■ ■••'.•'' ' '/ J x' /r *J^ r COMPLETE WORKS OF N. P. WILLIS. Armado. How hast thou purchased this experience 7 Moth. By my penny of observation." Shakspkrk. NEW YORK: REDFIELD, CLINTON HALL, CORNER OF NASSAU ANT) BEEKMAN STREETS 1846 'h' 5 Entered, nwordine 10 Act of Corfgress, in the year lc4 r i, BY J. S. REDFIKLD, in the Clerk'* Office of the Dfotrkt Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. STETU.OTYI'K!) HV RKDPIELT) ft SAVAOK, l:l CkuaMn Stfnt, S V TO GEORGE P. MORRIS, ESQ., 'HE FOLLOWING PAGE* ARK RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY HTS FRIEND, MJTHOR, 763854 Dear Reader: — This volume is sent forth, with a feeling somewhat akin to a parent's apprehensiveness, in giving his child into the hands of a stran- ger. We have a cellar, as well as many stories, in our giddy thought-house ; and it is from this cave of privacy that we have, with reluctance, and consentings far between, drawn treasures of feeling and impression, now bound and offered to you for the first time in one bundle. Oh, from the differ- ent stories of the mind — from the settled depths, and from the effervescent and giddy surface — how different looks the world ! — of what different stuff and worth the link that binds us to it ! In looking abroad from one window of the soul, we see sympathy, good- ness, truth, desire for us and our secrets, that we may be more loved ; from another, we see suspicion, coldness, mockery, and ill will — the evil spirits of the world — lying in wait for us. At one moment — the spirits down, and the heart calm and trusting — we tear out the golden leaf nearest the well of life, and pass it forth to be read and wept over. At anoth- er, we bar shutter and blind upon prying mal- ice, turn key carefully on all below, and, mounting to the summit, look abroad and jest at the very treasures we have concealed — wondering at our folly in even confessing to a heartless world that we had secrets, and would share them. We are not always alike. The world does not seem always the same. We believe it is all good sometimes. We believe sometimes, that it is but a place accursed, giv- en to devils and their human scholars. Some- times we are all kindness — sometimes aching only for an antagonist, and an arena without barrier or law. And oh what a Procrustes' bed is human opinion — trying a man's actions and words, in whatever mood committed and said, by the same standard of rigor ! How often must the angels hovering over us reverse the sentence of the judge — how oftener still the rebuke of the old maid and the Pharisee. But — a martingale on moralizing ! Yours affectionately, N. P. W. CONTENTS PROSE WORKS. Pencillings by the Way 1 Letters from under a Bridge 217 Dashks at Life with a Free Pencil — Parti. — High Life in Europe — Leaves from the Heart-book of Ernest Clay 251 The Marquis in Petticoats 269 Beauty and the Beast, or the handsome Mrs Titton and her plain Husband 272 Brown's Day with the Mimpsons 275 Mr. and Mrs. Follett, or the Danger of meddling with Married People 278 The Countess Nyschriem, and the handsome Artist 281 My One Adventure as a Brigand 283 Wigwam versus Almack's 285 Miss Jones's Son 294 Lady Rachel 298 The Phantom Head upon the Table 300 Getting to AVindward 306 The Wife bequeathed and resumed 310 A Revelation of a Previous Life 313 American Life — Count Pott's Strategy 3 1G The Female Wand 318 Two Buckets in a Well 323 Light Vervain 326 Nora Mehidy, or the strange Road to the Heart of Mr. Hypolet Leathers 330 The Pharisee and the Barber 332 Mrs. Passable Trott 335 The Spirit Love of "lone S " 336 Mabel Wynne 338 The Ghost-ball at Congress Hall 342 Born to love Pigs and Chickens 345 The Widow by Brevet 348 Those Ungrateful Blidgimses 352 Dashes at Life — Part II. — Inklings of Adventure — Pedlar Karl 3GJ Niagara— Lake Ontario— The St. Lawrence 366 The Cherokee's Threat 372 Paob F. Smith 377 Edith Linsey 333 Scenes of Fear 404 Incidents on the Hudson 410 The Gipsy of Sardis 412 Tom Fane and I j2y Larks in Vacation 433 A L02 in the Archipelago 441 The Revenge of the Signer Basil 445 Love and Diplomacy 454 The Madhouse of Palermo 457 Minute Philosophies 450 Loiterings of Travel — Lady Ravelgold 4^ Paletto's Bride 474 Violanta Cesarini 479 Pasquali, the Tailor of Venice 486 The Bandit of Austria 489 Oonder-Hoofden, or the Undercliff. 50 1 The Picker and Piler 504 Kate Crediford , . 507 Flirtation and Fox-Chasing 50y The Poet and the Mandarin 512 Meena Dimity, or why Mr Brown Crash took the Tour 516 The Power of an "Injured Look" 518 Beware of Dogs and Waltzing 52 1 The Inlet of Peach-Blossoms 524 The Belle of the Belfry, or the daring Lover 528 Passages from an Epistolary Journal kept on a Vis- it to England 530 My Adventures at the Tournament 543 Sketches of Travel 549 The four Rivers— the Hudson — the Mohawk — the Chenango — the Susquehannah 574 Dashfs at Life — Part III. — Ephemera 577 [Consisting of a collection of the "jottings down" contributed to the New Mirror and other papers, deemed worth preserving as daguerreotypes of the present — :js records of matters as they fly.] Lecture on Fashion 799 CONTENTS. POETICAL WORKS. Sacred Poems — The Healing of the Daughter of Jairus 817 The Leper 818 David's Grief for his Child 819 The Sacrfice of Abraham 820 The Shunamite 820 Jephthah's Daughter 821 Absalom 822 Christ's Entrance into Jerusalem 823 Baptism of Christ 823 Scene in Gethsemane 824 The Widow of Nain 824 Hagar in the Wilderness 824 Rizpah with her Sons, the Day before they were hanged on Gibeah 825 Lazarus and Mary 826 Thoughts while making the Grave of a new-born Child 827 On the Departure of Rev. Mr. White from his Parish 827 Birth-Day Verses 828 To my Mother from the Apennines 828 Lines on leaving Europe 829 A true Incident 829 The Mother to her Child 830 Thirty-Five 830 A Thought over a Cradle 830 Contemplation 830 On the Death of a Missionary 83 1 On the Picture of a " Child tired of Play" 83 1 A Child's first Impression of a Star 831 On Witnessing a Baptism 831 Revery at Glenmary 832 The Belfry Pigeon 832 The Sabbath 832 Dedication Hymn 832 Poems of Passion — The dying Alchymist 833 Parrhasius 834 The Scholar of Thebet Ben Khorat 835 The Wife's Appeal 837 Melanie 838 Lord Ivon and his Daughter 841 To Ermengarde 844 The Pity of the Park Fountain 845 " Chamber Scene" 845 To a Stolen Ring 845 To her who has Hopes for me 845 The Death of Harrison , 846 " She was not there" 846 Fail me not thou ! 846 Spirit-Whispers 846 To M , from Abroad 847 Sunrise Thoughts at the Close of a Ball 847 To a Face beloved 847 Unseen Spirits 847 Better Moments 847 The Annoyer 848 Andre's Request to Washington 848 Dawn 848 The Lady Jane, a Novel in Rhyme . . . 849 Miscellaneous Poems — An Apology 861 To Helen in a Huff 862 City Lyrics *. 862 To the Lady in the Chemisette with black Buttons 862 To the Lady in the white Dress 863 The white Chip-Hat 863 " You know if it was you" 863 Love in a Cottage 864 The Declaration 864 Tortesa, the Usurer 865 Bianca Visconti, or the Heart overtasked . 883 PENCILLIMS BY THE WAY: DURING SOME YEARS OF RESIDENCE AND TRAVEL FRANCE, ITALY, GREECE, ASIA MINOR, TURKEY, AND ENGLAND. THE AUTHOR OF PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY, TO THE READER OF THIS EDITION. A word or two of necessary explanation, dear reader. I had resided on the Continent for several years, and had been a year in England, without being suspected, I believe, in the societies in which I lived, of any hab- it of authorship. No production of mine had ever crossed the water, and my Letters to the New- York Mirror, were (for this long period, and I presumed would be for ever), as far as European readers were concerned, an unimportant and easy secret. Within a few months of returning to this country, the Quar- terly Review came out with a severe criticism on the Pencillings by the Way, published in the New York Mirror. A London publisher immediately procured a broken set of this paper from an American resident there, and called on me with an offer of <£300 for an immediate edition of what he had — rather less than one half of the Letters in this present volume. This chanced on the day before my marriage, and I left im- mediately for Paris, — a literary friend most kindly un- dertaking to look over the proofs, and suppress what might annoy any one then living in London. The book was printed in three volumes, at about $7 per j copy, and in this expensive shape three editions were sold by the original publisher. After his death a duo- decimo edition was put forth, very beautifully illus- trated ; and this ha3 been followed by a fifth edition, lately published, with new embellishments, by Mr. Virtue. The only American edition (long ago out of print) was a literal copy of this imperfect and curtailed book. In the present complete edition, the Letters objected to by the Quarterly, are, like the rest, re-published as originally written. The offending portions must be, at any rate, harmless, after being circulated extensively in this country in the Mirror, and prominently quoted from the Mirror in the Quarterly, — and this being true, I have felt that I could gratify the wish to be put fairly on trial for these alleged offences — to have a comparison instituted between my sins, in this respect, and Hamilton's, Muskau's, Von Raumer's, Marryat's and Lockhart's — and so to put a definite value and meaning upon the constant and vague allusions to these iniquities with which the critiques of my con- temporaries abound. I may state as a fact, that the only instance in which a quotation by me from the conversation of distinguished men gave the least of- fence in England, was the one remark made by Moore the poet at a dinner party, on the subject of O'Counell. It would have been harmless, as it was designed to be, but for the unexpected celebrity of my Pencillings ; yet with all my heart I wished it unwritten. I wish to put on record in this edition (and you need not be at the trouble of perusing them unless you pler.se, dear reader!) an extract or two from the Lon- .':ccs to " Pencillings," and parts of two arti- cles written apropos of the book's offences. The following is from the Preface to the first Lon- don edition : — "The extracts from these Letters which have ap- peared in the public prints, have drawn upon me much severe censure. Admitting its justice in part, perhaps I may shield myself from its remaining excess by a slight explanation. During several years' residence in Continental and Eastern countries, I have Lad op- portunities (as attache to a foreign Legation) of seeing phases of society and manners not usually described in books of travel. Having been the Editor, before leaving the United States, of a monthly review, I found it both profitable and agreeable to continue my interest in the periodical in which that Review was merged at my departure, by a miscellaneous corres- pondence. Foreign courts, distinguished men, royal entertainments, &c, &c, — matters which were likely to interest American readers more particularly — have been in turn my themes. The distance of America from these countries, and the ephemeral nature and usual obscurity of periodical correspondence, were a sufficient warrant to my mind that the descriptions would die where they first saw the light, and fulfil on- ly the trifling destiny for which they were intended. I indulged myself, therefore, in a freedom of detail and topic which is usual only in posthumous memoirs — expecting as soon that they would be read in the countries and by the persons described, as the biog- rapher of Byron and Sheridan that these fruitful and unconscious theme3 would rise from the dead to read their own interesting memoirs ! And such a resurrec- tion would hardly be a more disagreeable surprise to that eminent biographer, than was the sudden appear- ance to me of my own unambitious Letters in the Quarterly Review. " The reader will see (for every Letter containing the PREFACE TO PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. least personal detail has been most industriously re- published in the English papers) that I have in some slight measure corrected these Pencillings by the Way. They were literally what they were styled — notes written on the road, and despatched without a second perusal ; and it would be extraordinary if, be- tween the liberty I felt with my material, and the haste in which I scribbled, some egregious errors in judg- ment and taste had not crept in unawares. The Quar- terly has made a long arm over the water to refresh my memory on this point. There are passages I would not re-write, and some remarks on individuals which I would recal at some cost, and would not wil- lingly see repeated in these volumes. Having con- ceded thus much, however, I may express my surprise that this particular sin should have been visited upon me, at a distance of three thousand miles, when the reviewer's own literary fame rests on the more aggra- vated instance of a book of personalities published under the very noses of the persons described. Those of my Letters which date from England were written within three or four months of my first arrival in this country. Fortunate in my introductions, almost em- barrassed with kindness, and, from advantages of com- parison gained by long travel, qualified to appreciate keenly the delights of English society, I was little dis- posed to find fault. Everything pleased me. Yet in one instance — one single instance — I indulged myself in stricture upon individual character, and I repeat it in this work, sure that there will be but one person in the world of letters who will not read it with approba- tion — the editor of the Quarterly himself. It was ex- pressed at the time with no personal feeling, for I had never seen the individual concerned, and my name had probably never reached his ears. I but repeated what I had said a thousand times, and never without an in- dignant echo to its truth — an opinion formed from the most dispassionate perusal of his writings — that the editor of that Review was the most unprincipled critic of his age. Aside from its flagrant literary injustice, we owe to the Quarterly, it is well known, every spark of ill-feeling that has been kept alive between England and America for the last twenty years. The sneers, the opprobrious epithets of this bravo in literature, have been received in a country where the machinery of reviewing was not understood, as the voice of the English people, and an animosity for which there was no other reason, has been thus periodically fed and exasperated. I conceive it to be my duty as a literary man — I know it is my duty as an American — to lose no opportunity of setting my heel on the head of this reptile of criticism." The following is part of an article, written by my- self, on the subject of personalities, for a periodical in New- York : — " There is no question, I believe, that, pictures of living society where society is in very high perfection, and of living persons, where they are " persons of mark," arc both interesting to ourselves, and valuable to posterity. What would we not give for a descrip- tion of a dinner with Shakspere and Ben Jonson — of a danse with the Maids of Queen Elizabeth — of a chat with Milton in a morning call ? We should say the man was a churl, who, when he had the power, should have refused to ' leave the world a copy' of such precious hours. Posterity will decide who are the great of our time— but they are at least among those I have heard talk, and have described and quo- ted, and who would read without interest, a hundred years hence, a character of the second Virgin Queen, caught as it was uttered in a ball-room of her time ? or a description of her loveliest Maid of Honor, by one who had stood opposite her in a dance, and wrote it before he slept ? or a conversation with Moore or Buhver ? — when the Queen and her fairest maid, and Moore and Bulwer have had their splendid funerals, and are dust, like Elizabeth and Shakspere ? " The harm, if harm there be in such sketch- es, is in the spirit in which they are done. If they are ill-natured or untrue, or if the author says aught to injure the feelings of those who have admit- ted him to their confidence or hospitality, he is to blame, and it is easy, since he publishes while his subjects are living, to correct his misrepresentations, and to visit upon him his infidelities of friendship. "But (while I think of it) perhaps some fault-finder will be pleased to tell me, why this is so much deeper a sin in me than in all other travellers. Has Basil Hall any hesitation in describing a dinner party in the United States, and recording the conversation at table ? Does Miss Martineau stick at publishing the portrait of a distinguished American, and faithfully recording all he says in a confidential tete-a-tete ? Have Captain Hamilton and Prince Pukler, Von Raumer and Cap- tain Marryat, any scruples whatever about putting down anything they hear that is worth the trouble, or of describing any scene, private or public, which would tell in their book, or illustrate a national pecu- liarity ? What would their books be without this class of subjects ? What would any book of travels be, leaving out everybody the author saw, and all he heard 1 Not that I justify all these authors have done in this way, for I honestly think they have stepped over the line which I have but trod close upon. Surely it is the abuse and not the use of information thus acquired that makes the offence. The most formal, unqualified, and severe condem- nation recorded against my Pencillings, however, is that of the renowned Editor of the Quarterly, and to show the public the immaculate purity of the forge where this long-echoed thunder is manufactured, 1 will quote a passage or two from a book of the same description, by the Editor of the Quarterly himself. ' Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' by Mr. Lockhart, are three volumes exclusively filled with portraits of persons, living at the time it was written in Scotland, their conversation with the author, their manners, their private histories, etc., etc. In one of the letters upon the ' Society of Edinburgh,' is the following delicate passage : — '"Even you, my dear Lady Johnes, are a perfect tyro in this branch of knowledge. I remember, only PREFACE TO PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. the last time I saw you, you were praising witli all your might the legs of Col. B , those flimsy, worthless things that look as if they were bandaged with linen rollers from the heel to the knee. You may say what you will, but I still assert, and I will prove it if you please by pen and pencil, that, with one pair of exceptions, the best legs in Cardigan are Mrs. P 's. As for Miss J T) *■, 1 think they are frightful.' * '« Two pages farther on he says : — " ' As for myself, I assure you that ever since I spent a week at Lady L 's, and saw those great fat girls of hers waltzing every night with that odious De B , I can not endure the very name of the thing.' " 1 quote from the second edition of these letters, by which it appears that even these are moderated passa- ges. A note to the first of the above quotations runs as follows : — " ' A great part of this letter is omitted in the Second Edition in consequence of the displeasure its publi- cation gave to certain ladies in Cardiganshire. As for the gentleman who chose to take what I said of him in so much dudgeon, he will observe, that I have al- lowed what I said to remain in statu quo, which I cer- tainly should not have done, had he expressed his re- sentment in a proper manner.' " So well are these unfortunate persons' names known by those who read the book in England, that in the copy which I have from a circulating library, they are all filled out in pencil. And I would here beg the reader to remark that these are private individuals, compelled by no literary or official distinction to come out from their privacy and figure in print, and in this, if not in the taste and quality of my descriptions, I claim a fairer escutcheon than my self-elected judge — for where is a person's name recorded in my letters who is not, either by tenure of public office, or litera- ry, or political distinction, a theme of daily newspaper comment, and of course fair game for the traveller. "I must give one more extract from Mr. Lockhart's book, an account of a dinner with a private merchant of Glasgow. " * I should have told you before, that I had another visiter early in the morning, besides Mr. H. This was a Mr. P , a respectable merchant of the place, also an acquaintance of my friend W . He came before H , and after professing himself very sorry that his avocations would not permit him to devote his forenoon to my service, he made me promise to dine with him. * * My friend soon joined me, and observing from the appearance of my counte- nance that I was contemplating the scene with some disgust,' (the Glasgow Exchange) • ' My good fel- low,' said he, 'you are just like every other well-edu- cated stranger that comes into this town ; you can not endure the first sight of us mercantile whelps. Do not, however, be alarmed ; I will not introduce you to any of these cattle at dinner. No, sir! You must know that there are a few men of refinement and polite information in this city. I have warned two or three <>t these rara ores, and depend upon it, yon shall have a very snug day's work.'' So saying he toe >k my arm, and observing that five was just on the chap, hurried me through several streets and lanes till we arrived in the , where his house is situated. His wife was, I perceived, quite the fine lady, and, withal, a little of the blue stocking. Hearing that I had just come from Edinburgh, she remarked that Glasgow would be seen to much more disadvantage after that elegant city. ' Tndeed,' said she, ' a person of taste, must, of course, find many disagreeables connected with a resi- dence in such a town as this ; but Mr. P 's busi- ness renders the thing necessary for the present, and one can not make a silk purse of a sow's ear — he, he, he !' Another lady of the company carried this affec- tation still farther; she pretended to be quite ignorant of Glasgow and its inhabitants, although she had lived among them the greater part of her life, and, by the by, seemed no chicken. I was afterward told by nfy friend Mr. H , that this damsel had in reality so- journed a winter or two in Edinburgh, in the capacity of lick-spittle or toad-eater to a lady of quality, tc whom she had rendered herself amusing by a mali- cious tongue ; and that during this short absence, she had embraced the opportunity of utterly forgetting everything about the West country. " ' The dinner was excellent, although calculated ap- parently for forty people rather than sixteen, which last number sat down. While the ladies remained in the room, there was such a noise and racket of coarse mirth, ill-restrained by a few airs of sickly sentiment on the part of the hostess, that I really could neither attend to the wine nor the dessert ; but after a little time a very broad hint from a fat Falstaff, near the foot of the table, apparently quite a privileged character, thank Heaven ! sent the ladies out of the room. The moment after which blessed consummation, the butler and footman entered, as if by instinct, the one with a huge punch bowl, the other with Sfc.' " I do not thank Heaven that there is no parallel in my own letters to either of these three extracts. It is a thing of course that there is not. They are vio- lations of hospitality, social confidence, and delicacy, of which even my abusers will allow me incapable. Yet this man accuses me of all these things, and so runs criticism ! And to this I add (to conclude this long Preface) some extracts from a careful review of the work in the North American : — " ' Pencillings by the Way, ' is a very spirited book. The letters, out of which it is constructed, were written originally for the New York 4 Mirror,' and were not intended for distinct publication. From this circumstance, the author indulged in a freedom of personal detail, which we must say is wholly un- justifiable, and we have no wish to defend it. This book does not pretend to contain any profound obser- vations or discussions on national character, political condition, literature, or even art. It would be obvi- ously impossible to carry any one of these topics thoroughly out, without spending vastly more time and labor upon it than a rambling poet is likely to XIV PREFACE TO PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. have the inclination to do. In fact, there are very few men, who are qualified, by the nature of their previous studies, to do this with any degree of edification to their readers. But a man of general intellectual cul- ture, especially if he have the poetical imagination superadded, may give us rapid sketches of other countries, which will both entertain and instruct us. Now this book is precisely such a one as we have here indicated. The author travelled through Eu- rope, mingling largely in society, and visited whatever scenes were interesting to him as an American, a scholar, and a poet. The impressions which these scenes made upon his mind, are described in these volumes ; and we must say, we have rarely fallen in with a book of a more sprightly character, a more elegant and graceful stjle, and full of more lively descriptions. The delineations of manners are exe- cuted with great tact ; and ihe shifting pictures of natural scenery pass before us as we read, exciting a never-ceasing interest. As to the personalities which have excited the wrath of British critics, we have, as we said before, no wish to defend them ; but a few words upon the tone, temper, and motives, of those gentlemen, in their dealing with our author, will not, perhaps, be considered inappropriate. " It is a notorious fact, that British criticism, for many years past, has been, to a great extent, free from all the restraints of a regard to literary truth. Assuming the political creed of an author, it would be a very easy thing to predict the sort of criticism his writings would meet with, in any or all of the leading periodicals of the kingdom. This tendency has been carried so far, that even discussions of points in ancient classical literature have been shaped and colored by it. Thus, Aristophanes' comedies are turned against modern democracy, and Pindar, the Theban Eagle, has been unceremoniously classed with British Tories, by the London Quarterly. In- stead of inquiring 'What is the author's object? How far has he accomplished it ? How far is that object worthy of approbation ?'— three questions that are essential to all just criticism ; the questions put by English Reviewers are substantially 'What party does he belong to ? Is he a Whig, Tory, Radical, or is he an American ?' And the sentence in such cases depends on the answer to them. Even where British criticism is favorable to an American author, its tone is likely to be haughty and insulting; like the language of a condescending city gentleman toward some country cousin, whom he is kind enough to honor with his patronage. Now, to critics of this sort, Mr. Willis was a tempt- ing mark. No one can for a moment believe that the London Quarterly, Frazer's Magazine, and Captain Marryat's monthly, are honest in the language they hold toward Mr. Willis. Motives, wide enough from a love of truth, guided the conduct of these journals. The editor of the London Quarterly, it is well known, is the author of 'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' a work full of personalities, ten times more objectiona- ble than anything to be found in the 'Pencillings.' Yet this same editor did not blush to write and print a long and most abusive tirade upon the American traveller, for doing what he had himself done to a much greater and more reprehensible extent; and, to cap the climax of inconsistency, republished in his journal the very personalities, names and all, which had so shocked his delicate sensibilities. It is much more likely that a disrespectful notice of the London Quarterly and its editor, in these ' Pencillings,' was the source from which this bitterness flowed, than that any sense of literary justice dictated the harsh review. Another furious attack on Mr. Willis's book appeared in the monthly journal, under the editorial manage- j ment of Captain Marryat, the author of a series of j very popular sea novels. Whoever was the author of i that article, ought to be held disgraced in the opinions ; of all honorable men. It is the most extraordinary | tissue of insolence and coarseness, with one exception, : that we have ever seen, in any periodical which pre- | tended to respectability of literary character. It car- I ries its grossness 10 the intolerable length of attacking the private character of Mr. Willis, and throwing out foolish sneers about his birth and parentage. It is this article which led to the well-known correspon- dence, between the American Poet and the British Captain, ending in a hostile meeting. It is to be re- gretted that Mr. Willis should so far forget the prin- : ciples of his New England education, as to participate | in a duel. We regard the practice with horror; we J believe it not only wicked, but absurd. We can not ! possibly see how Mr. Willis's tarnished fame could be brightened by the superfluous work of putting an ad- ditional quantity of lead into the gallant captain. But there is, perhaps, no disputing about tastes ; and, bad as we think the whole affair was, no candid man can read the correspondence without feeling that Mr. Willis's part of it is infinitely superior to the captain's, in style, sense, dignity of feeling, and manly honor. "But, to return to the work from which we have been partially drawn aside. Its merits in point of style are unquestionable. It is written in a simple, vigorous, and highly descriptive form of English, and rivets the reader's attention throughout. There are passages in it of graphic eloquence, which it would be difficult to surpass from the writings of any other tourist, whatever. The topics our author selects, are, as has been already stated, not those which require long and careful study to appreciate and discuss ; they are such as the poetic eye would naturally dwell upon, and a poetic hand rapidly delineate, in a cursory sur- vey of foreign lands. Occasionally, we think, Mr. Willis enters too minutely into the details of the hor- rible. Some of his descriptions of the cholera, and the pictures he gives us of the catacombs of the dead, are ghastly. But the manners of society he draws with admirable tact ; and personal peculiarities of dis- tinguished men, he renders with a most life-like vi- vacity. Many of his descriptions of natural scenery are more like pictures, than sketches in words. The description of the Bay of Naples will occur as a good PREFACE TO PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY " It would be impossible to point out, with any de- gree of particularity, the many passages in this book whose beauty deserves attention. But it may be re- marked in general, that the greater part of the first volume is not so fresh and various, and animated, as the second. This we suppose arises partly from the fact that France and Italy have lung been beaten ground ; but Greece and Asia Minor have a newness of interest about them, which can not but give more vigor and elasticity to a traveller's description. Mr. Willis's account of the Ionian Islands is exceedingly lively ; and his contrast between present scenes and classic associations is highly amusing. " We think most readers will find Mr. Willis's sketches of Turkish scenes and Turkish life, the most entertaining parts of his book. They are written with great sprightliness, and will richly reward a care- ful perusal. "The last part of the book is a statement of the author's observations upon English life and society ; and it is this portion, which the English critics affect to be so deeply offended with. The most objectiona- ble passage in this is the account of a dinner at Lady Blessington's. Unquestionably Mr. Moore's remarks about Mr. O'Connell ought not to have been reported, considering the time when, and the place where, they were uttered; though they contain nothing new about the great Agitator, the secrets disclosed being well known to some millions of people who interest them- selves in British politics, and read the British news- papers. We close our remarks on this work by re- ferring our readers to a capital scene on board a Scotch steam-boat, and a breakfast at Professor Wil- son's, the famous editor of Blackwood, both in the second volume, which we regret our inability to quote." " Every impartial reader must confess, that for so young a man, Mr. Willis has done much to promote the reputation of American literature. His position at present is surrounded with every incentive to a no- ble ambition. With youth and health to sustain him under labor ; with much knowledge of the world ac- quired by travel and observation, to draw upon ; with a mature style, and a hand practised in various forms of composition, Mr. Willis's genius ought to take a wider and higher range than it has ever done before. We trust we shall meet him again, erelong, in the paths of literature ; and we trust that he will take it kindly, if we express the hope, that he will lay aside those tendencies to exaggeration, and to an unhealthy tone of sentiment, which mar the beauty of some of his otherwise most agreeable books " PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER I. At Sea. — I have emerged from my berth this morn- ing for the first time since we left the Capes. We have been running six or seven days before a strong northwest gale, which, by the scuds in the sky, is not yet blown out, and my head and hand, as you will see by my penmanship, are anything but at rights. If you have ever plunged about in a cold rain-storm at sea for seven successive days, you can imagine how I have amused myself. I wrote to you after my pilgrimage to the tomb of Washington. It was almost the only object of natu- ral or historical interest in our own country that I had not visited, and that seen, I made all haste back to em- bark, in pursuance of my plans of travel, for Europe. At Philadelphia I found a first-rate merchant-brig, the Pacific, on the eve of sailing for Havre. She was nearly new, and had a French captain, and no passen- gers, three very essential circumstances to my taste, and I took a berth in her without hesitation. The next day she fell down the river, and on the succeeding morning I followed her with the captain in the steam- boat. Some ten or fifteen vessels, bound on different voy- ages, lay in the roads waiting for the pilot-boat, and as she came down the river, they all weighed anchor together and we got under way. It was a beautiful sight — so many sail in close company under a smart breeze, and I stood on the quarter-deck and watched them in a mood of mingled happiness and sadness till we reached the Capes. There was much to elevate and much to depress me. The dream of my lifetime was about to be realized. I was bound to France, and those fair Italian cities, with their world of association and interest were within the limit of a voyage, and all that one looks to for happiness in change of scene, and all that I had been passionately wishing and imagining since I could dream a day-dream or read a book, was before me with a visible certainty ; but my home was receding rapidly, perhaps for years, and the chances of death and adversity in my absence crowded upon my mind — and I had left friends (many — many as dear to me, any of them, as the whole sum of my coming en- joyment), whom a thousand possible accidents might remove or estrange, and I scarce knew whether I was more happy or sad. We made Cape Henlopen about sundown, and all shortened sail and came to. The little boat passed 1 from one to another, taking off the pilots, and in a few minutes every sail was spread again, and away they went with a dashing breeze, some on one course and some on another, leaving us, in less than an hour, ap- parently alone on the sea. By this time the clouds had grown black, the wind had strengthened into a gale, with fits of rain ; and as the order was given to " close-reef the topsails," I took a last look at Cape Henlopen, just visible in the far edge of the horizon, and went below. Oct. 18. — It is a day to make one in love with life. The remains of the long storm, before which we have been driven for a week, lie in white, turreted masses around the horizon the sky overhead is spotlessly blue, the sun is warm, the wind steady and fresh, but soft as a child's breath, and the sea — I must sketch it to you more elaborately. We are in the Gulf Stream. The water here, as you know, even to the cold banks of Newfoundland, is always blood-warm, and the tem- perature of the air mild at all seasons, and just now. like a south wind on land in June. Hundreds of sea- birds are sailing around us — the spongy sea-weeds washed from the West Indian rocks, a thousand miles away in the southern latitudes, float by in large mas- ses — the sailors, barefoot and bareheaded, are scatter- ed over the rigging, doing " fair-woather work" — and just in the edge of the horizon, hidden by every swell, stand two vessels with all sail spread, making, with the first fair wind they have had in many days, for America. This is the first day that I have been able to be long enough on deck to study the sea. Even were it not, however, there has been a constant and chilly rain which would have prevented me from enjoying its grandeur, so that I am reconciled to my unusually se- vere sickness. I came on deck this morning and looked around, and for an hour or two I could scarce realize that it was not a dream. Much as I had watched the sea from our bold promontory at Nahant, and well as I thought I knew its character in storms and calms, the scene which was before me surprised and bewildered me utterly. At the first glance, we were just in the gorge of the sea, and looking over the leeward quarter, I saw, stretching up from the keel, what 1 can only describe as a hill of dazzling blue, thirty or forty feet in real altitude, but sloped so far away that the white crest seemed to me a cloud, and the space between a sky of the most wonderful beau- ty and brightness. A moment more, and the crest PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. burst over with a splendid volume of foam ; the sun struck through the thinner part of the swell in a line of vivid emerald, and the whole mass swept under us, I the brig rising and riding on the summit with the buoyancy and grace of a bird. The single view of the ocean which I got at that mo- ment, will be impressed upon my mind for ever. Noth- ing that I ever saw on land at all compares with it for splendor. No sunset, no lake scene of hill and water, no fall, not even Niagara, no glen or mountain gap ev- er approached it. The waves had had no time to " knock down," as the sailors phrase it, and it was a storm at sea without the hurricane and rain. J looked off to the horizon, and the long majestic swells were heaving into the sky upon its distant limit, and between it and my eye lay a radius of twelve miles, an im- mense plain flashing with green and blue and white, and changing place and color so rapidly as to be al- most painful to, the sight. I stood.' holding by the taf- ferel an hottr,". gazing c*>'it-v*itli ;\ tihildish delight and wonder. The spray had broken over me repeatedly, and as we «fcip.pecKhalf' h'.s'ea. a"t the scuppers at every roll, I was'siaM-i'ng "kalf -t&e {iraC «p to the knees in water; but the warm wind on my forehead, after a week's confinement to my berth, and the excessive beauty lavished upon my sight, were so delicious, that I forgot all, and it was only in compliance with the captain's repeated suggestion that I changed my po- sition. I mounted the quarter-deck, and pulling off my shoes, like a schoolboy, sat over the leeward rails, and with my feet dipping into the warm sea at every lurch, gazed at the glorious show for hours. I do not hesi- tate to say that the formation, progress, and final burst of a sea-wave, in a bright sun, are the most gorgeously beautiful sight under heaven. I must describe it like a jeweller to you, or I can never convey my impres- sions. First of all, a quarter of a mile away to windward, your eye is caught by an uncommonly high wave, rushing right upon your track, and heaping up slowly and constantly as it comes, as if some huge animal were ploughing his path steadily and powerfully be- neath the surface. Its " ground," as a painter would say, is of a deep indigo, clear and smooth as enamel, its front curved inward, like a shell, and turned over at the summit with a crest of foam, flashing and chan- ging perpetually in the sunshine, like the sudden out- burst of a million of "unsunned diamonds," and right through its bosom, as the sea falls off, or the angle of refraction changes, there runs a shifting band of the most vivid green, that you would take to have been the cestus of Venus as she rose from the sea, it is so supernaturally translucent and beautiful. As it nears you, it looks in shape like the prow of Cleopatra's barge, as they paint it in the old pictures ; but its col- ors, and the grace and majesty of its march, and its murmur (like the low tones of an organ, deep and full, and, to my ear, ten times as articulate and solemn), almost startle you into the belief that it is a sentient being, risen glorious and breathing from the ocean. As it reaches the ship, she rises gradually, for there is apparently an under-wave driven before it, which pre- pares her for its power; and as it touches the quarter, the whole magnificent wall breaks down beneath you with a deafening surge, and a volume of foam issues from its bosom, green and blue and white, as if it had been a mighty casket in which the whole wealth of the sea, crysoprase, and emerald, and brilliant spars, had been heaped and lavished at a throw. This is the " tenth wave," and, for four or five minutes, the sea will be smooth about you, and the sparkling and dy- ing foam falls into the wake, and may be seen like a white path, stretching away over the swells behind, till you are tired of gazing at it. Then comes another from the same direction, and with the same shape and motion, and so on till the sun sets, or your eyes are blinded and your brain giddy with splendor. I am sure this language will seem exaggerated to you, but, upon the faith of a lonely man (the captain has turned in, and it is near midnight and a dead calm), it is a mere skeleton, a goldsmith's inventory, of the reality. I long ago learned that first lesson of a man of the world, "to be astonished at nothing," but the sea has overreached my philosophy — quite. I am changed to a mere child in my wonder. Be assured no view of the ocean from land can give you a shadow of an idea of it. Within even the outermost Capes, the swell is broken, and the color of the water in soundings is essentially different — more dull and earthy. Go to the mineral cabinets of Cambridge or New Haven, and look at the Jiuor spars, and the turquoises, and the clearer specimens of cryso-prase, and quartz, and diamond, and imagine them all polished and clear, and flung at. your feet by millions in a noonday sun, and it may help your conceptions of the sea after a storm. You may "swim on bladders" at Nahant and Rocka- way till you are gray, and be never the wiser. The " middle watch" is called, and the second mate, a fine rough old sailor, promoted from " the mast," is walking the quarter-deck, stopping his whistle now and then with a gruff " how do you head ?" or "keep her up, you lubber," to the man at the helm ; the " silver-shell" of a waning moon, is just visible through the dead-lights over my shoulder (it has been up two hours, to me, and, by the difference of our present meridians, is just rising now over a certain hill, and peeping softly in at an eastern window that I have watched many a time when its panes have been silver- ed by the same chaste alchymy), and so, after a walk on the deck for an hour to look at the stars and watch the phosphorus in the wake, and think of , I'll get to mine own uneven pillow, and sleep too! LETTER II. At Sea, Octoekr 20. — We have had fine weather for progress, so far, running with north and north- westerly winds from eight to ten knots an hour, and making of course over two hundred miles a day. The sea is still rough ; and though the brig is light laden and rides very buoyantly, tht ,e mounting waves break over us now and then with a tremendous surge, keep- ing the decks constantly wet, and putting me to many an uncomfortable shiver. I have become reconciled, however, to much that I should have anticipated with no little horror. I can lie in my berth forty-eight hours, if the weather is chill or rainy, and amuse my- self very well with talking bad French across the cab- in to the captain, or laughing at the distresses of my friend and fellow-passenger, Turk (a fine setter dog, on his first voyage), or inventing some disguise for the peculiar flavor which that dismal cook gives to all his abominations ; or, at the worst, I can bury my head in my pillow, and brace from one side to the other against the swell, and enjoy my disturbed thoughts — all without losing my temper, or wishing that I had not undertaken the voyage. Poor Turk ! his philosophy is more severely tried. He has been bred a gentleman, and is amusingly ex- clusive. No assiduities can win him to take the least notice of the crew, and I soon discovered that when the ciptain and myself were below, he endured many a persecution. In an evil hour, a night or two since, I suffered his earnest appeals for freedom to work up- on my feelings, and, releasing him from his chain un- der the windlass, I gave him the liberty of the cabin. He slept very quietly on the floor till about midnight, when the wind rose and the vessel began to roll very uncomfortably. With the first heavy lurch a couple PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. a of chairs went tumbling to leeward, and by the yelp of distress, Turk was somewhere in the way. He changed his position, and, with the next roll, the mate's trunk "brought away," and shooting across the cabin, jammed him with such violence against the captain's state-room door, that he sprang howling to the deck, where the first thing that met him was a washing; sea, just taken in at mid-ships, that kept him swimming above the hatches for five minutes. Half- drowned, and with a gallon of water in his long hair, he took again to the cabin, and making a desperate leap into the steward's berth, crouched down beside the sleeping Creole with a long whine of satisfaction. The water soon penetrated however, and with a "sacre /" and a blow that he will remember the remainder of the voyage, the poor dog was again driven from the cabin, and I heard no more of him till morning. His deci- ded preference for me has since touched my vanity, and 1 have taken him under my more special protec- tion — a circumstance which costs me two quarrels a day at least, with the cook and steward. The only thing which forced a smile upon me du- ring the first week of the passage was the achieve- ment of dinner. In rough weather, it is as much as one person can do to keep his place at the table at all; and to guard the dishes, bottles, and castors, from a general slide in the direction of the lurch, requires a sleight and coolness reserved only for a sailor. "Pre- nez garde!" shouts the captain, as the sea strikes, and in the twinkling of an eye, everything is seized and held up to wait for the other lurch, in attitudes which it would puzzle the pencil of Johnson to exaggerate. With his plate of soup in one hand, and the larboard end of the tureen in the other, the claret bottle be- tween his teeth, and the crook of his elbow caught around the mounting corner of the table, the captain maintains his seat upon the transom, and with a look of the most grave concern, keeps a wary eye on the shifting level of his vermicelli ; the old weather-beat- en mate, with the alacrity of a juggler, makes a long leg back to the cabin panels at the same moment, and with his breast against the table, takes his own plate and the castors and one or two of the smaller dishes under his charge ; and the steward, if he can keep his legs, looks out for the vegetables, or if he falls, makes as wide a lap as possible to intercept the volant articles in their descent. "Gentlemen that live at home at ease" forget to thank Providence for the blessing of a water-level. Oct. 24. — We are on the Grand Bank, and surround- ed by hundreds of sea-birds. I have been watching them nearly all day. Their performances on the wing are certainly the perfection of grace and skill. With the steadiness of an eagle and the nice adroitness of a swallow, they wheel round in their constant circles with an arrowy swiftness, lifting their long tapering pinions scarce perceptibly, and mounting and falling as if by a mere act of volition, without the slightest apparent exertion of power. Their chief enjoyment seems to be to scoop through the deep hollows of the sea, and they do it so quickly that your eye can scarce follow them, just disturbing the polish of the smooth crescent, and leaving a fine line of ripple from swell to swell, but never wetting a wing, or dipping their white breasts a feather too deep in the capricious and wind- driven surface. I feel a strange interest in these wild- hearted birds. There is something in this fearless in- stinct, leading them away from the protecting and pleasant land to make their home on this tossing and desolate element, that moves both my admiration and my pity. I can not comprehend it. It is unlike the self-caring instincts of the other families of heaven's creatures. If I were half the Pythagorean that I used to be, I should believe they were souls in punishment — expiating some lifetime sin in this restless me- empsychosis. Now and then a land-bird has flown on board, driv- en to sea probably by the gale, and so fatigued as hardly to be able to rise again upon the wing. Yes- terday morning a large curlew came struggling down the wind, and seemed to have just sufficient strength to reach the vessel. He attempted to alight on the J main yard, but failed and dropped heavily into the long-boat, where he suffered himself to be taken with- ! out an attempt to escape. He must have been on the wing two or three days without food, for we were at ! least two hundred miles from land. His heart was throbbing hard through his ruffled feathers, and he ! held his head up with difficulty. He was passed aft, i but while I was deliberating on the best means for re- I suscitating and fitting him to get on the wing again, the captain had taken him from me and handed him over to the cook, who had his head off before I could remember French enough to arrest him. I dreamed all that night of the man " that shot the albatross." The captain relieved my mind, however, by telling me that he had tried repeatedly to preserve them, and that they died invariably in a few hours. The least food, in their exhausted state, swells in their throats and suffocates them. Poor curlew! there was a tender- ness in one breast for him at least — a feeling, I have the melancholy satisfaction to know, fully reciproca- ted by the bird himself — that seat of his affections having been allotted to me for my breakfast the morn- ing succeeding his demise. Oct. 29. — We have a tandem of whales ahead. They have been playing about the ship an hour, and now are coursing away to the east, one after the other, in gallant style. If we could only get them into tra- ces now, how beautiful it would be to stand in the fore- top and drive a degree or two on a summer sea ! It would not be more wonderful, de novo, than the dis- covery of the lightning-rod, or navigation by steam ! And, by the way, the sight of these huge creatures has made me realize, for the first time, the extent to which the sea has grown upon my mind during the voyage. I have seen one or two whales, exhibited in the docks, and it seemed to me always that they were monsters — out of proportion, entirely, to the range of the ocean. I had been accustomed to look out to the horizon from land (the radius, of course, as great as at sea), and, calculating the probable speed with which they would compass the diagonal, and the dis- turbance they would make in doing it, it appeared that in any considerable numbers, they would occupy more than their share of notice and sea-room. Now — after sailing five days, at two hundred miles a day, and not meeting a single vessel — it seems to me that a troop of a thousand might swim the sea a century and chance to be never crossed, so endlessly does this eter- nal horizon open and stretch away ! Oct. 30. — The day has passed more pleasantly than usual. The man at the helm cried "a sail," while we were at breakfast, and we gradually overtook a large ship, standing on the same course, with every sail set. We were passing half a mile to leeward, when she put up her helm and ran down to us, hoist- ing the English flag. We raised the "star-spangled banner" in answer, and " hove too," and she came dashing along on our quarter, heaving most majesti- cally to the sea, till she was near enough to speak us without a trumpet. Her fore-deck was covered with sailors dressed all alike and very neatly, and around the gangway stood a large group of officers in uni- form, the oldest of whom, a noble-looking man with gray hair, hailed and answered us. Several ladies stood back by the cabin-door— passengers apparently. She was a man-of-war. sailing as a king's packet be- tween Halifax and Falmouth, and had been out from i the former port nineteen days. After the usual cour- tesies had passed, she bore away a little, and then kept I on her course again, the 'wo vessels in company at PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. the distance of half a pistol shot. I rarely have seen a more beautiful sight. The fine effect of a ship un- der sail is entirely lost to one on board, and it is only at sea and under circumstances like these, that it can be observed. The power of the swell, lifting such a huge body as lightly as an egg-shell on its bosom, and tossing it sometimes half out of water without the slightest apparent effort, is astonishing. I sat on deck watching her with undiminished interest for hours. Apart from the spectacle, the feeling of companion- ship, meeting human beings in the middle of the ocean after so long a deprivation of society (five days without seeing a sail, and nearly three weeks unspo- ken from land), was delightful. Our brig was the fast- er sailer of the two, but the captain took in some of his canvass for company's sake ; and all the afternoon we heard her half-hour bells, and the boatswain's whistle, and the orders of the officer of the deck, and I could distinguish very well with a glass, the expres- sion of the faces watching our own really beautiful vessel as she skimmed over the water like a bird. We parted at sunset, the man-of-war making northerly for her port, and we stretching south for the coast of France. I watched her till she went over the horizon, and felt as if I had lost friends when the night closed in and we were once more M Alone on the wide, wide sea." Nov. 3. — We have just made the port of Havre, and the pilot tells us that the packet has been delayed by contrary winds, and sails early to-morrow morning. The town bells are ringing "nine" (as delightful a sound as I ever heard, to my sea-weary ear), and I close in haste, for all is confusion on board. LETTER III. Havre. — This is one of those places which scrib- bling travellers hurry through with a crisp mention of their arrival and departure, but as I have passed a day here upon customhouse compulsion, and passed it pleasantly too, and as I have an evening entirely to myself, and a good fire, why I will order another pound of wood (they sell it like a drug here), and Monsieur and Mademoiselle Somebodies, " violin players right from the hands of Paganini, only fifteen years of age, and miracles of music" (so says the placard), may de- 'ight other lovers of precocious talent than I. Pen, ink, and paper, for number two ! If I had not been warned against being astonished short of Paris, I should have thought Havre quite an affair. I certainly have seen more that is novel and amusing since morning than I ever saw before in any seven days of my life. Not a face, not a building, not a dress, not a child even, not a stone in the street, nor shop, nor woman, nor beast of burden, looks in any comparable degree like its namesake the other side of the water. It was very provoking to eat a salt supper and go to bed in that tiresome berth again last night, with a French hotel in full view, and no permission to send for a fresh biscuit even, or a cup of milk. It was nine o'clock when we reached the pier, and at that late hour there was, of course, no officer to be had for per- mission to land; and there paced the patrole, with his high black cap and red pompon, up and down the quay, within six feet of our tafferel, and a shot from his arquebuss would have been the consequence of any unlicensed communication with the shore. It was something, however, to sleep without rocking; and after a fit of musing anticipation, which kept me con- scious of the sentinel's measured tread till midnight, the " gentle goddess" sealed up my cares effectually, and I awoke at sunrise — in France ! It is a common thing enough to go abroad, and it may seem idle and common-place to be enthusiastic about it ; but nothing is common, or a trifle, to me, that can send the blood so warm to my heart, and the color to my temples as generously, as did my first conscious thought when I awoke this morning. In France! I would not have had it a dream fo,r the price of an empire ! Early in the morning a woman came clattering into the cabin with wooden shoes, and a patois of mingled French and English — a hlanchisseuse — spattered to the knees with mud, but with a cap and 'kerchief that would have made the fortune of a New-York milliner. del! what politeness! and what white teeth! and what a knowing row of papillotes, laid in precise par- allel, on her clear brunette temples. " Quelle nouvelle?" said the captain. " Poland est a has!" was the answer, with a look of heroic sorrow, that would have become a tragedy queen, mourning for the loss of a throne. The French manner, for once, did not appear exaggerated. It was news to sadden us all. Pity ! pity ! that the broad Christian world could look on and see this glorious people trampled to the dust in one of the most noble and desperate struggles for liberty that the earth ever saw ! What an opportunity was here lost to France for setting a seal of double truth and splendor on her own newly-achieved triumph over despotism. The washerwoman broke the silence with " Any clothes to wash, monsieur ?" and in the instant return of my thoughts to my own comparatively-pitiful interests, I found the philosophy for all I had condemned in kings — the humiliating and selfish individuality of human nature. And yet I believe with Dr. Channing on that dogma ! At ten o'clock I had performed the traveller's rou tine — had submitted my trunk and my passport to the three authorities, and had got into (and out of) as many mounting passions at what seemed to me the intolerable impertinences of searching my linen, and inspecting my person for scars. I had paid the portei three times his due rather than endure his cataract of French expostulation ; and with a bunch of keys, and a landlady attached to it, had ascended by a cold, wet, marble staircase, to a parlor and bedroom on the fifth floor ; as pretty a place, when you get there, and as difficult to get to as if it were a palace in thin air. It is perfectly French ! Fine, old, last-century chairs, covered with splendid yellow damask, two sofas of the same, the legs or arms of every one imperfect ; a coarse wood dressing-table, covered with fringed drapery and a sort of throne pincushion, with an immense glass leaning over it, gilded probably in the time of Henri Quatre ; artificial flowers all round the room, and prints of Atala and Napoleon mourant over the walls ; windows opening to the floor on hinges, damask and muslin curtains inside, and boxes for flower-pots with- out ; a bell-wire that pulls no bell, a bellows too asth- matic even to wheeze, tongs that refuse to meet, and a carpet as large as a table-cloth in the centre of the floor, may answer for an inventory of the " par- lor." The bedchamber, about half as large as the boxes in Rattle-row at Saratoga, opens by folding- doors, and discloses a bed, that for tricksy ornament as well as size might look the bridal couch for a faery queen in a panorama ; the same golden-sprig damask looped over it, tent-fashion, with splendid crimson cord, tassels, fringes, etc., and a pillow beneath that 1 shall be afraid to sleep on, it is so dainty a piece of needlework. There is a delusion about it, positively. One can not help imagining that all this splendor means something, and it would require a worse evil than any of these little deficiencies of comfort to dis- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. turb the self-complacent, Captain-Jackson sort of feeling, with which one throws his cloak on one sofa and his hat on the other, and spreads himself out for a lounge before this mere apology of a French fire. But for eating and drinking ! if they cook better in Paris, I shall have my passport altered. The next prefet that signs it shall substitute gourmand for pro- pnetaire. I will profess a palate, and live to eat. Making every allowance for an appetite newly from sea, my experience hitherto in this department of science is transcended in the degree of a rushlight to Arcturus. I strolled about Havre from breakfast till dinner, seven or eight hours, following curiosity at random, up one street and down another, with a prying avidity which I fear travel will wear fast away. I must com- press my observations into a sentence or two, for my fire is out, and this old castle of a hotel lets in the wind " shrewdly cold," and, besides, the diligence calls for me in a few hours, and one must sleep. Among my impressions the most vivid are — that of the twenty thousand inhabitants of Havre, by far the greater portion are women and soldiers — that the build- ings all look toppling, and insecurely antique and un- sightly — that the privates of the regular army are the most stupid, and those of the national guard the most intelligent-looking troops I ever saw — that the streets are filthy beyond endurance, and the shops clean be- yond all praise — that the women do all the buying and selling, and cart-driving, and sweeping, and even shoe- making, and other sedentary craftswork, and at the same time have (the meanest of them) an air of ambi- tious elegance and neatness, that sends your hand to your hat involuntarily when you speak to them — that the children speak French, and look like little old men and women, and the horses (the famed Norman breed) are the best of draught animals, and the worst for speed in the world — and that for extremes ridicu- lously near, dirt and neatness, politeness and knavery, chivalry and pelitesse, of learning and language, the people I have seen to-day must be pre-eminently re- markable, or France, for a laughing philosopher, is a paradise indeed ! And now for my pillow, till the dil- igence calls. Good night. LETTER IV. Paris. — It seems to me as if I were going back a *nonth to recall my departure from Havre, my mem- ory is so clouded with later incidents. I was awaked on the morning after I had written to you by a ser- vant, who brought me at the same time a cup of cof- fee, and at about an hour before daylight we were passing through the huge gates of the town on our way to Paris. The whole business of diligence-trav- elling amused me exceedingly. The construction of this vehicle has been often described ; but its separate apartments (at four different prices), its enormous size, its comfort and clumsiness, and, more than all, the driving of its postillions, struck me as equally novel and diverting. This last-mentioned performer on the whip and voice (the only two accomplishments he at all cultivates), rides one of the three wheel-horses, and drives the four or seven which are in advance, as a grazier in our country drives a herd of cattle, and they travel very much in the same manner. There is leather enough in two of their clumsy harnesses, to say nothing of the postillion's boots, to load a com- mon horse heavily. I never witnessed such a ludi- crous absence of contrivance and tact as in the appoint- ments and driving of horses in a diligence. It is so in everything in France, indeed. They do not possess the quality, as a nation. The story of the Gascoigne, who saw a bridge for the first time, and admired the ingenious economy that placed it across the river, in- stead of lengthwise, is hardly an exaggeration. At daylight I found myself in the coupe (a single seat for three in the front of the body of the carriage, with windows before and at the sides), with two whis- kered and mustached companions, both very polite, and very unintelligible. I soon suspected, by the science with which my neighbor on the left hummed little snatches of popular operas, that he was a pro- fessed singer (a conjecture which proved true), and it was equally clear, from the complexion of the port- feuille on the lap of the other, that his vocation was a liberal one — a conjecture which proved true also, as he confessed himself a diplomat, when we became better acquainted. For the first hour or more my at- tention was divided between the dim but beautiful out- line of the country by the slowly-approaching light of the dawn, and my nervousness at the distressing want ! of skill in the postillion's driving. The increasing and singular beauty of the country, even under the disad- vantage of rain and the late season, soon absorbed all my attention, however, and my involuntary and half- suppressed exclamations of pleasure, so unusual in an Englishman (for whom I found I was taken), warmed the diplomatist into conversation, and I passed the three ensuing hours very pleasantly. My companion was on his return from Lithuania, having been sent out by the French committee with arms and money for Poland. He was, of course, a most interesting fellow-traveller ; and, allowing for the difficulty with which I understood the language, in the rapid articu- lation of an enthusiastic Frenchman, I rarely have been better pleased with a chance acquaintance. I found he had been in Greece during the revolution, and knew intimately my friend, Dr. H , the best claim he could have on my interest, and I soon di„- covered an answering recommendation of myself to him. The province of Normandy is celebrated for its pic- turesque beauty, but I had no conception before of the cultivated picturesque of an old country. I have been a great scenery-hunter in America, and my eye was new, like its hills and forests. The massive, bat- tlemented buildings of the small villages we passed through, the heavy gateways and winding avenues and antique structure of the distant and half-hidden cha- teaux, the perfect cultivation, and, to me, singular ap- pearance of a whole landscape without a fence or a stone, the absence of all that we define by comfort and neatness, and the presence of all that we have seen in pictures and read of in books, but consider as the rep- resentations and descriptions of ages gone by — all seemed to me irresistibly like a dream. I could not rub my hand over my eyes, and realize myself. I could not believe that, within a month's voyage of my home, these spirit-stirring places had stood all my life- time as they do, and have for ages, every stone as it was laid in times of worm-eaten history, and looking to my eyes now as they did to the eyes of knights and dames in the days of French chivalry. I looked at the constantly-occurring ruins of the old pnories, and the magnificent and still-used churches, and my blood tingled in my veins, as I saw in the stepping-stones at their doors cavities that the sandals of monks, and the iron-shod feet of knights in armor a thousand years I ago, had trodden and helped to wear, and the stone J cross over the threshold, that hundreds of generations I had gazed upon and passed under. By a fortunate chanc" 'he postillion left the usual ! route at Balbec, and pursued what appeared to be a I by-road through the grain-fields and vineyards for ! twenty or twenty-five miles. I can only describe it as PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. an uninterrupted green lane, winding almost the whole distance through the bosom of a valley that must be one of* the very loveliest in the world. Imagine one of such extent, without a fence to break the broad swells of verdure, stretching up from the winding and unenclosed road on either side, to the apparent sky ; the houses occurring at distances of miles, and every one with its thatched roof covered all over with bright green moss, and its walls of marl interlaid through all the crevices with clinging vines, the whole structure and its appurtenances faultlessly picturesque, and when you have conceived a valley that might have content- ed Rasselas, scatter over it here and there groups of men, women, and children, the Norman peasantry in their dresses of all colors, as you see them in the prints — and if there is anything that can better please the eye, or make the imagination more willing to fold up its wings and rest, my travels have not crossed it. I have recorded a vow to walk through Normandy. As we approached Rouen the road ascended grad- ually, and a sharp turn brought us suddenly to the brow of a steep hill, opposite another of the same height, and with the same abrupt descent, at the dis- tance of a mile across. Between lay Rouen. 1 hard- ly know how to describe, for American eyes, the pe- culiar beauty of this view ; one of the most exquisite, I am told, in all France. A town at the foot of a hill is common enough in our country, but of the hun- dreds that answer to this description, I can not name one that would afford a correct comparison. ' The nice and excessive cultivation of the grounds in so old a country gives the landscape a complexion essentially different from ours. If there were another Mount Holyoke, for instance, on the other side of the Con- necticut, the situation of Northampton would be very similar to that of Rouen; but, instead of the rural vil- lage, with its glimpses of white houses seen through rich and luxurious masses of foliage, the mountain 6ides above broken with rocks, and studded with the gigantic and untouched relics of the native forest, and the fields below waving with heavy crops, irregularly fenced and divided, the whole picture one of an over- lavish and half-subdued Eden of fertility ; instead of this, I say, the broad meadows, with the winding Seine in their bosom, are as trim as a girl's flower-garden, the grass closely cut, and of a uniform surface of green, the edges of the river set regularly with willows, the little bright islands circled with trees, and smooth as a lawn ; and instead of green lanes lined with bushes, single streets running right through the unfenced ver- dure from one hill to another, and built up with an- tique structures of stone, the whole looking, in the coup d'ceil of distance, like some fantastic model of a town, with gothic houses of sand-paper, and meadows of silk velvet. You will find the size, population, etc., of Rouen in the guide-books. As my object is to record impres- sions, not statistics, I leave you to consult those laco- nic chronicles, or the books of a thousand travellers, for all such information. The Maid of Orleans was burnt here, as you know, in the fourteenth century. There is a statue erected to her memory, which I did not see, for it rained ; and after the usual stop of two hours, as the barometer promised no change in the weather, and as I was anxious to be in Paris, I took my place in the night diligence, and kept on. I amused myself till dark watching the streams that poured into the broad mouth of the postillion's boots from every part of his dress, and musing on the fate of the poor Maid of Orleans ; and then, sinking down into the comfortable corner of the coupe, I slept almost without interruption till the next morning — the best comment in the world on the only comfortable thing I have yet seen in France, a diligence. It is a pleasant thing in a foreign land to see the fa- miliar face of the sun ; and as he rose over a distant hill on the left, I lifted the window of the coupe to let him in, as I would open the door to a long-missed friend. He soon reached a heavy cloud, however, and my hopes of bright weather when we should enter the metropolis departed. It began to rain again ; and the postillion, after his blue cotton frock was soaked through, put on his great-coat over it — an economy which is peculiarly French, and which I observed in every succeeding postillion on the route. The last twenty-five miles to Paris are uninteresting to the eye ; and with my own pleasant thoughts, tinct as they were with the brightness of immediate anticipation, and an occasional laugh at the grotesque figures and equip- ages on the road, I made myself passably contented till we entered the suburb of St. Denis. It is something to see the outside of a sepulchre for kings, and the old abbey of Saint Denis needs no as- sociation to make a sight of it worth many a mile of weary travel. I could not stop within four miles of Paris, however, and I contented myself with running to get a second view of it in the rain while the postil- lion breathed his horses. The strongest association about it, old and magnificent as it is, is the fact, that Napoleon repaired it after the revolution ; and stand- ing in probably the finest point for its front view, my heart leaped to my throat as I fancied that Napoleon, with his mighty thoughts, had stood in that very spot, possibly, and contemplated the glorious old pile before me as the place of his future repose. After four miles more, over a broad straight avenue, paved in the centre and edged with trees, we arrived at the Porte St. Denis. I was exceedingly struck with the grandeur of the gate as we passed under, and referring to the guide-book I find it was a triumphal arch erected to Louis XIV., and the one by which the kings of France invariably enter. This also was restored by Napoleon, with his infallible taste, without changing its design ; and it is singular how everything that great man touched became his own, for who re- members for whom it was raised while he is told who employed his great intellect in its repairs ? I entered Paris on Sunday at eleven o'clock. I never should have recognised the day. The shops were all open, the artificers all at work, the unintelli- gible criers vociferating their wares, and the people in their working-day dresses. We wound through street after street, narrow and dark and dirty, and with my mind full of the splendid views of squares, and col- umns, and bridges, as I had seen them in the prints, I could scarce believe I was in Paris. A turn brought us into a large court, that of the Messagerie, the place at which all travellers are set down on arrival. Here my baggage was once more inspected, and, after a half-hour's delay, I was permitted to get into a fiacre, and drive to a hotel. As one is a specimen of all, I may as well describe the Hotel d'Etrangcrs, Rue Vi- vienne, which, by the way, I take the liberty at the same time to recommend to my friends. It is the pre- cise centre for the convenience of sight-seeing, admir- ably kept, and, being nearly opposite Galignani's, that bookstore of Europe, is a very pleasant resort for the half hour before dinner, or a rainy day. I went there at the instance of my friend the diplomat. The fiacre stopped before an arched passage, and a fellow in livery, who had followed me from the Mes- sagerie (probably in the double character of porter and police agent, as my passport was yet to bedemanded), took my trunk into a small office on the left, over which was written " Concierge." This person, who is a kind of respectable doorkeeper, addressed me in broken English, without waiting for the evidence of my tongue that I was a foreigner, and, after inquiring at what price I would have room, introduced me to the landlady, who took me across a large court (the hous- es are built round, the yard always in France), to the corresponding story of the house. The room was PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. quite pretty, with its looking-glasses and curtains, but there was no carpet, and the fireplace was ten feet deep. I asked to see another, and another, and anoth- er ; they were all curtains, and looking-glasses, and stone floors ! There is no wearying a Frenchwoman, and I pushed my modesty till I found a chamber to my taste — a nutshell, to be sure, but carpeted — and bowing my polite housekeeper out, I rang for break- fast and was at home in Paris ! There are few things bought with money that are more delightful than a French breakfast. If you take it at your room, it appears in the shape of two small ves- sels, one of coffee and one of hot milk, two kinds of bread, with a thin, printed slice of butter, and one or two of some thirty dishes from which you choose, the latter flavored exquisitely enough to make one wish to be always at breakfast, but cooked and composed I know not how or of what. The coffee has an aroma peculiarly exquisite, something quite different from any I ever tasted before ; and the pelitc-pain, a slender biscuit between bread and cake, is, when crisp and warm, a delightful accompaniment. All this costs about one third as much as the beefsteaks and coffee in America, at the same time that you are waited up- on with a civility that is worth three times the money. It still rained at noon, and finding that the usual dinner hour was five I took my umbrella for a walk. In a strange city I prefer always to stroll about at haz- ard, coming unawares upon what is fine or curious. The hackneyed descriptions in the guidebooks profane the spirit of a place, I never look at them till after I have found the object, and then only for dates. The Rue Vivienne was crowded with people, as I emerged from the dark archway of the hotel to pursue my wan- derings. A walk of this kind, by the way, shows one a great deal of novelty. In France there are no shop-men. No matter what the article of trade — hats, boots, pic- tures, books, jewellery, anything and everything that gentlemen buy — you are waited upon by girls, always handsome, and always dressed in the height of the mode. They sit on damask-covered settees, behind the counters ; and when you enter, bow and rise to serve you, with a grace and a smile of courtesy that would become a drawing-room. And this is uni- versal. I strolled on until I entered a narrow passage, pen- etrating a long line of buildings. It was thronged with people, and passing in with the rest, I found myself unexpectedly in a scene that equally surprised and delighted me. It was a spacious square enclosed by one entire building. The area was laid out as a garden, planted with long avenues of trees and beds of flowers, and in the centre a fountain was playing in the shape of a Jleur-de-lis, with a jet about forty feet in height. A superb colonnade ran round the whole square, ma- king a covered gallery of the lower story, which was occupied by shops of the most splendid appearance, and thronged through its long sheltered paves by thou- sands of gay promenaders. It was the far-famed Pal- ais Royal. I remembered the description I had heard of its gambling-houses, and facilities for every vice, and looked with a new surprise on its Aladdin-like magnificence. The hundreds of beautiful pillars, stretching away from the eye in long and distant per- spective, the crowd of citizens, and women, and offi- cers in full uniform, passing and repassing with French liveliness and politeness, the long windows of plated glass glittering with jewellery, and bright with every- thing to tempt the fancy, the tall sentinels pacing be- tween the columns, and the fountain turning over its clear waters with a fall audible above the tread and voices of the thousands who walked around it — who could look upon such a scene and believe it what it is, the most corrupt spot, probably, on the face of the civilized world ? LETTER V. THE LODVRE AMERICAN ARTISTS I.N PARIS — POL! TICS, ETC. The salient object in my idea of Paris has always been the Louvre. I have spent some hours in its vast gallery to-day, and I am sure it will retain the same prominence in my recollections. The whole palace is one of the oldest, and said to be one of the finest, in Europe ; and, if I may judge by its impres- siveness, the vast inner court (the facades of which were restored to their original simplicity by Napo- leon), is a specimen of high architectural perfection. One could hardly pass through it without being better fitted to see the masterpieces of art within ; and it requires this, and all the expansiveness of which the mind is capable besides, to walk through the Musec Roy ale without the painful sense of a magnificence beyond the grasp of the faculties. I delivered my passport at the door of the palace, and, as is customary, recorded my name, country, and profession in the book, and proceeded to the gallery. The grand double staircase, one part leading to the private apartments of the royal household, is described voluminously in the authorities ; and, truly, for one who has been accustomed to convenient dimensions only, its breadth, its lofty ceilings, its pillars and stat- uary, its mosaic pavements and splendid windows, are enough to unsettle for ever the standards of size and grandeur. The strongest feeling one has as he stops half way up to look about him, is the ludicrous dis- proportion between it and the size of the inhabiting animals. I should smile to see any man ascend such a staircase, except, perhaps, Napoleon. Passing through a kind of entrance-hall, I came to a spacious salle ronde, lighted from the ceiling, and hung principally with pictures of a large size, one of the most conspicuous of which, " The Wreck," has been copied by an American artist, Mr. Cooke, and is now exhibiting in New York. It is one of the best of the French school, and very powerfully conceived. I regret, however, that he did not prefer the wonder- fully fine piece opposite, which is worth all the pic- tures ever painted in France, " The Marriage Supper at Cana." The left wing of the table, projected tow- ard the spectator, with the seven or eight guests who occupy it, absolutely stands out into the hall. It seems impossible that color and drawing upon a flat surface can so cheat the eye. From the salle ronde on the right opens the grand gallery, which, after the lesson I had just received in perspective, I took, at the first glance, to be a paint- ing. You will realize the facility of the deception when you consider that, with a breadth of but forty- two feet, this gallery is one thousand three hundred and thirty-two feet (more than a quarter of a mile) in length. The floor is of tesselated woods, polished with wax like a table ; and along its glassy surface were scattered perhaps a hundred visiters, gazing at the pictures in varied attitudes, and with sizes reduced in proportion to their distance, the farthest off looking in the long perspective like pigmies of the most dimin- utive description. It is like a matchless painting to the eye after all. The ceiling is divided by nine or ten arches, standing each on four Corinthian columns, projecting into the area, and the natural perspective of these, and the artists scattered from oue end to the other, copying silently at their easels ; and a soldier at every division, standing upon his guard, quite as silent and motionless, would make it difficult to con- vince a spectator, who was led blindfold and unpre- pared to the entrance, that it was not some superb diorama, figures and all. I found our distinguished countryman, Morse, copy- ing a beautiful! Murillo at the end of the gallery. H« PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. is also engaged upon a Raffaelle for Cooper, the nov- elist. Among; the French artists, I noticed several soldiers, and some twenty or thirty females, the latter with every mark in their countenances of absorbed and extreme application. There was a striking differ- ence in this respect between them and the artists of the other sex. With the single exception of a lovely girl, drawing from a Madonna, by Guido, and pro- tected by the presence of an elderly companion, these lady-painters were anything but interesting in their appearance. Greenough, the sculptor, is in Paris, and engaged just now in taking the bust of an Italian lady. His reputation is very enviable ; and his passion for his art, together with his untiring industry and his fine natural powers, will work him up to something that will, before long, be an honor to our country. If the wealthy men of taste in America would give Green- ough liberal orders for his time and talents, and send out Augur, of New Haven, to Italy, they would do more to advance this glorious art in our country, than by expending ten times the sum in any other way. They are both men of rare genius, and both ardent and diligent, and they are both cramped by the uni- versal curse of genius — necessity. The Americans in Paris are deliberating at present on some means for expressing unitedly to our government their interest in Greenough, and their appreciation of his merit of public and private patronage. For the love of true taste, do everything in your power to second such an appeal when it comes. It is a queer feeling to find oneself a foreigner. One can not realize long at a time how his face or his manners should have become peculiar ; and after look- ing at a print for five minutes in a shop-window, or dipping into an English book, or in any manner throw- ing off the mental habit of the instant, the curious gaze of the passer-by, or the accent of a strange language, strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of foreigners of all nations, and of course physiognomies of all char- acters may be met everywhere ; but, differing as the European nations do decidedly from each other, they differ still more from the American. Our country- men, as a class, are distinguishable wherever they are met ; not as Americans however, for of the habits and manners of our country, people know nothing this side the water. But there is something in an Ameri- can face, of which I never was aware till I met them in Europe, that is altogether peculiar. The French take the Americans to be English ; but an English- man, while he presumes him his countryman, shows a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign to his usual indifference. As far as I can analyze it, V is the independent, self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to any one as his superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative ex- pression which is the index to our national character. The first is seldom possessed in England but by a man of decided rank, and the latter is never possessed by an Englishman at all. The two are united in no other nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of an Englishman, and nothing puzzles a European more than to know how to rate the pretensions of an American. On my way home from the Boulevards this even- ing, 1 was fortunate enough to pass through the grand court of the Louvre, at the moment when the moon broke through the clouds that have concealed her own light and the sun's ever since I have been in France. I had often stopped, in passing the sentinels at the entrance, to admire the grandeur of the interior to this oldest of the royal palaces ; but to-night, my dead halt within the shadow of the arch, as the view broke upon my eye, and my sudden exclamation in English, star- tled the grenadier, and he had half presented his mus- ket, when I apologized, and passed on. It was magic- ally beautiful indeed ! and with the moonlight pouring obliquely into the sombre area, lying full upon the taller of the three facades, and drawing its soft line across the rich windows and massive pilasters and arches of the eastern and western, while the remain- ing front lay in the heavy black shadow of relief, it seemed to me more like an accidental regularity in some rocky glen of America, than a pile of human design and proportion. It is strange how such high walls shut out the world. The court of the Louvre is in the very centre of the busiest quarter of Paris, thou- sands of people passing and repassing constantly at the extremity of the long arched entrances, and yet, stand- ing on the pavement of that lonely court, no living creature in sight but the motionless grenadiers at either gate, the noises without coming to your ear in a subdued murmur, like the wind on the sea, and nothing visible above but the sky, resting like a ceil- ing on the lofty walls, the impression of utter solitude is irresistible. I passed out by the archway for which Napoleon constructed his bronze gates, said to be the most magnificent of modern times, and which are now lying in some obscure corner unused, no succeeding power having had the spirit or the will to complete, even by the slight labor that remained, his imperial design. All over Paris you may see similar instances; they meet you at every step : glorious plans defeated ; works, that with a mere moiety of what has been already expended in their progress, might be finished with an effect that none but a mind like Napoleon's could have originally projected. Paris, of course, is rife with politics. There is but one opinion on the subject of another pending revo- lution. The "people's king" is about as unpopular as he need be for the purposes of his enemies ; and he has aggravated the feeling against him very un- necessarily by his late project in the Tuileries. The whole thing is very characteristic of the French peo- ple. He might have deprived them of half their civil rights without immediate resistance ; but to cut off a strip of the public garden to make a play-ground for his children — to encroach a hundred feet on the pride of Paris, the daily promenade of the idlers, who do all the discussion of his measures, it was a little too ven- turesome. Unfortunately, too, the offence is in the very eye of curiosity, and the workmen are surround- ed, from morning till night, by thousands of people, of all classes, gesticulating, and looking at the palace- windows, and winding themselves gradually up to the revolutionary pitch. In the event of an explosion, the liberal party will not want partisans, for France is crowded with refu- gees from tyranny of every nation. The Poles are flocking hither every day, and the streets are full of their melancholy faces ! Poor fellows ! they suffer dreadfully from want. The public charity for refu- gees has been wrung dry long ago, and the most he- roic hearts of Poland, after having lost everything but life, in their unavailing struggle, are starving abso- lutely in the streets. Accident has thrown me into the confidence of a well-known liberal — one of those men of whom the proud may ask assistance without humiliation, and circumstances have thus come to my knowledge, which would move a heart of stone. The fictitious sufferings of " Thaddeus of Warsaw," are transcended in real-life misery every day, and by na- tures quite as noble. Lafayette, I am credibly as- sured, has anticipated several years of his income in relieving them ; and no possible charity could be so well bestowed as contributions for the Poles, starving in these heartless cities. I have just heard that Chodsko, a Pole, of distin- guished talent and learning, who threw his whole for- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. tune and energy into the late attempted revolution, was arrested here last night, with eight others of his countrymen, under suspicions by the government. The late serious insurrection at Lyons has alarmed the king, and the police is exceedingly strict. The Spanish and Italian refugees, who receive pensions from France, have been ordered off to the provincial towns, by the minister of the interior, and there is every indication of extreme and apprehensive caution. The papers, meantime, are raving against the ministry in the most violent terms, and the king is abused, with- out qualification, everywhere. We apprehend oppres- sive measures in our country with sufficient indigna- tion and outcry; but to see the result upon those who bear their burdens till they are galled into the bone, is enough to fire the most unwilling blood to resentment. The irresistible enthusiasm to which one is kindled by contact with an oppressed people, loses here all the pleasure of a fine excitement, by the painfulness of the sympathies it causes with it. Thank God ! our own country is yet free from the scourges of Europe ! I went, a night or two since, to one of the minor theatres to see the representation of a play, which has been performed for the hundredth and second time ! — " Napoleon at Schoenbrun and St. Helena." My ob- ject was to study the feelings of the people toward Napoleon II., as the exile's love for his son is one of the leading features of the piece. It was beautifully played — most beautifully ! and I never saw more en- thusiasm manifested by an audience. Every allusion of Napoleon to his child, was received with that under- toned, guttural acclamation, that expresses such deep feeling in a crowd ; and the piece is so written, that its natural pathos alone is irresistible. No one could doubt, for an instant, it seems to me, that the en- trance of young Napoleon into France, at any critical moment, would be universally and completely trium- phant. The great cry at Lyons was, " Five Napoleon I have altered my arrangements a little, in conse- quence of the state of feeling here. My design was to go to Italy immediately, but affairs promise such an interesting and early change, that I shall pass the win- ter in Paris. LETTER VI. TAGLIONI FRENCH STAGE, ETC. I went last night to the French opera, to see the first dancer of the world. The prodigious enthusiasm about her all over Europe had, of course, raised my expectations to the highest possible pitch. " Have you seen TaglioniV is the first question addressed to a stranger in Paris ; and you hear her name constantly over all the hum of the cafes, and in the crowded re- sorts of fashion. The house was overflowed. The king and his numerous family were present ; and my companion pointed out to me many of the nobility, whose names and titles have been made familiar to our ears by the innumerable private memoirs and auto- biographies of the day. After a little introductory piece, the king arrived, and, as soon as the cheering was over, the curtain drew up for " Le Dieu et la Bay- adere." This is the piece in which Taglioni is most famous. She takes the part of a dancing girl, of whom the Bramah and an Indian prince are both en- amored ; the former in the disguise of a man of low rank at the court of the latter, in search of some one whose love for him shall be disinterested. The dis- guised god succeeds in winning her affection, and af- ter testing her devotion by submitting for a while to the resentment of his rival, and by a pretended caprice in favor of a singing girl, who accompanies her, he mar- ries her, and then saves her from the flames as she is about to be burned for marrying beneath her caste. Taglioni's part is all pantomime. She does not speak during the play, but her motion is more than ar- ticulate. Her first appearance was in a troop of Indian dancing girls, who performed before the prince in the public square. At a signal from the vizier a side pa- vilion opened, and thirty or forty bayaderes glided out together, and commenced an intricate dance. They were received with a tremendous round of applause from the audience; but, witli the exception of a little more elegance in the four who led the dance, they were dressed nearly alike; and, as I saw no particularly con- spicuous figure, I presumed that Taglioni had not yet appeared. The splendor of the spectacle bewildered me for the first moment or two, but I presently found my eyes riveted to a childish creature floating about among the rest, and, taking her for some beautiful young eleve making her first essays in the chorus, I interpreted her extraordinary fascination as a triumph of nature over my unsophisticated taste ; and wondered to myself whether, after all, I should be half so much captivated with the show of skill I expected presently to witness. This was Taglioni! She came forward directly, in a pas seul, and I then observed that her dress was distinguished from that of her companions by its extreme modesty both of fashion and ornament, and the unconstrained ease with which it adapted itself to her shape and motion. She looks not more than fifteen. Her figure is small, but rounded to the very last degree of perfection ; not a muscle swelled beyond the exquisite outline ; not an angle, not a fault. Her back and neck, those points so rarely beautiful in wo- man, are faultlessly formed ; her feet and hands are in full proportion to her size, and the former play as freely and with as natural a yieldingness in her fairy slippers, as if they were accustomed only to the dainty uses of a drawing-room. Her face is most strangely interesting ; not quite beautiful, but of that half-appealing, half- retiring sweetness that you sometimes see blended with the secluded reserve and unconscious refinement of a young girl just "out" in a circle of high fashion. In her greatest exertions her features retain the same timid half smile, and she returns to the alternate by play of her part without the slightest change of color, or the slightest perceptible difference in her breathing, or the ease of her look and posture. No language can describe her motion. She swims in your eye like a curl of smoke, or a flake of down. Her difficulty seems to be to keep to the floor. You have that feel- ing while you gaze upon her, that if she were to rise and float away like Ariel, you would scarce be sur- prised. And yet all is done with such a childish un- consciousness of admiration, such a total absence of exertion or fatigue, that the delight with which she fills you is unmingled, and, assured as you are by the perfect purity of every look and attitude, that her hith- erto spotless reputation is deserved beyond a breath of suspicion, you leave her with as much respect as ad- miration ; and find with surprise that a dancing-girl, who is exposed night after night to the profaning gaze of the world, has crept into one of the most sacred niches of your memory. I have attended several of the best theatres in Pans, and find one striking trait in all their first actors— nature. They do not look like actors, and their playing is not like acting. They are men, generally, of the most earnest, unstudied simplicity of countenance ; and when they come upon the stage it is singularly with- out affectation, and as the character they represent would appear. Unlike most of the actors I have seen, too, they seem altogether unaware of the presence of the audience. Nothing disturbs the fixed attention 10 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. they give to each other in the dialogue, and no private interview between simple and sincere men could be more unconscious and natural. I have formed con- sequently a high opinion of the French drama, degen- erate as it is said to be since the loss of Talma; and it is easy to see that the root of its excellence is in the taste and judgment of the people. They applaud ju- diciously. When Taglioni danced her wonderful pas seul, for instance, the applause was general and suf- ficient. It was a triumph of art, and she was applauded as an artist. But when, as the neglected bayadere, she stole from the corner of the cottage, and with her indescribable grace, hovered about the couch of the disguised Bramah, watching and fanning him while he slept, she expressed so powerfully by^the saddened tenderness of her manner, the devotion of a love that even neglect could not estrange, that a murmur of de- light ran through the whole house ; and when her si- lent pantomime was interrupted by the waking of the god, there was an overwhelming tumult of acclama- tion that came from the hearts of the audience, and as such must have been both a lesson, and the highest compliment to Taglioni. An actor's taste is of course very much regulated by that of his audience. He will cultivate that for which he is most praised. We shall never have a high-toned drama in America, while, as at present, applause is won only by physical exer- tion, and the nice touches of genius and nature pass undetected and unfelt. Of the French actresses T have been most pleased with Leontine Fay. She is not much talked of here, and perhaps, as a mere artist in her profession, is in- ferior to those who are more popular; but she has that indescribable something in her face that has interested me through life — that strange talisman which is linked wisely to every heart, confining its interest to some nice difference invisible to other eyes, and, by a happy consequence, undisputed by other admiration. She, too, has that retired sweetness of look that seems to come only from secluded habits, and in the highly- wrought passages of tragedy, when her fine dark eyes are filled with tears, and her tones, which have never the out-of-doors key of the stage, are clouded and im- perfect, she seems less an actress than a refined and lovely woman, breaking through the habitual reserve of society in some agonizing crisis of real life. There are prints of Leontine Fay in the shops, and I have seen them in America, but they resemble her very little. LETTER VII. JOACHIM LELEWEL — PALAIS ROYAL PEHE LA CHAISE VERSAILLES, ETC. I met at a breakfast party, to-day, Joachim Lelewel, the celebrated scholar and patriot of Poland. Having fallen in with a great deal of revolutionary and emi- grant society since I have been in Paris, 1 have often heard his name, and looked forward to meeting him with high pleasure and curiosity. His writings are passionately admired by his countrymen. He was the principal of the university, idolized by that effec- tive part of the population, the students of Poland ; and the fearless and lofty tone of his patriotic princi- ples is said to have given the first and strongest mo- mentum to the ill-fated struggle just over. Lelewel impressed me very strongly." Unlike most of the Poles, who are erect, athletic, and florid, he is thin, bent, and pale ; and were it not for the fire and decision of his eye, his uncertain gait and sensitive address would convey an expression almost of timidity. His form, features, and manners, are very like those of Percival, the American poet, though their counte nances are marked with the respective difference of their habits of mind. Lelewel looks like a naturally modest, shrinking man, worked up to the calm reso- lution of a martyr. The strong stamp of his face ia devoted enthusiasm. His eye is excessively bright, but quiet and habitually downcast ; his lips are set firmly, but without effort, together; and his voice is almost sepulchral, it is so low and calm. He never breaks through his melancholy, though his refugee countrymen, except when Poland is alluded to, have all the vivacity of French manners, and seem easily to forget their misfortunes. He was silent, except when particularly addressed, and had the air of a man who thought himself unobserved, and had shrunk into his own mind. I felt that he was winning upon my heart every moment. I never saw a man in my life whose whole air and character were so free from self- consciousness or pretension — never one who looked to me so capable of the calm, lofty, unconquerable heroism of a martyr. "Paris is the centre of the world," if centripetal tendency is any proof of it. Everything struck off from the other parts of the universe flies straight to the Palais Royal. You may meet in its thronged galleries, in the course of an hour, representatives of every creed, rank, nation, and system, under heaven. Hussein Pacha and Don Pedro pace daily the same pave — the one brooding on a kingdom lost, the other on the throne he hopes to win ; the Polish general and the proscribed Spaniard, the exiled Italian conspirator, the contemptuous Turk, the well-dressed negro from Hayti, and the silk-robed Persian, revolve by the horn together round the same jet d'cau, and costumes of every cut and order, mustaches and beards of every degree of ferocity and oddity, press so fast and thick upon the eye that one forgets to be astonished. There are no such things as "lions" in Paris. The extraor- dinary persons outnumber the ordinary. Every other man you meet would keep a small town in a ferment for a month. I spent yesterday at Pere la Chaise, and to-day at Versailles. The two places are in opposite environs, and of very opposite characters — one certainly making you in love with life, the other almost as certainly with death. One could wander for ever in the wilderness of art at Versailles, and it must be a restless ghost that could not content itself with Pere la Chaise for its elysium. This beautiful cemetery is built upon the broad ascent of a hill, commanding the whole of Paris at a glance. It is a wood of small trees, laid out in alleys, and crowded with tombs and monuments of every pos- sible description. You will scarce get through it without being surprised into a tear ; but if affectation and fantasticalness in such a place do not more grieve than amuse you, you will much oftener smile. The whole thing is a melancholy mock of life. Its distinc- tions are all kept up. There are the fashionable ave- nues, lined with costly chapels and monuments, with the names of the exclusive tenants in golden letters upon the doors, iron railings set forbiddingly about the shrubs, and the blessing-scrap writ ambitiously in Latin. The tablets record the long family titles, and the offices and honors, perhaps the numberless virtues of the dead. They read like chapters of heraldry more than like epitaphs. It is a relief to get into the outer alleys, and see how poverty and simple feeling express what should be the same thing. It is usually some brief sentence, common enough, but often ex- quisitely beautiful in this prettiest of languages, and expressing always the kind of sorrow felt by the mourner. You can tell, for instance, by the senli PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 11 ment simply, without looking at the record below, whether the deceased was young, or much loved, or mourned by husband, or parent, or brother, or a circle of all. I noticed one, however, the humblest and simplest monument perhaps in the whole cemetery, which left the story beautifully untold : it was a slab of common marl, inscribed " Pauvre Marie /" nothing more. I have thought of it, and speculated upon it, a great deal since. What was she ? and who wrote her epitaph? why was she pauvre Marie? Before almost all the poorer monuments is a minia- ture garden with a low wooden fence, and either the initials of the dead sown in flowers, or rose-trees, care- fully cultivated, trained to hang over the stone. I was surprised to find in a public cemetery, in December, roses in full bloom and valuable exotics at almost every grave. It speaks both for the sentiment and delicate principle of the people. Few of the more costly monuments were either interesting or pretty. One struck my fancy — a small open chapel, large enough to contain four chairs, with the slab facing the door, and a crucifix encircled with fresh flowers on a simple shrine above. It is a place where the survivors in a family might come and sit any time, nowhere more pleasantly. From the chapel I speak of, you may look out and see all Paris; and I can imagine how it would lessen the feeling of desertion and forgetfulness that makes the anticipation of death so dreadful, to be certain that your friends would come, as they may here, and talk cheerfully and enjoy themselves near you, so to speak. The cemetery in summer must be one of the sweetest places in the world. It would be a sufficient inducement of itself to bring me to Paris from almost any distance in another season. Versailles is a royal summer chateau, about twelve miles from Paris, with a demesne of twenty miles in circumference. Take that for the scale, and imagine a palace completed in proportion in all its details of grounds, ornament, and architecture. It cost, says the guide book, two hundred and fifty millions of dol- lars; and leaving your fancy to expend that trifle over a residence, which, remember, is but one out of some half dozen, occupied during the year by a single family, I commend the republican moral to your con- sideration, and proceed with the more particular description of my visit. My friend, Dr. Howe, was my companion. We drove up the grand avenue on one of the loveliest mornings that ever surprised December with a bright sun and a warm south wind. Before us, at the dis- tance of a mile, lay a vast mass of architecture, with the centre falling back between the two projecting wings, the whole crowning a long and gradual ascent, of which the tricolored flag waving against the sky from the central turrets was the highest point. As we approached, we noticed an occasional flash in the sun, and a stir of bright colors through the broad deep court between the wings, which, as we advanced nearer, proved to be a body of about two or three thousand lancers and troops of the line under review. The effect was indescribably fine. The gay uniforms, the hundreds of tall lances, each with its red flag flying in the wind, the imposing crescent of architecture in which the array was embraced, the ringing echo of the grand military music from the towers, and all this intoxication for the positive senses, fused with the his- torical atmosphere of the place, the recollection of the king and queen, whose favorite residence it had been (the unfortunate Louis and Marie Antoinette), of the celebrated women who had lived in their separate palaces within its grounds, of the genius and chivalry of court after court that had made it, in turn, the scene of their brilliant follies, and, over all, Napolean, *ht must have rode through its gilded gates with the thought of pride that he was its imperial master by the royalty of his great nature alone, it was in truth, enough, the real and the ideal, to dazzle the eyes of a simple republican. After gazing at the fascinating show an hour, we took a guide and entered the palace. We were walked through suite after suite of cold apartments, deso lately splendid with gold and marble, and crowded with costly pictures, till I was sick and weary of mag- nificence. The guide went before, saying over his rapid rigmarole of names and dates, giving us about three minutes to a room in which there were some twenty pictures, perhaps, of which he presumed he had told us all that was necessary to know. I fell be- hind, after a while; and as a considerable English party had overtaken and joined us, I succeeded in keeping one room in the rear, and enjoying the re- mainder in my own way. The little marble palace, called "Petit Trianon.? built for Madame Pompadour in the garden grounds, is a beautiful affair, full of what somebody calls " af- fectionate-looking rooms ;" and " Grand Trianon" built also on the grounds at the distance of half a mile, for Madame Maintenon, is a very lovely spot, made more interesting by the preference given to it over all other places by Marie Antoinette. Here she amused herself with her Swiss village. The cottages and arti- ficial " mountains" (ten feet high, perhaps) are exceed- ingly pretty models' in miniature, and probably illustrate very fairly the ideas of a palace-bred fancy upon natural scenery. There are glens and grottoes, and rocky beds for brooks that run at will (" les rivieres a. ro/an/e," the guide called them), and trees set out upon the crags at most uncomfortable angles, and every contrivance to make a lovely lawn as inconveniently like nature as pos- sible. The Swiss families, however, must have been very amusing. Brought fresh from their wild country, and set down in these pretty mock cottages, with orders to live just as they did in their own mountains, they must have been charmingly puzzled. In the midst of the village stands an exquisite little Corinthian temple; and our guide informed us that the cottage which the queen occupied at her Swiss tea-parties was furnished at an expense of sixty thousand francs — two not very Switzer-like circumstances. It was in the little palace of Trianon that Napoleon signed his divorce from Josephine. The guide showed us the room, and the table on which he wrote. I have seen nothing that brought me so near Napoleon. There is no place in France that could have for me a greater interest. It is a little boudoir, adjoining the state sleeping-room, simply furnished, and made for familiar retirement, not for show. The single sofa — the small round table — the enclosing, tent-like cur- tains — the modest, unobtrusive elegance of ornaments and furniture, give it rather the look of a retreat, fashioned by the tenderness and taste of private fife, than any apartment in a royal palace. I felt unwilling to leave it. My thoughts were too busy. What was the motive of that great man in this most affecting and disputed action of his life ? That he loved Josephine with his whole power of loving, no one can doubt. That he was above making such a sacrifice to his am- bition merely, I equally believe. There is but one other principle into which it can be resolved — one that has not been sufficiently weighed by those who have written upon his character, but which, as a spring of action, is second only to the ruling passion in the bosoms of men— the desire for offspring. I can con- ceive Napoleon's sacrifice of that glorious woman on no other ground; and, ascribing it to this, it more proves than discredits the tenderness of his great nature. After having been thridded through the palaces, we had a few moments left for the ground*. They are 12 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. magnificent beyond description. We know very little of this thing in America, as an art; but it is one, I have come to think, that, in its requisition of genius, is scarce inferior to architecture. Certainly the three palaces of Versailles together did not impress me so much as the single view from the upper terrace of the gardens. It stretches clear over the horizon. You stand on a natural eminence that commands the whole country, and the plan seems to you like some work of the Titans. The long sweep of the avenue, with a breadth of descent that at the first glance takes away your breath, stretching its two lines of gigantic statues and vases to the water level ; the wide, slum- bering canal at its foot, carrying on the eye to the horizon, like a river of an even flood lying straight through the bosom of the landscape; the side avenues almost as extensive ; the palaces in the distant grounds, and the strange union altogether to an American, of as much extent as the eye can reach, cultivated equally with the trim elegance of a garden — all these, com- bining together, form a spectacle which nothing but nature's royalty of genius could design, and (to descend ungracefully from the climax) which only the exac- tions of an unnatural royalty could pay for. I think the most forcible lesson one learns at Paris is the value of time and money. I have always been told, erroneously, that it was a place to waste both. You could do so much with another hour, if you had it, and buy so much with another dollar, if you could afford it, that the reflected economy upon what you can command, is inevitable. As to the worth of time, for instance, there are some twelve or fourteen gratui- tous lectures every day at the Sorbonne, the school of medicine and the college of France, by men like Cuvicr, Say, Spurzheim, and others, each in his professed pursuit, the most eminent perhaps in the world ; and there are the Louvre, and the Royal Library, and the Mazarin Library, and similar public institutions, all open to gratuitous use, with obsequious attendants, warm rooms, materials for writing, and perfect seclu- sion ; to say nothing of the thousand interesting but less useful resorts with which Paris abounds, such as exhibitions of flowers, porcelains, mosaics, and curious handiwork of every description, and (more amusing and time-killing still) the never-ending changes of eights in the public places, from distinguished foreign- ers down to miracles of educated monkeys. Life seems most provokingly short as you look at it. Then, for money, you are more puzzled how to spend a poor pitiful franc in Paris (it will buy so many things you want) than you would be in America with the outlay of a month's income. Be as idle and extravagant as you will, your idle hours look you in the face as they pass, to know whether, in spite of the increase of their value, you really mean to waste them ; and the money that slipped through your pocket you know not how at home, sticks embarrassed to your fingers, from the mere multiplicity of demands made for it. There are shops all over Paris called the " Vingt-cinq-sous,'''' where every article is fixed at that price — twenty-five cents ! They contain everything you want, except a wife and fire-wood — the only two things difficult to be got in France. (The latter, with or without a pun, is much the dearer of the two.) I wonder that they are not bought out, and sent over to America on speculation. There is scarce an article in them that would not be held cheap with us at five times its purchase. There are bronze standishes for ink, sand, and wafers, pearl paper-cutters, spice-lamps, decanters, essence-bottles, sets of china, table-bells of all devices, mantel orna- ments, vases of artificial flowers, kitchen utensils, dog- collars, canes, guard-chains, chessmen, whips, ham- mers, brushes, and everything that is either convenient or pretty. You might freight a ship with them, and all good and well finished, at twenty-five cents the set or article ! You would think the man was joking, to walk through his shop. LETTER VIII. DR. BOWRING AMERICAN ARTISTS BRUTAL AMUSE- MENT, ETC. I have met Dr. Bowring in Paris, and called upon him to-day with Mr. Morse, by appointment. The translator of the "Ode to the Deity" (from the Rus- sian of Derzzhavin) could not by any accident be an ordinary man, and I anticipated great pleasure in his society. He received us at his lodgings in the Place Vendome. I was every way pleased with him. His knowledge of our country and its literature surprised me, and I could not but be gratified with the unpreju- diced and well-informed interest with which he dis- coursed on our government and institutions. He ex- pressed great pleasure at having seen his ode in one of our schoolbooks (Pierpont's Reader, I think), and i assured us that the promise to himself of a visit to ! America was one of his brightest anticipations. This t is not at all an uncommon feeling, by the way, among I the men of talent in Paris ; and I am pleasingly sur- prised, everywhere, with the enthusiastic hopes ex- I pressed for the success of our experiment in liberal ' principles. Dr. Bowring is a slender man, a little j above the middle height, with a keen, inquisitive ex- ; pression of countenance, and a good forehead, from j which the hair is combed straight back all round, in ! the style of the Cameronians. His manner is all life, I and his motion and gesture nervously sudden and an- gular. He talks rapidly, but clearly, and uses beauti- ful language — concise, and full of select expressions and vivid figures. His conversation in this particular was a constant surprise. He gave us a great deal of information, and when we parted, inquired my route of travel, and offered me letters to his friends, with a cordiality very unusual on this side the Atlantic. It is a cold but common rule with travellers in Europe to avoid the society of their own country- men. In a city like Paris, where time and money are both so valuable, every additional acquaintance, pursued either for etiquette or intimacy, is felt, and one very soon learns to prefer his advantage to any tendency of his sympathies. The infractions upon the rule, however, are very delightful, and at the gen- eral reunion at our ambassador's on Wednesday even- ing, or an occasional one at Lafayette's, the look of pleasure and relief at beholding familiar faces, and hearing a familiar language once more, is universal. I have enjoyed this morning the double happiness of meeting an American circle, around an American breakfast. Mr. Cooper had invited us (Morse, the artist, Dr. Howe, a gentleman of the navy, and my- self). Mr. C. lives with great hospitality, and in all the comfort of American habits ; and to find him, as he is always found, with his large family about him, is to get quite back to the atmosphere of our country. The two or three hours we passed at his table were, of course, delightful. It should endear Mr. Cooper to the hearts of his countrymen, that he devotes all his influence, and no inconsiderable portion of his large income, to the encouragement of American artists. It would be natural enough, after being so long abroad, to feel or affect a preference for the works of foreign- ers ; but in this, as in his political opinions, most de- cidedly, he is eminently patriotic. We feel this in Europe, where we discern more clearly by comparison the poverty of our country in the arts, and meet, at the same time, American artists of the first talent, without a single commission from home for original works, PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 13 copying constantly for support. One of Mr. Cooper's purchases, the " Cherubs," by Greenough, has been sent to the United States, and its merit was at once acknowledged. It was done, however (the artist, who is here, informs me), under every disadvantage of feel- ing and circumstances ; and, from what I have seen and am told by others of Mr. Greenough, it is, I am confident, however beautiful, anything but a fair spe- cimen of his powers. His peculiar taste lies in a bolder range, and he needs only a commission from government to execute a work which will begin the art of sculpture nobly in our country. My curiosity led me into a strange scene to-day. I had observed for some time among the affiches upon the walls an advertisement of an exhibition of "fight- ing animals," at the Barriere du Combat. I am dis- posed to see almost any sight once, particularly where it is, like this, a regular establishment, and, of course, an exponent of the popular taste. The place of the " Combats des Animavx," is in one of the most ob- scure suburbs, outside the walls, and I found it with difficulty. After wandering about in dirty lanes for an hour or two, inquiring for it in vain, the cries of the animals directed me to a walled place, separated from the other houses of the suburb, at the gate of which a man was blowing a trumpet. I purchased a ticket of an old woman, who sat shivering in the porter's lodge ; and, finding I was an hour too early for the fights, I made interest with a savage-looking fellow, who was carrying in tainted meat, to see the interior of the es- tablishment. I followed him through a side gate, and we passed into a narrow alley, lined with stone ken- nels, to each of which was confined a powerful dog, with just length of chain enough to prevent him from reaching the tenant of the opposite hole. There were several of these alleys, containing, I should think, two hundred dogs in all. They were of every breed of strength and ferocity, and all of them perfectly frantic with rage or hunger, with the exception of a pair of noble-looking black dogs, who stood calmly at the mouths of their kennels: the rest struggled and howl- ed incessantly, straining every muscle to reach us, and resuming their fierceness toward each other when we had passed by. They all bore, more or less, the marks of severe battles ; one or two with their noses split open, and still unhealed ; several with their necks bleeding and raw, and galled constantly with the iron collar, and many with broken legs, but all apparently so excited as to be insensible to suffering. After fol- lowing my guide very unwillingly through the several alleys, deafened with the barking and howling of the savage occupants, I was taken to the department of wild animals. Here were all the tenants of the men- agerie, kept in dens, opening by iron doors upon the pit in which they fought. Like the dogs, they were terribly wounded ; one of the bears especially, whose mouth was torn all off from his jaws, leaving his teeth perfectly exposed, and red with the continually ex- uding blood. In one of the dens lay a beautiful deer, with one of his haunches severely mangled, who, the man told me, had been hunted round the pit by the dogs but a day or two before. He looked up at us, with his large soft eye, as we passed, and lying on the <lamp stone floor, with his undressed wounds festering in the chilly atmosphere of mid-winter : he presented a picture of suffering which made me ashamed to the smil ot my idle curiosity. The spectators began to collect, and the pit was lT"v ?7° thirds of those in the amphitheatre were hnghshmen, most of whom were amateurs, who hr ^°? g J lt d ? g 1 ° f ,heir own to P" a ? ainst ^ regu- nateES f . * hC establishme »<- These were des- ?o lar in? * ^ Stn l nge d °" W3S brou S ht in b y the ta»S and J 00Sec} ln tb -e arena, and a trained dog let ■ upon him. It was a cruel business. The sleek, well-fed, good-natured animal was no match for the exasperated, hungry savage, he was compelled to en- counter. One minute, in all the joy of a release from his chain, bounding about the pit, and fawning upon his master, and the next attacked by a furious mastiff, who was taught to fasten on him at the first onset in a way that deprived him at once of his strength ; it was but a murderous exhibition of cruelty. The combats between two of the trained dogs, however, were more equal. These succeeded to the private contests, and were much more severe and bloody. There was a small terrier among them, who disabled several dogs successively, by catching at their fore-legs, and break- ing them instantly with a powerful jerk of his body I was very much interested in one of the private dogs, a large yellow animal, of a noble expression of coun- tenance, who fought several times very unwillingly, but always gallantly and victoriously. There was a majesty about him, which seemed to awe his antago- nists. He was carried off in his master's arms, bleed- ing and exhausted, after severely punishing the best dogs of the establishment. The baiting of the wild animals succeeded the can- ine combats. Several dogs (Irish, I was told), of a size and ferocity such as I had never before seen, were brought in, and held in the leash opposite the den of the bear whose head was so dreadfully man- gled. The door was then opened by the keeper, but poor bruin shrunk from the contest. The dogs became unmanageable at the sight of him, however, and fas- tening a chain to his collar, they drew him out by main force, and immediately closed the grating. He fought gallantly, and gave more wounds than he re- ceived, for his shaggy coat protected his body effectu- ally. The keepers rushed in and beat oft' the dogs, when they had nearly finished peeling the remaining flesh from his head ; and the poor creature, perfectly blind and mad with pain, was dragged into his den again, to await another day of amusement ! I will not disgust you with more of these details. They fought several foxes and wolves afterward, and last of all, one of the small donkeys of the country, a creature not so large as some of the dogs, was led in, and the mastiffs loosed upon her. The pity and in- dignation I felt at first at the cruelty of baiting so un- warlike an animal, I soon found was quite unnecessa- ry. She was the severest opponent the dogs had vet found. She went round the arena at full gallop, with a dozen savage animals springing at her throat, but she struck right and left with her fore-legs, and at every kick with her heels threw one of them clear across the pit. One or two were left motionless on the field, and others carried off with their ribs kicked in, and their legs broken, while their inglorious antag- onist escaped almost unhurt. One of the mastiffs fastened on her ear and threw her down, in the begin- ning of the chase, but she apparently received no other injury. I had remained till the close of the exhibition with some violence to my feelings, and I was very glad to get away. Nothing would tempt me to expose myself to a similar disgust again. How the intelligent and gentlemanly Englishmen whom I saw there, and whom I have since met in the most refined society of Paris, can make themselves familiar, as they evidently were, with a scene so brutal, I can not very well conceive. LETTER IX. MALIBRAN PARIS AT MIDNIGHT A MOB, ETC. Our beautiful and favorite Malibran is playing in Paris this winter. I saw her last night in Desdemona, )4 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. The other theatres are so attractive, between Taglioni, Robert le Diable (the new opera), Leontine Fay, and the political pieces constantly coming out, that I had not before visited the Italian opera. Madame Mal- ibran is every way changed. She sings, unquestion- ably, better than when in America. Her voice is firmer, and more under control, but it has lost that gushing wildness, that brilliant daringness of execu- tion, that made her singing upon our boards so indes- cribably exciting and delightful. Her person is per- haps still more changed- The round, graceful ful- ness of her limbs and features has yielded to a half- haggard look of care and exhaustion, and I could not but think that there was more than Desdemona's ficti- tious wretchedness in the expression of her face. Still, her forehead and eyes have a beauty that is not readily lost, and she will be a strikingly interesting, and even splendid creature, as long as she can play. Her acting was extremely impassioned ; and in the more powerful passages of her part, she exceeded everything I had conceived of the capacity of the hu- man voice for pathos and melody. The house was crowded, and the applause was frequent and univer- sal. Madame Malibran, as you probably know, is di- vorced from the man whose name she bears, and has married a violinist of the Italian orchestra. She is just now in a state of health that will require immediate retirement from the stage, and, indeed, has played al- ready too long. She came forward after the curtain dropped, in answer to the continual demand of the au- dience, leaning heavily on Rubini, and was evidently so exhausted as to be scarcely able to stand. She made a single gesture, and was led off immediately, with her head drooping on her breast, amid the most violent acclamations. She is a perfect passion with the French, and seems to have out-charmed their usual caprice. It was a lovely night, and after the opera I walked home. I reside a long distance from the places of public amusement. Dr. Howe and myself had stop- ped at a cafe on the Italian Boulevards an hour, and it was very late. The streets were nearly deserted — here and there a solitary cabriolet with the driver asleep under his wooden apron, or the motionless fig- ure of a municipal guardsman, dozing upon his horse, with his helmet and brazen armor glistening in the light of the lamps. Nothing has impressed me more, by the way, than a body of these men passing me in the night. I have once or twice met the king return- ing from the theatre with a guard, and I saw them once at midnight on an extraordinary patrol winding through the arch into the Place Carrousel. Their equipments are exceedingly warlike (helmets of brass, and coats of mail), and with the gleam of the breast- plates through their horsemen's cloaks, the tramp of hoofs echoing through the deserted streets, and the silence and order of their march, it was quite a real- ization of the descriptions of chivalry. We kept along the Boulevards to the Rue Richelieu. A carriage, with footmen in livery, had just driven up to Frascati's, and, as we passed, a young man of un common personal beauty jumped out and entered that palace of gamblers. By his dress he was just from a ball, and th necessity of excitement after a scene meant to be so guy, was an obvious if not a fair satire on the happiness of the "gay" circle in which he ev- idently moved. We turned down the Paysage Pan- orama, perhaps the most crowded thoroughfare in all Paris, and traversed its long gallery without meeting a soul. The widely-celebrated patisserie of Felix, the first pastry-cook in the world, was the only shop open from one extremity to the other. The guard, in his gray capote, stood looking iq at the window, and the girl, who had served the palates of half the fashion and rank of Paris since morning, sat nodding fast asleep behind the counter, paying the usual fatiguing penalty of notoriety. The clock struck two as we passed the facade of the Bourse. This beautiful and central square is, night and day, the grand rendezvous of pub- lic vice ; and late as the hour was, its pave was still thronged with flaunting and painted women of the lowest description, promenading without cloaks or bonnets, and addressing every passer-by. The Palais Royal lay in our way, just below the Bourse, and we entered its magnificent court with an exclamation of new pleasure. Its thousand lamps were all burning brilliantly, the long avenues of trees were enveloped in a golden atmosphere created by the bright radiation of light through the mist, the Corin- thian pillars and arches retreated on either side from the eye in distinct and yet mellow perspective, the fountain filled the whole palace with its rich murmur, and the broad marble-paved galleries, so thronged by day, were as silent and deserted as if the drowsy gens d'armes standing motionless on their posts were the only living beings that inhabited it. It was a scene really of indescribable impressiveness. No one who has not seen this splendid palace, enclosing with its vast colonnades so much that is magnificent, can have an idea of its effect upon the imagination. I had seen it hitherto only when crowded with the gay and noisy idlers of Paris, and the contrast of this with the utter solitude it now presented — not a single footfall to be heard on its floors, yet every lamp burning bright, and the statues and flowers and fountains all illuminated as if for a revel — was one of the most powerful and captivating that I have ever witnessed. We loitered slowly down one of the long galleries, and it seemed to me more like some creation of enchantment than the public haunt it is of pleasure and merchandise. A single figure, wrapped in a cloak, passed hastily by us and entered the door to one of the celebrated "hells," in which the playing scarce commences till this hour — but we met no other human being. We passed on from the grand court to the Galerie Nemours. This, as you may find in the descriptions, is a vast hall, standing between the east and the west courts of the Palais Royal. It is sometimes called the " glass gallery." The roof is of glass, and the shops, with fronts entirely of windows, are separated only by long mirrors, reaching in the shape of pillars from the roof to the floor. The pavement is tasselated, and at either end stand two columns completing its form, and dividing it from the other galleries into which it opens. The shops are among the costliest in Paris ; and what with the vast proportions of the hall, its beautiful and glistening material, and the light- ness and grace of its architecture, it is, even when de- serted, one of the most fairy-like places in this fantas- tic city. It is the lounging place of military men par- ticularly ; and every evening from six to midnight, it is thronged by every class of gayly dressed people, of- ficers off duty, soldiers, polytechnic scholars, ladies, and strangers of every costume and complexion, promen- ading to and fro in the light of the cafes and the daz- zling shops, sheltered completely from the weather, and enjoying, without expense or ceremony, a scene more brilliant than the most splendid ball-room in Parish We lounged up and down the long echoing pavement an hour. It was like some kingly " banquet- hall deserted." The lamps burned dazzlingly bright, the mirrors multiplied our figures into shadowy and silent attendants, and our voices echoed from the glit- tering roof in the utter stillness of the hour as if we had broken in, Thalaba-like, upon some magical pal- ace of silence. It is singular how much the differences of time and weather affects scenery. The first sunshine I saw in PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 15; Paris, unsettled all my previous impressions com- pletely. I had seen every place of interest through the dull heavy atmosphere of a week's rain, and it was in such leaden colors alone that the finer squares and palaces had become familiar to me. The effect of a cl^ar sun upon them was wonderful. The sudden filding of the dome of the Invalides by Napoleon must ave been something like it. 1 took advantage of it to see everything over again, and it seemed to me like another city. I never realized so forcibly the beauty of sunshine. Architecture, particularly is nothing without it. Everything looks heavy and flat. The tracery of the windows and relievos, meant to be de- finite and airy, appears clumsy and confused, and the whole building flattens into a solid mass, without de- sign or beauty. I have spent the whole day in a Paris mob. The arrival of General Romarino and some of his compan- ions from Warsaw, gave the malcontents a plausible opportunity of expressing their dislike to the measures of government ; and, undercover of a public welcome to tliis distinguished Pole, they assembled in immense numbers at the Port St. Denis, and on the Boulevard Montmartre. It was very exciting altogether. The cavalary were out, and patroled the streets in compa- nies, charging upon the crowd wherever there was a stand ; the troops of the line marched up and down the Boulevards, continually dividing the masses of people, and forbidding any one to stand still. The shops were all shut, in anticipation of an affray. The students endeavored to cluster, and resisted, as far as they dared, the orders of the soldiery ; and from noon till night there was every prospect of a quarrel. The French are a fine people under excitement. Their handsome and ordinarily heartless faces become very expressive under the stronger emotions ; and their picturesque dresses and violent gesticulation set ofl* a popular tumult exceedingly. I have been highly amused all day, and have learned a great deal of what it is very difficult for a foreigner to acquire — the language of French passion. They express themselves very forcibly when angry. The constant irritation kept up by the intrusion of the cavalry upon the sidewalks, and the rough manner of dispersing gentlemen by sabre-blows and kicks with the stirrup, gave me suf- ficient opportunity of judging. I was astonished, however, that their summary mode of proceeding was borne at all. It is difficult to mix in such a vast body, and not catch its spirit, and I found myself, without knowing why, or rather with a full conviction that the military measures were necessary and right, entering with all my heart into the rebellious movements of the students, and boiling with indignation at every disper- sion by force. The students of Paris are probably the worst subjects the king has. They are mostly young men of from twenty to twenty-five, full of bodily vigor and enthusiasm, and excitable to tike last degree. .Many of them are Germans, and no small proportion Americans. They make a good amalgam for a mob, dress being the last consideration, apparently, with a medical or law studeut in Paris. I never saw such a collection of atrocious-looking fellows as are to be met at the lectures. The polytechnic scholars, on the other hand, are the finest looking body of young men I ever saw. Aside from their uniform, which is remarkably neat and beautiful, their figures and faces seem picked for spirit and manliness. They have al- ways a distinguished air in a crowd, and it is easy, af- ter seeing them, to imagine the part they played as leaders in the revolution of the three days. Contrary to my expectation, night came on without any serious encounter. One or two individuals at- tempted to resist the authority of the troops, and were cons.derably bruised ; and one young man, a student, had three of-his fingers cut off by the stroke of a dra- I goon's sabre. Several were arrested, but by eight o'clock all was quiet, and the shops on the Boulevards once more exposed their tempting goods, and lit up their brilliant mirrors without fear. The people thronged to the theatres to see the political pieces, and evaporate their excitement in cheers at the liberal al- lusions ; and so ends a tumult that threatened danger, but operated, perhaps, as a healthful event for the ac cumulating disorders of public opinion. LETTER X. GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES FASHIONABLE DRIVES FRENCH OMNIBUSES CHEAP RIDING SIGHTS STREET-BEGGARS IMPOSTORS, ETC. The garden of the Tuileries is an idle man's para- dise. Magnificent as it is in extent, sculptures, and cultivation, we all know that statues may be too dumb, gravel walks too long and level, and trees and flowers and fountains a little too Platonic, with any degree of beauty. But the Tuileries are peopled at all hours of sunshine with, to me, the most lovely objects in the world — children. You may stop a minute, perhaps, to look at the thousand gold fishes in the basin under the palace-windows, or follow the swans for a single voyage round the fountain in the broad avenue — but you will sit on your hired chair (at this season) under the shelter of the sunny wall, and gaze at the children chasing about, with their attending Swiss maids, till your heart has outwearied your eyes, or the palace- clock strikes five. I have been there repeatedly since I have been in Paris, and have seen nothing like the children. They move my heart always, more than anything under heaven ; but a French child, with an accent that all your paid masters can not give, and manners, in the midst of its romping, that mock to the life the air and courtesy for which Paris has a name over the world, is enough to make one forget Napo- leon, though the column of Vendome throws its shad- ow within sound of their voices. Imagine sixty-seven acres of beautiful creatures (that is the extent of the garden, and I have not seen such a thing as an ugly French child) — broad avenues stretching away as far as you can see, covered with little foreigners (so they seem to me), dressed in gay colors, and laughing and romping and talking French, in all the amusing mix- ture of baby passions and grown-up manners, and an- swer me — is it not a sight better worth seeing than all the grand palaces that shut it in ? The Tuileries are certainly very magnificent, and to walk across from the Seine to the Rue Rivoli, and look up the endless walks and under the long per- fect arches cut through the trees, may give one a very pretty surprise for once — but a winding lane is a bet- ter place to enjoy the loveliness of green leaves, and a single New England elm, letting down its slendei branches to the ground in the inimitable grace of na- ture, has, to my eye, more beauty than all the clipped vistas from the king's palace to the Arc de VEtoile, the Champs Elysces inclusive. One of the finest things in Paris, by the way, is the view from the terrace in front of the palace to this " Arch of Triumph," commenced by Napoleon at the extremity of the " Elysian Fields," a single avenue of about two miles. The part beyond the gardens is the fashionable drive, and by a saunter on horseback to the Boh de Boulogne, between four and five, on a pleasant day, one may see all the clashing equipages in Paris. Broadway, however, would eclipse every- thing here, either for beauty of construction or ap- pointments. Our carriages are every way handsomer and better hung, and the horses are harnessed more compactly and gracefully. The lumbering vehicles 16 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. here make a great show, it is true, for the box, with its heavy hammer cloth, is level with the top, and the coachman and footmen and outriders are very striking in their bright liveries ; but the elegant, convenient, light-running establishments of Philadelphia and New York, excel them, out of all comparison, for taste and fitness. The best driving I have seen is by the king's whips, and really it is beautiful to see his retinue on the road, four or five coaches and six, with footmen and outriders in scarlet liveries, and the finest horses possible for speed and action. His majesty generally takes the outer edge of the Champs Elysees, on the bank of the river, and the rapid glimpses of the bright show through the breaks in the wood, are exceedingly picturesque. There is nothing in Paris that looks so outlandish to my eye as the common vehicles. I was thinking of it this morning as I stood waiting for the St. Sulpice omnibus, at the corner of the Rue Vivienne, the great thoroughfare between the Boulevards and the Palais Royal. There was the hack-cabriolet lumbering by in the fashion of two centuries ago, with a horse and harness that look equally ready to drop in pieces; the hand-cart with a stout dog harnessed under the axle- tree, drawing with twice the strength of his master ; the market-wagon, driven always by women, and drawn generally by a horse and a mule abreast, the horse of the Norman breed, immensely large, and the mule about the size of a well-grown bull-dog ; a vehicle of which I have not yet found out the name, a kind of long demi-omnibus, with two wheels and a single horse, and carrying nine ; and last, but not least amu- sing, a small close carriage for one person, swung upon two wheels and drawn by a servant, very much used, apparently, by elderly women and invalids, and certainly most admirable conveniences either for the economy or safety of getting about a city. It would be difficult to find an American servant who would draw in harness as they do here ; and it is amusing to see a stout, well-dressed fellow, strapped to a carriage, and pulling along the paves, sometimes at a jog-trot, while his master or mistress sits looking unconcern- edly out of the window. I am not yet decided whether the French are the best or the worst drivers in the world. If the latter, they certainly have most miraculous escapes. A cab- driver never pulls the reins except upon great emer- gencies, or for a right-about turn, and his horse has a ludicrous aversion to a straight line. The streets are built inclining toward the centre, with the gutter in the middle, and it is the habit of all cabriolet-horses to run down one side and up the other constantly at such sudden angles that it seems to you they certainly will go through the shop-windows. This, of course, is very dangerous to foot-passengers in a city where there are no side-walks ; and, as a consequence, the average number of complaints to the police of Paris for peo- ple killed by careless driving, is about four hundred annually. There are probably twice the number of legs broken. One becomes vexed in riding with these fellows, and I have once or twice undertaken to get into a French passion, and insist upon driving my- self. But I have never yet met with an accident. " Gar-r-r-r-e /" sings out the driver, rolling the word off his tongue like a bullet from a shovel, but never thinking to lift his loose reins from the dasher, while the frightened passenger, without looking round, makes for the first door with an alacrity that shows a habit of expecting very little from the cocker's skill. Riding is very cheap in Paris, if managed a little. The city is traversed constantly in every direction by omnibuses, and you may go from the Tuileries to Pere la Chaise, or from St. Surplice to the Italian Boulevards (the two diagonals), or take the " Tous les Boulevards,''' and ride quite round the city for six sous the distance. The "fiacre" is like our own hacks, except that you pay but "twenty sows the course," and fill the vehicle with your friends if you please ; and, more cheap and comfortable still, there is the universal cabriolet, which for fifteen sous the course," or "twenty the hour," will give you at least three times the value of your money, with the advantage of seeing ahead and talking bad French with the driver. Everything in France is either grotesque or pictur- esque. I have been struck with it this morning, while sitting at my window, looking upon the close inner court of the hotel. One would suppose that a pave, between four high walls, would offer very little to se- duce the eye from its occupation ; but, on the con- trary, one's whole time may be occupied in watching the various sights presented in constant succession. First comes the itinerant cobbler, with his seat and materials upon his back, and coolly selecting a place against the wall, opens his shop under your window, and drives his trade, most industriously, for half an hour. If you have anything to mend, he is too happy ; if not, he has not lost his time, for he pays no rent, and is all the while at work. He packs up again, bows to the concierge, as politely as his load will per- mit, and takes his departure, in the hope to find your shoes more worn another day. Nothing could be more striking than his whole appearance. He is met in the gate, perhaps, by an old clothes-man, who will buy or sell, and compliment you for nothing, cheap- ening your coat by calling the Virgin to witness that your shape is so genteel that it will not fit one man in a thousand ; or by a family of singers, with a monkey to keep time ; or a regular beggar, who, however, does not dream of asking charity till he has done something to amuse you : after these, perhaps, will follow a succession of objects singularly peculiar to this fantastic metropolis; and, if one could separate from the poor creatures the knowledge of the cold and hunger they suffer, wandering about, houseless, in the most inclement weather, it would be easy to imagine it a diverting pantomime, and give them the poor pittance they ask, as the price of an amused hour. An old man has just gone from the court who comes regularly twice a week, with a long beard, perfectly white, and a strange kind of an equipage. It is an organ, set upon a rude carriage, with four small wheels, and drawn by a mule, of the most diminu- tive size, looking (if it were not the venerable figure crouched upon the seat) like some roughly-contrived plaything. The whole affair, harness and all, is evi- dently his own work ; and it is affecting to see the difficulty, and, withal, the habitual apathy with which the old itinerant fastens his rope-reins beside him, and dismounts to grind his one — solitary — eternal tune, for charity. Among the thousands of wretched objects in Paris (they make the heart sick with their misery at every turn), there is, here and there, one of an interesting character; and it is pleasant to select them, and make a habit of your trifling gratuity. Strolling about, as I do, constantly, and letting everybody and everything amuse me that will, I have made several of these penny-a-day acquaintances, and find them very agree- able breaks to the heartless solitude of a crowd. There is a little fellow who stands by the gate of the Tuile- ries, opening to the Place Vendome, who, with all the rags and dirt of a street-boy, begs with an air of su- periority that is absolutely patronizing. One feels obliged to the little varlet for the privilege of giving to him — his smile and manner are so courtly. His face is beautiful, dirty as it is ; his voice is clear, and unaffected, and his thin lips have an expression of high-bred contempt, that amuses me a little, and puz- zles me a great deal. I think he must have a gentle- man's blood in his veins, though he possibly came indirectly by it. There is a little Jewess hanging about the Louvre, who begs with her dark eyes very PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. J7 eloquently ; and, in the Rue de la Pair there may be found at all hours, a melancholy, sick-looking Italian boy, with his hand in his bosom, whose native lan- guage and picture-like face are a diurnal pleasure to me, cheaply bought with the poor trifle which makes him happy. It is surprising how many devices there are in the streets for attracting attention and pity. There is a woman always to be seen upon the Boule- vards, playing a solemn tune on a violin, with a child as pallid as ashes, lying, apparently, asleep in her lap. I suspected, after seeing it once or twice, that it was wax, and, a day or two since I satisfied myself of the fact, and enraged the mother excessively by touching its cheek. It represents a sick child to the life, and any one less idle and curious, would be deceived. I have often seen people give her money with the most unsuspecting look of sympathy, though it would be natural enough to doubt the maternal kindness of keeping a dying child in the open air in mid-winter. Then there is a woman without hands, making braid with wonderful adroitness; and a man without legs or arms, singing, with his hat set appealingly on the ground before him ; and cripples, exposing their ab- ! breviated limbs, and telling their stories over and j over, with or without listeners, from morning till night ; and every description of appeal to the most acute sympathies, mingled up with all the gayety, show, and fashion, of the most crowded promenade in Paris. In the present dreadful distress of trade, there are other still more painful cases of misery. It is not un- common to be addressed in the street by men of per- fectly respectable appearance, whose faces bear every mark of strong mental struggle, and often of famish- ing necessity, with an appeal for the smallest sum that will buy food. The look of misery is so general, as to mark the whole population. It has struck me most forcibly everywhere, notwithstanding the gayety of the national character, and, I am told by intelligent Frenchmen, it is peculiar to the time, and felt and observed by all. Such things startle one back to na- ture sometimes. It is difficult to look away from the face of a starving man, and see the splendid equipages, and the idle waste upon trifles, within his very sight, and reconcile the contrast with any belief of the exist- ence of human pity — still more difficult, perhaps, to admit without reflection, the right of one human being to hold in a shut hand, at will, the very life and breath for which his fellow-creatures are perishing at his door. It is this that is visited back, so terribly in the horrors of a revolution. LETTER XI. FOYETIER — THE THRACIAN GLADIATOR MADEMOI- SELLE MARS DOCTOR FRANKLIN'S RESIDENCE I.N PARIS ANNUAL BALL FOR THE POOR. 1 had the pleasure to-day of being introduced to the young sculptor Foyetier, the author of the new statue on the terrace of the Tuileries. Aside from his genius, he is interesting from a circumstance con- nected with his early history. He was a herd-driver in one of the provinces, and amused himself in his leisure moments with the carving of rude images, which he sold for a sous or two on market-days in the provincial town. The celebrated Dr. Gall fell in with him accidentally, and felt of his head, en passant. The bump was there which contains his present greatness, and the phrenologist took upon himself the risk of his education in the arts. He is now the first sculptor, beyond all competition, in France. His " Spartacus," the Thracian gladiator, is the admiration of Paris. It •tauds in front of the palace, in the most conspicuous 9 part of the regal gardens, and there are hundreds of people about the pedestal at all hours of the day. The gladiator has broken his chain, and stands with his weapon in his hand, every muscle and feature breathing action, his body throw n back, and his right foot planted powerfully for a spring. It is a gal hint thing. One's blood stirs to look at it. I think that Forrest (however well he may be playing now in the new tragedy, of which I see so much in the papers), would get from it even a more intense conception of the gladiator. If I had written such a play, I would make the voyage of the Atlantic to see the character thus bodied out. Foyetier is a young man, I should think about thir- ty. He is small, very plain in appearance ; but he has a rapid, earnest eye, and a mouth of singular suavity of expression. I liked him extremely. His celebrity seems not to have trenched a step on the na- ture of his character. His genius is everywhere al- lowed, and he works for the king altogether, his majes- ty bespeaking everything he attempts, even in the model ; but he is certainly, of all geniuses, one of the most modest. The celebrated Mars has come out from her retire ment once more, and commenced an engagement at the Theatre Francois. I went a short time since to see her play in Tartuffe. This stane is the home of the true French drama. Here Talma played when he and Mademoiselle Mars were the delight of Napoleon and of France. I have had few gratifications greater than that of seeing this splendid woman reappear in the place where she won her brilliant reputation. The play, too, was Rloliere's, and it was here that it was first performed. Altogether it was like something plucked back from history ; a renewal, as in a magic mirror, of glories gone by. I could scarce believe my eyes when she appeared as the " wife of Argon." She looked about twenty- five. Her step was light and graceful ; her voice was as tinlike that of a woman of sixty as could well be imagined: sweet, clear, and under a control which gives her a power of expression I never had conceived before; her mouth had the definite, firm play of youth ; her teeth (though the dentist might do that) were white and perfect ; and her eyes can have lost none of their fire, I am sure. I never saw so quiet a play- er. Her gestures were just perceptible, no more ; and yet they were done so exquisitely at the right moment — so unconsciously, as if she had not meant them, that they were more forcible than even the language itself. She repeatedly drew a low murmur of delight from the whole house with a single play of expression across her face, while the other characters were speak- ing, or by a slight movement of her fingers, in panto- mimic astonishment or vexation. It was really some- thing new to me. I had never before seen a first-rate female player in comedy. Leontine Fay is inimitable in tragedy; but, if there is any comparison between them, it is that this beautiful young creature overpow- ers the heart with her nature, while Mademoiselle Mars satisfies the uttermost demand of the judg- ment with her art. I yesterday visited the house occupied by Franklin while he was in France. It is one of the most beau- tiful country residences in the neighborhood of Paris, standing on the elevated ground of Passy, and over- looking the whole city on one side, and the valley of the Seine for a long distance toward Versailles on the other. The house is otherwise celebrated. Madame de Genlis lived there while the present king was her pupil ; and Louis the Fifteenth occupied it six months for the country air, while under the infliction of the gout — its neighborhood to the palace probably ren- dering it preferable to the more distant chateaux of 18 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. St. Cloud or Versailles. Its occupants would seem to have been various enough, without the addition of a lieutenant general of the British army, whose hos- pitality makes it delightful at present. The lightning- rod, which was raised by Franklin, and which was the first conductor used in France, is still standing. The gardens are large, and form a sort of terrace, with the house on the front edge. It must be one of the sweetest places in the world in summer. The great annual ball for the poor was given at the Academie Royale, a few nights since. This is attend- ed by the king and royal family, and is ordinarily the most splendid affair of the season. It is managed by twenty or thirty lady-patronesses, who have the con- trol of the tickets ; and, though by no means exclu- sive, it is kept within very respectable limits ; and, if one is content to float with the tide, and forego dan- cing, is an unusually comfortable and well-behaved spectacle. I went with a large party at the early hour of eight. We fell into the train of carriages, advancing slowly between files of dragoons, and stood before the door in our turn in the course of an hour. The staircases were complete orangeries, with immense mirrors at every turn, and soldiers on guard, and servants in liv- ery, from top to bottom. The long saloon, lighted by ten chandeliers, was dressed and hung with wreaths as a receiving-room ; and passing on through the spa- cious lobbies, which were changed into groves of pines and exotics, we entered upon the grand scene. The coup d'aii would have astonished Aladdin. The theatre, which is the largest in Paris, and gorgeously built and ornamented, was thrown into one vast ball- room, ascending gradually from the centre to plat- forms raised at either end, one of which was occupied by the throne and seats for the king's family and suite. The four rows of boxes were crowded with ladies, and the house presented, from the floor to the paradis, one glittering and waving wall of dress, jewelry, and feath- ers. An orchestra of near a hundred musicians occu- pied the centre of the hall ; and on either side of them swept by the long countless multitudes of people, dressed with a union of taste and show ; while, instead of the black coats which darken the complexion of a party in a republican country, every other gentleman '■■ was in a gay uniform ; and polytechnic scholars with I their scarlet-faced coats, officers of the " National Guard" and the " line," gentlemen of the king's household, and foreign ministers, and attaches, pre- sented a variety of color and splendor which nothing ! could exceed. The theatre itself was not altered, except by the platform occupied by the king ; it is sufficiently splen- j did as it stands ; but the stage, whose area is much larger than that of the pit, was hung in rich drapery as a vast tent, and garnished to profusion with flags and arms. Along the sides, on a level with the lower row of boxes, extended galleries of crimson velvet, festooned with flowers. These were filled with ladies, and completed a circle about the house of beauty and magnificence, of which the king and his dazzling suite formed the corona. Chandeliers were hung close together from one end of the hall to the other. I commenced counting them once or twice, but some bright face flitting by in the dance interrupted me. An English girl near me counted fifty-five, and I think there must have been more. The blaze of light was almost painful. The air glittered, and the fine grain of the most delicate complexions was distinctly visible. It is impossible to describe the effect of so much light and space and music crowded into one spectacle. The vastness of the hall, so long that the best sight could not distinguish a figure at the opposite extremity, and so high as to absorb and mellow the vibration of a hundred instruments — the gorgeous sweep of splendor from one platform to the other, absolutely drowning the eye in a sea of gay colors, nodding feathers, jewel- ry, and military equipment — the delicious music, the strange faces, dresses, and tongues (one half of the multitude at least being foreigners), the presence of the king, and the gallant show of uniforms in his con- spicuous suite, combined to make up a scene more than sufficiently astonishing. 1 felt the whole night the smothering consciousness of senses too narrow — eyes, ears, language — all too limited for the demand made upon them. The king did not arrive till after ten. He entered by a silken curtain in the rear of the platform on which seats were placed for his family. The " Vive le JRoi' was not so hearty as to drown the music, but his majesty bowed some twenty times very graciously, and the good-hearted queen courtsied, and kept a smile on her excessively plain face, till I felt the muscles of my own ache for her. King Philippe looks anxious. By the remarks of the French people about me when he entered, he has reason for it. I observed that the polytechnic scholars all turned their backs upon him : and one exceedingly handsome, spirited-looking boy, standing just at my side, muttered a " sacre .'" and bit his lip, with a very revolutionary air, at the continu- ance of the acclamation. His majesty came down, and walked through the hall about m idnight. His eldest son, the Duke of Orleans, a handsome, unoffending- looking youth of eighteen, followed him, gazing round upon the crowd with his mouth open, and looking very i much annoyed at his part of the pageant. The young j duke has a good figure, and is certainly a very beauti- ful dancer. His mouth is loose and weak, and his I eyes are as opaque as agates. He wore the uniform of the Garde Nationale, which does not become him. ( In ordinary gentleman's dress he is a very authentical copy of a Bond-street dandy, and looks as little like a Frenchman as most of Stultz's subjects. He danced all the evening, and selected, very popularly, decidedly the most vulgar women in the room, looking all the while as one who had been petted by the finest women in France (Leontine Fay among the number), might be supposed to look under such an infliction. The king's second son, the Duke of Nemours, pursued the same policy. He has a brighter face than his broth- er, with hair almost white, and dances extremely well. The second daughter is also much prettier than the eldest. On the whole, the king's family is very plain, though a very amiable one, and the people seem at- tached to them. These general descriptions, are, after all, very vague. Here I have written half a sheet with a picture in my mind of which you are getting no semblable idea. Language is a mere skeleton of such things. The Academie Royale should be borne over the water like the chapel of Loretto, and set down in Broadway with all its lights, music, and people to give you half a no- tion of the " Bal en faveur des Pauvres." And so it is with everything except the little histories of one's own personal atmosphere, and that is the reason why egotism should be held virtuous in a traveller, and the reason why one can not study Europe at home. After getting our American party places, I aban- doned myself to the strongest current, and went in search of "lions." The first face that arrested my eye was that of the Duchess D'Istria, a woman cele- brated here for her extraordinary personal beauty. Directly opposite this lovely dutchess, in the othei stage-box sat Donna Maria, the young Queen of For tugal, surrounded by her relatives. Theex-emperess her mother, was on her right, her grandmother on hei left, and behind her some half-dozen of her Portu guese cousins. She is a little girl of twelve or four teen, with a fat, heavy face, and a remarkably pamper ed, sleepy look. She was dressed like an old woman and gaped incessantly the whole evening. The bo> PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY 19 wa9 a perfect blaze of diamonds. I never before real- ized the beauty of these splendid stones. The necks, I heads, arms, and waists of the ladies royal were all streaming with light. The necklace of the emperess ! mother particularly flashed on the eye in every part of| the house. By the unceasing exclamations of the women, it was an unusually brilliant show, even here. ! The little Donna has a fine, well-rounded chin ; and when she smiled in return to the king's bow, I thought I could see more than a child's character in the ex- 1 pression of her mouth. I should think a year or two of mental uneasiness might let out a look of intelli- gence through her heavy features. She is likely to have it, I think, with the doubtful fortunes that seem to beset her. I met Don Pedro often in society before his depar- ; ture upon his expedition. He is a short, well-made man, of great personal accomplishment, and a very bad expression, rather aggravated by an unfortunate cuta- neous eruption. The first time I saw him, I was in- duced to ask who he was, from the apparent coldness and dislike with which he was treated by a lady whose beauty had strongly arrested my attention. He sat by, her on a sofa in a very crowded party, and seemed to' be saying something very earnestly, which made the lady's Spanish eyes flash fire, and brought a curl of! very positive anger upon a pair of the loveliest lips imaginable. She was a slender, aristocratic-looking creature, and dressed most magnificently. After glan- cing at them a minute or two, I made up my mind that, from the authenticity of his dress and appoint- ments, he was an Englishman, and that she was some French lady of rank whom he was particularly annoy- ing with his addresses. On inquiry, the gentleman ! proved to be Don Pedro, and the lady the Countess de Lourle, his sister! I have often met her since, and never without wondering how two of the same family could look so utterly unlike each other. The! Count de Lourle is called the Adonis of Paris. He' is certainly a very splendid fellow, and justifies the ro- mantic admiration of his wife, who married him clan-! destinely, giving him her left hand in the ceremony, \ as is the etiquette, they say, when a princess marries below her rank. One can not help looking with great' interest on a beautiful creature like this, who has bro- ! ken away from the imposing fetters of a royal sphere, to follow the dictates of natural feeling. It does not occur so often in Europe that one may not sentimen- \ talizs about it without the charge of affectation. To return to the ball. The king bowed himself out a little after midnight, and with him departed most of the fat people, and all the little girls. This made room enough to dance, and the French set themselves ! at it in good earnest. I wandered about for an hour or two ; after wearying my imagination quite out in speculating on the characters and rank of people whom I never saw before and shall probably never see again, I mounted to the paradis to take a last look down up- j on the splendid scene, and made my exit. I should be quite content never to go to such a ball again, ! though it was by far the most splendid scene of the kind I ever saw. LETTER XII. PLACE LOUIS XV. PANORAMIC VIEW OF PAK1S A LIT-! ERARY CLUB DINNER THE GUESTS — THE PRESI- DENT THE EXILED POLES, ETC. I have spent the day in a long stroll. The wind J blew warm and delicious from the south this morning, and the temptation to abandon lessons and lectures ! was irresistible. Taking the Arc de VEtoile as my j pxtreme point. I yielded to all the leisurely hinder-| ances of shop-windows, beggars, book-stalls, and views by the way. Among the specimen-cards in an en- graver's window I was amused at finding, in the latest Parisian fashion, "Hussein-Pacha, Dcif d' Algiers." These delightful Tuileries! We rambled through them (I had met a friend and countryman, and enticed him into my idle plans for the day), and amused our- selves with the never-failing beauty and grace of tho French children for an hour. On the inner terrace we stopped to look at the beautiful hotel of Prince Polignac, facing the Tuileries, on the opposite bank. By the side of this exquisite little model of a palace stands the superb commencement of Napoleon's min- isterial hotel, breathing of his glorious conception in every line of its ruins. It is astonishing what a god- like impress that man left upon all he touched. Every third or fourth child in the gardens was dressed in the full uniform of the National Guard — helmet, sword, epaulets, and all. They are ludi- crous little caricatures, of course, but it inoculates them with love of the corps, and it would be better if that were synonymous with a love of liberal principles. The Garde Rationale are supposed to be more than half "Carlists"' at this moment. We passed out by the guarded gate of the Tuileries to the Place Louis XV. This square is a most beau- tiful spot,. as a centre of unequalled views, and yet a piece of earth so foully polluted with human blood | probably does not exist on the face of the globe. It divides the Tuileries from the Champs Elysces, and ranges, of course, in the long broad avenue of two I miles, stretching between the king's palace and the I Arc de VEtoile. It is but a list of names to write down ! the particular objects to be seen in such a view, j but it commands, at the extremities of its radii, the most princely edifices, seen hence with the most ad- vantageous foregrounds of space and avenue, and softened by distance into the misty and unbroken sur- face of engraving. The king's palace is on one hand, Napoleon's Arch at a distance of nearly two miles on the other. Prince Talleyrand's regal dwelling behind, with the church of Madeline seen through the Rue Royale, while before you, to the south, lies a picture of profuse splendor : the broad Seine, spanned by bridges that are the admiration of Europe, and crowded by specimens of architectural magnificence; the chamber of deputies ; and the Palais Bourbon, ap- proached by the Pont Louis XVI. with its gigantic statuses and simple majesty of structure; and, rising over all, the grand dome of the " Invalides," which Napoleon gilded, to divert the minds of his subjects from his lost battle, and which Peter the Great ad- mired more than all Paris beside. What a spot for a man to stand upon, with but one bosom to feel and one tongue to express his wonder! And yet, of what, that should make a spot of earth sink to perdition, has it not been the theatre ? Here were beheaded the unfortunate Louis XVI. — his wife, Marie Antoinette — his kinsman; Philip duke of Orleans, and his sister Elizabeth; and here were guillotined the intrepid Charlotte Corday, the deputy Brissot, and twenty of his colleagues, and all the victims of the revolution of 1793, to the amount of two thousand eight hundred; and here Robespierre and his cursed crew met at last with their insufficient retribution; and, as if it were destined to be the very blood-spot of the earth, here the fireworks, which were celebra- ting the marriage of the same Louis that was after- ward brought hither to the scaffold, exploded and killed fourteen hundred persons. It has been the scene, also, of several minor tragedies not worth men- tioning in such a connexion. Were I a Bourbon, and as unpopular as King Philippe I. at this moment, tho view of the Place Louis XV. from my palace windows would very much disturb the beauty of the perspec- tive. Without an equivoque, I should look with a very 20 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. ominous dissatisfaction on the "Elysian fields" that lie beyond. We loitered slowly on to the Barrier Neuilly, just outside of which, and right before the city gates, stands the Triumphal Arch. It has the stamp of Napoleon — simple grandeur. The broad avenue from the Tuileries swells slowly up to it for two miles, and the view of Paris at its foot, even, is superb. We ascended to the unfinished roof, a hundred and thirty- five feet from the ground, and saw the whole of the mighty capital of France at a coup d'ceil — churches, palaces, gardens; buildings heaped upon buildings clear over the edge of the horizon, where the spires of the city in which you stand are scarcely visible for the distance. T dined a short time since, with the editors of the Revue Encyclopedique at their monthly reunion. This is a sort of club dinner, to which the eminent contrib- utors of the review invite once a month all the stran- gers of distinction who happen to be in Paris. 1 owed my invitation probably to the circumstance of my liv- ing with Dr. Howe, who is considered the organ of American principles here, and whose force of charac- ter has given him a degree of respect and prominence not often attained by foreigners. It was the most re- markable party, by far, that I had ever seen. There were nearly a hundred guests, twenty or thirty of whom were distinguished Poles, lately arrived from Warsaw. Generals Romarino and Langermann were placed beside the president, and another general, whose name is as difficult to remember as his face is to forget, and who is famous for having been the last on the field, sat next to the head seat. Near him were General Bernard and Dr. Bowring, with Sir Sidney Smith (covered with orders, from every quarter of the world), and the President of Colombia. After the usual courses of a French dinner, the president, Mons. Julien, a venerable man, with snow-white hair, ad- dressed the company. He expressed his pleasure at the meeting, with the usual courtesies of welcome, and in the fervent manner of the old school of French politeness; and then, pausing a little, and lowering his voice, with a very touching cadence, he looked around to the Poles, and began to speak of their coun- try. Every movement was instantly hushed about the table— the guests leaned forward, some of them half rising in their earnestness to hear ; the old man's voice trembled, and sunk lower; the Poles dropped their heads upon their bosoms, and the whole company were strongly affected. His mannersuddenly changed at this moment, in a degree that would have seemed too dramatic, if the strong excitement had not sustain- ed him. He spoke indignantly of the Russian bar- barity toward Poland — assured the exiles of the strong sympathy felt by the great mass of the French people in their cause, and expressed his confident belief that the struggle was not yet done, and the time was near when, with France at her back, Poland would rise and be free. He closed, amid tumultuous acclamation, and all the Poles near him kissed the old man, after the French manner, upon both his cheeks. This speech was followed by several others, much to the same effect. Dr. Bowring replied handsomely, in French, to some compliment paid to his efforts on the "question of reform," in England. Cesar Moreau, the great schemist, and founder of the Academie d' In- dustrie, said a few very revolutionary things quite em- phatically, rolling his fine visionary-looking eyes about as if he saw the " shadows cast before" of coming events; and then rose a speaker, whom I shall never forget — he was a young Polish noble, of about nine- teen, whose extreme personal beauty and enthusiastic expression of countenance had particularly arrested my attention in the drawing-room, before dinner. His person was slender and graceful — his eye and mouth full of beauty and fire, and his manner had a quiet na- tive superiority, that would have distinguished him anywhere. He had behaved very gallantly in the struggle, and some allusion had been made to him in one of the addresses. He rose modestly, and half un- willingly, and acknowledged the kind wishes for his country in language of great elegance. He then went on to speak of the misfortunes of Poland, and soon warmed into eloquence of the most vivid earnestness and power. I never was more moved by a speaker — he seemed perfectly unconscious of everything but the recollections of his subject. His eyes swam with tears and flashed with indignation alternately, and his refined spirited mouth assumed a play of varied expres- sion, which, could it have been arrested, would have made a sculptor immortal. I can hardly write ex- travagantly of him, for all present were as much ex- cited as myself. One ceases to wonder at the desper- ate character of the attempt to redeem the liberty of a land when he sees such specimens of its people. I have seen hundreds of Poles, of all classes, in Paris, and I have not yet met with a face of even common dulness among them. You have seen by the papers, I presume, that a body of several thousand Poles fled from Warsaw, after the defeat, and took refuge in the northern forests of Prussia. They gave up their arms under an assurance from the king that they should have all the rights of Prussian subjects. He found it politic afterward to recall his protection, and ordered them back to Pohind. They refused to go, and were sunounded by a detach- ment of his army, and the orders given to fire upon them. The soldiers refused, and the Poles, taking advantage of the sympathy of the army, bioke through the ranks, and escaped to the forest, where, at the last news, they were armed with clubs, and determined to defend themselves to the last. The consequence of a return to Poland would be, of course, an immediate exile to Siberia. The Polish committee, American and French, with General Lafayette at their head, have appropriated a great part of their funds to the re- lief of this body, and our countryman, Dr. Howe, has undertaken the dangerous and difficult task of carrying it to them. He left Paris for Brussels, with letters from the Polish generals, and advices from Lafayette to all Polish committees upon his route, that they should put all their funds into his hands. He is a gal- lant fellow, and will succeed if any one can ; but he certainly runs great hazard. God prosper him! LETTER XIII. THE GAMBLING-HOUSES OF TARIS. I accepted, last night, from a French gentleman of high standing, a polite offer of introduction to one of the exclusive gambling clubs of Paris. With the understanding, of course, that it was only as a specta- tor, my friend, whom I had met at a dinner party, despatched a note from the table, announcing to the temporary master of ceremonies his intention of pre- senting me. We went at eleven, in full dress. I was surprised at the entrance with the splendor of the establishment — gilt balustrades, marble staircases, crowds of servants in full livery, and all the formal announcement of a court. Passing through several ante-chambers, a heavy folding-door was thrown open, and we were received by one of the noblest-looking men I have seen in France — Count . I was put immediately at my ease by his dignified and kind po- liteness; and after a little conversation in English, which he spoke fluently, the entrance of some other person left me at liberty to observe at my leisure. PEXCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 21 Everything about me had the impress of the studied taste of high life. The lavish and yet soft disposition >f light, the harmony of color in the rich hangings pud furniture, the quiet manners and subdued tones j of conversation, the respectful deference of the ser- | vants, and the simplicity of the slight entertainment, \ would have convinced me, without my Asmodeus, that I I wa> in no every-day atmosphere. Conversation pro- ! ceeded for an hour, while the members came dropping j in from their evening engagements, and a little after twelve a glass door was thrown open, and we passed j from the reception-room to the spacious suite of apart- ] meats intended for play. One or two of the gentle- ; men entered the side rooms for billiards and cards, but ! the majority closed about the table of hazard in the central ball. I had never conceived so beautiful an ! apartment. It can be described in two words — columns and mirrors. There was nothing else between the exquisitely-painted ceiling and the door. The form was circular, and the wall was laid with glass, inter- j rupted only with pairs of Corinthian pillars, with their , rich capitals reflected and re-reflected innumerably. It seemed like a hall of colonnades of illimitable ! extent -the multiplication of the mirrors into each j other was so endless and illusive. I felt an uncou- j querable disposition to abandon myself to a waking revery of pleasure; and as soon as the attention of the company was perfectly engrossed by the silent occupation before them, I sank upon a sofa, and gave ; iny senses up for a while to the fascination of the j scene. My eye was intoxicated. As far as my sight could penetrate, stretched apparently interminable halls, carpeted with crimson, and studded with grace- ful columns and groups of courtly figures, forming altogether, with its extent and beauty, and in the sub- dued and skilfully-managed light, a picture that, if real, would be one of unsurpassable splendor. I quite forgot my curiosity to see the game. I had merely observed, when my companion reminded me of the arrival of my own appointed hour for departure, that, whatever was lost or won, the rustling bills were j passed from one to the other with a quiet and imper- turbable politeness, that betrayed no sign either of chagrin or triumph; though, from the fact that the transfers were in paper only, the stakes must have been anything but trifling. Refusing a polite invita- tion to partake of the supper, always in waiting, we took leave about two hours after midnight. As we drove from the court, my companion sug- gested to me, that, since we were out at so late an hour, we might as well look in for a moment at the more accessible " hells," and, pulling the cordon, he ordered to " Frascati's." This, you know of course, is the fashionable place of ruin, and here the heroes of all noveis, and the rakes of all comedies, mar or J make their fortunes. An evening dress, and the look \ of a gentleman, are the only required passport. A j servant in attendance took our hats and canes, and ! we walked in without ceremony. It was a different I scene from the former. Four large rooms, plainly J but handsomely furnished, opened into each other, j three of which were devoted to play, and crowded with players. Elegantly-dressed women, some of j them with high pretensions to French beauty, sat and j stood at the table, watching their own stakes in the i rapid games with fixed attention. The majority of ! the gentlemen were English. The table was very large, marked as usual with the lines and figures of the game, and each person playing had a small rake in his hand, with which he drew toward him his pro- portion of the winnings. I was disappointed at the first glance in the faces: there was very little of the high-bred courtesy I had seen at the club-house, but there was no very striking exhibition of feeling, and I should think, in any but an extreme case, the wins poring silence and general quietness of the room would repress it. After watching the variations of luck awhile, however, I selected one or two pretty desperate losers, and a young Frenchman who was a large winner, and confined my observation to them only. Among the former was a girl of about eighteen, a mild, quiet-looking creature, with her hair curling long on her neck, and hands childishly small and white, who lost invariably. Two piles of five-franc pieces and a small heap of gold lay on the table beside her, and I watched her till she laid the last coin upon the losing color. She bore it very well. By the eagerness with which, at every turn of the last card, she closed her hand upon the rake which she held, it was evident that her hopes were high ; but when her last piece was drawn in to the bank, she threw up her little fingers with a playful desperation, and commenced conversation even gayly with a gentleman who stood leaning over her chair. The young Frenchman con- tinued almost as invariably to win. He was excessively handsome ; but there was a cold, profligate, unvarying hardness of expression in his face, that made me dis- like him. The spectators drew gradually about his chair; and one or two of the women, who seemed to know him well, selected a color for him occasionally, or borrowed of him and staked for themselves. We left him winning. The other players were mostly English, and very uninteresting in their exhibition of disappointment. My companion told me that there would be more desperate playing toward morning, but I had become disgusted with the cold selfish faces of the scene, and felt no interest sufficient to detain me. LETTER XIV. THE GARDEN* OF THE TUILF.RIES PRINCE MOSCOWA SONS OF NAPOLEON COOPER AND MORSE SIR SID- NEY SMITH FASHIONABLE WOMEN CLOSE OF THE DAT THE FAMOUS EATING-HOUSES HOW TO DINE WELL IN PARIS, ETC. It is March, and the weather has all the character- istics of New-England May. The last two or three days have been deliciously spring-like, clear, sunny, and warm. The gardens of the Tuileries are crowded. The chairs beneath the terraces are filled by the old men reading the gazettes, mothers and nurses watch- ing their children at play, and, at every few steps, circles of whole families sitting and sewing, or con- versing, as unconcernedly as at home. It strikes a stranger oddly. With the privacy of American feel- ings, we can not conceive of these out-of-door French habits. What would a Boston or New York mother think of taking chairs for her whole family, grown-up daughters and all, in the Mall or upon the Battery, and spending the day in the very midst of the gayest promenade of the city ? People of all ranks do it here. You will see the powdered, elegant gentleman of the ancicn regime, handing his wife or his daughter to a straw-bottomed chair, with all the air of drawing-room courtesy ; and, begging pardon for the liberty, pull his journal from his pocket, and sit down to read beside her ; or a tottering old man, leaning upon a stout Swiss servant girl, goes bowing and apologizing through the crowd, in search of a pleasant neighbor, or some old compatriot, with whom he may sit and nod away the hours of sunshine. It is a beautiful custom, positively. The gardens are like a constant fete. It is a holyday revel, without design or disappointment. It is a masque, where every one plays his character uncon- sciously, and therefore naturally and well. We get no idea of it at home. We are too industrious a na- tion to have idlers enough. It would even pain most 22 PENCILLING^ BY THE WAY. of the people of our country to see so many thousands of all ages and conditions of life spending day after day in such absolute uselessness. Imagine yourself here, on the fashionable terrace, the promenade, two days in the week, of all that is dis- tinguished and gay in Paris. It is a short raised walk, just inside the railings, and the only part of all these wide and beautiful gardens where a member of the beau monde is ever to be met. The hour is four, the day Friday, the weather heavenly. I have just been long enough in Paris to be an excellent walking dic- tionary, and I will tell you who people are. In the first place, all the well-dressed men you see are Eng- lish. You will know the French by those flaring coats, laid clear back on their shoulders, and their execrable hats and thin legs. Their heads are right from the hair-dresser; their hats are chateaux de sole, or imitation beaver ; they are delicately rouged, and wear very white gloves ; and, those who are with ladies, lead, as you observe, a small dog by a string, or carry it in their arms. No French lady walks out without her lap-dog. These slow-paced men you see in brown mustaches and frogged coats are refugee Poles. The short, thick, agile looking man before us is General , celebrated for having been the last to surrender on the last field of that brief contest. His handsome face is full of resolution, and, unlike the rest of his coun- trymen, he looks still unsubdued and in good heart. He walks here every day an hour or two, swinging his cane round his forefinger, and thinking, apparently, of anything but his defeat. Observe these two young men approaching us. The short one on the left, with the stiff hair and red mustache, is Prince Moskowa, the son of Marshal Ney. He is an object of more th n usual interest just now, as the youngest of the new batch of peers. The expression of his countenance is more bold than handsome, and indeed he is any- thing but a carpet knight; a fact of which he seems, like a man of sense, quite aware. He is to be seen at the parties standing with his arms folded, leaning si- lently against the wall for hours together. His com- panion is, I presume to say, quite the handsomest man you ever saw. A little over six feet, perfectly propor- tioned, dark silken-brown hair, slightly curling about his forehead, a soft curling mustache, and beard just darkening the finest, cut mouth in the world, and an olive complexion, of the most golden richness and clearness — Mr. is called the handsomest man in Europe. What is more remarkable still, he looks like the most modest man in Europe, too ; though, like most modest looking men, his reputation for constancy in the gallant world is somewhat slender. And here comes a fine looking man, though of a different order of beauty — a natural son of Napoleon. He is about his father's height, and has most of his features, though his person and air must be quite different. You see there Napoleon's beautiful mouth and thinly chiselled nose, but I fancy that soft eye is his mother's. He is said to be one of the most fascinating men in France. His mother was the Countess Walewski, a lady with whom the emperor became acquainted in Poland. It is singular that Napoleon's talents and love of glory have not descended upon any of the eight or ten sons whose claims to his paternity are admitted. And here come two of our countrymen, who are to be seen con- stantly together — Cooper and Morse. That is Cooper with the blue surtout buttoned up to his throat, and his hat over his eyes. What a contrast between the faces of the two men ! Morse, with his kind, open, gentle countenance, the very picture of goodness and sincerity ; and Cooper, dark and corsair-looking, with his brows down over his eyes, and his strongly lined mouth fixed in an expression of moodiness and reserve. The two faces, however, are not equally just to their owners — Morse is all that he looks to be, but Cooper's features do him decided injustice. I take a pride in the reputation this distinguished oounttymen of ou;s has for humanity and generous sympathy. The dis- tress of the refugee liberals from all countries comes home especially to Americans, and the untiring liber- ality of Mr. Cooper particularly, is a fact of common admission and praise. It is pleasant to be able to say such things. Morse is taking a sketch of the Gallery of the Louvre, and he intends copying some of the best pictures also, to accompany it as an exhibition, when he returns. Our artists do our country credit abroad. The feeling of interest in one's country ar tists and authors become very strong in a foreign land. Every leaf of laurel awarded them seems to touch one's own forehead. And talking of laurels, here comes Sir Sidney Smith — the short, fat, old gentleman yon- der, with the large acquiline nose and keen eye. He is one of the few men who ever opposed Napoleon successfully, and that should distinguish him, even if he had not won by his numerous merits and achieve- ments the gift of almost every order in Europe. He is, among other things, of a very mechanical turn, and is quite crazy just now about a six-wheeled coach, which he has lately invented, and of which nobody sees the exact benefit but himself. An invitation to his rooms, to hear his description of the model, is considered the last new bore. And now for ladies. Whom do you see that looks distinguished ? Scarce one whom you would take positively for a lady, I venture to presume. These two, with the velvet pelisses and small satin bonnets, are rather the most genteel-looking people in the gar- den. I set them down for ladies of rank the first walk I ever took here ; and the two who have just passed us, with the curly lap-dog, I was equally sure were per- sons of not very dainty morality. It is precisely au contrarie. The velvet pelisses are gamblers from Fras- cati's, and the two with the lap-dog are the Countess N. and her unmarried daughter — two of the most ex- clusive specimens of Parisian society. It is very odd — but if you see a remarkably modest-looking woman in Paris, you may be sure, as the periphrasis goes, that "she is no better than she should be." Everything gets travestied in this artificial society. The general ambition seems to be, to appear that which one is not. W T hite-haired men cultivate their sparse mustaches, and dark-haired men shave. Deformed men are suc- cessful in gallantry, where handsome men despair. Ugly women dress and dance, while beauties mope and are deserted. Modesty looks brazen, and vice looks timid; and so all through the calendar. Life in Paris is as pretty a series of astonishments as an ennaye could desire. But there goes the palace-bell — five o'clock ! The sun is just disappearing behind the dome of the "In- valides," and the crowd begins to thin. Look at the atmosphere of the gardens. How deliciously the twi- light mist softens everything. Statues, people, trees, and the long perspectives down the alleys, all mel- lowed into the shadowy indistinctness of fairy-land. The throng is pressing out at the gates, and the guard, with his bayonet presented, forbids all re-en- trance, for the gardens are cleared at sundown. The carriages are driving up and dashing away, and if you stand a moment you will see the most vulgar-looking people you have met in your promenade, waited for by chasseurs, and departing with indications of rank in their equipages, which nature has very positively de- nied to their persons. And now all the world dines, and dines well. The '■'■chef" stands with his gold re- peater in his hand, waiting for the moment to decide the fate of the first dish ; the garcons at the restau- rants have donned their white aprons, and laid the sil- ver forks upon the napkins ; the pretty women are seated on their thrones in the saloons, and the interest- ing hour is here. Where shall we dine ? We will walk toward the Palais Royal, and talk of it as we go along. PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. 23 That man would " deserve well of his country" who should write a " Paris Guide" for the palate. I would do it myself if I could elude the immortality it would occasion me. One is compelled to pioneer his own stomach through the endless cartes of some twelve eating-houses, all famous, before he half knows wheth- er he is dining well or ill. 1 had eaten a week at Very's, for instance, before I discovered that, since Peiham's day, that gentleman's reputation has gone down. He is a subject for history at present. I was misled also by an elderly gentleman at Havre, who advised me to eat at Grig-lion's, in the Passage Vivi- enne. Not liking my first coquilles aux huilres, I made some private inquiries, and found that his chef had deserted him about the time of Napoleon's return from Elba. A stranger gets misguided in this way. And then, if by accident you hit upon the right house, you may be eating a month before you find out the peculiar triumphs which have stamped its celebrity. No mortal man can excel in everything, and it is as true of cooking as it is of poetry. The " Rochers de Cancalce" is now the first eating-house in Paris, yet they only excel in fish. The " Trois Freres Proven- caux," have a high reputation, yet their colcletles pro- vencale are the only dish which you can not get equally well elsewhere. A good practice is to walk about in the Palais Royal for an hour before dinner, and select a master. You will know a gourmet easily — a man slightly past the prime of life, with a nose just getting its incipient blush, a remarkably loose, voluminous white cravat, and a corpulence more of suspicion than fact. Follow him to his restaurant, and give the gar- con a private order to serve you with the same dishes as the bald gentleman. (I have observed that dainty livers universally lose their hair early.) I have been in the wake of such a person now for a week or more, and I never lived, comparatively, before. Here we are, however, at the " Trois Freres" and there goes my unconscious model deliberately up stairs. We'll follow him, and double his orders, and if we dine not well, there is no eating in France. LETTER XV. HOPITAL DES INVALIDES — MONUMENT OF TURENNE — MARSHAL NET — A POLISH LADY IN UNIFORM — FE- MALES MASQUERADING IN MEN's CLOTHES DUEL BE- TWEEN THE SONS OF GEORGE IV. AND OF BONAPARTE GAMBLING PROPENSITIES OF THE FRENCH. The weather still holds warm and bright, as it has been all the month, and the scarcely " premature white pantaloons" appeared yesterday in the Tuileries. The ladies loosen their "boas;" the silken greyhounds of Italy follow their mistresses without shivering ; the birds are noisy and gay in the clipped trees — who that had known February in New England would recog- nise hiin by such a description ? I took an indolent stroll with my friend, Mr. Van B , this morning to the Hopital des Invalides, on the other side of the river. Here, not long since, were twenty-five thousand old soldiers. There are but five thousand now remaining, most of them having been dismissed by the Bourbons. It is of course one of the most interesting spots in France; and of a pleasant day there is no lounge where a traveller can find so much matter for thought, with so much pleas- ure to the eye. We crossed over by the Pons Louis Quinze, and kept along the bank of the river to the esplanade in front of the hospital. There was never a softer sunshine, or a more deliciously tempered air; and we found the old veterans ont of doors, sitting upon the cannon along the rampart, or halting about, with their wooden legs, under the trees, the pictures of comfort and contentment. The building itself, as you know, is very celebrated for its grandeur. The dome of the Invalides rises upon the eye from all parts of Paris, a perfect model of proportion and beauty. It was this which Bonaparte ordered to be gilded, to divert the people from thinking too much : upon his defeat. It is a living monument of the most j touching recollections of him now. Positively the i blood mounts, and the tears spring to the eyes of the spectator, as he stands a moment, and remembers what is around him in that place. To see his maimed followers, creeping along the corridors, clothed and ; fed by the bounty he left, in a place devoted to his soldiers alone, their old comrades about them, and all i glowing with one feeling of devotion to his memory, to speak to them, to hear their stories of " VEm- pereur" 1 — it is better than a thousand histories to make ! owe fed the glory of "the great captain." The inte- j rior of the dome is vast, and of a splendid style of : architecture, and out from one of its sides extends a I superb chapel, hung all round with the tattered flags taken in his victories alone. Here the veterans of his army worship, beneath the banners for which they fought. It is hardly appropriate, I should think, to ! adorn thus the church of a "religion of peace;" but j while there, at least, we feel strangely certain, some- j how, that it is right and fitting ; and when, as we stood ! deciphering the half-effaced insignia of the different | nations, the organ began to peal, there certainly was anything but a jar between this grand music, conse- crated as it is by religious associations, and the thril- ling and uncontrolled sense in my bosom of Napoleon's glory. The anthem seemed to him ! The majestic sounds were still rolling through the dome when we came to the monument of Turenne. Here is another comment on the character of Bona- parte's mind. There was once a long inscription on this monument, describing, in the fulsome style of an epitaph, the deeds and virtues of the distinguished man who is buried beneath. The emperor removed and replaced it by a small slab, graven with the single word Turenne. You acknowledge the sublimity of this as you stand before it. Everything is in keep- ing with its grandeur. The lofty proportions and magnificence of the dome, the tangible trophies of glory, and the maimed and venerable figures, kneeling about the altar, of those who helped to win them, are circumstances that make that eloquent word as ar- ticulate as if it was spoken in thunder. You feel that Napoleon's spirit might walk the place, and read the hearts of those who should visit it, unoffended. We passed on to the library. It is ornamented with the portraits of all the generals of Napoleon, save one. Ney's is not there. It should, and will be. at some time or other, doubtless ; but I wonder that, in a day when such universal justice is done to the memory of this brave man, so obvious and it would seem necessary a reparation should not be demanded. Great efforts have been making of late to get his sen- tence publicly reversed, but, though they deny his widow and children nothing else, this melancholy and unavailing satisfaction is refused them. Key's mem- ory little needs it, it is true. Ko visiter looks about the gallery at the Invalides without commenting feel- ingly on the omission of his portrait; and probably no one of the scarred veterans who sit there, reading their own deeds in history, looks round on the faces of the old leaders of whom it tells, without remembering and feeling that the brightest name upon the page is want- ing. I would rather, if I were his son, have the regret than the justice. We left the hospital, as all must leave it, full of Kapoleon. France is full of him. The monuments and the hearts of the people, all are alive with his name and glory. Disapprove and detract from his reputation as you will (and as powerful minds, with 24 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. apparent justice, have done), as long as human nature is what it is, as long as power and loftiness of heart hold their present empire over the imagination, Napo- leon is immortal. The promenading world is amused just now with the daily appearance in the Tuileries of a Polish lady, dressed in the Polonaise undress uniform, decorated with the order of distinction given for bravery at War- saw. She is not very beautiful, but she wears the handsome military cap quite gallantly; and her small feet and full chest are truly captivating in boots and a frogged coat. It is an exceedingly spirited, well- charactered face, with a complexion slightly roughened by her new habits. Her hair is cut snort, and brushed up at the sides, and she certainly handles the little switch she carries with an air which entirely forbids insult. She is ordinarily seen lounging very idly along between two polytechnic boys, who seem to have a great admiration for her. I observe that the Polish generals touch their hats very respectfully as she passes, but as yet I have been unable to come at her precise history. By the by, masquerading in men's clothes is not at all uncommon in Paris. I have sometimes seen two or three women at a time dining at the restaurants in this way. No notice is taken of it, and the lady is per- fectly safe from insult, though every one that passes may penetrate the disguise. It is common at the theatres, and at the public balls still more so. 1 have noticed repeatedly at the weekly soirees of a lady of high respectabilily, two sisters in boy's clothes, who play duets upon the piano for the dance. The lady of the house told me they preferred it, to avoid atten- tion, and the awkwardness of position natural to their vocation, in society. The tailors tell me it is quite a branch of trade — making suits for ladies of a similar taste. There is one particularly, in the Rue Richelieu, who is famed for his nice fits to the female figure. Tt is remarkable, however, that instead of wearing their new honors meekly, there is no such impertinent pup- py as zfemme deguisee. I saw one in a cafe, not long ago, rap the garcon very smartly over the fingers with a rattan, for overrunning her cup; and they are sure to shoulder you off the sidewalk, if you are at all in the way. I have seen several amusing instances of a probable quarrel in the street, ending in a gay bow, and a '■'■pardon, madame!" There has been a great deal of excitement here for the past two days on the result of a gambling quarrel. An English gentleman, a fine, gay, noble-looking fel- low, whom I have often met at parties, and admired for his strikingly winning and elegant manners, lost fifty thousand francs on Thursday night at cards. The Count St. Leon was the winner. It appears that Hesse, the Englishman, had drank freely before sitting down to play, and the next morning his friend, who had bet upon the game, persuaded him that there had been some unfairness on the part of his opponent. He refused consequently to pay the debt, and charged the Frenchman, and another gentleman who backed him, with deception. The result was a couple of challen- ges, which were both accepted. Hesse fought the Count on Friday, and was dangerously wounded at the first fire. His friend fought on Saturday (yesterday), and is reported to be mortally wounded. It is a littie remarkable that both the losers are shot, and still more remarkable, that Hesse should have been, as he was known to be, a natural son of George the Fourth ; and Count Leon, as was equally well known, a natural son of Bonaparte! Everybody gambles in Paris. I had no idea that so desperate a vice could be so universal, and so little leprecated as it is. The gambling-houses are as open ^d as ordinary a resort as any public promenade, and one may haunt them with as little danger to his rep- utation. To dine from six to eight, gamble from eight to ten, go to a ball, and return to gamble till morning, is as common a routine for married men and bachelors both, as a system of dress, and as little commented on. I sometimes stroll into the card-room at a party, buf I can not get accustomed to the sight of ladies losin« or winning money. Almost all Frenchwomen, who are too old to dance, play at parties, and their daugh- ters and husbands watch the game as unconcernedly as if they were turning over prints. I have seen Eng- lish ladies play, but with less philosophy. They do not lose their money gayly. It is a great spoiler of beauty, the vexation of a loss. I think I never could respect a woman upon whose face I had remarked the shade I often see at an English card-table. It is cer- tain that vice walks abroad in Paris, in many a shape that would seem, to an American eye, to show the fiend too openly. I am not over particular, 1 think, but I would as soon expose a child to the plague as give either son or daughter a free reign for a year in Paris. LETTER XVI. THE CHOLERA A MASQUE BALL THE GAY WORLD MOBS VISIT TO THE HOTEL DIEU. You see by the papers. I presume, the official ac counts of the cholera in Paris. It seems very terrible to you, no doubt, at your distance from the scene, and truly it is terrible enough, if one could realize it, any- where ; but many here do not trouble themselves about it, and you might be in this metropolis a month, and if you observed the people only, and frequented only the places of amusement, and the public promenades, you might never suspect its existence. The weather is June-like, deliciously warm and bright; the trees are just in the tender green of the new buds, and the public gardens are thronged all day with thousands of the gay and idle, sitting under the trees in groups, laughing and amusing themselves, as if there were no plague in the air, though hundreds die every day. The churches are all hung in black; there is a con- stant succession of funerals; and you cross the biers and hand-barrows of the sick, hurrying to the hospi- tals at eveiy turn, in every quarter of the city. It is very hard to realize such things, and, it would seem, very hard even to treat them seriously. I was at a masque ball at the Theatre des Varietes, a night or two since, at the celebration of the Mi-Careme, or half-lent. There were some two thousand people, I should think, in fancy dresses, most of them grotesque and satirical, and the ball was kept up till seven in the morning, with all the extravagant gayety, noise, and fun, with which the French people manage such mat- ters. There was a cholera-waltz, and a cholera- galop- ade, and one man, immensely tall, dressed as a per- sonification of the Cholera itself, with skeleton armor, bloodshot eyes, and other horrible appurtenances of a walking pestilence. It was the burden of all the jokes, and all the cries of the hawkers, and all the conversation; and yet, probably, nineteen out of twen- ty of those present lived in the quarters most ravaged by the disease, and many of them had seen it face to face, and knew perfectly its deadly character! As yet, with few exceptions, the higher classes of society have escaped- It seems to depend very much on the manner in which people live, and the poor have been struck in every quarter, often at the very next door to luxury. A friend told me this morning, that the porter of a large and fashionable hotel, in which he lives, had been taken to the hospital ; and there have been one or two cases in the airy quarter of St. Germain, in the same street with Mr. Cooper, and PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 25 nearly opposite. Several physicians and medical stu- dents have died too, but the majority of these li\e with the narrowest economy, and in the parts of the city the most liable to impure effluvia. The balls go on still in the gay world; and I presume they wou Id go on if there were only musicians enough left to make an orchestra, or fashionists to compose a quadrille. I was walking home very late from a party the night be- fore last, with a captain in the English army. The gray of the morning was just stealing into the sky ; and after a stopping a moment in the Place Vendome, to look at the column, stretching up apparently unto the very stars, we bade good morning, and parted. He bad hardly left me, he said, when he heard a fright- ful scream from one of the houses in the Rue St. Ho- nore, and thinking there might be some violence go- ing on, he rang at the gate and entered, mounting the j first staircase that presented. A woman had just , opened a door, and fallen on the broad stair at the top, and was writhing in great agony. The people of the j house collected" immediately ; but the moment my '• friend pronounced the word cholera, there was a gen- i eral dispersion, and he was left alone with the patient, j He took her in his arms, and carried her to a coach- j stand without assistance, and driving to the Hotel Dieu, j left her with the Sceurs de Charite. She has since j died. _ | As if one plague was not enough, the city is still alive in the distant fauxbourgs with revolts. Last j night, the rappel was beat all over the town, the na- j tional guard called to arms, and marched to the Porte | S£. Denis, and the different quarters where the mobs j were collected. Many suppose there is no cholera except such as is produced by poison; and the Hotel Dieu, and the oth- er hospitals, are besieged daily by the infuriated mob, j who swear vengeance against the government for all i the mortality they witness. I have just returned from a visit to the Hotel Dieu — the hospital for the cholera. Impelled by a power- | ful motive, which it is not now necessary to explain, I j had previously made several attempts to gain admis- | sion in vain; but yesterday I fell in fortunately with ] an English physician, who told me I could pass with a doctor's diploma, which he offered to borrow for me of some medical friend. He called by appointment at ; seven this morning, to accompany me on my visit. It was like one of our loveliest mornings in June — an inspiriting, sunny, balmy day, all softness and ■ beauty — and we crossed the Tuileries by one of its j superb avenues, and kept down the bank of the river ' to the island. With the errand on which we were bounJ in our minds, it was impossible not to be struck : very forcibly with our own exquisite enjoyment of life. I am sure I never felt my veins fuller of the pleasure of health and motion ; and I never saw a day when , everything about me seemed better worth living for. j The splendid palace of the Louvre, with its long fa- fade of nearly half a mile, lay in the mellowest sun- j shine on our left ; the lively river, covered with boats, : and spanned with its magnificent and crowded bridges j on our right; the view of the island, with its massive : old structures below, and the fine gray towers of the : church of Notre Dime rising, dark and gloomy, in the j distance, rendered it difficult to realize anything but j life and pleasure. That under those very towers, which added so much to the beauty of the scene, there lay a thousand and more of poor wretches dying of a plague, was a thought my mind would not retain a moment. Half an hour's walk brought us to the Place Notre Dame, on one side of which, next this celebrated church, stands the hospital. My friend entered, lea- ving me to wait till he had found an acquaintance of whom he could borrow a diploma. A hearse was standing at the door of the church, and I went in for a moment. A few mourners, with the appearance of extreme poverty, were kneeling round a coffin at one of the side altars; and a solitary priest, with an at- tendant boy, was mumbling the prayers for the dead. As I came out, another hearse drove up, with a rough coffin, scantily covered with a pall, and followed by one poor old man. They hurried in, and I strolled around the square. Fifteen or twenty water-carriers were filling their buckets at the fountain opposite, singing and laughing ; and at the same moment four different litters crossed toward the hospital, each with its two or three followers, women and children, friends or rel- atives of the sick, accompanying them to the door, where they parted from them, most probably for ever. The litters were set down a moment before ascending the steps; the crowd pressed around and lifted the coarse curtains ; farewells were exchanged, and the sick alone passed in. I did not see any great demon- stration of feeling in the particular cases that were be- fore me ; but I can conceive, in the almost deadly cer- tainty of this disease, that these hasty partings at the doorof the hospital might often be scenes of unsur- passed suffering and distress. I waited, perhaps, ten minutes more. In the whole time that I had been there, twelve litters, bearing the sick, had entered the Hotel Dieu. As I exhibited the borrowed diploma, the thirteenth arrived, and with it a young man, whose violent and uncontrolled grief worked so far on the soldier at the door, that he al- lowed im to pass. I followed the bearers to the ward, interested exceedingly to observe the first treat ment and manner of reception. They wound slowly up the stone staircase to the upper story, and entered the female department — a long low room, containing nearly a hundred beds, placed in alleys scarce two feet from each other. Nearly all were occupied, and those which were empty my friend told me were vacated by deaths yesterday. They set down the litter by the side of a narrow cot, with coarse but clean sheets, and a Satur de Charite, with a white cap, and a cro.*s at her girdle, came and took off the canopy. A young wo- man, of apparently twenty-five, was beneath, absolutely convulsed with agony. Her eyes were started from the sockets, her mouth foamed, and her face was of a frightful, livid purple. I never saw so horrible a sight! She had been taken in perfect health only three hours before, but her features looked to me marked with a year of pain. The first attempt to lift her produced violent vomiting, and I thought she must die instantly. They covered her up in bed, and leaving the man who came with her hanging over her with the moan of one deprived of his senses, they went to receive others, who were entering in the same man- ner. I inquired of my companion how soon she would be attended to. He said. " possibly in an hour, as the physician was just commencing his rounds." An hour after this I passed the bed of this poor woman, and she had not yet been visited. Her husband answered my question with a choking voice and a flood of tears. I passed down the Ward, and found nineteen or twenty in the last agonies of death. They lay per- fectly still, and seemed benumbed. I felt the limbs of several, and found them quite cold. The stomach only had a little warmth. Now and then a half groan escaped those who seemed the strongest; but with the exception of the universally open mouth and upturned ghastly eye, there were no signs of much suffering. I found two who must have been dead half an hour, undiscovered by the attendants. One of them was au old woman, nearly gray, with a very bad expression of face, who was perfectly cold— lips, limbs, body, and all. The other was younger, and looked as if she had died in pain. Her eyes appeared as if they had been forced half out of the sockets, and her skin was of the most livid and deathly purple. The woman in the PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. next bed told me she had died since the Sosur de Charile had been there. It is horrible to think how these poor creatures may suffer in the very midst of the provisions that are made professedly for their re- lief. I asked why a simple prescription of treatment might not be drawn up by the physicians, and admin- istered by the numerous medical students who were in Paris, that as few as possible might suffer from de- lay. "Because," said my companion, "the chief physicians must do everything personally, to study the complaint." And so. I verily believe, more hu- man lives are sacrificed in waiting for experiments, than ever will be saved by the results. My blood boiled from the beginning to the end of this melan- choly visit. I wandered about alone among the beds till my heart was sick, and I could bear it no longer ; and then rejoined my friend, who was in the train of one of the physicians, making the rounds. One would think a dying person should be treated with kindness. I never saw a rougher or more heartless manner than that of the celebrated Dr. , at the bedsides of these poor creatures. A harsh question, a rude pull- ing open of the mouth, to look at the tongue, a sen- tence or two of unsuppressed commands to the stu- dents on the progress of the disease, and the train passed on. If discouragement and despair are not medicines, I should think the visits of such physicians were of little avail. The wretched sufferers turned away their heads after he had gone, in every instance that I saw, with an expression of visibly increased dis- tress. Several of them refused to answer his ques- tions altogether. On reaching the bottom of the Salle St. Moniquc, one of the male wards, I heard loud voices and laugh- ter. I had noticed much more groaning and com- plaining in passing among the men, and the horrible discordance struck me as something infernal. It pro- ceeded from one of the sides to which the patients had been removed who were recovering. The most successful treatment has been found to be fundi, very strong, with but little acid, and being permitted to drink as much as they would, they had become par- tially intoxicated. It was a fiendish sight, positively. They were sitting up, and reaching from one bed to the other, and with their still pallid faces and blue lips, and the hospital dress of white, they looked like so many carousing corpses. I turned away from them in horror. I was stopped in the door-way by a litter entering with a sick woman. They set her down in the main passage between the beds, and left her a moment to find a place for her. She seemed to have an interval of pain, and rose up on one hand, and looked about her very earnestly. T followed the direction of her eyes, and could easily imagine her sensations. Twenty or thirty death-like faces were turned toward her from the different beds, and the groans of the dying and the distressed came from every side. She was without a friend whom she knew, sick of a mortal disease, and abandoned to the mercy of those whose kindness is mercenary and habitual, and of course without sym- pathy or feeling. Was it not enough alone, if she had been far less ill, to imbitter the very fountains of life, and kill her with mere fright and horror ? She sank down upon the litter again, and drew her shawl over her head. I had seen enough of suffering, and I left the place. On reaching the lower staircase, my friend proposed to me to look into the dead-room. We descended to a large dark apartment below the street-level, lighted by a lamp fixed to the wall. Sixty or seventy bodies lay on the floor, some of them quite uncovered, and some wrapped in mats. I could not see distinctly enough by the dim light, to judge of their discolora- tion. They appeared mostly old and emaciated. I can not describe the sensation of relief with which I breathed the free air once more. I had no fear of the cholera, but the suffeiing and misery I had seen, oppressed and half smothered me. Every one who has walked through an hospital, will remember how natural it is to subdue the breath, and close the nos- trils to the smells of medicine and the close air. The fact, too, that the question of contagion is still dispu- ted, though I fully believe the cholera not to be con- tagious, might have had some effect. My breast heaved, however, as if a weight had risen from my lungs, and I walked home, blessing God for health with undissembled gratitude. P. S. — I began this account of my visit to the Hotel Dieu yesterday. As I am perfectly well this morning, I think the point of non-contagion, in my own case at least, is clear. I breathed the same air with the dying and the diseased for two hours, and felt of nearly a hundred to be satisfied of the curious phenornena of the vital heat. Perhaps an experiment of this sort, in a man not professionally a physician, may be con- sidered rash or useless ; and I would not willingly be thought to have done it from any puerile curiosity. I have been interested in such subjects always ; and I considered the fact that the king's sons had been per- mitted to visit the hospital, a sufficient assurance that the physicians were seriously convinced there could be no possible danger. If I need an apology, it may be found in this. LETTER XVII. LEGION OF HONOR — PRESENTATION TO THE KING — THE THRONE OF FRANCE — THE QUEEN AND THE PRIN- CESSES COUNTESS GUICCIOLI THE LATE DUEL THE SEASON OF CARNIVAL — ANOTHER FANCY BALL DIF- FERENCE BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MASKERS — STREET MASKING — BALL AT THE PALACE — THE YOUNG DUKE OF ORLEANS PRINCESS CHRISTINE- LORD HARRY VANE HEIR OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU VILL1ERS BERNARD, FABVIER, COUSIN, AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED CHARACTERS — THE SUPPER — THF GLASS VERANDAH, ETC. As I was getting out of a fiacre this morning on the Boulevard, I observed that the driver had the cross of the legion of honor, worn very modestly under his coat. On taking a second look at his face, I was struck with its soldier-like, honest expression ; and with the fear that 1 might imply a doubt by a question, I simply ob- served, that he probably received it from Napoleon. He drew himself up a little as he assented, and with half a smile pulled the coarse cape of his coat across bis bosom. It was done evidently with a mixed feeling of pride and a dislike of ostentation, which showed the nurture of Napoleon. It is astonishing how superior every being seems to have become that served under him. Wherever you find an old soldier of the " em- peror," as they delight to call him, you find a noble, brave, unpretending man. On mentioning this circum- stance to a friend, he informed me, that it was possibly a man who was well known, from rather a tragical circumstance. He had driven a gentleman to a party one night, who was dissatisfied with him, for some reason or other, and abused him very grossly. The cocker the next morning sent him a challenge ; and, as the cross of honor levels all distinctions, he was com- pelled to fight him, and was shot dead at the first fire. Honors of this sort must be a very great incentive. They are worn very proudly in France. You see men of all classes, with the striped riband in their but- ton-hole, marking them as the heroes of the three days of July. The Poles and the French and English, PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 27 who fought well at Warsaw, wear also a badge ; and it certainly produces a feeling of respect as one passes them in the street. There are several very young men, lads really, who are wandering about Paris, with the latter distinction on their breasts, and every indi- cation that it is all they have brought away from their unhappy country. The Poles are coming in now from every quarter. I meet occasionally in society the celebrated Polish countess, who lost her property and was compelled to flee, for her devotion to the cause. Louis Philippe has formed a regiment of the refugees, and sent them to Algiers. He allows no liberalists to remain in Paris, if he can help it. The Spaniards and Italians, particularly, are ordered of} - to Tours, and other provincial towns, the instant they become pen- sioners upon the government. I was presented last night, with Mr. Carr and Mr. Ritchie, two of our countrymen, to the king. We were very naturally prepared for an embarrassing cere- mony—an expectation which was not lessened in my case, by the necessity of a laced coat, breeches, and sword. We drove into the court of the Tuileries, as the palace clock struck nine, in the costume of cour- tiers of the time of Louis the Twelfth, very anxious about the tenacity of our knee-buckles, and not at all satisfied as to the justice done to our unaccustomed proportions by the tailor. To say nothing of my looks, 1 am sure I should have fell much more like a gentle- man in my costume bourgeois. By the lime we had been passed through the hands of all the chamberlains, however, and walked through all the preparatory halls and drawing-rooms, each with its complement of gen- tlemen in waiting, dressed like ourselves in lace and small-clothes, I became more reconciled to myself, and began to feel that I might possibly have looked out of place in my ordinary dress. The atmosphere of a court is certainly very contagious in this par- ticular. After being sufficiently astonished with long rooms, frescoes, and guardsmen, seven or eight feet high, (the tallest men I ever saw, standing with halberds at the doors), we were introduced into the Salle du Trone — a large hall lined with crimson velvet through- out, with the throne in the centre of one of the sides. Some half dozen gentlemen were standing about the fire, conversing very familiarly, among whom was the British ambassador, Lord Grenville, and the Brazilian minister, both of whom I had met before. The king was not there. The Swedish minister, a noble-look- ing man, with snow-white hair, was the. only other official person present, each of the ministers having come to present one or two of his countrymen. The king entered in a few moments, in the simple uniform of the line, and joined the group at the fire, with the most familiar and cordial politeness ; each minister presenting his countrymen as occasion offered, cer- tainly with far less ceremony than one sees at most dinner-parties in America. After talking a few min- utes with Lord Grenville, inquiring the progress of the cholera, he turned to Mr. Rives, and we were pre- sented. We stood in a little circle around him. and he conversed with us about America for ten or fifteen minutes. He inquired from what states we came, and said he had been as far west as Nashville, Ten- nessee, and had often slept in the woods, quite as 6oundly as he ever did in more luxurious quarters. He begged pardon of Mr. Carr, who was from South Carolina, for saying that he had found the southern taverns not particularly good. He preferred the north. All this time I was looking out for some accent in the "king's English." He speaks the language with all the careless correctness and fluency of a vernacular tongue. We were all surprised at it. It is American English, however. He has not a particle of the cock- ney drawl, half Irish and half Scotch, with which 1 1 many Englishmen speak. He must be the most cos- II mopolite king that ever reigned. He even said lie had been at Tangiers, the place of Mr. Can's consulate. After some pleasant compliment to our country, he passed to the Brazilian minister, who stood on the other side, leaving us delighted with his manner; and, probably, in spile of our independence, much more inclined than before to look indulgently upon his bad politics. The queen had entered, meantime, with the king's sister, Lady Adelaide, and one or two of the ladies of honor; and, after saying something cour- teous to all, in her own language, and assuring us that his majesty was very fond of America, the royal group bowed out, and left us once more to ourselves. We remained a few minutes, and I occupied my- self with looking at the gold and crimson throne before me, and recalling to my mind the world of historical circumstances connected with it. You can easily imagine it all. The throne of France is, perhaps, the most interesting one in the world. But of all its as- sociations, none rushed upon me so forcibly, or re- tained my imagination so long, as the accidental drama of which it was the scene during the three days of July. It was here that the people brought the polytechnic scholar, mortally wounded in the attack on the palace, to die. He breathed his last on the throne of France, surrounded with his comrades and a crowd of patriots. It is one of the most striking and affecting incidents, I think, in all history. As we passed out I caught a glimpse, through a side door, of the queen and the princesses sitting round a table, covered with books, in a small drawing- room, while a servant, in the gaudy livery of the court, was just entering with tea. The careless attitudes of the figures, the mellow light of the shade-lamp, and the happy voices of children coming through the door, reminded me more of home than anything I have seen in France. It is odd, but really the most aching sense of home-sickness I have felt since I left Amer- ica, was awakened at that moment — in the palace of a king, and at the sight of his queen and daughters! We stopped in the antechamber to have our names recorded in the visiting-book — a ceremony which in- sures us invitations to all the balls given at court du- ring the winter. The first has already appeared in the shape of a printed note, in which we are informed by the " aide-de-camp of the king and the lady of honor of the queen," that we are invited to a ball at the pal- ace on Monday night. To my distress there is a little direction at the bottom, " Les hommes seront en uni- forme," which subjects those of us who are not mili- tary, once more to the awkwardness of this ridiculous court dress. I advise all Americans coming abroad to get a commission in the militia to travel with. It is of use in more ways than one. I met the Countess Guiccioli, walking yesterday in the Tuileries. She looks much younger than I anti- cipated, and is a handsome blonde, apparently about thirty. I am told by a gentleman who knows her, that she has become a great flirt, and is quite spoiled by admiration. The celebrity of Lord Byron's attach- ment would, certainly, make her a very desirable ac- quaintance, were she much less pretty "than she really is; and I am told her drawing-room is thronged with lovers of all nations, contending for a preference, which, having been once given, as it has, should be buried, I think, for ever. So, indeed, should have been the Emperess Maria Louisa's, and that of the widow of Bishop Heber ; and yet the latter has mar- ried a Greek count, and the former a German baron! I find I was incorrect in the statement I gave you of the duel between Mr. Hesse and Count Leon. The particulars have come out more fully, and from the curious position of the parties (Mr. Hesse, as I St PE^CILLINGS BY THE WAY. stated, being the natural son of George the Fourth ; and Count Leon of Napoleon) are worth recapitula- ting. Count Leon had lost several thousand francs to Mr. Hesse, which he refused to pay, alleging that there had been unfiir dealing in the game. The niarter was left to arbitration, and Mr. Hesse fully cleared of the charge. Leon still refused to pay, and for fifteen days practised with the pistol from morning till night. At the end of this time he paid the money, and challenged Hesse. The latter had lost the use of his right arm in the battle of Waterloo, (fighting of course against Count Leon's father), but accepted his challenge, and fired with his left hand. Hesse was shot through the body, and has since died, and Count Leon was not hurt. The affair has made a great sensation here, for Hesse had a young and lovely wife, only seventeen, and was unusually beloved and admired; while his opponent is a notorious gam- bler, and every way detested. People meet at the gaming-table here, however, as they meet in the street, without question of character. Carnival is over. Yesterday was " Mardi Gras" — the last day of the reign of Folly. Paris has been like a city of grown-up children for a week. What with masking all night, supping, or bieakfasting, what you will, at sunrise, and going to bed between morning and noon, I feel that I have done my devoir upon the ex- periment of French manners. It would be tedious, not to say improper, to describe all the absurdities I have seen and mingled in for the last fortnight; but I must try to give you some idea of the meaning the French attach to the season of carni- val, and the manner in which it is celebrated. In society it is the time for universal gayety and freedom. Parties, fancy balls, and private masques, are given, and kept up till morning. The etiquette is something more free, and gallantry is indulged and followed with the privileges, almost, of a Saturnalia. One of the gayest things I have seen was a fancy ball, given by a man of some fashion, in the beginning of the season. Most of the distinguzs of Paris were there; and it was, perhaps, as fair a specimen of the elegant gayety of the French capital, as occurred during the carnival. The rooms were full by ten. Everybody was in costume, and the ladies in dresses of unusual and costly splendor. At a bal costume there are no masks, of course, and dancing, waltzing, and galopading followed each other in the ordinary succession, but with all the heightened effect and ad- ditional spirit of a magnificent spectacle. It was really beautiful. There were officers from all the English regiments, in their fine showy uniforms ; and French officers who had brought dresses from their far-off cam- paigns ; Turks, Egyptians, Mussulmans, and Algerine rovers — every country that had been touched by French soldiers, represented in its richest costume, and by men of the finest appearance. There was a colonel of the English Madras cavalry, in the uniform of his corps — one mass of blue and silver, the most spendidly dressed man I ever saw; and another Eng- lishman, who is said to be the successor of Lord By- ron in the graces of the gay and lovely Countess Guic- cioli, was dressed as a Greek; and between the ex- quisite taste and richness of his costume, and his really excessive personal beauty, he made no ordinary sensation. The loveliest woman there was a young baroness, whose dancing, figure, and face, so resembled a celebrated Philadelphia belle, that I was constantly expecting her musical French voice to break into Eng- lish. She was dressed as an eastern dancing-girl, and floated about with the lightness and grace of a fairy. Her motion intoxicated the eye completely. I have seen her since at the Tuileries, where, in a waltz with the handsome Duke of Orleans, she was the single ob- ject of admiration for the whole court. She is a small, lightly-framed creature, with very little feet, and a face of more brilliancy than regular beauty, but all airiness and spirit. A very lovely, indolent-looking English girl, with large sleepy eyes, was dressed as a Circas- sian slave, with chains from her ankles to her waist. She was a beautiful part of the spectacle, but too pas- sive to interest one. There were sylphs and nuns, broom-girls and Italian peasants, and a great many in rich Polonaise dresses. It was unlike any other fancy ball I ever saw, in the variety and novelty of the char- acters represented, and the costliness with which they were dressed. You can have no idea of the splendor of a waltz in such a glittering assemblage. It was about time for an early breakfast when the ball was over. The private masks are amusing to those who are intimate with the circle. A stranger, of course, is neither acquainted enough to amuse himself within proper limits, nor incognito enough to play his gallan- tries at hazard. I never have seen more decidedly triste assemblies than the balls of this kind which I have attended, where the uniform black masks and dominoes gave the party the aspect of a funeral, and the restraint made it quite as melancholy. The public masks are quite another affair. They are given at the principal theatres, and commence at midnight. The pit and stage are thrown into a bril- liant hall, with the orchestra in the centre ; the music is divine, and the etiquette perfect liberty. There is, of course, a great deal of vulgar company, for every one is admitted who pays the ten francs at the door; but all classes of people mingle in the crowd ; and if one is not amused, it is because he will neither listen nor talk. I think it requires one or two masks to get one's eye so much accustomed to the sight, that he is not disgusted with the exteriors of the women. There was something very diabolical to me at first in a dead, black representation of the human face, and the long black domino. Persuading one's self that there is beauty under such an outside, is like getting up a pas- sion for a very ugly woman, for the sake of her mind — difficult, rather. I soon became used to it, however, and amuse myself infinitely. One is liable to waste his wit, to be sure ; for in a crowd so rarely bicn composce, as they phrase it, the undistinguishing dress gives every one the opportunity of bewildering you; but the feet and manner of walking, and the tone and mode of expression, are indices sufficiently certain to decide, and give interest to a pursuit ; and, with tolerable cau- tion, one is paid for his trouble, in nineteen cases out of twenty. t At the public masks, the visiters are not all in dom- ino. One half at least are in caricature dresses, men in petticoats, and women in boots and spurs. It is not always easy to detect the sex. An English lady, a carnival-acquaintance of mine, made love successfully, with the aid of a tall figure and great spirit, to a num- ber of her own sex. She wore a half uniform, and was certainly a very elegant fellow. France is so re- markable indeed, for effeminate looking men and mas- culine looking women, that half the population might change costume to apparent advantage. The French are fond of caricaturing English dandies, and they do it with great success. The imitation of Bond-street dialect in another language is highly amusing. There were two imitation exquisites at the " Varieties 1 ' 1 one night, who were dressed to perfection, and must have studied the character thoroughly. The whole theatre was in a roar when they entered. Malcontents take the opportunity to show up the king and ministers, and these are excellent, too. One gets weary of fun. It is a life which becomes tedious long before carnival is over. It is a relief to sit down once more to books and pen. The three last days are devoted to street-masking. This is the most ridiculous of all. Paris pours ou< PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 29 its whole population upon the Boulevards, and guards are stationed to keep the goers and comers in separate lines, and prevent all collecting of groups on the patt. People in the most grotesque and absurd dresses pass on loot, and in loaded carriages, and all is nonsense and obscenity. It is difficult to conceive the motive which can induce grown-up people to go to the ex- pense and trouble of such an exhibition, merely to amuse the world. A description of these follies would be waste of paper. On the last night but one of the carnival, I went to a ball at the palace. We presented our invitations at the door, and mounted through piles of soldiers of the line, crowds of servants in the king's livery, and groves of exotics at the broad landing places, to the reception roam. We were ushered into the Salle des Mare- cha's — a large hall, the ceiling of which rises into the djiue of the Tuileries, ornamented with full-length portraits of the living marshals of France. A gallery of a light airy structure runs round upon the capitals of the pillars, and this, when we entered, and at all the after hours of the ball, was crowded with loungers from the assembly beneath — producing a splendid effect, as their glittering uniforms passed and repassed under the flags and armor with which the ceilings were thickly hung. The royal train entered presently, and the band struck up a superb march. Three rows of vel- vet-covered seats, one above another, went round the hall, leaving a passage behind, and in front of these the queen and her family made a circuit of courtesy, fol- lowed by the wives of the ambassadors, among whom was our countrywoman, Mrs. Rives. Her majesty weut smiling past, stopping here and there to speak to a lady whom she recognised, and the king followed her with his eternal and painfully forced smile, saying something to every second person he encountered. The princesses have good faces, and the second one has an expression of great delicacy and tenderness, but no beauty. As soon as the queen was seated, the band played a quadrille, and the crowd cleared away from the centre for the dance. The Duke of Orleans selected his partner, a pretty girl, who, T believe, was English, and forward went the head couples to the ex- quisite music of the new opera — Robert le Diable. I fell into the little cortege standing about the queen, and watched the interesting party dancing in the head quadrille for an hour. The Dnke of Orleans, who is nearly twenty, and seems a thoughtless, good-natured, immature young man, moved about very gracefully with his handsome figure, and seemed amused, and quite unconscious of the attention he drew. The princesses were vis-a-vis, and the second one a dark- haired, slender, interesting girl of nineteen, had a polytechnic scholar for her partner. He was a hand- some, gallant-looking fellow, who must have distin- guished himself to have been invited to court, and I could not but admire the beautiful mixture of respect and self-confidence with which he demanded the hand of the princess from the lady of honor, and conversed with her during the dance. If royalty does not seal up the affections, I could scarce conceive how a being so decidedly of nature's best nobility, handsome, grace- ful, and confident, could come within the sphere of a sensitive-looking girl, like the princess Christine, and not leave more than a transient recollection upon her fancy. The music stopped, and I had been so occu- pied with my speculations upon the polytechnic boy, that I had scarcely noticed any other person in the dance. He led the princess back to her seat by the dame d'honneur, bowing low, colored a little, and min- gled with the crowd. A few minutes after I saw him in the gallery, quite alone, leaning over the railing, and looking down upon the scene below, having ap- parently abandoned the dance for the evening. From something in his face, and in the manner of resuming his sword, I was certain he had come to the palace | with that single object, and would dance no more. I 1 kept him in my eye most of the night, and am very ! sure he did not. If the little romance 1 wove out of ! it was not a true one, it was not because the material ! was improbable. As I was looking still at the quadrille dancing before | the queen, Dr. Bowring took my arm and proposed a 1 stroll through the other apartments. I found that the : immense crowd in the S(dle des Mareclials was but : about one fifth of the assembly. We passed through ' hall after hall, with music and dancing in each, all ! crowded and gay alike, till we came at last to the Salle \ du Trdne, where the old men were collected at card- tables and in groups for conversation. My distinguish- ed companion was of the greatest use to me here, for he knew everybody, and there was scarce a person in the room who did not strongly excite my curiosity. 1 One half of them at least were maimed ; some without arms, and some with wooden legs, and faces scarred and weather-burnt, but all in full uniform, and nearly all with three or four orders of honor on the breast. You would have held your breath to have heard the recapitulation of their names. At one table sat Mar- shal Grouchy and General Excelmans ; in a corner stood Marshal Soidt, conversing with a knot of peers of France ; and in the window nearest the door, Gen- eral Bernard, our country's friend and citizen, was earnestly engaged in talking to a group of distinguished looking men, two of whom, my companion said, were members of the chamber of deputies. We stood a I moment, and a circle was immediately formed around Dr. Bowring, who is a great favorite among the literary and liberal people of France. The celebrated General Fabvier came up among others, and Cousin the poet. Fabvier, as you know, held a chief command in Greece, and was elected governor of Paris pro tern, after the "three days." He is a very remarkable looking man, with a head almost exactly resembling that of the bust of j Socrates. The engravings give him a more animated and warlike expression than he wears in private. Cousin is a mild, retired looking man, and was one of I the very few persons present not in the court uniform. J Among so many hundred coats embroidered with gold, ■ his plain black dress looked singularly simple and ! poet-like. I left the diplomatist-poet conversing with his ! friends, and went back to the dancing rooms. Music and female beauty are more attractive metal than dis- abled generals playing at cards; and encountering in l my way an attache to the American legation, 1 in- ' quired about one or two faces that interested me, and ! collecting information enough to pass through the courtesies of a dance, I found a partner and gave my- ; self up, like the rest, to amusement. Supper was served at two, and a more splendid af- ! fair could not be conceived, A long and magnificent I hall on the other side of the Salle du Tidnc, was set ; with tables, covered with everything that France could ! afford, in the royal services of gold and silver, and in j the greatest profusion. There was room enough for i all the immense assemblage, and when the queen was I seated with her daughters and ladies of honor, the company sat down and all was as quiet and well-reg- ulated as a dinner party of four. After supper the dancing was resumed, and the queen remained till three o'clock. At her departure the band played cotillons or waltzes with figures, in i which the Duke of Orleans displayed the grace for 1 which he is celebrated, and at four, quite exhausted ; with fatigue and heat, I went with a friend or two into the long glass verandah, built by Napoleon as a pron enadeforthe Emperes* Maria Louisa during her illness, ! where tea, coffee, and ices were served to those who ! wished them after supper. It was an interesting place ! enough, and had my eyes and limbs ached less, I : should have liked to walk up and down, and muse a 30 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. little upon its recollections, but swallowing my tea as hastily as possible, 1 was but too happy to make my escape and get home to bed. LETTER XVIII. CHOLERA UNIVERSAL TERROR FLIGHT OF THE IN- HABITANTS— CASES WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE PAL- ACE DIFFICULTY OF ESCAPE DESERTED STREETS CASES NOT REPORTED DRYNESS OF THE ATMO- SPHERE PREVENTIVES RECOMMENDED PUBLIC BATHS, ETC. Cholera ! Cholera ! It is now the only topic. There is no other interest — no other dread — no other occupation, for Paris. The invitations for parties are at last recalled — the theatres are at last shut or languishing — the fearless are beginning to be afraid — people walk the streets with camphor bags and vinaigrettes at their nostrils — there is a universal terror in all classes, and a general flight of all who can afford to get away. I never saw a people so en- grossed with one single and constant thought. The waiter brought my breakfast this morning with a pale face, and an apprehensive question, whether I was quite well. I sent to my boot-maker yesterday, and he was dead. I called on a friend, a Hanoverian, one of those broad-chested, florid, immortal-looking men, of whose health for fifty years, violence apart, one is absolutely certain, and he was at death's door with the cholera. Poor fellow ! He had fought all through the revolution in Greece ; he had slept in rain and cold, under the open sky, many a night, through a ten years' pursuit of the profession of a soldier of fortune, living one of the most remarkable lives, hitherto, of which I ever heard, and to be taken down here in the midst of ease and pleasure, reduced to a shadow with so vulgar and unwarlike a disease as this, was quite too much for his philosophy. He had been ill three days when I found him. He was emaciated to a skeleton in that short time, weak and helpless, and, though he is not a man to exaggerate suffering, he said he never had conceived such intense agony as he had endured. He assured me, that if he recovered, and should ever be attacked with it again, he would blowout his brains at the first symptom. Nothing but his iron constitu- tion protracted the disorder. Most people who are attacked die in from three to twenty-four hours. For myself, I have felt and still feel quite safe. My rooms are in the airiest quarter of Paris, facing the gardens of the Tuileries, with windows overlooking the king's ; and, as far as air is concerned, if his ma- jesty considers himself well situated, it would be quite ridiculous in so insignificant a person as myself to be alarmed. With absolute health, confident spirits, and tolerably regular habits, I have usually thought one may defy almost anything but love or a bullet. To- day, however, there have been, they say, two cases within the palace-icalls, members of the royal house- hold, and Casimir Perier. who probably lives well and has enough to occupy his mind, is very low with it, and one cannot help feeling that he has no certain ex- emption, when a disease has touched both above and below him. I went to-day to the messagerie to en- gage my place for Marseilles, on the way to Italy, but the seats are all taken, in both mail-post and dili- gence, for a fortnight to come, and, as there are no extras in France, one must wait his turn. Having done my duty to myself by the inquiry, I shall be con- tent to remain quiet. I have just returned from a social tea-party at a house of one of the few English families left in Paris. It is but a little after ten, and the streets, as I came along, were as deserted and still as if it were a city of the dead. Usually, until four or five in the morning, the same streets are thronged with carriages hurrying to and fro, and always till midnight the troltoirs are crowded with promenaders. To-night I scarce met a foot-passenger, and but one solitary cabriolet in a walk of a mile. The contrast was really impressive. The moon was nearly full, and high in the heavens, and the sky absolutely without a trace of a cloud ; nothing interrupted the full broad light of the moon, and the empty streets were almost as bright as at noon-day ; and, as I crossed the Place Vendome, I could hear, for the first time since I have been in Paris, though I have passed it at every hour of the night, the echo of my footsteps reverberated from the walls around. You should have been in these crowded cities of Europe to realize the impressive solemnity of such solitude. It is said that fifty thousand people have left Paris within the past week. Adding this to the thousand a day who are struck with the cholera, and the attend- ance necessary to the sick, and a thinned population is sufficiently accounted for. There are, however, hundreds ill of this frightful disease, whose cases are not reported. It is only those who are taken to the hospitals, the poor and destitute, who are numbered in the official statements. The physicians are wearied out with their private practice. The medical lectures are suspended, and a regular physician is hardly to be had at all. There is scarce a house in which some one has not been taken. You see biers and litters issuing from almost every gate, and the better ranks are no longer spared. A sister of the premier, M. Perier, died yesterday ; and it was reported at the Bourse, that several distinguished persons, who have been ill of it, are also dead. No one feels safe ; and the consternation and dread on every countenance you meet, is enough to chill one's very blood. I went out to-day for a little exercise, not feeling very well, and I was glad to get home again. Every creature looks stricken with a mortal fear. And this among a French population, the gayest and merriest of people under all depressions ordinarily, is too strong a contrast not to be felt painfully. There is something singular in the air, too ; a disagreeable, depressing dryness, which the physicians say must change, or all Paris will be struck with the plague. It is clear and cold, but al- most suffocating with dryness. It is very consoling in the midst of so much that is depressing^ that the preventives recommended against the cholera are so agreeable. " Live well," s;sy the doctors, "and bathe often. Abstain from excesses, keep a clear head and good spirits, and amuse your- self as much and as rationally as possible." It is a very excellent recipe for happiness, let alone the chol- era. There is great room for a nice observance of this system in Paris, particularly the eating and bathing. The baths are delightful. You are received in hand- some saloons, opening upon a garden in the centre of the building, ornamented with statues and fountains, the journals lying upon the sofas, and everything ar- ranged with quite the luxury of a palace. The bath- ing-rooms are furnished with taste; the baths are of marble, and covered inside with spotlessly white linen cloths ; the water is perfumed, and you may lie and take your coffee, or have your breakfast served upon the mahogany cover which shuts you in — a union of luxuries which is enough to enervate a cynic. When you are ready to come out, a pull of the bell brings a servant, who gives you a peignoir — a long linen wrap- per, heated in an oven, in the warm folds of which you are enveloped, and in three minutes are quite dry. In this you may sit, at your ease, reading, or musing, or lie upon the sofa without the restraint of a tight dress, till you are ready to depart ; and then four or five francs, something less than a dollar, pays for all. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 3! LETTER XIX. MORNING VIEW FROM THE RUE RIVOLI THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE GUICCIOLI SISMONDI THE HISTO- RIAN, ETC. It is now the middle of April, and sitting at my window on the Rue Rivoli, I look through one of the lone;, clipped avenues of the Tuileries, and see an arch of green leaves, the sun of tight o'clock in the morning just breaking through the thin foliage and dappling the straight, even gravel-walk below, with a look of summer that makes my heart leap. The cholera has put an end to dissipation, and one gets up early from necessity. It is delicious to step out before breakfast, and cross the street into those lovely gar- dens, for an hour or two of fresh air and reflection. It is warm enough now to sit on the stone benches about the fountains, by the time the dew is dry; and I know nothing so contemplative as the occupation of watch- ing these royal swans in the dreamy, almost impercep- tible motion with which they glide around the edges of the basins. The gold fish swim up and circle about the breast of the imperial birds with a motion almost as idle; and the old wooden-legged soldier, who has been made warden of the gardens for his service, sits nodding on one of the chairs, or drawing fortifications with his stick in the gravel; and so it happens, that in the midst of a gay and busy city one may feel always a luxurious solitude ; and, be he ever so poor, loiter all day if he will, among scenes which only regal munificence could provide for him. With the Seine bounding them on one side, the splendid uniform facade of the Rue Rivoli on the other, the palace stretching across the southern terrace, and the thick woods of the Champs Elysccs at the opposite gate, where could one go in the world to give his taste or his eye a more costly or delightful satisfaction? The Bois de Boulogne, about which the Parisians talk so much, is less to my taste. It is a level wood of small trees, covering a mile or two square, and cut from corner to corner with straight roads for driving. The soil is sandy, and the grass grows only in tufts, the walks are rough, and either muddy or dusty al- ways, and, barring the equipages and the pleasure of a word in passing an acquaintance, I find a drive to this famous wood rather a dull business. I want ei- ther one thing or the other — cultivated grounds like the Tuileries, or the wild wood. I have just left the Countess Guiccioli, with whom I have been acquainted for some two or three weeks. She is very much frightened at the cholera, and thinks of going to America. The conversation turned princi-' pally upon Shelley, whom of course she knew intirmte- ly ; and she gave me one of his letters to herself as an autograph. She says he was at times a little cra- zy — "fou," as she expressed it — but that there never was a nobler or a better man. Lord Byron, she says, loved him like a brother. She is still in correspond- ence with Shelley's wife, of whom also she speaks with the greatest affection. There was several min- iatures of Byron hanging up in the room, and I asked her if any of them were perfect in the resemblance. " No," she said, " this was the most like him," taking down an exquisitely finished miniature by an Italian artist, " mai3 el etait beaucoup plus beau — beaucoup ! — beaucoup .'" She reiterated the word with a very touching tenderness, and continued to look at the pic- ture for some time, either forgetting our presence, or affecting it. She speaks English sweetly, with a soft, slow, honeyed accent, breaking into French when ever she gets too much interested to choose herwords. She went on talking in French of the painters who had drawn Byron, and said the American, West's, was the best likeness. I did not like to tell her that West's picture of herself was excessively flattered. I am sure no one would know her from the engraving of it at least. Her cheek bones are high, her forehead is badly shaped, and altogether, the frame of her fea- tures is decidedly ugly. She dresses in the worst taste, too, and yet, with all this, and poetry and celeb- rity aside, the Countess Guiccioli is both a lovely and a fascinating woman, and one whom a man of senti- ment would admire e\en at this age, very sincerely, but not for beauty. She has white and regular teeth, however, and her hair is incomparably the most beau- tiful I ever saw. It is of the richest and glossiest gold, silken and luxuriant, and changes, as the light falls upon it, with a mellow softness, than which noth- ing could be lovelier. It is this and her indescribably winning manner which are lost in a picture, and there- fore, it is perhaps fair that she should be otherwise flattered. Her drawing-room is one of the most agreeable in Paris at present, and it is one of the chief agremcns which console me for a detention in an at- mosphere so tristc as well as dangerous. My bed-room window opens upon the court in the interior of the hotel Rivoli, in which I lodge. In looking out occasionally upon my very near neigh- bors opposite, I have frequently observed a gray-head- ed, scholar-like, fine-looking old man, writing at a window in the story below. One does not trouble himself much about his fellow-lodgers, and I had seen this gentleman at his work at all hours, for a month or more, without curiosity enough to inquire even his name. This morning the servant came in, with a Mon Dieu .' and said M. Sismondi was fright- eded by the cholera, and was leaving his lodgings at that moment. The name startled me, and making some inquiries, I found that my gray-headed neighbor was no other than the celebrated historian of Italian literature, and that I had been living under the same roof with him for weeks, and watching him at his classical labors, without being at all aware of the hon- or of his neighborhood. He is a kind, benevolent- looking man, of about sixty, I should think ; and al- ways had a peculiarly affectionate manner to his wife, who, I am told by the valet, is an Englishwoman. I regretted exceedingly the opportunity I had lost of knowing Ijim, for there are few writers of whom one retains a more friendly and agreeable remembrance. In a conversation with Mr. Cooper, the other day, he was remarking of how little consequence any one individual found himself in Paris, even the most dis- tinguished. We were walking in the Tuileries, and the remark was elicited by my pointing out to him one or two celebrated persons, whose names are suf- ficiently known, but who walk the public promenades, quite unnoticed and unrecognised. He said he did not think there were five people in Paris who knew him at sight, though his works were advertised in all the bookstores, and he had lived in Paris one or two years, and walked there constantly. This was putting a strong case, for the French idolize Cooper ; and the peculiarly translateable character of his works makes them read even better in a good translation than in the original. It is so all over the continent, T am told. The Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, prefer Cooper to Scott ; and it is easily accounted for when one re- members how much of" the beauty of the Waverley novels depends on their exquisite style, and how pe- culiarly Cooper's excellence lies in his accurate, defi nite, tangible descriptions. There is not a more ad- mired author in Europe than Cooper, it is very cer- tain ; and I am daily asked whether he is in America at present — so little do the people of these crowded cities interest themselves about that which is imme- diately at their elbows. 32 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER XX. GENERAL BERTRAND — FRIEND OF LADY MORGAN PHRENOLOGY DR. SPURZHEI3I — HIS LODGINGS — PRO- CESS OF TAKING A CAST OF THE HEAD — INCARCERA- TION OF DR. BOWRING AND DE POTTER — DAVID THE SCULPTOR — VISIT OF DR. SPURZHE1M TO THE UNITED STATES. My room-mate called a day or two since on General Bertrand, and yesterday he returned the visit, and spent an hour at our lodgings. He talked of Napo- leon with difficulty, and became very much affected when my friend made some inquiries about the safety of the body at St. Helena. The inquiry was sug- gested by some notice we had seen in the papers of an attempt to rob the tomb of Washington. The general said that the vault was fifteen feet deep, and covered by a slab that could not be moved without machinery. He told us that Madame Bertrand had many mementoes of the emperor, which she would be happy to show us, and we promised to visit him. At a party, a night or two since, 1 fell into conversa- tion witti an English lady, who had lived several years in Dublin, and was an intimate friend of Lady Mor- gan. She was an uncommonly fine woman, both in appearance and conversational powers, and told me many anecdotes of the authoress, defending her from all the charges usually made against her, except that of vanity, which she allowed. 1 received, on the whole, the impression that Lady Morgan's goodness of heart was more than an offset to her certainly very innocent weaknesses. My companion was much amused at an American's asking after the "fender inKildare street;" though she half withdrew her cordiality when I told her 1 knew the countryman of mine who wrote the account of Lady Morgan, of which she complains so bitterly in the "Book of the Boudoir." It was this lady with whom the fair authoress " dined in the Chaussce d'Antin," so much to her satisfaction. While we were conversing, the lady's husband came up, and finding I was an American, made some inqui- ries about the progress of phrenology on the other side of the water. Like most enthusiasts in the sci- ence, his owu head was a remarkably beautiful one; and I soon found that he was the bosom friend of Dr. Spurzheim, to whom he offered to introduce me. We made an engagement for the next day, and the party separated. My new acquaintance called on me the next morn- ing, according to appointment, and we went together to Dr. Spurzheim's residence. The passage at the entrance was lined with cases, in which stood plaster casts of the heads of distinguished men, orators, po- ets, musicians — each class on its particular shelf — making altogether a most ghastly company. The doctor received my companion with great cordiality, addressing him in French, and changing to very good German-English when he made any observation to me. He is a tall, large-boned man, and resembles Harding, the American artist, very strikingly. His head is" finely marked ; his features are bold, with rather a German look ; and his voice is particularly winning, and changes its modulations, in argument, from the deep, earnest tone of a man, to an almost child like softness. The conversation soon turned upon America, and the doctor expressed, in ardent terms, his desire to visit the United States, and said he had thought of accomplishing it the coming summer. He spoke of Dr. Channing — said he had read all his works with avidity and delight, and considered him one of the clearest and most expansive minds of the age. If Dr. Channing had not strong developments of the organs of ideality and benevolence, he said, he should doubt his theory more than he had ever found reason to. He knew Webster and Processor Silliman by reputation, and seemed to be familiar with our country, as tew men in Europe are. One naturally, on meet- ing a distinguished phrenologist, wishes to have his own developments pronounced upon; but I had been warned by my friend that Dr. Spurzheim refused such examinations as a general principle, not wishing to de- ceive people, and unwilling to run the risk of offending them. After a half-hour's conversation, however, he came across the room, and putting his hands under my thick masses of ltair, felt my head closely all over, and mentioned at once a quality, which, right or wrong, has given a tendency to all my pursuits in life. As he knew absolutely nothing of me, and the gentleman who introduced me knew no more, I was a little startled. The doctor then requested me to submit to the operation of having a cast taken of my head, an offer which was too kind and particular to be declined; and, appointing an hour to be at his rooms the follow- ing day, we left him. 1 was there again at twelve the morning after, and found De Potter (the Belgian patriot) and Dr. Bow- ring, with the phrenologist, waiting to undergo the same operation. The preparations looked very formi- dable. A frame, of the length of the human body, lay in the middle of the room, with a wooden bowl to receive the head, a mattress, and a long white dress to prevent stain to the clothes. As I was the youngest, 1 took my turn first. It was very like a preparation for being beheaded. My neck was bared, my hair cut, and the long white dress put on. The back of the head is taken first; and, as I was only immersed up to the ears in the liquid plaster, this was not very alarm- ing. The second part, however, demanded more patience. My head was put once more into the stiff- ened mould of the first half, and as soon as 1 could get my features composed I was ordered to shut my eyes ; my hair was oiled and laid smooth, and the liquid plaster poured slowly over my mouth, eyes, and forehead, till I was cased completely in a stiffening mask. The material was then poured on thickly, till the mask was two or three inches thick, and the voices of those standing over me were scarcely audible. I breathed prettily freely through the two small orifices at my nose; but the dangerous experiment of Made- moiselle Sontag, who was nearly smothered in the same operation, came across my mind rather vividly ; and it seemed to me that the doctor handled the plas- ter quite too ungingerly, when he came to mould about my nostrils. After a half hour's imprisonment, the plaster became sufficiently hardened, and the thread which was laid upon my face was drawn through, di- viding the mask into two parts. It was then gradually removed, pulling very tenaciously upon my eyelashes and eyebrows, and leaving all the cavities of my face filled with particles of lime. The process is a tribute to vanity, which one would not be willing to pay very often. I looked on at Dr. Bowring's incarceration with no great feeling of relief. It is rather worse to see than to experience, I think. The poet is a nervous man ; and as long as the muscles of his face were visible, his lips, eyelids, and mouth, were quivering so violently that I scarcely believed it would be possible to get an impression of them. He has a beautiful face for a scholar — clear, well-cut, finished features, expressive of great purity of thought; and a forehead of noble amplitude, white and polished as marble. His hair is black and curling (indicating in most cases, Dr. Spur- zheim remarked, activity of mind), and forms a clas- sical relief to his handsome temples. Altogether, his head would look well in a picture, though his ordinary and ungraceful dress, and quick, oustling manner, rather destroy the effect of it in society. De Potter is one of the noblest-looking men I ever saw. He is quite bald, with a broad, ample, majestic head, the very model of dignity and intellect. De PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 33 Spurzheim considers his head one of the most extra- ordinary he has met. Firmness is the great develop- ment of its organs. His tone and manner are calm and very impressive, and he looks made for great occa- sions — a man stamped with the superiority which others acknowledge when circumstances demand it. He employs himself in literary pursuits at Paris, and has just published a pamphlet on " the manner of conducting a revolution, so that no after-revolution shall be necessary." I have translated the title awk- wardly, but that is the subject. I have since heard Dr. Spurzheim lecture twice, and have been with him to a meeting of the "Anthropo- logical society" (of which he is the president and De Potter the secretary), where I witnessed the dissection of the human brain. It was a most interesting and satisfactory experiment, as an illustration of phre- nology. David the sculptor is a member of the so- ciety, and was present. He looks more like a soldier than an artist, however — wearing the cross of the legion of honor, with a military frock coat, and an erect, stern, military carriage. Spurzheim lectures in a free, easy,, unconstrained style, with occasionally a little humor, and draws his arguments from admitted facts only. Nothing could be more reasonable than his premises, and nothing more like an axiom than the results, as far as I have heard him. At any rate, true or false, his theory is one of extreme interest, and no time can be wasted in examining it; for it is the study of man, and therefore the most important of studies. I have had several long conversations with Dr. Spurzheim about America, and have at last obtained his positive assurance that he would visit it. He gave me permission this morning to say (what I am sure all lovers of knowledge will be pleased to hear) that he should sail for New York in the course of the ensuing summer, and pass a year or more in lecturing and travelling in the United States. He is a man to obtain the immediate confidence and respect of a peo- ple like ours, of the highest moral worth, and the most candid and open mind. I hope, my dear M. and F., that you will make our paper a vehicle for any information he may wish to convey to the public, and that you and all our friends will receive him with the warmth and respect due to his reputation and worth. If he arrive in August, as he anticipates, he proposes to pass a month or so at New Haven, and then to pro- ceed to Boston, to commence his tour at the North. P. S. — As I shall leave Paris shortly, you may expect but one or two letters more from this metropolis. I shall, however, as I extend my travels, find a greater variety of materials for my future communications. LETTER XXI. DEPARTURE PROM PARIS DESULTORY REMARKS. I take my departure from Paris to-morrow. I have just been making preparations to pack, and it has giv- en me a fit of bad spirits. 1 have been in P>ance only a few months, but if I had lived my life here, I could not be more at home. In my almost universal ac- quaintance, 1 have of course made pleasant friends, and, however time and travel should make us indiffer- ent to such volant attachments, I can not now cast off these threads of intimacy, without pulling a little up- on very sincere feelings. I have been burning the mass of papers and cards that have accumulated in my dr-nvers ; and the sight of these French invita- tions, mementoes, as they are, of delightful and fascin- ating hours, almost staggers my resolution of depar- ture. It has been an intoxicating time to me. Aside 3 from lighter attractions, this metropolis collects with- ' in itself so much of the distinction and genius of the world ; and gifted men in Paris, coming here merely ; for pleasure, are so peculiarly accessible, that one looks upon them as friends to whom he has become attached and accustomed, and leaves the sphere in which he has met them, as if he had been a part of ! it, and had a right to be regretted. I do not think I shall ever spend so pleasant a winter again. And then my local interest is not a light one. I am a great lov- | er of out-of-doors, and I have ransacked Paris thor- oughly. I know it all from its broad faubourgs to its obscurest cul de sac. I have hunted with antiqua- ries for coins and old armor ; with lovers of adven- ture for the amusing and odd ; with the curious for i traces of history ; with the romantic for the pictu- resque. Paris is a world for research. It contains more odd places, I believe, more odd people, and ev- ery way more material for uncommon amusement, than any other city in the universe. One might live II a life of novelty without crossing the barrier. All this insensibly attaches one. My eye wanders at this mo- ment from my paper to these lovely gardens lying be- neath my window, and I could not feel more regret if they were mine. Just over the long line of low clip- ped trees, edging the fashionable terrace, 1 see the win- dows of the king within half a stone's throw — the windows at which Napoleon has stood, and the long line of the monarchs of France, and it has become to me so much a habit of thought, sitting here in the twilight and musing on the thousand, thousand things linked with the spot my eye embraces, that I feel as if I had grown to it — as if Paris had become to me, what it is proverbially and naturally enough to a Frenchman — " the world." I have other associations which I part from less painfully, because I hope at some future time to re- new them — those with my own countrymen. There | are few pleasanter circles than that of the Americans in Paris. Lafayette and his numerous family make a : part of them. I could not learn to love this good ' man more, but seeing him often brings one's revcr- | ence more within the limits of the affections ; and 1 consider the little of his attention that has fallen to my share the honored part of my life, and the part best worth recording and remembering. He called '■ upon me a day or two ago, to leave with me some | copies of a translation of Mr. Cooper's letter on the I finances of our government, to be sent to my friend | Dr. Howe ; but, to my regret, I did not see him. He neglects no American, and is ever busied about some ; project connected with their welfare. May God con- tinue to bless him! And speaking of Mr. Cooper, no one who loves or owns a pride in his native land, can live abroad with- out feeling every day what we owe to the patriotism as well as the genius of this gifted man. If there is an individual who loves the soil that gave him birth, and so shows it that we are more respected for it, it is he. Mr. Cooper's position is a high one ; he has great advan- tages, and he improves them to the uttermost. His benevolence and activity in all enterprises for the re- lief of suffering, give him influence, and he employs it like a true philanthropist and a real lover of his country. I say this particularly, though it may look like too personal a remark, because Americans abroad are not always national. I am often mortified by re- proaches from foreigners, quoting admissions made by my countrymen, which should be the last on their lips. A very distinguished person told me a day or two since, that " the Americans abroad were the worst enemies we had in Europe. It is difficult to conceive at home how such a remark stings. Proportionately, one takes a true patriot to his heart, and 1 feel it right to say here, that the love of country and active be- nevolence of Mr. Cooper, distinguish him abroad, 34 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. even more than his genius. His house is one of the most hospitable and agreeable in Paris ; and with Morse and the circle of artists and men of distinction and worth about him, he is an acquaintance sincerely to regret leaving. From Mr. Rives, our minister, I have received ev- ery possible kindness. He has attached me to his le- gation, to facilitate my access to other courts and the society of other cities, and to free me from all delays and annoyances at frontiers and custom-houses. It is a particular and valuable kindness, and I feel a pleas- ure in acknowledging it. Then there is Dr. Bowring, the lover and defender of the United States, who, as the editor of the Westminster Review, should be well remembered in America, and of him I have seen much, and from him I have received great kindness. Altogether, as I said before, Paris is a home to me, and I leave it with a heavy heart. I have taken a place on the top of the diligence for a week. It is a long while to occupy one seat, but the weather and the season are delicious ; and in the cov- ered and roomy cabriolet, with the conducteur for a living reference, and all the appliances for comfort, I expect to live very pleasantly, night and day, till I reach Marseilles. Vaucleuse is on the way, and I shall visit it if I have time and good weather, perhaps. At Marseilles I shall take the steamboat for Leghorn, and thence get directly to Florence, where I shall re- main till I become familiar with the Italian, at least. I lay down my pen till all this plan of travel is accom- plished, and so, for the present, adieu ! LETTER XXII. Chalons, on the Saone. — I have broken my route to stop at this pretty town, and take the steamboat which goes down the Saone to Lyons to-morrow morning. I have travelled two days and nights ; but an excellent dinner and a quickened imagination indis- pose me for sleep, and, for want of better amusement in a strange city at night, I will pass away an hour in transcribing the hurried notes I have made at the stopping places. I chose, by advice, the part of the diligence called the banquette — a covered seat over the front of the car- riage, commanding all the view, and free from the dust of the lower apartments. The conducteur had the opposite corner, and a very ordinary-looking man sat between us ; the seat holding three very comforta- bly. A lady and two gentlemen occupied the coupe; a dragoon and his family, going to join his regiment, filled the rotonde ; and in the interior was a motley collection, whom I scarce saw after starting ; the oc- cupants of the different parts of a diligence having no more association, even in a week's travel, than peo- ple living in an adjoining house in the city. We rolled out of Paris by the faubourg St. Antoine, and at the end of the first post passed the first object that interested me — a small brick pavilion, built by Henri Quatre for the beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrees. It stands on a dull, level plain, not far from the banks of the river; and nothing but the fact that it was once occupied by the woman who most enslaved the heart of the most chivalrous and fickle of the French mon- archs, would call your attention to it for a moment. For the twenty or thirty miles which we travelled by daylight, I saw nothing particularly curious or beautiful. The guide-book is very diffuse upon the chateaux and villages on the road, but I saw nothing except very ordinary country-houses, and the same suc^ssion of small and dirty villages, steeped to the very chimi.evs in poverty. If ever I return to Amer- ica, I shall make a journey to the west, for the pure refreshment of seeing industry and thrift. I am sick to the heart of pauperism and misery. Everything that is near the large towns in France is either splen- did or disgusting. There is no medium in condition — nothing that looks like content — none of that class we define in our country as the " respectable." The moon was a little in the wane, but bright, and the night lovely. As we got further into the interior, the towns began to look more picturesque and antique ; and, with the softening touch of the moonlight, and the absence of beggars, the old low-browed buildings and half-ruined churches assumed the beauty they wear in description. I slept on the road, but the echo of the wheels in entering a post-town woke me always; and I rarely have felt the picturesque more keenly than at these sudden wakings from dreams, perhaps, of familiar things, finding myself opposite some shad- owy relic of another age ; as if it were by magical transportation, from the fireside to some place of which I had heard or read the history. I awoke as we drove into Sens at broad daylight. We were just passing a glorious old pile of a cathe- dral, which I ran back to see while the diligence stop- ped to change horses. It is of pointed architecture, black with age, and crusted with moss. It was to this town that Thomas a Becket retired in disgrace at his difference with Henry the Second. There is a chapel in the cathedral, dedicated to his memory. The French certainly should have the credit of leav- ing things alone. This old pile stands as if the town in which it is built had been desolate for centuries : not a letter of the old sculptures chiselled out, not a bird unnested, not a filament of the gathering moss pulled away. All looks as if no human hand had been near it — almost as if no human eye had looked upon it. In America they would paint such an old church white or red, shove down the pillars, and put up pews, sell the pictures for fireboards, and cover the tesselated pavement with sand, or a home-made carpet. As we passed under a very ancient gate, crowning the old Roman ramparts of the town, a door opened, and a baker, in white cap and apron, thrust out his head to see us pass. His oven was blazing bright, and he had just taken out a batch of hot bread, which was smoking on the table; and what with the chill of the morning air and having fasted for some fourteen hours, I quite envied him his vocation. The diligence, however, pushed on most mercilessly till twelve o'clock, the French never dreaming of eating befoie their late dejeuner — a mid-day meal always. When we did get it, it was a dinner in every respect — meats of all kinds, wine, and dessert, certainly as solid and various as any of the American breakfasts, at which travellers laugh so universally. Auxerre is a pretty town, on a swelling bank of the river Yonne ; and I had admired it as one of the most improved-looking villages of Fiance. It was not till I had breakfasted there, and travelled a league or two toward Chalons, that I discovered by the guide-book it was the ancient capital of Auxerrois, a famous town in the time of Julius Caesar, and had the honor of being ravaged "at different times by Attila, the Saracens, the Normans, and the Calvinists, vestiges of whose devastations may still be seen." If I had not eaten of a positively modern fate fate gras, and an omelette sovffic, at a nice little hotel, with a mistress in a cap, and a coquettish French apron, I should for- give myself less easily for not having detected anti- quity in the atmosphere. One imagines more readilj than he realizes the charm of mere age without beauty. We were now in the province of Burgundy, and to say nothing of the historical recollections, the vine- yards were all about us that delighted the palates of the world. One does not dine at the Trois Freres, in the Palais Royal, without contracting a tenderness for PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 35 the very name of Burgundy. 1 regretted that I was not there in the season of the grape. The vines were just budding, and the paytans, men and women, were scat- tered over the vineyards, loosening the earth about the roots, and driving stakes to support the young shoots. At Saint Bris I found the country so lovely, that I left the diligence at the post-house, and walked on to mount a Ions succession of hills on foot. The road sides were quite blue with the violets growing thickly among the grass, and the air was filled with perfume. I soon got out of sight of the heavy vehicle, and made use of my leisure to enter the vineyards and talk to the people at their work. I found one old man, with all his family about him; the little ones with long bas- kets on their backs, bringing manure, and one or two grown-up boys and girls raking up the earth with the unhandy hoe of the country, and setting it firmly around the roots with their wooden shoes. It was a pretty group, and I was very much amused with their simplicity. The old man asked my country, and set down his hoe in astonishment when I told him I was an American. He wondered I was not more burnt, living in such a hot country, and asked me what lan- guage we spoke. I could scarce get away from his civilities when I bade him " Good day." No polite- ness could have been more elegant than the manner and expressions of this old peasant, and certainly nothing could have appeared sincerer or kinder. I kept on up the hill till I reached a very high point, passing on my way a troop of Italians, going to Paris with their organs and shows — a set of as ragged speci- mens of the picturesque as I ever saw in a picture. A lovely scene lay before me when I turned to look back. The valley, on one side of which lies St. Bris, is as round as a bowl, with an edge of mountain-tops absolutely even all around the horizon. It slopes down from every side to the centre, as if it had been measured and hollowed by art ; and there is not a fence to be seen from one side to the other, and scarcely a tree, but one green and almost unbroken carpet of verdure, swelling up iu broad green slopes to the top, and realizing, with a slight difference, the similitude of Madame de Genlis, of the place of satiety, eternal green meadow and eternal blue sky. St. Bris is a little handful of stone buildings around an old church; just such a thing as a painter would throw into a pic- ture — and the different-colored grain, and here and there a ploughed patch of rich yellow earth, and the road crossing the hollow from hill to hill like a white band ; and then for the life of the scene, the group of Italians, the cumbrous diligence, and the peasants in their broad straw hats, scattered over the fields — it was something quite beyond my usual experience of scenery and accident. I had rarely before found so much in one view to delight me. After looking a while, I mounted again, and stood on the very top of the hill ; and, to my surprise, there, on the other side, lay just such another valley, with just such a village in its bosom, and the single im- provement of a river — the Yonne stealing through it, with its riband like stream ; but all the rest of the valley almost exactly as I have described the other. I crossed a vineyard to get a view to the southeast, and once more there lay a deep hollow valley before mo, formed like the other two, with its little hamlet and its vineyards and mountains — as if there had been three lakes in the hills, with their edges touching like three bowls, and the terrace on which T stood was the platform between them- It is a most singular forma- tion of country, really, and as beautiful as it is singular. Each of these valleys might be ten miles across; and if the dukes of Burgundy in feudal times rode ever to St. Bris, I can conceive that their dukedom never seemed larger to them than when crossing this triple ?pex of highland. At Saulieu we left the usual route, and crossed over I to Chagny. Between these two places lay a spot, I I which, out of my own country, I should choose be- fore all others for a retreat from the world. As it w;is off the route, the guide-book gave me not even the name, and 1 have discovered nothing but that the little hamlet is called Bocliepot. It is a little nest of wild scenery, a mimic valley shut in by high overhanging crags, with the ruins of a battlemented and noble old castle, standing upon a rock in the centre, with the village of some hundred stone cottages at its very foot. You might stand on the towers of the ruins, and toss a biscuit into almost every chimney in the village. The strong round towers are still perfect, and the turrets and loop-holes and windows are still there ; and rank green vines have overrun the whole mass everywhere ; and nothing but the prodigious solidity with which it was built could have kept it so lone from falling, for it is evidently one of the oldest castles in Burgundy. I never saw before anything, even in a picture, which realized perfectly my idea of feudal position. Here lived the lord of the domain, a hun- dred feet in the air in his rocky castle, right over the heads of his retainers, with the power to call in every soul that served him at a minute's warning, and with a single blast of his trumpet. I do not believe a stone has been displaced in the village for a hundred years. The whole thing was redolent of antiquity. We wound out of the place by a sharp narrow pass, arid there, within a mile of this old and deserted fortress, lay the broad plains of Beaune and Chagny — one of the most fertile and luxurious parts of France. I was charmed altogether. How many things I have seen this side the water that 1 have made an involun- tary vow in my heart to visit again, and at more lei- sure, before I die! From Chagny it was but one post to Chalons, and here I am in a pretty, busy town, with broad beautiful quays, where I have promenaded till dark, observing this out-of-doors people; and now. having written a long letter for a sleepy man, I will get to bed, and redeem some portion of my two nights' wakefulness LETTER XXIII. PASSAGE DOWN THE SAONE AN ODD ACQUAINTANCE — LYONS — CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME DE FOURVIERES VIEW FROM THE TOWER. I looked out of my window the last thing before going to bed at Chalons, and the familiar constellation of ursa major never shone brighter, and never made me a more agreeable promise than that of fair weather the following day for my passage down the Saone. I was called at four, and it rained in torrents. The steamboat was smaller than the smallest I have seen in our country, and crowded to suffocation with chil- dren, women, and lap-dogs. I appropriated my own trunk, and spreading my umbrella, sat down upon it, to endure my disappointment with what philosophy I might. A dirty-looking fellow, who must have slept in his clothes for a month, came up, with a loaf of coarse bread under his arm, and addressed me, to my sufficient astonishment, in Latin! He wanted to sit under my umbrella. I looked at him a second time, but he had touched my passion. Latin is the only thing I have been driven to, in this world, that I ever really loved ; and a clear, mellow, unctuous pronuncia- tion of my dirty companion equally astonished and pleased me. I made room for him on my trunk, and though rusted somewhat since I philosophized over II Lucretius, we got on very tolerably. He was a Ger- j man student, travelling to Italy, and a fine specimen of lithe class. A dirtier man I never saw, and hardly a 36 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. finer or more intellectual face. He knew everything, and served me as a talking guide to the history of all the places on the river. Instead of eating all at once, as we do on board the steamboats in America, the French boats have a res- taurant, from which you order what you please, and at any hour. The cabin was set round with small tables, and the passengers made little parties, and breakfasted and dined at their own time. It is much the better method. I descended to the cabin very hungry about twelve o'clock, and was looking about for a place, when a French gentleman politely rose, and observing that I was alone, (my German friend living on bread and water only), requested me to join his party at breakfast. Two young ladies and a lad of fourteen sat at the table, and addressing them by their familiar names, my polite friend requested them to give me a place; and then told me that they were his daughters and son, and that he was travelling to Italy for the health of the younger girl, a pale, slender creature, apparently about eighteen. I was very well pleased with my position, and rarely have passed an hour more agreeably. French girls of the better classes never talk, but the father was very communicative, and a Parisian, with the cross of the legion of honor, and we found abundance of matter for conversation. They have stopped at Lyons, where I write at present, and I shall probably join their party to Marseilles. The clouds broke away after mid-day, and the banks of the river brightened wonderfully with the change. The Saone is about the size of the Mohawk, but not half so beautiful; at least for the greater part of its course. Indeed, you can hardly compare American with European rivers, for the charm is of another de- scription quire, With us it is nature only, here it is almost all art. Our rivers are lovely, because the out- line of the shore is graceful, and particularly because the vegetation is luxuriant. The hills are green, the foliage deep and lavish, the rocks grown over with vines or moss, the mountains in the distance covered with pines and other forest-trees; everything is wild, and nothing looks bare or steril. The rivers of France are crowned on every height with ruins, and in the bosom of every valley lies a cluster of picturesque stone cottages ; but the fields are naked, and there are no trees; the mountains are barren and brown, and everything looks as if the dwellings had been deserted by the people, and nature had at the same time gone to decay. I can conceive nothing more melancholy than the views upon the Saone, seen, as I saw them, though vegetation is out everywhere, and the banks should be beautiful if ever. As we approached Lyons the river narrowed and grew bolder, and the last ten miles were enchanting. Naturally the shores at this part of the Saone are exceedingly like the highlands of the Hudson above West Point. Abrupt hills rise from the river's edge, and the windings are sharp and constant. But imagine the highlands of the Hudson crowded with antique chateaux, and covered to the very top with terraces and summer-houses and hang- ing-gardens, gravel walks and beds of flowers, instead of wild pines and precipices, and you may get a very correct idea of the Saone above Lyons. You emerge from one of the dark passes of the river by a sudden turn, and there before you lies this large city, built on both banks, at the foot and on the sides of moun- tains. The bridges are fine, and the broad, crowded quays, all along the edges of the river, have a beautiful effect. We landed at the stone stairs, and I selected a hotel by chance, where I have found seven Amer- icans of my acquaintance. We have been spending the evening at the rooms of a townsman of mine, very pleasantly. There is a great deal of magnificence at Lyons, in the way of quays, promenades, and buildings ; but its excessive filthiness spoils everything. One could scarce admire a Venus in such an atmosphere ; and you can not find room to stand in Lyons where you have not some nauseating odor. I was glad to escape from the lower streets, and climb up the long staircases to the observatory that overhangs the town. From the base of this elevation the descent of the river is al- most a precipice. The houses hang on the side of the steep hill, and their doors enter from the long alleys of stone staircases by which you ascend. On every step, and at almost every foot of the way, stood a beg- gar. They might have touched hands from the quay to the summit. If they were not such objects of real wretchedness, it would be laughable to hear the church calendar of saints repeated so volubly. The lame hobble after you, the blind stumble in your way, the sick lie and stretch out their hands from the wall, and all begin in the name of the Virgin Mary, and end with "Mora bon Monsieur" and "un petit sous." I confined my charities to a lovely child, that started out from its mother's lap, and ran down to meet us — a dirty and ragged little thing, but with the large dark eyes of the province; and a skin, where one could see it, of the clearest nut-brown teint. Her mother had five such, and each of them, to any one who loved chil- dren, would have been a treasure of beauty and in- terest. It was holy-week, and the church of Notre Dame de Fourvieres, which stands on the summit of the hill, was crowded with people. We went in for a moment, and sat down on a bench to rest. My companion was a Swiss captain of artillery, who was a passenger in the boat, a very splendid fellow, with a mustache that he might have tied behind his ears. He had addressed me at the hotel, and proposed that we should visit the curiosities of the town together. He was a model of a manly figure, athletic, and soldier-like, and standing near him was to get the focus of all the dark eyes in the congregation. The "new square tower stands at the side of the church, and rises to the height of perhaps sixty feet. The view from it is said to be one of the finest in the world. I have seen more extensive ones, but never one that comprehended more beauty and interest. Lyons lies at the foot, with the Saone winding through its bosom in abrupt curves; the Rhone comes down from the north on the other side of the range of mountains, and meeting the Saone in a broad stream below the town, they stretch off to the south, through a diversi- fied landscape; the Alps rise from the east like the edges of a thunder-cloud, and the mountains of Savoy fill up the interval to the Rhone. All about the foot of the monument lie gardens, of exquisite cultivation; and above and below the city the villas of the rich ; giving you altogether as delicious a nucleus for a broad circle" of scenery as art and nature could create, and one sufficiently in contrast with the barrenness of the rocky circumference to enhance the charm, and con- tent you with your position. Half way down the hill lies an old monastery, with a lovely garden walled in from the world: and several of the brotherhood were there, idling up and down the shaded alleys, with their black dresses sweeping the ground, possibly in holy contemplation. The river was covered with boats, the bells were ringing to church, the glorious old cathe- dral, so famous for its splendor, stood piled up, with its arches and gray towers, in the square below; the day was soft, sunny, and warm, and existence was a blessing. I leaned over the balustrade, I know not how long, looking down upon the scene about me; and I shall ever remember it as one of those few un- alloyed moments, when the press of care was taken off my mind, and the chain of circumstances was strong enough to set aside both the past and the future, and leave me to the quiet enjoyment of the present. I have found such hours " few and far between." PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 37 LETTER X^IV. DEPARTURE FROM LYONS BATTEAUX DE POSTE RIVER SCENERY VILLAGE OF CONDRIEU — VIENNE VALENCE PONT ST. ESPRIT DAUPHINY AND LANGUEDOC DEMI-FETE DAY, ETC. I found a day and a half quite enough for Lyons. The views from the mountain and the river were the only things that pleased me. I made the usual dry visit to the library and the museum, and admired the Hotel de Ville, and the new theatre, and the front of the Maison de Tolosan, that so struck the fancy of Joseph II., and having "despatched the lions," like a true cockney traveler, I was too happy to escape the offensive smells of the streets, and get to my rooms. One does not enjoy much comfort within doors eilher. Lyons is a great imitation metropolis — a sort of sec- ond-hand Paris. I am not very difficult to please, but I found the living intolerable. It was an affectation of abstruse cookery throughout. We sat down to what is called the best table in the place, and it was a series of ludicrous travesties, from the soup to the salad. ' One can eat well in the country, because the dishes are simple, and he gets the natural taste of things ; but to come to a table covered with artificial dishes, which he has been accustomed to see in their perfection, and to taste and send away everything in disgust, is a trial of temper which is reserved for the traveller at Lyons. The scenery on the river, from Lyons to Avignon, has great celebrity, and I had determined to take that course to the south. Just at this moment, however, the Rhone had been pronounced too low, and the steamboats were stopped. I probably made the last passage by steam on the Saone, for we ran aground repeatedly, and were compelled to wait till horses could be procured to draw the boat into deep water. It was quite amusing to see with what a regular, business-like air, the postillions fixed their traces to the prow, and whipped into the middle of the river. A small boat was my only resource, and I found a man on the quay who plied the river in what is called batteaux de poste, rough shallops with fiat bottoms, which are sold for firewood on their arrival, the rapidity of the Rhone rendering a return against the current next to impos- sible. The sight of the frail contrivance in which I was to travel nearly two hundred miles, rather startled me, but the man assured me he had several other pas- sengers, and two ladies among them. I paid the arrhes, or earnest money, and was at the river-stairs punctually at four the next morning. To my very sincere pleasure the two ladies were the daughters of my polite friend and fellow passenger from Chalons. They were already on board, and the little shalop sat deep in the water with her freight. Besides these, there were two young French chasseurs going home on leave of absence, a pretty Parisian dress-maker flying from the cholera, a masculine wo- man, the wife of a dragoon, and my friend the captain. We pushed out into the current, and drifted slowly down under the bridges, without oars, the padrone quietly smoking his pipe at the helm. In a few min- utes we were below the town, and here commenced again the cultivated and ornamented banks I had so much admired on my approach to Lyons from the other side. The thin haze was just stirring from the river's surface, the sunrise flush was on the sky, the air was genial and impregnated with the smell of grass and flowers, and the little changing landscapes, as we followed the stream, broke upon us like a series of ex- quisite dioramas. The atmosphere was like Dough- ty's pictures, exactly. I wished a thousand times Vor that delightful artist, that he might see how richly the old cWeauz and their picturesque appurtenances filled up the scene. It would have given a new turn to his pencil. We soon arrived at the junction of the rivers, and as we touched the rapid current of the Rhone, the little shallop yielded to its sway, and redoubled its velocity. The sun rose clear, the cultivation grew less and less, the hills began to look distant and barren, and our little party became sociable in proportion. We closed around I the invalid, who sat wrapped in a cloak in the stern, leaning on her father's shoulder, and talked of Paris and its pleasures — a theme of which the French are j never weary. Time passed delightfully. Without ] being decidedly pretty, our two Parisiennes were quiet- mannered and engaging; and the younger one partic- i ularly, whose pale face and deeply-sunken eyes gave j her a look of melancholy interest, seemed to have thought much, and to feel besides, that her uncertain health gave her a privilege of overstepping the rigid reserve of an unmarried girl. She talks freely, and | with great delicacy of expression and manner. We ran ashore at the little village of Condrieu to breakfast. We were assailed on stepping out of the boat by the demoiselles of two or three rival auberges — nice-looking, black-eyed girls, in white aprons, who seized us by the arm, and pulled each to her own door, with torrents of unintelligible patois. We left j it to the captain, who selected the best-looking leader, | and we were soon seated around a table covered with j a lavish breakfast ; the butter, cheese, and wine ex- | cellent, at least. A merrier party, I am sure, never I astonished the simple people of Condrieu. The pretty j dress-maker was full of good-humor and politeness, and delighted at the envy with which the rural belles 'regarded her knowing Parisian cap; the chasseurs j sang the popular songs of the army, and joked with the maids of the auberge ; the captain was inexhaust- I ibly agreeable, and the hour given us by the padrone was soon gone. We embarked with a thousand adieus from the pleased people, and altogether it was more j like a scene from Wilhelm Meister, than a passage from real life. The wind soon rose free and steady from the north- west, and with a spread sail we ran past Vienne, at ten miles in the hour. This was the metropolis of my old friends, " the Allobrogues," in Cesar's Commen- taries. I could not help wondering at the feelings with which I was passing over such classic ground. The little dress-maker was giving us an account of her fright at the cholera, and every one in the boat was in agonies of laughter. I looked at the guide- book to find the name of the place, and the first glance at the word carried me back to my old school-desk at Andover, and conjured up for a moment the redolent classic interest with which I read the history of the land I was now hurrying through. That a laugh with a modern grisette should engross me entirely, at the moment I was traversing such a spot, is a possibility the man may realize much more readily than the school-boy. A new roar of merriment from my com- panions plucked me back effectually from Andover to the Rhone, and I thought no more of Gaul or its great historian. We floated on during the day, passing chateaux and ruins constantly ; but finding the country barren and rocky to a dismal degree, I can not well imagine how the Rhone has acquired its reputation for beauty. It has been sung by the poets more than any other river in France, and the various epithets that have been ap- plied to it have become so common, that you can not mention it without their rising to your lips ; but the Saone and the Seine are incomparably more lovely, and I am told the valleys of the Loire are the most beautiful part of France. From its junction with the Saone to the Mediterranean, the Rhone is one stretch of barrenness. We passed a picturesque chateau, built very wildly on a rock washed by the river, called " La Roche de Glun," and twilight soon after fell, closing in our view 38 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. to all but the river edge. The wind died away, but the stars were bright and the air mild ; and, quite f.itigued to silence, our little party leaned on the sides of the boat, and waited till the current should float us down to our resting-place for the night. We reached Valence at ten, and with a merry dinner and supper in one, which kept us up till after midnight, we got to our coarse but clean beds, and slept soundly. The following forenoon we ran under the Pont St. Esprit, an experiment the guide-book calls very dan- gerous. The Rhone is rapid and noisy here, and we shot under the arches of the fine old structure with great velocity ; but the " Rapids of the St. Lawrence" are passed constantly without apprehension by travel- lers in America, and those of the Rhone are a mere mill-race in comparison. We breakfasted just below, at a village where we could scarce understand a sylla- ble, the patois was so decided, and at sunset we were far down between the provinces of Dauphiny and Lan- guedoc, w\th the villages growing thicker and greener, and a high mountain within ten or fifteen miles, cov- ered with snow nearly to the base. We stopped op- posite the old castle of Rochemeu.se to pay the droit. It was a demi-fete day, and the inhabitants of a village back from the river had come out to the green bank in their holyday costume for a revel. The bank swell- ed up from the stream to a pretty wood, and the green sward between was covered with these gay people, ar- rested in their amusements by our arrival. We jump- ed out for a moment, and I walked up the bank and endeavored to make the acquaintance of a strikingly handsome woman of about thirty, but the patois was quite too much. After several vain attempts to un- derstand each other, she laughed and turned on her heel, and 1 followed the call of the padrone to the batteau. For five or six miles below, the river passed through a kind of meadow, and an air more loaded with fragrance I never breathed. The sun was just down, and with the mildness of the air, and quiet glide of the boat on the water, it was quite enchanting. Conversation died away, and I went forward and lay down in the bow alone, with a fit of desperate musing. It is as singular as it is certain, that the more one en- ioys the loveliness of a foreign land, the more he feels how absolutely his heart is at home only in his own country. LETTER XXV. INFLUENCE OF A BOATMAN THE TOWN OF ARLES ROMAN RUINS THE CATHEDRAL MARSEILLES — THE PASS OF OLLIOULES THE VINKYARDS TOULON ANTIBES — LAZARETTO — VILLA FRANCA, ETC. I entered Avignon after a delicious hour on the Rhone, quite in the mood to do poetical homage to its associations. My dreams of Petrarch and Vau- cluse were interrupted by a scene between my friend the captain, and a stout boatman, who had brought his baggage from the batteau. The result was an appeal to the mayor, who took the captain aside after the matter was argued, and told him in his ear (that he must compromise the matter, for he dared not give a judgment in his favor ! The man had demanded twelve francs where the regulations al- lowed him but one, and palpable as the imposition was, the magistrate refused to interfere. The captain curled his mustache and walked the room in a terri- ble passion, and the boatman, an herculean fellow, eyed him with a look of assurance which quite astonished me. After the case was settled, I asked an explana- tion of the mayor. He told me frankly, that the fel- low belonged to a powerful class of men of the low- est description, who, having declared first for the present government, were and would be supported by it in almost any question where favor could be f.hown — that all the other classes of inhabitants were mal- contents, and that between positive strength and royal favor, the boatmen and their party had become too powerful even for the ordinary enforcement of the law. The following day was so sultry and warm, that I gave up all idea of a visit to Vaucluse. We spent the morning under the trees which stand before the cafe, in the village square, and at noon we took the steamboat upon the Rhone for Aries. An hour or two brought us to this ancient town, where we -were compelled to wait till the next day, the larger boat which goes hence by the mout 1 ^ of the Rhone to Marseilles, being out of order. We left our baggage in the boat, _rfid I walked up with the captain to see the town. An officer whom we addressed for information on the quay politely of- fered to be our guide, and we passed three or four hours rambling about, with great pleasure. Our first object was the Roman ruins, for which the town is celebrated. We traversed several streets, so narrow that the old time-worn houses on either side seemed to touch at the top, and in the midst of a desolate and poverty-stricken neighborhood, we came suddenly up- on a noble Roman amphitheatre of gigantic dimen- sions, and sufficiently preserved to be a picturesque ruin. It was built on the terrace of a hill, overlook- ing the Rhone. From the towers of the gateway, the view across the river into the lovely province of Lan- guedoc, is very extensive. The arena is an excavation of perhaps thirty feet in depth, and the rows of seats, all built of vast blocks of stone, stretch round it in re- treating and rising platforms to the stirface of the hill. The lower story is surrounded with dens ; and the upper terrace is enclosed with a circle of small apart- ments, like boxes in a theatre, opening by handsome arches upon the scene. It is the ruin of a noble structure, and even without the help of the imagina- tion, exceedingly impressive. It seems to be at pres- ent turned into a play-ground. The dens and cavities were full of black-eyed and happy creatures, hiding and hallooing with all the delightful spirit and gayety of French children. Probably, it was never appro- priated to a better use. We entered the cathedral in returning. It is an antique, and considered a very fine one. The twilight was just falling ; and the candles burning upon the altar, had a faint, dull glare, making the dimness of the air more perceptible. I walked up the long aisle to the side chapel, without observing that my com- panions had left me, and quite tired with my walk, seated myself against one of the gothic pillars, enjoy- ing the quiet of the place, and the momentary relief from exciting objects. It struck me presently that there was a dead silence in the church, and, as much to hear the sound of English as for any better motive, I approached the priest's missal, which lay open on a stand near me, and commenced translating a familiar psalm aloud. My voice echoed through the building with a fulness which startled me, and looking over my shoulder, I saw that a simple, poor old woman was kneeling in the centre of the church, praying alone. She had looked up at my interruption of the silence of the place, but her beads still slipped slowly through her fingers, and feeling that I was intruding possibly between a sincere worshipper and her Maker, I with- drew to the side aisle, and made my way softly out of the cathedral. Aries appears to have modernized less than any town I have seen in France. The streets and the in- habitants look as if they had not changed for a cen- tury. The dress of the women is very peculiar ; the waist of the gown coming up to a point behind, be- tween the shoulder blades, and consequently very short in front, and the high cap bound to the head with broad velvet ribands, suffering nothing but the jet PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. black curls to escape over the forehead. As a class, they are the handsomest women I have seen. Noth- ing could be prettier than the small-featured lively brunettes we saw sitting on the stone benches at every door. We ran down the next morning, in a few hours to Marseilles. It was a cloudy, misty day, and I did not enjoy, as I expected, the first view of the Mediterra- nean from the mouths of the Rhone. We put quite out into the swell of the sea, and the passengers were all strewn on the deck in the various gradations of sickness. My friend the captain, and myself, had the only constant stomachs on board. I was very happy to distinguish Marseilles through the mist, and as we approached nearer, the rocky harbor and the islands of Chateau <f' //"and Pomcguc, with the fortress at the mouth of the harbor, came out gradually from the mist, and the view opened to a noble amphitheatre of rocky mountains, in whose bosom lies Marseilles at the edge of the sea. We ran into the narrow cove which forms the inner harbor, passing an American ship, the " William Penn," just arrived from Phila- delphia, and lying in quarantine. My blood started at the sight of the starred flag ; and as we passed closer and I read the name upon her stern, a thousand recol- lections of that delightful city sprang to my heart, and I leaned over to her from the boat's side, with a feeling of interest and pleasure to which the foreign tongue that called me to bid adieu to newer friends, seemed an unwelcome interruption. * I parted from my pleasant Parisian friend and his family, however, with real regret. They were polite and refined, and had given me their intimacy volun- tarily and without reserve. I shook hands with them on the quay, and wished the pale and quiet invalid bet- ter health, with more of feeling than is common with acquaintances of a day. I believe them kind and sin- cere, and I have not found these qualities growing so thickly in the world that I can thrust aside anything that resembles them with a willing mistrust. The quay of Marseilles is one of the most varied scenes to be met with in Europe. Vessels of all na- tions come trading to its port, and nearly every cos- tume in the world may be seen in its busy crowds. I was surprised at the number of Greeks. Their pic- turesque dresses and dark fine faces meet you at every step, and it would be difficult, if it were not for the shrinking eye, to believe them capable of an ignoble thought. The mould of the race is one for heroes, but if all that is said of them be true, the blood has become impure. Of the two or three hundred I must have seen at Marseilles, I scarce remember one whose countenance would not have been thought remarkable. I have remained six days in Marseilles by the ad- vice of the Sardinian consul, who assured me that so long a residence in the south of France, is necessary to escape quarantine for the cholera, at the ports or on the frontiers of Italy. I have obtained his certificate to-day, and depart to-morrow for Nice. My forced sejour here has been far from an amusing or a willing one. The " mistral" has blown chilly and with suf- focating dryness, so that I have scarce breathed freely since I entered the town, and the streets, though handsomely laid out and built, are intolerable from the dust. The sun scorches your skin to a blister, and the wind chills your blood to the bone. There are beautiful public walks, which, at the more moist sea- sons, must be delightful, but at present the leaves on the trees are all white, and you can not keep your eyes open long enough to see from one end of the prom- enade to the other. Within doors, it is true, I have found everything which could compensate for such evds : and I shall carrr away pleasant recollections of the hospitality of the Messrs. Fitch, and others of my countryman, living here — gentlemen whose courtesies are well-remembered by every American traveller through the south of France. I sank into the corner of the coupe of the diligence for Toulon, at nine o'clock in the evening, and awoke with the gray of the dawn at the entrance of the pass of OUioules, one of the wildest defiles I ever saw. The gorge is the bed of a winter torrent, and you travel three miles or more between two mountains seemingly cleft asunder, on a road cut out a little above the stream, with naked rock to the height of two or three hundred feet almost perpendicularly above you. Nothing could be more bare and desolate than the whole pass, and nothing could be richer or more delightfully cultivated than the low valleys upon which it opens. It is some four or five miles hence to Toulon, and we traversed the road by sunrise, the soft, gray light creeping through the olive and orange trees with which the fields are laden, and the peasants just coming out to their early labor. You see no brute animal here except the mule ; and every coun- tryman you meet is accompanied by one of these ser- viceable little creatures, often quite hidden from sight by the enormous load he carries, or pacing patiently along with a master on his back, who is by far the larger of the two. The vineyards begin to look delightfully ; for the thick black stump which was visible over the fields I have hitherto passed, is in these warm valleys cov- ered already with masses of luxuriant vine leaves, and the hill-sides are lovely with the light and tender ver- dure. I saw here for the first time, the olive and date trees in perfection. They grow in vast orchards planted. regularly, and the olive resembles closely the willow, and reaches about the same height and shape. The leaves are as slender but not quite so long, and the color is more dusky, like the bloom upon a grape. Indeed, at a short distance, the whole tree looks like a mass of untouched fruit. I was agreeably disappointed in Toulon. It is a ru- ral town with a harbor — not the dirty seaport one nat- urally expects to find it. The streets are the cleanest I have seen in France, some of them lined with trees, and the fountains all over it freshen the eye delight- fully. We had an hour to spare, and with Mr. D — e, an Irish gentleman, who had been my travelling com- panion, since I parted with my friend the Swiss, I made the circuit of the quays. They were covered with French naval officers and soldiers, promenading and conversing in the lively manner of this gayest of nations. A handsome child, of perhaps six years, was selling roses at one of the corners, and for a sous, all she demanded, I bought six of the most superb dam- ask buds just breaking into flower. They were the first I had seen from the open air since I left America, and I have not often purchased so much pleasure with a copper coin. Toulon was interesting to me as the place where Napoleon's career began. The fortifications are very imposing. We passed out of the town over the draw- bridge, and werp again in the midst of a lovely landscape, with an air of bland and exhilarating softness, and ev- erything that could delight the eye. The road runs along the shore of the Mediterranean, and the fields are green to the water edge. We arrived at Antibes to-day at noon, within fifteen miles of the frontier of Sardinia. We have run through most of the south of France, and have found it all like a garden. The thing most like it in our country is the neighborhood of Boston, particularly the undulated country about Brookline and Dorches- ter. Remove all the stone fences from that sweet country, put here and there an old chateau on an em- inence, and change the pretty white mock cottages of gentlemen, for the real stone cottages of peasantry, and you have a fair picture of the 6cenery of this eel- 40 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. ebrated shore. The Mediterranean should be added as a distance, with its exquisite blue, equalled by nothing but an American sky in a July noon — its crowds of sail, of every shape and nation, and the Alps in the horizon crested with snow, like clouds half touched by the sun. It is really a delicious climate. Out of the scorching sun the air is bracing and cool ; and though my ears have been blistered in walking up the hills in a travelling cap, I have scarcely experienced an uncomfortable sensation of heat, and this in my winter dress, with flannels and a surtout, as 1 have worn them for the six months past in Paris. The air could not be tempered more accurately for enjoyment. I regret to go in-doors. I regret to sleep it away. Antibes was fortified by the celebrated Vauhan, and it looks impregnable enough to my unscientific eye. If the portcullises were drawn up, I would not under- take to get into the town with the full consent of the inhabitants. We walked around the ramparts which are washed by the Mediterranean, and got an appetite in the sea-breeze, which we would willingly have dis- pensed with. I dislike to abuse people, but I must say that the cuisine of Madame Agarra, at the " Gold Eagle," is rather the worst I have fallen upon in my travels. Her price, as is usual in France, was pro- portionably exorbitant. My Irish friend, who is one of the most religious gentlemen of his country I ever met, came as near getting into a passion with his sup- per and bill, as was possible for a temper so well dis- ciplined. For myself, having acquired only polite French, I can but "look daggers" when I am abused. We depart presently for Nice, in a ricketty barouche, with post-horses, the courier, or post-coach, going no farther. It is a roomy old affair, that has had preten- sions to style some time since Henri Quarte, but the arms on its panels are illegible now, and the. ambi- tious driving-box is occupied by the humble materials to remedy a probable break-down by the way. The postillion is cracking his whip impatiently, my friend has called me twice, and I must put up my pencil. Antibes again! We have returned here after an unsuccessful attempt to enter the Sardinian domin- ions. We were on the road by ten in the morning, and drove slowly along the shores of the Mediterrane- an, enjoying to the utmost the heavenly weather and the glorious scenery about us. The driver pointed out to us a few miles from Antibes, the very spot on which Napoleon landed on his return from Elba, and the tree, a fine old olive, under which he slept three hours, before commencing his march. We arrived at the Pont de Var about one, and crossed the river, but here we were met by a guard of Sardinian soldiers, and our passports were demanded. The commissary came from the guard-house with a long pair of tongs and receiving them open, read them at the longest possible distance. They were then handed back to us in the same manner, and we were told we could not pass. We then handed him our certificates of quar- antine at Marseilles ; but were told it availed nothing, a new order having arrived from Turin that very mor- ning, to admit no travellers from infected or suspected places across the frontier. We asked if there were no means by which we could pass ; but the commis- sary only shook his head, ordered us not to dismount on the Sardinian side of the river, and shut his door. We turned about and recrossed the bridge in some perplexity. The French commissary at St. Laurent, the opposite village, received us with a suppressed smile, and informed us that several parties of travel- lers, among others an English gentleman and his wife and sister, were at the auberge, waiting for an answer from the prefect of Nice, having been turned back in the same manner since morning. We drove up, and they advised us to send our passports by the postillion. with a letter to the consuls of our respective nations, requesting information, which we did immediately. Nice is three miles from St. Laurent, and as we could not expect an answer for several hours, we amused ourselves with a stroll along the banks of the Var to the Mediterranean. The Sardinian side is bold, and wooded to the tops of the hills very richly. We kept along a mile or more through the vineyards, and returned in time to receive a letter from the American consul, confirming the orders of the commissary, but advising us to return to Antibes, and sail thence for Villa Franca, a lazaretto in the neighborhood of Nice, whence we could enter Italy, after seven days quaran- tine! By this time several travelling- carriages had collected, and all, profiting by our experience, turned back together. We are now at the " Gold Eagle," deliberating. Some have determined to give up their object altogether, but the rest of us sail to-morrow morning in a fishing-boat for the lazaretto. Lazaretto, Villa Franca. — There were but eight of the twenty or thirty travellers stopped at the bridge who thought it worth while to persevere. We are all here in this pest-house, and a motley mixture of nations it is. There are two young Sicilians re- turning from college to Messina ; a Belgian lad of seventeen, just started on his travels ; two aristocratic young Frenchmen, very elegant and very ignorant of the world, running down to Italy in their own carriage, to avoid the cholera ; a middle-aged surgeon in the British navy, very cool and very gentlemanly ; a vulgar Marseilles trader, and myself. We were from seven in the morning till two getting away from Antibes. Our difficulties during the whole day are such a practical comparison of the freedom of European states and ours, that I may as well detail them. First of all, our passports were to be vised by the police. We were compelled to stand an hour with our hats off, in a close, dirty office, waiting our turn for this favor. The next thing was to get the permis- sion of the prefect of the marine to embark ; and this occupied another hour. Thence we were taken to the health-office, where a bill of health was made out for eight persons going to a lazaretto! The padrone's freight duties were then to be settled, and we went back and forth between the Sardinian consul and the French, disputing these for another hour or more. Our baggage was piled upon the charrctte at last, to be taken to the boat. The quay is outside the gate, and here are stationed the douanes, or custom-officers, who ordered our trunks to be taken from the cart, and searched them from top to bottom. After a half hour spent in repacking our effects in the open street, amid a crowd of idle spectators, we were suffered to pro- ceed. Almost all these various gentlemen expect a fee, and some demand a heavy one ; and all this trou- ble and expense of time and money to make a voyage of fifteen miles in a fishing-boat ! We hoisted the fisherman's lateen sail, and put out of the little harbor in very bad temper. The wind was fair, and we ran along the shore for a couple of hours, till we came to Nice, where we were to stop for permission to go to the lazaretto. We were hailed off the mole with a trumpet, and suffered to pass. Doubling a little point, half a mile farther on, we ran into the bay of Villa Franca, a handful of houses at the base of an amphitheatre of mountains. A little round tower stood in the centre of the harbor, built upon a rock, and connected with the town by a draw- bridge, and we were landed at a staircase outside, by which we mounted to show our papers to the health- officer. The interior was a little circular yard, sepa- rated from an office on the town side by an iron gra- ting, and looking out on the sea by two embrasures for cannon. Two strips of water and the sky above PENCI LUNGS BY THE WAY. 41 was our whole prospect for the hour that we waited here. The cause of the delay was presently explained by clouds of smoke issuing from the interior. The tower filled, and a more nauseating odor l never in- haled. We were near suffocating with the intolerable smell, and the quantity of smoke deemed necessary to secure his majesty's officers against contagion. A cautious-looking old gentleman, with gray hair, emerged at 'ast from the smoke, with a long cane-pole in his hand, and, coughing at every syllable, requested us to insert our passports in the split at the extremity, which he thrust through the gate. This being done, we asked him for bread. We had breakfasted at seven, and it was now sundown — near twelve hours' fast. Several of my companions had been seasick with the swell of the Mediterranean, in coming from Antibes, and all were faint with hunger and exhaustion. For myself, the villanous smell of our purification had made me sick, and I had no appetite; but the rest ate very voraciously of a loaf of coarse bread, whicli was extended to us with a tongs and two pieces of paper. After reading our passports, the magistrate informed us that he had no orders to admit us to the lazaretto, and we must lie in our boat till lie could send a mes- senger to Nice with our passports and obtain permis- sion. We opened upon him, however, with such a flood of remonstrance, and with such an emphasis from hunger and fatigue, that he consented to admit us temporarily on his own responsibility, and gave the boatmen orders to row back to a long, low stone build- ing, we had observed at the foot of a precipice at die entrance to the harbor. He was there before us, and as we mounted the stone ladder he pointed through the bars of a large inner gate to a single chamber, separated from the rest of the building, and promising to send us some- thing to eat in the course of the evening, left us to take possession. Our position was desolate enough. The building was new, and the plaster still soft and wet. There was not an article of furniture in the chamber, and but a single window; the floor was of brick, and the air as damp within as a cellar. The alternative was to remain out of doors, in the small yard, walled up thirty feet on three sides, and washed by the sea on the other; and here, on a long block of granite, the softest thing I could find, I determined to make an al fresco night of it. Bread, cheese, wine, and cold meat, seethed, Italian fashion, in nauseous oil, arrived about nine o'clock ; and, by the light of a candle standing in a boot, we sat around on the brick floor, and supped very merrily. Hunger had brought even our two French exquisites to their fare, and they ate well. The navy surgeon had seen service, and had no qualms; the Sicilians were from a German university, and were not delicate ; the Marseilles trader knew no better; and we should have been less contented with a better meal. It was superfluous to abuse it. A steep precipice hangs immediately over the laza- retto, and the horn of the half moon was just dipping below it, as I stretched myself to sleep. With a folded coat under me, and a carpet-bag for a pillow, I soon fell asleep, and slept soundly till sunrise. My companions had chosen shelter, but all were happy to be early i risers. We mounted our wall upon the sea, and promenaded till the sun was broadly up, and the breeze j from the Mediterranean sharpened our appetites, and j then finishing the relics of our supper, we waited with what patience we might the appearance of our break- fast. The magistrate arrived at twelve, yesterday, with a commissary from Villa Franca, who is to be our vic- tualler during the quarantine. He has enlarged our limits, by a stone staircase and an immense chamber, on condition that we pay for an extra guard, in the shape of a Sardinian soldier, who is to sleep in our room, and eat at our table. By the way, we have a table, and four rough benches, and these, with three single mattresses, are all the furniture we can procure. We are compelled to sleep across the latter, of course, to give every one his share. We have come down very contentedly to our situa- tion, and I have been exceedingly amused at the facility with which eight such different tempers can amalgamate upon compulsion. Our small quarters bring us in contact continually, and we harmonize like schoolboys. At this moment the Marseilles trader and the two Frenchmen are throwing; stones at some- thing that is floating out with the tide; the surgeon has dropped his Italian grammar to decide upon the best shot; the Belgian is fishing off the wall, with a pin hook and a bit of cheese; and the two Sicilians are talking lingua franca, at the top of their voices, to Carolina, the guardian's daughter, who stands coquet- ting on the pier just outside the limits. I have got out my books and portfolio, and taken possession of the broad stair, depending on the courtesy of my com- panions to jump over me and my papers when they go up and down. I sit here most of the day laughing at the fun below, and writing or leading alternately. The climate is too delicious for discontent. Every breath is a pleasure. The hills of the amphitheatre opposite to us are covered with olive, lemon, and orange trees ; and in the evening, from the time the land breeze commences to blow offshore, until ten or II eleven, the air is impregnated with the delicate per- | ! fume of the orange-blossom, than which nothing could be more grateful. Nice is called the hospital of Europe; and truly, under this divine sky, and with ; the inspiriting vitality and softness of the air, and all j that nature can lavish of luxuriance and variety upon I the hills, it is the place, if there is one in the world, ! where the drooping spirit of the invalid must revive | and renew. At this moment the sun has crept from i the peak of the highest mountain across the bay, and I we shall scent presently the spicy wind from the shore. I close my book to go upon the wall, which I see the surgeon has mounted already with the same object, j to catch the first breath that blows seaward. It is Sunday, and an Italian summer morning. I do not think my eyes ever woke upon so lovely a day. The long, lazy swell comes in from the Mediterranean as smooth as glass ; the sails of a beautiful yacht, belong- ing to an English nobleman at Nice, and lying be- calmed just now in the bay, are hanging motionless about the masts ; the sky is without a speck, the air just seems to me to steep every nerve and fibre of the j frame with repose and pleasure. Now and then in | America I have felt a June morning that approached | it, but never the degree, the fulness, the sunny soft- ness of this exquisite clime. It tranquillizes the mind as well as the body. You can not resist feeling con- tented and genial. We are all out of doors, and my companions have brought down their mattresses, and are lying along the shade of the east wall, talking quietly and pleasantly; the usual sounds of the work- men on the quays of the town are still, our harbor- guard lies asleep in his boat, the yellow flag of the lazaretto clings to the staff, everything about us breathes tranquillity. Prisoner as I am, I would not stir willingly to-day. We have had two new arrivals this morning — a boat from Antibes, with a company of players bound for the theatre at Milan; and two French deserters from the regiment at Toulon, who escaped in a leaky boat, and have made this voyage along the coast to get into Italy. They knew nothing of the quarantine, and were very much surprised at their arrest. They will, probably, be delivered up to the French consul. The new comers are nil put together in the large chamber next 42 PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. us, and we have been talking with them through the grate. His majesty of Sardinia is not spared in their voluble denunciations. Our imprisonment is getting to be a little tedious. We lengthen our breakfasts and dinners, go to sleep early and get up late, but a lazaretto is a dull place after all. We have no books except dictionaries and gram- mars, and I am on my last sheet of paper. What I shall do the two remaining days, lean not divine. Our meals were amusing for a while. We have but three knives and four glasses; and the Belgian, having cut his plate in two on the first day, has eaten since from the mash- bowl. The salt is in a brown paper, the vinegar in a shell; and the meats, to be kept warm during their passage by water, are brought iu the black utensils in which they are cooked. Our tablecloth appeared to- day of all the colors of the rainbow. We sat down to breakfast with a general cry of horror. Still, with youth and good spirits, we manage to be more content- ed than one would expect; and our lively discussions of the spot on the quay where the table shall be laid and the noise of our dinners en plein air, would con- vince a spectator that we were a very merry and suf- ficiently happy company. I like my companions, on the whole, very much. The surgeon has been in Canada and the west of New York, and we have travelled the same routes, and made, in several instances, the same acquaintances. He has been in almost every part of the world also, and his descriptions are very graphic and sensible. The Belgian talks of his new king Leopold, the Sicilians of the German universities; and, when I have exhausted all they can tell me. I turn to our Parisians, whom I find 1 have met all last winter with- out noticing them at the parties; and we discuss the belles, and the different members of the beau mondc, with all the touching air and tone of exiles from par- adise. In a case of desperate ennvi, wearied with studying and talking, the sea-wall is a delightful lounge, and the blue Mediterranean plays the witch to the in- dolent fancy, and beguiles it well. I have never seen such a beautiful sheet of water. The color is pecu- liarly rich and clear, like an intensely blue sky, heaving into waves. I do not find the often-repeated descrip- tion of its loveliness exaggerated. Our seven days expire to-morrow, and we ave pre- paring to eat our last dinner in the lazaretto with great glee. A temporary table is already laid upon the quay, and two strips of board raised upon some in- genious contrivance, I can not well sav what, and cov- ered with all the private and public napkins that re- tained any portion of their maiden whiteness. Our knives are reduced to two, one having disappeared un- accountably ; but the deficiency is partially remedied. The surgeon has " whittled" a pine knot, which floated in upon the tide, into a distant imitation ; and one of the company has produced a delicate dagger, that looks very like a keepsake from a lady ; and, by the re- luctant manner in which it was put to service, the pro- fanation cost his sentiment an effort. Its white han- dle and silver sheath lie across a plate, abridged of its proportions by a very formidable segment. There was no disguising the poverly of the brown paper that contained the salt. It was too necessary to be made an "aside," and lies plump in the middle of the table. I fear there has been more fun in the preparation than we shall feel in eating the dinner when it arrives. The Belgian stands on the wall, watching all the boats from town ; but they pass off down the harbor, one after another, and we are destined to keep our appetites to a late hour, Their detestable cookery needs the 44 sauce of hunger." The Belgian's hat waves in the air, and the commis- sary's boat must be in sight. As we get off at six o'clock to-morrow morning, my portfolio shuts till I find another resting place, probably Genoa. LETTER XXVI. SHORE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN — NICE — FUNERAL SER- VICES OF MARIA THERESK, ARCHDUCHESS OF AUS- TRIA PRINCIPALITY OF MONACO— ROAD TO GENOA — SARDINIA — PRISON OF THE POPE — HOUSE OF CO- LUMBUS — GENOA. The health-magistrate arrived at an early hour on the morning of our departure, from the lazaretto of Villa Franca. He was accompanied by a physician, who was to direct the fumigation. The iron pot was placed in the centre of the chamber, our clothes were spread out upon the beds, and the windows shut. The chlorin soon filled the room, and its detestable odor be- came so intolerable that we forced the door, and rush- ed past the sentinel into the open air, nearly suffocated. This farce over, we were permitted to embark, and rounding the point put inlo Nice. The Mediterranean curves gracefully into the cres- cented shore of this lovely bay, and the high hills lean away from the skirts of the town in one unbroken slope of cultivation to the top. Large, handsome buildings, face you on the long quay, as you approach ; and white chimneys, and half concealed parts of coun- try-houses and suburban villas, appear through the olive and orange trees, with which the whole amplii- theatre is covered. We landed amid a crowd of half- naked idlers, and were soon at a hotel, where we or- dered the best breakfast the town would afford, and sat down once more to clean cloths and unrepulsive food. As we rose from the table, a note, edged with black, and sealed and enveloped with considerable circum- stance, was put into my hand by the master of the ho- tel. It was an invitation from the governor to attend a funeral service, to be performed in the cathedral that day, at ten o'clock, for the " late queen-mother, Ma- ria Therese, archduchess of Austria." Wondering not a little how I came by the honor, I joined the crowd flocking from all parts of the town to see the ceremony. The central door was guarded by a file of Sardinian soldiers; and, presenting my invitation to the officer on duty, I was handed over to the master of ceremonies, and shown to an excellent seat in the centre of the church. The windows were darkened, and the candles of the altar not yet lit; and, by the indistinct light that came in through the door, I could distinguish nothing clearly. A little silver bell tinkled presently from one of the side-chapels, and boys dressed in white appeared, with long tapers, and the house was soon splendidly illuminated. I found my- self in the midst of a crowd of four or five hundred ladies, all in deep mourning. The church was hung from the floor to the roof in black cloth, ornamented gorgeously with silver; and under the large dome, which occupied half the ceiling, was raised a pyra- midal altar, with tripods supporting chalices for in- cense at the four corners, a walk round the lower base for the priests, and something in the centre, surround- ed with a blaze of light, representing figures weeping over a tomb. The organ commenced pealing, there was a single beat on the drum, and a procession en- tered. It was composed of the nobility of Nice, and the military and civil officers, all in uniform and court dresses. The gold and silver flashing in the light, the tall plumes of the Sardinian soldiery below, the sol- emn music, and the moving of the censers from the four corners of the altar, produced a very impressive effect. As soon as the procession had quite entered, the fire was kindled in the four chalices ; and as the white smoke rolled up to the roof, an anthem com- menced with the full power of the organ The sing- ing was admirable, and there was one female voice in the choir, of singular power and sweetness. The remainder of the service was the usual cere- monies of the catholic church, and I amused myself PENCILLIXGS BY THE WAY. 43 with observing the people nbout me. It was little like a scene of mourning. The officers gradually edged in between the seats, and every wom;m of the least pretension to prettiness was engaged in anything but ber prayers lor the soul of the late archduchess. Some of these, the very young girls, were pretty ; and the women of thirty-five or forty apparently were fine- looking; but, except a decided air of style and rank, the fairly grown-up belles seemed to me of very small attraction. I s iw little else in Nice to interest me. I wandered about with my friend the surgeon, laughing at the ri- diculous figures and villanous uniforms of the Sardin- ian infantry, and repelling the beggars, who radiated to us from every corner ; and, having traversed the terrace of a mile on the tops of the houses next the sea, unravelled all the lanes of the old town, and ad- mired all the splendor of the new, we dined and got early to bed, anxious to sleep once more between sheets, and prepare for an early start on the following morning. We were on the road to Genoa with the first gray of the dawn— the surgeon, a French officer, and my- self, three passengers" of a courier barouche. We were climbing up mountains and sliding down with locked wheels for several hours, by a road edging on precipices, an 1 overhung by tremendous rocks, and descending at last to the sea level, we entered Menfore, a town of the little principality of Monaco. Having paid our twenty sous tribute to this prince of a terri- tory not larger than a Kentucky farm, we were suffer- ed I-) cross his borders once more into Sardinia, hav- ing posted through a whole state in less than half an hour. It is impossible to conceive a route of more grandeur than the famous road along the Mediterranean from Nice to Genoa. It is near a hundred and fifty miles, over the edges of mountains bordering the sea for the whole distance. The road is cut into the sides of the precipice, often hundreds of feet perpendicular above the surf, descending sometimes into the ravines formed by the numerous rivers that cut their way to the sea, and mounting immediately again to the loftiest sum- mits. It is a dizzy business from beginning to end. There is no parapet usually, and there are thousands of places where half a "shie" by a timid horse would drop you at once some hundred fathoms upon rocks wet by the spray of every sea that breaks upon the shore. The loveliest little nests of valleys lie between that can be conceived. You will see a green spot, miles below you, in turning the face of a rock ; and riiiht in the midst, like a handful of plaster models on a carpet, a cluster of houses, lying quietly in the warm southern exposure, embosomed in everything refresh- ing to the eye, the mountain sides cultivated in a large circle around, and the ruins of an old castle to a certainty on the eminence above. You descend and descend, and wind into the curves of the shore, losing and regaining sight of it constantly, till, entering at a gate on the sea level, you find yourself in a filthy, nar- row, half-whitewashed town, with a population of beg- gars, priests, and soldiers; not a respectable citizen to be seen from one end to the other, nor a clean woman, nor a decent house. It is so all through Sardinia. The towns from a distance lie in the most exquisitely- chosen spots possible. A river comes down from the hills and washes the wall; the uplands above are al- ways of the very choicest shelter and exposure. You j would think man and nature had conspired to com- j plete its convenience and beauty; yet within, all is I misery, dirt, and superstition. Every corner has a cross — every bench a priest, idling in the sun — every door a picture of the Virgin. You are delighted to emerge once more, and get up a mountain to the fresh air. As we got farther on toward Genoa, the valleys be- came longer by the sea, and the road ran through gar- dens down to the very beach, of great richness and beauty. It was new to me to travel for hours among groves of orange and lemon trees, laden with both fruit and flower, the ground beneath covered with the windfalls, like an American apple-orchard. I never saw such a profusion of fruit. The trees were break- ing under the rich yellow clusters. Among other things, there were hundreds of tall palms, spreading out their broad fans in the sun, apparently perfectly strong and at home under this warm sky. They are cultivated as ornaments for the churches on sacred days. I caught some half dozen views on the way that I shall never get out of my memory. At one place par- ticularly, I think near Fenale, we ran round the cor- ner of a precipice by a road cut right into the face of a rock, two hundred feet at least above the sea, and a long view burst upon us at once of a sweet green val- ley, stretching back into the mountains as far as the eye could go, with three or four small towns, with their white churches, just checkering the broad sweeps of verdure, a rapid river winding through its bosom, and a back ground of" the Piedmontese Alps, with clouds half- way up their sides, and snow glittering in the sun on their summits. Language can not describe these scenes. It is but a repetition of epithets to attempt it. You must come and see them to feel how much one loses to live always at home, and read of such things only. The courier pointed out to us the place in which Napoleon imprisoned the pope of Rome ; alow house, surrounded with a wall close upon the sea ; and the house a few miles from Genoa, believed to have been that of Columbus. We entered Genoa an hour after sunrise, by a noble gate, placed at the western extremity of the crescenled harbor. Thence to the centre of the city was one continued succession of sumptuous palaces. We drove rapidly along the smooth, beautifully paved streets, and my astonishment was unbroken till we were set down at the hotel. Congratulating ourselves on the hiuderances which had conspired to bring us here against our will, we took coffee, and went to bed for a few hours, fatigued with a journey more weari- some to the body than the mind. I have spent two days in merely wandering about Genoa, looking at the exterior of the city. It is a group of hills, piled with princely palaces. I scarce know how to commence a description of it. If there were but one of these splendid edifices, or if I could isolate a single palace, and describe it to you minutely, it would be easy to convey an impression of the sur- prise and pleasure of a stranger in Genoa. The whole city, to use the expression of a French guide-book, " respire la magnificence'" — breathes of splendor ! The grand street, in which most of the palates stand, winds around the foot of a high hill; and the gardens and terraces are piled back, with palaces above them ; and gardens, and tenaces, and palaces still above these, forming wherever you can catch a vista, the most ex- quisite rising perspective. On the summit of this bill stands the noble fortress of St. George; and be- hind it a lovely open garden, just now alive with mil- lions of roses, a fountain playing into a deep oval ba- sin in the centre, and a view beneath and beyond of a broad winding valley, covered with the country vil las of the nobility and gentry, and blooming with all the luxuriant vegetation of a southern clime. My window looks out upon the bay, across which 1 see the palace of Andrea Doria, the great winner of the best glory of the Genoese; and just under me floats an American flag, at the peak of a Baltimore schooner, that sails to-morrow morning for the United 44 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. States. I must close my letter, to send by her. I shall remain in Genoa a week, and will write you of its splendor more minutely. LETTER XXVII. FLORENCE THE GALLERY THE VENUS DE MEDICIS THE TRIBUNE THE FORNARINA THE CASCINO AN ITALIAN FASTA MADAME CATALANI. Florence. — It is among the pleasantest things in this very pleasant world, to find oneself for the first time in a famous city. We sallied from the hotel this morning an hour after our arrival, and stopped at the first corner to debate where we should go. I could not help smiling at the magnificence of the alterna- tives. " To the gallery, of course," said I, "to see the Venus de Medicis." "To Santa Croce," said one, " to see the tombs of Michael Angelo, and Alfieri, and Machiavelli." "To the Palazzo Pitti," said another, " the grand duke's palace, and the choicest collection of pictures in the world." The embarrassment alone was quite a sensation. The Venus carried the day. We crossed the Pi- azza del Granduca, and inquired for the gallery. A. fine court was shown us, opening out from the square, around the three sides of which stood a fine uniform structure, with a colonnade, the lower story occupied by shops and crowded with people. We mounted a broad staircase, and requested of the soldier at the door to be directed to the presence of the Venus with- out delay. Passing through one of the long wings of the gallery, without even a glance at the statues, pic- tures, and bronzes that lined the walls, we arrived at the door of a cabinet, and putting aside the large crim- son curtain at the entrance, stood before the en- chantress. I must defer a description of her. We spent an hour there, but, except that her divine beauty filled and satisfied my eye, as nothing else ever did, and that the statue is as unlike a thing to the casts one sees of it as one thing could well be unlike anoth- er, I made no criticism. There is an atmosphere of fame and circumstantial interest about the Venus, which bewilders the fancy almost as much as her loveliness does the eye. She has been gazed upon and admired by troops of pilgrims, each of whom it were worth half a life to have met at her pedestal. The painters, the poets, the talent and beauty, that have come there from every country under the sun, and the single feeling of love and admiration that she has breathed alike into all, consecrate her mere presence as a place for revery and speculation. Childe Harold has been here, I thought, and Shelley and Words- worth and Moore ; and, farther removed from our sym- pathies, but interesting still, the poets and sculptors of another age, Michael Angelo and Alfieri, the men I of genius of all nations and times; and to stand in the same spot, and experience the same feeling with them, is an imaginative pleasure, it is true, but as truly a deep and real one. Exceeding, as the Venus does beyond all competition, every image of loveliness paint- ed or sculptured that one has ever before seen, the fancy leaves the eye gazing upon it, and busies itself irresistibly with its pregnant atmosphere of recollec- tions. At least I found it so, and I must go there again and again before I can look at the marble sep- arately, and with a merely admiring attention. Three or four days have stolen away, I scarce know how. I have seen but one or two things, yet have felt so unequal to the description, that but for my promise I should never write a line about them. Really, to sit down and gaze into one of Titian's faces for an hour, and then to go away and dream of putting into language its color and expression, seems to me little short of superlative madness. I only wonder at the divine faculty of sight. The draught of pleasure seems to me immortal, and the eye the only Ganyinede that can carry the cup steadily to the mind. How shall I begin to give you an idea of the Fornarina? What can I tell you of the St. John in the desert, that can afford you a glimpse even of Raphael's inspired creations? The Tribune is the name of a small octagonal cab- inet in the gallery, devoted to the masterpieces of the collection. There are five statues, of which one is the Venus de Medicis; and a dozen or twenty pictures, of which I have only seen as yet Titian's Two Venuses, and Raphael's St. John and Fornarina. People walk through the other parts of the gallery, and pause here and there a moment before a painting or a statute; but on the Tribune they sit down, and you may wait hours before a chair is vacated, or often before the oc- cupant shows a sign of life. Everybody seems en- tranced there. They get before a picture, and bury their eyes in it, as if it had turned them to stone. After the Venus, the Fornarina strikes me most forci- bly, and I have stood and gazed at it till my limbs were numb with the motionless posture. There is no affectation in this. I saw an English girl yesterday gazing at the St. John. She was a flighty, coquettish- looking creature, and I had felt that the spirit of the place was profaned by the way she sailed into the room. She sat down with half a glance at the Venus, and began to look at this picture. It is a glorious thing, to be sure, a youth of apparently seventeen, with a leopard-skin about his loins, in the very pride of ma- turing manliness and beauty. The expression of the face is all human, but wrought to the very limit of celestial enthusiasm. The wonderful richness of the coloring, the exquisite ripe fulness of the limbs, the passionate devotion of the kindling features combine to make it the faultless ideal of a perfect human being in youth. I had quite forgotten the intruder for an hour. Quite a different picture had absorbed all my attention. The entrance of some one disturbed me, and as I looked round I caught a glance of my coquet, sitting with her hands awkwardly clasped over her guide-book, her mouth open, and the lower jaw hang- ing down with a ludicrous expression of unconscious- ness and astonished admiration. She was evidently unaware of everything in the world except the form before her, and a more absorbed and sincere wonder I never witnessed. I have been enjoying all day an Italian Festa. The Florentines have a pleasant custom of celebrating this particular festival, Ascension-day, in the open air; breakfasting, dining, and dancing under the superb trees of the Cascino. This is, by the way, quite the loveliest public pleasure-ground I ever saw — a wood of three miles in circumference, lying on the banks of the Arno, just below the town ; not, like most European promenades a bare field of clay or ground, set out with stunted trees, and cut into rectangular walks, or without a secluded spot or an untrodden blade of grass ; but full of sward-paths, green and embowered, the underbrush growing wild and luxuriant between , ivy and vines of all descriptions hanging from the limbs, and winding about every trunk ; and here and there a splendid opening of velvet grass for half a mile, with an ornamental temple in the centre, and beauti- ful contrivances of perspective in every direction. I have been not a little surprised with the enchantment of so public a place. You step into the woods from the very pavement of one of the most populous streets in Florence ; from dust and noise and a crowd of busy people to scenes where Boccacio might have fitly laid his " hundred tales of love." The river skirts the Cascino on one side, and the extensive grounds of a young Russian nobleman's villa on the other; and PENCILLING^ BY THE WAV 49 here at sunset comes all the world to walk and drive, and on festas like this to encamp, and keep holyday under the trees. The whole place is more like a half-redeemed wild- wood in America, than a public promenade in Europe. It is the custom, I am told for the grand duke and the nobles of Tuscany to join in this festival, and breakfast in the open air with the people. The late death of the young and beautiful grand-dutchess has prevented it this year, and the merry-makings are di- minished of one half their interest. I should not have imagined it, however, without the information. I took a long stroll among the tents this morning, with two ladies from Albany, old friends, whom I have en- countered accidentally in Florence. The scenes were peculiar and perfectly Italian. Everything was done fantastically and tastefully. The tables were set about the knolls, the bonnets and shawls hung upon the trees, and the dark-eyed men and girls, with their expressive faces full of enjoyment, leaned around upon the grass, with the children playing among them, in innumera- ble little parties, dispersed as if it had been managed by a painter. At every few steps a long embowered alley stretched off to the right or left, with strolling groups scattered as far as the eye could see under the trees, the red ribands and bright colored costumes contrasting gayly with the foliage of every teint, from the dusky leaf of the olive to the bright soft green of the acacia. Wherever there was a circular opening there were tents just in the edges of the wood, the white festoons of the cloth hung from the limbs, and tables spread under them, with their antique-looking Tuscan pitchers wreathed with vines, and tables spread with broad green leaves, making the prettiest cool cov- ering that could be conceived. I have not come up to the reality in this description, and yet, on reading it, it sounds half a fiction. One must be here to feel how little language can convey an idea of this "gar- den of the world." The evening was the fashionable hour, and with the addition of Mr. Greenough, the sculptor, to our par- ty, we drove to the cascines about an hour before sun- set to see the equipages, and enjoy the close of the festival. The drives intersect these beautiful grounds irregularly in every direction, and the spectacle was even more brilliant than in the morning. The nobil- ity and the gay world of Florence flew past us in their showy carriages of every description, the distinguish- ed occupants differing in but one respect from well- bred people of other countries — they looked happy. If I had been lying on the grass, an Italian peasant, with my kinsmen and friends, I should not have felt that among the hundreds who were rolling past me richer and better born, there was one face that looked on me contemptuously or condescendingly. I was very much struck with the universal air of enjoyment and natural exhilaration. One scarce felt like a stran- ger in such a happy-looking crowd. Near the centre of the grounds is an open space, where it is the custom for people to stop in driving to exchange courtesies with their friends. It is a kind of fashionable open air soiree. Every evening you may see from fifty to a hundred carriages at a time, moving about in this little square in the midst of the woods, and drawing up side by side, one after the other, for conversation. Gentlemen come ordinarily on horse- back, and pass round from carriage to carriage, with their hats off, talking gayly with the ladies within. There could not be a more brilliant scene, and there never was a more delightful custom. It keeps alive the intercourse in the summer months, when there are no parties, and it gives a stranger an opportunity of seeing the lovely and the distinguished without the difficulty and restraint of an introduction to society. I wish some of these better habits of Europe were hnitated in our country as readily as worse ones. After thridding the embowered roads of the cas- cines for an hour, and gazing with constant delight at the thousand pictures of beauty and happiness^ that meet us at every turn, we came back and mingled in the gay throng of carriages at the centre. The valet of our lady-friends knew everybody, and taking a con- venient stand, we amused ourselves for an hour, gazing at them as they were named in passing. Among oth- ers, several of the Bonaparte family went by in a splendid barouche ; and a heavy carriage, with a showy, tasselled hammer-cloth, and servants in dashy liveries, stopped just at our side, containing Madame Catalani, the celebrated singer. She has a fine face yet, with large expressive features, and dark, handsome eyes. Her daughter was with her, but she has none of her mother's pretensions to good looks. LETTER XXVIII. THE PITTI PALACE — TITIAN'S BELLA — AN IMPROVISA- TRICE VIEW FROM A WINDOW ANNUAL EXPENSE OF RESIDENCE AT FLORENCE. I have got into the "back-stairs interest," as the politicians say, and to-day I wound up the staircase of the Pitti Palace, and spent an hour or two in its glorious halls with the younger Greenough, without the insufferable and usually inevitable annoyance of a cicerone. You will not of course, expect a regular description of such a vast labyrinth of splendor. I could not give it to you even if I had been there the hundred times that I intend to go, if I live long enough in Florence. In other galleries you see merely the arts, here you are dazzled with the renewed and costly magnificence of a royal palace. The floors and ceil- ings and furniture, each particular part of which it must have cost the education of a life to accomplish, bewilder you out of yourself quite; and, till you can tread on a matchless pavement or imitated mosaic, and lay your hat on a table of inlaid gems, and sit on a sofa wrought with you know not what delicate and curious workmanship, without nervousness or com- punction, you are not in a state to appreciate the pic- tures upon the walls with judgment or pleasure. I saw but one thing well — Titian's Bella, as the Florentines call it. There are two famous Venuses by the same master, as you know in the other gallery, hanging over the Venus de Medicis — full-length fig- ures reclining upon couches, one of them usually called Titian's mistress. The Bella in the Pitti gal- lery, is a half-length portrait, dressed to the shoulders, and a different kind of picture altogether. The oth- ers are voluptuous, full-grown women. This repre- sents a young girl of perhaps seventeen ; and if the frame in which it hangs were a window, and the love- liest creature that ever trod the floors of a palace stood looking out upon you, in the open air, she could not seem more real, or give you a stronger feeling of the presence of exquisite, breathing, human beauty. The face has no particular character. It is the look with which a girl would walk to the casement in a mood of listless happiness, and gaze out, she scarce knew why. Y r ou feel that it is the habitual expres- sion. Y"et, with all its subdued quiet and sweetness, it is a countenance beneath which evidently sleeps warm and measureless passion, capacities for loving and enduring and resenting everything that makes up a character to revere and adore. I do not know how a picture can express so much — but it does express all this, and eloquently too. In a fresco on the ceiling of one of the private chambers, is a portrait of the late lamented granddutch- ess. On the mantelpiece in the duke's cabinet also is 45 PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAY. a beautiful marble bust of her. It is a face and head | corresponding perfectly to the character given her by j common report, full of nobleness and kindness. The j duke, who loved her with a devotion rarely found in j marriages of state, is inconsolable since her death, and has shut himself from all society. He hardly slept during her illness, watching by her bedside constantly. She was a religious enthusiast, and her health is said to have been first impaired by too rigid an adherence to the fasts of the church, and self-inflicted penance. The Florentines talk of her still, and she appears to have been unusually loved and honored. I have just returned from hearing an improiisatrice. At a party last night I met an Italian gentleman, who talked very enthusiastically of a lady of Florence, celebrated for her talent of improvisation. She was to give a private exhibition to her friends the next day at twelve, and he offered politely to introduce me. He called this morning, and we went together. Some thirty or forty people were assembled in a handsome room, darkened tastefully by heavy cur- tains. They were sitting in perfect silence when we entered, all gazing intently on the improvisatrice, a lady of some forty or fifty years, of a fine countenance, and dressed in deep mourning. She rose to receive us; and my friend introducing me, to my infinite dis- may, as an improvisatore Americano, she gave me a seat on the sofa at her right hand, an honor I had not Italian enough to decline. I regretted it the less that it gave me an opportunity of observing the effects of the " fine phrensy," a pleasure I should otherwise cer- tainly have lost through the darkness of the room. We were sitting in profound silence, the head of the improvisatrice bent down upon her breast, and her hands clasped over her lap, when she suddenly raised herself, and with both hands extended, commenced in a thrilling voice, "Patrice. 1 " Some particular passage of Florentine history had been given her by one of the company, and we had interrupted her in the midst of her conception. She went on with astonishing flu- ency, in smooth harmonious rhyme, without the hes- itation of a breath, for half an hour. My knowledge of the language was too imperfect to judge of the finish of the style, but the Italians present were quite carried away with their enthusiasm. There was an improvisatore in company, said to be the second in Italy; a young man, of perhaps twenty-five, with a face that struck me as the very heau ideal of genius. His large expressive eyes kindled as the poetess went on, and the changes of his countenance soon attract- ed the attention of the company. She closed and sunk back upon her seat, quite exhausted ; and the poet, looking round for sympathy, loaded her with praises in the peculiarly beautiful epithets of the Ital- ian language. I regarded her more closely as she sat by me. Her profile was beautiful ; and her mouth, which at the first glance had exhibited marks of age, was curled by her excitement into a firm animated curve, which restored twenty years at least by its ex- pression. • After a few minutes one of the company went out of the room, and wrote upon a sheet of paper the last words of every line for a sonnet ; and a gentleman who had remained within, gave a subject to fill it up. She took the paper, and looking at it a moment or two, repeated the sonnet as fluently as if it had been written out before her. Several other subjects were then given her, and she filled the same sonnet with the same terminations. Tt was wonderful. I could not conceive of such facility. After she had satisfied them with this, she turned to me and said, that in compliment to the American improvisatore she would give an ode upon America. To disclaim the charac- ter and the honor would have been both difficult and embarrassing even for one who knew the language better than I, so I bowed and submitted. She began with the discovery by Columbus, claimed him as her countryman ; and with some poetical fancies about the wild woods and the Indians, mingled up Montezuma and Washington rather promiscuously, and closed with a really beautiful apostrophe to liberty. My ac- knowledgments were fortunately lost in the general murmur. A tragedy succeeded, in which she sustained four characters. This, by the working of her forehead and the agitation of her breast, gave her more trouble, but her fluency was unimpeded ; and when she closed, the company was in raptures. Her gestures were more passionate in this performance, but, even with my imperfect knowledge of the language, they always seemed called for and in taste. Her friends rose as she sunk back on the sofa, gathered round her, and took her hands, overwhelming her with praises. It was a very exciting scene altogether, and 1 went away with new ideas of poetical power and enthusiasm. One lodges like a prince in Florence, and pays like a beggar. For the information of artists and scholars desirous to come abroad, to whom exact knowledge on the subject is important, I will give you the inventory and cost of my whereabout. I sit at this moment in a window of what was for- merly the archbishop's palace — a noble old edifice, with vast staircases and resounding arches, and a hall in which you might put a dozen of the modern brick houses of our country. My chamber is as large as a ball-room, on the second story, looking out upon the garden belonging to the house, which extends to the eastern wall of the city. Beyond this lies one of the sweetest views in the world — the ascending amphithe- atre of hills, in whose lap lies Florence, with the tall eminence of Ficsolc in the centre, crowned with the monastery in which Milton passed six weeks, while gathering* scenery for his Paradise. I can almost count the panes of glass in the windows of the bard's room; and, between the fine old building and my eye, on the slope of the hill, lie thirty or forty splendid villas, half-buried in trees (Madame Catalani's among them), piled one above another on the steep ascent, with their columns and porticoes, as if they were mock temples in a vast terraced garden. I do not think there is a window in Italy that commands more points of beauty. Cole, the American landscape painter, who occupied the room before me, took a sketch from it. For neighbors, the Neapolitan am- bassador lives on the same floor, the two Greenoughs in the ground-rooms below, and the palace of one of the wealthiest nobles of Florence overlooks the garden, with a front of eighty-five windows, from which you are at liberty to select any two or three, and imagine the most celebrated beauty of Tuscany behind the crimson curtains — the daughter of this same noble bearing that reputation. She was pointed out to me at the opera a night or two since, and I have seen as famous women with less pretensions. For the interior, my furniture is not quite upon the same scale, but I have a clean snow-white bed, a cali- co-covered sofa, chairs and tables enough, and pic- tures three deep from the wail to the floor. For all this, and the liberty of the episcopal garden, I pay three dollars a month ! A dollar more is charged for lamps, boots, and service, and a dark-eyed landlady of thirty-five, mends my gloves, and pays me two vis- its a day — items not mentioned in the bill. Then for the feeding, an excellent breakfast of coffee and toast is brought me for six cents ; and, without wine, one may dine heartily at a fashionable restaurant for twelve cents, and with wine, quite magnificently for twenty- five. Exclusive of postage and pleasures, this is all one is called upon to spend in Florence. Three hun- i died dollars a year would fairly and largely cover the PENCILLIN'GS BY THE WAY. 47 expenses of a man living at this rate ; and a man who would not be willing to live half as well for the sake of his art, does not deserve to see Italy. I have sta- ted these unsentimental particulars, because it is a kind of information I believe much wanted. I should have come to Italy years ago if I had known as much, and I am sure there are young men in our country dreaming of this paradise of art in half despair, who will thank me for it, and take up at once " the pil- grim's sandal-shoon and scollop-shell." LETTER XXIX. EXCURSION TO VENICE — AMERICAN ARTISTS — VALLEY OF FLORENCE — MOUNTAINS OF CARRARA — TRAVEL- LING COMPANIONS — HIGHLAND TAVERN— MIST AND SUNSHINE — ITALIAN VALLEYS — VIEW OF THE ADRI- ATIC — BORDER OF ROMAGNA — SUBJECTS FOR THE PEN- CIL — HIGHLAND ITALIANS ROMANTIC SCENERY A PAINFUL OCCURRENCE AN ITALIAN HUSBAND A DUTCHMAN, HIS WIFE, AND CHILDREN — BOLOGNA THE PILGRIM — MODEL FOR A MAGDALEN. I started for Venice yesterday, in company with Mr. Alexander and Mr. Cranch, two American artists. We had taken the vetturino for Bologna, and at day- light were winding up the side of the amphitheatre of Appenines that bends over Florence, leaving Fiesole risin2 sharply on our right. The mist was creeping up the mountain just in advance of us, retreating with a scarcely perceptible motion to the summits, like the lift of a heavy curtain. Florence, and its long, heavenly valley, full of white palaces sparkling in the sun, lay below us, more like a vision of a better world than a scene of human passion ; away in the horizon the abrupt heads of the mountains of Carrara rose into the sky, and with the cool, fresh breeze of the hills, and the excitement of the pleasant excursion before us, we were three of as happy travellers proba- bly as were to be met on any highway in this garden of the world. We had six companions, and a motley crew they were — a little effeminate Venitian, probably a tailor, with a large, noble-looking, handsome contadina for a wife ; a sputtering Dutch merchant, a fine, little, coarse, good-natured fellow, with his wife, and two very small and very disagreeable children ; an Austrian corporal in full uniform, and a fellow in a straw hat, speaking some unknown laniuase, and a nondescript in every respect. The women and children, and my friends, the artists, were my companions inside, the double dickey in front accommodating the others. Conversation commenced with the journey. The Dutch spoke their dissonant language to each other, and French to us, the contadina's soft Venitian dia- lect broke in like a flute in a chorus of harsh instru- ments, and our own hissing English added to a mix- ture already sufficiently various. We were all day ascending mountains, and slept coolly under three or four blankets at a highland tav- ern, on a very wild Appenine. Our supper was gayly eaten, and our mirth served to entertain five or six I English families, whose chambers were only separated j from the rough raftered dining hall by double cur- tains. It was pleasant to hear the children and nurses | speaking English unseen. The contrast made us j realize forcibly the eminently foreign scene about us. I The next morning, after travelling two or three hours ! in a thick, drizzling mist, we descended a sharp hill, and emerged at its foot into a sunshine so sudden and clear, that it seemed almost as if the night had burst j into mid-day in a moment. We had come out of a j black cloud. The mounlain behind us was capped ! with it to the summit. Beneath us lay a map of a ! hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the eye could span, lay a long sparkling line of water, like a silver frame round the landscape. It was our first view of the Adriatic. We looked at it with the sin- gular and indefinable emotion with which one alway sees a celebrated icater for the first time — a sensation, it seems to me, which is like that of no other addition to our knowledge. The Mediterranean at Marseilles, the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris, affected me in the same way. Explain it who will, or can ! An hour after, we reached the border of Roma&na, the dominions of the pope running up thus far into the Appenines. Here our trunks were taken off and searched minutely. The little village was full of the dark-skinned, romantic-looking Romagnese, and my two friends, seated on a wall, with a dozen curious ga- zers about them, sketched the heads looking from the old stone windows, beggars, buildings, and scenery, in a mood of professional contentment. Dress apart, these highland Italians are like North American In- dians — the same copper complexions, high .cheek bones, thin lips, and dead black hair. The old women particularly, would pass in any of our towns for full- blooded squaws. The scenery after this grew of the kind "which savage Rosa dashed'' — the only landscape I ever saw exactly of the teints so peculiar to Salvator's pictures. Our painters were in ecstasies with it, and truly, the dark foliage, and blanched rocks, the wild glens, and wind-distorted trees, gave the country the air of a home for all the tempests and floods of a continent. The Kaatskills are tame to it. The forenoon came on, hot and sultry, and our lit- tle republic began to display its character. The tai- lor's wife was taken sick ; and fatigue, and heat, and the rousrh motion of the vetturino in descending the mountains, brought on a degree of suffering which it was painful to witness. She was a woman of really extraordinary beauty, and dignified and modest as few women are in any country. Her suppressed groans, her white, tremulous lips, the tears of agony pressing thickly through her shut eyelids, and the clenching of her sculpture-like hands, would have moved any- thing but an Italian husband. The little effeminate villain treated her as if she had been a dog. She bore everything from him till he took her hand, which she raised faintly to intimate that she could not rise, when the carriage stopped, and threw it back into her face with a curse. She roused, and looked at him with a natural majesty and calmness that made my blood thrill. " AspctlaV was her only answer, as she sunk back and fainted. The Dutchman's wife was a plain, honest, affection- ate creature, bearing the humors of two heated and ill-tempered children, with a patience we were com- pelled to admire. Her husband smoked and laughed, and talked villanous French and worse Italian, but was glad to escape to the cabriolet in the hottest of the day, leaving his wife to her cares. The baby scream- ed, and the child blubbered and fretted, and for hours the mother was a miracle of kindness. The " drop | too much," came in the shape of a new crying fit ! from both children, and the poor little Dutchwoman, quite wearied out, burst into a flood of tears, and hic- cupped her complaints in her own language, weeping unrestrainedly for a quarter of an hour. After this she felt better, took a gulp of wine from the black bot- tle, and settled herself once more quietly and resign- edly to her duties. We had certainly opened one or two very fresh veins of human character, when we stopped at the gates. There is but one hotel for American travellers in Bologna, of course. Those who have read Rogers's Italy, will remember his mention of " The Pilgrim," the house where the poet met Lord Byron by appoint- ment, and passed the evening with him which h« de- 4S PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAY. scribes so exquisitely. We took leave of our motley | friends at the door, and our artists who had greatly ad- I mired the iovely Venitiati, parted from her with the regret of old acquaintances. She certainly was, as they said, a splendid model for a Magdalen, " majesti- cal and sad," and, always in attitudes for a picture : sleeping or waking, she afforded a succession of stud- ies of which they took the most enthusiastic advantage. LETTER XXX. EXCURSION TO VENICE CONTINUED BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF BOLOGNA GALLERY OF THE FINE ARTS — RA- PHAEL'S ST. CECILIA— PICTURES OF CARRACC1 — DO- MENICHINOS' MADONNA DEL ROSARIO — GUIDO'S MAS- SACRE OF THE INNOCENTS — THE CATHEDRAL AND THE DUOMO — EFFECTS OF THESE PLACES OF "WORSHIP, AND THE CEREMONIES, UPON THE WIND — RESORT OF THE ITALIN PEASANTRY — OPEN CHURCHES SUBTERRA- NEAN-CONFESSION CHAPEL — THE FESTA — GRAND PRO- CESSIONS — ILLUMINATIONS — AUSTRIAN BANDS OF MU- SIC — DEPORTMENT OF THE PEOPLE TO A STRANGER. Another evening is here, and my friends have crept to bed with the exclamation, "how much we may live in a day." Bologna is unlike any other city we have ever seen, in a multitude of things. You walk all over it under arcades, sheltered on either side from the sun, the elegance and ornament of the lines of pillars, depending on the wealth of the owner of the particular house, but columns and arches, simple or rich, every- where. Imagine porticoes built on the front of every house in Philadelphia or New York, so as to cover the sidewalks completely, and down the long perspective of every street, continued lines of airy Corinthian, or simple Doric pillars, and you may faintly conceive the impression of the streets of Bologna. With Lord Byron's desire to forget everything English, I do not wonder at his selection of this foreign city for a res- idence, so emphatically unlike, as it is, to everything else in the world. We inquired out the gallery after breakfast, and spent two or three hours among the celebrated master- pieces of the Carracci, and the famous painters of the Bolognese school. The collection is small, but said to be more choice than any other in Italy. There certainly are five or six among its forty or fifty gems, that deserve each a pilgrimage. The pride of the place is the St. Cecilia, by Raphael. This always beautiful personification of music, a woman of celestial beauty, stands in the midst of a choir who have been interrupted in their anthem by a song, issuing from a vision of angels in a cloud from heaven. They have dropped their instruments, broken, upon the ground, and are listening with rapt attention, all, except the 6aint, with heads dropped upon their bosoms, over- come with the glory of the revelation. She alone, with her harp hanging loosely from her fingers, gazes up with the most serene and cloudless rapture beam- ing from her countenance, yet with a look of full and angelic comprehension, and understanding of the melody and its divine meaning. You feel that her beauty is mortal, for it is all woman ; but you see that, for the moment, the spirit that breathes through and mingles with the harmony in the sky, is seraphic and immortal. If there ever was inspiration, out of holy writ, it touched the pencil of Raphael. It is tedious to read descriptions of pictures. I liked everything in the gallery. The Bolognese style of color suits my eye. It is rich and forcible, without startling or offending. Its delicious mellowness of color, and the vigor and triumphant power of concep- tion, show two separate triumphs of the art, which in the same hand are delightful. The pictures of Lu- dovico Carracci especially fired my admiration. And Domenichino, who died of a broken heart at Rome, because his productions were neglected, is a painter who always touches me nearly. His Madonna del Rosario is crowded with beauty. Such children I never saw in painting — the very ideals of infantile grace and innocence. It is said of him, that after painting his admirable frescoes in the church of St. Andrew, at Rome, which, at the time, were ridiculed unsparingly by the artists, he used to walk in on his return from his studio, and gazing at them with a de- jected air, remark to his friend, that he "could not think they were quite so bad — they might have been worse." How true it is, that "the root of a great name is in the dead body." Guido's celebrated picture of the "Massacre of the Innocents," hangs just oppositethe St. Cecilia. It is a powerful and painful thing. The marvel of it to me is the simplicity with which its wonderful effects are produced, both of expression and color. The kneel- ing mother in the foreground, with her dead children before her, is the most intense representation of agony I ever saw. Yet the face is calm, her eyes thrown up to heaven, but her lips undistorted, and the muscles of her face, steeped as they are in suffering, still and nat- ural. It is the look of a soul overwhelmned — that has ceased to struggle because it is full. Her gaze is on heaven, and in the abandonment of her limbs, and the deep, but calm agony of her countenance, you see that nothing between this and heaven can move her more. One suffers in seeing such pictures. You go away exhausted, and with feelings harassed and ex- cited. As we returned, we passed the gates of the universi- ty. On the walls were pasted a sonnet printed with some flourish, in honor of Camillo Rosalpina, the laureate of one of the academical classes. We visited several of the churches in the afternoon. The cathedral and the Duomo are glorious places — both. I wish I could convey to minds accustomed to the diminutive size and proportions of our churches in America, an idea of the enormous size and often al- most supernatural grandeur of those in Italy. Aisles in whose distance the figure of a man is almost lost — pillars, whose bases you walk round in wonder, stretch- ing into the lofty vaults of the roof, as if they ended in the sky — arches of gigantic dimensions, mingling and meeting with the fine tracery of a cobweb — altars piled up on every side with gold, and marble, and silver — private chapels ornamented with the wealth of nobles, let into the sides, each large enough for a communion, and through the whole extent of the interior, an un- encumbered breadth of floor, with here and there a solitary worshipper on his knees, or prostrated on his face — figures so small in comparison with the immense dome above them, that it seems as if, could distance drown a prayer, they were as much lost as if they prayed under the open sky ! Without having even a leaning to the catholic faith, I love to haunt their churches, and I am not sure that the religious awe of the sublime ceremonies and places of worship does not steal upon me daily. Whenever I am heated, or fatigued, or out of spirits, I go into the first cathedral, and sit down for an hour. They are always dark, and cool, and quiet ; and the distant tinkling of the bell from some distant chapel, and the grateful odor of the incense, and the low, just audible murmur of prayer, settles on my feelings like a mist, and softens and soothes and refreshes me, as nothing else will. The Italian peasantry who come to the cities to sell or bar- gain, pass their noons in these cool places. You see them on their knees asleep against a pillar, or sitting in a corner, with their heads upon their bosoms ; and, if it were as a place of retreat and silence alone, the churches are an inestimable blessing to them. It seems to me, that any sincere Christian, of whatever faith, PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 49 would find a pleasure in going into a sacred place and sitting down in the heat of the day, to be quiet and devotional for an hour. It would promote the objects of any denomination in our country, I should think, if the churches were thus left always open. Under the cathedral of Bologna is a svbterranean con fission-chapel — as singular and impressive a device as I ever saw. It is dark like a cellar, the daylight faintly struggling through a painted window above the altar, and the two solitary wax candles giving a most ghastly intensity to the gloom. The floor is paved with tomb-stones, the inscriptions and death's heads of which you feel under your feet as you walk through. The roof is so vaulted that every tread is reverberated endlessly in hollow tones. All around are the confes- sion-boxes, with the pierced plates at which the priest within puts his ear, worn with the lips of penitents, and at one of the sides is a deep cave, far within which, as in a tomb, lies a representation on limestone of our Sa- vior, bleeding as he came from the cross, with the apostles made of the same cadaverous material, hang- ing over him! We have happened, by a fortunate chance, upon an extraordinary day in Bologna — afesta, that occurs but once in ten years. We went out as usual after break- fast this morning, and found the city had been deco- rated over-night in the most splendid and singular manner. The arcades of some four or five streets in the centre of the town were covered with rich crimson damask, the pillars completely bound, and the arches dressed and festooned with a degree of gorgeousness and taste as costly as it was magnificent. The streets I themselves were covered with cloths stretched above the second stories of the houses from one side to the other, keeping off the sun entirely, and making in each street one long tent of a mile or more, with two lines of crimson columns at the sides, and fes- toons of gauze, of different colors, hung from win- dow to window in every direction. It was by far the most splendid scene I ever saw. The people were all there in their gayest dresses, and we probably saw in the course of the day every woman in Bologna. My friends, the painters, give it the palm for beauty over all the cities they had seen. There was a grand pro- cession in the morning, and in the afternoon the bands of the Austrian army made the round of the decora- ted streets, playing most delightfully before the prin- cipal houses. In the evening there was an illumina- tion, and we wandered up and down till midnight through the fairy scene, almost literally •« dazzled and drunk with beauty." The people of Bologna have a kind of earnest yet haughty courtesy, very different from that of most of the Italians I have seen. They bow to the stranger, as he enters the cafe; and if they rise before him, the men raise their hats and the ladies smile and courtesy as they go out; yet without the least familiarity which i could authorize farther approach to acquaintance. We have found the officers, whom we meet at the eating-houses particularly courteous. There is some- thing delightful in this universal acknowledgment of a stranger's claims on courtesy and kindness. I could well wish it substituted in our country, for the surly and selfish manners of people in public-houses to each other. There is neither loss of dignity nor commit- ] tal of acquaintance in such attentions ; and the man- ner in which a gentleman steps forward to assist you in any difficulty of explanation in a foreign tongue, or sends the waiter to you if you are neglected, or hands you the newspaper or his snuff-box, or rises to give you room in a crowded place, takes away, from me at least, all that painful sense of solitude and neglect one feels as a stranger in a foreign land. We go to Ferrara to-morrow, and thence by the Po to Venice My letter must close for the present. LETTER XXXI. VENICE — THE FESTA — GONDOLIERS — WOMEN — AN ITAL- IAN SUNSET — THE LANDING — PRISONS OF THE DU- CAL PALACE — THE CELLS DESCRIBED BY BYRON APARTMENT IN WHICH PRISONERS WERE STRANGLED — DUNGEONS UNDER THE CANAL — SECRET GUILLO- TINE — STATE CRIMINALS — BRIDGE OF SIGHS — PAS- SAGE TO THE INQUISITION AND TO DEATH — CHURCH OF SAINT MARC — A NOBLEMAN IN POVERTY, ETC., ETC. You will excuse me at present from a description of Venice. It is a matter not to be hastily undertaken. It has also been already done a thousand times ; and I have just seen a beautiful sketch of it in the public prints of the United States. I proceed with my let- ters. The Venetian festa is a gay affair, as you mav im- agine. If not so beautiful and fanciful as the revels by moonlight, it was more satisfactory, for we could see and be seen, those important circumstances to one's individual share in the amusement. At four o'clock in the afternoon, the links of the long bridge of boats across the Gindecca were cut away, and the broad canal left clear for a mile up and down. It was covered in a few minutes with gondolas, and all the gayety and fashion of Venice fell into the broad prom- enade between the city and the festal island. I should think five hundred were quite within the number of gondolas. You can scarcely fancy the novelty and agreeableness of this singular promenade. It was busy work for the eyes to the right and left, with the great proportion of beauty, and the rapid glide of their fairy-like boats. And the quietness of the thing was so delightful — no crowding, no dust, no noise but the dash of oars and the ring of merry voices ; and we sat so luxuriously upon our deep cushions the while, thridding the busy crowd rapidly and silently, without a jar or touch of anything but the yielding element that sustained us. Two boats soon appeared with wreaths upon their prows, and these had won the first and second prizes at the last year's regatta. The private gondolas fell away from the middle of the canal, and left them free space for a trial of their speed. They were the most airy things I ever saw afloat, about forty feet long, and as slender and light as they could well be, and hold together. Each boat had six oars, and the crews stood with their faces to the beak of their craft ; slight, but muscular men, and with a skill and quick- ness at their oars which I had never conceived. I re- alized the truth and force of Cooper's inimitable de- scription of the race in the Bravo. The whole of his book gives you the very air and spirit of Venice, and one thanks him constantly for the lively interest which he has thrown over everything in this bewitching city. The races of the rival boats to-day were not a regular part of the festa, and were not regularly contested. The gondoliers were exhibiting themselves merely, and the people soon ceased to be interested in them. We rowed up and down till dark, following here and there the boats whose freights attracted us, and exclaiming every moment at some new glimpse of beauty. There is really a surprising proportion of loveliness in Venice. The women are all large, prob- ably from never walking, and other indolent habits consequent upon want of exercise; and an oriental air, sleepy and passionate, is characteristic of the whole race. One feels that be has come among an entirely new class of women, and hence, probably, the far- famed fascination of Venice to foreigners. The sunset happened to be one of those so peculiar to Italy, and which are richer and more enchanting in Venice than in any other part of it, from the charac- 50 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. ter of its scenery. It was a sunset without a cloud ; but at the horizon the sky was died of a deep orange, which softened away toward the zenith almost imper- ceptibly, the whole west like a wall of burning gold. The mingled softness and splendor of these skies is indescribable. Everything is touched with the same hue. A mild, yellow glow is all over the canals and buildings. The air seems filled with glittering golden dust, and the lines of the architecture, and the out- lines of the distant islands, and the whole landscape about you is mellowed and enriched with a new and glorious light. I have seen one or two such sunsets in America; but there the sunsets are bolder and clearer, and with much more sublimity — they have rarely the voluptuous coloring of those in Italy. It was delightful to glide along over a sea of light so richly teinted, among those graceful gondolas, with their freights of gayety and beauty. As the glow on the sky began to fade, they all turned their prows to- ward San Marc, and dropping into a slower motion, the whole procession moved on together to the stairs of the piazzetta ; and by the time the twilight was per- ceptible, the cafes were crowded, and the square was like one great fete. We passed the evening in wander- ing up and down, never for an instant feeling like stran- gers, and excited and amused till long after midnight. After several days delay, we received an answer this morning from the authorities, with permission to see the bridge of sighs, and the prisons of the ducal palace. We landed at the broad stairs, and passing the deso- late cotirt, with its marble pillars and statues green with damp and neglect, ascended the " giant's steps," and found the warder waiting for us, with his enor- mous keys, at the door of a private passage. At the bottom of a staircase we entered a close gallery, from which the first range of cells opened. The doors were broken down, and the guide holding his torch in th^m for a moment in passing, showed us the same dismal interior in each — a mere cave, in which you would hardly think it possible to breathe, with a raised platform for a bed, and a small hole in the front wall' to admit food and what air could find its way through from the narrow passage. There were eight of these ; and descending another flight of damp steps, we came to a second range, differing only from the first in their slimy dampness. These are the cells of which Lord Byron gives a description in the notes to the fourth canto of Childe Harold. He has transcribed, if you remember, the inscription from the ceilings and walls of one which was occupied successively by the victims of the inquisition. The letters are cut rudely enough, and must have been done entirely by feeling, as there is no possibility of tho penetration of a ray of light. I copied them with some difficulty, forgetting that they were in print, and comparing them afterward with my copy of Childe Harold, I found them exactly the same, and I refer you, therefore, to his notes. In a range ofcellsstill below these, and almost suffoca- ting from their closeness, one was shown us in which prisoners were strangled. The rope was passed through an iron grating of four bars, the executioner standing outside the cell. The prisoner within sat upon a stone, with his back to the grating, and the cord was passed round his neck, and drawn till he was choked. The wall of the cell was covered with blood, which had spattered against it with some violence. The guide explained it by saying, that owing to the nar- rowness of the passage the executioner had no room to draw the cord, and to expedite his business his as- sistant at the same time plunged a dagger into the neck of the victim. The blood had flowed widely over the wall, and ran to the floor in streams. With the darkness of the place, the difficulty I found in breathing, and the frightful reality of the scenes before me, I never had in my life a comparable sensation of horror. At the end of the passage a door was walled up. It led in the times of the republic, to dungeons under the canal, in which the prisoner died in eight days from his incarceration at the farthest, from the noisome dampness and unwholesome vapors of the place. The guide gave us a harrowing description of the swelling of their bodies, and the various agonies of their slow death. I hurried away from the place with a sickness at my heart. In returning by the same way I passed the turning, and stumbled over a raised stone across the passage. It was the groove of a secret guillotine. Here many of the state and inquisition victims were put to death in the darkness of a narrow passage, shut out even in their last moment from the light and breath of heaven. The frame of the instrument had been taken away ; but the pits in the wall, which had sustained the axe, were still there ; and the sink on the other side, where the head fell, to carry off the blood. And these shocking executions took place di- rectly before the cells of the other prisoners, within twenty feet from the farthest. In a cell close to this guillotine had been confined a state criminal for six- teen years. He was released at last by the arrival of the French, and on coming to the light in the square of San Marc was struck blind, and died into a few days. In another cell we stopped to look at the attempts of a prisoner upon its walls, interrupted, happily, by his release. He had sawed several inches into the front wall, with some miserable instrument, probably a nail. He had afterward abandoned this, and had, with pro- digious strength, taken up a block from the floor; and, the guide assured us, had descended into the cell below. It was curious to look around his pent prison, and see the patient labor of years upon those rough walls, and imagine the workings of the human mind in such a miserable lapse of existence. We ascended to the light again, and the guide led us to a massive door, with two locks, secured by heavy iron bars. It swung open with a scream, and we mounted a winding stair, and " Stood in Venice on the bridge of sighs." Two windows of close grating looked on either side upon the long canal below, and let in the only light to the covered passage. It is a gloomy place within, beautifully as its light arch hangs in the air from with- out. It was easy to employ the imagination as we stood on the stone where Childe Harold had stood be- fore us, and conjured up in fancy the despair and ag- ony that must have been pressed into the last glance at light and life that had been sent through those bar- red windows. Across this bridge the condemned were brought to receive their sentence in the chamber of the ten, or to be confronted with bloody inquisitors, and then were led back over it to die. The last light that ever gladdened their eyes came through those close bars, and the gay Gindecca in the distance, with its lively waters covered with boats, must have made that farewell glance to a Venetian bitter indeed. The side next the prison is now massively walled up. We stayed, silently musing at the windows, till the old cice- rone ventured to remind us that his time was precious. Ordering the gondola round to the stairs of the piazzetta. we strolled for the first time into the church of San Marc. The four famous bronze horses stood with their dilated nostrils and fine action over the porch, bringing back to us Andrea Doria, and his threat ; and as I remembered the ruined palace of the old admiral at Genoa, and glanced at the Austrian sol- dier upon guard, in the very shadow of the winged lion, I could not but feel most impressively the moral of the contrast. The lesson was not attractive enough, however, to keep us in a burning sun, and we put aside the heavy folds of the drapery and entered. How deliciously cool are these churches in Italy! We walked slowly up toward the distant altar. An PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. M old man rose from the base of one of the pillars, and put out his hand for charity. It is an incident that meets one at every step, and with half a glance at his face I passed on. 1 was looking at the rich mosaic on the roof, but his features lingered in my mind. They grew upon me still more strongly ; and as I became aware of the full expression of misery and pride upon them, I turned about to see what had become of him. My two friends had done each the very same thing, with the same feeling of regret, and were talking of the old man when I came back to them. We went to the door, and looked all about the square, but he was nowhere to be seen. It is singular that he should have made the same impression upon all of us, of an old Venetian nobleman in poverty. Slight as my glance was, the noble expression of sadness about his fine white head and strong features, are still indelible in my memory. The prophecy which Byron puts in- to the mouth of the condemned doge, is still true in J every particular: — " When the Hebrew's in thy palaces, The Hun in thy high places, and the (ireek Walks o'er thy mart, and smiles on it for his ; When thy patricians beg their bitter bread," &c. The church of San Marc is rich to excess, and its splendid mosaic pavement is sunk into deep pits with j age and the yielding foundations on which its heavy I pile is built. Its pictures are not so fine as those of j the other churches of Venice, but its age and historic associations make it by far the most interesting. LETTER XXXII. VENICE SCENES BY MOONLIGHT THE CANALS — THE ARMENIAN ISLAND THE ISLAND OF THE INSANE IMPROVEMENTS MADE BY NAPOLEON SHADKD WALKS — PAVILION AND ARTIFICIAL HILL ANT I- j DOTES TO SADNESS PARTIES ON THE CANALS NARROW STREETS AND SMALL BRIDGES THE RI- ALTO MERCHANTS AND IDLERS SHELL-WORK AND JEWELRY POETRY AND HISTORY — GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY THE FRIULI MOUNTAINS THE SHORE OF ITALY A SILENT PANORAMA THE ADRIATIC PROMENADERS AND SITTERS, ETC. We stepped into the gondola to-night as the shad- ows of the moon began to be perceptible, with orders to Giuseppe to take us where he would. Abroad in a summer's moonlight in Venice, is a line that might nev- er be written but as the scene of a play. You can not miss pleasure. If it were only the tracking silently and swiftly the bosom of the broader canals, lying asleep like streets of molten silver between the marble palaces, or shooting into the dark shadows of the nar- rower, with the black spirit-like gondolas gliding past, or lying in the shelter of a low and not unoccupied balcony ; or did you but loiter on in search of music, \y\nz unperceived beneath the windows of a palace, and listening, half asleep, to the sound of the guitar and the song of the invisible player within ; this, with the strange beauty of every building about you, and the loveliness of the magic lights and shadows, were enough to make a night of pleasure, even were no charm of personal adventure to be added to the enu- meration. We glided along under the Rialto, talking of Belvi- dera, and Othello, and Shylock, and, entering a cross canal, cut the arched shadow of the bridge of sighs, I hanging like a cobweb in the air, and shot in a mo- ment forth to the full, ample, moonlit bosom of the Gindecca. This is the canal that makes the harbor and washes the stairs of San Marc. The Lido lay off at a mile's distance across the water, and, with the j moon riding over it, the bay between as still as the sky I above, and brighter, it looked like a long cloud pencil- led like a landscape in the heavens. To the right lay the Armenian island, which Lord Byron visited so oft- en, to study with the fathers at the convent; and, a little nearer the island of the Insane — spite of its mis- ery, asleep, with a most heavenly calmness on the sea. You remember the touching story of the crazed girl, who was sent here with a broken heart, described as putting her hand through the grating at the dash of every passing gondola, with her unvarying and affect- ing " Venite per me ? Vcnite per me ?" At a corner of the harbor, some three quarters of a mile from San Marc, lies an island once occupied by a convent. Napoleon raised the buildings, and con- necting it with the town by a new, handsome street and a bridge, laid out the ground as a public garden. We debarked at the stairs, and passed an hour in strol- ling through shaded walks, filled with the gay Vene- tians, who come to enjoy here what they find nowhere else, the smell of grass and green leaves. There is a pavilion upon an artificial hill in the centre, where the best lemonades and ices of Venice are to be found ; and it was surrounded to-night by merry groups, amu- sing themselves with all the heart-cheering gayety of this delightful people. The very sight of them is an antidote to sadness. In returning to San Marc a large gondola crossed us, filled with ladies and gentlemen, and followed by another with a band of music. This is a common mode of making a party on the canals, and a more agreeable one never was imagined. We ordered the gondolier to follow at a certain distance, and spent an hour or two just keeping within the softened sound of the instruments. How romantic are the veriest every- day occurrences of this enchanting city. We have strolled to-day through most of the nar- row streets between the Rialto "and the San Marc. They are, more properly, alleys. You wind through them at sharp angles, turning constantly, from the in- terruption of the canals, and crossing the small bridges at every twenty yards. They are dark and cool ; and no hoof of any description ever passing through them, the marble flags are always smooth and clean ; and with the singular silence, only broken by the shuffling of feet, they are pleasant places to loiter in at noon- day, when the canals are sunny. We spent a half hour on the Rialto. This is the only bridge across the grand canal, and connects the two main parts of the city. It is, as you see by en- gravings, a noble span of a single arch, built of pure white marble. You pass it, ascending the arch by a long flight of steps to the apex, and descending again to the opposite side. It is very broad, the centre forming a street, with shops on each side, with alleys outside these, next the parapet, usually occupied by idlers or merchants, probably very much as in the time of Shylock. Here are exposed the cases of shell-work and jewelry for which Venice is famous. The variety and cheapness of these articles are surpri- sing. The Rialto has always been to me, as it is prob- ably to most others, quite the core of romantic local- ity. I stopped on the upper stair of the arch, and passed my hand across my eyes to recall my idea of it, and realize that 1 was there. One is disappointed, spite of all the common sense in the world, not to meot Shylock and Antonio and Pierre. " Shylock and the Moor And Pierre can not be swept or worn away," says Childe Harold ; and that, indeed, is the feeling everywhere in these romantic countries. You can not separate them from the characters with which po- etry or history once peopled them. At sunset we mounted into the tower of San Marc, to get a general view of the city. The gold-duat at- 52 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. mosphere, so common in Italy at this hour, was all over the broad lagunes and the far stretching city ; and she lay beneath us, in the midst of a sea of light, an island far out into the ocean, crowned with towers and churches, and heaped up with all the splendors of architecture. The Friuli mountains rose in the north with the deep blue dies of distance, breaking up the else level horizon ; the shore of Italy lay like a low line-cloud in the west; the spot where the Brenta empties into the sea glowing in the blaze of the sun- set. About us lay the smaller islands, the suburbs of the sea-city, and all among them, and up and down the Gindecca, and away off in the lagunes were sprin- kled the thousand gondolas, meeting and crossing in one continued and silent panorama. The Lido, with its long wall hemmed in the bay, and beyond this lay the wide Adriatic. The floor of San Marc's vast square was beneath, dotted over its many-colored mar- bles with promenaders, its cafts swarmed by the sit- ters outside, and its long arcades thronged. One of my pleasantest hours in Venice was passed here. LETTER XXXIII. palaces — palazzo grimani — old statuary — male and female cherubs — the bath of cleofatra — titian's palace — unfinished picture of the great master — his magdalen and bust — his daughter in the arms of a satyr — beautiful female heads — the churches of venice — buri- al-places of the doges — tomb of canova — de- parture for verona, etc. We have passed a day in visiting palaces. There are some eight or ten in Venice, whose galleries are still splendid. We landed first at the stairs of the Palazzo Grimani, and were received by an old family servant, who sat leaning on his knees, and gazing idly into the canal. The court and staircase were orna- mented with statuary, that had not been moved for centuries. In the ante-room was a fresco painting by Georgione, in which there were two female cherubs, the first of that sex I ever saw represented. They were beautifully contrasted with the two male cherubs, who completed the picture, and reminded me strongly of Greenough's group in sculpture. After examining several rooms, tapestried and furnished in such a style as befitted the palace of a Venetian noble, when Ven- ice was in her glory, we passed on to the gallery. The best picture in the first room was a large one by Cigoli, the bath of Cleopatra. The four attendants of the fair Egyptian are about her, and one is bathing her feet from a rich vase. Her figure is rather a voluptu- ous one, and her head is turned, but without alarm, to Antony, who is just putting aside the curtain and entering the room. It is a piece of fine coloring, rather of the Titian school, and one of the few good pictures left by the English, who have bought up al- most all the private galleries of Venice. We slopped next at the stairs of the noble old Bar- bcrigo Palace, in which Titian lived and died. We mounted the decaying staircases, imagining the choice spirits of the great painter's time, who had trodden them before us, and (as it was for ages the dwelling of one of the proudest races of Venice) the beauty and rank that had swept up and down those worn slabs of marble on nights of revel, in the days when Venice was a paradise of splendid pleasure. How thickly come romantic fancies in such a place as this. We passed through halls hung with neglected pictures to an inner room, occupied only with those of Titian. Here he painted, and here is a picture half-finished, as he left it when he died. His famous Magdalen, hangs on the wall, covered with dirt ; and so, indeed, is everything in the palace. The neglect is melancholy. On a marble table stood a plaster bust of Titian, moulded by himself in his old age. It is a most no- ble head, and it is difficult to look at it and believe hs could have painted a picture which hangs just against it — his own daughter in the arms of a satyr. There is an engraving from it in one of the souvenirs ; but instead of the satyr's head, she holds a casket in her hands, which, though it does not sufficiently account for the delight of her countenance, is an improvement upon the original. Here, too, are several slight sketches of female heads, by the same master. Oh how beautiful they are! There is one, less than the size of life, which I would rather have than his Mag- dalen. I have spent my last day in Venice in visiting churches. Their splendor makes the eye ache and the imagination weary. You would think the surplus wealth of half the empires of the world would scaice suffice to fill them as they are. I can give you no descriptions. The gorgeous tombs of the doges are interesting, and the plana black monument over^ Mari- no Faliero made me linger. Canova's tomb is splen- did ; and the simple slab under your feet in the church of the Frari, where Titian lies with his brief epitaph, is affecting — but, though I shall remember all the se, the simplest as well as the grandest, a description would be wearisome to all who had not seen them. This evening at sunset I start in the post-boat for the mainland, on my way to the place of Juliet's tomb — Verona. My friends, the painters, are so attracted with the galleries here that they remain to copy, and I go back alone. Take a short letter from me this time, and expect to hear from me by the next earliest opportunity, and more at length. A.dieu. LETTER XXXIV. DEPARTURE FROM VENICE A SUNSET SCENE — PADUA SPLENDID HOTEL MANNERS OF THE COUNTRY VICENZA MIDNIGHT LADY RETURNING FROM A PARTY VERONA JULIET'S TOMB THE TOMB OF THE CAPULETS THE TOMBS OF THE SCALIGKRS TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA A WALKING CHRON- ICLE PALACE OF THE CAPULETS ONLY COOL PLACE IN AN ITALIAN CITY BANQUETING HALL OF THE CAPULETS FACTS AND FICTION, ETC. We pushed from the post-office stairs in a gondola with six oars at sunset. It was melancholy to leave Venice. A hasty farewell look, as we sped down the grand canal, at the gorgeous palaces, even less famous than beautiful — a glance at the disappearing Rialto, and we shot out into the Gindecca in ablaze of sunset glory. Oh how magnificently looked Venice in that light — rising behind us from the sea — all her superb towers and palaces, turrets and spires fused into gold and the waters about her, like a mirror of stained glass, without a ripple ! An hour and a half of hard rowing brought us to the nearest land. You should go to Venice to know how like a dream a reality may be. You will find it difficult to realize when you smell once more the fresh earth and grass and flowers, and walk about and see fields and mountains, that this city upon the sea exists out of the imagination. You float to it anc about it and from it, in their light craft, so aerially, that it seems a vision. With a drive of two or three hours, half twilight half moonlight, we entered Padua. It was too late tc see the portrait of Petrarch, and I had not time to gc to his tomb at Argua, twelve miles distant, so, musing on Livy and Galileo, to both of whom Padua was PEXCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 53 home, I inquired for a cafe. A new one had lately been built in the centre of the town, quite the largest and most thronged I ever saw. Eight or ten large, high-roofed halls were open, and filled with tables, at which sat more beauty and fashion than I supposed all Padua could have mustered. I walked through »ne after another, without finding a seat, and was ibout turning to go out, and seek a place of less pre- tension, when an elderly lady, who sat with a party of *even, eating ices, rose, with Italian courtesy, and of- fered ine a chair at their table. I accepted it, and made the acquaintance of eight as agreeable and pol- ished people as it has been my fortune to meet. We parted as if we had known each other as many weeks is minutes. I mention it as an instance of the man- ners of the country. Three hours more, through spicy fields and on a road lined with the country-houses of the Venetian oobles, brought us to Vicenza. It was past midnight, ind not a soul stirring in the bright moonlight streets. 1 remember it as a kind of city of the dead. As we passed out of the opposite gate, we detained for a mo- ment a carriage, with servants in splendid liveries, and i» lady inside returning from a party in full dress. I Kaiely have seen so beautiful a head. The lamps shore strongly on a broad pearl fillet on her forehead, aud lighted up features such as we do not often meet evci> iu Italy. A gentleman leaned back in the corner of tiro carriage, fast asleep — probably her husband! I tiv. Wasted at Verona at seven. A humpbacked cicerone there took me to " Juliet's tomb." A very high w*\f, green with age, surrounds what was once a cemetcn, just outside the city. An old woman an- swered iht bell at the dilapidated gate, and, without 6aying a wt>id, pointed to an empty granite sarcopha- gus, raised '.«pon a rude pile of stones. " Questa?" asked I, wi.h a doubtful look. " Questa," said the old woman. " Questa !" said the hunchback. And here, I was V.I believe, lay the gentle Juliet ! There was a raised \ lace in the sarcophagus, with a hollow- ed socket for the head, and it was about the measure for a woman ! I ran my fingers through the cavity, and tried to imagine the dark curls that covered the hand of Father Lawrence as he laid her down in the trance, and fitted her beautiful head softly to the place. But where was " the tomb of the Capulets?" The beldame took me through a cabbage-garden, and drove otl* a donkey who was feeding on an artichoke that grew on the very spot. " Ecco !" said she, point- ing to one of the slightly sunken spots on the surface. I deferred my belief, and paying an extra paul for the privilege of chipping off a fragment of the sto e cof- fin, followed the cicerone. The tombs of the Scaligers were more authentic. They stand in the centre of the town, with a highly ornamental railing about them, and are a perfect mock- ery of death with their splendor. If the poets and scholars whom these petty princes drew to their court had been buried in these airy tombs beside them, one would look at them with some interest. Now, one asks, " who were the Scaligers, that their bodies should be lifted high in air in the midst of a city, and kept for ages, in marble and precious stones?" With less ostentation, however, it were pleasant to be so disposed of after death, lifted thus into the sun, and in sight of moving and living creatures. I inquired for the old palace of the Capulets. The cicerone knew nothing about it, and I dismissed her and went into a cafe. " Two gentlemen of Verona" sat on different sides ; one reading, the other asleep, with his chin on his cane — an old, white-headed man, of about seventy. I sat down near the old gentleman, and by the time I had eaten my ice, he awoke. I ad- dressed him in Italian, which I speak indifferently; but, stumbling for a word, he politely helped me out in French, and I went on in that language with my in- quiries. He was the very man — a walking chronicle of Verona. He took up his hat and cane to conduct me to casa Capuletli, and on the way told me the true history, as I had heard it before, which differs but lit- tle, as you know, from Shakspere's version. The whole story is in the annuals. After a half hour's walk among the handsomer, and more modern parts of the city, we stopped opposite a house of an antique construction, but newly stuccoed and painted. A wheelwright occupied the lower sto- ry, and by the sign, the upper part was used as a tav- ern. " Impossible !" said I, as I looked at the fresh front and the staring sign. The old gentleman smiled, and kept his cane pointed at it in silence. " It is well authenticated," said he, after enjoying my astonish- ment a minute or two, and the interior still bears marks of a palace. We went in and mounted the dirty staircase to a large hall on the second floor. The frescoes and cornices had not been touched, and, 1 in- vited my kind old friend to an early dinner on the spot. He accepted, and we went back to the cathedral, and sat an hour in the only cool place in an Italian city. The best dinner the house could afford was ready when we returned, and a pleasanter one it has never been my fortune to sit down to ; though, for the meats, I have eaten better. That I relished an hour in the very hall where the masque must have been held, to which Romeo ventured in the house of his enemy, to see the fair Juliet, you may easily believe. The wine was not so bad either that my imagination did not warm all fiction into fact ; and another time, perhaps, I may describe my old friend and the dinner more par- ticularly. LETTER XXXV. ANOTHER SHORT LETTER — DEPARTURE FROM VERONA MANTUA FLEAS MODENA TASSONl's BUCKET A MAN GOING TO EXECUTION — THE DUKE OF MODENA — BOLOGNA AUSTRIAN OFFICERS THE APFENINES MOONLIGHT ON THE MOUNTAINS — ENGLISH BRIDAL PARTY — PICTURESQUE SUPPER, ETC. I left Verona with the courier at sunset, and was at Mantua in a few hours. I went to bed in a dirty hotel, the best in the place, and awoke, bitten at every pore by fleas — the first I have encountered in Italy, strange as it may seem, in a country that swarms with them. For the next twenty-four hours I was in such positive pain that my interest in » Virgil's birthplace" quite evaporated. I hired a caleche, and travelled all night to Modena. I liked the town as I drove in, and after sleeping an hour or two, I went out in search of " Tassoni's buck- et" (which Rogers says is not the true one), and the picture of " Ginevra." The first thing I met was a man going to execution. He was a tall, exceedingly handsome man ; and, I thought, a marked gentleman, even in his fetters. He was one of the body-guard of the duke, and had joined a conspiracy against him, in which he had taken the first step by firing at him from a window as he passed. I saw him guillotined, but I will spare you the description. The duke is tho worst tyrant in Italy, it is well known, and has been fired at eighteen times in the streets. So said the cicerone, who added, that " the d — 1 took care of his own." After many fruitless inquiries, I could find nothing of "the picture," and I took my place for Bologna in the afternoon. I was at Bologna at ten the next morning. As I felt rather indisposed, I retained my seat with the courier for Florence ; and, hungry with travel and a long fast, went into a restaurant, to make the best use 54 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. of the hour given me for refreshment. A party of Austrian officers sat at one end of the only table, breakfasting ; and here I experienced the first rude- ness I have seen in Europe. I mention it to show its rarity, and the manner in which, even among military men, a quarrel is guarded against or prevented. A young man, who seemed the wit of the party, chose to make comments from time to time on the solidity of what he considered my breakfast. These became at last so pointed, that I was compelled to rise and de- mand an apology. With one voice, all except the offender, immediately sided with me, and insisted on the justice of the demand, with so many apologies of their own, that I regretted noticing the thing at all. The young man rose, after a minute, and offered me his hand in the frankest manner ; and then calling for a fresh bottle, they drank wine with me, and I went back to my breakfast. In America, such an incident would have ended, nine times out often, in a duel. The two mounted gens d'armes, who usually attend the courier at night, joined us as we began to ascend the Appenines. We stopped at eleven to sup on the highest mountain between Bologna and Florence, and I was glad to get to the kitchen fire, the clear moon- light was so cold. Chickens were turning on the long spit, and sounds of high merriment came from the rooms above. A bridal party of English had just ar- rived, and every chamber and article of provision was engaged. They had nothing to give us. A compli- ment to the hostess and a bribe to the cook had their usual effect, however ; and as one of the dragoons had ridden back a mile or two for my travelling cap, which had dropped off while I was asleep, T invited them both, with the courier, to share my bribed supper. The cloth was spread right before the fire, on the same table with all the cook's paraphernalia, and a merry and picturesque supper we had of it. The roujrh Tus- can flasks of wine and Etruscan pitchers, the brazen helmets formed on the finest models of the antique, the long mustaches, and dark Italian eyes of the men, all in the bright light of a blazing fire, made a picture that Salvator Hosa would have relished. We had time for a hasty song or two after the dishes were cleared, and then went gayly on our way to Florence. Excuse the brevity of this epistle, but I must stop here, or lose the opportunity of sending. If my let- ters do not reach you with the utmost regularity, it is no fault of mine. You can not imagine the difficulty I frequently experience in getting a safe conveyance. LETTER XXXVI. BATHS OF LUCCA SARATOGA OF ITALY — HILL SCENE- RY RIVF.R LIMA — FASHIONABLE LODGINGS THE VILLA THE DUKE'S FALACE — MOUNTAINS VALLEYS — COTTAGES — FEASANTS — WINDING-PATHS — AMUSE- MENTS — PRIVATE PARTIES — BALLS — FETES A CAS- INO—ORIGINALS OF SCOTT'S DIANA VERNON AND THE MISS PRATT OF THE INHERITANCE — A SUMMER IN ITALY, ETC., ETC. I spent a week at the baths of Lucca, which is about sixty miles north of Florence, and the Saratoga of Italy. None of the cities are habitable in summer for the heat, and there flocks all the world to bathe and keep cool by day, and dance and intrigue by night, from spring to autumn. It is very like the month of June in our country in many respects, and the differ- ences are not disagreeable. The scenery is the finest of its kind in Italy. The whole village is built about a bridge across the river Lima, which meets the Ser- chio a half mile below. On both sides of the stream the mountains rise so abruptly, that the houses are erected against them, and from the summits on both sides you look directly down on the street. Half-way up one of the hills stands a cluster of houses, over- looking the valley to fine advantage, and these are rather the most fashionable lodgings. Round the base of this mountain runs the Lima, and on its banks for a mile is laid out a superb road, at the extremity of which is another cluster of buildings, called the Villa, composed of the duke's palace and baths, and some fifty lodging-houses. This, like the pavilion at Sara- toga, is usually occupied by invalids and people of more retired habits. I have found no hill scenery in Europe comparable to the baths of Lucca. The mountains ascend so sharply and join so closely, that two hours of the sun are lost, morning and evening, and the heat is very little felt. The valley is formed by four or five small mountains, which are clothed from the base to the summit with the finest chestnut woods ; and dotted over with the nest-like cottages of theLuccese peasants, the smoke from which, morning and evening, breaks through the trees, and steals up to the summits with an effect than which a painter could not conceive anything more beautiful. It is quite a little paradise ; and with the drives along the river on each side at the mountain foot, and the trim Avinding-paths in the hills, there is no lack of oppor- tunity for the freest indulgence of a love of scenery or amusement, Instead of living as we do in great hotels, the peo- ple at these baths take their own lodgings, three or four families in a house, and meet in their drives and walks, or in small exclusive parties. The duke gives a ball every Tuesday, to which all respectable strangers are invited ; and while I was there an Italian prince, who married into the royal family of Spain, gave a grand fete at the theatre. There is usually some par- ty everv night, and with the freedom of a watering- place, they are rather the pleasantest I have seen in Italy. The duke's chamberlain, an Italian cavalier, has the charge of a casino, or public hall, which is open day and night for conversation, dancing and play. The Italians frequent it very much, and it is free to all well-dressed people; and as there is always a band of music, the English sometimes make up a party, and spend the evening there in dancing or promena- ding. It is maintained at the duke's expense, lights, music, and all, and he finds his equivalent in the prof- its of the gambling bank. I scarce know who of the distinguished people I met there would interest you. The village was full of coroneted carriages, whose masters were nobles of every nation, and every reputation. The originals of two well-known characters happened to be there — Scott's Diana Vernon, and the Miss Pratt of the In- heritance. The former is a Scotch lady, with five 01 six children : a tall, superb woman still, with the look of a mountain-queen, who rode out every night wilt two gallant boys mounted on ponies, and dashing afte? her with the spirit you would bespeak for the sons of Die Vernon. Her husband was the best horseman there, and a " has been" handsome fellow, of about forty-five. An Italian abbe came up to her one night, at a small party, and told her he " wondered the king of England did not marry her." " Miss Pratt" was the companion of an English lady of fortune, who lived on the floor below me. She was still what she used to be, a much-laughed-at but much-sought per- son, and it was quite requisite to know her. She flew into a passion whenever the book was named. The rest of the world there was very much what it is else- where — a medley of agreeable and disagreeable, intel- ligent and stupid, elegant and awkward. The women were perhaps superior in style and manner to those ordinarily met in such places in America, and the men vastly inferior. It is so wherever I have been on the continent. I remained at the baths a few weeks, recruiting — for the hot weather and travel had, for the first time in PENCILLING^ BY THE WAY. 55 my life, worn upon me. They say that a summer in Italy is equal to five years elsewhere, in its ravages upon the constitution, and so I found it. LETTER XXXVII. HETURN TO VENICE — CITY OF LUCCA — A MAGNIFICENT WALL — A CULTIVATED AND LOVELY COUNTRY — A COMFORTABLE PALACE — THE DUKE AND DUTCHESS OF LUCCA — THE APPKNTNES— MOUNTAIN SCENERY — MO- DENA — VIEW OF AN IMMENSE PLAIN VINEYARDS AND FIELDS — AUSTRIAN TROOPS — A PETTY DUKE AND A GREAT TYRANT SUSPECTED TRAITORS — LADIES UN- DER ARREST — MODENKSE NOBILITY— SPLENDOR AND MEANNESS — CORREGIO'S BAG OF COPPER COIN — PIC- TURE GALLERY CHIEF OF THE CONSPIRATORS — OP- PRESSIVE LAWS — ANTIQUITY — MUSEUM — BOLOGNA — MANUSCRIPTS OF TASSO AND ARIOSTO— THE PO — AUSTRIAN CUSTOM-HOUSE — POLICE OFFICERS — DIFFI- CULTY ON BOARD THE STEAMBOAT VENICE ONCE MORE, ETC. After five or six weeks sejovrat the baths of Lucca, the only exception to the pleasure of which was an attack of the "country fever," I am again on the road, with a pleasant party, bound for Venice ; but passing by cities I had not seen, I have been from one place to another for a week, till I find myself to-day in Mo- dena — a place I might as well not have seen at all as to have hurried through, as I was compelled to do a month or two since. To go back a little, however, our first stopping-place was the city of Lucca, about fifteen miles from the baths ; a little, clean, beautiful gem of a town, with a wall three miles round only, and on the top of it a broad carriage road, giving you on every side views of the best cultivated and loveliest country in Italy. The traveller finds nothing so rural and quiet, nothing so happy-looking, in the whole land. The radius to the horizon is nowhere more than five or six miles ; and the bright green farms and luxuriant vineyards stretch from the foot of the wall to the summits of the lovely mountains which form the theatre around. It is a very ancient town, but the dutchy is so rich and flourishing that it bears none of the marks of decay, so common to even more modern towns in Italy. Here Cesar is said to have stopped to deliberate on passing the Rubicon. The palace of the duke is the prettiest I ever saw. There is not a room in it you could not live in — and no feeling is less common than this in visiting palaces. It is furnished with splendor, too — but with such an eye to comfort, such taste and elegance, that you would respect the prince's affections that should order such a one. The duke of Lucca, however, is never at home. He is a young man of twenty-eight or thirty, and spends his time and money in travelling, as caprice takes him. He has been now for a year at Vienna, where he spends the revenue of these rich plains most lavishly. The dutchess, too, travels always, but in a different direction, and the people complain loudly of the desertion. For many years they have now been both absent and parted. The duke is a member of the royal family of Spain, and at the death of Maria Louisa of Parma, he becomes Duke of Par- ma, and the dutchy goes to Tuscany. From Lucca we crossed the Appenines, by a road seldom travelled, performing the hundred miles to Modena in three days. We suffered, as all must who leave the high roads in continental countries, more privations than the novelty was worth. The moun- tain scenery was fine, of course, but I think less so than that on the passes between Florence and Bologna, the account of which I wrote a few weeks since. We were too happy to get to Modena. Modena lies in the vast campagnia lying between the Appeuines and the Adriatic — an immense plain looking like the sea as far as the eye can stretch from north to south. The view of it from the mountains in descending is magnificent beyond description. The capital of the little dutchy lay in the midst of us, like a speck on a green carpet, and smaller towns and rivers varied its else unbroken surface of vineyards and fields. We reached the gates just as a .'me sunset was redden- ing the ramparts and towers, and, giving up our pass- ports to the soldier on guard, rattled in to the hotel. The town is full of Austrian troops, and in our walk to the ducal palace we met scarce any one else. The i streets look gloomy and neglected, and the people singularly dispirited and poor. This petty duke of Modena is a man of about fifty, and said to be the ■ greatest tyrant after Don Miguel in the world. The prisons are full of suspected traitors: one hundred and thirty of the best families of the dutchy are ban- ished for liberal opinions; three hundred and over are now under arrest (among them a considerable number | of ladies); and many of the Modenese nobility are I now serving in the galleys for conspiracy. He has been shot at eighteen times. The last man who at- tempted it, as I stated in a former letter, was executed the morning I passed through Modena on my return from Venice. With all this he is a fine soldier, and his capital looks in all respects like a garrison in the first style of discipline. He is just now absent at a chateau three miles in the country. The ralace is a union of splendor and meanness within. The endless succession of state apartments are gorgeously draped and ornamented, but the en- trance halls and intermediate passages are furnished with an economy you would scarce find exceeded in the "worst inn's worst room." Modena is Corregio's birthplace, and it was from a duke of Modena that he received the bag of copper coin which occasioned his j death. It was, I think, the meager reward of his celebrated "Night," and he broke a bloodvessel in j carrying it to his house. The duke has sold this pic- ture, as well as every other other sufficiently cele- brated to bring a princely price. His gallery is a heap of trash, with but here and there a redeeming thing. Among others, there is a portrait of a boy, I think by Rembrandt, very intellectual and lofty, yet with all the youthfulness of fourteen ; and a copy of " Giorgione's mistress," the " love in life" of the Manfrein palace, so admired by Lord Byron. There is also a remarkably fine crucifixion, I forget by whom. The front of the palace is renowned for its beauty. In a street near it, we passed a house half battered down by cannon. It was the residence of the chief of a late conspiracy, who was betrayed a few hours before his plot was ripe. He refused to surrender, and before the ducal troops had mastered his house, the revolt commenced and the duke was driven from Modena. He returned in a week or two with some three thousand Austrians, and has kept possession by their assistance ever since. While we were waiting dinner at the hotel, I took up a volume of the Mode- nese law, and opened upon a statute forbidding all subjects of the dutchy to live out of the duke's territo- ries under pain of the entire confiscation of their prop- erty. They are liable to arrest, also, if it is suspected that they are taking measures to remove. The alter- natives are oppression here or poverty elsewhere, and the result is that the duke has scarce a noble left in his realm. Modena is a place of great antiquity. It was a strong-hold in the time of Cesar, and after his death was occupied by Brutus, and besieged by Antony. There are no traces left, except some mutilated and uncettain relics in the museum. We drove to Bologna the following morning, and I slept once more in Rogers's chamber at "the Pilgrim '* 56 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. I have described this city, which I passed on my way to Venice, so fully before, that I pass it over now with the mere mention. I should not forget, however, my acquaintance with a snuffy little librarian, who showed me the manuscripts of Tasso and Ariosto, with much amusing importance. We crossed the Po to the Austrian custom-house. Our trunks were turned inside out, our papers and books examined, our passports studied for flaws — as usual. After two hours of vexation, we were permit- ted to go on board the steamboat, thanking Heaven that our troubles were over for a week or two, and giving Austria the common benediction she gets from travellers. The ropes were cast off from the pier when a police retainer came running to the boat, and ordered our whole party on shore, bag and baggage. Our passports, which had been retained to be sent on to Venice by the captain, were irregular. We had not passed by Florence, and they had not the signa- ture of the Austrian ambassador. We were ordered imperatively back over the Po, with a flat assurance that without first going to Florence, we never could see Venice. To the ladies of the party, who had made themselves certain of seeing this romance of cities in twelve hours, it was a sad disappointment, and after seeing them safely seated in the return shallop, I thought I would go and make a desperate appeal to the commissary in person. My nominal commission as attache to the legation at Paris, served me in this case as it had often done before, and making myself and the honor of the American nation responsible for the innocent designs of a party of ladies upon Venice, the dirty and surly commissary signed our passports and permitted us to remand our baggage. It was with unmingled pleasure that I saw again the towers and palaces of Venice rising from the sea. The splendid approach to the Piazzetta ; the transfer to the gondola and its soft motion ; the swift and still glide beneath the balconies of palaces, with whose history I was familiar; and the renewal of my own first impressions in the surprise and delight of others, made up, altogether, a moment of high happiness. There is nothing like — nothing equal to Venice. She is the city of the imagination — the realization of ro- mance — the queen of splendor and softness and luxury. Allow all her decay — feel all her degradation — see the " Huns in her palaces," and the " Greek upon her mart," and, after all, she is alone in the world for beauty, and, spoiled as she has been by successive conquerors, almost for riches too. Her churches of marble, with' their floors of precious stones, and walls of gold and mosaic ; her ducal palace, with its world of art and massy magnificence ; her private palaces, with their fronts of inland gems, and balconies and towers of inimitable workmanship and richness; her lovely islands and mirror-like canals — all distinguish her, and will till the sea rolls over her, as one of the wonders of time. LETTER XXXVIII. VENrCE — CHURCH OF THE JESUITS — A MARBLE CURTAIN —ORIGINAL OF TITIAN's MARTYRDOM OF ST. LAW- RENCE—A SUMMER MORNING ARMENIAN ISLAND VISIT TO A CLOISTER — A CELEBRATED MONK — THE POET'S STUDY ILLUMINATED COPIES OF THE BIBLE THE STRANGER'S BOOK A CLEAN PRINTING-OF- FICE THE HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE INNOCENT AND HAPPY-LOOKING MANIACS — THE CELLS FOR UN- GOVERNABLE LUNATICS — BARBARITY OF THE KEEPER MISERABLE PROVISIONS — ANOTHER GLANCE AT THE PRISONS UNDER THE DUCAL PALACE— THE OFFICE OF EXECUTIONER — -THE ARSENAL— THE STATE GALLERY — THE ARMOR OF HENRY THE FOURTH — A CURIOUS KEY— MACHINES FOR TORTURE, ETC. In a first visit to a great European city it is difficult not to let many things escape notice. Among several churches which 1 did not see when I was here before, is that of the Jesuits. It is a temple worthy of the ce- lebrity of this splendid order. The proportions are finer than those of most of the Venetian churches, and the interior is one tissue of curious marbles and gold. As we entered, we were first struck with the grace and magnificence of a large heavy curtain, hang- ing over the pulpit, the folds of which, and the figures wrought upon it, struck us as unusually elegant and ingenious. Our astonishment was not lessened when we found it was one solid mass of verd-antique marble. Its sweep over the side and front of the pulpit is as careless as if it were done by the wind. The whole ceiling of the church is covered with sequin gold — the finest that is coined. In one of the side chapels is the famous " Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," by Titian. A fine copy of it (said in the catalogue to be the original) was exhibited in the Boston Athenaeum a year or two since. It is Sunday, and the morning has been of a heav- enly, summer, sunny calmness, such as is seen often in Italy, and once in a year, perhaps, in New England. It is a kind of atmosphere that to breathe is to be grateful and happy. We have been to the Armenian island — a little gem on the bosom of the Lagune, a mile from Venice, where stands the monastery, to which place Lord Byron went daily to study and trans- late with the fathers. There is just room upon it for a church, a convent, and a little garden. It looks afloat on the water. Our gondola glided up to the clean stone stairs, and we were received by one of the order, a hale but venerable looking monk, in the Ar- menian dress, the long black cassock and sjnall round cap, his beard long and scattered with gray, and his complexion and eyes of a cheerful, child-like clearness, such as regular and simple habits alone can give. I inquired, as we walked through the cloister, for the fa- ther with whom Lord Byron studied, and of whom the poet speaks so often and so highly in his letters. The monk smiled and bowed modestly, and related a little incident that had happened to him at Padua, where he had met two American travellers, who had asked him of himself in the same manner. He had forgotten their names, but from his description 1 presumed one to have been Professor Longfellow, of Bowdoin uni- versity. The stillness and cleanliness about the convent, as we passed through the cloisters and halls, rendered the impression upon a stranger delightful. We passed the small garden, in which grew a stately oleander in full blossom, and thousands of smaller flowers, in neat beds and vases, and after walking through the church, a plain and pretty me, we came to the library, where the monk had studied with the poet. It is a proper place for study — disturbed by nothing but the dash of oars from a passing gondola, or the scream of a sea- bird, and well furnished with books in every language, and very luxurious chairs. The monk showed us an encyclopaedia, presented to himself by an English lady of rank, who had visited the convent often. His hand- some eyes flashed as he pointed to it on the shelves. We went next into a smaller room, where the more precious manuscripts are deposited, and he showed us curious illuminated copies of the Bible, and gave us the strangers book to inscribe our names. Byron had scrawled his there before us, and the emperess Ma- ria Louisa had written hers twice on separate visits. The monk then brought us a volume of prayers, in twenty-five languages, translated by himself. We bought copies, and upon some remark of one of the ladies upon his acquirements, he ran from one Ian guage to another, speaking English, French, Italian, German, and Dutch, with equal facility. His English PENCILLING^ BY THE WAY. 57 was quite wonderful; and a lady from Rotterdam, who was with us, pronounced his Dutch and German excellent. We tlien bought small histories of the or- der, written by an English gentleman, who had studied at the island, and passed on to the printing-office— the first clean one I ever saw, and quite the best appointed. Here the monks print their bibles and prayer-books in really beautiful Armenian type, beside almanacs, and other useful publications for Constantinople, and other parts of Turkey. The monk wrote his name at our request (Pascal Aucher) in the blank leaves of our books, and we parted ftom him at the water-stairs with sincere regret. I recommend this monastery to all travellers to Venice. On our return we passed near an island, upon which stands a single building — an insane hospital. I was not very curious to enter it, but the gondolier assured us that it was a common visit for strangers, and we con- sented to go in. We were received by the keeper, who went through the horrid scene like a regular cicerone, giving us a cold and rapid history of every patient that arrested our attention. The men's apart- ment was the first, and I should never have supposed them insane. They were all silent, and either read or slept like the inmates of common hospitals. We came to a side door, and as it opened, the confusion of a hundred tongues burst through, and we were intro- duced into the apartment for women. The noise was deafening. After traversing a short gallery, we entered a large hall, containing perhaps fifty females. There was a simultaneous smoothing back of the hair and prinking of the dress through the room. These, the keeper said, were the well-behaved patients, and more innocent and happy-looking people I never saw. If to be happy is to be wise, I should believe with the mad philosopher, that the world and the lunatic should change names. One large, fine-looking woman took upon herself to do the honors of the place, and came forward with a graceful courtesy and a smile of conde- scension and begged the ladies to take oft' their bon- nets, and offered me a chair. Even with her closely- shaven head and coarse (lannel dress, she seemed a la- dy. The keeper did not know her history. Her at- tentions were occasionally interrupted by a stolen glance at the keeper, and a shrinking in of the shoul- ders, like a child that had been whipped. One hand- some and perfectly healthy-looking girl of eighteen, walked up and down the hall, with her arms folded, and a sweet smile on her face, apparently lost in pleas- ing thought, and taking no notice of us. Only one was in bed, and her face might have been a conception of Michael Angelo for horror. Her hair was uncut, and fell over her eyes, her tongue hung from her mouth, her eyes were sunken and restless, and the deadly pallor over features drawn into the intensest look of mental a^ony completed a picture that made my heart sick. Her bed was clean, and she was as well cared for as she could be, apparently. We mounted a flight of stairs to the cells. Here were confined those who were violent and ungoverna- ole. The mingled souuds that came through the £ratin2:$ as we passed were terrific. Laughter of a demoniac wildness, moans, complaints in every lan- guage, screams — every sound that could express im- j patience and fear and suffering saluted our ears. The ! keeper opened most of the cells and went in, rousing occasionally one that was asleep, and insisting that all should appear at the grate. I remonstrated, of course, against such a piece of barbarity, but he said he did it for all strangers, and took no notice of our pity. The cells were small, just large enough for a bed, up- on the post of which hung a small coarse cloth bag, containing two or three loaves of the coarsest bread. There was no other furniture. The beds were bags of straw, without sheets or pillows, and each had a coarse piece of matting for a covering. I expressed some horror at the miserable provision made for their comfort, but was told that they broke and injured themselves with any loose furniture, and were so reck- less in their habits, that it was impossible to give them any other bedding than straw, which was changed ev- ery day. I observed that each patient had a wisp of long straw tied up in a bundle, given them, as the keeper said, to employ their hands and amuse them. The wooden blind before one of the gratings was re- moved, and a girl flew to it with the ferocity of a tiger, thrust her hands at us through the bars, and threw her bread out into the passage, with a look of violent and uncontrolled anger such as I never saw. She was tall and very fine-looking. In another cell lay a poor creature, with her face dreadfully torn, and her hands tied strongly behind her. She was tossing about restlessly upon her straw, and muttering to herself in- distinctly. The man said she tore her face and bosom whenever she could get her hands free, and was his worst patient. In the last cell was a girl of eleven or twelve years, who began to cry piteously the moment the bolt was drawn. She was in bed, and uncovered her head very unwillingly, and evidently expected to be whipped. There was another range of cells above, but we had seen enough, and were glad to get out upon the calm Lagune. There could scarcely be a stronger contrast than between those two islands lying side by side — the first the very picture of regularity and happiness, and the last a refuge for distraction and misery. The feeling of gratitude to God for reason after such a scene is irresistible. In visiting again the prisons under the ducal palace, several additional circumstances were told us. The condemned were compelled to become executioners. They were led from their cells into the dark passage where stood the secret guillotine, and without warning forced to put to death a fellow-creature either by this instrument, or the more horrible method of strangling against a grate. The guide said that the office of ex- ecutioner was held in such horror that it was impossi- ble to fill it, and hence this dreadful alternative. When a prisoner was about to be executed, his clothes were sent home to his family with the message, that " the state would care for him." How much more agoni- zing do these circumstances seem, when we remember that most of the victims were men of rank and educa- tion, condemned on suspicion of political crimes, and often with families refined to a most unfortunate ca- pacity for mental torture ! One ceases to regret the fall of the Venetian republic, when he sees with how much crime and tyranny her splendor was accompa- nied. I saw at the arsenal to-day the model of the " Bu- centaur," the state galley in which the doge of Venice went out annually to marry him to the sea. This poetical relic (which, in Childe Harold's time, " lay rotting unrestored") was burnt by the French — why, I can not conceive. It was a departure from their usual habit of respect to the curious and beautiful; and if they had been jealous of such a vestige of the grandeur of a conquered people, it might at least have been sent to Paris as easily as "Saint Mark's steeds of brass," and would have been as great a curi- osity. I would rather have seen the Bucentaur than all their other plunder. The arsenal contains many other treasures. The armor given to the city of Venice by Henry the Fourth is there, and a curious key con- structed to shoot poisoned needles, and used by one of the Henrys, I have forgotten which, to despatch any one who offended him in his presence. One or two curious machines for torture were shown us — j mortars into which the victim was put, with an iron | armor open only at the ear, which was screwed down I upon him till his head was crushed, or confession I stopped the torture. 58 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER XXXIX. VENICE SAN MARC'S CHURCH — RECOCLECTIONS OF HOME FESTA AT THE LIDO A POETICAL SCENE AN ITAL- IAN SUNSET — PALACE OF MANFRINI PESARO'S PAL- ACE AND COUNTRY RESIDENCE — CHURCH OF SAINT MARY OF NAZARETH — PADUA THE UNIVERSITY- STATUES OF DISTINGUISHED FOREIGNERS — THE PUB- LIC PALACE — BUST OF TITUS LIVY BUST OF PE- TRARCH — CHURCH OP ST. ANTONY DURING MASS THE SAINT'S CHIN AND TONGUE MARTYRDOM OF ST. AGATHA AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN SOLDIERS TRAVELLER'S RECORD-BOOK — PETRARCH'S COTTAGE AND TOMB ITALIAN SUMMER AFTERNOON — THE PO- ET'S HOUSE A FINE VIEW THE ROOM WHERE PE- TRARCH DIED, ETC. I was loitering down one of the gloomy aisles of San Marc's church, just at twilight this evening, lis- tening to the far-off Ave Maria in one of the distant chapels, when a Boston gentleman, who I did not know was abroad, entered with his family, and passed up to the altar. It is difficult to conceive with what a title the half-forgotten circumstances of a home, so far away, rush back upon one's heart in a strange land, after a long absence, at the sight of familiar faces. I could realize nothing about me after it — the glittering mosaic of precious stones under my feet, the gold and splendid colors of the roof above me, the echoes of the monotonous chant through the arches — foreign and strange as these circumstances all were. I was irresistibly at home, the familiar pictures of my native place filling my eye, and the recollections of those whom I love and honor there crowding upon my heart with irrepressible emotion. The feeling is a painful one, and with the necessity for becoming again a for- getful wanderer, remembering home only as a dream, one shrinks from such things. The reception of a letter, even, destroys a day. There has been a grand festa to-day at the Lido. This, you know, is a long island, forming part of the sea-wall of Venice. It is, perhaps, five or six miles long, covered in part with groves of small trees, and a fine green sward ; and to the Venetians, to whom leaves and grass are holyday novelties, is the scene of their gayest festas. They were dancing and dining under the trees ; and in front of the fort which crowns the island, the Austrian commandant had pitched his tent, and with a band of military music, the officers were waltzing with ladies in a circle of green-sward, making altogether a very poetical scene. We passed an hour or two wandering among this gay and unconscious people, and came home by one of the loveliest sunsets that ever melted sea and sky together. Venice looked like a vision of a city hanging in mid-air. "We have been again to that delightful palace of Manfrini. The " Portia swallowing fire," the Rem- brandt portrait, the far-famed "Giorgione, son and wife," and twenty others, which to see is to be charm- ed, delighted me once more. I believe the surviving Manfrein is the only noble left in Venice. Pesaro, who disdained to live in his country after its liberty was gone, died lately in London. His palace here is the finest structure I have seen, and his country-house on the Brenta is a paradise. It must have been a strong feeling which exiled him from them for eigh- teen years. In coming from the Manfrini, we stopped at the church of " St. Mary of Nazareth." This is one of those whose cost might buy a kingdom. Its gold and marbles oppress one with their splendor. In the cen- tre of the ceiling is a striking fresco of the bearing of " Loretto's chapel through the air;" and in one of the corners a lovely portrait of a boy looking over a bal- ustrade, done by the artist at fourteen years of age! Padua. — We have passed two days in this venera- ble city of learning, including a visit to Petrarch's tomb at Arqua. The university here is still in its glory, with fifteen hundred students. It has never declined, I believe, since Livy's time. The beautiful inner court has two or three galleries, crowded with the arms of the nobles and distinguished individuals who have received its honors. It has been the " cradle of princes" from every part of Europe. Around one of the squares of the city, stand forty or fifty statues of the great and distinguished foreign- ers who have received their education here. It hap- pened to be the month of vacation, and we could not see the interior. At a public palace, so renowned for the size and singular architecture of its principal hall, we saw a very antique bust of Titus Livy — a fine, cleanly-chis- elled, scholastic old head, that looked like the spirit of Latin imbodied. We went thence to the Duomo, where they show a beautiful bust of Petrarch, who lived at Padua some of the latter years of his life. It is a softer and more voluptuous conntenance than is given him in the pictures. The church of Saint Antony here has stood just six hundred years. It occupied a century in building, and is a rich and noble old specimen of the taste of the times, with eight cupolas and towers, twenty-seven chapels inside, four immense organs, and countless statues and pictures. Saint Antony's body lies in the midst of the principal chapel, which is surrounded with relievos representing his miracles, done in the best manner of the glorious artists of antiquity. We were there during mass, and the people were nearly suffocating themselves in the press to touch the altar and tomb of the saint. This chnpel was formerly lit by massive silver lamps, which Napoleon took, pre- senting them with their models in gilt. He also ex- acted from them three thousand sequins for permission to retain the chin and tongue of St. Antony, which works miracles still, and are preserved in a splendid chapel with immense brazen doors. Behind the main altar I saw a harrowing picture by Teipolo, of the martyrdom of St. Agatha. Her breasts are cut off, and lying in a dish. The expression in the face of the dying woman is painfully well done. Returning to the inn, we passed a magnificent palace on one of the squares, upon whose marble steps and column-bases, sat hundreds of brutish Austrian troops, smoking and laughing at the passers-by. This is a sight you may see now all through Italy. The pala- ces of her proudest nobles are turned into barracks for foreign troops, and there is scarce a noble old church or monastery that is not defiled with their filth. The German soldiers are, without exception, the most stol- id and disagreeable looking body of men I ever saw, and they have little to soften the indignant feeling with which one sees them rioting in this lovely and oppress- ed country. We passed an hour before bedtime in the usual amusement of travellers in a foreign hotel — reading the traveller's record-book. Walter Scott's name was written there, and hundreds of distinguished names besides. I was pleased to find, on a leaf far back, " Edward Everett," written in his own round legible hand. There were at least the names of fifty Ameri- cans, within the dates of the year past — such a wan- dering nation we are. Foreigners express their aston- ishment always at their numbers in these cities. On the afternoon of the next day, we went to Arqua, on a pilgrimage to Petrarch's cottage and tomb. It was an Italian summer afternoon, and the Euganean hills were rising green and lovely, with the sun an hour PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 59 high above them, and the yellow of the early sunset already commencing to glow about the horizon. We left the carriage at the " pellucid lake," and went into the hills a "mile, plucking the ripe grapes which hung over the road in profusion. We were soon at the little village and the tomb, which stands just before the church door, "reared in air." The four laurels Byron mentions are dead. We passed up the hill to the poet's house, a rural stone cottage, commanding a lovely view of the campagna from the portico. Sixteen villages may be counted from the door, and the two large towns of Rovigo and Ferrara are distinguishable in a clear atmosphere. It was a retreat fit for a poet. We went through the rooms, and saw the poet's cat, stuffed and exhibited behind a wire grating, his chair and desk, his portrait in fresco, and Laura's, and the small closet-like room where he died. It was an interesting visit, and we returned by the golden twilight of this heavenly climate, repeating Chiide Harold, and wishing for his peu to describe afresh the scene about us. LETTER XL. EXCURSION FROM VENICE TO VERONA TRUTH OF BYRON'S DESCRIPTION OF ITALIAN SCENERY THE LOMBARDY PEASANTRY APPEARANCE OF THE COUN- TRY MANNER OF CULTIVATING THE VINE ON LIV- ING TREES THE VINTAGE ANOTHER VISIT TO JU- LIET'S TOMB THE OPERA AT VERONA — THE PRI- MA DONNA ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE BOLOGNA AGAIN MADAME MALIBRAN IN LA GAZZA LADRA CHEAP LUXURIES THE PALACE OF THE LAMBAC- CARI a MAGDALEN OF GUIDO CARRACCI — CHARLES THE SECOND'S BEAUTIES VALLEY OF THE ARNO FLORENCE ONCE MORE. Our gondola set us on shore at Fusina an hour or two before sunset, with a sky (such as we have had for five months) without a cloud, and the same prom- ise of a golden sunset, to which I have now become so accustomed, that rain and a dark heaven would seem to me almost unnatural. It was the hour and the spot at which Chiide Harold must have left Ven- ice, and we look at the " blue Friuli mountains," the "deep-died Brenta," and the "far Rhoetian hill," and feel the truth of his description as well as its beauty. The two banks of the Brenta are studded with the palaces of the Venetian nobles for almost twenty miles, and the road runs close to the water on the northern side, following all its graceful windings, and, at every few yards, surprising the traveller with some fresh scene of cultivated beauty, church, palace, or garden, while the gondolas on the stream, and the fair "damas" of Italy sitting under the porticoes, enliven and brighten the picture. These people live out of doors, and the road was thronged with the cnntadini ; and here and there rolled by a carriage, with servants in livery ; or a family of the better class on their eve- ning walk, sauntered along at the Italian pace of indo- lence, and a finer or happier looking race of people would not easily be found. It is difficult to see the athletic frames and dark flashing eyes of the Lom- bardy peasantry, and remember their degraded condi- tion. You can not believe it will remain so. If they think at all, they must in time, feel too deeply to en- dure. The guide-book says, the " traveller wants words to express his sensations at the beauty of the country from Padua to Verona." Its beauty is owing to the per- fection of a method of cultivation universal in Italy. The fields are divided into handsome squares, by rows of elms or other forest trees, and the vines are trained upon these with all the elegance of holyday festoons, winding about the trunks, and hanging with their heavy clusters from one to the other, the foliage of vine and tree mingled so closely that it appears as if they sprung from the same root. Every square is per- fectly enclosed with these fantastic walls of vine-leaves and grapes, and the imagination of a poet could con- ceive nothing more beautiful for a festival of Bacchus. The ground between is sown with grass or corn. The vines are luxuriant always, and often send their ten- drils into the air higher than the topmost branch of the tree, and this extends the whole distance from Padua to Verona, with no interruption except the pal- aces and gardens of the nobles lying between. It was just the season for gathering and pressing the grape, and the romantic vineyards were full of the hap- py peasants, of all ages, mounting the ladders adven- turously for the tall clusters, heaping the baskets and carts, driving in the stately gray oxen with their loads, and talking and singing as merrily as if it were Arca- dia. Oh how beautiful these scenes are in Italy. The people are picturesque, the land is like the poetry of nature, the habits are all as they were described cen- turies ago, and as the still living pictures of the glori- ous old masters represent them. The most every-day traveller smiles and wonders, as he lets down his car- riage windows to look at the vintage. We have been three or four days in Verona, visiting Juliet's tomb, and riding through the lovely environs. The opera here is excellent, and we went last night to see "Romeo and Juliet" performed in the city re- nowned by their story. The prima donna was one of those sirens found often in Italy — a young singer of great promise, with that daring brilliancy which practice and maturer science discipline, to my taste, too severely. It was like the wild, ungovernable trill of a bird, and my ear is not so nice yet, that 1 even would not rather feel a roughness in the harmony than lose it. Malibran delighted me more in America than in Paris. The opera was over at twelve, and, as we emerged from the crowded lobby, the moon, full, and as clear and soft as the eye of a child, burst through the arch- es of the portico. The theatre is opposite the cele- brated Roman amphitheatre, and the wish to visit it by moonlight was expressed spontaneously by the whole party. The custode was roused, and we enter- ed the vast arena and stood in the midst, with the gi- gantic ranges of stone seats towering up in a receding circle, as if to the very sky, and the lofty arches and echoing dens lying black and silent in the dead shad- ows of the moon. A hundred thousand people could sit here ; and it was in these arenas, scattered through the Roman provinces, that the bloody gladiator fights, and the massacre of Christians, and every scene of horror, amused the subjects of the mighty mistress of the world. You would never believe it, if you could have seen how peacefully the moonlight now sleeps on the moss-gathering walls, and with what untrim- med grace the vines and flowers creep and blossom on the rocky crevices of the windows. We arrived at Bologna just in time to get to the opera. Malibran in La Gazza Ladra was enough to make one forget more than the fatigue of a day's trav- el. She sings as well as ever, and plays much better, though she had been ill, and looked thin. In the pris- on scene, she was ghastlier even than the character required. There are few pleasures in Europe like such singing as hers, and the Italians, in their excel- lent operas, and the cheap rate at which they can be frequented, have a resource corresponding to every- thing else in their delightful country. Every comfort and luxury is better and cheaper in Italy than else- where, and it is a pity that he who can get his wine for three cents a bottle, his dinner and his place at the opera for ten, and has lodgings for anything he chooses CO PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. to pay, can not find leisure, and does not think it worth the trouble, to look about for means to be free. It is vexatious to see nature lavishing such blessings on slaves. The next morning we visited a palace, which, as it is not mentioned in the guide-books of travel, I had not before seen — the Lambaccari. It was full of glo- rious pictures, most of them for sale. Among others we were captivated with a Magdalen of unrivalled sweetness, by Guido Carracci. It has been bought since by Mr. Cabot, of Boston, who passed through Bologna the day after, and will be sent to America, I am happy to say, immediately. There were also six of " Charles the Second's beauties," — portraits of the celebrated women of that gay monarch's court, by Sir Peter Lely — ripe, glowing English women, more voluptuous than chary-looking, but pictures of ex- quisite workmanship. There were nine or ten apart- ments to this splendid palace, all crowded with paint- ings by the first masters, and the surviving Lambaccari is said to be selling them one by one for bread. It is really melancholy to go through Italy, and see how her people are suffering, and her nobles starving un- der oppression. We crossed the Appenines in two of the finest days that ever shone, and descending through clouds and mist to the Tuscan frontier, entered the lovely valley of the Arno, sparkling in the sunshine, with all its palaces and spires, as beautiful as ever. I am at Flor- ence once more, and parting from the delightful party with whom I have travelled for two months. I start for Rome to-morrow, in company with five artists. LETTER XLI. JOURNEY TO THE ETERNAL CITY — TWO ROADS TO ROME — SIENNA — THE PUBLIC SQUARE — AN ITALIAN FAIR THE CATHEDRAL — THE LIBRARY THE THREE GRE- CIAN RRACES DANDY OFFICERS PUBLIC PROMENADE — LANDSCAPE VIEW — LONG GLEN — A WATERFALL — A CULTIVATED VALLEY— THE TOWN OF AQUAPENDENK SAN LORENZO — PLINY'S FLOATING ISLANDS — MON- TEFTASCONE — VITERBO — PROCESSION OF FLOWER AND DANCING GIRLS TO THE VINTAGE ASCENT OF THE MONTECIMINO — THE ROAD OF THIEVES — LAKE VICO BACCANO MOUNT SORACTE — DOME OF ST. PETER'S, ETC. . I left Florence in company with the five artists mentioned in my last letter, one of them an English- man, and the other four pensioners of the royal acad- emy at Madrid. The Spaniards had but just arrived in Italy, and could not speak a syllable of the lan- guage. The Englishman spoke everything but French, which he avoided learning/row principle. He "hated a Frenchman !" There are two roads to Rome. One goes by Sien- na, and is a day shorter; the other by Perugia, the Falls of Temi, LakeThrasymene, and the Clitumnus. Childe Harold took the latter, and his ten or twelve best cantos describe it. I was compelled to go by Si- enna, and shall return, of course, by the other road. I was at Sienna on the following day. As the sec- ond capital of Tuscany, this should be a place of some interest, but an hour or two is more than enough to see all that is attractive. The public square was a gay scene. It was rather singularly situated, lying fifteen or twenty feet lower than the streets about it. I should think there were several thousand people in its area — all buying or selling, and vociferating, as usual, at the top of their voices. We heard the murmur, like the roar of the sea, in all the distant streets. There are few sights more picturesque than an Italian fair, and I strolled about in the crowd for an hour, amused with the fanciful costumes, and endeavoring to make out with the assistance of the eye what rather distracted my unaccustomed ear — the cries of the various wan- dering venders of merchandise. The women, who were all from the country, were coarse, and looked well only at a distance. The cathedral is the great sight of Sienna. It has a rich exterior, encrusted with curiously wrought mar- bles, and the front, as far as I can judge, is in beauti- ful taste. The pavement of the interior is very pre- cious, and covered with a wooden platform, which is removed but once a year. The servitor raised a part of it, to show us the workmanship. It was like a drawing in India ink, quite as fine as if pencilled, and representing, as is customary, some miracle of a saint. A massive iron door, made ingeniously to imitate a rope-netting, opens from the side of the church into the library. It contained some twenty volumes in black letter, bound with enormous clasps, and placed upon inclined shelves. It would have been a task for a man of moderate strength to lift either of them from the floor. The little sacristan found great difficulty in only opening one to show us the letter. In the centre of the chapel, on a high pedestal, stands the original antique group, so often copied, of the three Grecian Graces. It is shockingly mutilated; but its original beauty i3 still, in a great measure, dis- cernible. Three naked women are an odd ornament for the private chapel of a cathedral.* One often wonders, however, in Italian churches, whether his devotion is most called upon by the arts or the Deity. As we were leaving the church, four young officers passed us in gay uniform, their long steel scabbards rattling on the pavement, and their heavy tread dis- turbing visibly every person present. As I turned to look after them, with some remark on their coxcomb- ry, they dropped on their knees at the bases of the tall pillars about the altar, and burying their faces in their caps, bowed their heads nearly to the floor, in at- titudes of the deepest devotion. Sincere or not, cath- olic worshippers of all classes seem absorbed in their re- ligious duties. You can scarce withdraw the atten- tion even of a child in such places. In the six months that I have been in Italy, I never saw anything like ir- reverence within the church walls. The public promenade, on the edge of the hill upon which the town is beautifully situated, commands a noble view of the country about. The peculiar land- scape of Italy lay before us in all its loveliness — the far-off hills lightly teinted with the divided colors of distance, the atmosphere between absolutely clear and invisible, and villages clustered about, each with its ancient castle on the hill-top above, just as it was set- tled in feudal times, and just as painters and poets would imagine it. You never get a view in this " gar- den of the world" that would not excuse very extrava- gant description. Sienna is said to be the best place for learning the language. Just between Florence and Rome, it com- bines the " lingua Toscano," with the " bocca Roma- na" — the Roman pronunciation with the Florentine purity of language. It looks like a dull place, how- ever, and I was very glad after dinner to resume my passport at the gate and get on. The next morning, after toiling up a considerable as- cent, we suddenly rounded the shoulder of the moun- tain, and found ourselves at the edge of a long glen, walled up at one extremity by a precipice, with an old town upon its brow, and a waterfall pouring off at its side, and opening away at the other into a broad gen- tly-sloped valley, cultivated like a garden as far as the eye could distinguish. I think I have seen an engra- * I remember hearing a friend receive a severe reproof from one of the most enlightened men in our country for offering his daughter an annual, upon the cover of which was an engra- ving of these same " Graces." PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. Gl viiif of it in the Landscape Annual. Taken together, it is positively the most beautiful view I ever saw, from the road edge, as you wind up into the town of Acquaperulenk. The precipice might be a hundred feet, and from its immediate edge were built up the walls of the houses, so that a child at the window might throw its plaything into the bottom of the ra- vine. It is scarce a pistol-shot across the glen, and the two hills on cither side lean oil" from the level of the town in one long soft declivity to the valley — the little river which pours oft' the rock at the very base of the church, fretting and fuming its way between to the meadows — its stony bed quite hidden by the thick ve- getation of its banks. The bells were ringing to mass, and the echoes came back to us at long distances with every modulation. The streets, as we entered the town, were full of people hurrying to the churches ; the women with their red shawls thrown about their heads, and the men with their immense dingy cloaks flung romantically over their shoulders, with a grace, one and all, that in a Parisian dandy, would be at- tributed to a consummate study of effect. For out- line merely, I think there is nothing in costume which can surpass the closely-stockinged leg, heavy cloak, and slouched hat of an Italian peasant. It is added to by his indolent, and, consequently, graceful motion and attitudes. Johnson, in his book on the climate of Italy, says their sloth is induced by mala- ria. You will see a man watching goats or sheep, with his back against a rock, quite motionless for hours together. His dog feels, apparently, the same influ- ence, and lies couched in his long white hair, with his eyes upon the flock, as lifeless, and almost as pic- turesque, as his master. The town of San Lorenzo is a handful of houses on the top of a hill which hangs over Lake Bolsena. You get the first view of the lake as you go out of the gate toward Rome, and descend immediately to its banks. There was a heavy mist upon the water, and we could not see across, but it looked like as quiet and pleasant a shore as might be found in the world — the woods wild, and of uncommonly rich foliage for Italy, and the slopes of the hills beautiful. Saving the road, and here and there a house with no sign of an in- habitant, there can scarcely be a lonelier wilderness in America. We stopped two hours at an inn on its banks, and whether it was the air, or the influence of the perfect stillness about us, my companions went to sleep, and I could scarce lesist my own drowsiness. The mist lifted a little from the lake after dinner, and we saw the two islands said by Pliny to have floated in his time. They look like the tops of green hills rising from the water. It is a beautiful country again as you approach Montefiascone. The scenery is finely broken up with glens formed by columns of basalt, giving it a look of great wildness. Montefiascone is built on the river of one of these ravines. We stopped here long enough to get a bottle of the wine for which the place is fa- mous, drinking it to the memory of the " German prel- ate," who, as Madame Stark relates, "stopped here on his journey to Rome, and died of drinking it to ex- cess." It has degenerated, probably, since his time, or we chanced upon a bad bottle. The walls of Vilerho are flanked with towers, and have a noble appearance from the hill-side on which the town stands. We arrived too late to see anything of the place. As we were taking coffee at the cafe the next morning, a half hour before daylight, we heard music in the street, and looking out at the door, we saw a long procession of young girls, dressed with flowers in their hair, and each playing a kind of cymbal, ami half dancing as she went along. Three or four at the head of the procession sung a kind of verse, and the rest joined in a short merry chorus at intervals. It was more like a train of Corybantes than anything I had seen. We inquired the object of it, and were told it was a procession to the vintage. They were going out to pluck the last grapes, and it was the custom to make it a festa. It was a striking scene in the other- wise perfect darkness of the streets, the torch-bearers at the sides waving their flambeaux regularly over their heads, and shouting with the rest in chorus. The measure was quick, and the step very fast. They were gone in an instant. The whole thing was po- etical, and in keeping for Italy. I have never seen it elsewhere. We left Viterbo on a clear, mild autumnal morning; and I think I never felt the excitement of a delightful climate more thrill ingly. Theroad was wild, and with the long ascent of the Monte-Cimino before us, I left the carriage to its slow pace and went ahead several miles on foot. The first rain of the season had fallen, and the road was moist, and all the spicy herbs of Italy per- ceptible in the air. Half way up the mountain, 1 over- took a fat, bald, middle-aged priest, slowly toiling up on his mule. I was passing him with a " huon giorno" when he begged me for my own sake, as well as his, to keep him company. "It was the worst road for thieves," he said, "in all Italy," and he pointed at every short distance to little crosses erected at the road-side, to commemorate the finding of murdered men on the spot. After he had told me several stories of the kind, he elevated his tone, and began to talk of other matters. I think I never heard so loud and long a laugh as his. I ventured to express a wonder at his finding himself so happy in a life of celibacy. He looked at me slily a moment or two as if he were hes- itating whether to trust me with his opinions on the subject; but he suddenly seemed to remember his caution, and pointing oft' to the right, showed me a lake brought into view by the last turn of the road. It was Lake Vico. From the midst of it rose a round mountain covered to the top with luxuriant chestnuts — the lake forming a sort of trench about it, with the hill on which we stood rising directly from the other edge. It was one faultless mirror of green leaves. The two hill sides shadowed it completely. All the views from Monte-Cimino were among the richest in mere nature that I ever saw, and reminded me strong- ly of the country about the Seneca lake of America. 1 was on the Cayuga at about the same season three summers ago, and I could have believed myself back again, it was so like my recollection. We stopped on the fourth night of our journey, seventeen miles from Rome, at a place called Baccano. A ridge of hills rose just before us, from the top of which we were told we could see St. Peter's. The sun was just dipping under the horizon, and the ascent was three miles. We threw off our cloaks, deter- mining to see Rome before we slept, ran unbreathed to the top of the hill, an effort which so nearly ex- hausted us, that we could scarce stand long enough upon our feet to search over the broad campagna for the dome. Tho sunset had lingered a great while — as it does in Italy. Four or five light feathery streaks of cloud glowed with intense crimson in the west, and on the brow of Mount Soracte, (which I recognised instantly from the graphic simile* of Childe Harold), and along on all the ridges of mountain in the east, still play- ed a kind of vanishing reflection, half purple, half eray. With a moment's glance around to catch the outline of the landscape, I felt instinctively where Rome should stand, and my eye fell at once upon "the mighty dome." Jupiter had by this time appeared, and hung right over it, trembling in the sky with its peculiar glorv, like a lump of molten spar, and as the color faded from the clouds, and the dark mass of "the eternal city" itself mingled and was lost in the shad- • « A, long swept wave about to break, And ott the curl hangs pausing " 62 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. ows of the campagna, the dome still seemed to catch light, and tower visibly, as if the radiance of the glowing star above fell more directly upon it. We could see it till we could scarcely distinguish each other's features. The dead level of the campagna extended between and beyond for twenty miles, and it looked like a far-off beacon in a dim sea. We sat an hour on the summit of the hill, gazing into the in- creasing darkness, till our eyes ached. The stars brightened one by one, the mountains grew indistinct, and we rose unwillingly to retrace our steps to Bac- cano. LETTER XLII. first dat in rome — saint peter's — a solitary monk strange music michael angelo's mas- terpiece the museum likeness of young au- gustus arollo belvedere the medicean venus — Raphael's transfiguration — the pantheon — the burial-place of carracci and raphael — ro- man forum — temple of fortune — the rostrum — palace of the cesars — the ruins — the col- iseum, etc. To be rid of the dust of travel, and abroad in a strange and renowned city, is a sensation of no slight pleasure anywhere. To step into the street under these circumstances and inquire for the Roman Forum, was a sufficient advance upon the ordinary feeling to mark a bright day in one's calendar. I was hurrying up the Corso with this object before me a half hour after my arrival in Rome, when an old friend arrested my steps, and begging me to reserve the " Ruins" for moonlight, took me off to St. Peter's. The facade of the church appears alone, as you walk up the street from the castle of St. Angelo. It disappointed me. There is no portico, and it looks fiat and bare. But approaching nearer, I stood at the base of the obelisk, and with those two magnificent fountains sending their musical waters as if to the sky, and the two encircling wings of the church em- bracing the immense area with its triple colonnades, I felt the grandeur of St. Peter's. I felt it again in the gigantic and richly-wrought porches, and again with indescribable surprise and admiration at the first step on the pavement of the interior. There was not a figure on its immense floor from the door to the altar, and its far-off roof, its mighty piHars, its gold and marbles in such profusion that the eye shrinks from the examination, made their overpowering impression uninterrupted. You feel that it must be a glorious creature that could build such a temple to his Maker. An organ was playing brokenly in one of the dis- tant chapels, and. drawing insensibly to the music, we found the door half open, and a monk alone, running his fingers over the keys, and stopping sometimes as if to muse, till the echo died and the silence seemed to startle him anew. It was strange music very irreg- ular, but sweet, and in a less excited moment, I could have sat and listened to it till the sun set. I strayed down the aisle, and stood before the " Dead Christ" of Michael Angelo. The Savior lies in the arms of Mary. The limbs hang lifelessly down, and, exquisitely beautiful as they are, express death with a wonderful power. It is the best work of the artist, I think, and the only one I was ever moved in looking at. The greatest statue and the first picture in the world are under the same roof, and we mounted to the Vati- can. The museum is a wilderness of statuary. Old Romans, men and women, stand about you, copied, as you feel when you look on them, from the life, and conceptions of beauty in children, nymphs, and heroes, from minds that conceived beauty in a degree that has never been transcended, confuse and bewilder you with their number and wonderful workmanship. It is like seeing a vision of past ages. It is calling up from Athens and old classic Rome, all that was dis- tinguished and admired of the most polished ages of the world. On the right of the long gallery, as you enter, stands the bust of the " Young Augustus" — a kind of beautiful, angelic likeness of Napoleon, as Napoleon might have been in his youth. It is a boy, but with a serene dignity about the forehead and lips, that makes him visibly a boy-emperor — born for his throne, and conscious of his right to it. There is nothing in marble more perfect, and I never saw any- thing which made me realize that the Romans of his- tory and poetry were men — nothing which brought them so familiarly to my mind, as the feeling for beau- ty shown in this infantine bust. I would rather have it than all the gods and heroes of the Vatican. No cast gives you any idea worth having of the Apollo Belvidere. It is a god-like model of a man. The lightness and the elegance of the limbs ; the free, fiery, confident energy of the atitude ; the breathing, indignant nostril and lips ; the whole statue's mingled and equal grace and power, are, with all its truth to nature, beyond any conception I had formed of manly beauty. It spoils one's eye for common men to look at it. It stands there like a descended angel, with a splendor of form and an air of power, that makes one feel what he should have been, and mortifies him for what he is. Most women whom I have met in Eu- rope, adore the Apollo as far the finest statue in the world, and most men say as much of the Medicean Venus. But, to my eye, the Venus, lovely as she is, compares with the Apollo as a mortal with an angel of light. The latter is incomparably the finest statue. If it were only for its face, it would transcend the oth- er infinitely. The beauty of the Venus is only in the limbs and body. It is a faultless, and withal, modest representation of the flesh and blood beauty of a wo- man. The Apollo is all this, and has a soul. I have seen women that approached the Venus in form, and had finer faces — I never saw a man that was a shadow of the Apollo in either. It stands as it should, in a room by itself, and is thronged at all hours by female worshippers. They never tire of gazing at it ; and I should believe, from the open-mouthed wonder of those whom I met at its pedestal, that the story of the girl who pined and died for love of it, was neither im- probable nor singular. Raphael's " Transfiguration" is agreed to be the finest picture in the world. I had made up my mind to the same opinion from the engravings of it, but was painfully disappointed in the picture. I looked at it from every corner of the room, and asked the custode three times if he was sure this was the original. The color offended my eye, blind as Raphael's name should make it, and I left the room with a sigh, and an un- settled faith in my own taste, that made me seriously unhappy. My complacency was restored a few hours after on hearing that the wonder was entirely in the drawing — the colors having quite changed with time. I bought the engraving immediately, which you have seen too often, of course, to need my commentary. The aerial lightness with which he has hung the fig- ures of the Savior and the apostles in the air, is a tri- umph of the pencil over the laws of nature, that seem to have required the power of the miracle itself. I lost myself in coming home, and following a priest's direction to the Corso, came unexpectedly up- on the " Pantheon," which I recognised at once. This wonder of architecture has no questionable beau- ty. A dunce would not need to be told that it was perfect. Its Corinthian columns fall on the eye with that sense of fulness that seems to answer an instinct of beauty in the very organ. One feels a fault or an PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. excellence in architecture long before he can give the feeling a name ; and I can see why, by Childe Harold and others, this heathen temple is called "the pride of Rome," though I can not venture on a description. The faultless interior is now used as a church, and there lie Annibal Carracci and the divine Raphael — two names worthy of the place, and the last of a shrine in every bosom capable of a conception of beauty. Glorious Raphael ! If there was no other relic in Rome, one would willingly become a pilgrim to his ashes. With my countryman and friend, Mr. Cleveland, I stood in the Roman forum by the light of a clear half moon. The soft silver rays poured in through the ruined columns of the Temple of Fortune and threw our shadows upon the bases of the tall shafts near the capitol, the remains, I believe, of the temple erected by Augustus to Jupiter Tonans. Impressive things they are, even without their name, standing tall and alone, with their broken capitals wre'athed with ivy, and neither roof nor wall to support them where they were placed by hands that have mouldered for centu- ries. It is difficult to rally one's senses in such a place, and be awake coldly to the scene. We stood, as we supposed, in the Rostrum. The noble arch, still almost perfect, erected by the senate to Septimius Severus, stood up clear and lofty beside us, the three matchless and lonely columns of the supposed temple of Jupiter Stator threw their shadows across the Fo- rum below, the great arch, built at the conquest of Jerusalem to Titus, was visible in the distance, and above them all, on the gentle ascent of the Palatine, stood the ruineil palace of the Cesars, the sharp edg- es of the demolished walls breaking up through vines and ivy, and the mellow moon of Italy softening rock and foliage into one silver-edged mass of shadow. It seems as if the very genius of the picturesque had ar- ranged these immortal ruins. If the heaps of fresh excavation were but overgrown with grass, no poet nor painter could better image out the Rome of his dream. It surpasses fancy. We walked on over fragments of marble columns turned up from the mould, and leaving the majestic arches of the Temple of Peace on our left, passed under the arch ol Titus (so dreaded by the Jews), to the Coliseum. This too is magnificently ruined — broken in every part, and yet showing still the brave skeleton of what it was— its gigantic and triple walls, half encircling the silent arena, and its rocky seats lifting one above the other amid weeds and ivy, and darkening the dens beneath, whence issued the gladi- ators, beasts, and Christian martyrs, to be sacrificed for the amusement of Rome. A sentinel paced at the gigantic archway, a capuchin monk, whose duty is to attend the small chapels built around the arena, walk- ed up and down in his russet cowl and sandals, the moon broke through the clefts in the wall, and the whole place was buried in the silence of a wilderness. I have given you the features of the scene— I leave you to people it with your own thoughts. I dare not trust mine to a colder medium than poetry. LETTER XLIII. TIVOLI RUINS OF THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN FALLS OF TIVOLI CASCATELLI SUBJECT OF ONE OFCOLE's LANDSCAPES RUINS OF THE VILLAGE OF MECENAS RUINED VILLA OF ADRIAN THE FORUM TEMPLE OF VESTA THE CLOACA MAXIMA THE RIVER JU- TURNA, ETC. I have spent a day at Tivoli with Messrs. Auchmu- ty and Bissell, of our navy, and one or two others, forming quite an American party. We passed the ru- ins of the baths of Diocletian, with a heavy cloud over our heads; but we were scarce through the gate when the sun broke through, the rain swept off over Soracte, and the sky was clear till sunset. I have seen many finer falls than Tivoli; that is more water, and failing farther ; but I do not think there is so pretty a place in the world. A very dirty village, a dirtier hotel, and a cicerone all rags and ruf- fianism, are somewhat dampers to anticipation. We passed through a broken gate, and with a step, were in a glen of fairy land; the lightest and loveliest of an- tique temples on a crag above, a snowy waterfall of some hundred and fifty feet below, grottoes mossed to the mouth at the river\s outlet, and all up and down the cleft valley vines twisted in the crevices of rock, and shrubbery hanging on every ledge, with a felicity of taste or nature, or both, that is uncommon even in Italy. The fall itself comes rushing down through a grotto to the face of the precipice, over which it leaps, and looks like a subterranean river just coming to light. Its bed is rough above, and it bursts forth from its cav- ern in dazzling foam, and falls in one sparry sheet to the gulf. The falls of Montmorenci are not unlike it. We descended to the bottom, and from the little ter- race, wet by the spray, and dark with overhanging rocks, looked up the " cavern of Neptune," a deep pas- sage, through which half the divided river rushes to meet the fall in the gulf. Then remounting to the top, we took mules to make the three miles' circuit of the glen, and see what are called the CascateUi. No fairy-work could exceed the beauty of the little an- tique Sybil's temple perched on the top of the crag above the fall. As we rode round the other edge of the glen, it stood opposite us in all the beauty of its light and airy architecture ; a thing that might be borne, " like Lo- retto's chapel, through the air," and seem no miracle. A mile farther on I began to recognise the features- of the scene, at a most lovely point of view. It was J the subject of one of Cole's landscapes, which I had seen in Florence; and I need not say to any one who knows the works of this admirable artist, that it was done with truth and taste.* The little town of Tivoli hangs on a jutting lap of the mountain, on the side of the ravine opposite to your point of view. From be- neath its walls, as if its foundations were laid upon a river's fountains, bursts foaming water in some thirty different falls; and it seems to you as if the long de- clivities were that moment for the first time overflowed, for the currents go dashing under trees, and overleap- ing vines and shrubs, appearing and disappearing con- tinually, till they all meet in the quiet bed of the river below. " It was marie by Bernini,'''' said the guide, as we stood gazing at it ; and, odd as this information sounded, while wondering at a spectacle worthy of the happiest accident of nature, it will explain the phe- nomena of the place to you — the artist having turned a mountain river from its course, and leading it under the town of Tivoli, threw it over the sides of the pre- cipitous hill upon which it stands. One of the streams appears from beneath the ruins of the "Villa of Me- caenas," which topples over a precipice just below the town, looking over the campagna toward Rome— a situation worthy of the patron of the poets. We rode through the immense subterranean arches, which form- ed its court in ascending the mountain again to the town. Near Tivoli is the ruined villa of Adrian, where was found the Venus de Medicis, and some other of the wonders of antique art. The sun had set, however, and the long campagna of twenty miles lay between us • On my way to Rome (near Radicofani, I think), we pass- ed an old man, whose picturesque figure, enveloped in his brown cloak and slouched hat, arrested the attention of all my com- panions. I had seen him before. From a five minutes' sketch in passing, Mr. Cole had made one of the most spirited heads I ever saw, admirably like, and worthy of Caravajrgio fo force and expression. 64 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. and Rome. We were compelled to leave it unseen. We entered the gates at nine o'clock, unrobbed — ra- ther an unusual good fortune, we were told, for travel- lers after dark on that lonely waste. Perhaps our number deprived us of the romance. I left a crowded ball-room at midnight, wearied with a day at Tivoli, and oppressed with an atmosphere breathed by two hundred, dancing and card-playing, Romans and foreigners ; and with a step from the por- tico of the noble palace of our host, came into a broad beam of moonlight, that with the stillness and cool- ness of the night refreshed me at once, and banished all disposition for sleep. A friend was with me, and I proposed a ramble among the ruins. The sentinel challenged us as we entered the Fo- rum. The frequent robberies of romantic strangers in this lonely place have made a guard necessary, and they are now stationed from the Arch of Severus to the Coliseum. We passed an hour rambling among the ruins of the temples. Not a footstep was to be heard, nor a sound even from the near city ; and the tall columns, with their broken friezes and capitals, and the grand imperishable arches, stood up in the bright light of the moon, looking indeed like monu- ments of Rome. I am told they are less majestic by daylight. The rubbish and fresh earth injure the ef- fect. But I have as yet seen them in the garb of moonlight only, and I shall carry this impression away. It is to me, now, all that my fancy hoped to find it — its temples and columns just enough in ruin to be af- fecting and beautiful. We went thence to the Temple of Vesta. It is shut up in the modern streets, ten or fifteen minutes walk from the Forum. The picture of this perfect temple, and the beautiful purpose of its consecration, have been always prominent in my imaginary Rome. It is worthy of its association — an exquisite round temple, with its simple circle of columns from the base to the roof, a faultless thing in proportion, and as light and floating to the eye as if the wind might lift it. It was no common place to stand beside, and re- call the poetical truth and fiction of which it has been the scene — the vestal lamp cherished or neglected by its high-horn votaries, their honors if pure, and their dreadful death if faithless. It needed not the heaven- ly moonlight that broke across its columns to make it a very shrine of fancy. My companion proposed a visit next to the Cloaca Maxima. A common sewer, after the Temple of Vesta, sounds like an abrupt transition; but the arches be- neath which we descended were touched by moonlight, and the vines and ivy crossed our path, and instead of a drain of filth, which the fame of its imperial builder would scarce have sweetened, a rapid stream leaped to the right, and disappeared again beneath the solid ma- sonry, more like a wild brook plunging into a grotto than the thing one expects to find it. The clear little river Juturna (on the banks of which Castor and Pol- lux watered their foaming horses, when bringing the news of victory to Rome), dashes now through the Cloaca Maxima ; and a fresher and purer spot, or wa- ters with a more musical murmur, it has not been my fortune to see. We stopped over a broken column for a drink, and went home, refreshed, to bed. LETTER XLIV. MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL THE CARDINALS THE " LAST JUDGMENT" THE POPE OF ROME THE " ADAM AND EVE" CHANTING OF THE PRIESTS FESTA AT THE CHURCH OF SAN CARLOS GREG- ORY THE SIXTEENTH, HIS EQUIPAGE, TRAIN, ETC. All the world goes to hear " mass in the Sistine chapel," and all travellers describe it. It occurs infre- quently and is performed by the pope. We were there to-day at ten, crowding at the door with hundreds of foreigners, mostly English, elbowed alternately by priests and ladies, and kept in order by the Swiss guards in their harlequin dresses and long pikes. We were admitted after an hour's pushing, and the guard retreated to the grated door, through which no woman is permitted to pass. Their gay bonnets and feathers clustered behind the gilded bars, and we could admire them for once without the qualifying reflection that they were between us and the show. An hour more was occupied in the entrance, one by one, of some forty cardinals with their rustling silk trains supported by boys in purple. They passed the gate, their train- bearers lifted their cassocks and helped them to kneel a moment's prayer was mumbled, and they took theii seats with the same servile assistance. Their attend- | ants placed themselves at their feet, and, taking the j prayer-books, the only use of which appeared to be j to display their jewelled fingers, they looked over i them at the faces behind the grating, and waited for his I holiness. The intervals of this memory, gave us time to study | the famous frescoes for which the Sistine chapel is re- j nowned. The subject is the "Last judgment." The j Savior sits in the midst, pronouncing the sentence, the wicked plunging from his presence on the left hand, and the righteous ascending with the assistance of an- gels on the right. The artist had, of course, infinite scope for expression, and the fame of the fresco (which occupies the whole of the wall behind the altar) would seem to argue his success. The light is miserable, however, and incense or lamp-smoke, has obscured the colors, and one looks at it now with little pleasure. As well as I could see, too, the figure of the Savior was more that of a tiler throwing down slates from the top of a house in some fear of falling, than the judge of the world upon his throne. Some of the other parts are better, and one or two naked female figures might once have been beautiful, but one of the suc- ceeding popes ordered them dressed, and they now flaunt at the judgment seat in colored silks, obscuring both saints and sinners with their finery. There are some redeeming frescoes, also by Michael Angelo, on the ceiling, among them "Adam and Eve," exquisite- ly done. The pope entered by a door at the side of the altar. With him came a host of dignitaries and church ser- vants, and, as he tottered round in front of the altar, to kneel, his cap was taken off and put on, his flowing robes lifted and spread, and he was treated in all re- spects, as if he were the Deity himself. In fact, the whole service was the worship, not of God, but of the pope. The cardinals came up, one by one, with their heads bowed, and knelt reverently to kiss his hand and the hem of his white satin dress; his throne was higher than the altar, and ten times as gorgeous ; the incense was flung toward him, and his motions from one side of the chapel to the other, were attended with more ceremony and devotion than all the rest of the service together. The chanting commenced with his en- trance, and this should have been to God alone, for it was like music from heaven. The choir was com- posed of priests, who sang from massive volumes bound in golden clasps, in a small side gallery. One stood by the book, turning the leaves as the chant proceeded, and keeping the measure, and the others clustered around with their hands clasped, their heads thrown back, and their eyes closed or fixed upon the turning leaves in such grouping and attitude as you see in pictures of angels singing in the clouds. 1 have heard wonderful music since I have been on the continent, and have received new ideas of the compass of the human voice, and its capacities for pathos and sweetness. But, after all the wonders of the opera, as it i9 learned to sing before kings and courts, the chant PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 65 ing of these priests transcended every conception in my mind of music. It was the human voice, cleared of ail earthliness, and gushing through its organs with uncontrollable feeling and nature. The burden of the various parts returned continually upon one or two simple notes, the deepest and sweetest in the octave for melody, and occasionally a single voice outran the choir in a passionate repetition of the air, which seem- ed less like musical contrivance, than an abandonment of soul and voice to a preternatural impulse of devo- tion. One writes nonsense in describing such things, but there is no other way of conveying an idea of them. The subject is beyond the wildest superlatives. To-day we have again seen the pope. It was a festa, and the church of San Carlos was the scene of the ceremonies. His holiness came in the state-coach with six long-tailed black horses, and all his cardinals in their red and gold carriages in his train. The gaudy procession swept up to the steps, and the father of the church was taken upon the shoulders of his bearers in a chair of gold and crimson, and solemnly borne up the aisle, and deposited within the railings of the altar, where homage was done to him by the cardinals as before, and the half-supernatural music of his choir awaited his motions. The church was half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman no- bles, stood even within the railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything else does, the irresistible impression that it was the worship of the pope, not of God. Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and a flushed apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even his limbs hanging lifelessly. The gorgeous and heavy pap/1 costumes only render him more insignificant, and when he is borne about, buried in his deep chair, or lost in the corner of his huge black and gold pa- goda of a carriage, it is difficult to look at him without a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are magnificent heads, boldly marked, noble and scholar- like, and I may say, perhaps, that there is no one of them, who had not nature's mark upon him of superior- ity. They are a dignified and impressive body of men, and their servile homage to the pope, seems unnatural and disgusting. LETTER XLV. ROME— A MORNING IN THE STUDIO OF THORWALSDEN — colossal statue of the savior — statue of byron— Gibson's rooms— cupid and psyche— hy- las with the river nymphs — palazzo spada — statue of pompey — borghese palace — portrait OF CESAR BORGIA— DOSSI'S PSYCHE SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE — ROO.M DEVOTED TO VENUSES- -THE SOCIETY OF ROME, ETC. 1 have spent a morning in the studio of Thorwals- den. He is probably the greatest sculptor now living. A. colossal statue of Christ, thought by many to be his masterpiece, is the prominent object as you enter. It 19 a noble conception— the mild majesty of a Savior expressed in a face of the most dignified human beauty. Perhaps his full-length statue of Byron is inferior to some of his other works, but it interested me, and I spent most of my time in looking at it. It was taken from life ; and my friend, Mr. Auchmuty, who was with me, and who had seen Byron frequently on board one of our ships-of-war at Leghorn, thought it the only faithful likeness he had ever seen. The poet is dressed oddly enough, in a morning frock coat, cravat, pantaloons, and shoes; and, unpromising as these ma- terials would seem, the statue is classic and elegant to a very high degree. His coat is held by the two centre buttons in front (a more exquisite cut never came from the hands of a London tailor), swelled out a little above and below by the fleshy roundness of his figure ; his cravat is tied loosely, leaving his throat bare (which, by the way, both in the statue and the original, was very beautifully chiselled) ; and he sits up ,n a frag- ment of a column, with a book in one hand and a pen- cil in the other. A man reading a pleasant poem among the ruins of Rome, and looking up to reflect upon a fine passage before marking it, would assum the attitude and expression exactly. The face has half a smile upon it, and, differing from the Apollo /aces usually drawn for Byron, is finer, and more expressive of his character than any I ever met with. Thorwalsden is a Dane, and is beloved by every one for his simplicity and modesty. I did not see him. We were afterward at Gibson's rooms. This gen- tleman is an English artist, apparently about thirty, and full of genius. He has taken some portraits which are esteemed admirable ; but his principal labor has been thrown upon the most beautiful fables of anti- quity. His various groups and bas-reliefs of Cupid and Psyche are worthy of the beauty of the story. His chef d'auvrc, 1 think, is a group of three figures, representing the boy "Hylas with the river nymphs." He stands between them with the pitcher in his hand, startled with their touch, and listening to their persua- sions. The smaller of the two female figures is an almost matchless conception of loveliness. Gibson went round with us kindly, and I was delighted with his modesty of manner, and the apparently completely poetical character of his mind. He has a noble head, a lofty forehead well marked, and a mouth of finely mingled strength and mildness. We devoted this morning to palaces. At the Pa- lazzo Spada we saw the statue of Pompey, at the I base of which Cesar fell. Antiquaries dispute its j authenticity, but the evidence is quite strong enough for a poetical belief; and if it were not, one's time is not lost, for the statue is a majestic thing, and well worth the long walk necessary to see it. The muti- lated arm, and the hole in the wall behind, remind one of the ludicrous fantasy of the French, who carried it to the Forum to enact " Brutus" at its base. The Borghesc Palace is rich in pictures. The por- trait of Cesar Borgia, by Titian, is one of the most striking. It represents that accomplished villain with rather slight features, and, barring a look of cool de- termination about his well-formed lips, with rather a prepossessing countenance. One detects in it the ca- pabilities of such a character as his, after the original is mentioned; but otherwise he might pass for a hand- ■ some gallant, of no more dangerous trait than a fiery temper. Just beyond it is a very strong contrast in a figure of Psyche, by Dossi, of Ferrara. 'She is coming on tiptoe, with the lamp, to see her lover. The Cupid asleep is not so well done; but for an image of a real woman, unexaggerated and lovely, I have seen nothing which pleases me better than this Psyche. Opposite it hangs a very celebrated Titian, representing " Sacred and Profane Love." Two fe- male figures are sitting by a well — one quite nude, with her hair about her shoulders, and the other dressed, and coifled a la mode, but looking less modest to my eye than her undraped sister. It is little won- der, however, that a man who could paint his own daughter in the embraces of a satyr (a revolting picture, which I saw in the Barberigo palace at Venice) should fail in drawing the face of Virtue. The coloring of the picture is exquisite, but the design is certainly a failure. The last room in the palace is devoted to Venuses — all very naked and very bad. There might be forty, 66 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. I think, and not a limb among them that one's eye would rest upon with the least pleasure for a single moment. The society of Rome is of course changing con- tinually. At this particular season, strangers from every part of the continent are beginning to arrive, and it promises to be pleasant. I have been at most of the parties during the fortnight that I have been here, but find them thronged with priests, and with only the resident society, which is dull. Cards and conversa- tion with people one never saw before, and will cer- tainly never see again, are heavy pastimes. I start for Florence to-morrow, and shall return to Rome for Holy Week and the spring months. LETTER XL VI. ITALIAN AND AMERICAN SKIES — FALLS OF TERNI THE CLITUMNUS — THE TEMPLE — EFFECTS OF AN EARTH- QUAKE AT FOLIGNO — LAKE THRASIMENE — JOURNEY FROM ROME FLORENCE FLORENTINE SCENERY PRINCE FONIATOWSKI — JEROME BONAPARTE AND FAM- ILY — WANT OF A MINISTER IN ITALY. I left Rome by the magnificent " Porta del Popo- lo," as the flush of a pearly and spotless Italian sun- rise deepened over Soracte. They are so splendid without clouds — these skies of Italy ! so deep to the eye, so radiantly clear ! Clouds make the glory of an American sky. The "Indian summer" sunsets ex- cepted, our sun goes down in New England, with the extravagance of a theatrical scene. The clouds are massed and heavy, like piles of gold and fire, and day after day, if you observe them, you are literally aston- ished with the brilliant phenomena of the west. Here, for seven months, we have had no rain. The sun has risen faultlessly clear, with the same gray, and silver, and rose teints, succeeding each other as regularly as the colors in a turning prism, and it has set as con- stantly in orange, gold, and purple, with scarce the variation of a painter's pallet, from one day to another. It is really most delightful to live under such heavens as these ; to be depressed never by a gloomy sky, nor ill from a chance exposure to a chill wind, nor out of humor because the rain or damp keeps you a prisoner at home. You feel the delicious climate in a thou- sand ways. It is a positive blessing, and were worth more than a fortune, if it were bought and sold. I would rather be poor in Italy, than rich in any other country in the world. We ascended the mountain that shuts in the cam- pagna on the north, and turned, while the horses breathed, to take a last look at Rome. My two friends, the lieutenants, and myself, occupied the interior of the vetturino, in company with a young Roman wo- man, who was making her first journey from home. She was going to see her husband. I pointed out of the window to the distant dome of St. Peter's, rising above the thin smoke hung over the city, and she looked at it with the tears streaming from her large black eyes in torrents. She might have cried because she was going to her husband, but I could not divest myself of the fact that she was a Roman, and leaving a home that could be very romantically wept for. She was a fine specimen of this finest of the races of wo- men — amply proportioned without grossness, and with that certain presence or dignity that rises above man- ners and rank, common to them all. We saw beautiful scenery at Narni. The town stands on the edge of a precipice, and the valley, a hundred feet or two below, is coursed by a wild stream, that goes foaming along its bed in a long line of froth for miles away. We dined here, and drove afterward to Terni, where the voiturier stopped for the night, to give us an opportunity to see the Falls. We drove to the mountain base, three miles, in an old post barouche, and made the ascent on foot. A line of precipices extends along from the summit, and from the third or fourth of these leaps the Velino, clear into the valley. We saw it in front as we went on, and then followed the road round, till we reached the bed of the river behind. The fountain of Egeria is not more secludedly beautiful than its current above the fall. Trees overhang and meet, and flowers spring in wonderful variety on its banks, and the ripple against the roots is heard amid the roar of the cata- ract, like a sweet, clear voice in a chorus. It is a place in which you half expect to startle a fawn, it looks so unvisited and wild. We wound out through the shrubbery, and gained a projecting point, from which we could see the sheet of the cascade. It is " horribly beautiful," to be sure. Childe Harold's description of it is as true as a drawing. I should think the quantity of water at Niagara would make five hundred such falls as those of Ter- ni, without exaggeration. It is a " hell of waters," however, notwithstanding, and leaps over with a cur- rent all turned into foam by the roughness of its bed above — a circumstance that gives the sheet more rich- ness of surface. Two or three lovely little streams steal oft" on either side of the fall, as if they shrunk from the leap, and drop down, from rock to rock, till they are lost in the rising mist. The sun set over the little town of Terni, while we stood silently looking down into the gulf, and the wet spray reminded ns that the most romantic people may take cold. We descended to our carriage; and in an hour were sitting around the blazing fire at the post- house, with a motley group of Germans, Swiss, French, and Italians — a mixture of company univer- sal in the public room of an Italian albergo, at night. The coming and going vetturini stop at the same houses throughout, and the concourse is always amu- sing. We sat till the fire burned low, and then wishing our chance friends a happy night, had the "priests"* taken from our beds, and were soon lost to everything but sleep. Terni was the Italian Tempe, and its beautiful sce- nery was shown to Cicero, whose excursion hither is recorded. It is part of a long, deep valley, between abrupt ranges of mountains, and abounds in loveliness. We went to Spoleto, the next morning, to break- fast. It is a very old town, oddly built, and one of its gates still remains, at which Hannibal was repulsed after his victory at Thrasimene. It bears his name in timeworn letters. At the distance of one post from Spoleto we came to the Clitummis, a small stream, still, deep, and glas- sy — the clearest water I ever saw. It looks almost like air. On its bank, facing away from the road, stands the temple, " of small and delicate propor- tion," mentioned so exquisitely by Childe Harold. The temple of the Clitumnus might stand in a drawing-room. The stream is a mere brook, and this little marble gem, whose richly fretted columns were raised to its honor with a feeling of beauty that makes one thrill, seems exactly of relative proportions. It is a thing of pure poetry; and to find an antiquity of such perfect preservation, with the small clear stream running still at the base of its facade, just as it did when Cicero and his contemporaries passed it on their visits to a country called after the loveliest vale of Greece for its beauty, was a gratification of the high est demand of taste. Childe Harold's lesson, " Pass not unblest the genius of the place " was scarce necessai-y.f * The name of a wooden trame by which a pot of coals is hung between the sheets of a bed in Italy. t As if everything should be poeticaron the shores of the Clitumnus, the beggars ran after us in quartettes, singing a chant, and sustaining the four parts as they ran. Every child PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 07 We slept at Foligno. For many miles we had ob- served that the houses were propped in every direc- tion, many of them in ruins apparently recent, and small wooden sheds erected in the midst of the squares, or beside the roads, and crowded with the poor. The next morning we arrived at St. Angelo, and found its gigantic cathedral a heap of ruins. Its painted chap- els, to the number of fifteen or sixteen, were half standing in the shattered walls, the altars all exposed, and the interior of the dome one mass of stone and rubbish. It was the first time I had seen the effects of an earthquake. For eight or ten miles further, we found every house cracked and deserted, and the peo- ple living like the settlers in a new country, half in the open air. The beggars were innumerable. We stopped the next night on the shores of lake Thrasimene. For once in my life, I felt that the time spent at school on the " dull drilled lesson," had not been wasted. I was on the battle ground of Hannibal — the " locus aptus insidiis" where the consul Fla- minius was snared and beaten by the wily Carthagin- ian on his march to Rome. I longed for my old copy of Livy, "much thumbed," that I might sit on the hill and compare the image in my mind, made by his pithy and sententious description, with the reality. The battle ground, the scene of the principal slaughter, was beyond the albergo, and the increasing darkness compelled us to defer a visit to it till the next morning. Meantime the lake was beautiful. We were on the eastern side, and the deep-red sky of a departed sunset over the other shore, was reflected glowingly on the water. All around was dark, but the light in the sky and lake seemed to have forgotten to follow. It is a phenomenon peculiar to Italy. The heavens seem " died - ' and steeped in the glory of the sunset. We drank our host's best bottle of wine, the grape plucked from the battle-ground ; and if it was not better for the Roman blood that had manured its an- cestor, it was better for some other reason. Early the next morning we were on our way, and wound down into the narrow pass between the lake and the hill, as the sun rose. We crossed the San- guinctto, a little stream which took its name from the battle. The principal slaughter was just on its banks, and the hills are so steep above it, that everybody which fell near must have rolled into its bed. It crawls on very quietly across the road, its clear stream scarce in- terrupted by the wheels of the vetturino, which in cros- sing it, passes from the Roman states into Tuscany. I ran a little up the stream, knelt and drank at a small gurgling fall. The blood of the old Flaminian Co- hort spoiled very delicious water, when it mingled with that brook. We were six days and a half accomplishing the hun- dred and eighty miles from Rome to Florence — slow travelling — but not too slow in Italy, where every stone has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's eye could not imagine them. We looked down on the Eden-like valley of the Arno at sunrise, and again my heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence, and the hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces and bright in a sun that shines nowhere so kindly. If there is a spot in the world that could wean one from his native home, it is Florence ! " Florence the fair," they call her! I have passed four of the seven months I have been in Italy, here — and I think I shall pass here as great a proportion of the rest of my life. There is nothing that can contribute to comfort and pleasure, that is not within the reach of the smallest sings well in Italy ; and I have heard worse music in a church anthem, than was made by these half-clothed and homeless wretches, running at full speed by the carriage- wheels. I have never met the same thing elsewhere. means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth made less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in the world, are open to all comers. The palace of the monarch may be entered and visited, and enjoyed by all. The ducal gardens of the Boboli rich in every- thing that can refine nature, and commanding views that no land can equal, cooled by fountains, haunted in every grove by statuary, are the property of the stran- ger and the citizen alike. Museums, laboratories, li- braries, grounds, palaces, are all free as Utopia. You may take any pleasure that others can command, and have any means of instruction, as free as the common air. Where else would one live so pleasantly — so profitably — so wisely ? The society of Florence is of a very fascinating de- scription. The Florentine nobles have a casino, or club-house, to which most of the respectable stran- gers are invited, and balls are given there once a week, frequently by the duke and his court, and the best so- ciety of the place. I attended one on my first arrival from Rome, at which I saw a proportion of beauty which astonished me. The female descendants of the great names in Italian history, seem to me to have almost without exception the mark of noble beauty by nature. The loveliest woman in Florence is a Medi- ci. The two daughters of Capponi, the patriot and the descendant of patriots, are of the finest order of beauty. I could instance many others, the mention of whose names, when I have first seen them, has j made my blood start. I think if Italy is ever to be re- I deemed, she must owe it to her daughters. The men, ! the brothers of these women, with very rare excep- | tions, look like the slaves they are, from one end of j Italy to the other. One of the most hospitable houses here, is that of I Prince Poniatowski, the brother of the hero of Po- | land. He has a large family, and his soirees are | thronged with all that is fair and distinguished. He is a ! venerable, grayheadedoldman, of perhaps seventy, very fond of speaking English, of which rare acquisition abroad he seems a little vain. He gave me the heartiest welcome as an American, and said he loved the nation. I had the honor of dining, a day or two since, with the ex-king of Westphalia, Jerome Bonaparte. He lives here with the title of Prince Montfort, confer- red on him by his father-in-law, the king of Wurtem- burg. Americans are well received at this house also; and his queen, as the prince still calls her, can never say enough in praise of the family of Mr. H., cur for- mer secretary of legation at Paris. It is a constantly recurring theme, and ends always with " Taime leau- coup les Atnericains." The prince resembles his brother, but has a milder face, and his mouth is less firm and less beautiful than Napoleon's. His second son is most remarkably like the emperor. He is about ten years of age ; but except his youth, you can detect no difference between his head and the busts of his uncle. He has a daughter of about twelve, and an elder son at the university of Sienna. His family is large, as his queen still keeps up her state, with the ladies of honor and suite. He never goes out, but his house is open every night, and the best society of Florence may be met there almost at the prima sera, or early part of the evening. The grand duke is about to be married, and the court is to be unusually gay in the carnival. Our countryman, Mr. Thorn, was presented some time since, and I am to have that honor in two or three days. By the way, we feel exceedingly in Italy the want of a minister. There is no accredited agent of our government in Tuscany, and there are rarely less than three hundred Americans within its dominions. Fortunately the marquis Corsi, the grand chamber- lain of the duke, offers to act in the capacity of an am- bassador, and neglects nothing for our advantage in 68 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY such matters, but he never fails to express his regret that we should not have some charge d'affaires at his court. We have officers in many parts of the world where they are much less needed. LETTER XL VII. FLORENCE — GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY — THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN — PRINCE DE LIGNE — THE AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR — THE MARQUIS TORRIGIANI LEOPOLD OF TUSCANY — VIEWS OF THE VAL d'aRNO — SPLEN- DID BALL — TREES OF CANDLES — THE DUKE AND DUTCH- ESS — HIGHBORN ITALIAN AND ENGLISH BEAUTIES, ETC., ETC. I was presented to the grand duke of Tuscany yes- terday morning, at a private audience. As we have no minister at this court, I drove alone to the ducal palace, and, passing through the body-guard of young nobles, was met at the door of the antechamber by the Marquis Corsi, the grand chamberlain. Around a blazing fire, in this room, stood five or six persons, in splendid uniforms, to whom I was introduced on entering. One was the Prince de Ligne — travelling at present in Italy, and waiting to be presented by the Austrian ambassador — a young and remarkably hand- some man of twenty-five. He showed a knowledge of America, in the course of a half hour's conversa- tion, which rather surprised me, inquiring particularly about the residences and condition of the United States' ministers whom he had met at the various courts of Europe. The Austrian ambassador, an old, wily-looking man, covered with orders, joined in the conversation, and- asked after our former minister at Paris, Mr. Brown, remarking that he had done the United States great credit, during his embassy. He had known Mr. Gallatin also, and spoke highly of him. Mr. Van Buren's election to the vice-presidency, af- ter his recall, seemed greatly to surprise him. The prince was summoned to the presence of the duke, and 1 remained some fifteen minutes in conver- sation with a venerable and noble looking man, the Marquis Torrigiani, one of the chamberlains. His eldest son has lately gone upon his travels in the United States, in company with Mr. Thorn, an Amer- ican gentleman living in Florence. He seemed to think the voyage a great undertaking. Torrigiani is one of the oldest of the Florentine nobles, and his fam- ily is in high esteem. As the Austrian minister came out, the grand cham- berlain came for me, and I entered the presence of the duke. He was standing quite alone in a small plain room, dressed in a simple white uniform, with a star upon his breast — a slender, pale, scholar-like looking young man, of perhaps thirty years. He received me with a pleasant smile, and crossing his hands behind him, came close to me, and commenced questioning me about America. The departure of young Tor- rigiani for the United States pleased him, and he said he should like to go himself — " but," said he, " a voy- age of three thousand miles and back — comment fair e P" 1 and he threw out his hands with a look of mock de- spair that was very expressive. He assured me he felt great pleasure at Mr. Thorn's having taken up his res- idence in Florence. He had sent for his whole fam- ily a few days before, and promised them every atten- tion to their comfort during the absence of Mr. Thorn. He said young Torrigiani was bien inslruit, and would travel to advantage, without doubt. At every pause of his inquiries, he looked me full in the eyes, and seemed anxious to yield me the parole and listen. He bowed with a smile, after I had been with him perhaps half an hour, and I took my leave with all the impres- sions of his character which common report had given me, quite confirmed. He is said to be the best mon- arch in Europe, and it is written most expressively in his mild amiable features. The duke is very unwilling to marry again, although the crown passes from his family if he die without a male heir. He has two daughters, lovely children, between five and seven, whose mother died not quite a year since. She was unusually beloved, both by her husband and his subjects, and is still talked of by the people, and never without the deepest regret. She was very religious, and is said to have died of a cold taken in doing a severe penance. The duke watched with her day and night, till she died; and I was told by the old chamberlain, that he can not yet speak of her without tears. With the new year, the grand duke of Tuscany threw off his mourning. Not from his countenance, for the sadness of that is habitual; but his equipages have laid off their black trappings, his grooms and outriders are in drab and gold, and, more important to us strangers in his capital, the ducal palace is aired with a weekly reception and ball, as splendid and hos- pitable as money and taste can make them. Leopold of Tuscany is said to be the richest indi- vidual in Europe. The Palazzo Pitti, in which he lives, seems to confirm it. The exterior is marked with the character of the times in which it was built, and might be that of a fortress — its long, dark front of roughly-hewn stone, with its two slight, out-curving wings, bearing a look of more strength than beauty. The interior is incalculably rich. The suite of halls on the front side is the home of the choicest and most extensive gallery of pictures in the world. The tables of inlaid gems and mosaic, the walls encrusted with relievos, the curious floors, the drapery — all satiate the eye with sumptuousness. It is built against a hill, and I was surprised, on the night of the ball, to find myself alighting from the carriage upon the same floor to which I had mounted from the front by tediously long staircases. The duke thus rides in his carriage to his upper story — an advantage which saves him no little fatigue and exposure. The gardens of the Bo- boli, which cover the hill behind, rise far above the turrets of the palace, and command glorious views of the Val d'Arno. The reception hour at the ball was from eight to nine. We were received at the steps on the garden side of the palace, by a crowd of servants, in livery, under the orders of a fat major-domo, and passing through a long gallery, lined with exotics and grena- diers, we arrived at the anteroom, where the duke's body-guard of nobles were drawn up in attendance. The band was playing delightfully in the saloon be- yond. I had arrived late, "having been presented a few days before, and desirous of avoiding the stiffness of the first hour of presentations. The rooms were in a blaze of light from eight trees of candles, cypress- shaped, and reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and the company entirely assembled, crowded them with a dazzling show of jewels, flowers, feathers, and uniforms. The duke and the grand dutchess (the widow of the late duke) stood in the centre of the room, and in the pauses of conversation, the different ambassadors pre- sented their countrymen. His highness was dressed in a suit of plain black, probably the worst made clothes in Florence. With his pale, timid face, his bent shoulders, an inexpressibly ill-tied cravat, and rank, untrimmed whiskers, he was the most uncourtly person present. His extreme popularity as a monarch is certainly very independent of his personal address. His mother-in-law is about his own age, with marked features, full of talent, a pale, high forehead, and the bearing altogether of a queen. She wore a small diadem of the purest diamonds, and with her height and her flashing jewels, she was conspicuous from PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY (v.) every part of the room. She is a high catholic, and is said to be bending all her powers upon the re- establishment of the Jesuits in Florence. As soon as the presentations were over, the grand duke led out the wife of the English ambassador, and opened the ball with a waltz. He then danced a quadrille with the wife of the French ambassador, and for his next partner selected an American lady — the daughter of Colonel T , of New York. The supper rooms were opened early, and among the delicacies of a table loaded with everything rare and luxurious, were a brace or two of pheasants from the duke's estates in Germany. Duly flavored with truffes, and accompanied with Rhine wines, which deserved the conspicuous place given them upon the royal table — and in this letter. I hardly dare speak of the degree of beauty in the assembly ; it is so difficult to compare a new impres- sion with an old one, and the thing itself is so in- definite. But there were two persons present whose extreme loveliness, as it i3 not disputed even by ad- miring envy, may be worth describing, for the sake of the comparison. The princess S may be twenty-four years of age. She is of the middle height, with the slight stoop in her shoulders, which is rather a grace than a fault. Her bust is exquisitely turned, her neck slen- der but full, her arms, hands, and feet, those of a Psyche. Her face is the abstraction of highborn Italian beauty — calm, almost to indifference, of an indescribably glowing paleness — a complexion that would be alabaster if it were not for the richness of the blood beneath, betrayed in lips whose depth of color and fineness of curve seem only too curiously beautiful to be the work of nature. Her eyes are dark and large, and must have had an indolent ex- pression in her childhood, but are now the very seat and soul of feeling. A constant trace of pain mars the beauty of her forehead. She dresses her hair with a kind of characteristic departure from the mode, parting its glossy flakes on her brow with nymph-like simplicity, a peculiarity which one regrets not to see in the too Parisian dress of her person. In her man- ner she is strikingly elegant, but without being absent, she seems to give an unconscious attention to what is about her, and to be gracious and winning without knowing or intending it, merely because she could not listen or speak otherwise. Her voice is sweet, and, in her own Italian, mellow and soft to a degree incon- ceivable by those who have not heard this delicious language spoken in its native land. With all these advantages, and a look of pride that nothing could insult, there is an expression in her beautiful face that reminds you of her sex and its temptations, and pre- pares you fully for the history which you may hear from the first woman that stands at your elbow. The other is that English girl of seventeen, shrink- ing timidly from the crowd, and leaning with her hands clasped over her father's arm, apparently listen- ing only to the waltz, and unconscious that every eye is fixed upon her in admiration. She has lived all her life in Italy, but has been bred by an English mother, in a retired villa of the Val d'Arno— her character and feelings are those of her race, and nothing of Italy about her, but the glow of its sunny clime in the else spotless snow of her complexion, and an enthusiasm in her downcast eye that you may account for as you will— it is not English ! Her form has just ripened into womanhood. The bust still wants fulness, and the step confidence. Her forehead is rather too intellectual to be maidenly ; but the droop of her singularly long eye-lashes over eyes that elude the most guarded glance of your own, and the modest expression of her lips closed but not pressed together, redeem her from any look of conscious superiority, and convince you that she only seeks to be unob- served. A single ringlet of golden brown hair falls nearly to her shoulder, catching the light upon its glossy curves with an effect that would enchant a painter. Lilies of the valley, the first of the season, are in her bosom and her hair, and she might be the personification of the flower for delicacy and beauty. You are only disappointed in talking with her. She expresses herself with a nerve and self-command which, from a slight glance, you did not anticipate. She shrinks from the general eye, but in conversation she is the high-minded woman more than the timid child for which her manner seems to mark her. In either light, she is the very presence of purity. She stands by the side of her not less beautiful rival, like a Madonna by a Magdalen — both seem not at home in the world, but only one could have dropped from heaven. LETTER XL VIII. VALLOMBROSA — ITALIAN OXEN — CONVENT — SERVICE IN THE CHAPEL — HOUSE OCCUPIED BY MILTON. I left Florence for Vallombrosa at daylight on a warm summer's morning, in company with four ladies. We drove along the northern bank of the Arno for four or five miles, passing several beautiful villas, belonging to the Florentine nobles; and, crossing the river by a picturesque bridge, took the road to the village of Pe- lago, which lies at the foot of the mountain, and is the farthest point to which a carriage can mount. It is about fourteen miles from Florence, and the ascent thence to the convent is nearly three. We alighted in the centre of the village, in the midst of a ragged troop of women and children, among whom were two idiot beggars ; and, while the preparations were making for our ascent, we took chairs in the open square around a basket of cherries, and made a delicious luncheon of fruit and bread, very much to the astonishment of some two hundred spectators. Our conveyances appeared in the course of half an hour, consisting of two large baskets, each drawn by a pair of oxen and containing two persons, andasmall Sar- dinian pony. The ladies seated themselves with some hesitation in their singular sledges; I mounted the pony, and we made a dusty exit from Pelago, attended to the gate by our gaping friends, who bowed, and wished us the bon viaggio with more gratitude than three Tuscan crazie would buy, I am sure, in any other part of the world. The gray oxen of Italy are quite a different race from ours, much lighter and quicker, and in a small vehicle they will trot off five or six miles in the hour as freely as a horse. They are exceedingly beautiful. The hide is very fine, of a soft squirrel gray, and as sleek and polished often as that of a well-groomed courser. With their large, bright, intelligent eyes, high-lifted heads, and open nostrils, they are among the finest-looking animals in the world in motion. We soon came to the steep path, and the facility with which our singular equipages mounted was surprising. I followed, as well as I could, on my diminutive pony, my feet touching the ground, and my balance con- stantly endangered by the contact of stumps and stones — the hard-mouthed little creature taking his own way, in spite of every effort of mine to the con- trary. We stopped to breathe in a deep, cool glen, which lay across our path, the descent into which was very difficult. The road through the bottom of it ran just above the bank of a brook, into which poured a pretty fall of eight or ten feet, and with the spray-wet grass beneath, and the full-leaved chestnuts above, it was as 70 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. delicious a spot for a rest in a summer noontide as I ever saw. The ladies took out their pencils and sketched it, making a group themselves the while, which added all the picture wanted. The path wound continually about in the deep woods, with which the mountain is covered, and occa- sionally from an opening we obtained a view back up- on the valley of the Arno, which was exceedingly fine. We came in sight of the convent in about two hours, emerging from the shade of the thick chestnuts into a cultivated lawn, fenced and mown with the nicety of the grass-plot before a cottage, and entering upon a smooth, well-swept pavement, approached the gate of the venerable-looking pile, as anxious for the refresh- ment of its far-famed hospitality as ever pilgrims were. An old cheerful-looking monk came out to meet us, and shaking hands with the ladies very cordially, as- sisted in extracting them from their cramped convey- ances. He then led the way to a small stone cottage, a little removed from the convent, quoting gravely by the way the law of the order against the entrance of females over the monastic threshold. We were ush- ered into a small, neat parlor, with two bedrooms communicating, and two of the servants of the monas- tery followed, with water and show-white napkins, the -padre degli forestieri, as they called the old monk, who received us, talking most volubly all the while. The cook appeared presently with a low reverence, and asked what we would like for dinner. He ran over the contents of the larder before we had time to answer his question, enumerating half a dozen kinds of game, and a variety altogether that rather surprised our ideas of monastical seventy. His own rosy gills bore testimony that it was not the kitchen of Dennis Bul-iruddery. While dinner was preparing, Father Gasparo pro- posed a walk. An avenue of the most majestic trees opened immediately away from the little lawn before the cottage door. We followed it perhaps half a mile round the mountain, thridding a thick pine forest, till we emerged on the edge of a shelf of greensward, running just under the summit of the hill. From this spot the view was limited only by the power of the eye. The silver line of the Mediterranean oft* Leg- horn is seen hence on a clear day, between which and the mountain lie sixty or seventy miles, wound into the loveliest undulations by the course of the Arno. The vale of this beautiful river, in which Florence stands, was just distinguishable as a mere dell in the prospect. It was one of the sultriest days of August, but the air was vividly fresh, and the sun, with all the strength of the climate of Italy, was unoppressive. We seated ourselves on the small fine grass of the hill- side, and with the good old monk narrating passages of his life, enjoyed the glorious scene till the cook's messenger summoned us back to dinner. We were waited upon at table by two young servi- tors of the convent, with shaven crowns and long black cassocks, under the direction of Father Gasparo, who sat at a little distance, entertaining us with his inex- haustible stories till the bell rung for the convent sup- per. The dinner would have graced the table of an emperor. Soup, beef, cutlets, ducks, woodcock, fol- lowed each other, cooked in the most approved man- ner, with all the accompaniments established by taste and usage ; and better wine, white and red, never was pressed from the Tuscan grape. The dessert was va- rious and plentiful ; and while we were sitting, after the good father's departure, wondering at the luxuries we had found on a mountain-top, strong coftee and liqueurs were set before us, both of the finest flavor. I was to sleep myself in the convent. Father Gas- paro joined us upon the wooden bench in the avenue, where we were enjoying a brilliant sunset, and inform- ed me that the ga'es shut at eight. The vesper-bell soon rung, echoing round from the rocks, and I bade my four companions good night, and followed the monk to the cloisters. As we entered the postern, he asked me whether I would go directly to the cell, or attend first the service in the chapel, assisting my de- cision at the same time by gently slipping his arm through mine and drawing me toward the cloth door, from which a strong peal of the organ was issuing. We lifted the suspended curtain, and entered I chapel so dimly lit, that I could only judge of its ex tent from the reverberations of the music. The lamps were all in the choir, behind the altar, and the shuf- fling footsteps of the gathering monks approached it from every quarter. Father Gasparo led me to the base of a pillar, and telling me to kneel, left me and entered the choir, where he was lost in the depth of one of the old richly-carved seats for a few minutes, appearing again with thirty or forty others, who rose and joined in the chorus of the chant, making the hollow roof ring with the deep unmingled base of then- voices. I stood till I was chilled, listening to the service, and looking at the loug line of monks rising and sit- ting, with their monotonous changes of books and positions, and not knowing which way to go for warmth or retirement. I wandered up and down the dim church during the remaining hour, an unwilling, but not altogether an unamused spectator of the scene. The performers of the service, with the exception of Father Gasparo, were young men of from sixteen to twenty ; but during my slow turns to and fro on the pavement of the church, fifteen or twenty old monks entered, and, with a bend of the knee before the altar, went off into the obscure corners, and knelt motionless at prayer, for almost an hour. I could just distin- guish the dark outline of their figures when my eye became accustomed to the imperfect light, and 1 nev er saw a finer spectacle of religious devotion. The convent clock struck ten, and shutting up their " clasped missals," the young monks took their cloaks about them, bent their knees in passing the altar, and disappeared by different doors. Father Gasparo was the last to depart, and our footsteps echoed as we passed through the long cloisters to the cell appropri- ated for me. We opened one of some twenty small doors, and I was agreeably surprised to find a supper of cold game upon the table, with a bottle of wine, and two plates — the monk intending to give me his company at supper. The cell was hung round with bad engravings of the virgin, the death of martyrs, crosses, &c, and a small oaken desk stood against the wall beneath a large crucifix, with a prayer-book upon it. The bed was high, ample, and spotlessly white, and relieved the otherwise comfortless look of a stone floor and white-washed walls. I felt the change from summer heat to the keen mountain air, and as I shiv- ered and buttoned my coat, my gay guest threw over me his heavy black cowl of cloth — a dress that, with its closeness and numerous folds, would keep one warm in Siberia. Adding to it his little black scull- cap, he told me, with a hearty laugh, that but for a certain absence of sanctity in the expression of my face, and the uncanonical length of my hair, I looked the monk complete. We had a merry supper. The wine was of a choicer vintage than that we had drank at dinner, and the father answered, upon my discovery of its merits, that he never tvasted it upon women. In the course of the conversation, I found out that my entertainer was a kind of butler, or heard-servitor of the convent, and that the great body of the monks were of noble lineage. The feeling of pride still re- mains among them from the days when the Certosa of Vallombrosa was a residence for princes, before its splendid pictures were pillaged by a foreign army, its wealth scattered, and its numbers demolished. "In those days," said the monk, "we received nothing for PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 71 our hospitality but the pleasure it gave us" — relieving my mind, by the remark, of what I looked forward to at parting as a delicate point. My host left me at midnight, and I went to bed, and slept under a thick covering in an Italian August. " The blanched linen, white and lavendered," seemed to have a peculiar charm, for though I had promised to meet my excluded companions at sunrise, on the top of the mountain, I slept soundly till nine, and was obliged to breakfast alone in the refectory of the con- vent. We were to dine at three, and start for Florence at four the next day, and we spent our morning in trav- ersing the mountain paths, and getting views on ev- ery side. Fifty or a hundred feet above the convent, perched on a rock like an eyry, stands a small build- ing in which Milton is supposed to have lived, during his six weeks sojourn at the convent. It is now fitted up as a nest of small chapels — every one of its six or eight little chambers having an altar. The ladies were not permitted to enter it. I selected the room I pre- sumed the poet must have chosen — the only one com- manding the immense view to the west, and, looking from the window, could easily feel the truth of his simile, "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." It is a mountain of foliage. Another sumptuous dinner was served, Father Gas- paro sitting by, even more voluble than before, the baskets and the pony were brought to the door, and we bade farewell to the old monk with more regret than a day's acquaintance often produces. We reach- ed our carriage in an hour, and were in Florence at eight — having passed, by unanimous opinion, the two brightest days in our calendar of travel. LETTER XLIX. HOUSE OF MICHAEL ANGELO — THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF SAN MINIATO — MADAME CATALANI — WALTER RAVAGE LANDOR — MIDNIGHT MASS, ETC. I went with a party this morning to visit the house of Michael Angelo. It stands as he lived in it, in the Via Ghibellini, and is still in possession of his de- scendants. It is a neat building of three stories, divided on the second floor into three rooms, shown as those occupied by the painter, sculptor, and poet. The first is panelled and painted by his scholars after his death — each picture representing some incident of his life. There are ten or twelve of these, and several of them are highly beautiful. One near the window represents him in his old age on a visit to " Lorenzo the Magnificent," who commands him to sit in his presence. The duke is standing before his chair, and the figure of the old man is finely expressive. The next room appears to have been his parlor, and the furniture is exactly as it stood when he died. In one corner is placed a bust of him in his youth, with nis face perfect ; and opposite, another, taken from a cast after his nose was broken by a fellow painter in the church of the Carmine. There are also one or two portraits of him, and the resemblance through them all shows that the likenesses we have of him in the engravings are uncommonly correct. In the inner room, which was his studio, they show his pallet, brushes, pots, maul-sticks, slippers, and easel — all standing carelessly in the little closets around, as if he had left them but yesterday. The walls are painted in fresco, by Angelo himself, and represent groups of all the distinguished philosophers, poets and statesmen of his time. Among them are the heads of Petrarch, Dante, Galileo, and Lorenzo de Medici. It is a noble gallery ! perhaps a hundred heads in all. The descendant of Buonarotti is now an old man, and fortunately rich enough to preserve the house of his great ancestor as an object of curiosity. He has a son, I believe, studying the arts at Rome. On a beautiful hill which ascends directly from one of the southern gates of Florence, stands a church built so Ions; ago as at the close of the first century. The gate, church, and hill, are all called San Miniato, after a saint buried under the church pavement. A large, and at present flourishing convent, hangs on the side of the hill below, and around the church stand the walls of a strong fortress, built by Michael Angelo. A half mile or more south, across a valley, an old tower rises against the sky, which was erected for the observations of Galileo. A mile to the left, on the same ridge, an old villa is to be seen in which Boccaccio wrote most of his "Hundred Talesof Love." The Arno comes down from Vallombrosa, and pas- sing through Florence at the foot of San Miniato, is seen for three miles further on its way to Pisa ; the hill, tower, and convent of Fiesole, where Milton studied and Catiline encamped with his conspirators, rise from the opposite bank of the river ; and right below, as if you could leap into the lantern of the dome, nestles the lovely city of Florence, in the lap of the very brightest vale that ever mountain shel- tered or river ran through. Such are the temptations to a walk in Italy, and add to it the charms of the climate, and you may understand one of a hundred reasons why it is the land of poetry and romance, and why it so easily becomes the land of a stranger's affection. The villas which sparkle all over the hills which lean unto Florence, are occupied mainly by foreigners living here for health or luxury, and most of them are known and visited by the floating society of the place. Among them are Madame Catalani, the celebrated singer, who occupies a beautiful palace on the ascent of Fiesole, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of the " Imaginary Conversations," as refined a scholar perhaps as is now living, who is her near neighbor. A pleasant family of my acquaintance lives just back of the fortress of San Miniato, and in walking out to them with a friend yesterday, I visited the church again, and remarked more particularly the features of the scene I have described. The church of San Miniato was built by Henry I. of Germany, and Cunegonde his wife. The front is pretty — a kind of mixture of Greek and Arabic archi- tecture, crusted with marble. The interior is in the style of the primitive churches, the altar standing in what was called the presbijtery, a high platform occu- pying a third of the nave, with two splendid flights of stairs of the purest white marble. The most curious part of it is the rotunde in the rear, which is lit by five windows of transparent oriental alabaster, each eic;ht or nine feet high and three broad, in single slabs. The sun shone full on one of them while we were there, and the effect was inconceivably rich. It was like a sheet of half molten gold and silver. The transparency of course was irregular, but in the yel- low spots of the stone the light came through like the effect of deeply stained glass. A partly subterranean chapel, six or eight feet lower than the pavement of the church, extends under the presbytery. It is a labyrinth of marble columns which support the platform above, no two of which are alike. The ancient cathedral of Modena is the only church 1 have seen in Italy built in the same manner. The midnight mass on " Christmas eve," is abused in all catholic countries, I believe, as a kind of satur- nalia of gallantry. I joined a party of young men who were leaving a ball for the church of the An- 72 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. nunciata, the fashionable rendezvous, and we were set down at the portico when the mass was about half over. The entrances of the open vestibule were thronged to suffocation. People of all ages and con- ditions were crowding in and out, and the sound of the distant chant at the altar came to our ears as we entered, mingled with every tone of address and reply from the crowd about us. The body of the church was quite obscured with the smoke of the incense. We edged our way on through the press, carried about in the open area of the church by every tide that rushed in from the various doors, till we stopped in a thick eddy in the centre, almost unable to stir a limb. I could see the altar very clearly from this point, and I contented myself with merely observing what was about me, leaving my motions to the im- pulse of the crowd. It was a curiously mingled scene. The ceremonies of the altar were going on in all their mysterious splendor. The waving of censers, the kneeling and rising of the gorgeously clad priests, accompanied simultaneously by the pealing of solemn music from the different organs — the countless lights burning upon the altar, and, ranged within the paling, a semi- circle of the duke's grenadiers, standing motionless, with their arms presented, while the sentinel paced to and fro, and all kneeling, and grounding arms at the tinkle of the slight bell — were the materials for the back-ground of the picture. In the immense area of the church stood perhaps, four thousand people, one third of whom, doubtless, came to worship. Those who did and those who did not, dropped alike upon the marble pavement at the sound of the bell ; and then, as I was heretic enough to stand, I had full opportunity for observing both devotion and intrigue. The latter was amusingly managed. Almost air the pretty and young women were accompanied by an ostensible duenna, and the methods of eluding their vigilance in communication were various. I had detected under a blond wig, in entering, the young ambassador of a foreign court, who being cavaliere ser- vente to one of the most beautiful women in Florence, certainly had no right to the amusement of the hour. We had been carried up the church in the same tide, and when the whole crowd were prostrate, I found him just beyond me, slipping a card into the shoe of an uncommonly pretty girl kneeling before him. She was attended by both father and mother apparently, but as she gave no sign of surprise, except stealing an almost imperceptible glance behind her, I presumed she was not offended. I passed an hour, perhaps, in amused observation of similar matters, most of which could not be well described on paper. It is enough to say, that I do not think more dissolute circum- stances accompanied the worship of Venus in the most defiled of heathen temples. LETTER L. FLORENCE — VISIT TO THE CHURCH OF SAN GAETANO — PENITENTIAL PROCESSIONS THE REFUGEE CARLISTS — THE MIRACLE OF RAIN — CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCI- ATA — TOMB OF GIOVANNI DI BOLOGNA — MASTER- PIECE OF ANDREA DEL SARTO, ETC., ETC. I heard the best passage of the opera of " Romeo and Juliet" delightfully played in the church of San Gattano this morning. I was coming from the cafe, where I had been breakfasting, when the sound of the organ drew me in. The communion was administering at one of the side chapels, the showy Sunday mass was going on at the great altar, and the numerous con- fession boxes were full of penitents, all female, as usual. As I took a seat near the communicants, the sacred wafer was dipped into the cup and put into the mouth of a young woman kneeling before the railing. She rose soon after, and I was not lightly surprised to find it was a certain errand-girl of a bachelor's washerwo- man, as unfit a person for the holy sacrament as wears a petticoat in Florence. I was drawn by the agreeable odor of the incense to the paling of the high altar. The censers were flung by unseen hands from the doors of the sacristy at the sides, and an unseen chorus of boys in the choir be- hind broke in occasionally with the high-keyed chant that echoes with its wild melody from every arch and corner of these immense churches. It seems running upon the highest note that the ear can bear, and yet nothing could be more musical. A man knelt on the pavement near me, with two coarse baskets beside him, and the traces of long and dirty travel from his heels to his hips. He had stopped in to the mass probably on his way to market. There can be no greater contrast than that seen in catholic churches, between the splendor of architecture, renowned pic- tures, statues and ornaments of silver and gold, and the crowd of tattered, famished, misery-marked, wor- shippers that throng them. I wonder it never occurs to them, that the costly pavement upon which they kneel might feed and clothe them.* Penitential processions are to be met all over Flor- ence to-day, on account of the uncommon degree of sickness. One of them passed under my window just now. They are composed of people of all classes, upon whom it is inflicted as a penance by the priests. A white robe covers them entirely, even the face, and, with their eyes glaring through the two holes made for that purpose, they look like processions of shroud- ed corpses. Eight of the first carry burning candles of six feet in length, and a company in the rear have the church books, from which they chant, the whole procession joining in a melancholy chorus of three notes. It rains hard to-day, and their white dresses cling to them with a ludicrously ungraceful effect. Florence is an unhealthful climate in the winter. The tramontane winds come down from the Appenines so sharply, that delicate constitutions, particularly those liable to pulmonary complaints, suffer invariably. There has been a dismal mortality among the Italians. The Marquis Corsi, who presented me at court a week ago (the last day he was out, and the last duty he performed), lies in state, at this moment, in the church of Santa Trinita, and another of the duke's counsellors of state died a few days before. His prime minister, Fossombroni, is dangerously ill also, and all of the same complaint, the mal di petto, as it is called, or disease of the lungs. Corsi is a great loss to Amer- icans. He was the grand chamberlain of court, wealthy and hospitable, and took particular pride in fulfilling the functions of an American ambassador. He was a courtier of the old school, accomplished, elegant, and possessed of universal information. The refugee Garlists are celebrating to-day, in the church of Santa Maria Novella, the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI. The bishop of Strasbourg is here, and is performing high mass for the soul of the " martyr," as they term him. Italy is full of the more aristocratic families of France, and it has become mauvais ton in society to advocate the present govern- ment of France, or even its principles. They detest Louis Philippe with the virulence of a deadly private enmity, and declare universally, that they will exile themselves till they can return to overthrow him. Among the refugees are great numbers of young men, * The Tuscans, who are the best governed people in Italy, pay twenty per cent, of their property in taxes — paying the whole value of their estates, of course, in five years. The extortions of the priests, added to this, are sufficiently bur- densome PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. T.i who are sent away from home with a chivalrous devo- tion to the cause of the Dutchess of Berri, which they avow so constantly in the circles of Italian society, that she seems the exclusive heroine of the day. There was nothing seen of the French exquisites in Florence for a week after she was taken. They were in mourn- ing for the misfortune of their mistress. All Florence is ringing with the miracle. The city fountains have for some days been dry, and the whole country was suffering for rain. The day before (he moon changed, the processions began, and the day af- ter, when the sky was full of clouds, the holy picture in the church of the Annunciata, "painted by St. Luke himself," was solemnly uncovered. The re- sult was the present miracle of rain, and the priests are preaching upon it from every pulpit. The padrone of my lodgings came in this morning, and told me the circumstances with the most serious astonishment. I joined the crowd this morning, who are still thronging up the via de Serti to the church of the Annunciata at all hours of the day. The square in front of the church was like a fair — every nook occu- pied with the little booths of the sellers of rosaries, 6aint's books, and pictures. We were assailed by a troop of pedlars at the door, holding leaden medals and crucifixes, and crying, at the top of their voices, for fidele Christiani to spend a crazie for the love of God. After crowding up the long cloister with a hundred or two of wretches, steaming from the rain, and fresh from every filthy occupation in the city, we were pushed under the suspended leather door, and reached the nave of the church. In the slow progress we made toward the altar, I had full opportunity to study the fretted-gold ceiling above me, the masterly pic- tures in the side chapels, the statuary, carving, and general architecture. Description can give you no idea of the waste of splendor in these places. I stood at last within sight of the miraculous pic- ture. It is painted in fresco above an altar surrounded with a paling of bronze and marble projecting into the body of the church. Eight or ten massive silver lamps, each one presented by some trade in Florence, hung from the roof of the chapel, burning with a dusky glare in the daylight. A grenadier, with cap and musket, stood on each side of the bronze gate, re- pressing the eager rush of the crowd. Within, at the side of the altar, stood the officiating priest, a man with a look of intellect and nobleness on his fine fea- tures and lofty forehead, that seemed irreconcilable with the folly he was performing. The devotees came in, one by one, as they were admitted by the sentinel, knelt, offered their rosary to the priest, who touched it to the frame of the picture with one hand, and re- ceived their money with the other, and then crossing themselves, and pressing the beads to their bosom, passed out at the small door leading into the cloisters. As the only chance of seeing the picture, I bought a rosary for two crazie (about three cents), and pressed into the throng. In a half hour it came to my turn to pass the guard. The priest took my silver paul, and while he touched the beads to the picture, I had a moment to look at it nearly. I could see nothing but a confused mass of black paint, with an indistinct outline of the head of a Madonna in the centre. The large spiked rays of glory standing out from every side were all I could see in the imperfect light. The rich- ness of the chapel itself, however, was better worth the trouble to see. It is quite encrusted with silver. Sil- ver bas.si relievi, two silver candelabra, six feet in height, two very large silver statues of angels, a ciborio (enclosing a most exquisite head of our Savior by An- drea del Sarto), a massive silver cornice sustaining a heavily folded silver curtain, and silver lilies and lamps in any quantity all around. I wonder, after the plun- dering of the church of San Antonio, at Padua, that these useless riches escaped Napoleon. How some of the priests, who are really learned and clever men, can lend themselves to such barefaced im- posture as this miracle, it is difficult to conceive. The picture has been kept as a doer of these miracles, per- haps for a century. It is never uncovered in vain. Su- pernatural results are certain to follow, and it is done as often as they dare make a fresh draught on the credulity and money of the people. The story is as follows: "A certain Bartolomeo, while painting a fresco of the annunciation, being at a loss how to make the countenance of the Madonna properly seraphic, fell asleep while pondering over his work ; and, on waking, found it executed in a style he was unable to equal." I can only say that St. Luke, or the angel, or whoever did it, was a very indifferent draughtsman. It is ill drawn, and whatever the colors might have been upon the pallet of the sleepy painter, they were not made immortal by angelic use. It is a mass of con- fused black. I was glad to get away from the crowd and their mummery, and pay a new tribute of reverence at the tomb of Giovanni di Bologna. He is buried behind the grand altar, in a chapel ornamented at his own ex- pense, and with his owe inimitable works. Six bas- reliefs in bronze, than which life itself is not more nat- ural, represent different passages of our Savior's histo ry. They were done for the grand duke, who, at the death of the artist, liberally gave them to ornament his tomb. After the authors of the Venus and the Apollo Belvidere, John of Bologna is, in my judgment, the greatest of sculptors. His mounting Mercury, in the Florence gallery, might have been a theft from heaven for its divine beauty. In passing out by the cloisters of the adjoining con- vent, I stopped a moment to see the fresco of the Ma- donna del Sacco, said to have been the masterpiece of Andrea del Sarto. Michael Angelo and Kaphael are said to have " gazed at it unceasingly." It is much defaced, and preserves only its graceful drawing. The countenance of Mary has the beau reste of singu- lar loveliness. The models of this delightful artist (who, by the way, is buried in the vestibule of this same church), must have been the most beautiful in the world. All his pictures move the heart. LETTER LI. FLORENTINE PECULIARITIES SOCIETY BALLS DU- CAL ENTERTAINMENTS PRIVILEGE OF STRANGERS FAMILIES OF HIGH RANK THE EXCLUSIVES SOIREES PARTIES OF A RICH BANKER PEASANT BEAUTY VISITERS OF A BARONESS AWKWARD DE- PORTMENT OF A PRINCE A CONTENTED MARRIED LADY HUSBANDS, CAVALIERS, AND WIVES PER- SONAL MANNERS HABITS OF SOCIETY, ETC. I am about starting on my second visit to Rome, after having passed nearly three months in Florence. As I have seen most of the society of this gayest and fairest of the Italian cities, it may not be uninteresting to depart a little from the traveller's routine by sketch- ing a feature or two. Florence is a resort for strangers from every part, of the world. The gay society is a mixture of all na- tions, of whom one third may be Florentine, one third English, and the remaining part equally divided between Russians, Germans, French, Poles, and Amer- icans. The English entertain a great deal, and give most of the balls and dinner parties. The Floren- 74 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. tines seldom trouble themselves to give parties, but are always at home for visits in the prima sera (from seven till nine), and in their box at the opera. They go, without scruple, to all the strangers' balls, consid- ering courtesy repaid, perhaps, by the weekly recep- tion of the grand duke, and a weekly ball at the club- house of young Italian nobles. The ducal entertainments occur every Tuesday, and are the most splendid of course. The foreign ministers present all of their countrymen who have been presented at their own courts, and the company is necessarily more select than elsewhere. The Flor- entines who go to court are about seven hundred, of whom half are invited on each week — strangers, when once presented, having the double privilege of coming uninvited to all. There are several Italian families, of the highest rank, who are seen only here ; but, with the single exception of one unmarried girl, of uncommon beauty, who bears a. name celebrated in Italian history, they are no loss to general society. Among the foreigners of rank, are three or four Ger- man princes, who play high and waltz well, and are remarkable for nothing else ; half a dozen star-wear- ing dukes, counts, and marquises, of all nations and in any quantity, and a few English noblemen and noble ladies — only the latter nation showing their blood at all in their features and bearing. The most exclusive society is that of the Prince Montfort (Jerome Bonaparte), whose splendid palace is shut entirely against the English, and difficult of access to all. He makes a single exception in favor of a descendant of the Talbots, a lady whose beauty might be an apology for a much graver departure from rule. He has given two grand entertainments since the carnival commenced, to which nothing was wanting but people to enjoy them. The immense rooms were flooded with light, the nmsic was the best Florence could give, the supper might have supped an army — stars and red ribands entered with every fresh comer, but it looked like a "banquet hall desert- ed." Some thirty ladies, and as many men, were all that Florence contained worthy of the society of the ex-king. A kinder man in his manners, however, or apparently a more affectionate husband and father, I never saw. He opened the dance by waltzing with the young princess, his daughter, a lovely girl of four- teen, of whom he seems fond to excess, and he was quite the gayest person in the company till the ball was over. The ex-queen, who is a miracle of size, sat on a divan, with her ladies of honor about her, fol- lowing her husband with her eyes, and enjoying his gayety with the most childish good humor. The Saturday evening soirees, at Prince Ponia- towski's (a brother of the hero), are perhaps as agree- able as any in Florence. He has several grown-up sons and daughters married, and, with a very sumptu- ous palace and great liberality of style, he has made his parties more than usually valued. His eldest daughter is the leader of the fashion, and his second is the " cynosure of all eyes." The old prince is a tall, bent, venerable man, with snow-white hair, and very peculiarly marked features. He is fond of speak- ing English, and professes a great affection for Amer- ica. Then there are the soirees of the rich banker, Fen- zi, which, as they are subservient to business, assem- ble all ranks on the common pretensions of interest. At the last, I saw, among other curiosities, a young girl of eighteen from one of the more common fam- ilies of Florence — a fine specimen of the peasant beauty of Italy Her heavily moulded figure, hands, and feet, were quite forgiven when you looked at her dark, deep, indolent eye, and glowing skin, and strong- ly-lined mouth and forehead. The society was evi- dently new to her, but she had a manner quite beyond being astonished. It was the kind of animal dignity so universal in the lower classes of this country. A German baroness of high rank receives on the Mondays, and here one sees foreign society in its highest coloring. The prettiest woman that frequents her parties, is a Genoese marchioness, who has left her husband to live with a Lucchese count, who has left his wife. He is a very accomplished man, with the look of Mephistopheles in the " Devil's Walk," and she is certainly a most fascinating woman. She is re- ceived in most of the good society of Florence — a se- vere, though a very just comment on its character. A prince, the brother of the king of , divided the attention of the company with her last Monday. He is a tall, military-looking man, with very bad manners, ill at ease, and impudent at the same time. He en- tered with his suite in the middle of a song. The singer stopped, the company rose, the prince swept about, bowing like a dancing-master, and, after the sensation had subsided, the ladies were taken up and presented to him, one by one. He asked them all the same question, stayed through two songs, which he spoiled by talking loudly all the while, and then bow- ed himself out in the same awkward style, leaving ev- erybody more happy for his departure. One gains little by his opportunities of meeting Italian ladies in society. The cavaliere servente flour- ishes still as in the days of Beppo, and it is to him only that the lady condescends to talk. There is a delicate, refined-looking, little marchioness here, who is remarkable as being the only known Italian lady without a cavalier. They tell you, with an amused smile, " that she is content with her husband." It really seems to be a business of real love between the lady of Italy and her cavalier. Naturally enough too — for her parents marry her without consulting her at all, and she selects a friend afteiward, as ladies in oth- er countries select a lover, who is to end in a husband. The married couple are never seen together by any accident, and the lady and her cavalier never apart. The latter is always invited with her as a matter of course, and the husband, if there is room, or if he is not forgotten. She is insulted if asked without a cav- alier, but is quite indifferent whether her husband goes with her or not. These are points really settled in the policy of society, and the rights of the cavalier are specified in the marriage contracts. I had thought, until I came to Italy, that such things were either a romance, or customs of an age gone by. I like very much the personal manners of the Ital- ians. They are mild and courteous to the farthest ex- tent of looks and words. They do not entertain, it is true, but their great dim rooms are free to you when- ever you can find them at home, and you are at liber- ty to join the gossipping circle around the lady of the house, or sit at the table and read, or be silent unquestioned. You are let alone, if you seem to choose it, and it is neither commented on, nor thought uncivil, and this I take to be a grand excellence in manners. The society is dissolute, I think, almost without an exception. The English fall into its habits, with the difference that they do not conceal it so well, and have the appearance of knowing its wrong — which the Ital- ians have not. The latter are very much shocked at the want of propriety in the management of the English. To suffer the particulars of an intrigue to get about is a worse sin, in their eyes, than any violation of the commandments. It is scarce possible for an Ameri- can to conceive the universal corruption of a society like this of Florence, though, if he were not told of it he would think it all that was delicate and attrac- tive. There are external features in which the soci- ety of our own country is far less scrupulous and proper. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 75 LETTER LTI. SIENNA — POGGIOBONSI BONCONVENTO ENCOURAGE- MENT OF FRENCH ARTISTS BY THEIR GOVERNMENT ACQ.UAPENDENTE — POOR BEGGAR, THE ORIGINAL OF A ^SKETCH BY COLE — BOLSENA— VOLSCINIUM — SCE- NERY—CURIOUS STATE OF THE CHESTNUT WOODS. Sienna. — A day and a half on ray second journey to Rome. With a party of four nations inside, and two strangers, probably Frenchmen, in the cabriolet, we have jogged on at'some three miles in the hour, enjoy- ing the lovely scenery of these lower Appenines at our leisure. We slept last night at Poggiobonsi, a little village on a hill-side, and arrived at Sienna for our midday rest. I pencil this note after an hour's ram- ble over the city, visiting once more the cathedral, with its encrusted marbles and naked graces, and the three shell-shaped square in the centre of the city, at the rim of which the eight principal streets terminate. There is a fountain in the midst, surrounded with bassi relieri much disfigured. It was mentioned by Dante. The streets were deserted, it being Sunday, and all the people at the Corso, to see the racing of horses without riders. Bonconvento. — We sit, with the remains of a trav- eller's supper on the table — six very social companions. Our cabriolet friends are two French artists, on their way to study at Rome. They are both pensioners of the government, each having gained the annual prize at the academy in his separate branch of art, which entitles him to five years' support in Italy. They are full of enthusiasm, and converse with all the amusing vivacity of their nation, The academy of France send out in this manner five young men annually, who have gained the prizes for painting, sculpture, archi- tecture, music, and engraving. This is the place where Henry the Seventh of Ger- many was poisoned by a monk, on his way to Rome. The drug was given to him in the communion cup. The "ave marie" was ringing when we drove into town, and I left the carriage and followed the crowd, in the hope of finding an old church where the crime might have been committed. But the priest was mumbling the service in a new chapel, which no ro- mance that I could summon would picture as the scene of a tragedy. Acquapendentf.. — While the dirty customhouse officer is deciphering our passports, in a hole a dog would live in unwillingly, I take out my pencil to mark once more the pleasure I have received from the exquisite scenery of this place. The wild rocks en- closing the little narrow valley below, the waterfalls, the town on its airy perch above, the just starting ve- getation of spring, the roads lined with snowdrops, cro- cuses and violets, have renewed, in a tenfold degree, the delight with which I saw this romantic spot on my former journey to Rome. We crossed the mountain of Radicofani yesterday, in so thick a mist that I could not even distinguish the ruin of the old castle, towering into the clouds above. The wild, half-naked people thronged about us as be- fore, and I gave another paul to the old beggar with whom I became acquainted by Mr. Cole's graphic sketch. The winter had, apparently, gone hard with him. He was scarce able to come to the carriage window, and coughed so hollowly that I thought he had nearly begged his last pittance. Bolskna. — We have walked in advance of the vettu- rino along the borders of this lovely and beautiful lake till we are tired. Our artists have taken off their coats with the heat, and sit, a quarter of a mile further on, pointing in every direction at these unparalleled views. The water is as still as a mirror, with a soft mist on its face, and the water-fowl in thousands are diving and floating within gunshot of us. An afternoon in June could not be more summer-like, and this, to a lover of soft climate, is no trifling pleasure. A mile behind us lies the town, the seat of ancient Volscinium, the capital of the Volscians. The coun- try about is one quarry of ruins, mouldering away in the moss. Nobody can live in health in the neighbor- hood, and the poor pale wretches who call it a home are in melancholy contrast to the smiling paradise about them. Before us, in the bosom of the lake, lie two green islands, those which Pliny records to have floated in his time ; and one of which, Mariana, a small conical isle, was the scene of the murder of the qneen of the Goths by her cousin Theodatus. She was taken there and strangled. It is difficult to ima- gine, with such a sea of sunshine around and over it, that it was ever anything but a spot of delight. The whole neighborhood is covered with rotten trunks of trees — a thing which at first surprised me in a country where wood is so economised. It is ac- counted for in the French guide-book of one of our party by the fact, that the chestnut woods of Bolsena are considered sacred by the people from their antiqui- ty, and are never cut. The trees have ripened and fallen and rotted thus for centuries — one cause, per- haps, of the deadly change in the air. The vetturino comes lumbering up, and I must pocket my pencil and remount. LETTER LIII. MONTEFIASCONE — ANECDOTE OF THE WINE — VITERBO — MOUNT C1MINO — TRADITION — VIEW OF ST. PETER 's — ENTRANCE INTO ROME — A STRANGER'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE CITY. Montefiascone. — We have stopped for the night at the hotel of this place, so renowned for its wine — the remnant of a bottle of which stands, at this mo- ment, twinkling between me and my French compan- ions. The ladies of our party have gone to bed, and left us in the room where sat Jean Defoucris, the mer- ry German monk, who died of excess in drinking the same liquor that flashes through this straw-covered flask. The story is told more fully in the French guide-books. A prelate of Augsbourg, on a pilgrim- age to Rome, sent forward his servant with orders to mark every tavern where the wine was good with the word est, in large letters of chalk. On arriving at this hotel, the monk saw the signal thrice written over the door — Est! Est! Est? He put up his mule, and drank of Montefiascone till he died. His servant wrote his epitaph, which is still seen in the church of St. Florian :— " Propter minium est, est, Dominus metis mortuus est !" u Est, Est, Est!" is the motto upon the sign of the hotel to this day. In wandering about Viterbo in search of amusement, while the horses were baiting, I stumbled upon the shop of an antiquary. After looking over his medals, Etruscan vases, cameos, &c, a very interesting col- lection, I inquired into the state of trade for such things in Viterbo. He was a cadaverous, melancholy looking old man, with his pockets worn quite out with the habit of thrusting his hands into (hem, and about his mouth and eye there was the proper virtuoso ex- pression of inquisitiveness and discrimination. He kept also a small cafe adjoining his shop, into which we passed, as he shrugged his shoulders at my ques- tion. I had wondered to find a vender of costly curi- 76 PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAY. osities in a town of such poverty, and I was not sur- prised at the sad fortunes which had followed upon his enterprise. They were a base herd, he said, of the people, utterly ignorant of the value of the precious objects he had for sale, and he had been compelled to open a cafe , and degrade himself by waiting on them for a contemptible crazie worth of coffee, while his lovely antiquities lay unappreciated within. The old gentleman was eloquent upon his misfortunes. He had not been long in trade, and had collected his mu- seum originally for his own amusement. He was an odd specimen, in a small way, of a man who was quite above his sphere, and suffered for his superiority. I bought a pretty intaglio, and bad him farewell, after an hour's acquaintance, with quite the feeling of a friend. Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Vi- terbo, and we walked up most of the long and gentle ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy plants for which it is famous, and looking out sharply for the brigands with which it is always infested. English carriages are constantly robbed on this part of the route of late. The robbers are met usually in parties of ten and twelve, and, a week before we passed, Lady Berwick (the widow of an English nobleman, and a sister of the famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in broad mid-day. The excessive distress among the peasantry of these misgoverned states accounts for these things, and one only wonders why there is not even more robbing among such a starving population. This mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below it, are spoken of in the ^Eneid : " Cimini cum monte locum,' 1 '' etc. There is an ancient tradition, that in the crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills, there was formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise of the water, and certain authors state that, when the lake is clear, the ruins are still to be seen at the bottom. The sun rose upon us as we reached the mountain above Baccano, on the sixth day of our journey, and, by its clear golden flood, we saw the dome of St. Pe- ter's, at a distance of sixteen miles, towering amid the campagna in all its majestic beauty. We descend- ed into the vast plain, and traversed its gentle undula- tions for two or three hours. With the forenoon well advanced, we turned into the valley of the Tiber, and saw the home of Raphael, a noble chateau on the side of a hill, near the river, and, in the little plain be- tween, the first peach-trees we had seen, in full blos- som. The tomb of Nero is on one side of the road, before crossing the Tiber, and on the other a newly painted and staring restaurant, where the modern Ro- man cockneys drive for punch and ices. The bridge of Pontemolle, by which we passed into the immediate suburb of Rome, was the ancient Pons JEmilius, and here Cicero arrested the conspirators on their way to join Catiline in his camp. It was on the same bridge, too, that Constantine saw his famous vision, and gain- ed his victory over the tyrant Maxentius. Two miles over the Via Flaminia, between garden walls that were ornamented with sculpture and inscrip- tion in the time of Augustus, brought us to the Porta del Popolo. The square within this noble gate is modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge be- fore you, as far away as you can see into the heart of the city, a magnificent fountain sends up its waters in the centre, the facades of two handsome churches face you as you enter, and on the right and left are gar- dens and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and sumptuous equipages cross it in every direction, dri- ving out to the villa Borghese, and up to the Pincian mount, the splendid troops of the pope are on guard, and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome swell out to its limit like the ebb and flow of the sea. All this disappoints while it impresses the stranger. He has come to Rome — but it was old Rome that he had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of her temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes of her orators, poets, and patriots, the majestic relics of the once mistress of the world, are the features in his anticipation. But he enters by a modern gate to a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a whiskered officer of customs ; and in the place of a venerable Belisarius begging an obolus in classic Lat- in, he is beset by a troop of lusty and filthy lazzaroni entreating for a baioch in the name of the Madonna, and in effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso, and reads nothing but French signs, and sees all the familiar wares of his own country exposed for sale, and every other person on the pave is an Englishman, with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and with an hour at the Dogama where his baggage is turned inside out by a snuffy old man who speaks French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter addresses him in his own language, whatever it may be; he goes to bed under Parisian curtains, and tries to dream of the Rome he could not realize while awake. LETTER LIV. APPIAN WAT — TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA — ALBANO — TOMB OF THE CURIATII — ARICIA — TEMPLE OF DIANA FOUNTAIN OF EfiERIA LAKE OF NEMI VELLETRI PONTINE MARSHES CONVENT CANAL TERRAC1NA — SAN FELICE — FONDI — STORY OF JULIA GONZAGA — CICERO'S GARDEN AND TOMB — MOLA — MINTURNA — RUINS OF AN AMPHITHEATRE AND TEMPLE — FALER- NIAN MOUNT AND WINE — THE DOCTOR OF ST. AGATHA — CAPUA — ENTRANCE INTO NAPLES — THE QUEEN. With the intention of returning to Rome for the ceremonies of the holy week, I have merely passed through on my way to Naples. We left it the morn- ing after our arrival, going by the " Appian way," to Mount Albano, which borders the Campagna on the south, at a distance of fifteen miles. This celebrated road is lined with the ruined tombs of the Romans. Off at the right, some four or five miles from the city, rises the fortress-like tomb of Cecilia Metella, so ex- quisitely mused upon by Childe Harold. This, says Sismondi, with the tombs of Adrian and Augustus, became fortresses of banditti, in the thirteenth cen- tury, and were taken by Brancallone, the Bolognese governor of Rome, who hanged the marauders from the walls. It looks little like " a woman's grave." We changed horses at the pretty village of Albano, and, on leaving it, passed an ancient mausoleum, be- lieved to be the tomb of the Curiatii who fought the Horatii on this spot. It is a large structure, and had originally four pyramids on the corners, two of which only remain. A mile from Albano lies Aricia, in a country of the loveliest rural beauty. Here was the famous temple of Diana, and here were the lake and grove sacred to the "virgin huntress," and consecrated as her home by peculiar worship. The fountain of Egeria is here, where Numa communed with the nymph, and the lake of Nemi, on the borders of which the temple stood, and which was called Dian's mirror (speculum Diance), is at this day, perhaps, one of the sweetest gems of natural scenery in the world. We slept at Velletri, a pretty town of some twelve thousand inhabitants, which stands on a hill-side, leaning down to the Pontine marshes. It was one of the grand days of carnival, and the streets were full of masks, walking up and down in their ridiculous dresses, and committing every sort of foolery. The next morning, by daylight, we were upon the Pontine PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. marshes, the long thirty miles level of which we passed in an unbroken trot, one part of a day's jour- ney of seventy-five miles, done by the same horses, at the rate of six miles in the hour ! They are small, compact animals, and look in good condition, though they do as much habitually. At a distance of fifteen miles from Velletri, we passed a convent, which is built opposite the spot where St. Paul was met by his friends, on his journey from the seaside to Rome. The canal upon which Horace embarked on his celebrated journey to Brun- dusium, runs parallel with the road for its whole dis- tance. This marshy desert is inhabited by a race of as wretched beings, perhaps, as are to be found upon the face of the earth. The pestiferous miasma of the pools is certain destruction to health, and the few who are needed at the distant post-houses, crawl out to the road-side like so many victims from a pest-house, stooping with weakness, hollow-eyed, and apparently insensible to everything. The feathered race seems exempt from its influence, and the quantities of game of every known description are incredible. The ground was alive with wild geese, turkeys, pigeons, plover, clucks, and numerous birds we did not know, as far as the eye could distinguish. The travelling books caution against sleeping in the carriage while passing these marshes, but we found it next to impos- sible to resist the heavy drowsiness of the air. At Terracina the marshes end, and the long avenue of elms terminates at the foot of a romantic precipice, which is washed by the Mediterranean. The town is most picturesquely built between the rocky wall and the sea. We dined with the hollow murmur of the surf in our ears, and then, presenting our pass- ports, entered the kingdom of Naples. This Terraci- na, by the way, was the ancient Anxur, which Horace describes in his line — " Imposilum late saxis candentibus Anxur." For twenty or thirty miles before arriving at Terra- cina, we had seen before us the headland of Circceum, lying like a mountain island off the shore. It is usually called San Felice, from the small town seated upon it. This was the ancient abode of the "daugh- ter of the sun," and here were imprisoned, according to Homer, the champions of Ulysses, after their metamorphoses. From Terracina to Fondi, we followed the old Ap- pian way, a road hedged with flowering myrtles and orange trees laden with fruit. Fondi itself is dirtier than imagination could picture it, and the scowling men in the streets look like myrmidons of Fra Diavolo, their celebrated countryman. This town, however' was the scene of the romantic story of the beautful Julia Gonzaga, and was destroyed by the corsair Bar- barossa, who had intended to present the rarest beauty of Italy to the sultan. It was to the rocky mountains above the town that she escaped in her night-dress, and lay concealed till the pirate's departure. In leaving Fondi, we passed the ruined walls of a garden said to have belonged to Cicero, whose tomb is only three leagues distant. Night came on before we reached the tomb, and we were compelled to prom- ise ourselves a pilgrimage to it on our return. We slept at Mola, and here Cicero was assassinated. The ruins of his country-house are still here. The town lies in the lap of a graceful bay, and in all Italy, it is said, there is no spot more favored by nature. The mountains shelter it from the winds of the north; tne soil produces, spontaneously, the orange, the myrtle, the olive, delicious grapes, jasmine, and many odoriferous herbs. This and its neighborhood was called, by the great orator and statesman who selected it for his retreat, "the most beautiful patrimony of the Romans." The Mediterranean spreads out from its bosom, the lovely islands near Naples bound its view, Vesuvius sends up its smoke and fire in the south. 77 and back from its hills stretches a country fertile and beautiful as a paradise. This is a place of great re- sort for the English and other travellers in the summer. The old palaces are turned into hotels, and we entered our inn through an avenue of shrubs that must have been planted and trimmed for a century. We left Mola before dawn and crossed the small river Garigliano as the sun rose. A short distance from the southern bank, we found ourselves in the midst of ruins, the golden beams of the sun pouring upon us through the arches of some once magnificent structure, whose area is now crossed by the road. This was the ancient Minturna, and the ruins are those of an amphitheatre, and a temple of Venus. Some say that it was in the marshes about this now waste city, that the soldier, sent by Sylla to kill Mari- us, found the old hero, and, struck with his noble mien, fell with respect at his feet. The road soon enters a chain of hills, and the sce- j nery becomes enchanting. At the left of the first as- cent lies the Falernian mount, whose wines are im- mortalized by Horace. It is a beautiful hill, which throws round its shoulder to the south, and is covered with vineyards. 1 dismounted and walked on whfte the horses breathed at the post-house of St. Agatha, and was overtaken by a good-natured-looking man, mounted on a mule, of whom I made some inquiry respecting the modern Falernian. He said it was still the best wine of the neighborhood, but was far below ( its ancient reputation, because never kept long enough to ripen. It is at its prime from the fifteenth to the I twentieth year, and is usually drank the first or second. My new acquaintance, I soon found, was the phy- I sician of the two or three small villages nested about among the hills and a man of some pretensions to learning. I was delighted with his frank good-humor, and a certain spice of drollery in his description of his patients. The peasants at work in the fields saluted him from any distance as he passed ; and the pretty contadini going to St. Agatha with their baskets on their heads, smiled as he nodded, calling them all by name, and I was rather amused than offended with the inquisitiveness he manifested about my age. family, pursuits, and even morals. His mule stopped of its own will at the door of the apothecary of the small village on the summit of the hill, and as the carriage came in sight the doctor invited me, seizing my hand with a look of friendly sincerity, to stop at St. Agatha on my return, to shoot, and drink Falernian with him for a month. The apothecary stopped the vettu- rino at the door; and, to the astonishment of my com- panions within, the doctor seized me in his arms and kissed me on both sides of my face with a volume of blessings and compliments which I had no breath in my surprise to return. I have made many friends on the road in this country of quick feelings, but the doc- tor of St. Agatha had a readiness of sympathy which threw all my former experience into the shade. We dined at Capua, the city whose luxuries ener- vated Hannibal and his soldiers— the " dives, amoro- so,, felix" Capua. It is in melancholy contrast with the description now — its streets filthy, and its people looking the antipodes of luxury. The climate should be the same, as we dined with open doors, and with the branch of an orange tree heavy with fruit hanging in at the window, in a month that with us is one of the wintriest. From Capua to Naples, the distance is but fifteen miles, over a flat uninteresting country. We entered " this third city in the world" in the middle of the af- ternoon, and were immediately surrounded with beg- gars of every conceivable degree of misery. We sat an hour at the gate while our passports were recorded, and the vetturino examined, aud then passing up a no- ble street, entered a dense crowd, through which was 78 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. creeping slowly a double line of carnages. The mounted dragoons compelled our postillion to fall into the line, and we were two hours following in a fashion- able corso with our mud-spattered vehicle and tired holies, surrounded by all that was brilliant and gay in Naples. It was the last day of carnival. Every- Dody was abroad, and we were forced, however unwil- lingly to see all the rank and beauty of the city. The carriages in this fine climate are all open, and the la- dies were in full dress. As we entered the Toledo, the cavalcade came to a halt, and with hats off and hand- kerchiefs flying in every direction about them, the young new-married queen of Naples rode up the mid- dle of the street preceded and followed by outriders in the gayest livery. She has been married about a month, is but seventeen, and is acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman in the kingdoin. The de- scription I had heard of her, though very extravagant, had hardly done her justice. She is a little above the middle height, with a fine lift to her head and neck, and a countenance only less modest and maidenly than noble. LETTER LV. rome — front of saint peter 's — equipages of the cardinals — beggars — body of the church — tomb of saint peter — the tiber — fortress- tomb of adrian — jews' quarter — forum — bar- berini palace portrait of beatrice cenci her melancholy history picture of the for- narina — likeness of giorgione's mistress jo- seph and potiphar's wife the palaces do- ria and sciarra— portrait of olivia walda- chini of " a celebrated widow" of semira- mis — claude's landscapes— brill's — brughel's — NOTTl's " WOMAN CATCHING FLEAS" DA VINCl's QUEEN GIOVANNA PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE DOR1A — PRINCE DORIA PALACE SCIARRA BRILL AND BOTH'S LANDSCAPES — CLAUDE'S — PICTURE OF NOAH INTOXICATED — ROMANA's FORNARINA — DA VINCl's TWO PICTURES. Drawn in twenty different directions on starting from my lodgings this morning, I found myself, unde- cided where to pass my day, in front of St. Peter's. Some gorgeous ceremony was just over, and the sump- tuous equipages of the cardinals, blazing in the sun with their mountings of gold and silver, were driving up and dashing away from the end of the long colon- nades, producing any effect upon the mind rather than a devout one. I stood admiring their fiery horses and gay liveries, till the last rattled from the square, and then mounted to the deserted church. Its vast vesti- bule was filled with beggars, diseased in every conceiv- able manner, halting, groping, and crawling about in search of strangers of whom to implore charity — a contrast to the splendid pavement beneath and the gold and marble above and around, which would reconcile one to see the "mighty dome" melted into alms, and his holiness reduced to a plain chapel and a rusty cassock. Lifting the curtain I stood in the body of the church. There were perhaps twenty persons, at different distan- ces, on its immense floor, the farthest off (six hundred and fourteen feet from me!) looking like a pigmy in the far perspective. St. Peter's is less like a church than a collection of large churches enclosed under a gigan- tic roof. The chapels at the sides are larger than most houses of public worship in our country, and of these there may be eight or ten, not included in the effect of the vast interior. One is lost in it. It is a city of columns and sculpture and mosaic. Its walls are en- crusted with precious stones and masterly workman- ship to the very top, and its wealth may be conceived when you remember that, standing in the centre and raising your eyes aloft, there are four hundred and forty feet between you and the roof of the dome — the height, almost of a mountain. I walked up toward the tomb of St. Peter, passing in my way a solitary worshipper here and there, upon his knees, and arrested constantly by the exquisite beauty of the statuary with which the columns are carved. Accustomed, as we are in America, to church- es filled with pews, it is hardly possible to imagine the noble effect of a vast mosaic floor, unencumbered even with a chair, and only broken by a few prostrate fig- ures, just specking its wide area. All catholic church- ' es are without fixed seats, and St. Peter's seems scarce measurable to the eye, it is so far and clear, from one extremity to the other. I passed the hundred lamps burning over the tomb of St. Peter, the lovely female statue (covered with a bronze drapery, because its exquisite beauty was thought dangerous to the morality of the young priests), reclining upon the tomb of Paul III., the ethereal figures of Canova's geniuses weeping at the door of the tomb of the Stuarts (where sleeps the pretender Charles Edward), the thousand, thousand rich and beautiful monuments of art and taste ciowding every corner of this wondrous church — I passed them, I say, with the same lost and unexamining, unparticular- izing feeling which I can not overcome in this place — a mind borne quite off" its feet and confused and overwhelmed with the tide of astonishment — the one grand impression of the whole. I dare say, a little more familiarity with St. Peter's will do away the feeling, but I left the church, after two hours loitering in its aisles, despairing, and scarce wishing to examine or make a note. Those beautiful fountains, moistening the air over the whole area of the column encircled front ! — and that tall Egyptian pyramid, sending up its slender and perfect spire between ! One lingers about, and turns again and again to gaze around him, as he leaves St. Peter's, in wonder and admiration. I crossed the Tiber, at the fortress-tomb of Adrian, and thridding the long streets at the western end of Rome, passed through the Jews' quarter, and entered the Forum. The sun lay warm among the ruins of the great temples and columns of ancient Rome, and, seating myself on a fragment of an antique frieze, near the noble arch of Septimius Severus, I gazed on the scene, for the first time, by daylight.. I had been in Rome, on my first visit, during the full moon, and my impressions of the forum with this romantic en- hancement were vivid in my memory. One would think it enough to be upon the spot at any time, with light to see it, but what with modern excavations, fresh banks of earth, carts, boys playing at marbles, and wooden sentry-boxes, and what with the Parisian promenade, made by the French through the centre, the imagination is too disturbed and hindered in day- light. The moon gives it all one covering of gray and silver. The old columns stand up in all their solitary majesty, wrecks of beauty and taste ; silence leaves the fancy to find a voice for itself; and from the pal- aces of the Cesars to the prisons of the capitol, the whole train of emperors, senators, conspirators, and citizens, are summoned with but half a thought and the magic glass is filled with moving and reanimated Rome. There, beneath those walls, on the right, in the Mamertine prisons, perished Jugurtha (and there, too, were imprisoned St. Paul and St. Peter), and opposite upon the Palatine-hill, lived the mighty masters of Rome, in the " palaces of the Cesars," and beneath the majestic arch beyond, were led, as a seal of their slavery, the captives from Jerusalem, and in these temples, whose ruins cast their shadows at my feet, walked and discoursed Cicero and the philoso- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAV. 79 phers, Brutus and the patriots, Catiline and the con- spirators, Augustus and the scholars and poets, and the great stranger in Rome, St. Paul, gazing at the false altars, and burning in his heart to reveal to them the " unknown God." What men have crossed the shadows of these very columns ! and what thoughts, that have moved the world, have been born beneath them ! The Barberini palace contains three or four master- pieces of painting. The most celebrated is the por- trait of Beatrice Cenci, by Guido. The melancholy and strange history of this beautiful girl has been told in a variety of ways, and is probably familar to every reader. Guido saw her on her way to execution, and has painted ber as she was dressed, in the gray habit and head-dress made by her own hands, and finished but an hour before she put it on. There are engra- vings and copies of the picture all over the world, but none that I have seen give any idea of the excessive gentleness and serenity of the countenance. The eyes retain traces of weeping, but the child-like mouth, the soft, girlish lines of features that look as if they never had worn more than the one expression of youth- fulness and affection, are all in repose, and the head is turned over the shoulder with as simple a sweetness as if she had but looked back to say a good-night before going to her chamber to sleep. She little looks like what she was— one of the firmest and boldest spirits whose history is recorded. After murdering her fa- ther for his fiendish attempts upon her virtue, she en- dured every torture rather than disgrace her family by confession, and was only moved from her constancy, at last, by the agonies of her younger brother on the rack. Who would read capabilities like these, in these heavenly and child-like features? I have tried to purchase the life of the Cenci, in vain. A bookseller told me to-day, that it was a forbidden book, on account of its reflections upon the pope. Immense interest was made for the poor girl, but, it is said, the papal treasury ran low, and if she was par- doned, the large possessions of the Cenci family could not have been confiscated. The gallery contains also, a delicious picture of the Fornarina, by Raphael himself, and a portrait of Gior- gione's mistress, as a Carthaginian slave, the same head multiplied so often in his and Titian's pictures. The original of the admirable picture of Joseph and the wifo of Potiphar, is also here. A copy of it is in the gallery of Florence. I have passed a day between the two palaces Doria and Sciarra, nearly opposite each other in the Corso at Rome. The first is an immense gallery of perhaps a thousand pictures, distributed through seven large halls, and four galleries encircling the court. In the first four rooms I found nothing that struck me par- ticularly. In the fifth was a portrait, by an unknown ar- tist, of Olivia Waldachini, the favorite and sister-in- law of Pope Innocent X. — a handsome woman, with that round fulness in the throat and neck, which (whether it existed in the originals, or is a part of a painter's ideal of a woman of pleasure), is universal in portraits of that character. In the same room was a portrait of a " celebrated widow," by Vandyck,* a had-been beautiful woman, in a staid cap (the hands wonderfully painted), and a large and rich picture of Semiramis, by one of the Carraccis. In the galleries hung the landscapes by Claude, fa- mous through the world. It is like roving through • So called in the catalogue. The custode, however, told us it was a portrait of the wife of Varulvck, painted as an old woman to mortify her excessive vanity, when she was but twenty-three. He kept the picture until she was older, and, at the time of his death, it had become a nattering likeness, and was carefully treasured by the widow. a paradise, to sit and look at them. His broad preen lawns, his half-hidden temples, his life-like luxuriant trees, his fountains, his sunny streams — nil flush into the eye like the bright opening of a Utopia, or some dream over a description from Boccaccio. It is what Italy might be in a golden age — her ruins rebuilt into the transparent air, her woods unprofaned, her people pastoral and refined, and every valley a landscape of Arcadia. I can conceive no higher pleasure for the imagination than to see a Claude in travelling through Italy. It is finding a home for one's more visionary fancies — those children of moonshine that one begets in a colder dime, but scarce dares acknowledge till he has seen them under a more congenial skv. More plainly, one does not know whether his abstract imagi- nations of pastoral life and scenery are not ridiculous and unreal, till he has seen one of these landscapes, and felt steeped, if I may use such a word, in the very loveliness which inspired the pencil of the painter. There he finds the pastures, the groves, the fairy structures, the clear waters, the straying groups, the whole delicious scenery, as bright as in his dreams, and he feels as if he should bless the artist for the lib- erty to acknowledge freely to himself the possibility of so beautiful a world. We went on through the long galleries, going back again and again to see the Claudes. In the third di- vision of the gallery were one or two small and bright landscapes, by Brill, that would have enchanted us if seen elsewhere ; and four strange pictures, by Breit- ghel, representing the four elements, by a kind of half- poetical, half-supernatural landscapes, one of which had a very lovely view of a distant village. Then there was the famous picture of the "woman catching fleas," by Gherardodelle Notti, a perfect piece of life. She stands close to a lamp, with a vessel of hot water before her, and is just closing her thumb and finger over a flea, which she has detected on the bosom of her dress. Some eight or ten are boiling already in the water, and the expression upon the girl's face is that of the most grave and unconscious interest in her employment. Next to this amusing picture hangs a portrait of Queen Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo da Vinci, a copy of which I had seen, much prized, in the possession of the archbishop of Torento. It scarce looks like the talented and ambitious queen she was, but it does full justice to her passion for amorous intrigue — a face full of the woman. The last picture we came to, was one not even men- tioned in the catalogue, an old portrait of one of the females of the Doria family. It was a girl of eighteen, with a kind of face that in life must have been ex- tremely fascinating. While we were looking at it, we heard a kind of gibbering laugh from the outer apart- ment, and an old man, in a cardinal's dress, dwarfish in size, and with deformed and almost useless legs, came shuffling into the gallery, supported by two priests. His features were imbecility itself, rendered almost horrible by the contrast of the cardinal's red cap. The custode took off his hat and bowed low, and the old man gave us a half-bow and a long laugh in pas- sing, and disappeared at the end of the gallery. This was the Prince Doria, the owner of the palace, and a cardinal of Rome ! the sole remaining representative of one of the most powerful and ambitious families of Italy ! There could not be a more affecting type of the great " mistress of the world" herself. Her very children have dwindled into idiots. We crossed the Corso to the Palace Sciarra. The collection here is small, but choice. Half a dozen small but exquisite landscapes, by Brill and Both, grace the second room. Here are also three small Claudes, very, very beautiful. In the next room is a finely-colored but most indecent picture of Noah in- toxicated, by Andrea Sacchi, and a portrait by Giulio 60 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. Romano, of Raphael's celebrated Fornarina, to whose lovely face one becomes so accustomed in Italy, that it seems like that of an acquaintance. In the last room are two of the most celebrated pic- tures in Rome. The first is by Leonardo da Vinci, and represents Vanity and Modesty, by two females standing together in conversation — one a handsome, gay, volatile looking creature, covered with ornaments, and listening unwillingly to what seems a lecture from the other, upon her foibles. The face of the other is a heavenly conception of woman — earnest, delicate, and lovely — the idea one, forms to himself, before inter- course with the world, gives him a distaste for its pu- rity. The moral lesson of the picture is more forcible than language. The painter deserved to have died, as he did, in the arms of an emperor. The other picture represents two gamblers cheating a youth, a very striking picture of nature. It is com- mon from the engravings. On the opposite side of the room, is a very expressive picture by Schidone. On the ruins of an old tomb stands a scull, beneath which is written — "/, too, was of Arcadia ;" and, at a little distance, gazing at it in attitudes of earnest re- flection, stand two shepherds, struck simultaneously with the moral. It is a poetical thought, and wrought out with great truth and skill. Our eyes aching and our attention exhausted with pictures, we drove from the Sciarra to the ruined pal- aces of the Cesars. Here, on an eminence above the Tiber, with the Forum beneath us on one side, the Coliseum on the other, and all the towers and spires of modern and catholic Rome arising on her many hills beyond, we seated ourselves on fragments of marble, half buried in the grass, and mused away the hours till sunset. On this spot Romulus founded Rome. The princely Augustus, in the last days of her glory, laid here the foundations of his imperial palace, which, continued by Caligula and Tiberius, and completed by Domitian, covered the hill, like a small city. It was a labyrinth of temples, baths, pa- vilions, fountains, and gardens, with a large theatre at the western extremity ; and, adjoining the temple of Apollo, was a library filled with the best authors, and ornamented with a colossal bronze statue of Apollo, "of excellent Etruscan workmanship." " Statues of the fifty daughters of Danaus Siuramdert, surrounded the portico" (of this same temple), "and opposite them were equestrian statues of their husbands." About a hundred years ago, accident discovered, in the gardens buried in rubbish, a magnificent hall, two hundred feet'in length and one hundred and thirty-two in breadth, supposed to have been built by Domitian. It was richly ornamented with statues, and columns of precious marbles, and near it were baths in excel- lent preservation. "But," says Stark, "immense and superb as was this first-built palace of the Cesars, Nero, whose extravagance and passion for architecture knew no limits, thought it much too small for him, and extended its edifices and gardens from the Palatine to the Esquiline. After the destruction of the whole, by fire, sixty-five years after Christ, he added to it his celebrated ' Golden House,' which extended from one extremity to the other of the Ccelian Hill."* * The following description is given of this splendid palace, by Suetonius : " To give an idea of the extent and beauty of this edifice, it is sufficient to mention, that in its vestibule was placed his colossal statue, one hundred and twenty feet in height. It had a triple portico, supported by a thousand columns ; with a lake like a little sea, surrounded by buildings which resembled cities. It contained pasture-grounds and 'groves in which were all descriptions of animals, wild and tame. Its interior shone with gold, gems, and mother-of- pearl. In the vaulted roofs of the eating-rooms were ma- chines of ivory, which turned round and scattered perfumes upon the guests. The principal banqueting room was a ro- tundo, so constructed that it turned round night and day, in The ancient walls, which made the whole of the Mount Palatine a fortress, still hold together its earth and its ruins. It is a broad tabular eminence, worn into footpaths which wind at every moment around broken shafts of marble, fragments of statuary, or bro ken and ivy -covered fountains. Part of it is cultiva- ted as a vineyard, by the degenerate modern Romans, and the baths, into which the water still pours from aqueducts encrusted with aged stalactites, are public washing-places for thecontadini, eight or ten of whom were splashing away in their red jackets, with gold bodkins in their hair, while we were moralizing on their worthier progenitors of eighteen centuries ago. It is a beautiful spot of itself, and with the delicious soft sunshine of an Italian spring, the tall green grass beneath our feet, and an air as soft as June just stir- ring the myrtles and jasmines, growing wild wherever the ruins gave them place, our enjoyment of the over- powering associations of the spot was ample and un- troubled. I could wish every refined spirit in the world had shared our pleasant hour upon the Palatine. LETTER LVI. ANNUAL DOWRIES TO TWELVE GIRLS VESPERS IN THE CONVENT OF SANTA TRINITA RUINS OF RO- MAN BATHS A MAGNIFICENT MODERN CHURCH WITHIN TWO ANCIENT HALLS— -GARDENS OF ME- C.ENAS TOWER WHENCE NERO SAW ROME ON FIRE HOUSES OF HORACE AND VIRGIL BATHS OF Tl TUS AND CARACALLA. The yearly ceremony of giving dowries to twelve girls, was performed by the pope, this morning, in the church built over the ancient temple of Minerva. His holiness arrived, in state, from the Vatican, at ten, followed by his red troop of cardinals, and preceded by a clerical courier, on a palfrey, and the body-guard of nobles. He blessed the crowd, right and left, with his three fingers (precisely as a Parisian dandy salutes his friend across the street), and, descending from his carriage (which is like a good-sized glass boudoir up- on wheels), he was received in the papal sedan, and carried into the church by his Swiss bearers. My le- gation button carried me through the guard, and I found an excellent place under a cardinal's wing, in the penetralia within the railing of the altar. Mass commenced presently, with a chant from the celebra ted choir of St. Peter's. Room was then made through the crowd, the cardinals put on their red caps, and the small procession of twelve young girls entered from side chapel, bearing each a taper in her hand, and robed to the eyes in white, with a chaplet of flowers round the forehead. I could form no judgment of any- thing but their eyes and feet. A Roman eye could not be otherwise than fine, and a Roman woman's foot could scarce be other than ugly, and, consequently, there was but one satin slipper in the group that a man might not have worn, and every eye I could see from my position, might have graced an improvisa- trice. They stopped in front of the throne, and, giv- ing their long tapers to the servitors, mounted in conples, hand in hand, and kissed the foot of his ho- liness, who, at the same time, leaned over and blessed them, and then turning about, walked off* again behind the altar in the same order in which they had entered. The choir now struck up their half-unearthly chant (a music so strangely shrill and clear, that I scarce know whether the exquisite sensation is pleasure or pain), the pope was led from his throne to his sedan, and his mitre changed for a richly jewelled crown, the bearers lifted their burden, the guard presented arms, imitation of the motion of the earth. When Nero took pos- session of this fairy palace, his only observation was — ' Now I shall begin to live like a man '" PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 81 the cardinals summoned their officious servants to un- robe, and the crowd poured out as it came. This ceremony, I found, upon inquiry, is performed every year, on the day of the annunciation — just nine months before Christmas, and is intended to commem- orate the incarnation of our Savior. As I was returning from a twilight stroll upon the Pincian hill, this evening, the bells of the convent of Santa Trinita rung to vespers. I had heard of the singing of the nuns in the service at the convent chap- el, but the misbehavior of a party of English had ex- cluded foreigners, of late, and it was thought impos- sible to get admittance. I mounted the steps, however, and rung at the door. It was opened by a pale nun, of thirty, who hesitated a moment, and let me pass. In a small, plain chapel within, the service of the al- ! tar was just commencing, and, before I reached a seat, a low plaintive chant commenced, in female voices, from the choir. It went on, with occasional interrup- tions from the prayers, for perhaps an hour. I can not describe the excessive mournfulness of the music. One or two familiar hymns occurred in the course of it, like airs in a recitative, the same sung in our church- es, but the effect was totally different. The neat, white caps of the nuns were just visible over the railing be- fore the organ, and, as 1 looked up at them and listen- ed to their melancholy notes, they seemed, to me, mourning over their exclusion from the world. The small white cloud from the censer mounted to the ceil- ing, and creeping away through the arches, hung over the organ till it was lost to the eye in the dimness of the twilight. It was easy, under the influence of their delightful music, to imagine within it the wings of that tranquillizing resignation one would think so ne- cessary to keep down the heart in these lonely cloisters. The most considerable ruins of ancient Rome are those of the Baths. The Emperors Titus, Caracalla, Nero, and Agrippa, constructed these immense places of luxury, and the remains of them are among the most interesting and beautiful relics to be found in the world. It is possible that my readers have as imper- fect an idea of the extent of a Roman bath as I have had, and I may as well quote from the information given by writers upon antiquities. " They were open every day, to both sexes. In each of the great baths, there were sixteen hundred seats of marble, for the convenience of the bathers, and three thousand two hundred persons could bathe at the same time. There were splendid porticoes in front for promenade, ar- cades with shops, in which was found every kind of luxury for the bath, and halls for corporeal exercises, and for the discussion of philosophy ; and here the poets read their productions and rhetoricians ha- rangued, and sculptors and painters exhibited their works to the public. The baths were distributed into grand halls, with ceilings enormously high and paint- ed with admirable frescoes, supported on columns of the rarest marble, and the basins were of oriental ala- baster, porphyry, and jasper. There were in the cen- tre vast reservoirs, for the swimmers, and crowds of slaves to attend gratuitously upon all who should come." The baths of Diocletian (which I visited to-day), covered an enormous space. They occupied seven years in building, and were the work of fort 'y thousand Christian slaves, two thirds of whom died of fatigue and misery! Mounting one of the seven hill's of Rome, we come to some half-ruined arches, of enormous size, extending a long distance, in the sides of which were built two modern churches. One was the work of Michael Angelo, and one of his happiest efforts. He has turned two of the ancient halls into a magnif- icent church, in the shape of a Greek cross, leaving in their places eight gigantic columns of granite. Af- 6 ter St. Peter's it is the most imposing church in Rome. We drove thence to the baths of Titus, passing the site of the ancient gardens of Mecamas, in which still stands the tower from which Nero beheld the confla- gration of Rome. The houses of Horace and Virgil communicated with this garden, but they are now un- distinguishable. We turned up from the Coliseum to the left, and entered a gate leading to the baths of Titus. Five or six immense arches presented their front to us, in a state of picturesque ruin. We took a guide, and a long pole, with a lamp at the extremity, and descended to the subterranean halls, to see the still inimitable frescoes upon the ceilings. Passing through vast apartments, to the ruined walls of which still clung, here and there, pieces of the finely-colored stucco of the ancients, we entered a suite of long gal- leries, some forty feet high, the arched roofs of which were painted with the most exquisite art, in a kind of fanciful border-work, enclosing figures and landscapes, in as bright colors as if done yesterday. Farther on was the niche in which was found the famous group of Laocoon, in a room belonging to a subterranean palace of the emperor, communicating with the baths. The Belvedeve Meleager was also found here. The imagination loses itself in attempting to conceive the splendor of these under-ground palaces, blazing with artificial light, ornamented with works of art, never equalled, and furnished with all the luxury which an emperor of Rome, in the days when the wealth of the world flowed into her treasury, could com- mand for his pleasure. How short life must have seemed to them, and what a tenfold curse became death and the common ills of existence, interrupting or taking away pleasures so varied and inexhaustible. These baths were built in the last great days of Rome, and one reads the last stages of national corrup- tion and, perhaps, the secret of her fall, in the charac- ter of these ornamented walls. They breathe the very spirit of voluptuousness. Naked female figures fill every plafond, and fauns and satyrs, with the most licentious passions in their faces, support the festoons and hold together the intricate ornament of the frescos. The statues, the pictures, the object of the place itself, in- spired the wish for indulgence, and the history of the private lives of the emperors and wealthier Romans shows the effect in its deepest colors. We went on to the baths of Caracalla, the largest ruins of Rome. They are just below the palaces of the Cesars, and ten minutes' walk from the Coliseum. It is one labyrinth of gigantic arches and ruined halls, the ivy growing and clinging wherever it can fasten its root, and the whole as fine a picture of decay as imagination could create. This was the favorite haunt of Shelley, and here he wrote his fine tragedy of Pro- metheus. He could not have selected a more fitting spot for solitary thought. A herd of goats were climbing over one of the walls, and the idle boy who tended them lay asleep in the sun, and every footstep echoed loud through the place. We passed two or three hours rambling about, and regained the populous streets of Rome in the last light of the sunset. LETTER LVI1. SUMMER WEATHER IN MARCH — BATHS OF CARACALLA BEGINNING OF THE APFIAN WAT— TOMB OF THE SCIPIOS— CATACOMBS — CHURCH OF SAN SEBASTIANO —YOUNG CAPUCHIN FRIAR— TOMBS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MARTYRS— CHAMBER WHERE THE APOS- TLES WORSHIPPED— TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA— THE CAMPAGNA CIRCUS OF CARACALLA OR KOMU- LUS— TEMPLE DEDICATED TO RIDICULE— KEATs's GRAVE- -FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA — THE WOOD WHERE NUMA MET THE NYMPH— HOLY WEEK. 82 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. The last days of March have come, clothed in sun- shine and summer. The grass is tall in the Cam- pagna, the fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses and myrtles are in full flower, the shrubs are in full leaf, the whole country about breathes of June. We left Rome this morning on an excursion to the " Fountain of Egeria." A more heavenly day never broke. The gigantic baths of Caracalla turned us aside once more, and we stopped for an hour in the shade of their ro- mantic arches, admiring the works, while we execrated the character of their ferocious builder. This is the beginning of the ancient Appian Way, and, a little farther on, sunk in the side of a hill, near the road, is the beautiful doric tomb of the Scipios. We alighted at the antique gate, a kind of portico, with seats of stone beneath, and reading the inscrip- tion, " Sepulchro degli Scipioni," mounted, by ruined steps, to the tomb. A boy came out from the house, in the vineyard above, with candles to show us the interior; but, having no curiosity to see the damp cave from which the sarcophagi have been removed (to the museum), we sat down upon a bank of grass opposite the chaste facade, and recalled to memory the early-learnt history of the family once entombed within. The edifice (for it is more like a temple to a river-nymph or a dryad than a tomb) was built by an ancestor of the great Scipio Africanus, and here was deposited the noble dust of his children. One feels, in these places, as if the improvisatore's inspira- tion was about him — the fancy draws, in such vivid colors, the scenes that have passed where he is stand- ing. The bringing of the dead body of the conqueror of Africa from Rome, the passing of the funeral train beneath the portico, the noble mourners, the crowd of people, the eulogy of perhaps some poet or orator, whose name has descended to us — the air seems to speak, and the gray stones of the monument against which the mourners of the Scipios have leaned, seem to have had life and thought, like the ashes they have sheltered. We drove on to the Catacombs. Here, the legend says, St. Sebastian was martyred, and the modern church of St. Sebastiano stands over the spot. We entered the church, where we found a very handsome young capuchin friar, with his brown cowl and the white cord about his waist, who offered to conduct us to the catacombs. He took three wax-lights from the sacristy, and we entered a side door, behind the tomb of the saint, and commenced a descent of a long flight of stone steps. We reached the bottom and found ourselves upon damp ground, following a nar- row passage, so low that I was compelled constantly to stoop, in the sides of which were numerous small niches of the size of a human body. These were the tombs of the early Christian martyrs. We saw near a hundred of them. They were brought from Rome, the scene of their sufferings, and buried in these secret catacombs by the small church of perhaps the immediate converts of St. Paul and the apostles. What food for thought is here, for one who finds more interest in the humble traces of the personal followers of Christ, who knew his face and had heard his voice, to all the splendid ruins of the works of the persecu- ting emperors of his time ! Most of the bones have been taken from their places, and are preserved at the museum, or enclosed in the rich sarcophagi raised to the memory of the martyrs in the catholic churches. Of those that are left we saw one. The niche was closed by a thin slab of marble, through a crack of which the monk put his slender candle. We saw the skeleton as it had fallen from the flesh in decay, un- touched, perhaps, since the time of Christ. We passed through several cross-passages, and came to a small chamber, excavated simply in the earth, with an earthen altar, and an antique marble cross above. This was the scene of the forbidden worship of the early Christians, and before this very cross, which was, perhaps, then newly selected as the emblem of their faith, met the few dismayed followers of Christ, hidden from their persecutors, while they breathed their forbidden prayers to their lately cru- cified master. We reascended to the light of day by the rough stone steps, worn deep by the feel of those who, for ages, for so many different reasons, have passed up and down, and, taking leave of our capuchin conductor, drove on to the next object upon the road — the tomb of Cecilia Metella. It stands upon a slight elevation, in the Appian Way, a "stern round tower," with the ivy dropping over its turrets and waving from the em- brasures, looking more like a castle than a tomb. Here was buried " the wealthiest Roman's wife," or, according to Corinne, his unmarried daughter. It was turned into a fortress by the marauding nobles of the thirteenth century, who sallied from this and the tomb of Adrian, plundering the ill-defended subjects of Pope Innocent IV. till they were taken and hanged from the walls by Brancaleone, the Roman senator. It is built with prodigious strength. We stooped in passing under the low archway, and emerged into the round chamber within, a lofty room, open to the sky, in the circular wall of which there is a niche for a single body. Nothing could exceed the delicacy and fancy with which Childe Harold muses on this spot. The lofty turrets command a wide view of the Campagna, the long aqueducts stretching past at a short distance, and forming a chain of noble arches from Rome to the mountains of Albano. Cole's pic- ture of the Roman Campagna, as seen from one of these elevations, is, I think, one of the finest land- scapes ever painted. Just below the tomb of Metella, in a flat valley, lie the extensive ruins of what is called the " circus of Caracalla" by some, and the "circus of Romulus" by others — a scarcely distinguishable heap of walls and marble, half buried in the earth and moss; and not far off stands a beautiful ruin of a small temple dedicated (as some say) to Ridicule. One smiles to look at it. If the embodying of that which is power- ful, however, should make a deity, the dedication of a temple to ridicule is far from amiss. In our age par- ticularly, one would think, the lamp should be relit, and the reviewers should repair the temple. Poor Keats sleeps in his grave scarce a mile from the spot, a human victim, sacrificed, not long ago, upon its highest altar. In the same valley almost hidden with the luxuriant ivy waving before the entrance, flows the lovely Foun- tain of Egeria, trickling as clear and musical into its pebbly bed as when visited by the enamored successor of Romulus twenty-five centuries ago ! The hill above, leans upon the single arch of the small temple which embosoms it, and the green soft meadow spreads j away from the floor, with the brightest verdure con- | ceivable. We wound around by a halfworn path in descending the hill, and, putting aside the long branches of ivy, entered an antique chamber, sprinkled with quivering spots of sunshine, at the extremity of which, upon a kind of altar, lay the broken and de- faced statue of the nymph. The fountain poured from beneath in two streams as clear as crystal. In the sides of the temple were six empty niches, through one of which stole, from a cleft in the wall, a little stream, which wandered from its way. Flowers, p-ale with growing in the shade, sprang from the edges of the rivulet as it found its way out, the small creepers, dripping with moisture, hung out from between the diamond-shaped stones of the roof, the air was re- freshingly cool, and the leafy door at the entrance, seen against the sky, looked of a transparent green, as vivid as emerald. No fancy could create a sweeter PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 8:< spot. The fountain and the inspiration it breathed into Childe Harold are worthy of each other. Just above the fountain, on the crest of a hill, stands a thick grove, supposed to occupy the place of the consecrated wood, in which Numa met the nymph. It is dark with shadow, and full of birds, and might afford a fitting retreat for meditation to another king and lawgiver. The fields about it are so thickly studded with flowers, that you can not step without crushing them, and the whole neighborhood seems a favorite of nature. The rich banker, Torlonia, has bought this and several other classic spots about Rome — possessions for which he is more to be envied than for his purchased dukedom. All the travelling world assembles at Rome for the ceremonies of the holy week. Naples, Florence, and Pisa, send their hundreds of annual visiters, and the hotels and palaces are crowded with strangers of every nation and rank. It would be difficult to imagine a gayer or busier place than this usually sombre city has become within a few days. LETTER LVIII. PALM SUNDAY — SISTINE CHAPEL — ENTRANCE OF THE POPE — THE CHOIR THE POPE ON HIS THRONE PRE- SENTING THE PALMS — PROCESSION BISHOP ENGLAND'S LECTURE HOLY TUESDAY THE MISERERE — ACCI- DENTS IN THE CROWD— TENEBRjE THE EMBLEMATIC CANDLES HOLY THURSDAY FRESCOES OF MICHAEL ANGELO "CREATION OF EVE" — "LOT INTOXICATED" — DELPHIC SYBIL POPE "WASHING PILGRIMS' FEET STRIKING RESEMBLANCE OF ONE TO JUDAS POPE AND CARDINALS WAITING UPON PILGRIMS AT DINNER. Palm Sunday opens the ceremonies. We drove to the Vatican this morning, at nine, and, after wait- ing a half hour in the crush, kept back, at the point of the spear, by the pope's Swiss guard, I succeeded in getting an entrance into the Sistine chapel. Leav- ing the ladies of the party behind the grate, I passed two more guards, and obtained a seat among the cowl- ed and bearded dignitaries of the church and state within, where I could observe the ceremony with ease. The pope entered, borne in his gilded chair by twelve men, and, at the same moment, the chanting from the Sistine choir commenced with one long, piercing note, by a single voice, producing the most impressive effect. He mounted his throne as high as the altar opposite him, and the cardinals went through their obeisances, one by one, their trains supported by their servants, who knelt on the lower steps behind them. The palms stood in a tall heap beside the al- tar. They were beautifully woven in wands of perhaps six feet in length, with a cross at the top. The cardi- nal nearest the papal chair mounted first, and a palm was handed him. He laid it across the knees of the pope, and, as his holiness signed the cross upon it, he stooped, and kissed the embroidered cross upon his foot, then kissed the palm, and taking it in his two hands, descended with it to his seat. The other forty or fifty cardinals did the same, until each was provided with a palm. Some twenty other persons, monks of apparent clerical rank of every order, military men, and members of the catholic embassies, followed and took palms. A procession was then formed, the car- dinals going first with their palms held before them, and the pope following, in his chair, with a small frame of palmwork in his hands, in which was woven the initial of the Virgin. They passed out of the Sistine chapel, the choir chanting most delightfully, and, hav- ing made a tour around the vestibule, returned in the same order. The ceremony is intended to represent the entrance of the Savior into Jerusalem. Bishop England, of Charleston, South Carolina, delivered a lecture at the house of the English cardinal Weld, a day or two ago, explanatory of the ceremonies of the holy week. It was principally an apology for them. He confessed that, to the educated, they appeared empty, and even absurd rites, but they were intended not for the refined, but the vulgar, whom it was necessary to instruct and impress through their outward senses. As nearly all these rites, however, take place in the Sistine chapel, which no person is permitted to enter who is not fur- nished with a ticket, and in full dress, his argument rather fell to the ground. With all the vast crowd of strangers in Rome, 1 went to the Sistine chapel on Holy Tuesday, to hear the far-famed Miserere. It is sung several times du- ring the holy week, by the pope's choir, and has been described by travellers, of all nations in the most rap- turous terms. The vestibule was a scene of shocking confusion, for an hour, a constant struggle going on between the crowd and the Swiss guard, amounting occasionally to a fight, in which ladies fainted, chil- dren screamed, men swore, and, unless by force of contrast, the minds of the audience seemed likely to be little in tune for the music. The chamberlains at last arrived, and two thousand people attempted to get into a small chapel which scarce holds four hundred. Coat-skirts, torn cassocks, hats, gloves, and fragments of ladies' dresses, were thrown up by the suffocating throng, and, in the midst of a confusion beyond de- scription, the mournful notes of the tenehrce (or lam- entations of Jeremiah) poured in full volume from the choir. Thirteen candles burned in a small pyramid within the paling of the altar, and twelve of these, representing the apostles, were extinguished, one by one (to signify their desertion at the cross), during the singing of the tenahrai. The last, which was left burning, represented the mother of Christ. As the last before this was extinguished, the music ceased. The crowd had, by this time, become quiet. The twilight had deepened through the dimly-lit chapel, and the one solitary lamp looked lost at the distance of the altar. Suddenly the miserere commenced with one high prolonged note, that sounded like a wail ; another joined it, and another and another, and all the different parts came in, with a gradual swell of plain- tive and most thrilling harmony, to the full power of the choir. It continued for perhaps half an hour. The music was simple, running upon a few notes, like a dirge, but there were voices in the choir that seemed of a really supernatural sweetness. No instrument could be so clear. The crowd, even in their uncom- fortable positions, were breathless with attention, and the effect was universal. It is really extraordinary music, and if but half the rites of the catholic church had its power over the mind, a visit to Rome would have quite another influence. The candles were lit, and the motley troop of car- dinals and red-legged servitors passed out. The har- lequin-looking Swiss guard stood to their tall halberds, the chamberlains and mace-bearers, in their cassock and frills, took care that the males and females should not mix until they reached the door, the pope disap- peared in the sacristy, and the gay world, kept an hour beyond their time, went home to cold dinners. The ceremonies of Holy Thursday commenced with the mass in the Sistine chapel. Tired of seeing genuflexions, and listening to a mumbling of which I could not oatch a syllable, I took advantage of my privileged seat, in the ambassador's box, to lean back and study the celebrated frescoes of Michael Angelo upon the ceiling. A little drapery would do no harm to any of them. They illustrate, mainly, passages of 84 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. scripture history, but the " creation of Eve,"' in the centre, is an astonishingly fine representation of a naked man and woman, as large as life ; and •« Lot intoxicated and exposed before his two daughters," is about as immodest a picture, from its admira- ble expression as well as its nudity, as could easi- ly be drawn. In one corner there is a most beau- tiful draped figure of the Delphic Sybil — and I think this bit of heathenism is almost the only very decent part of the pope's most consecrated chapel. After the mass, the host was carried, with a showy procession, to be deposited among the thousand lamps in the Capella Paolina, and, as soon as it had passed, there was a general rush for the room in which the pope was to ivash the feet of the pilgrims. Thirteen men, dressed in white, with sandals open at the top, and caps of paper covered with white linen, sat on a high bench, just under a beautiful copy of the last supper of Da Vinci, in gobelin tapestry. It was a small chapel, communicating with the pope's private apartments. Eleven of the pilgrims were as vulgar and brutal-looking men as could have been found in the world ; but of the two in the centre, one was the personification of wild fanaticism. He was pale, ema- ciated, and abstracted. His hair and beard were neg- lected, and of a singular blackness. His lips were firmly set in an expression of severity. His brows were gathered gloomily over his eyes, and his glan- ces, occasionally sent among the crowd, were as gla- ring and flashing as a tiger's. With all this, his countenance was lofty, and if I had seen the face on canvass, as a portrait of a martyr, I should have thought it finely expressive of courage and devotion. The man on his left wept, or pretended to weep, con- tinually ; but every person in the room was struck with his extraordinary resemblance to Judas, as he is drawn in the famous picture of the last supper. It was the same marked face, the same treacherous, ruf- fian look, the same style of hair and beard, to a won- der. It is possible that he might have been chosen on purpose, the twelve pilgrims being intended to repre- sent the twelve apostles of whom Judas was one — but if accidental, it was the most remarkable coincidence that ever came under my notice. He looked the hyp- ocrite and traitor complete, and his resemblance to the Judas in the picture directly over his head, would have struck a child. The pope soon entered from his apartments, in a purple stole, with a cape of dark crimson satin, and the mitre of silver-cloth, and, casting the incense into the golden censer, the white smoke was flung from side to side before him, till the delightful odor filled the room. A short service was then chanted, and the choir sang a hymn. His holiness was then un- robed, and a fine napkin, trimmed with lace, was tied about him by the servitors, and with a deacon before him, bearing a splendid pitcher and basin, and a pro- cession behind him, with large bunches of flowers, he crossed to the pilgrims' bench. A priest, in a snow- white tunic, raised and bared the foot of the first. The pope knelt, took water in his hand, and slightly rub- bed the instep, and then drying it well with a napkin, he kissed it. The assistant-deacon gave a large bunch of flowers and a napkin to the pilgrim, as the pope left him, and another person in rich garments, followed, with pieces of money presented in a wrapper of white paper. The same ceremony took place with each — one foot only being honored with a lavation. When his holiness arrived at the " Judas," there was a general stir, and every one was on tip-toe to watch his countenance. He took his handkerchief from his eyes, and looked at the pope very earnestly, and when the ceremony was finished, he seized the sacred hand, and, imprint- ing a kiss upon it, flung himself back, and buried his face again in his handkerchief, quite overwhelmed with his feelings. The other pilgrims took it very coolly, comparatively, and one of them seemed rather amused than edified. The pope returned to his throne, and water was poured over his hands. A cardinal gave him a napkin, his splendid cape was put again over his shoulders, and, with a paternoster the ceremony was over. Half an hour after, with much crowding and several losses of foothold and temper, I had secured a place in the hall where the apostles, as the pilgrims are called after the washing, were to dine, waited on by the pope and cardinals. With their gloomy faces and ghastly white caps and white dresses, they looked more like criminals waiting for execution, than guests at a feast. They stood while the pope went round with a gold pitcher and basin, to wash their hands, and then seating themselves, his holiness, with a good- natured smile, gave each a dish of soup, and said something in his ear, which had the effect of putting him at his ease. The table was magnificently set out with the plate and provisions of a prince's table, and spite of the thousands of eyes gazing on them, the pilgrims were soon deep in the delicacies of every dish, even the lachrymose Judas himself, eating most voraciously. We left them at their dessert. LETTER LIX. SEPULCHRE OF CAIIIS CESTITJS — PROTESTANT BURYING GROUND — GRAVES OF KEATS AND SHELLEY — SHEL- LEY : S LAMENT OVER KEATS — GRAVES OF TW. AMERICANS — BEAUTY OF THE BURIAL PLACE — MONUMENTS OVER TWO INTERESTING YOUNG FE- MALES — INSCRIPTION ON KEATs's MONUMENT — THE STYLE OF KEATS'S POEMS— GRAVE OF DR. BELL — RESIDENCE AND LITERARY UNDERTAKINGS OF HIS WIDOW. A beautiful pyramid, a hundred and thirteen feet high, built into the ancient wall of Rome, is the proud Sepulchre of Caius Cestius. It is the most imperish- able of the antiquities, standing as perfect after eighteen hundred years as if it were built but yester- day. Just beyond it, on the declivity of a hill, over the ridge of which the wall passes, crowning it with two mouldering towers, lies the protestant burying- ground. It looks toward Rome, which appears in the distance, between Mount Aventine and a small hill called Mont Testaccio, and leaning to the southeast, the sun lies warm and soft upon its banks, and the grass and wild flowers are there the earliest and tallest of the Campagna. I have been here to-day, to see the graves of Keats and Shelley. With a cloudless sky and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon the marble slab laid over the ashes of poor Shelley, and read his own lament over Keats, who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill. The cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with walks between, and Shelley's grave and one other, without a name, occupy a small nook above, made by the projections of a mouldering wall-tower, and crowded with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly fragrant yellow flower, which perfumes the air around for several feet. The avenue by which you ascend from the gate is lined with high bushes of the marsh-rose in the most luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly mingled with flowers of every die. In his preface to his lament over Keats, Shelley says, "he was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the protestants, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. It is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might PENCI LUNGS BY THE WAY. 85 make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.'' If Shelley had chosen his own grave at the time, he would have selected the very spot where he has since been laid — the most sequestered and flowery nook of the place he de- scribes so feelingly. In the last verses of the elegy, he speaks of it again with the same feeling of its beauty : — " The spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green acces-s, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead, A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. " And gray walls moulder round, on which dull time Feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand : And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath Afield is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched, in heaven's smile, their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose, with scarce extinguished breath. " Here pause : these graves are all too young a.y yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each." m Shelley has left no poet behind, who could write so j touchingly of his burial-place in turn. He was, in- j deed, as they have graven on his tombstone, "corj cordium " — the heart of hearts. Dreadfully mistaken as he was in his principles, he was no less the soul of genius than the model of a true heart and of pure in- tentions. Let who will cast reproach upon his memory, I believe, for one, that his errors were of the ! kind most venial in the eye of Heaven, and I read, ! almost like a prophecy, the last lines of his elegy on ! one he believed had gone before him to a happier world : — " Burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." On the second terrace of the declivity, are ten or twelve graves, two of which bear the names of Ameri- cans who have died in Rome. A portrait carved in bas-relief, upon one of the slabs, told me, without the inscription, that one whom I had known was buried beneath.* The slightly rising mound was covered with small violets, half hidden by the grass. It takes away from the pain with which one stands over the grave of an acquaintance or a friend, to see the sun lying so warm upon it, and the flowers springing so profusely and cheerfully. Nature seems to have cared for those who have died so far from home, binding the earth gently over them with grass, and decking it with the most delicate flowers. A little to the left, on the same bank, is the new- made grave of a very young man, Mr. Elliot. He came abroad for health, and died at Rome, scarce two months since. Without being disgusted with life, one feels, in a place Mke this, a certain reconciliation, if I may so express it, with the thought of a burial — an almost willingness, if his bed could be laid amid such loveliness, to be brought and left here to his repose. Purely imaginary as any difference in this circum- stance is, it must, at least, always affect the sick powerfully ; and with the common practice of sending the dying to Italy, as a last hope, I consider the ex- quisite beauty of this place of burial, as more than a common accident of happiness. Farther on, upon the same terrace, are two monu- ments that interested me. One marks the grave of a young English girl,f the pride of a noble family, and, • Mr. John Hone, of New York. t An interesting account of this ill-fated young lady, who wm on the eve of marriage, has appeared in the Mirror. as a sculptor told me, who had often seen and admired her, a model of high-born beauty. She was riding with a party on the banks of the Tiber, when her horse became unmanageable, and backed into the river. She sank instantly, and was swept so rapidly away by the current, that her body was not found for many months. Her tombstone is adorned with a bas- relief, representing an angel receiving her from the waves. The other is the grave of a young lady of twenty, who was at the baths of Lucca, last summer, in pur- suit of health. She died at the first approach of winter. I had the melancholy pleasure of knowing her slightly, and we used to meet her in the winding path upon the bank of the romantic river Lima, at evening, borne in a sedan, with her mother and sister walking at her side, the fairest victim consumption ever seized. She had all the peculiar beauty of the disease, the transparent complexion and the unnatu- rally bright eye, added to features cast in the clearest and softest mould of female loveliness. She excited general interest even among the gay and dissipated crowd of a watering place ; and if her sedan was missed in the evening promenade, the inquiry for her was anxious and universal. She is buried in a place that seems made for such as herself. We descended to the lower enclosure at the foot of the slight declivity. The first grave here is that of Keats. The inscription on his monument runs thus : " This grave contains all that teas mortal of a young English poet, who, on his deathbed, in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb : here lies o>e whose name was written IN water." He died at Rome in 1821. Every reader knows his history and the cause of his death. Shelley says, in the preface to his elegy, " The savage criticism on his poems, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind ; the agitation thus originated ended in a rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs ; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments, from more can- did critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were in- effectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted." Keats was, no doubt, a poet of very uncommon promise. He had all the wealth of genius within him, but he had not learned, before he was killed by criticism, the received, and, therefore, the best manner of producing it for the eye of the world. Had he lived longer, the strength and richness which break continually through the affected style of Endymion and Lamia and his other poems, must have formed ' themselves into some noble monuments of his powers. As it is, there is not a poet living who could surpass the material of his " Endymion" — a poem, with all its faults, far more full of beauties. But this is not the place for criticism. He is buried fitly for a poet, and sleeps beyond criticism now. Peace to his ashes ! Close to the grave of Keats is that of Dr. Bell, the author of "Observations on Italy." This estimable man, whose comments on the fine arts are, perhaps, as judicious and high-toned as any ever written, has left behind him, in Naples (where he practised his pro- fession for some years), a host of friends, who remem- ber and speak of him as few are remembered and spoken of in this changing and crowded portion of the world. His widow, who edited his works so ably and judiciously, lives still at Naples, and is preparing just now a new edition of his book on Italy. Having known her, and having heard from her own lips many particulars of his life, I felt an additional interest in visiting his grave. Both his monument and Keats's are almost buried in the tall flowering clover of this beautiful place. 80 PENCIL LINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER LX. PRESENTATION AT THE PAPAL COURT PILGRIMS GO- ING TO VESPERS PERFORMANCE OF THE MISERERE TARPEIAN ROCK THE FORUM — PALACE OF THE CESARS COLISEUM. I have been presented to the pope this morning, in company with several Americans — Mr. and Mrs. Gray, of Boston, Mr. Atherton and daughters, and Mr. Walsh, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Mayer of Baltimore. With the latter gentleman, I arrived rather late, and found that the rest of the party had been already re- ceived, and that his holiness was giving audience, at the moment, to some Russian ladies of rank. Bishop England, of Charleston, however, was good enough to send in once more, and, in the course of a few min- utes, the chamberlain in waiting announced to us that 11 Padre Santo would receive us. The ante-room was a picturesque and rather peculiar scene. Clus- ters of priests, of different rank, were scattered about in the corners, dressed in a variety of splendid cos- tumes, white, crimson, and ermine, one or two monks, with their picturesque beards and flowing dresses of gray or brown, were standing near one of the doors, in their habitually humble attitudes, two gentleman mace-bearers guarded the door of the entrance to the pope's presence, their silver batons under their arms, and their open-breasted cassocks covered with fine lace ; the deep bend of the window was occupied by the American party of ladies, in the required black veils, and around the outer door stood the helmeted guard, a dozen stout men-at-arms, forming a forcible contrast to the mild faces and priestly company within. The mace-bearers lifted the curtain, and the pope stood before us, in a small plain room. The Irish priest who accompanied us prostrated himself on the floor, and kissed the embroidered slipper, and Bishop England hastily knelt and kissed his hand, turning to present us as he rose. His holiness smiled, and step- ped forward, with a gesture of his hand, as if to pre- vent our kneeling, and, as the bishop mentioned our names, he looked at us and nodded smilingly, but without speaking to us. Whether he presumed we did not speak the language, or whether he thought us too young to answer for ourselves, he confined his in- quiries about us entirely to the good bishop, leaving me, as I had wished, at leisure to study his features and manner. It was easy to conceive that the fa- ther of the catholic church stood before me, but I could scarcely realize that it was a sovereign of Eu- rope, and the temporal monarch of millions. He was dressed in along vesture of snow-white flannel, buttoned together in front, with a large crimson velvet cape over his shoulders, and band and tassels of silver cloth hanging from beneath. A small white scull-cap cov- ered the crown of his head, and his hair, slightly griz- zled, fell straight toward a low forehead, expressive of good-nature merely. A large emerald on his fingers, and slippers wrought in gold, with a cross on the in- step, completed his dress. His face is heavily mould- ed, but unmarked, and expressive mainly of sloth and kindness; his nose is uncommonly large, rather pendent than prominent, and an incipient double chin, slightly hanging cheeks, and eyes, over which the lids drop, as if in sleep, at the end of every sentence, con- firm the general impression of his presence — that of an indolent and good old man. His inquiries were principally of the catholic church in Baltimore (men- tioned by the bishop as the city of Mr. Mayer's resi- dence), of its processions, its degree of state, and whether it was recognised by the government. At the first pause in the conversation, his holiness smiled and bowed, the Irish priest prostrated himself again, and kissed his foot, and, with a blessing from the father of the church, we retired- On the evening of holy Thursday, as I was on my way to St. Peter's, to hear the miserere once more, I overtook the procession of the pilgrims going up to vespers. The men went first in couples, following a cross, and escorted by gentlemen penitents covered conveniently with sackcloth, their eyes, peeping through two holes, and their well-polished boots be- neath, being the only indications by which their pen- ance could be betrayed to the world. The pilgrims themselves, perhaps a hundred in all, were the dirtiest collection of beggars imaginable, distinguished from the lazars in the street, only by a long staff with a fa- ded bunch of flowers attached to it, and an oil-cloth cape stitched over with scallop shells. Behind came the female pilgrims, and these were led by the first la- dies of rank in Rome. It was really curious to see the mixture of humility and pride. There were, per- haps, fifty ladies of all ages, from sixteen to fifty, walking each between two filthy old women, who sup- ported themselves by her arms, while near them, on either side of the procession, followed their splendid equipages, with numerous servants, in livery, on foot, as if to contradict to the world their temporary degra- dation. The lady penitents, unlike the gentlemen, walked in their ordinary dress. I had several acquain- tances among them ; and it was inconceivable, to me, how the gay, thoughtless, fashionable creatures I had met in the most luxurious drawing-rooms of Rome, could be prevailed upon to become a part in such a ri- diculous parade of humility. The chief penitent, who carried a large, heavy crucifix at the head of the procession, was the Princess , at whose weekly soirees and balls assemble all that is gay and pleasure- loving in Rome. Her two nieces, elegant girls of eighteen or twenty, walked at her side, carrying light- ed candles, of four or five feet in length, in broad day- light, through the streets ! The procession crept slowly up to the church, and I left them kneeling at the tomb of St. Peter, and went to the side chapel, to listen to the miserere. The choir here is said to be inferior to that in the Sistine chapel, but the circumstances more than make up for the difference, which, after all, it takes a nice ear to detect. I could not but congratulate myself, as I sat down upon the base of a pillar, in the vast aisle, with- out the chapel where the choir were chanting, with the twilight gathering in the lofty arches, and the candles of the various processions creeping to the con- secrated sepulchre from the distant parts of the church. It was so different in that crowded and suffocating chapel of the Yatican, where, fine as was the music, I vowed positively never to subject myself to such an- noyance again. It had become almost dark, when the last candle but one was extinguished in the symbolical pyramid, and the first almost painful note of the miserere wailed out into the vast church of St. Peter. For the next half hour, the kneeling listeners, around the door of the chapel, seemed spell-bound in tdieir motionless at- titudes. The darkness thickened, the hundred lamps at the far-off sepulchre of the saint, looked like a gal- axy of twinkling points of fire, almost lost in the dis- tance, and from the now perfectly obscured choir, poured, in ever-varying volume, the dirge-like music, in notes inconceivably plaintive and affecting. The power, the mingled mournfulness and sweetness, the impassioned fulness, at one moment, and the lost, shrieking wildness of one solitary voice, at another, carry away the soul like a whirlwind. I have never been so moved by anything. It is not in the scope of language to convey an idea to another of the effect of the miserere. It was not till several minutes after the music had ceased, that the dark figures rose up from the floor about me. As we approached the door of the church, the full moon, about three hours risen, poured broadly PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 87 under the arches of the portico, inundating the whole front of the lofty dome with a flood of light, such as falls only on Italy. There seemed to be no atmo- sphere between. Daylight is scarce more intense. The immense square, with its slender obelisk and em- bracing crescents of colonnade, lay spread out as def- initely to the eye as at noon, and the two famous foun- tains shot up their clear waters to the sky, the moon- light streaming through the spray, and every drop as visible and bright as a diamond. I got out of the press of carriages, and took a by- street along the Tiber, to the Coliseum. Passing the Jews' quarter, which shuts at dark by heavy gates, I found myself near the Tarpeian rock, and entered the Forum, behind the ruins of the temple of For- tune. I walked toward the palace of the Cesars, stopping to gaze on the columns, whose shadows have fallen on the same spot, where I now saw them for six- teen or seventeen centuries. It checks the blood at one's heart, to stand on the spot and remember it. There was not the sound of a footstep through the whole wilderness of the Forum. I traversed it to the arch of Titus in a silence, which, with the majestic ruins around, seemed almost supernatural — the mind was left so absolutely to the powerful associations of the place. Ten minutes more brought me to the Coliseum. Its gigantic walls, arches on arches, almost to the very clouds, lay half in shadow, half in light, the ivy hung trembling in the night air, from between the cracks of the ruin, and it looked like some mighty wreck in a desert. I entered, and a hundred voices announced to me the presence of half the fashion of Rome. I had forgotten that it was the mode " to go to the Co- liseum by moonlight." Here they were dancing and laughing about the arena where thousands of Chris- tians had been torn by wild beasts, for the amusement of the emperors of Rome ; where gladiators had fought and died ; where the sands beneath their feet were more eloquent of blood than any other spot on the face of the earth — and one sweet voice proposed a dance, and another wished she could have music and supper, and the solemn old arches re-echoed with shouts and laughter. The travestie of the thing was amusing. I mingled in the crowd, and found ac- quaintances of every nation, and an hour I had devo- ted to romantic solitude and thought passed away per- haps quite as agreeably, in the nonsense of the most thoughtless triflers in society. LETTER LXI. VIGILS OVER THE HOST CEREMONIES OF EASTER SUN- DAY — THE PROCESSION HIGH MASS — THE POPE BLESSING THE PEOPLE CURIOUS ILLUMINATION RETURN TO FLORENCE RURAL FESTA HOSPITAL- ITY OF THE FLORENTINES EXPECTED MARRIAGE OF THE GRAND DUKE. Rome, 1833— This is Friday of the holy week. The host, which was deposited yesterday amid its thousand lamps in the Paoline chapel, was taken from its place this morning, in solemn procession, and car- ried back to the Sistine, after lying in the consecrated place twenty-four hours. Vigils were kept over it all night. The Paoline chapel has no windows, and the lights are so disposed as to multiply its receding arch- es till the eye is lost in them. The altar on which the host lay was piled up to the roof in a pyramid of light, and with the prostrate figures constantly cover- ing the floor, and the motionless soldier in antique ar- mor at the entrance, it was like some scene of wild romance. The ceremonies of Easter Sunday were performed where all others should have been — in the body of St. Peter's. Two lines of soldiers, forming an aisle up the centre, stretched from the square without the por- tico to the sacred sepulchre. Two temporary plat- forms for the various diplomatic corps and other priv- ileged persons occupied the sides, and the remainder of the church was filled by thousands of strangers, Ro- man peasantry, and contadini (in picturesque red bod- dices, and with golden bodkins through their hair), from all the neighboring towns. A loud blast of trumpets, followed by military mu- sic, announced the coming of the procession. The two long lines of soldiers presented arms, and the es- quires of the pope entered first, in red robes, followed by the long train of proctors, chamberlains, mitre- bearers, and incense-bearers, the men-at-arms escort- ing the procession on either side. Just before the cardinals, came a cross-bearer, supported on either side by men in showy surplices carrying lights, and then came the long and brilliant line of white-headed cardinals, in scarlet and ermine. The military digni- taries of the monarch preceded the pope, a splendid mass of uniforms, and his holiness then appeared, sup- ported, in his great gold and velvet chair, upon the shoulders of twelve men, clothed in red damask, with a canopy over his head, sustained by eight gentlemen, in short, violet-colored silk mantles. Six of the Swiss guard (representing the six catholic cantons) walked near the pope, with drawn swords on their shoulders, and after his chair followed a troop of civil officers, whose appointments 1 did not think it worth while to inquire. The procession stopped when the pope was opposite the " chapel of the holy sacrament," and his holiness descended. The tiara was lifted from his head by a cardinal-, and he knelt upon a cushion of vel- vet and gold to adore the " sacred host," which was exposed upon the altar. After a few minutes he re- turned to his chair, his tiara was again set on his head, and the music rang out anew, while the procession swept on to the sepulchre. The spectacle was all splendor. The clear space through the vast area of the church, lined with glit- tering soldiery, the dazzling gold and crimson of the coming procession, the high papal chair, with the im- mense fan-banners of peacock's feathers, held aloft, the almost immeasurable dome and mighty pillars above and around, and the multitudes of silent people, produced a scene which, connected with the idea of religious worship, and added to by the swell of a hun- dred instruments of music, quite dazzled and over- powered me. The high mass (performed but three times a year) proceeded. At the latter part of it, the pope mounted to the altar, and, after various ceremonies, elevated the sacred host. At the instant that the small white wa- fer was seen between the golden candlesticks, the two immense lines of soldiers dropped upon their knees, and all the people prostrated themselves at the same instant. This fine scene over, we hurried to the square in front of the church, to secure places for a still finer one — that of the pope blessing the people. Several thousand troops, cavalry and footmen, were drawn up between the steps and the obelisk, in the centre of the piazza, and the immense area embraced by the two circling colonnades was crowded by, perhaps, a hun- dred thousand people, with eyes directed to one single point. The variety of bright costumes, the gay liv- eries of the ambassadors' and cardinals' carriages, the vast body of soldiery, and the magnificent fram« of columns and fountains in which this gorgeous picture was contained, formed the grandest scene conceivable. In a few minutes the pope appeared in the balcony, over the great door of St. Peter's. Every hat in the vast multitude was lifted and every knee bowed in an 88 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. instant. Half a nation prostrate together, and one gray old man lifting up his hands to heaven, and bles- sing them! The cannon of the castle of St. Angelo thundered, the innumerable bells of Rome pealed forth simulta- neously, the troops fell into line and motion, and the children of the two hundred and fifty-seventh succes- sor of St. Peter departed blessed. In the evening all the world assembled to see the il- lumination, which it is useless to attempt to describe. The night was cloudy and black, and every line in the architecture of the largest building in the world was defined in light, even to the cross, which, as I have said before, is at the height, of a mountain from the base. For about an hour it was a delicate butvast structure of shining lines, like the drawing of a glo- rious temple on the clouds. At eight, as the clock struck, flakes of fire burst from every point, and the whole building seemed started into flame. Jt was done by a simultaneous kindling of torches in a thousand points a man stationed at each. The glare seemed to exceed that of noonday. No description can give an idea of it. I am not sure that I have not been a little tedious in describing the ceremonies of the holy week. Forsyth says in his bilious book, that he "never could read, and certainly never could write, a description of them." They have struck me, however, as particularly unlike anything ever seen in our own country, and I have en- deavored to draw them slightly and with as little par- ticularity as possible. I trust that some of the read- ers of the Mirror may find them entertaining and novel. Florence, 1833. — I found myself at six this mor- ning, where I had found myself at the same hour a year before — in the midst of the rural festa in the Cas- c'tne of Florence. The duke, to-day, breakfasts at his farm. The people of Florence, high and low, come out, and spread their repasts upon the fine sward of the openings in the wood, the roads are watered, and the royal equipages dash backward and forward, while the ladies hang their shawls in the trees, and children and lovers stroll away into the shade, and all looks like a scene from Boccaccio. I thought it a picturesque and beautiful sight last year, and so described it. But I was a stranger then, newly arrived in Florence, and felt desolate amid the happiness of so many. A few months among so frank and warm-hearted a people as the Tuscans, however, makes one at home. The tradesman and his wife, familiar with your face, and happy to be seen in their holyday dresses, give you the " buon giorno," as you pass, and a cup of red wine or a seat at the cloth on the grass is at your service in almost any group in the prato. I am sure I should not find so many acquain- tances in the town in which I have passed my life. A little beyond the crowd, lies a broad open glade of the greenest grass, in the very centre of the woods of the farm. A broad fringe of shade is flung by the trees along the eastern side, and at their roots cluster the different parties of the nobles and the ambassadors. Their gayly-dressed chasseurs are in waiting, the sil- ver plate quivers and glances, as the chance rays of the sun break through the leaves over head, and at a little distance, in the road, stand their showy equipa- ges in a long line from the great oak to the farmhouse. In the evening, there was an illumination of the green alleys and the little square in front of the house, and a band of music for the people. Within, the halls were thrown open for a ball. It was given by the grand duke to the Dutchess of Lichtenberg, the widow of Eugene Beauharnois. The company assembled at eight, and the presentations (two lovely countrywomen of our own among them), were over at nine. The dancing then commenced, and we drove home, through the fading lights still burning in the trees, an hour or two past midnight. The grand duke is about to be married to one of the princesses of Naples, and great preparations are ma- king for the event. He looks little like a bridegroom, with his sad face, and unshorn beard and hair. It is, probably, not a marriage of inclination, for the fat princess expecting him, is every way inferior to the incomparable woman he has lost, and he passed half the last week in a lonely visit to the chamber in which she died, in his palace at Pisa. LETTER LXII. PISA — DULNESS OF THE TOWN — LEANING TOWER — CRUISE IN THE FRIGATE UNITED STATES — ELBA FIOMBTNO— PORTO FERRAJO — APPEARANCE OF THE BAY NAVAL DISCIPLINE — VISIT TO THE TOWN RESI- DENCE OF NAPOLEON HIS EMPLOYMENT DURING HIS CONFINEMENT ON THE ISLAND — HIS SISTERS ELIZA AND PAULINE — HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE SIMPLICITY OF THE INHABITANTS OF ELBA. I left Florence on one of the last days of May for Pisa, with three Italian companions, who submitted as quietly as myself to being sold four times from one vetturino to another, at the different stopping-places, and we drove into the grass-grown, melancholy streets of Pisa, in the middle of the afternoon, thankful to escape from the heat and dust of the low banks of the Arno. My fellow-travellers were Florentines, and in their sarcastic remarks upon the dulness of Pisa, I imagined I could detect a lingering trace of the an- cient hatred of these once rival republics. Prepara- tions for the illumination in honor of the new grand dutchess, were going on upon the streets bordering the river, but other sign of life there was none. It must have been solitude itself which tempted Byron to reside in Pisa. I looked at the hot sunny front of the Palazzo Lanfranchi in which he lived, and tried in vain to imagine it the home of anything in the shape of pleasure. I hurried to dine with the friends whose invitation had brought me out of my way (I was going to Leg- horn), and with a warm, golden sunset flushing in the sky, we left the table a few hours after to mount to the top of the " leaning tower." On the north and east lay the sharp terminating ridges of the Appenines. in which lay nested Lucca and its gay baths, and on the west and south, over a broad bright green meadow of from seven to fourteen miles, thridded by the Arno and the Serchio, coiled the distant line of the Medi- terranean, peaked with the many ships, entering and leaving the busy port of Leghorn, and gilded like a flaunting riband, with the gold of the setting sun. Below us lay Pisa, and away to the mountains, and off over the plains, the fertile farms of Tuscany. Every • point of the scene was lovely. But there was an un- accustomed feature in the southern view, which had more power over my feelings than all else around me. Floating like small clouds in the distance, I could just distinguish two noble frigates, lying at anchor in the roads. The guardian of the tower handed me his glass, and I strained my eye till I fancied I could see the "stars and stripes" of my country's flag flying at the peaks. I pointed them out with pride to my English friends ; and while they hung over the dizzy railing, watching the fading teintsof the sunset on the mountains of Tuscany, I kept my eye on the distant ships, lost in a thousand reveries of home. The blood so stirs to see that free banner in a foreign land. We remained on the tower till the moon rose, clear and full, and then descended by its circling galleries to the square, looked at the tall fairy stru mire in her PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 89 mellower light, its sides laced with the shadows of the hundred columns winding around it, and the wondrous pile, as it leaned forward to meet the light, seeming in the very act of toppling to the earth. I had come from Florence to join the "United States," at the polite invitation of the officers of the ward-room, on a cruise up the Mediterranean. My cot was swung immediately on my arrival, but we lay three days longer than was expected in the harbor, riding out a gale of wind, which broke the chain cables of both ships, and drove several merchant ves- sels on the rocks. We got under way on the third of June, and the next morning were off Elba, with Corsica on our quarter, and the little island of Capreja just ahead. The firing of guns took me just now to the deck. Three Sardinian gun-boats had saluted the commo- dore's flag in passing, and it was returned with twelve guns. They were coming home from the affair at Tunis. It is a fresh, charming morning, and we are beating up against a light head-wind, all the officers on deck, looking at the island with their glasses, and discussing the character of the great man to whom this little barren spot was a temporary empire. A bold fortification just appears on the point, with the Tuscan flag flying from the staff. The sides of the hills are dotted with desolate looking buildings, among which are one or two monasteries, and in rounding the side of the island, we have passed two or three small villages, perched below and above on the rocks. Off to the east, we can just distinguish Piombino, the nearest town of the Italian shore, and very beautiful it looks, rising from the edge of the water like Venice, with a range of cloudy hills relieving it in the rear. Our anchor is dropped in the bay of Porto Ferrajo. As we ran lightly in upon the last tack, the walls of the fort appeared crowded with people, the whole town apparently assembled to see the unusual spec- tacle of two ships- of-war entering their now quiet waters. A small curving bay opened to us, and as we rounded directly under the walls of the fort, the tops of the houses in the town behind, appeared crowded with women, whose features we could easily distinguish with a glass. By the constant exclamations of the midshipmen, who were gazing intently from the quar- ter deck, there was among them a fair proportion of beauty, or what looked like it in the distance. Just below the summit of the fort, upon a terrace com- manding a view of the sea, stood a handsome house, with low windows shut with Venetian blinds and shaded with acacias, which the pilot pointed out to us as the town residence of Napoleon. As the ship lost her way, we came in sight of a gentle amphitheatre of hills rising away from the cove, in a woody ravine of which stood a handsome building, with eight win- dows, built by the exile as a country-house. Twenty or thirty, as good or better, spot the hills around, ornamented with avenues and orchards of low olive- trees. It is altogether a rural scene, and disappoints us agreeably after the barren promise of the outer sides of the isle. The Constellation came slowly in after us, with every sail set, and her tops crowded with men, and as she fell under the stern of the commodore's ship, the word was given, and her vast quantity of sail was furled with that wonderful alacrity which so astonishes a landsman. I have been continually surprised in the few days that I have been on board, with the wonders of sea discipline ; but for a spectacle, I have seen nothing more imposing than the entrance of these two beautiful frigates into the little port of Elba, and their magical management. The anchors were dropped, the yards came down by the run, the sails disappeared, the living swarm upon the rigging slid below, all in a moment, and then struck up the delightful band on our quarter deck, and the sailors leaned on the guns, the officers on the quarter railing, and boats from the shore filled with ladies, lay off at different distances, the whole scene as full of repose and enjoyment, as if we had lain idle for a month in these glassy waters. How beautiful are the results of order i We had made every preparation for a pic-nic party to the country-house of Napoleon yesterday — but it rained. At sunset, however, the clouds crowdedinto vast masses, and the evening gave a glorious promise, which was fulfilled this morning in freshness and sun- shine. The commodore's barge took off the ladies for an excursion on horseback to the iron mines, on the other side of the island — the midshipmen were set ashore in various directions for a ramble, and I, tempted with the beauty of the ravine which enclosed the villa of Napoleon, declined all invitations with an eye to a stroll thither. We were first set ashore at the mole to see the town. A medley crowd of soldiers, citizens, boys, girls, and galley-slaves, received us at the landing, and followed us up to the town-square, gazing at the officers with undisguised curiosity. We met several gentlemen from the other ship at the cafe, and taking a cicerone together, started for the town-residence of the emper- or. It is now occupied by the governor, and stands on the summit of the little fortified city. We mounted by clean excellent pavements, getting a good-natured " buon giornol" from every female head thrust from beneath the blinds of the houses. The governor's aid received us at the door, with his cap in his hand, and we commenced the tour of the rooms with all the household, male and female, following to gaze at us. Napoleon lived on the first floor. The rooms were as small as those of a private house, and painted in the pretty fresco common in Italy. The furniture was all changed, and the fireplaces and two busts of the em- peror's sisters (Eliza and Pauline) were all that re- mained as it was. The library is a pretty room, though very small, and opens on a terrace level with his favor- ite garden. The plants and lemon-trees were planted by himself, we were told, and the officers plucked sou- venirs on all sides. The officer who accompanied us was an old soldier of Napoleon's, and a native of Elba, and after a little of the reluctance common to the teller of an oft-told tale, he gave us some interesting partic- ulars of the emperor's residence at the island. It ap- pears that he employed himself, from the first day of his arrival, in the improvement of his little territory, making roads, &c.,and behaved quite like a man, who had made up his mind to relinquish ambition, and con- tent himself with what was about him. Three as- sassins were discovered and captured in the course of the eleven months, the first two of whom he pardon- ed. The third made an attempt upon his life, in the disguise of a beggar, at a bridge leading to his country- house, and was condemned and executed. He was a native of the emperor's own birthplace in Corsica. The second floor was occupied by his mother and Pauline. The furniture of the chamber of the re- nowned beauty is very much as she left it. The bed is small, and the mirror opposite its foot very large, and in a mahogany frame. Small mirrors were set also in to the bureau, and in the back of a pretty cabinet of dark wood standing at the head of the bed. It is de- lightful to breathe the atmosphere of a room that has been the home of the lovely creature whose marble image by Canova thrills every beholder with love, and is fraught with such pleasing associations. Her sit- ting-room, though «ss interesting, made us linger and muse again. It looks out over the sea to the west, and the prospect is beautiful. One forgets that her histo- ry could not be written without many a blot. How much we forgive to beauty/! Of all the female branch- es of the Bonaparte family. Pauline bore the greatest 90 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. resemblance to her brother Napoleon. But the grand and regular profile which was in him marked with the stern air of sovereignty and despotic rule, was in her tempered with an enchanting softness and fascinating smile. Her statue, after the Venus de Medicis, is the chefd'osuvre of modern sculpture. We went from the governor's house to the walls of the town, loitering along and gazing at the sea; and then rambled through the narrow streets of the town, attracting, by the gay uniforms of the officers, the at- tentfon and courtesies of every smooched petticoat far and near. What the faces of the damsels of Elba might be, if washed, we could hardly form a conjec- ture The country-house of Napoleon is three miles from the town, a little distance from the shore, farther round into the bay. Captain Nicholson proposed to walk to it, and send his boat across — a warmer task for the mid-day of an Italian June than a man of less enter- prise would choose for pleasure. We reached the stone steps of the imperial casino, after a melting and toilsome walk, hungry and thirsty, and were happy to fling ourselves upon broken chairs in the denuded drawing-room, and wait for an extempore dinner of twelve eggs and bottle of wine as bitter as criticism. A farmer and his family live in the house, and a couple of bad busts and the fireplaces, are all that remain of its old appearance. The situation and the view, how- ever, are superb. A little lap of a valley opens right away from the door to the bosom of the bay, and in the midst of the glassy basin lies the bold peninsular promontory and fortification of Porto Ferrajo, like a castle in a loch, connected with the body of the island by a mere rib of sand. Off beyond sleeps the main- land of Italy, mountain and vale, like a smoothly- shaped bed of clouds ; and for the foreground of the landscape, the valleys of Elba are just now green with fig-trees and vines, speckled here and there with fields of golden grain, and farmhouses shaded with all the trees of this genial climate. We examined the place, after our frugal dinner, and found a natural path under the edge of the hill behind, stretching away back into the valley, and leading, af- ter a short walk, to a small stream and a waterfall. Across it, just above the fall, lay the trunk of an old and vigorous fig-tree, full of green limbs, and laden with fruit half ripe. It made a natural bridge over the stream, and as its branches shaded the rocks below, we could easily imagine Napoleon, walking to and fro in the smooth path, and seating himself on the broad- est stone in the heat of the summer evenings he pass- ed on the spot. It was the only walk about the place, and a secluded and pleasant one. The groves of firs and brush above, and the locust and cherry-trees on the edges of the walk, are old enough to have shaded him. We sat and talked under the influence of the " genius of the spot," till near sunset, and then, cut- ting each a walking-stick from the shoots of the old fig-tree, returned to the boats and reached the ship as the band struck up their exhilarating music for the evening on the quarter-deck. We have passed two or three days at Elba most agreeably. The weather has been fine, and the ships have been thronged with company. The common people of the town come on board in boat-loads, men, women, and children, and are never satisfied with ga- zing and wondering. The inhabitants speak very pure Tuscan, and are mild and simple in their manners. They all take the ships to be bound upon a mere voy- age of pleasure ; and, with the officers in their gay dresses, and the sailors in their clean white and blue, the music morning and evening, and the general gay- ety on board, the impression is not much to be won- dered at. Yesterday, after dinner, Captain Nicholson took us ashore in his gig, to pass an hour or two in the shade. His steward followed, with a bottle or two of old wine, and landing near the fountain to which the boats are sent for water, we soon found a spreading fig-tree, and, with a family of the country people from a neighbor- ing cottage around us, we idled away the hours till the cool of the evening. The simplicity of the old man and his wife, and the wonder of himself and sev- eral laborers in his vineyard, to whom the captain gave a glass or two of his excellent wines, would have made a study for Wilkie. Sailors are merry companions for a party like this. We returned over the unruffled ex- panse of the bay, charmed with the beauty of the scene by sunset, and as happy as a life, literally sans souci, could make us. What is it, in this rambling ab sence from all to which we look forward to in love and hope, that so fascinates the imagination ? I went, in the commodore's suite, to call upon the governor this morning. He is a military, command- ing looking man, and received us in Napoleon's sa- loon, surrounded by his officers. He regretted that his commission did not permit him to leave the shore, even to visit a ship, but offered a visit on the part of his sister and a company of the first ladies of the town. They came off this evening. She was a lady-like woman, not very pretty, of thirty years perhaps. As she spoke only Italian, she was handed over to me, and I waited on her through the ship, explaining a great many things of which I knew as much as herself. This visit over, we get under way to-morrow morning for Naples. LETTER LXIII. VISIT TO NAPLES, HERCULANEUM, AND POMPEII. I have passed my first day in Naples in wandering about, without any definite object. I have walked around its famous bay, looked at the lazzaroni, watch- ed the smoke of Vesuvius, traversed the square where the young Conradine was beheaded and Masaniello commenced his revolt, mounted to the castle of St. Elmo, and dined on macaroni in a trattoria, where the Italian I had learned in Tuscany was of little more use to me than Greek. The bay surprised me most. It is a collection of beauties, which seems more a miracle than an acci dent of nature. It is a deep crescent of sixteen miles across and a little more in length, between the points of which lies a chain of low mountains, called the island of Capri, looking, from the shore, like a vast heap of clouds brooding at sea. In the bosom of the crescent lies Naples. Its palaces and principal buildings cluster around the base of an abrupt hill crowned by the castle of St. Elmo, and its half mill- ion of inhabitants have stretched their dwellings over the plain toward Vesuvius, and back upon Posilipo, bordering the curve of the shore on the right and left, with a broad white band of city and village for twelve or fourteen miles. Back from this, on the southern side, a very gradual ascent brings your eye to the base of Vesuvius, which rises from the plain in a sharp cone, broken in at the top, its black and lava-streaked sides descending with the evenness of a sand-hill, on one side to the disinterred city of Pompeii, and on the other to the royal palace of Portici, built over the yet unexplored Herculaneum. In the centre of the crescent of the shore, projecting into the sea by a bridge of two or three hundred feet in length, stands a small castle built upon a rock, on one side of which lies the mole with its shipping. The other side is bordered, close to the beach, with the gardens of the PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 91 oyal villa, a magnificent promenade of a mile, orna- mented with fancy temples nod statuary, on the smooth alleys of which may be mot, at certain hours, all that is brilliant and gay in Naples. Farther on, toward the northern horn of the bay, lies the mount of Posilipo, the ancient coast of Baise, Cape Mysene, and the mountain isles of Procida and Ischia, the last of which still preserves the costumes of Greece, from which it was colonized centuries ago. The bay itself is as blue as the sky, scarcely ruffled all day with the wind, and covered by countless boats fishing or creeping on with their picturesque lateen sails just filled ; while the at- mosphere oversea, city, and mountain, is of a clearness and brilliancy which is inconceivable in other coun- tries. The superiority of the sky and climate of Ita- ly is no fable in any part of this delicious land — but in Naples, if the day I have spent here is a fair speci- men, it is matchless even for Italy. There is some- thing like a fine blue veil of a most dazzling transpa- rency over the mountains around, but above and be- tween there seems nothing but viewless space — noth- ing like air that a bird could rise upon. The eye gets intoxicated almost with gazing on it. We have just returned from our first excursion to Pompeii. It lies on the southern side of the bay, just below the volcano which overwhelmed it, about twelve miles from Naples. The road lay along the shore, and is lined with villages which are only separated by name. The first is Portici, where the king has a sum- mer palace, through the court of which the road pass- es. It is built over Herculaneum, and the danger of undermining it has stopped the excavations of unques- tionably the richest city buried by Vesuvius. We stopped at a little gate in the midst of the village, and taking a guide and two torches, descended to the only part of it now visible, by near a hundred steps. We found ourselves at the back of an amphitheatre. We entered the narrow passage, and the guide pointed to several of the upper seats for the spectators which had been partially dug out. They were lined with marble, as the whole amphitheatre appears to have been. To realize the effect of these ruins, it is to be remembered that they are imbedded in solid lava, like rock, near a hundred feet deep, and that the city which is itself ancient is built above them. The carriage in which we came stood high over our heads, in a time- worn street, and ages had passed and many generations of men had lived and died over a splendid city, whose very name had been forgotten! It was discovered in sinking a well, which struck the door of the amphi- theatre. The guide took us through several other long passages, dug across and around it, showing us the orchestra, the stage, the numerous entrances, and the bases of several statues which are taken to the museum at Naples. This is the only part of the ex- cavation that remains open, the others having again been filled with rubbish. The noise of the carriages overhead in the street of Portici was like a deafening thunder. In a hurry to get to Pompeii, which is much more interesting, we ascended to daylight, and drove on. — Coasting along the curve of the bay, with only a suc- cession of villas and gardens between us and the beach, we soon came to Torre del Greco, a small town which was overwhelmed by an eruption thirty-nine years ago. Vesuvius here rises gradually on the left, the crater being at a distance of five miles. The road crossed the bed of dry lava, which extends to the sea in a broad black mass of cinders, giving the country the most desolate aspect. The town is rebuilt just beyond the ashes, and the streets are crowded with the thought- less inhabitants, who buy and sell, and lounge in the sun, with no more remembrance or fear of the volcano than the people of a city in America. Another half hour brought us to a long, high bank of earth and ashes, thrown out from the excavations ; and, passing on, we stopped at the gate of Pompeii. A guide met us, and we entered. We found ourselves in the ruins of a public square, surrounded with small low columns of red marble. On the right were sev- eral small prisons, in one of which was found the skeleton of a man with its feet in iron stocks. The cell was very small, and the poor fellow must have been suffocated without even a hope of escape. The columns just in front were scratched with ancient names, possibly those of the guard stationed at the door of the prison. This square is surrounded with shops, in which were found the relics and riches of tradesmen, consisting of an immense variety. In one of the buildings was found the skeleton of a newborn child, and in one part of the square the skeletons of sixty men, supposed to be soldiers, who, in the severi- ty of Roman discipline, dared not fly, and perished at their post. There were several advertisements of gladiators on the pillars, and it appears that at the time of the eruption the inhabitants of Pompeii were principally assembled in the great amphitheatre, at a show. We left the square, and visiting several small pri- vate houses near it, passed into a street with a slight ascent, the pavement of which was worn deep with carriage-wheels. It appeared to have led from the up- per part of the city directly to the sea, and in rainy weather must have been quite a channel for water, as high stones at small distances were placed across the street, leaving open places between for the carriage wheels. (I think there is a contrivance of the same kind in one of the streets of Baltimore.) We mounted thence to higher ground, the part of the city not excavated. A peasant's hut and a iarge vineyard stand high above the ruins, and from the door the whole city and neighborhood are seen to advan- tage. The effect of the scene is strange beyond de- scription. Columns, painted walls, wheelworn streets, amphitheatres, palaces, all as lonely and deserted as the grave, stand around you, and behind is a poor cot- tage and a vineyard of fresh earth just putting forth its buds, and beyond the broad, blue, familiar bay, cov- ered with steamboats and sails, and populous modern Naples in the distance — a scene as strangely mingled? perhaps, as any to be found in the world. We looked around for a while, and then walked on through the vineyard to the amphitheatre which lies beyond, near the other gate of the city. It is a gigantic ruin, com- pletely excavated, and capable of containing twenty thousand spectators. The form is oval, and the archi- tecture particularly fine. Besides the many vomitories or passages for ingress and egress, there are three small- er alleys, one used as the entrance for wild beasts, one for the gladiators, and the third as that by which the dead were taken away. The skeletons of eight lions and a man, supposed to be their keeper, were found in one of the dens beneath, and those of five other per- sons near the different doors. It is presumed that the greater proportion of the inhabitants of Pompeii must have escaped by sea, as the eruption occurred while they were nearly all assembled on this spot, and these few skeletons only have been found.* We returned through the vineyard, and stopping at the cottage, called for some of the wine of the last vintage (delicious, like all those in the neighborhood j of Vesuvius), and producing our basket of provisions, made a most agreeable dinner. Two parties of Eng- lish passed while we were sitting at our out-of-doors table. Our attendant was an uncommonly pretty girl of sixteen, born on the spot, and famous just now as the object of a young English nobleman's particu- lar admiration. She is a fine, dark-eyed creature, but • " The number of skeletons hitherto disinterred in Pom- peii and its suburbs is three hundred." — Stark. 92 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. certainly no prettier than every fifth peasant girl in Italy. Having finished our picturesque meal, we went down into the ancient streets once more, and arrived at the small temple of Isis, a building in excellent preserva- tion. On the altar stood, when it was excavated, a small statue of Isis, of exquisite workmanship (now in the museum, to which all the curiosities of the place are carried), and behind this we were shown the secret penetralia, where the priests were concealed who uttered the oracles supposed to be pronounced by the goddess. The access was by a small secret flight of stairs, communicating with the apartments of the priests in the rear. The largest of these apartments was probably the refectory, and here was found a hu- man skeleton near a table, upon which lay dinner utensils, chicken bones, bones of fishes, bread and wine, and a faded garland of flowers. In the kitchen, which we next visited, were found cooking utensils, remains of food, and the skeleton of a man leaning against the wall with an axe in his hand, and near him a considerable hole, which he had evidently cut to make his escape when the door was stopped by cinders. The skeleton of one of the priests was found prostrate near the temple, and in his hand three hundred and sixty coins of silver, forty-two of bronze, and eight of gold, wrapped strongly in a cloth. He had probably stopped before his flight to load himself with the treasures of the temple, and was overtaken by the shower of cinders and suffocated. The skeletons of one or two were found upon beds, supposed to have been smothered while asleep or ill. The temple is beautifully paved with mosaic (as indeed are all the better private houses and public buildings of Pom- peii), and the open inner court is bordered with a quadrilateral portico. The building is of the Roman Doric order. (I have neither time nor room to enu- merate the curiosities found here and in the other parts of the city, and I only notice those which most im- pressed my memory. The enumeration by Madame Stark, will be found exceedingly interesting to those who have not read her laconic guide-book.) We passed next across a small street to the tragic theatre, a large handsome building, where the seats for the vestals, consuls, and other places of honor, are well preserved, and thence up the hill to the temple of Hercules, which must have been a noble edifice, commanding a superb view of the sea. The next object was the triangular forum, an open space surrounded with three porticoes, supported by a hundred Doric columns. Here were found several skeletons, one of which was that of a man who had loaded himself with plunder. Gold and silver coins, cups, rings, spoons, buckles, and other things, were found under him. Near here, under the ruins of a wall, were discovered skeletons of a man and a wo- man, and on the arms of the latter two beautiful bracelets of gold. We entered from this a broad street, lined with shops, against the walls of which were paintings in fresco and inscriptions in deep-red paint, representing the occupations and recording the names of the occu- pants. In one of them was found a piece of salt-fish, smelling strongly after seventeen centuries! In a small lane leading from this street, the guide led us to a shop, decorated with pictures of fish of various kinds, and furnished with a stove, marble dressers, ;u^l earthen jars, supposed to have belonged to a vender of fish and olives. A little further en was a baker's shop, with a well-used oven, in which was found a batch of bread burnt to a cinder. Near this was the house of a midwife. In it were found several instruments of a simple and excellent construction, unknown to the moderns, a forceps, remains of medicines in a wooden box, and various pestles and mortars. The walls were ornamented with frescoes of the Graces, Venus, and Adonis, and similar subjects. The temple of the pantheon is a magnificent ruin, and must have been one of the choicest in Pompeii. Its walls are decorated with exquisite paintings in fresco, arabesques, mosaics, &c, and its court is one hundred and eighty feet long, and two hundred and thirty broad, and contains an altar, around which are twelve pedes- tals for statues of the twelve principal deities of the ancients. Gutters of marble are placed at the base of the triclinium, to carry away the blood of the victims. A thousand coins of bronze, and forty or fifty of silver, were found near the sanctuary. We passed on to the Curea, a semicircular building, for the discussion of matters of religion by the magis- trates ; a temple of Romulus ; the remains of a tem- ple of Janus ; a splendid building called the chalcidi- cum, constructed by the priestess Eumachea and her son, and dedicated as a temple of concord, and came at last, by a regular ascent, into a large and spacious square, called the forum civile. This part of the city of Pompeii must have been extremely imposing. Porticoes, supported by noble columns, encompassed its vast area ; the pedestals of colossal statues, erected to distinguished citizens, are placed at the corners ; at the northern extremity rose a stately temple of Jupiter; on the right was another temple to Venus ; beyond, a large public edifice, the use of which is not known; across the narrow street which bounds it stood the Basilica, an immense building, which served as a court of justice and an exchange. We passed out at the gate of the city and stopped at a sentry-box, in which was found a skeleton in full armo r — a soldier who had died at his post ! From hence formerly the road descended directly to the sea, and for some distance was lined on either side with the magnificent tombs of the Pompeians. Among them was that of the vestal virgins, left unfinished when the city was destroyed ; a very handsome tomb, in which was found the skeleton of a woman, with a lamp in one hand and jewels in the other (who had probably attempted to rob before her flight), and a very hand- some square monument, with a beautiful relievo on one of the slabs, representing (as emblematic of death) a ship furling her sails on coming into port. Near one of the large family sepulchres stands a small semi- circular room, intended for the funeral feast after a burial ; and here were found the remains of three men around a table, scattered with relics of a meal. They were overwhelmed ere their feast was concluded over the dead ! The principal inn of Pompeii was just inside the gate. We went over the ruins of it. The skeleton of an ass was found chained to a ring in the stable, and the tire of a wheel lay in the court yard. Chequers are painted on the side of the door, as a sign. Below the tombs stands the " suburban villa of Diomed," one of the most sumptuous edifices of Pompeii. Here was found everything that the age could furnish for the dwelling of a man of wealth. Statues, frescoes, jewels, wine, household utensils of every description, skeletons of servants and dogs, and every kind of elegant furniture. The family was large, and in the first moment of terror, they all retreated to a wine vault under the villa, where their skeletons (eighteen grown persons and two children) were found seventeen centuries after ! There was really some- thing startling in walking through the deserted rooms of this beautiful villa — more than one feels elsewhere in Pompeii, for it is more like the elegance and taste of our own day ; and with the brightness of the pre- served walls, and the certainty with which the use of each room is ascertained, it seems as if the living in- habitant would step from some corner and welcome you. The fiaures on the walls are as fresh as if done yesterday. The baths look as if they might scarce be dry from use. It seems incredible that the whole Christian age has elapsed since this was a human PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. dwelling — occupied by its last family while our Savior was walking the world! It would be tedious to enumerate all the curious places to which the guide led us in this extraordinary city. On our return through the streets, among the ob- jects of interest was the home of Sallust, the historian. I did not think, when reading his beautiful latin at school, that I should ever sit down in his parlor ! Sallust was rich, and his house is uncommonly hand- some. Here is his chamber, his inner court, his kitchen, his garden, his dining-room, his guest cham- ber, all perfectly distinguishable by the symbolical frescoes on the walls. In the court was a fountain of pretty construction, and opposite, in the rear, was a flower-garden, containing arrangements for dining in open air in summer. The skeleton of a female (suppo- sed to be the wife of the historian) and three servants, known by their different ornaments, were found near the door of the street. We passed a druggist's shop and a cook-shop, and entered, treading on a beautiful mosaic floor, the " house of the dramatic poet," so named, from the character of the paintings with which it is ornamented throughout. The frescoes found here are the finest ancient paintings in the world, and from some pecu- liarity in the rings upon the fingers of the female figures, they are supposed to be family portraits. With assistance like this, how easily the imagination repeo- ples these deserted dwellings ! A heavy shower drove us to the shelter of the wine- vaults of Diomed, as we were about stepping into our carriage to return to Naples. We spent the time in exploring, and found some thirty or forty earthen jars still half-buried in the ashes which drifted through the loop-holes of the cellar. In another half hour the black cloud had passed away over Vesuvius, and the sun set behind Posilipo in a flood of splendor. We were at home soon after dark, having had our fill of astonishment for once. I have seen nothing in my life so remarkable as this disentombed city. I have passed over, in the description, many things which were well worth noting, but it would have grown into a mere catalogue else. You should come to Italy. It is a privilege to realize these things which could not be bought too dearly, and they can not be realized but by the eye. Description conveys but a poor shadow of them to the fancy. LETTER LXIV. ACCOUNT OF VESUVIUS — THE HERMITAGE — THE FAMOUS LAGRIMA CHRISTI — DIFFICULTIES OF THE PATH — CU- RIOUS APPEARANCE OF THE OLD CRATER — ODD AS- SEMBLAGE OF TRAVELLERS — THE NEW CRATER SPLENDID PROSPECT — MR. MATHIAS, AUTHOR OF THE PURSUITS OF LITERATURE — THE ARCHBISHOP OF TA- RENTO. Mounted upon asses much smaller than their ri- ders, and with each a barelegged driver behind, we commenced the ascent of Vesuvius. It was a trou- blesome path worn through the rough scoria of old eruptions, atiu^fter two hours' toiling, we were glad to dismount at " the hermitage." Here lives a capu- chin friar on a prominent rib in the side of the volcano, the red-hot lava dividing above his dwelling every year or two, and coursing away to the valley in two rivers of fire on either side of him. He has been there twelve years, and supports himself, and probably half the brotherhood at the monastery by selling lagrima Chrisli to strangers. It is a small white building with a little grass and a few trees about it, and looks like an island in the black waste of cinders and lava. A shout from the guide was answered by the open- ing of a small window above, and the shaven crown of the old friar was thrust forth with a welcome and a request that we would mount the stairs to the parlor. He received us at the top, and gave us chairs around a plain board table, upon which he set several bottles of the far-famed wine of Vesuvius. One drinks it, and blesses the volcano that warmed the roots of the grape. It is a ripe, rich, full-bodied liquor which " ascends me into the brain" sooner than any conti- nental wine I have tasted. I never drank anything more delicious. We remounted our asses and rode on, much more indifferent than before to the roughness of the path. It strikes one like the road to the infernal regions. No grass, not a shrub, nothing but a wide mountain of cinders, black and rugged, diversified only by the deeper die of the newer streaks of lava. The eye wearied of gazing on it. We mounted thus for an hour or more, arriving at last at the base of a lofty cone whose sides were but slopes of deep ashes. W T e left our donkeys here in company with those of a large party that had preceded us, and made preparations to ascend on foot. The drivers unlaced their sashes and passing them round the waists of the ladies, took the ends over their shoulders, and proceeded. Harder work could scarce be conceived. The feet had no hold, sinking knee-deep at every step, and we slipped back so much, that our progress was almost imper- ceptible. The ladies were soon tired out, although more than half dragged up by the guides. At every few steps there was a general cry for a halt, and we lay down in the warm ashes, quite breathless and dis- couraged. In something more than an hour from the hermit- age we reached the edge of the old crater. The scene here was very curious. A hollow, perhaps a mile round, composed entirely of scoria (like the cin- ders under a blacksmith's window) contained in its centre the sharp new cone of the last eruption. Around, in various directions, sat some thirty groups of travellers, with each their six or seven Italian guides, refreshing themselves with a lunch after the fatigues of the ascent. There were English, Germans, French, Russians, and Italians, each speaking their own lan- guage, and the largest party, oddly enough, was from the United States. As I was myself travelling with foreigners, and found my countrymen on Vesuvius un- expectedly, the mixture of nations appeared still more extraordinary. The combined heat of the sun and the volcano beneath us, had compelled the Italians to throw off half their dress, and they sat, or stood lean- ing on their long pikes, with their brown faces and dark eyes glowing with heat, as fine models of ruffians as ever startled a traveller in this land of bandits. Eight or ten of them were grouped around a crack in the crater, roasting apples and toasting bread. There were several of these cracks winding about in different directions, of which I could barely endure the heat, holding my hand at the top. A stick thrust in a foot or more, was burnt black in a moment. With another bottle or two of " lagrima Christi" and a roasted apple, our courage was renewed, and we picked our way across the old crater, sometimes lost in the smoke which steamed up through the cracks, and here and there treading on beautiful beds of crys- tals of sulphur. The ascent of the new cone was shorter but very difficult. The ashes were so new and light, that it was like a steep sandbank, giving dis- couragingly at the least pressure, and sinking till the next step was taken. The steams of sulphur as we approached the summit, were all but intolerable. The ladies coughed, the guides sneezed and called on the Madonna, and I never was more relieved than in catching the first clear draught of wind on the top of the mountain. Here we all stood at last — crowded together on the 94 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. narrow edge of a crater formed within the year, and liable every moment to be overwhelmed with burning lava. There was scarce room to stand, and the hot ashes burnt our feet as they sunk into it. The fe- males of each party sunk to the ground, and the com- mon danger and toil breaking down the usual stiff bar- rier of silence between strangers, the conversation be- came general, and the hour on the crater's edge pass- ed very agreeably. A strong lad would just about throw a stone from one side to the other of the new crater. It was about forty feet deep, perhaps more, and one crust of sul- phur lined the whole. It was half the time obscured in smoke, which poured in volumes from the broad cracks with which it was divided in every direction, and occasionally an eddy of wind was caught in the vast bowl, and for a minute its bright yellow surface was perfectly clear. There had not been an eruption for four or five months, and the abyss which is for years together a pit of fire and boiling lava, has had time to harden over, and were it not for the smoking seams, one would scarce suspect the existence of the tremendous volcano slumbering beneath. After we had been on the summit a few minutes, an English clergyman of my acquaintance to our surprise emerged from the smoke. He had been to the bottom for specimens of sulphur for his cabinet. Contrary to the advice of the guide, I profited by his experience, and disappearing in the flying clouds, reached the low- est depths of the crater with some difficulties of foot- hold and breath. The cracks, which I crossed twice, were so brittle as to break like the upper ice of a twice frozen pond beneath my feet, and the stench of the ex- haling gases, was nauseating beyond all the sulphuret- ted hydrogen I have ever known. The sensation was painfully suffocating from the moment I entered the crater. I broke off as many bits of the bright golden crystals from the crust as my confusion and failing strength would allow, and then remounted, feeling my way up through the smoke to the summit. I can compare standing on the top of Vesuvius and looking down upou the bay and city of Naples, to nothing but mounting a peak in the infernal regions overlooking paradise. The larger crater encircles you entirely for a mile, cutting off the view of the sides of the mountain, and from the elevation of the new cone, you look over the rising edge of this black field of smoke and cinders, and drop the eye at once upon Naples, lying asleep in the sun, with its lazy sails upon the water, and the green hills enclosing it clad in the inde- scribable beauty of an Italian atmosphere. Beyond all comparison, by the testimony of every writer and traveller, the most beautiful scene in the world, the loveliest water, and the brightest land, lay spread out before us. With the stench of hot sulphur in our nostrils, ankle deep in black ashes, and a waste of smouldering cinders in every direction around us, the enjoyment of the view certainly did not want for the heightening of contrast. We made our descent by jumps through the sliding ashes, frequently tumbling over each other, and re- tracing in five minutes the toil of an hour. Our don- keys stood tethered together on the herbless field of cinders, and we were soon in the clumsy saddles, and with a call at the hermitage, and a parting draught of wine with the friar, we reached our carriages at the little village of Resina in safety. The feet of the whole troop were in a wretched condition. The ladies had worn shoes, or slight boots, which were cut to pieces of course, and one very fine-looking girl, the daughter of an elderly French gentleman, had, with the usual improvidence of her nation, started in satin slippers. She was probably lamed for a month, as she insisted on persevering, and wrapped her feet in handkerchiefs to return. We rode along the curve of the bay, by one of these matchless sunsets of Italy, and arrived at Naples at dark. I have had the pleasure lately of making the acquaint- ance of Mr. Malhias, the distinguished author of the " Pursuits of Literature," and the translator of Spenser and other English poets into Italian. About twentv years ago, this well-known scholar came to Italy on a desperate experiment of health. Finding himself better, almost against hope, he has remained from year to year in Naples, in love with the climate and the language, until, at this day, he belongs less to the English than the Italian literature, having written various original poems in Italian, and translated into Italian verse to the wonder and admiration of the scholars of the country. I found him this morning at his lodgings, in an old palace on the Pizzofalcone, buried in books as usual, and good-humored enough to give an hour to a young man, who had no claim on him beyond the ordinary interest in a distinguished scholar. He talked a great deal of America naturally, and expressed a very strong friendship for Mr. Everett, whom he had met on his travels, requesting me at the same time to take to him a set of his works as a remem- brance. Mr. Mathias is a small man, of perhaps sixty years, perfectly bald, and a little inclined to corpulency. His head is ample, and would make a fine picture of a scholar. His voice is hurried and modest, and from long residence in Italy his English is full of Italian idioms. He spoke with rapture of Da Ponte, calling me back as I shut the door to ask for him. It seemed to give him uncommon pleasure that we appreciated and valued him in America. I have looked over, this evening, a small volume, which he was kind enough to give me. It is entitled " Lyric Poetry, by T. I. Mathias, a new edition, priut- ed privately." It is dated 1832, and the poems were probably all written within the last two years. The shortest extract I can make is a "Sonnet to the Mem ory of Gray," which strikes me as very beautiful. " Lord of the various lyre ! devout we turn Our pilgrim steps to thy supreme abode, And tread with awe the solitary road To grace with votive wreaths thy hallowed urn. Yet, as we wander through this dark sojourn, No more the strains we hear, that all abroad Thy fancy wafted, as the inspiring God Prompted' the thoughts that breathe, the words that burn.' u But hark ! a voice in solemn accents clear Bursts from heaven's vault that glows with temperate fire ; Cease, mortal, cease to drop the fruitless tear, Mute though the raptures of his full-strung lyre, E'en his own warblings, lessened on his ear, Lost in seraphic harmony expired I have met also, at a dinner party lately, the cele- brated antiquary, Sir William Gell. He too lives abroad. His work on Pompeii has become authority, and displays very great learning. He is a tall, large- featured man, and very commanding in his appearance, though lamed terribly with the gout. A friend, whom I met at the same house, took me to see the archbishop of Tarento yesterday. This venerable man, it is well known, lost his gown for his participation in the cause of the Carbonari (the revo- lutionary conspirators of Italy). He has always play- ed a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, and now, at the age of ninety, unlike the usual fate of med- dlers in troubled waters, he is a healthy, happy, ven- erated old man, surrounded in his palace with all that luxury can give him. The lady who presented me, took the privilege of intimate friendship to call at an unusual hour, and we found the old churchman in his slippers, over his breakfast, with two immense tortoise- shell cats, upon stools, watching his hand for bits of bread and purring most affectionately. He looks like one of Titian's pictures. His face is a wreck of com- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 99 manding features, and his eye seems less to have lost its fire, than to slumber in its deep socket. His hair is snowy white — his forehead of prodigious breadth and height — and his skin has that calm, settled, and yet healthy paleness, which carries with it the history of a whole life of temperance and thought. The old man rose from his chair with a smile, and came forward with a stoop and a feeble step, and took my two hands, as my friend mentioned my name, and looked me in the face very earnestly. "Your country," said he, in Italian, " has sprung into existence like Minerva, full grown and armed. We look for the result." He went on with some comments upon the dangers of republics and then sent me to look at a por- trait of Queen Giovanna, of Naples, by Leonardo da Vinci, while he sat down to talk with the lady who brought me. His secretary accompanied me as a cicerone. Five or six rooms, communicating with each other were filled with choice pictures, every one a gift from some distinguished individual. The pres- ent king of France had sent him his portrait ; Queen Adelaide had sent a splendid set of Sevres china, with the portraits of her family ; the queen of Belgium had presented him with her miniature and that of Leopold ; the king and queen of Naples had half furnished his house ; and so the catalogue went on. It seemed as if the whole continent had united to honor the old man. While I was looking at a curious mosaic portrait of a cat, presented to him on the death of the original, by some prince whose name I have forgotten, he came to us, and said he had just learned that my pursuits were literary, and would present me with his own last work. He opened the drawer of a small bureau and produced a manuscript of some ten pages, written in a feeble hand. " This," said he, " is an enumeration from memory of what I have not seen for many years, the classic spots about our beautiful city of Naples, and their associations. I have written it in the last month to wile away the time, and call up again the pleasure I have received many times in my life in visiting them." I put the curious document in my bosom with many thanks, and we kissed the hand of the good old priest and left him. We found his carriage, with three or four servants in handsome livery, waiting for him in the court below. We had intruded a little on the hour for his morning ride. I found his account of the environs merely a simple catalogue, with here and there a classic quotation from a Greek or Latin author, referring to them. I keep the MS. as a curious memento of one of the noblest relics I have seen of an age gone by. LETTER LXV. THE FASHIONABLE WORLD OF NAPLES AT THE RACES —BRILLIANT SHOW OF EQUIPAGES — THE KING AND HIS BROTHER— RANK AND CHARACTER OF THE JOCKEYS — DESCRIPTION OF THE RACES THE PUBLIC BURIAL-GROUND AT NAPLES HORRID AND INHUMAN SPECTACLES — THE LAZZARONI THE MUSEUM AT NA- PLES—ANCIENT RELICS FROM POMPEII— FORKS NOT USED BY THE ANCIENTS— THE LAMP LIT AT THE TIME OF OUR SAVIOR — THE ANTIQUE CHAIR OF SAL- LUST THE VILLA OF CICERO THE BALBI FAMILY — BACCHUS ON THE SHOULDERS OF A FAUN — GAL- LERY OF DIANS, CUPIDS, JOVES, MERCURIES, AND APOLLOS, STATUE OF ARISTIDES, ETC. I have been all day at " the races." The king of Naples, who has a great admiration for everything English, has abandoned the Italian custom of running horses without riders through the crowded street, and has laid out a magnificent course on the summit of a broad hill overlooking the city on the east. Here he astonishes his subjects with ridden races, and it was to see one of the best of the season, that the whole fashionable world of Naples poured out to the campo this morning. The show of equipages was very bril- liant, the dashing liveries of the various ambassadors, and the court and nobles of the kingdom, showing on the bright green-sward to great effect. I never saw a more even piece of turf, and it was fresh in the just- born vegetation of spring. The carriages were drawn up in two lines, nearly half round the course, and for an hour or two before the races, the king and his broth- er, Prince Carlo, rode up and down between with the royal suite, splendidly mounted, the monarch himself upon a fiery gray blood horse, of uncommon power and beauty. The director was an Aragonese noble- man, cousin to the king, and as perfect a specimen of the Spanish cavalier as ever figured in the pages of romance. He was mounted on a Turkish horse, snow- white, and the finest animal I ever saw ; and he car- ried all eyes with him, as he dashed up and down, like a meteor. I like to see a fine specimen of a man, as I do a fine picture, or an excellent horse, and I think I never saw a prettier spectacle of its kind, than this wild steed from the Balkan and his handsome rider. The king is tall, very fat, but very erect, of a light complexion, and a good horseman, riding always in the English style, trotting and rising in his stirrup. — (He is about twenty-three, and so surprisingly like a friend of mine in Albany, that the people would raise their hats to them indiscriminately, 1 am sure.) Prince Charles is smaller and less kingly in his ap- pearance, dresses carelessly and ill, and is surrounded always in public with half a dozen young Englishmen. He is said to have been refused lately by the niece of the wealthiest English nobleman in Italy, a very beau- tiful girl of eighteen, who was on the ground to-day in a chariot and four. The horses were led up and down — a delicate, fine- limbed sorrel mare, and a dark chestnut horse, com- pact and wiry — both English. The bets were arran- ged, the riders weighed, and, at the beat of a bell, off they went like arrows. Oh what a beautiful sight ! The course was about a mile round, and marked with red flags at short distances ; and as the two flying creatures described the bright green circle, spread out like greyhounds, and running with an ease and grace that seemed entirely without effort, the king dashed across the field followed by the whole court ; the Tur- kish steed of Don Giovanni restrained with difficulty in the rear, and leaping high in the air at every bound, his nostrils expanded, and his head thrown up with the peculiar action of his race, while his snow-white mane and tail flew with every hair free to the wind. I had, myself, a small bet upon the sorrel. It was nothing, a pair of gloves with a lady, but as the horses came round, the sorrel a whip's length a-head, and both shot by like the wind, scarce touching the earth apparently, and so even in their speed that the rider in blue might have kept his hand on the other's back, the excitement became breathless. Away they went again, past the starting post, pattering, pattering on with their slender hoofs, the sorrel still keeping her ground, and a thousand bright lips wishing the grace- ful creature success. Half way round the blue jacket began to whip. The sorrel still held her way, and I felt my gloves to be beyond peril. The royal cortege within the ring spurred across at the top of their speed to the starting post. The horses came on — their nos- trils open and panting, bounding upon the way with the same measured leaps a little longer and more eager than before; the rider of the sorrel leaning over the neck of his horse with a loose rein, and his whip hanging untouched from his wrist. Twenty leaps more ! With every one the rider of the chestnut gave the fine animal a blow. The sorrel sprang desperately 96 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. on, every nerve strained to the jump, but at the instant that they passed the carriage in which I stood, the chestnut was developing his wiry frame in tremendous leaps, and had already gained on his opponent the length of his head. They were lost in the crowd that broke instantly into the course behind them, and in a moment after a small red flag was waved from the stand. My favorite had lost ! The next race was ridden by a young Scotch noble- man, and the son of the former French ambassador, upon the horses with which they came to the ground. It was a match made up on the spot. The French- man was so palpably better mounted, that there was a general laugh when the ground was cleared and the two gentlemen spurred up and down to show them- selves as antagonists. The Parisian himself stuffed his white handkerchief in his bosom, and jammed down his hat upon his head with a confident laugh, and among the ladies there was scarce a bet upon the grave Scotchman, who borrowed a stout whip, and rode his bony animal between the lines with a hard rein and his feet set firmly in the stirrups. The Frenchman generously gave him every advantage, be- ginning with the inside of the ring. The bell struck, and the Scotchman drove his spurs into his horse's flanks and started away, laying on with his whip most industriously. His opponent followed, riding very gracefully, but apparently quite sure that he could overtake him at any moment, and content for the first round with merely showing himself off to the best advantage. Round came Sawney, twenty leaps ahead, whipping unmercifully still ; the blood of his hired hack completely up, and himself as red in the face as an alderman, and with his eye fixed only on the road. The long-tailed bay of the Frenchman came after, in handsome style, his rider sitting com- placently upright, and gathering up his reins for the first time to put his horse to his speed. The Scotch- man flogged on. The Frenchman had disdained to take a whip, but he drove his heels hard into his horse's sides soon after leaving the post, and leaned forward quite in earnest. The horses did remarkably well, both showing much more bottom than was expected. On they came, the latter gaining a little and working very hard. Sawney had lost his hat, and his red hair streamed back from his redder face ; but flogging and spurring, with his teeth shut and his eyes steadily fixed on the road, he kept the most of his ground and rode away. They passed me a horse's length apart, and the Scotchman's whip flying to the last, disap- peared beyond me. He won the race by a couple of good leaps at least. The king was very much amused, and rode off laughing heartily, and the discomfited Frenchman came back to his party with a very ill-con- cealed dissatisfaction. A very amusing race followed between two mid- shipmen from an English corvette lying in the bay, and then the long lines of splendid equipages wheeled into train and dashed off the ground. The road, after leaving the campo, runs along the edge of the range of hills enclosing the city, and just below, within a high white wall, lies the public burial-place of Naples. I had read so many harrowing descriptions of this spot, that my curiosity rose as we drove along in sight of it, and requesting my friends to set me down, I joined an American of my acquaintance, and we start- ed to visit it together. An old man opened the iron door, and we entered a clean, spacious, and well-paved area, with long rows of iron rings in the heavy slabs of the pavement. Without asking a question, the old man walked across to the farther corner, where stood a moveable lever, and fastening the chain into the fixture, raised the massive stone cover of a pit. He requested us to stand back for a few minutes to give the effluvia time to escape, and then, sheltering our eyes with our hats, we looked in. You have read of course, that there are three hundred and sixty-five pits in this place, one of which is opened every day for the dead of the city. They are thrown in without shroud or coffin,, and the pit is sealed up at night for a year. They are thirty or forty feet deep, and each would contain perhaps two hundred bodies. Lime is thrown upon the daily heap, and it soon melts into a mass of garbage, and by the end of the year the bottom of the pit is covered with dry white bones. It was some time before we could distinguish any thing in the darkness of the abyss. Fixing my eyes on one spot, however, the outlines of a body became defined gradually, and in a few minutes, sheltering my eyes completely from the sun above, I could see all the horrors of the scene but too distinctly. Eight corpses, all of grown persons, lay in a confused heap together, as they had been thrown in one after another in the course of the day. The last was a powerfully made, gray old man, who had fallen flat on his back, with his right hand lying across and half covering the face of a woman. By his full limbs and chest, and the darker color of his legs below the knee, he was probably one of the lazzaroni, and had met with a sudden death. His right heel lay on the forehead of a young man, emaciated to the last degree, his chest thrown up as he lay, and his ribs showing like a skele- ton covered with skin. The close black curls of the latter, as his head rested on another body, were in such strong relief that I could have counted them. Off to the right, quite distinct from the heap, lay, in a beautiful attitude, a girl, as well as I could judge, of not more than nineteen or twenty. She had fallen on the pile and rolled or slid away. Her hair was very long, and covered her left shoulder and bosom ; her arm was across her body, and if her mother had laid her down to sleep, she could not have disposed her limbs more decently. The head had fallen a little away to the right, and the feet, which were small, even for a lady, were pressed one against the other, as if she were about turning on her side. The sex- ton said that a young man had come with the body, and was very ill for some time after it was thrown in. We asked him if respectable people were brought here. " Yes," he said, " many. None but the rich would go to the expense of a separate grave for their relations. People were often brought in handsome grave clothes, but they were always stripped before they were left. The shroud, whenever there was one, was the perquisite of the undertakers." And thus are flung into this noisome pit, like beasts, the greater part of the population of this vast city — the young and the old, the vicious and the virtuous together, without the decency even of a rag to keep up the distinctions of life ! Can human beings thus be thrown away ? — men like ourselves — women, children, like our sisters and brothers ? I never was so humiliated in my life as by this horrid spectacle. I did not think a man— a felon even, or a leper — what you will that is guilty or debased — I did not think anything that had been hu- man could be so recklessly abandoned. Pah ! It makes one sick at heart ! God grant I may never die at Naples ! While we were recovering from our disgust, the old man lifted the stone from the pit destined to re- ceive the dead on the following day. We looked in. The bottom was strewn with bones, already fleshless and dry. He wished us to see the dead of several previous days, but my stomach was already tried to its utmost. We paid our gratuity, and hurried away. A few steps from the gate, we met a man bearing a coffin on his head. Seeing that we came from the cemetery, he asked us if we wished to look into it He set it down, and the lid opening with a hinge, we were horror-struck with the sight of seven dead in- fants ! The youngest was at least three months old, PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 97 the eldest perhaps a year ; and they lay heaped to- gether like so many puppies, one or two of them spotted with disease, and all wasted to baby-skeletons. While we were looking at them, six or seven noisy children ran out from a small house at the road-side and surrounded the coffin. One was a fine girl of twelve years of age, and instead of being at all shock- ed at the sight, she lifted the whitest of the dead things, and looked at its face very earnestly, loading it with all the tenderest diminutives of the language. The others were busy in pointing to those they thought had been prettiest, and none of them betrayed fear or disgust. In answer to a question of my friend about the marks of disease, the man rudely pulled out one by the foot that lay below the rest, and holding it up to show the marks upon it, tossed it again careless- I ly into the coffin. He had brought them from the j hospital for infants, and they had. died that morning. The coffin was worn with use. He shut down the lid, and lifting it again upon his head, went on to the cemetery, to empty it like so much offal upon the heap we had seen ! I have been struck repeatedly with the little value attached to human life in Italy. I have seen several of these houseless lazzaroni literally dying in the streets, and no one curious enough to look at them. The most dreadful sufferings, the most despairing cries, in the open squares, are passed as unnoticed as the howling of a dog. The day before yesterday, a woman fell in the Toledo, in a fit, frothing at the mouth, and livid with pain; and though the street was so crowded that one could make his way with dif- ficulty, three or four ragged children were the only persons even looking at her. I have devoted a week to the museum at Naples. It is a world! Anything like a full description of it would tire even an antiquary. It is one of those things (and there are many in Europe) that fortunately compel travel. You must come abroad to get an idea of it. The first day I buried myself among the curiosities found at Pompeii. After walking through the cham- bers and streets where they were found, I came to them naturally with an intense interest. I had visited a disentombed city, buried for seventeen centuries — had trodden in their wheel-tracks— had wandered through their dining rooms, their chambers, their baths, their theatres, their market-places. And here were gather- ed in one place, their pictures, their statues, their cooking-utensils, their ornaments, the very food as it was found on their tables! I am puzzled, in looking over my note-book, to know what to mention. The catalogue fills a printed volume. A curious corner in one of the cases was that con- taining the articles found on the toilet of the wealthiest Pompeian's wife. Here were pots of rouge, ivory pins, necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets, small silver mirrors, combs, ear-pickers, etc., etc. In the next case were | two loaves of bread, found in a baker's oven, and stamp- ed with his name. Two large cases of precious gems, cameos and intaglios of all descriptions, stand in the centre of this room (among which, by the way, the most exquisitely done are two which one can not look at without a blush). Another case is filled with eat- ables, found upon the tables— eggs, fish-bones, honey- comb, grain, fruits, etc. In the repository for ancient glass are several cinerary urns, in which the ashes of the dead are perfectly preserved ; and numerous small glass lachrymatories, in which the tears of the survi- vors were deposited in the tombs. The brazen furniture of Pompeii, the lamps par- ticularly, are of the most curious and beautiful models. Irees, to which the lamps were suspended like fruit, vines, statues holding them in their hands, and numer- ous other contrivances, were among them, exceeding tat in beauty any similar furniture of our time. It ap- 7 pears that the ancients did not know the use of the fork, as every other article of table service except this has been found here. To conceive the interest attached to the thousand things in this museum, one must imagine a modern city, Boston for example, completely buried by an un- expected and terrific convulsion of nature. Its inhab- itants mostly escape, but from various causes leave their city entombed, and in a hundred years the grass grows over it. and its very locality is forgotten. Near two thousand years elapse, and then a peasant, digging in the field, strikes upon some of its ruins, and it is un- earthed just as it stands at this moment, with all its utensils, books, pictures, houses, and streets, in un- touched preservation. What a subject for speculation ! What food for curiosity ! What a living and breath- ing chapter of history were this! Far more interest- ing is Pompeii. For the age in which it flourished and the characters who trod its streets, are among the most remarkable in history. This brazen lamp, shown to me to-day as a curiosity, was lit every evening in the time of Christ. The handsome chambers through which I wandered a day or two ago, and from which were brought this antique chair, were the home of Sallust, and doubtless had been honored by the visits of Cicero (whose villa, half-excavated, is near by), and by all the poets and scholars and statesmen of his time. One might speculate endlessly thus! And it is that which makes these lands of forgotten empires so delightful to the traveller. His mind is fed by the very air. He needs no amusements, no company, no books except the history of the place. The spot is peopled, wherever he may stray, and the common ne- cessities of life seem to pluck him from a far-reaching dream, in which he had summoned back receding ages, and was communing, face to face, with philos- ophers and poets and emperors, like a magician before his mirror. Pompeii and Herculaneum seem to me vis- ions. I can not shake myself and wake to their real- ity. My mind refuses to go back so far. Seventeen hundred years! I followed the cicerone on, listening to his astonish- ing enumeration, and looking at everything as he point- ed to it, in a kind of stupor. One has but a certain capacity. We may be over-astonished. Still he went on in the same every-day tone, talking as indifferently of this and that surprising antiquity as a pedlar of his two-penny wares. We went from the bronzes to the hall of the papyri — thence to the hall of the frescoes, and beautiful they were. Their very number makes them indescribable. The next morning we devoted to the statuary — and of this, if I knew where to begin, I should like to say a word or two. First of all comes the Balbi family — father, mother, sons, and daughters. He was proconsul of Hercula- neum, and by the excellence of the statues, which are life itself for nature, he and his family were worth the artist's best effort. He is a fine old Roman himself, and his wife is a tall, handsome woman, much better- looking than her daughters. The two Misses Balbi are modest-looking girls, and that is all. They were the high-born damsels of Herculaneum, however; and, if human nature has not changed in seventeen centuries, they did not want admirers who compared them to the Venuses who have descended with them to the "Museo Borbonico." The eldest son is on horseback in armor. It is one of the finest equestrian statues in the world. He is a noble youth, of grave and handsome features, and sits the superb animal with the freedom of an Arab and the dignity of a Ro- man. It is a beautiful thing. If one had visited these Balbis, warm and living, in the time of Augustus, he could scarcely feel more acquainted with them than after having seen their statues as they stand before him here. Come a little farther on ! Bacchus on the shoulders 98 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. of a faun — a child delighted with a grown-up playfel- low. I have given the same pleasure to just such an- other bright "picture in little" of human beauty. It moves one's heart to see it. Pass now a whole gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries and Apollos, and come to the presence of Aristides — him whom the Athenians exiled because they were tired of hearing him called " The Just." Cauova has marked three spots upon the floor where the spectator should place himself to see to the best advantage this renowned statue. He stands wrapped in his toga, with his head a little inclined, as if in re- flection, and in his face there is a mixture of firmness and goodness from which you read his character as clearly as if it were written across his forehead. It was found at Herculaneum, and is, perhaps, the sim- plest and most expressive statue in the world. LETTER LXVI. *.KSTUM TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE DEPARTURE FROM EL- BA ISCHIA — BAY OF NAPLES — THE TOLEDO — THE YOUNG QUEEN — CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE KING — NEAPOLITANS VISITING THE FRIGATES — LEAVE THE BAY — CASTELLAMARE. Salvator Rosa studied the scenery of La Cava — the country between Pompeii and Salerno, on the road to Psestum. It is a series of natively abrupt glens, but gemmed with cottages and hanging gardens, through which the wildness of every feature is as apparent as those of a savage through his trinkets. I was going to Paastum with an agreeable party, and we came out upon the bluff's overhanging Salerno and the sea, an hour before sunset. We darted down upon the little city lying in the bend of the bay, like a bird's descent upon her nest. The road is cut through the side of the precipice, and runs to the bottom with a single sweep. We were to pass the night here and go to Psestum the next morning, see the ruins, and return here to sleep once more before returning to Naples. We were five or six miles from Salerno before sun- rise, and entering upon the dreary wastes of Calabria. The people we passed on the road were dressed in skins with the wool outside, and the country looked abandoned by nature itself, scarce a flourishing tree or a healthy plant within the range of the sight. We turned from the main road after a while, crossed a ru- inous bridge, and tracked a broad, waste, gloomy plain, till my eyes ached with its barrenness. In an hour more, three stately temples began to rise in the dis- tance, increasing in grandeur as we approached. A cluster of ruined tombs on the right — a grass-grown and broken city wall, through a rent of which passed the road — and we stood among them, in the desert, amid temples of inimitable beauty! There seemed to be a general feeling in the party that silence and solitude were the spirits of the place. We separated and rambled about alone. The grand temple of Neptune stands in the centre. A temple in the midst of the sea could scarce seem more strangely placed. I stood on the high base of the altar within, and looked out between the columns on every side. The Mediterranean slept in a broad sheet of silver on the west, and on every other side lay the bare, houseless desert, stretching away to the naked moun- tains on the south and east, with a barrenness that made the heart ache, while it filled the imagination with its singleness and grandeur. I descended to look at the columns. They were eaten through and through with snails and worms, and all of the same rich yellow so admirably represented in the cork mod- els. But their size, and their noble proportion as they stand, can not be represented. They seem the conception and the work of giant minds and hands. One's soul rises among them. We walked round the ruins for hours. A little toward the sea, lie the traces of an amphitheatre, filled with fragments of statuary, and parts of immense friezes and columns. We all assembled at last in the great temple, and sat down on the immense steps toward the east, in the shadow of the pediment, specu- lating on the wonderful fabric above us, till we were summoned to start on our return. To think that these very temples were visited as venerable antiquities in the time of Christ ! What events have these worm- eaten columns outlived ! What moths of an hour, in comparison, are we ? It is difficult to conceive how three such magnifi- cent structures, so near the sea, the remains of a great city, should have been lost for ages. A landscape- painter, searching for the picturesque, came suddenly upon them fifty years ago, and astonished the world with his discovery ! It adds to their interest now. We turned our horses' heads toward Naples. What an extraordinary succession of objects were embraced in the fifty miles between ! — Paestum, Pompeii, Vesu- vius, Herculaneum ! — and, added to these, the thou- sand classic associations of the lovely coast along Sorrento ! The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel. Written on board the frigate United States — We set sail from Elba on the third of June. The in habitants, all of whom, I presume, had been on boara of the ships, were standing along the walls and look- ing from the embrasures of the fortress to see us off It was a clear summer's morning, without much wind, and we crept slowly off from the point, gazing up al the windows of Napoleon's house as we passed under, and laying on our course for the shore of Italy. Wt soon got into the fresher breeze of the open sea, an<? the low white line of villages on the Tuscan coast ap- peared more distant, till, with a glass, we could see the people at the windows watching our progress. Fishing boats were drawn up on shore, and the idle sailors were leaning in the half shadow which they afforded; but with the almost total absence of trees, and the glaring white of the walls, we were content to be out upon the cool sea, passing town after town un- visited. Island after island was approached and left during the day; barren rocks, with only a lighthouse to redeem their nakedness ; and in the evening at sun- set we were in sight at Ischia, the towering isle in the bosom of the bay of Naples. The band had been called as usual at seven, and were playing a delightful waltz upon the quarter deck ; the sea was even, and just crisped by the breeze from the Italian shore : the sailors were leaning on the guns listening ; the officers clustered in their various places ; and the murmur of the foam before the prow was just audible in the lighter passages of the music. Above and in the west glowed the eternal but untiring teints of the summer sky of the Mediterranean, a gradually fading gold from the edge of the sea to the zenith, and the early star soon twinkled through it, and the air dampened to a reviving freshness. I do not know that a mere scene like this, without incident, will interest a reader, but it was so delightful to myself, that I have described it for the mere pleasure of dwelling on it. The desert stillness and loneliness of the sea, the silent motion of the ship, and the delightful music swelling beyond the bulwarks and dying upon the wind, were such singularly com- bined circumstances! It was a moving paradise in the waste of the ocean. Sail was shortened last night, and we lay to under the shore of Ischia, to enter the bay of Naples by daylight. As the morning mist lifted a little, the pe- culiar shape of Vesuvius, the boldness of the island PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 99 of Capri, the sweeping curves of Baia and Portici, and the small promontory which lifts Naples toward the sea, rose like the features of a familiar friend to my eye. It would be difficult to have seen Naples without having a memory steeped in its beauty. A fair wind set us straight into the bay, and one by one the towns on its shore, the streaks of lava on the sides of its volcano, and, soon after, the houses of friends on the street of the Chiaga, became distinguishable to the eye. There had been a slight eruption since I was here ; but now, as before, there was scarce a puff of smoke to be seen rising from Vesuvius. My little specimen of sulphur which I took from the just hard- ened bosom of the crater now destroyed, lies before me on the table as I write, more valued than ever, since its bed has been melted and blown into the air. The new and lighter-colored streak on the right of the mountain, would have informed me of itself that the lava had issued since I was here. The sound of bells and the hum of the city reached our ears, and running in between the mole and the castle, the anchor was dropped, and the ship surrounded with boats from the shore. The heat kept us on board till the evening, and with several of the officers I landed and walked up the Toledo as the lazzaroni were stirring from their sleep under the walls of the houses. With the exception of the absence of the English, who have mostly flit- ted to the baths, Naples was the same place as ever, crowded, busy, dirty, and gay. Her thousand beg- gars were still "dying of hunger," and telling it to the passenger in the same exhausted tone ; her gay car- riages and skeleton hacks were still flying up and down, and dashing at and over you for your custom ; the cows and goats were driven about to be milked in the street; the lemonade sellers stood in their stalls; the money changers at their tables in the open squares; puncinello squeaked and beat his mistress at every corner; the awnings of the cafes covered hun- dreds of smokers and loungers; and this gay, misera- ble, homeless, out-of-doors people, seemed as de- graded and thoughtless, and, it must be owned, as in- sensibly happy as before. You would think, to walk through the Toledo of Naples, that two thirds of its crowd of wretches, and all its horses and dogs, were at their last extremity, and yet they go on, and, I was told by an Englishman resident here, who has been accustomed to meet always the same faces, seem never to change or disappear, suffering, and groaning, and dragging up and down, shocking the eye and sickening the heart of the inexperienced stranger for years and years. We passed the prima sera the first part of the evening, as most men in Italy pass it, eating ices at the thronged cafe, and at nine we went to the splendid theatre of San Carlo to see " La Somnambula." The king and queen were present, with the dissolute old queen-mother and her grayheaded lover. I was instantly struck with the alteration in the appearance of the young queen. When I was here three months ago, she was just married, and appeared frequently in the public walks, and a fresher or brighter face I never had seen. She was acknowledged the most beautiful woman in Naples, and had, what is very much valued in this land of pale brunettes, a clear rosy cheek, and lips as bright as a child's. She is now thin and white, and looks to me like a person fading with a rapid consump- tion. Several conspiracies have been detected within a month or two, the last of which was very nearly suc- cessful. The day before we arrived, two officers in the royal army, men of high rank, had shot themselves, each putting a pistol to the other's breast, believing discovery inevitable. One died instantly, and the other lingers to-day without any hope of recovery. The king was fired at on parade the day previous, which was supposed to have been the first step, but the plot had been checked by partial disclosure, and hence the tragedy I have just related. The ships have been thronged with visiters during the two or three days we have lain at Naples, among whom have been the prime minister and his family. Orders are given to admit every one on board that wishes to come, and the decks, morning and evening, present the most motley scene imaginable. Cameo and lava sellers expose their wares on the gun-car- riages, surrounded by the midshipmen — Jews and fruit-sellers hail the sailors through the ports — boats full of chickens and pigs, all in loud outcry, are held up to view with a recommendation in broken English — contadini in their best dresses walk up and down, smiling on the officers, and wondering at the cleanli- ness of the decks, and the elegance of the captain's cabin — Punch plays his tricks under the gun-deck ports — bands of wandering musicians sing and hold | out their hats, as they row around, and all is harmony J and amusement. In the evening it is pleasanter still, ! for the band is playing, and the better classes of peo- i pie come off from the shore, and boats filled with j these pretty dark-eyed Neapolitans, row round and J round the ship, eying the officers as they lean over the bulwarks, and ready with but half a nod to make i acquaintance and come up the gangway. I have had j a private pride of my own in showing the frigate as ; American to many of my foreign friends. One's na | tionality becomes nervously sensitive abroad, and in I the beauty and order of the ships, the manly elegance of the officers, and the general air of superiority and decision throughout, I have found food for some of the highest feelings of gratification of which I am ca- pable. We weighed anchor yesterday morning (the twen- tieth of June), and stood across the4)ay for Castella- mare. Running close under Vesuvius, we passed Portici, Torre del Greco, and Pompeii, and rounded to in the little harbor of this fashionable watering- place soon after noon. Castellamare is about fifteen miles from Naples, and in the summer months it is crowded with those of the fashionables who do not make a northern tour. The shore rises directly from the sea into a high mountain, on the side of which the king has a country-seat, and around it hang, on ter- races, the houses of the English. Strong mineral springs abound on the slope. We landed directly, and mounting the donkeys waiting on the pier, started to make the round of the village walks. English maids with their prettily dressed and rosy children, and English ladies and gen- tlemen, mounted like ourselves on donkeys, met us at every turn as we wound up the shady and zigzag roads to the palace. The views became finer as we ascend- ed, till we look down into Pompeii, which was but four miles off, and away toward Naples, following the white road with the eye along the shore of the sea. The paths were in fine order, and as beautiful as green trees, and shade, and living fountains, crossing the road continually, could make them. In the neighbor- hood of the royal casino, the ground was planted more like a park, and the walks were terminated with artificial fountains, throwing up their bright waters amid statuary and over grottoes, and here we met the idlers of the place of all nations, enjoying the sunset. I met an acquaintance or two, and felt the yearning unwillingness to go away which I have felt on every spot almost of this " delicious land." We set sail again with the night-breeze, and at this moment are passing between Ischia and Capri, run- ning nearly on our course for Sicily. We shall prob- ably be at Palermo to morrow. The ship's bell beats ten, and the lights are ordered out, and under this im- perative government, I must say "good night!" 100 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER LXVII. BALE GROTTO OF PAUSILYPPO TOMB OF VIRGIL POZZUOLI RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER SER- APIS THE LUCRINE LAKE LAKE OF AVERNUS, THE TARTARUS OF VIRGIL TEMPLE OF PROSERPINE GROTTO OF THE CUM.EAN SYBIL NERO'S VILLA CAPE OF MISENUM ROMAN VILLAS RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF VENUS CENTO CAMERELLE THE STY- GIAN LAKE THE ELYSIAN FIELDS GROTTO DEL CANE VILLA OF LUCULLUS. We made the excursion to Baits on one of those premature days of March common to Italy. A south wind and a warm sun gave it the feeling of June. The heat was even oppressive as we drove through the city, and the long echoing grotto of Pausilyppo, always dim and cool, was peculiarly refreshing. Near the en- trance to this curious passage under the mountain, we stopped to visit the tomb of Virgil. A ragged boy took us up a steep path to the gate of a vineyard, and winding in among the just budding vines, we came to a small ravine, in the mouth of which, right over the deep cut of the grotto, stands the half-ruined mau- soleum which held the bones of the poet. An Eng- lishman stood leaning against the entrance, reading from a pocket copy of the iEneid. He seemed ashamed to be caught with his classic, and put the book in his pocket as I came suddenly upon him, and walked off to the other side whistling an air from the Pirata, which is playing just now at San Carlo. We went in, counted the niches for the urns, stood a few minutes to indulge in what recollections we could summon, and then mounted to the top to hunt for the "myrtle." Even its root was cut an inch or two be- low the ground. We found violets however, and they answered as well. The pleasure of visiting such pla- ces, I think, is nftt found on the spot. The fatigue of the walk, the noise of a party, the difference between reality and imagination, and worse than all, the caprice of mood — one or the other of these things disturbs and defeats for me the dearest promises of anticipation. It is the recollection that repays us. The picture re- curs to the fancy till it becomes familiar; and as the disagreeable circumstances of the visit fade from the memory, the imagination warms it into a poetic feeling, and we dwell upon it with the delight we looked for in vain when present. A few steps up the ravine, al- most buried in luxuriant grass, stands a small marble tomb, covering the remains of an English girl. She died at Naples. It is as lovely a place to lie in as the world could show. Forward a little toward the edge of the hill some person of taste has constructed a little arbor, laced over with vines, whence the city and bay of Naples is seen to the finest advantage. Par- adise that it is ! It is odd to leave a city by a road piercing the base of a broad mountain, in at one side and out at the other, after a subterranean drive of near a mile ! The grotto of Pausilyppo has been one of the wonders of the world these two thousand years, and it exceeds all expectation as a curiosity. Its length is stated at two thousand three hundred and sixteen feet, its breadth twenty-two, and its height eighty-nine. It is thronged with carts and beasts of burden of all descriptions, and the echoing cries of these noisy Italian drivers are al- most deafening. Lamps, struggling with the distant daylight as you near the end, just make darkness vis- ible, and standing in the centre and looking either way, the far distant arch of daylight glows like a fire through the cloud of dust. What with the impressiveness of the place, and the danger of driving in the dark amid so many obstructions, it is rather a stirring half-hour that is spent in its gloom! One emerges into the fresh open air and the bright light of day with a feeling of relief. The drive hence to Pozzuoli, four or five miles, was extremely beautiful. The fields were covered with the new tender grain, and by the short passage through the grotto we had changed a busy and crowded city for scenes of as quiet rural loveliness as ever charmed the eye. We soon reached the lip of the bay, and then the road turned away to the right, along the beach, passing the small island of Nisida (where Brutus had a villa, and which is now a prison for the carbonari). Pozzuoli soon appeared, and mounting a hill we de- scended into its busy square, and were instantly beset by near a hundred guides, boatmen, and beggars, all preferring their claims and services at the tops of their voices. I fixed my eye on the most intelligent face among them, a curly -headed fellow in a red lazzaroni cap, and succeeded, with some loss of temper, in getting him aside from the crowd and bargaining for our boats. While the boatmen were forming themselves into a circle to cast lots for the bargain, we walked up to the famous ruins of the temple of Jupiter Serapis. This was one of the largest and richest of the temples of an- tiquity. It was a quadrangular building, near the edge of the sea, lined with marble, and sustained by col- umns of solid cipollino, three of which are still stand- ing. It was buried by an earthquake and forgotten for a century or two, till in 1750 it was discovered by a peasant, who struck the top of one of the columns in digging. We stepped around over the prostrate fragments, building it up once more in fancy, and peopling the aisles with priests and worshippers. In the centre of the temple was the place of sacrifice, raised by flights of steps, and at the foot still remain two rings of Corinthian brass, to which the victims were fastened, and near them the receptacles for their blood and ashes. The whole scene has a stamp of grandeur. We obeyed the call of our red-bonnet guide, whose boat waited for us at the temple stairs, very unwillingly. As we pushed off from the shore, we deviated a mo- ment from our course to look at the ruins of the an- cient mole. Here probably St. Paul set his foot, land- ing to pursue his way to Rome. The great apostle spent seven days at this place, which was then called Puteoli — a fact that attaches to it a deeper interest than it draws fronvall the antiquities of which it is the centre. We kept on our way along the beautiful bend of the shore of Bake, and passing on the right a small moun- tain formed in thirty-six hours by a volcanic explosion, some three hundred years ago, we came to the Lu- crine Lake, so famous in the classics for its oysters. The same explosion that made the Monte Nuovo, and sunk the little village of Tripergole, destroyed the oyster-beds of the poets. A ten minutes' walk brought us to the shores of Lake Avernus — the " Tartarus" of Virgil. This was classic ground indeed, and we hoped to have found a thumbed copy of the JEneid in the pocket of the cicerone. He had not even heard of the poet. A ruin on the opposite shore, reflected in the still dark water, is supposed to have been a temple dedicated tc Proserpine. If she was allowed to be present at hei own worship, she might have been consoled for her ab- duction. A spot of more secluded loveliness could scarce be found. The lake lay like a sheet of silvei at the foot of the ruined temple, the water looking un- fathomly deep through the clear reflection, and the fringes of low shrubbery leaning down on every side, were doubled in the bright mirror, the likeness even fairer than the reality. Our unsentimental guide hurried us away as we were seating ourselves upon the banks, and we struck into a narrow footpath of wild shrubbery which circled the lake, and in a few minutes stood before the door of a grotto sunk in the side of the hill. Here dwelt the Cumfean sybil, and by this dark passage, the soul9 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 101 of the ancients passed from Tartarus to Elysium. The guide struck a light and kindled two large torches, and we followed him into the narrow cavern, walking down- ward at a rapid pace for ten or fifteen minutes. With a turn to the right, we stood before a low archway which the guide entered, up to his knees in water at the first step. It looked like the mouth of an abyss, and the ladies refused to go on. Six or seven stout fellows had followed us in, and the guide assured us we should be safe on their backs. I mounted first myself to carry the torch, and holding my head very low, we went plunging on, turning to the right and left through a crooked passage, dark as Erebus, till I was set down on a raised ledge called the sybil's bed. The lady behind me, I soon discovered by her screams had not made so prosperous a voyage. She had insisted on being taken up something in the side-saddle fashion; and the man, not accustomed to hold so heavy a bur- deu on his hip with one arm, had stumbled and let her slip up to her knees in water. He took her up im- mediately, in his own homely but safer fashion, and she was soon set beside me on the sybil's stony couch, dripping with water, and quite out of temper with an- tiquities. The rest of the party followed, and the guide lifted the torches to the dripping roof of the cavern, and showed us the remains of beautiful mosaic with which the place was once evidently encrusted. Whatever truth there may be in the existence of the sybil, these had been, doubtlessly, luxurious baths, and probably devoted by the Roman emperors to secret licentious- ness. The guide pointed out to us a small perforation in the rear of the sybil's bed, whence, he said (by what authority I know not), Caligula used to watch the lavations of the nymph. It communicates with an outer chamber. We reappeared, our nostrils edged with black from the smoke of the torches, and the ladies' dresses in a melancholy plight, between smoke and water. It would be a witch of a sybil that would tempt us to re- peat our visit. We retraced our steps, and embarked for Nero's villa. % It was perhaps a half mile further down the bay. The only remains of it were some vapor baths, built over a boiling spring which extended under the sea. One of our boatmen waded first a few feet into the surf, and plunging under the cold sea-water, brought up a handful of warm gravel— the evidence of a sub- marine outlet from the springs beyond. We then mounted a high and ruined flight of steps, and entered a series of chambers dug out of the rock, where an old man was stripping off his shirt, to go through the usual process of taking eggs down to boil in the fountain. He took his bucket, drew a long breath of fresh air, and rushed away by a dark passage, whence he re- appeared in three or four minutes, the eggs boiled, and the perspiration streaming from his body like rain. He set the bucket down, and rushed to the door, gasp- ing as if from suffocation. The eggs were boiled hard, but the distress of the old man, and the danger of such sudden changes of atmosphere to his health, quite destroyed our pleasure at the phenomenon. Hence to the cape of Misenum, the curve of the bay presents one continuation of Roman villas. And cer- tainly there was not probably in the world, a place more adapted to the luxury of which it was the scene. These natural baths, the many mineral waters, the balmy climate, the fertile soil, the lovely scenery, the matchless curve of the shore from Pozzuoli to the cape, and the vicinity, by that wonderful subterranean passage, to a populous capital on the other side of a range of mountains, rendered Baia; a natural paradise to the emperors. It was improved as we see. Temples to Venus, Diana, and Mercury, the villas of Marius, of Hortensius, of Caesar, of Lucullus. and others whose masters are disputed, follow each other in rival beauty of situation. The ruins are not much now, except the temple of Venus, which is one of the most pictur- esque fragments of antiquity I have ever seen. The. long vines hang through the rent in its circular roof, and the bright flowers cling to the crevices in its still half-splendid walls with the very poetry of decay. Our guide here proposed a lunch. We sat down on the immense stone which has fallen from the ceiling, and in a few minutes the rough table was spread with a hundred open oysters fro nj Fusaro (near Lake Avernus), bottles at will of lagrima.chrizti.fzom. Vesuyfu^lxotied crabs from the shore benoath i'ke> temple of Mercury, fish from the Lucrinc iake,, apd br,e?,d from Pozzuoii. The meal was not less dar.stc th?te tpffiakiig. .We drank to the goddess \the only one in mythology, by the way, whose worship has not fallen into contempt), and leaving twenty ragged descendants of ancient Baia? to feast on the remains, mounted our donkeys and started over land for " Elysium." We passed the villa of Hortensius, to which Nero invited his mother, with the design of murdering her, visited the immense subterranean chambers in which water was kept for the Roman fleet, the horrid prisons called the Cento Camerelle of the emperors, and then rising the hill at the extremity of the cape, the Stygian lake lay off on the right, a broad and gloomy pool, and around its banks spread the Elysian fields, the very home and centre of classic fable. An overflowed march, and an adjacent cornfield will give you a per- fect idea of it. The sun was setting while we swallow- ed our disappointment, and we turned our donkeys' heads toward Naples. We left the city again this morning by the grotto of Pausilyppo, to visit the celebrated " Grotto del Cane.' 1 It is about three miles off, on the borders of a pretty lake, once the crater of a volcano. On the way there arose a violent debate in the party on the propriety of subjecting the poor dogs to the distress of the common experiment. We had not yet decided the point when we stopped before the door of the keeper's house. Two miserable-looking terriers had set up a howl, ac- companied with a ferocious and half-complaining bark from our first appearance around the turn of the road, and the appeal was effectual. We dismounted and walking toward the grotto, determined to refuse to see the phenomenon. Our scruples were unnecessary. The door was surrounded with another party less merciful, and as we approached, two dogs were dragged out by the heels, and thrown lifeless on the grass. We gathered round them, and while the old woman coolly locked the door of the grotto, the poor animals began to kick, and after a few convulsions, struggled to their feet and crept feebly away. Fresh dogs were offered to our party, but we contented ourselves with the more innocent experiments. The mephitic air of this cave rises to a foot above the surface of the ground, and a torch put into it, was immediately extinguished. It has been described too often, however, to need a repetition. We took a long stroll around the lake, which was covered with wild-fowl, visited the remains of a villa of Lucullus on the opposite shore, and returned to Naples to dinner. LETTER LXVIII. ISLAND OF SICILV PALERMO SARACENIC APPEAR- ANCE OF THE TOWN CATHEDRAL THE MARINA VICEROY LEOPOLD MONASTERY OF THE CAPU- CHINS CELEBRATED CATACOMBS FANCIFUL GAR- DENS. Frigate United States, June 25. — The mount- ain coast of Sicily lay piled up before us at the dis tance of ten or twelve miles, when I came on deck 102 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. this morning. The quarter-master handed me the glass, and running my eye along the shore, I observed three or four low plains, extending between projecting spurs of the hills, studded thickly with country-hous- es, and bright with groves which I knew, by the deep glancing green, to be the orange. In a corner of the longest of these intervals, a sprinkling of white, look- ing in the distance like a bed of pearly shells on the edge of the sea, was pointed out as Palermo. With a steady glass its turrets and gardens became apparent, and its ynyle, br'utUng .abfove the wall with masts; and, running in witli a- free w'mi'i-, the character of our ship was soon. r<?cogn ; .eed from the shore, and the flags of every jftMji] iq the Sikrbdr ra-n ui> to the mast, the cus- tomary courtesy to "a man-of-war entering port. As the ship came to her anchorage, the view of the city was very captivating. The bend of the shore embraced our position, and the eastern half of the curve was a succession of gardens and palaces. A broad street extended along in front, crowded with people gazing at the frigates, and up one of the long avenues of the public gardens we could distinguish the veiled women walking in groups, children playing, priests, soldiers, and all the motley frequenters of such places in this idle clime, enjoying the refreshing sea- breeze, upon whose wings we had come. I was im- patient to get ashore, but between the health-officer and some other hinderances, it was evening before we set foot upon the pier. With Captain Nicholson and the purser I walked up the Toledo, as the still half-asleep tradesmen were opening their shops after the siesta. The oddity of the Palermitan style of building struck me forcibly, j Of the two long streets, crossing each other at right angles and extending to the four gates of the city, the I lower story of every house is a shop, of course. The second and third stories are ornamented with tricksy- looking iron balconies, in which the women sit at work universally, while from above projects, far over the street, a grated enclosure, like a long bird-cage, from which look down girls and children (or, if it is a con- vent, the nuns), as if it were an airy prison to keep the household from the contact of the world. The whole air of Palermo is different from that of the towns upon the continent. The peculiarities are said to be Saracenic, and inscriptions in Arabic are still found upon the ancient buildings. The town is poet- ically called the concha d'oro, or " the golden shell." We walked on to the cathedral, followed by a troop of literally naked beggars, baked black in the sun, and more emaciated and diseased than any I have yet seen abroad. Their cries and gestures were painfully ener- getic. In the course of five minutes we had seen two or three hundred. They lay along the sidewalks, and upon the steps of the houses and churches, men, wo- men, and children, nearly or quite naked, and as unno- ticed by the inhabitants as the stones of the street. Ten or twenty indolent-looking priests sat in the shade at the porch of the cathedral. The columns of the vestibule were curiously wrought, the capitals exceedingly rich with fretted leaf-work, and the orna- ments of the front of the same wild-looking character as the buildings of the town. A hunchback scarce three feet high, came up and offered his services as a cicerone, and we entered the church. The antiquity of the interior was injured by the new wViite paint, cov- ering every part except the more valuable decorations, but with its four splendid sarcophagi standing like sep- arate buildings in the aisles, and covering the ashes of Ruggiero and his kinsmen ; the eighty columns of Egyptian granite in the nave ; the ciborio of entire lapis-lazuli with its lovely blue, and the mosaics, fres- coes and relievoes about the altar, it could scarce fail of producing an effect of great richness. The floor was occupied by here and there a kneeling beggar, praying in his rags, and undisturbed even by the tempting neighborhood of strangers. I stood long by an old man, who seemed hardly to have the strength to hold himself upon his knees. His eyes were fixed upon a lovely picture of the Virgin, and his trembling hands loosed bead after bead as his prayer proceeded. I slipped a small piece of silver between his palm and the cross of his rosary, and without removing his eyes from the face of the holy mother, he implored an audi- ble blessing upon me in a tone of the most earnest feeling. I have scarce been so moved within my rec- ollection. The equipages were beginning to roll toward the " Marina," and the Seabreeze was felt even through the streets. We took a carriage and followed to the corso, where we counted near two hundred gay, well- appointed equipages, in the course of an hour. What a contrast to the wretchedness we had left behind ! Driving up and down this half-mile in front of the palaces on the sea, seemed quite a sufficient amuse- ment for the indolent nobility of Palermo. They were named to us by their imposing titles as they passed, and we looked in vain into their dull unanima- ted faces for the chivalrous character of the once re- nowned knights of Sicily. Ladies and gentlemen sat alike silent, leaning back in their carriages in the ele- gant attitudes studied to such effect on this side of the water, and gazing for acquaintances ' among those passing on the opposite line. Toward the dusk of the evening, an avant-couricr on horseback announced the approach of the viceroy Leopold, the brother of the king of Naples. He drove himself in an English hunting-wagon with two seats, and looked like a dandy whip of the first water from Regent street. He is about twenty, and quite handsome. His horses, fine English bays, flew up and down the short corso, passing and repassing every other minute, till we were weary of touching our hats and stopping till he had gone by. He noticed the uniform of our officers, and raised his hat with partic- ular politeness to them. As it grew dark, the carriages came to a stand around a small open gallery raised in the broadest part of the Marina. Rows of lamps, suspended from the roof, were lit, and a band of forty or fifty musicians appeared in the area, and played parts of the popular operas. We were told they performed every night from nine till twelve. Chairs were set around for the people on foot, ices circulated, and some ten or twelve thousand people enjoyed the music in a deli- cious moonlight, keeping perfect silence from the first note to the last. These heavenly nights of Italy are thus begun, and at twelve the people separate and go to visit, or lounge at home till morning, when the win- dows are closed, the cool night air shut in, and they sleep till evening comes again, literally "keeping the hours the stars do." It is very certain that it is the only way to enjoy life in this enervating climate. The sun is the worst enemy to health, and life and spirits sink under its intensity. The English, who are the only people abroad in an Italian noon, are constant vic- tims to it. We drove this morning to the monastery of the capuchins. Three or four of the brothers in long gray beards, and the heavy brown sackcloth cowls of the order tied around the waist with ropes, received us cordially and took us through the cells and chapels. We had come to see the famous catacombs of the con- vent. A door was opened on the side of the main cloister, and we descended a long flight of stairs into the centre of three lofty vaults, lighted each by a window at the extremity of the ceiling. A more frightful scene never appalled the eye. The walls were lined with shallow niches, from which hung, leaning forward as if to fall upon the gazer, the dried bodies of monks in the full dress of their order. Their PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 103 hands were crossed upon their breasts or hung at their sides, their faces were blackened and withered, and every one seemed to have preserved, in diabolical cari- cature, the very expression of life. The hair lay red- dened and dry on the dusty scull, the teeth, perfect or imperfect, had grown brown in their open mouths, the nose had shrunk, the cheeks fallen in and cracked, and they looked more like living men cursed with some horrid plague, than the inanimate corpses they were. The name of each was pinned upon his cowl, with his a<je and the time of his death. Below in three or four tiers, lay long boxes painted fantastically, and contain- ing, the monk told us, the remains of Sicilian nobles. Upon a long shelf above sat perhaps a hundred children of from one year to five, in little chairs worn with their use while in life, dressed in the gayest manner, with fanciful caps upon their little blackened heads, dolls in their hands, and in one or two instances, a stuffed dog or parrot lying in their laps. A more horribly ludicrous collection of little withered faces, shrunk into expres- j sion so entirely inconsistent with the gayety of their j dresses, could scarce be conceived. One of them had his arm tied up, holding a child's whip in the act of | striking, while the poor thing's head had rotted and dropped upon its breast; and a leather cap fallen on : one side, showed his bare scull, with the most comical expression of carelessness. We quite shocked the old monk with our laughter, but the scene was irresis- tible. We went through several long galleries filled in the same manner, with the dead monks standing over the coffins of nobles, and children on the shelf above. There were three thousand bodies and upward in the place, monks and all. Some of them were very an- cient. There was one, dated a century and a half back, whose tongue still hangs from his mouth. The frair took hold of it, and moved it up and down, rattling it against his teeth. It was like a piece of dried fish- skin, and as sharp and thin as a nail. At the extremity of the last passage was a new vault appropriated to women. There were nine already lying on white pillows in the different recesses, who had died within the year, and among them a young girl, the daughter of a noble family of Palermo, stated in the inscription to have been a virgin of seventeen years. The monk said her twin-sister was the most beautiful woman of the city at this moment. She was laid upon her back, on a small shelf faced with a wire grating, dressed in white, withalarge bouquet of artificial flowers on the centre of the body. Her hands and face were exposed, and the skin which seemed to me scarce- ly dry, was covered with small black ants. I struck with my stick against the shelf, and, startled by the concussion, the disgusting vermin poured from the mouth and nostrils in hundreds. How difficult it is to believe that the beauty we worship must come to this! As we went toward the staircase, the friar showed us the deeper niches, in which the bodies were placed for the first six months. There were fortunately no fresh bodies in them at the time of our visit. The stench, for a week or two, he told us, was intolerable. They are suffered to get quite dry here, and then are disposed of according to their sex or profession. A rope passed round the middle, fastens the dead monk to his shallow niche, and there he stands till his bones rot from each other, sometimes for a century or more. We hurried up the gloomy stairs, and giving the monk our gratuity, were passing out of the cloister to our carriage when two of the brothers entered, bearing a sedan chair with the blinds closed. Our friend called us back, and opened the door. An old gray-headed woman sat bolt upright within, with a rope around her body and another around her neck, supporting her by two rings in the back of the sedan. She had died that morning, and was brought to be dried in the capuchin catacombs. The effect ot the newly deceased body in a handsome silk dress and plaited cap was horrible. We drove from the monastery to the gardens of a Sicilian prince, near by. I was agreeably disappointed to find the grounds laid out in the English taste, wind- ing into secluded walks shaded with undipped trees, and opening into glades of greensward cooled by foun- tains. We strolled on from one sweet spot to another, coming constantly upon little Grecian temples, ruins, broken aqueducts, aviaries, bowers furnished with curious seats and tables, bridges over streams, and labyrinths of shrubbery ending in hermitages built curiously of cane. So far, the garden, though lovely, was like many others. On our return, the person who accompanied us began to surprise us with singular contrivances, fortunately selecting the coachman who had driven us as the subject of his experiments. In the middle of a long green alley he requested him to step forward a few paces, and, in an instant, streams of water poured upon him from the bushes around in every direction. There were seats in the arbors, the least pressure of which sent up a stream beneath the unwary visiter ; steps to an ascent, which you no sooner touched than you were showered from an invisible source ; and one small hermitage, which sent a jet d'eau into the face of a person lifting the latch. Nearly in the centre of the garden stood a pretty building, with an ascending staircase. At the first step, a friar in white, represented to the life in wax, opened the door, and fixed his eyes on the comer. At the next step, the door was violently shut. At the third, it was half opened again, and as the foot pressed the platform above, both doors flew wide open, and the old friar made room for the visiter to enter. Life itself could not have been more natural. The garden was full of similar tricks. We were hurried away by an engage- ment before we had seen them all, and stopping for a moment to look at a magnificent Egyptian Ibis, walk- ing around in an aviary like a temple, we drove into town to dinner. LETTER LXIX. THE LUNATIC ASYLUM AT PALERMO. Palermo, June 28. — Two of the best-conducted lunatic asylums in the world are in the kingdom of Naples — one at Aversa, near Capua, and the other at Palermo. The latter is managed by a whimsical Si- cilian baron, who has devoted his time and fortune to it, and with the assistance of the government, has car- ried it to great extent and perfection. The poor are received gratuitously, and those who can afford it en- ter as boarders, and are furnished with luxuries ac- cording to their means. The hospital stands in an airy situation in the love- ly neighborhood of Palermo. We were received by a porter in a respectable livery, who introduced us im- mediately to the old baron — a kind-looking man, rather advanced beyond middle life, of manners singularly genteel and prepossessing. " Je suis It premier fou," said he, throwing his arms out, as he bowed on our entrance. We stood in an open court, surrounded with porticoes lined with stone seats. On one of them lay a fat, indolent-looking man, in clean gray clothes, talking to himself with great apparent satis- faction. He smiled at the baron as he passed without checking the motion of his lips, and three others standing in the doorway of a room marked as the kitchen, smiled also as he came up, and fell into his train, apparently as much interested as ourselves in the old man's explanations. The kitchen was occupied by eight or ten people all at work, and all, the baron assured us, mad. One 104 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. man, of about forty, was broiling a steak with the gra- vest attention. Another, who had been furious till em- ployment was given him, was chopping meat with vio- lent industry in a large wooden bowl. Two or three girls were about, obeying the little orders of a middle- aged man, occupied with several messes cooking on a patent stove. I was rather incredulous about his in- sanity, till he took a small bucket and went to the jet of a fountain, and getting impatient from some cause or other, dashed the water upon the floor. The baron mildly called him by name, and mentioned to him as a piece of information that he had wet the floor. He nodded his head, and filling his bucket quietly, poured a little into one of the pans, and resumed his occu- pation. We passed from the kitchen into an open court, cu- riously paved, and ornamented with Chinese grottoes, artificial rocks, trees, cottages, and fountains. Within the grottoes reclined figures of wax. Before the altar of one, fitted up as a Chinese chapel, a mandarin was prostrated in prayer. The walls on every side were painted in perspective scenery, and the whole had as little the air of a prison as the open valley itself. In one of the corners was an unfinished grotto, and a handsome young man was entirely absorbed in thatch- ing the ceiling with strips of cane. The baron pointed to him, and said he had been incurable till he had found this employment for him. Everything about us, too, he assured us, was the work of his pa- tients. They had paved the court, built the grottoes and cottages, and painted the walls, under his direc- tion. The secret of his whole system, he said, was employment and constant kindness. He had usually about one hundred and fifty patients, and he dismissed upon an average two thirds of them quite recovered. We went into the apartment of the women. These, he said, were his worst subjects. In the first room sat eight or ten employed in spinning, while one infuriated creature, not more than thirty, but quite gray, was walking up and down the floor, talking and gesticula- ting with the greatest violence. A young girl of six- teen, an attendant, had entered into her humor, and with her arm put affectionately round her waist, assent- ed to everything she said, and called her by every name of endearment while endeavoring to silence her. When the baron entered, the poor creature addressed herself to him, and seemed delighted that he had come. He made several mild attempts to check her, but she seized his hands, and with the veins of her throat swelling with passion, her eyes glaring terribly, and her tongue white and trembling, she continued to declaim more and more violently. The baron gave an order to a male attendant at the door, and beckoning us to follow, led her gently through a small court planted with trees, to a room containing a hammock. She checked her torrent of language as she observed the preparations going on, and seemed amused with the idea of swinging. The man took her up in his arms without resistance, and laced the hammock over her, confining everything but her head, and the female attendant, one of the most playful and prepossessing little creatures I ever saw, stood on a chair, and at every swing threw a little water on her face as if in sport. Once or twice, the maniac attempted to resume the subject of her ravings, but the girl laughed in her face and diverted her from it, till at last she smiled and dropping her head into the hammock, seemed disposed to sink into an easy sleep. We left her swinging and went out into the court, where eight or ten women in the gray gowns of the establishment were walking up and down, or sitting under the trees, lost in thought. One, with a fine, in- telligent face, came up to me and courtesied gracefully without speaking. The physician of the establish- ment joined me at the moment, and asked her what she wished. » To kiss his hand," said she, " but his looks forbade me." She colored deeply, and folded her arms across her breast and walked away. The baron called us, and in going out I passed her again, and taking her hand, kissed it, and bade her good-by. " You had better kiss my lips," said she, "you'll never see me again." She laid her forehead against the iron bars of the gate, and with a face working with emo- tion, watched us till we turned out of sight. I asked the physician for her history. " It was a common case," he said. " She was the daughter of a Sicilian noble, who, too poor to marry her to one of her own rank, had sent her to a convent, where confinement had driven her mad. She is now a charity patient in the asylum." The courts in which these poor creatures are con- fined, open upon a large and lovely garden. We walk- ed through it with the baron, and then returned to the apartments of the females. In passing a cell, a large majestic woman strided out with a theatrical air, and commenced an address to the Deity, in a language strangely mingled of Italian and Greek. Her eyes were naturally large and soft, but excitement had given them additional dilation and fire, and she looked a prophetess. Her action, with all its energy, was lady- like. Her feet, half covered with slippers were well- formed and slight, and she had every mark of superi- ority both of birth and endowment. The baron took her by the hand with the deferential courtesy of the old school, and led her to one of the stone seats. She yielded to him politely, but resumed her harangue, upbraiding the Deity, as well as I could understand her, for her misfortunes. They succeeded in soothing her by the assistance of the same playful attendant who had accompanied the other to the hammock, and she sat still, with her lips white and her tongue tremb- ling like an aspen. While the good old baron was endeavoring to draw her into a quiet conversation, the physician told me some curious circumstances respect- ing her. She was a Greek, and had been brought to Palermo when a girl. Her mind had been destroyed by an illness, and after seven years' madness, during which she had refused to rise from her bed and had quite lost the use of her limbs, she was brought to this establishment by her friends. Experiments were tried in vain to induce her to move from her painful posi- tion. At last the baron determined upon addressing what he considered the master-passion in all female bosoms. He dressed himself in the gayest manner, and, in one of her gentle moments, entered her room with respectful ceremony and offered himself to her in marriage! She refused him with scorn, and with seeming emotion he begged forgiveness and left her. The next morning, on his entrance, she smiled — the first time for years. He continued his attentions for a day or two, and after a little coquetry she one morn- ing announced to him that she had re-considered his proposal, and would be his bride. They raised her from her bed to prepare her for the ceremony, and she was carried in a chair to the garden, where the bridal feast was spread, nearly all the other patients of the hospital being present. The gayety of the scene ab- sorbed the attention of all ; the utmost decorum pre- vailed ; and when the ceremony was performed, the bride was crowned, and carried back in state to her apartment. She recovered gradually the use of her limbs, her health is improved, and excepting an occa- sional paroxysm, such as we happened to witness, she is quiet and contented. The other inmates of the asylum still call her the bride ; and the baron, as her husband, has the greatest influence over her. While the physician was telling me these circum- stances, the baron had succeeded in calming her, and she sat with her arms folded, dignified and silent. He was still holding her hand, when the woman whom we had left swinging in the hammock, came stealing up behind the trees on tiptoe, and putting her hand sud- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 105 denly over the baron's eyes, kissed him on both sides of his face, laughing heartily, and calling him by every name of affection. The contrast between this mood and the infuriated one in which we had found her, was the best comment on the good man's system. He gently disengaged himself, and apologised to his lady for allowing the liberty, and we followed him to an- other apartment. It opened upon a pretty court, in which a fountain was playing, and against the columns of the portico sat some half dozen patients. A young man of eighteen, with a very-pale, scholar-like face, was reading Ariosto. Near him, under the direction of an attendant, a fair, delicate girl, with a sadness in her soft blue eyes that might have been a study for a mater dolorosa, was cut- ting paste upon a board laid across her lap. She seemed scarcely conscious of what she was about, and when I approached and spoke to her, she laid down the knife and rested her head upon her hand, and looked at me steadily, as if she was trying to recollect where she had known me. " I can not remember," she said to herself, and went on with her occupation. I bowed to her as we took our leave, and she returned it gracefully but coldly. The young man looked up from his book and smiled, the old man lying on the stone seat in the outer court rose up and followed us to the door, and we were bowed out by the baron and his gentle madmen as politely and kindly as if we were concluding a visit with a company of friends. An evening out of doors, in summer, is pleasant enough anywhere in Italy : but I have found no place where the people and their amusements were so con- centrated at that hour, as upon the " Marina" of Pa- lermo. A ramble with the officers up and down, re- newing the acquaintances made with visiters to the ships, listening to the music and observing the various characters of the crowd, concludes every day agreeably. A terraced promenade, twenty feet above the street, extends nearly the whole length of the Marina, and here, under the balconies of the viceroy's palace, with the crescent harbor spread out before the eye, trees above, and marble seats tempting the weary at every step, may be met pedestrians of every class, from the first cool hour when the Seabreeze sets in till midnight or morning. The intervals between the pieces per- formed by the royal band in the centre of the drive, is seized by the wandering improvisatrice, or the ludicrous puncindlo, and even the beggars cease to importune in the general abandonment to pleasure. Every other moment the air is filled with a delightful perfume, and you are addressed by the bearer of a tall pole tied thickly with the odorous flowers of this voluptuous climate — a mode of selling these cheap luxuries which I believe is peculiar to Palermo. The gayety they give a crowd, by the way, is singular. They move about among the gaudily-dressed contadini like a troop ' of banners — tulips, narcissus, moss-roses, branches of ' jasmine, geraniums, every flower that is rare and beau- ! tiful scenting the air from a hundred overladen poles, j and the merest pittance will purchase the rarest and loveliest. It seems a clime of fruits and flowers; and if one could but shut his eyes to the dreadful contrasts of nakedness and starvation, he might believe himself in a Utopia. We were standing on the balcony of the consul's residence (a charming situation overlooking the Ma- rina), and remarking the gayety of the scene on the first evening of our arrival. The conversation turned upon the condition of the people. The consul re- marked that it was an every-day circumstance to find beggars starved to death in the streets ; and that, in the small villages near Palermo, eight or ten were of- ten taken up dead from the road-side in the morning. The difficulty of getting a subsistence is every day in- creasing, and in the midst of one of the most fertile spots of the earth, one half the population are driven to the last extremity for bread. The results appear in constant conspiracies against the government, de- tected and put down with more or less difficulty. The island is garrisoned with troops from Italy," and the viceroy has lately sent to his brother for a reinforce- ment, and is said to feel very insecure. A more la- mentably misgoverned kingdom than that of the Sici- lies, probably does not exist in the world. LETTER LXX. PALERMO — FETE GIVEN BY ME. GARDINER, THE AMERI- CAN CONSUL — TEMPLE OF CLITUMNTJS — COTTAGE OF PETRARCH — MESSINA — LIPAEI ISLANDS — SCYLLA AND CHARTBDIS. Palermo, June 28. — The curve of " The Golden Shell," which bends to the east of Palermo, is a luxu- riant plain of ten miles in length, terminated by a bluff which forms a headland corner of the bay. A broad neck of land between this bay and another in- denting the coast less deeply on the other side, is oc- cupied by a cluster of summer palaces belonging to several of the richer princes of Sicily. The breeze, whenever there is one on land or sea, sweeps freshly across this ridge, and a more desirable residence for combined coolness and beauty could scarce be imagin- ed. The Palermitan princes, however, find every country more attractive than their own; and while you may find a dozen of them in any city of Europe, their once magnificent residences are deserted and falling to decay, almost without an exception. The old walls of one of these palaces were enlivened yesterday, by a fete given to the officers of the squadron by the American consul, Mr. Gardiner. "We left Palermo in a long cavalcade, followed by a large omni- bus containing the ship's band, early in the forenoon. The road was lined with prickly pear and oleander in the most luxuriant blossom. Exotics in our country, these plants are indigenous to Sicily, and form the only hedges to the large plantations of cane and the spread- ing vineyards and fields. A more brilliant show than these long lines of trees, laden with bright pink flowers, and varied by the gigantic and massive leaf of the pear, can not easily be imagined. We were to visit one or two places on our way. The carriage drew up about eight miles from town, at the gate of a ruinous building, and passing through a deserted court, we entered an old-fashioned garden, presenting one succession of trimmed walks, urns, statues and fountains. The green mould of age and exposure upon the marbles, the broken seats, the once costly but now ruined and silent fountains, the tall weeds in the seldom-trodden walks, and the wild vege- tation of fragrant jasmine and brier burying everything with its luxuriance, all told the story of decay. I re- membered the scenes of the Decameron ; the many " tales of love," laid in these very gardens ; the gay romances of which Palermo was the favorite home ; and the dames and knights of Sicily the fairest and bravest themes, and I longed to let my merry com- panions pass on, and remain to realize more deeply the spells of poetry and story. The pleasure of travel is in the fancy. Men and manners are so nearly alike over the world, and the same annoyances disturb so certainly, wherever we are, the gratification of seeing and conversing with our living fellow-beings, that it is only by the mingled illusion of fancy and memory, by getting apart, and peopling the deserted palace or the sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we ever realize the anticipated pleasure of standing on cele- brated ground. The eye, the curiosity, are both dis- appointed, and the voice of a common companion re- duces the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone. In 106 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. some of the footsteps of Childe Harold himself, with his glorious thoughts upon my lips, and all that moved his imagination addressing my eye, with the additional grace which his poetry has left around them, I have found myself unable to overstep the vulgar circum- stances of the hour — the " Temple of the Clitumnus" was a ruined shed glaring in the sunshine, and the " Cottage of Petrarch" an apology for extortion and annoyance. I heard a shout from the party, and followed them to a building at the foot of the garden. I passed the threshold and started back. A ghastly monk, with a broom in his hand, stood gazing at me, and at a door just beyond, a decrepit nun was see-sawing backward and forward, ringing a bell with the most impatient yiolence. I ventured to pass in, and a door opened at the right, disclosing the self-denying cell of a hermit with his narrow bed and single chair, and at the table sat the rosy-gilled friar, filling his glass from an anti- quated bottle, and nodding his head to his visiter in grinning welcome. A long cloister with six or eight cells extended beyond, and in each was a monk in some startling attitude, or a pale and saintly nun employed in work or prayer. The whole was as like a living mon- astery as wax could make it. The mingling of monks and nuns seemed an anachronism, but we were told that it represented a tale, the title of which I have for- gotten. It was certainly an odd as well as an expensive fancy for a garden ornament, and shows by its useless- ness the once princely condition of the possessors of the palace. An Englishman married not many years since an old princess, to whom the estates had descend- ed, and with much unavailable property and the title of prince, he has entered the service of the king of the Sicilies for a support. We drove on to another palace, still more curious in its ornaments. The extensive walls which enclosed it, the gates, the fountains in the courts and gardens, were studded with marble monsters of every conceiva- ble deformity. The head of a man crowned the body of an eagle standing on the legs of a horse ; the lovely face and bosom of a female crouched upon the body of a dog ; alligators, serpents, lions, monkeys, birds, and reptiles, were mixed up with parts of the human body in the most revolting variety. So admirable was the work, too, and so beautiful the material, that even outraged taste would hesitate to destroy them. The wonder is that artists of so much merit could have been hired to commit such sins against decency, or that a man in his senses would waste upon them the fortune they must have cost. We mounted a massive flight of steps, with a balus- trade of gorgeously-carved marble, and entered a hall hung round with the family portraits, the eccentric founder at their head. He was a thin, quizzical-looking gentleman, in a laced coat and sword, and had precisely the face I imagined for him — that of a whimsied mad- man. You would select it from a thousand as the subject for a lunatic asylum. We were led next to a long narrow hall, famous for having dined the king and his courtiers an age or two ago. The ceiling was of plate mirror, reflecting us all, upside down, as we strolled through, and the walls were studded from the floor to the roof with the quartz diamond, (valueless but brilliant), bits of colored glass, spangles, and everything that could reflect light. The effect, when the quaint old chandeliers were lit, and the table spread with silver and surrounded by a king and his nobles, in the costume of a court in the olden time, must have exceeded faery. Beyond, we were ushered into the state drawing- room, a saloon of grand proportions, roofed like the other with mirrors, but paved and lined throughout with the costliest marbles, Sicilian agates, \ aintings set in the wall and covered with glass, while on pedestals around, stood statues of the finest workmanship, rep- resenting the males of the family in the costume or armor of the times. A table of inlaid precious stones stood in the centre, cabinets of lapis-lazuli and side- tables, occupied the spaces between the furniture, and the chairs and sofas were covered with the rich velvet stuffs now out of use, embroidered and fringed magni- ficently. 1 sat down upon a tripod stool, and with my eyes half closed, looked up at the mirrored reflections of the officers in the ceiling, and tried to imagine back the gay throngs that had moved across the floor they were treading so unceremoniously, the knightly and royal feet that had probably danced the stars down with the best beauty of Sicily beneath those silent mirrors; the joy, the jealousy, the love and hate, that had lived their hour and been repeated, as were our lighter feel- ings and faces now, outlived by the perishing mirrors that might still outlive ours as long. How much there is an atmosphere ! How full the air of these old palaces is of thought! How one might enjoy them could he ramble here alone, or with one congenial and musing companion to answer to his moralizing. We drove on to our appointment. At the end of a handsome avenue stood a large palace, in rather more modern taste than those we had left. The crowd of carriages in the court, the gold-laced midshipmen scattered about the massive stairs and in the formal walks of the gardens, the gay dresses of the ship's band, playing on the terrace, and the troops of ladies and gentlemen in every direction, gave an air of bustle to the stately structure that might have reminded the marble nymphs of the days when they were first lifted to their pedestals. The old hall was thrown open at two, and a table stretching from one end to the other, loaded with every luxury of the season, and capable of accommodating sixty or seventy persons, usurped the place of unsub- stantial romance, and brought in the wildest straggler willingly from his ramble. No cost had been spared, and the hospitable consul (a Bostonian) did the honors of his table in a manner that stirred powerfully my pride of country and birthplace. All the English resident in Palermo were present; and it was the more agreeable to me that their countrymen are usually the only givers of generous entertainment in Europe. One feels ever so distant a reflection on his country abroad. The liberal and elegant hospitality of one of our coun- trymen at Florence, has served me as a better argu- ment against the charge of hardness and selfishness urged upon our nation, than all which could be drawn from the acknowledgments of travellers. When dinner was over, an hour was passed at coffee in a small saloon stained after the fashion of Pompeii, and we then assembled on a broad terrace facing the sea, and with the band in the gallery above, commen- ced dances which lasted till an hour or two into the moonlight. The sunset had the eternal but untiring glory of the Italian summer, and it never set on a gayer party. There were among the English one or two lovely girls, and with the four ladies belonging to the squadron (the commodore's family and Captain Reed's), the dancers were sufficient to include all the officers, and the scene in the soft light of the moon was like a description in an old tale. The broad sea on either side, broke by the headland in front, the distant crescent of lights glancing along the seaside at Palermo, the solemn old palaces seen from the eminence around us, and the noble pile through whose low windows we strolled out upon the terrace, the music and the ex- citement, all blended a scene that is drawn with bright and living lines in my memory. We parted unwilling- ly, and reaching Palermo about midnight, pulled off to the frigates, and were under way at daylight for Messina. This is the poetry of sailing. The long, low frigate glides on through the water with no more motion titan PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAY. 107 is felt in a dining-room on shore. The sea changes only from a glossy calm to a feathery ripple, the sky is always serene, the merchant sail appears and dis- appears on the horizon edge, the island rides on the bow, creeps along the quarter, is examined by the glasses of the idlers on deck and sinks gradually astern, the sun-fish whirls in the eddy of the wake, the tortoise plunges and breathes about us, and the delightful temperature of the sea, even and invigorating, keeps both mind and body in an undisturbed equilibrium of enjoyment. For me it is a paradise. 1 am glad to escape from the contact, the dust, the trials of tem- per, the noon-day sultriness, and the midnight chill, the fatigue and privation and vexation, which beset the traveller on shore. I shall return to it no doubt willing- ly after a while, but for the present, it is rest, it is re- lief, refreshment, to be at sea. There is no swell in the Mediterranean during the summer months, and this gliding about, sleeping or reading as if at home, from one port to another, seems to me just now the Utopia of enjoyment. We have been all day among the Lijyari islands. It is pleasant to look up at the shaded and peaceful huts on their mountainous sides, as we creep along under them or to watch the fisherman's children with a glass, as they run out from their huts on the sea- shore to gaze at the uncommon apparition of a ship- of-war. They seem seats of solitude and retirement. I have just dropped the glass, which I had raised to look at what I took to be a large ship in full sail round- ing the point of Felicudi. It is a tall, pyramidal rock, rising right from the sea, and resembling exactly a ship with studding-sails set, coming down before the wind. The band is playing on the deck ; and a fisherman's boat with twenty of the islanders resting on their oars and listening in wondering admiration, lies just under our quarter. It will form a tale for the evening meal, to which they were hastening home. We run between Scylla and Charyhdis, with a fresh wind and a strong current. The "dogs" were silent, and the " whirlpool" is a bubble to Hurl-gate. Scylla is quite a town, and the tall rock at the entrance of the strait is crowned with a large building, which seems part of a fortification. The passage through the Faro is lonely — quite like a river. Messina lies in a curve of the western shore, at the base of a hill ; and, opposite, a graceful slope covered with vineyards, swells up to a broad table plain on the mountain, which looked like the home of peace and fertility. We rounded to, off the town, to send in for letters, and I went ashore in the boat. Two American friends, whom I had as little expectation of meeting as if I had dropped upon Jerusalem, hailed me from the grating of the health-office, before we reached the land, and having exhibited our bill of health, I had half an hour for a call upon an old friend, resident at Messina, and we were off again to the ship. The sails filled, and we shot away on a strong breeze down the straits. Rhegium lay on our left, a large cluster of old-looking houses on the edge of the sea. It was at this town of Calabria that St. Paul landed on his journey to Rome. We sped on without much time to look at it, even with a glass, and were soon rounding the toe of "the boot," the southern point of Italy. We are heading at this moment for the gulf of Tarento, and hope to be in Venice by the fourth of July. LETTER LXXI. THE ADRIATIC — ALBANIA GAT COSTUMES AND BEAU- TY OF THE ALBANESE — CAPO DTSTRIA — TRIESTE RESEMBLES AN AMERICAN TOWN — VISIT TO THE AUSTRIAN AUTHORITIES OF THE PROVINCE — CURIOS- ITY OF THE INHABITANTS GENTLEMANLY RECEP- TION BY THE MILITARY COMMANDANT — VISIT TO VIENNA — SINGULAR NOTIONS OF THE AUSTRIAN'S RESPECTING THE AMERICANS — SIMILARITY OF THE SCENERY TO THAT OF NEW-ENGLAND — MEETING WITH GERMAN STUDENTS — FREQUENT SIGHT OF SOL- DIERS AND MILITARY PREPARATIONS — PICTURESQUE SCENERY OF STYRIA. The doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic. It is the fourth of July, and with the Italian Cape Colonna on our left, and the long, low coast of Alba- nia shading the horizon on the east, we are gazing upon her from the deck of the first American frigate that has floated upon her bosom. We head for Ven- ice, and there is a stir of anticipation on board, felt even through the hilarity of our cherished anniversa- ry. I am the only one in the ward-room to whom that wonderful city is familiar, and I feel as if I had forestalled my own happiness — the first impression of it is so enviable. It is difficult to conceive the gay costumes and handsome features of the Albanese, existing in these barren mountains that bind the Adriatic. It has been but a continued undulation of rock and sand, for three days past ; and the closer we hug to the shore, the more we look at the broad canvass above us, and pray for wind. We make Capo d'Istria now, a small town nestled in a curve of the sea, and an hour or two more will bring us to Trieste, where we drop anchor, we hope, for many an hour of novelty and pleasure. Trieste lies sixty or eighty miles from Venice, across the head of the gulf. The shore between is piled up to the sky with the " blue Friuli mountains ;" and from the town of Trieste, the low coast of Istria breaks away at a right angle to the south, forming the eastern bound of the Adriatic. As we ran into the harbor on our last tack, we passed close under the garden walls of the villa of the ex-queen of Naples, a lovely spot just in the suburbs. The palace of Je- rome Bonaparte was also pointed out to us by the pilot on the hill just above. They have both removed since to Florence, and their palaces are occupied by English. We dropped anchor within a half mile of the pier, and the flags of a dozen American vessels were soon distinguishable among the various colors of the shipping in the port. I accompanied Commodore Patterson to-day on a visit of ceremony to the Austrian authorities of the province. We made our way with difficulty through the people, crowding in hundreds to the water-side, and following us with the rude freedom of a skow- man's audience. The vice-governor, a polite but Frenchified German count, received us with every profession of kindness. His Parisian gestures sat ill enough upon his national high cheek-bones, lank hair, and heavy shoulders. We left him to call upon the military commandant, an Irishman, who occupies part of the palace of the ex-king of Westphalia. Our reception by him was gentlemanly, cordial, and digni- fied. I think the Irish are, after all, the best-manner- ed people in the world. They are found in every country, as adventurers for honor, and they change neither in character nor manner. They follow foreign fashions, and acquire a foreign language ; but in the first they retain their heart, and in the latter their brogue. They are Irishmen always. Count Nugent is high in the favor of the emperor, has the commis- sion of a field marshal, and is married to a Neapolitan princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely wo- man, and related to most of the royal houses of Eu- rope. His reputation as a soldier is well known, and he seems to me to have no drawback to the enviable- ness of his life, except its expatriation. Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling ex- tremely our new towns in America. We took a strol 108 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. through the principal streets after our visits were over, and I was surprised at the splendor of the shops, and the elegance of the costumes and equipages. It is said to contain thirty thousand inhabitants. Vienna. — The frigates were to lie three or four weeks at Trieste. One half of the officers had taken the steamboat for Venice on the second evening of our arrival, and the other half waited impatiently their turn of absence. Vienna was but some four hundred miles distant, and I might never be so near it again. On a rainy evening, at nine o'clock, I left Trieste in the " eil-ivagon," with a German courier, and com- menced the ascent of the spur of the Friuli mountains that overhangs the bay. My companions inside were, a merchant from Gratz, a fantastical and poor Hungarian count, a Corfu shop- keeper, and an Italian ex-militaire and present apoth- ecary, going to Vienna to marry a lady whom he had never seen. After a little bandying of compliments in German, of which I understood nothing except that they were apologies for the incessant smoking of three disgusting pipes, the conversation, fortunately for me, settled into Italian. The mountain was steep and very high, and my friends soon grew conversible. The novelty of two American frigates in the harbor naturally decided the first topic. Our Gratz merchant was surprised at the light color of the officers he had seen, and doubted if they were not Englishmen in the American service. He had always heard Americans were black. " They are so," said the soldier-apothe- cary ; " I saw the real Americans yesterday in a boat, quite black." (One of the cutters of the Constella- tion has a negro crew, which he had probably seen at the pier.) The assertion seemed to satisfy the doubts of all parties. They had wondered how such beauti- ful ships could come from a savage country. It was now explained. " They were bought from the Eng- lish, and officered by Englishmen." I was too much amused with their speculations to undeceive them ; and with my head thrust half out of the window to avoid choking with the smoke of their pipes, I gazed back at the glittering lights of the town below, and indulged the never-palling sensation of a first entrance into a new country. The lantern at the peak of the " United States " was the last thing I saw as we rose the brow of the mountain, and started off on a rapid trot toward Vienna. I awoke at daylight with the sudden stop of the carriage. We were at the low door of a German tav- ern, and a clear, rosy, good-humored looking girl bade us good morning, as we alighted one by one. The phrase was so like English, that 1 asked for a basin of water in my mother tongue. The similarity served me again. She brought it without hesitation ; but the question she asked me as she set it down was like nothing that had ever before entered my ears. The count smiled at my embarrassment, and explained that she wished to know if I wanted soap. I was struck with the cleanliness of everything. The tables, chairs, and floors, looked worn away with scrubbing. Breakfast was brought in immediately, eggs, rolls, and coffee, the latter in a glass bottle like a chemist's retort, corked up tightly, and wrapped in a snowy napkin. It was an excellent breakfast, served with cleanliness and good humor, and cost about four- teen cents each. Even from this single meal, it seem- ed to me that I had entered a country of simple man- ners and kind feelings. The conductor gravely kissed the cheek of the girl who had waited on us, my com- panions lit their pipes afresh, and the postillion, in cocked hat and feather, blew a stave of a waltz on his horn, and fell into a steady trot, which he kept up with phlegmatic perseverance to the end of his post. As we get away from the sea, the land grows richer, and the farm-houses more frequent. We are in the dutchy of Carniola, forty or fifty miles from Trieste. How very unlike Italy and France, and how very like New England it is! There are no ruined castles, nor old cathedrals. Every village has its small white church with a tapering spire, large manufactories cluster on the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid and deep, the horses large and strong, the barns im- mense, the crops heavy, the people grave and hard at work, and not a pauper by the post together. We are very far north, too, and the climate is like New Eng- land. The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing, and there is no travelling as in Italy, with one's hat off and breast open, dissolving at midnight in the luxury of the soft air. The houses, too, are ugly and com- fortable, staring with paint and pierced in all directions with windows. The children are white-headed and serious. The hills are half covered with woods, and clusters of elms are left here and there through the meadows, as if their owners could afford to let them grow for a shade to the mowers. I was perpetually exclaiming, "how like America!" We dined at Laybach. My companions had found out by my passport that 1 was an American, and their curiosity was most amusing. The report of the arri- val of the two frigates had reached the capital of lllyria, and with the assistance of the information of my friends, I found myself an object of universal attention. The crowd around the door of the hotel, looked into the windows while we were eating, and followed me round the house as if I had been a savage. One of the passengers told me they connected the arrival of the ships with some political object, and thought 1 might be the envoy. The landlord asked me if we had potatoes in our country. I took a walk through the city after dinner with my mincing friend the count. The low, two-story wood- en houses, the sidewalks enclosed with trees, the mat- ter-of-fact looking people, the shut windows, and neat white churches remind me again strongly of America. It was like the more retired streets of Portland or Portsmouth. The Illyrian language spoken here, seemed to me the most inarticulate succession of sounds I had ever heard. In crossing the bridge in the centre of the town, we met a party of German stu- dents travelling on foot with their knapsacks. My friend spoke to them to gratify my curiosity. I wished to know where they were going. They all spoke French and Italian, and seemed in high heart, bold, cheerful, and intelligent. They were bound for Egypt, determined to seek their fortunes in the service of the present reforming and liberal pacha. Their enthusiasm, when they were told I was an American, quite thrilled me. They closed about me and looked into my eyes, as if they expected to read the spirit of freedom in them. I was taken by the arms at last, and almost forced into a beer-shop. The large tankards were filled, each touched mine and the others, and "America" was drank with a grave earnestness of manner that moved my heart within me. They shook me by the hand on parting, and gave me a blessing in German, which, as the old count translated it, was the first word I have learned of their language. We had met constantly parties of them on the road. They all dress alike, in long travelling frocks of brown stuff, and small green caps with straight visors ; but, coarsely as they are clothed, and humbly as they seem to be faring, their faces bear always a mark that can never be mistaken. They look like scholars. The roads, by the way, are crowded with pedestrians. It seems to be the favorite mode of travelling in this country. We have scarce met a carriage, and I have seen, I am sure, in one day, two hundred passengers on foot. Among them is a class of people peculiar to Germany. I was astonished occasionally at being asked for charity by stout, well-dressed young men, PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 109 to all appearance as respectable as any travellers on the road. Expressing my surprise, my companions informed me that they were apprentices, and that the custom or law of the country compelled them, after completing their indentures, to travel in some distant province, and depend upon charity and their own ex- ertions for two or three years before becoming masters at their trade. It is a singular custom, and, I should think, i. useful lesson in hardship and self-reliance. They held out their hats with a confident indepen- dence of look that quite satisfied me they felt no deg- radation in it. We soon entered the province of Styria, and bright- er rivers, greener woods, richer and more graceful up- lands and meadows, do not exist in the world. I had thought the scenery of Stockbridge, in my own state, unequalled till now. I could believe myself there, were not the women alone working in the fields, and the roads lined for miles together with military wag- ons and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of Austria compels every peasant to serve fourteen years! and the labors of agriculture fall, of course, almost ex- clusively upon females. Soldiers swarm like locusts through the country, but they seem as inoffensive and as much at home as the cattle in the farm-yards. It is a curious contrast, to my eye, to see parks of artil- lery glistening in the midst of a wheat-field, and sol- diers sitting about under the low thatches of these peaceful-looking cottages. I do not think, among the thousands that I have passed in three days' travel, I have seen a gesture or heard a syllable. If sitting, they smoke and sit still, and if travelling, they econo- mise motion to a degree that is wearisome to the eye. Words are limited, and the description of scenery be- comes tiresome. It is a fault that the sense of beauty, freshening constantly on the traveller, compels him who makes a note of impressions to mark every other line with the same ever-recurring exclamations of pleasure. I saw a hundred miles of unrivalled scenery in Styria, and how can I describe it? I were keeping silence on a world of enjoyment to pass it over. We come to a charming descent into a valley. The town beneath, the river, the embracing mountains, the swell to the ear of its bells ringing some holyday, affect my imagination powerfully. I take out my tablets, What shall I say ? How convey to your minds who have not seen it, the charm of a scene I can only de- scribe as I have described a thousand others ? LETTER LXXII. GRATZ VIENNA. We had followed stream after stream through a succession of delicious valleys for a hundred miles. Descending from a slight eminence, we came upon the broad and rapid Mukr, and soon after caught sight of a distant citadel upon a rock. As we approached, it struck me as one of" the most singular freaks of na- ture I had ever seen. A pyramid, perhaps three hun- dred feet in height, and precipitous on every side, rose abruptly in the midst of a broad and level plain, and around it in a girdle of architecture, lay the capital of Styria. The fortress on the summit hung like an eagle's nest over the town, and from its towers, a pis- tol-shot would reach the outermost point of the wall. Wearied with travelling near three hundred miles without sleep, I dropped upon a bed at the hotel, with an order to be called in two hours. It was noon, and we were to remain at Gratz till the next morning. My friend, the Hungarian, had promised as he threw himself on the opposite bed, to wake and accompany me iq a walk through the town, but the shake of a stout German chambermaid at the appointed time had no effect upon him, and I descended to my dinner alone. I had lost my interpreter. The carte was in German, of which I did not know even the letters. After appealing in vain in French and Italian to the persons eating near me, I fixed my finger at hazard upon a word, and the waiter disappeared. The result was a huge dish of cabbage cooked in some filthy oil and graced with a piece of beef. I was hesitating whether to dine on bread or make another attempt, when a gentlemanly man of some fifty years came in and took the vacant seat at my table. He addressed me immediately in French, and smiling at my difficul- ties, undertook to order a dinner for me something less national. We improved our acquaintance with a bottle of Johannesburgh, and after dinner he kindly offered to accompany me in my walk through the city. Gratz is about the size of Boston, a plain German city, with little or no pretensions to style. The mili- tary band was playing a difficult waltz very beautifully in the public square, but no one was listening except a group of young men dressed in the worst taste of dandyism. We mounted by a zig-zag path to the fortress. On a shelf of the precipice, half way up, hangs a small casino, used as a beer-shop. The view from the summit was a feast to the eye. The wide and lengthening valley of theMuhr lay asleep beneath its loads of grain, its villas and farmhouses, the pic- ture of " waste and mellow fruitfulness," the rise to the mountains around the head of the valley was clus- tered with princely dwellings, thick forests with glades between them, and churches with white slender spires shooting from the bosom of elms, and right at our feet, circling around the precipitous rock for protec- tion, lay the city enfolded in its rampart, and sending up to our ears the sound of every wheel that rolled through her streets. Among the striking buildings below, my friend pointed out to me a palace which he said had been lately purchased by Joseph Bonaparte, who was coming here to reside. The people were beginning to turn out for their evening walk upon the ramparts which are planted with trees and laid out for a promenade, and we descended to mingle in the crowd. My old friend had a great many acquaintances. He presented me to several of the best-dressed people we met, all of whom invited me to supper. I had been in Italy almost a year and a half, and such a thing had never happene i to me. We walked about until six, and as I prefer ed going to the play, which opened at that early hour, we took tickets for " Der Schlimme Leisel" and were seated presently in one of the simplest and prettiest theatres I have ever seen. Der Schlimme Leisel was an old maid who kept house for an old bachelor brother, proposing, at the time the play opens, to marry. Her dislike to the match, from the dread of losing her authority over his household, formed the humor of the piece, and was admirably represented. After various unsuccess- ful attempts to prevent the nuptials, the lady is brought to the house, and the old maid enters in a towering passion, throws down her keys, and flirts out of the room with a threat that she " will go to America /" Fortunately she is not driven to that extremity. The lady has been already married secretly to a poorer lover, and the old bachelor, after the first shock of the discovery, settles a fortune on them, and returns to his celibacy and his old maid sister,' to the satisfac- tion of all parties. Certainly the German is the most unmusical language of Babel. If my good old friend had not translated it for me word for word, I should scarce have believed the play to be more than a gib- bering pantomime. I shall think differently when 1 have learned it, no doubt, but a strange language strikes upon one's ear so oddly ! I was quite too tired when the play was over (which, by the way, was at 110 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. the sober hour of nine), to accept any of the kind in- vitations of which my companion reminded me. We supped tete-a-tete, instead, at the hotel. I was delight- ed with my new acquaintance. He was an old citizen of the world. He had left Gratz at twenty, and after thirty years wandering from one part of the globe to the other, had returned to end his days in his birth- place. His relations were all dead, and speaking all the languages of Europe, he preferred living at a ho- tel for the society of strangers. With a great deal of wisdom, he had preserved his good humor toward the world ; and I think I have rarely seen a kinder and never a happier man. I parted from him with regret, and the next morning at daylight, had resumed my seat at the Eil-wagon. Imagine the Hudson, at the highlands, reduced to a sparkling little river a bowshot across, and a rich valley thridded by a road accompanying the remain- ing space between the mountains, and you have the scenery for the first thirty miles beyond Gratz. There is one more difference. On the edge of one of the most towering precipices, clear up against the clouds, hang the ruins of a noble castle. The rents in the wall, and the embrazures in the projecting turrets, seem set into the sky. Trees and vines grow within and about it, and the lacings of the twisted roots seem all that keep it together. It is a perfect " castle in the air." A long day's journey and another long night (during which we passed Neustadt, on the confines of Hunga- ry) brought us within sight of Baden, but an hour or two from Vienna. It was just sunrise, and market- carts and pedestrians and suburban vehicles of all de- scriptions notified us of our approach to a great capi- tal. A few miles farther we were stopped in the midst of an extensive plain by a crowd of carriages. A criminal was about being guillotined. What was that to one who saw Vienna for the first time ? A few steps farther the postillion was suddenly stopped. A gentleman alighted from a carriage in which were two ladies, and opened the door of the diligence. It was the bride of the soldier-apothecary come to meet him with her mother and brother. He was buried in dust, just waked out of sleep, a three day's beard upon his face, and, at the best, not a very lover-like person. He ran to the carriage door, jumped in, and there was an immediate cry for water. The bride had fainted ! We left her in his arms and drove on. The courier had no bowels for love. There is a small Gothic pillar before us, on the rise of a slight elevation. Thence we shall see Vienna. " Stop, thou tasteless postillion !" Was ever such a scene revealed to mortal sight ! It is like Paris from the Barriere de VEtoile — it seems to cover the world. Oh, beautiful Vienna ! What is that broad water on which the rising sun glances so brightly ? " The Danube /" What is that unparalleled Gothic structure piercing the sky ? What columns are these ? What spires ? Beautiful, beautiful city ! Vienna. — It must be a fine city that impresses one with its splendor before breakfast, after driving all night in a mail-coach. It was six o'clock in the morning when I left the postofhce, in Vienna, to walk to a hotel. The shops were still shut, the milkwomen were beating at the gates, and the short, quick ring upon the church bells summoned all early risers to mass. A sudden turn brought me upon a square. In its centre stood the most beautiful fabric that has ever yet filled my eye. It looked like the structure of a giant, encrusted by fairies — a majestically proportioned mass, and a spire tapering to the clouds, but a surface so curiously beautiful, so traced and fretted, so full of exquisite ornament, that it seemed rather some curious cabinet gem, seen through a magnifier, than a building in the open air. In these foreign countries, the laborer goes in with his load to pray, and I did not hesitate to enter the splendid church of St. Etienne, though a man followed me with a portmanteau on his back. What a wilderness of arches ! Pulpits, chapels, altars, ciboriums, confessionals, choirs, all in the exquisite slenderness of Gothic tracery, and all of one venerable and timeworn die, as if the incense of a myriad cen- sers had steeped them in their spicy odors. The mass was chanting, and hundreds were on their knees about me, and not one without some trace that he had come in on his way to his daily toil. It was the hour of the poor mail's prayer. The rich were asleep in their beds. The glorious roof over their heads, the costly and elaborated pillars against which they pressed their fore- heads, the music and the priestly service, were, for that hour, theirs alone. I seldom have felt the spirit of a place of worship so strong upon me. The foundations of St. Etienne were laid seven hun- dred years ago. It has twice been partly burnt, and has been embellished in succession by nearly all the emperors of Germany. Among its many costly tombs, the most interesting is thatofthe hero Eugene oj 'Savoy ; erected by his niece, the Princess Therese, of Liech- tenstein. There is also a vault in which it is said, in compliance with an old custom, the entrails of all the emperors are deposited. Having marked thus much upon my tablets, I re- membered the patient porter of my baggage, who had taken the opportunity to drop on his knees while I was gazing about, and having achieved his matins, was now waiting submissively till I was ready to proceed. A turn or two brought us to the hotel, where a bath and a breakfast soon restored me, and in an hour I was again on the way with a valet de place, to visit the tomb of the son of JSapoleon. He lies in the deep vaults of the capuchin convent, with eighty-four of the imperial family of Austria beside him. A monk answered our pull at the cloister-bell, and the valet translated my request into German. He opened the gate with a guttuial "Yaw!" and lighting a wax candle at a lamp burning before the image of the Virgin, unlocked a massive brazen door at the end of the corridor, and led the way into the vault. The capuchin was as pale as marble, quite bald, though young, and with features which expressed, I thought, the subdued fierceness of a devil. He impatiently waved away the officious interpreter after a moment or two, and asked me if I understood Latin. Nothing could have been mere striking than the whole scene. The immense bronze sarcophagi, lay in long isles be- hind railings and gates of iron, and as the long-robed monk strode on with his lamp through the darkness, pronouncing the name and title of each as he unlocked the door and struck it with his heavy key, he seemed to me, with his solemn pronunciation, like some mys- terious being calling forth the imperial tenants to judg- ment. He appeared to have a something of scorn in his manner as he looked on the splendid workmanship of the vast coffin and pronounced the sounding titles of the ashes within. At that of the celebrated Emperess Maria Theresa alone, he stopped to make a comment. It was a simple tribute to her virtues, and he uttered it slowly, as if he were merely musing to himself. He passed on to her husband, Francis the first, and then proceeded uninterruptedly till he came to a new copper coffin. It lay in a niche, beneath a tall, dim window, and the monk, merely pointing to the inscription, set down his lamp, and began to pace up and down the damp floor, with his head on his breast, as if it was a matter of course that here I was to be left awhile to my thoughts. It was certainly the spot, if there is one in the world, to feel emotion. In the narrow enclosure on which my finger rested lay the last hopes of Napoleon. The heart of the master-spirit of the world was bound up in these ashes. He was beautiful, acce* plished, PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. Ill generous, brave. He was loved with a sort of idolatry oy the nation with which he had passed his childhood. He had won all hearts. His death seemed impossible. There was a universal prayer that he might live, his inheritance of glory was so incalculable. I read his epitaph. It was that of a private individual. It gave his name, and his father's and mother's; and then enumerated his virtues, with a commonplace regret for his early death. The monk took up his lamp and reascended to the cloister in silence. He shut the convent-door behind me, and the busy street seemed to me profane. How short a time does the most moving event interrupt the common current of life. LETTER LXXIII. VIENNA MAGNIFICENCE OF THE EMPEROR'S MANAGE THE TOUNG QUEEN OF HUNGARY THE PALACE HALL OF CURIOSITIES, JEWELRY, ETC. THE POLY- TECHNIC SCHOOL GEOMETRICAL FIGURES DESCRI- BED BY THE VIBRATIONS OF MUSICAL NOTES LIBERAL PROVISION FOR THE PUBLIC INSTITU- TIONS POPULARITY OF THE EMPEROR. I had quite forgotten, in packing up my little port- manteau to leave the ship, that I was coming so far north. Scarce a week ago, in the south of Italy, we were panting in linen jackets. I find myself shivering here, in a latitude five hundred miles north of Boston, with no remedy but exercise and an extra shirt, for a cold that would grace December. It is amusing, sometimes, to abandon one's self to a valet de place. Compelled to resort to one from my ignorance of the German, I have fallen upon a dropsi- cal fellow, with a Bardolph nose, whose French is ex- ecrable, and whose selection of objects of curiosity is worthy of his appearance. His first point was the em- peror's stables. We had walked a mile and a half to see them. Here were two or three hundred horses of all breeds, in a building that the emperor himself might live in, with a magnificent inner court for a menage, and a wilderness of grooms, dogs, and other appurtenances. I am as fond of a horse as most peo- ple, but with all Vienna before me, and little time to lose, I broke into the midst of the head groom's ped- igrees, and requested to be shown the way out. Mon- sieur Karl did not take the hint. We walked on a half mile, and stopped before another large building. " What is this !" — " The imperial carriage-house, mon- eeigneur." I was about turning on my heel and taking my liberty into my own hands,' when the large door flew open, and the blaze of gilding from within, turned me from my purpose. I thought I had seen the ne plus ultra of equipages at Rome. The imperial fam- ily of Austria ride in more style than his holiness. The models are lighter and handsomer, while the gold and crimson is put on quite as resplendently. The most curious part of the show were ten or twelve state traineaux or sleighs. I can conceive nothing more brilliant than a turnout of these magnificent f ructures upon the snow. They are built with aerial ightness, of gold and sable, with a seat fifteen or jnty feet from the ground, and are driven, with /o or four horses, by the royal personage himself. The grace of their shape and the splendor of their gilded trap- pings are inconceivable to one who has never seen them. Our way lay through the court of the imperial pal- ace A large crowd was collected round a carriage with four horses standing at the side-door. As we ap- proached it, all hats flew off, and a beautiful woman, of perhaps twenty-eight, came down the steps, leading a handsome boy of two or three years. It was the young queen of Hungary and her son. If I had seen »uch a face in a cottage ornee on the borders of an American lake, I should have thought it made for the spot. We entered a door of the palace at which stood a ferocious-looking croat sentinel, near seven feet high. Three German travelling students had just been refused admittance. A little man appeared at the ring of the bell within, and after a preliminary explanation by my valet, probably a lie, he made a low bow, and invited me to enter. I waited a moment, and a permission was brought me to see the imperial treasury. Hand- ing it to Karl, I requested him to get permission in- serted for my three friends at the door. He accom- plished it in the same incomprehensible manner in which he had obtained my own, and introducing them with the ill-disguised contempt of a valet for all men with dusty coats, we commenced the rounds of thp curiosities together. A large clock, facing us as we entered, was just striking. From either side of its base, like companies of gentlemen and ladies advancing to greet each other, appeared figures in the dress and semblance of the royal family of Austria, who remained a moment, and then retired bowing themselves courteously out back- ward. It is a costly affair, presented by the landgrave of Hesse to Maria Theresa, in 1750. After a succession of watches, snuff-boxes, necklaces, and jewels of every description, we came to the famous Florentine diamond, said to be the largest in the world. It was lost by a duke of Burgundy upon the battle- field of Granson, found by a soldier, who parted with it for five florins, sold again, and found its way at last to the royal treasury of Florence, whence it was brought to Vienna. Its weight is one hundred and thirty-nine and a half carats, and it is estimated at one million forty-three thousand three hundred and thirty- four florins. It looks like a lump of light. Enormous diamonds surround it, but it hangs among them like Hesperus among the stars. The next side of the gallery is occupied by speci- mens of carved ivory. Many of them are antique, and half of them are more beautiful than decent. There were two bas-reliefs among them by Raphael Donner, which were worth, to my eye, all the gems in the gal- lery. They were taken from scripture, and represented the Woman of Samaria at the well, and Ha gar waiting for the death of her son. No powers of elocution, no enhancement of poetry, could bring those touching pas- sages of the Bible so movingly to the heart. The latter particularly arrested me. The melancholy beauty of Hagar, sitting with her head bowed upon her knees, while her boy is lying a little way off, beneath a shrub of the desert, is a piece of unparalleled work- manship. It may well hang in the treasury of an em- peror. Miniatures of the royal family in their childhood, set in costly gems, massive plate curiously chased, services of gold, robes of diamonds, gem-hilted swords, dishes wrought of solid integral agates, and finally the crown and sceptre of Austria upon red velvet cushions, looking very much like their imitations on the stage, were among the world of splendors unfolded to our eyes. The Florentine diamond and the bas-reliefs by Raphael Donner were all I coveted. The beauty of the diamond was royal. It needed no imagination to feel its value. A savage would pick it up in the desert for a star dropped out of the sky. For the rest, the demand on my admiration fatigued me, and I was glad to escape with my dusty friends from the unive-sity, and exchange courtesies in the free air. One of them spoke English a little, and called me " Mister Englishman," on bidding me adieu. I was afraid of a beer-shop scene in Vienna, and did not correct the mistake. As we were going out of the court, four covered wagons, drawn each by four superb horses, dashed through the gate. I waited a moment to see what 112 PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. they contained. Thirty or forty servants in livery came out from the palace, and took from the wagons quantities of empty baskets carefully labelled with directions. They were from Schoenbrunn, where the emperor is at present residing with his court, and had come to market for the imperial kitchen. It should be a good dinner that requires sixteen such horses to carry to the cook. It was the hungry hour of two, and I was still mu- sing on the emperor's dinner, and admiring the anx- ious interest his servants took in their disposition of the baskets, when a blast of military music came to my ear. It was from the barracks of the imperial guard, and I stepped under the arch, and listened to them an hour. How gloriously they played ! It was prob- ably the finest band in Austria. I have heard much good music, but of its kind this was like a new sensa- tion to me. They stand, in playing, just under the window at which the emperor appears daily when in the city. I have been indebted to Mr. Schwartz, the Ameri- can consul at Vienna, for a very unusual degree of kindness. Among other polite attentions, he procured for me to-day an admission to the Polytechnic school — a favor granted with difficulty, except on the ap- pointed days for public visits. The Polytechnic school was established in 1816, by the present emperor. The building stands outside the rampart of the city, of elegant proportions, and about as large as all the buildings of Yale or Harvard col- lege thrown into one. Its object is to promote in- struction in the practical sciences, or, in other words, to give a practical education for the trades, commerce, or manufactures. It is divided into three departments. The first is preparatory, and the course occupies two years. The studies are religion and morals, element- ary mathematics, natural history, geography, univer- sal history, grammar, and " the German style" decla- mation, drawing, writing, and the French, Italian, and Bohemian languages. To enter this class, the boy must be thirteen years of age, and pays fifty cents per month. The second course is commercial, and occupies one year. The studies are mercantile correspondence, commercial law, mercantile arithmetic, the keeping of books, geography, and history, as they relate to com- merce, acquaintance with merchandise, &c, &c. The third course lasts one year. The studies are chymistry as applicable to arts and trades, the fermen- tation of woods, tannery, soap-making, dying, blanch- ing, &c, &c. ; also mechanism, practical geometry, civil architecture, hydraulics, and technology. The two last courses are given gratis. The whole is under the direction of a principal, who has under him thirty professors and two or three guardians of apparatus. We were taken first into a noble hall, lined with glass cases containing specimens of every article man- ufactured in the German dominions. From the finest silks down to shoes, wigs, nails, and mechanics' tools, here were all the products of human labor. The va- riety was astonishing. Within the limits of a single room, the pupil is here made acquainted with every mechanic art known in his country. The next hall was devoted to models. Here was every kind of bridge, fortification, lighthouse, dry-dock, breakwater, canal-lock, &c, &c. ; models of steam- boats, of ships, and of churches, in every style of archi- tecture. It was a little world. We went thence to the chemical apartment. The servitor here, a man without education, has construct- ed all the apparatus. He is an old gray-headed man, of a keen German countenance, and great simplicity of manners. He takes great pride in having con- structed the largest and most complete chemical ap- paratus now in London. The one which he exhibited to us occupies the whole of an immense hall, and pro- duces an electric discharge like the report of a pistol. The ordinary batteries in our universities are scarce a twentieth part as powerful. After showing us a variety of experiments, the old man turned suddenly and asked us if we knew the ge- ometrical figures described by the vibrations of musi- cal notes. We confessed our ignorance, and he pro- duced a pane of glass covered with black sand. He then took a fiddle-bow, and holding the glass horizon- tally, drew it downward against the edge at a peculiar angle. The sand flew as if it had been bewitched, and took the shape of a perfect square. He asked us to name a figure. We named a circle. Another careful draw of the bow, and the sand flew into a cir- cle, with scarce a particle out of its perfect curve. Twenty times he repeated the experiment, and with the most complicated figures drawn on paper. He had reduced it to an art. It would have hung him for a magician a century ago. However one condemns the policy of Austria with respect to her subject provinces and the rest of Eu- rope, it is impossible not to be struck with her liberal provision for her own immediate people. The public institutions of all kinds in Vienna are allowed to be the finest and most liberally endowed on the continent. Her hospitals, prisons, houses of industry, and schools, are on an imperial scale of munificence. The emper- or himself is a father to his subjects, and every tongue blesses him. Napoleon envied him their affection, it is said, and certainly no monarch could be more uni- versally beloved. Among the institutions of Vienna are two which are peculiar. One is a maison d' accouchement, into which any female can enter veiled, remain till after the period of her labor, and depart unknown, leaving her child in the care of the institution, which rears it as a foundling. Its object is a benevolent prevention of infanticide. The other is a private penitentiary, to which the fathers of respectable families can send for reforma- tion children they are unable to govern. The name is kept a secret, and the culprits are returned to their families after a proper time, punished without dis- grace. Pride of character is thus preserved, while the delinquent is firmly corrected. LETTER LXXIV. VIENNA, — PALACES AND GARDENS MOSAIC COPY OF DA VINCI'S "LAST SUPPER" COLLECTION OF WAR- LIKE ANTIQUITIES ; SCANDERBURG's SWORD, MON- TEZUMA'S TOMAHAWK, RELICS OF THE CRUSADERS, WARRIORS IN ARMOR, THE FARMER OF AUGSBURGH ROOM OF PORTRAITS OF CELEBRATED INDIVIDUALS GOLD BUSTS OF JUPITER AND JUNO THE GLACIS, FULL OF GARDENS, THE GENERAL RESORT OF THE PEOPLE UNIVERSAL SPIRIT OF ENJOYMENT SIM- PLICITY AND CONFIDENCE IN THE MANNERS OF THE VIENNESE BADEN. At the foot of a hill in one of the beautiful suburbs of Vienna, stands a noble palace, called the Linoer Belvidere. On the summit of the hill stands another, equally mangnificent, called the Upper Belvidere, and between the two extend broad and princely gardens, open to the public. On the lower floor of the entrance-hall in the former palace, lies the copy, in mosaic, of Leonardo da Vinci's " Last Supper," done at Napoleon's order. Though supposed to be the finest piece of mosaic in the world, it is so large that they have never found a place for it. A temporary balcony has been erected on one side of the room, and the spectator mounts nearly to the PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 113 ceiling to get a fair position for looking down upon it. That unrivalled picture, now going to decay in the convent at Milan, will probably depend upon this copy for its name with posterity. The expression in the faces of the apostles is as accurately preserved as in the admirable engraving of Morghen. The remaining halls in the palace are occupied by a grand collection of antiquities, principally of a warlike character. When I read in my old worm-eaten Burton, of " Scanderburg's strength," I never thought to see his sword. It stands here against the wall, a long straight weapon with a cross hilt, which few men could heave to their shoulders. The tomahawk of poor Montezuma hnngs near it. It was presented to the emperor by the king of Spain. It is of a dark granite, and polished very beautifully. What a singular curiosity to find in Austria! The windows are draped with (lags dropping in pieces with age. This, so in tatters, was renowned in the crusades. It was carried to the Holy Land and brought back by the archduke Ferdinand. A hundred warriors in bright armor stand round the hall. Their visors are down, their swords in their hands, their feet planted for a spring. One can scarce believe there are no men in them. The name of some renowned soldier is attached to each. This was the armor of the cruel Visconti of Milan — that, of Duke Alba of Florence — both costly suits, beautifully inlaid with gold. In the centre of the room stands a gigantic fellow in full armor, with a sword on his thigh and a beam in his right hand. It is the shell of the famous fanner of Augsbunrh, who was in the service of one of the emperors. He was over eight feet in height, and limbed in proportion. How near such relics bring history! With what increased facility one pictures the warrior to his fancy, seeing his sword, and hearing the very rattle of his armor. Yet it puts one into Ham- let's vein to see a contemptible valet lay his hand with impunity on the armed shoulder, shaking the joints that once belted the soul of a Visconti ! I turned, in leaving the room, to take a second look at the flag of the ctusade. It had floated, perhaps, ovei the helmet of Cmir de Lion. Saladin may have had it in his eye, assaulting the Christian camp with his pagans. In the next room hung fifty or sixty portraits of celebrated individuals, presented in their time to the emperors of Austria. There was one of Mary of Scotland. It is a face of superlative loveliness, taken with a careless and most bewitching half smile, and yet not without the look of royalty, which one traces in all the pictures of the unfortunate queen. One of the emperors of Germany married Phillippina, a far- mer's daughter, and here is her portrait. It is done in the prim old style of the middle ages, but the face is full of character. Her husband's portrait hangs beside it, and she looks more born for an emperor than he. Hall after hall followed, of costly curiosities. A volume would not describe them. Two gold busts of Jupiter and Juno, by Benvenuto Cellini, attracted my attention particularly. They were very beautiful, but I would copy them in bronze, and coin "the thunderer and his queen," were they mine. Admiration is the most exhausting thing in the world. The servitor opened a gate leading into the gardens of the palace, that we might mount to the Upper Belvi- dere, which contains the imperial gallery of paintings. But 1 had no more strength. I could have dug in the field till dinner-time — but to be astonished more than three hours without respite is beyond me. I took a stroll in the garden. How delightfully the unmeaning beauty of a fountain refreshes one after this inward fatigue. I walked on, up one alley and down another, happy in finding nothing that surprised me, or worked upon my imagination, or bothered my historical rec- ollections, or called upon my wornout superlatives for expression. I fervently hoped not to have another new sensation till after dinner. 8 Vienna is an immense city (two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants), but its heart only is walled in. You may walk from gate to gate in twenty minutes. In leaving the walls you come upon a feature of the city which distinguishes it from every other in Eu- rope. Its rampart is encircled by an open park (called Ike Glacis), a quarter of a mile in width and perhaps three miles in circuit, which is, in fact, in the centre of Vienna. The streets commence again on the oth- er side of it, and on going from one part of the city to the other, you constantly cross this lovely belt of ver- dure, which girds her heart like a cestus of health. The top of the rampart itself is planted with trees, and, commanding beautiful views in every direction, it is generally thronged with people. (It was a favorite walk of the Duke of Keichstadt.) Between this and the Glacis lies a deep trench, crossed by drawbridges at every gate, the bottom of which is cultivated pret- tily as a flower-garden. Altogether Vienna is a beau- tiful city. Paris may have single views about the Tuileries that are finer than anything of the same kind here, but this capital of western Europe, as a whole, is quite the most imposing city I have seen. The Glacis is full of gardens. I requested my dis- agreeable necessity of a valet, this afternoon, to take me to two or three of the most general resorts of the people. We passed out by one of the city gates, five minutes walk from the hotel, and entered immediately into a crowd of people, sauntering up and down under the alleys of the Glacis. A little farther on we found a fanciful building, buried in trees, and occupied as a summer cafe. In a little circular temple in front was stationed a band of music, and around it for a con- siderable distance were placed small tables, filled just now with elegantly-dressed people, eating ices, or drinking coffee. It was in every respect like a private fete champelre. I wandered about for an hour, expect- ing involuntarily to meet some acquaintance — there was such a look of kindness and unreserve through- out. It is a desolate feeling to be alone in such a crowd. We jumped into a carriage and drove round the Glacis for a mile, passing everywhere crowds of peo- ple idling leisurely along and evidently out for pleas- ure. We stopped before a superb facade, near one of the gates of the city. It was the entrance to the Volksgarlen. We entered in front of a fountaiu, and turning up a path to the left, found our way almost impeded by another crowd. A semicircular building, with a range of columns in front encircling a stand for a band of music, was surrounded by perhaps two or three thousand people. Small tables and seats under trees, were spread in every direction within reach of the music. The band played charmingly. Waiters in white jackets and aprons were running to and fro, receiving and obeying orders for refreshments, and here again all seemed abandoned to one spirit of en- joyment. I had thought we must have left all Vien- na at the other garden. I wondered how so many people could be spared from their occupations and families. It was no holyday. " It is always as gay in fair weather," said Karl. A little back into the garden stands a beautiful little structure, on the model of the temple of Theseus in Greece. It was built for Canova's group of " Theseus and the Centaur," bought by the emperor. 1 had seen copies of it in Rome, but was of course much more struck with the original. It is a noble piece of sculpture. Still farther back, on the rise of a mount, stood another fanciful cafe, with another band of music — and another crowd ! After we had walked around it, my man was hurrying me away. " You have not seen the augarten," said he. It stands upon a little green island in the Danube, and is more extensive than either of the others. But I was content where I was ; and 114 PENC1LLJNGS BY THE WAY. dismissing my Asmodeus, I determined to spend the evening wandering about in the crowds alone. The sun went down, the lamps were lit, the alleys were il- luminated, the crowd increased, and the emperor him- self could not have given a gayer evening's entertain- ment. Vienna has the reputation of being the most profli- gate capital in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is certainly, even to a stranger, no lack of temptation to every species of pleasure. But there is, besides, a degree of simplicity and confidence in the manners of the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to Amer- ica, and inconsistent with the state of society in Eu- rope. In the most public resorts, and at all hours of the day and evening, modest and respectable young women of the middle classes walk alone perfectly se- cure from molestation. They sit under the trees in these public gardens, eat ices at the cafes, walk home unattended, and no one seems to dream of improprie- ty. Whole families, too, spend the afternoon upon a seat in a thronged place of resort, their children play- ing about them, the father reading, and the mother sewing or knitting, quite unconscious of observation. The lower and middle classes live all summer, I am told, out of doors. It is never oppressively warm in this latitude, and their houses are deserted after three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and the whole popu- lation pours out to the different gardens on the Gla- cis, where till midnight, they seem perfectly happy in the enjoyment of the innocent and unexpensive pleas- ures which a wise government has provided for them. The nobles and richer class pass their summer in the circle of rural villages near the city. They are nested about on the hills, and crowded with small and lovely rural villas, more like the neighborhood of Bos- ton than anything I have seen in Europe. Baden, where the emperor passes much of his time, is called " the miniature Switzerland." Its baths are excellent, its hills are cut into retired and charming walks, and from June till September it is one of the gayest of watering-places. It is about a two hours' drive from the city, and omnibuses at a very low rate, run between at all times of the day. The Austrians seldom travel, and the reason is evident. They have everything for which others travel, at home LETTER LXXV. VIENNA THE PALACE OF LIECHTENSTEIN. The red-nosed German led on through the crowded Graben, jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and her handsome Hungarian cavalier, the phlegmatic smoker and the bearded Turk, alike. We passed the imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty bridge over the trench (casting a look below at the flower garden laid out in "the ditch" which encircles the wall), and en- tered upon the lovely Glacis — one step from the crowded street to the fresh greenness of a park. Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded alley, that you are in the heart of the city still ? The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair chil- dren and shy maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude- seeking lovers, and its idling soldiers, and we again enter the crowded street. A half hour more, and the throng thins again, the country opens, and here you are, in front of the palace of Licchstcnstein, the first noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful and light architecture, rises from its clustering trees ; servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and lean against the pillars of the portico, and with an ex- planation from my lying valet, who evidently makes me out an ambassador at least by the ceremony with which Tarn received, a grav servitor makes bis appear- ance and opens the immense glass door leading from the side of the court. One should step gingerly on the polished marble of this superb staircase ! It opens at once into a lofty hall, the ceiling of which is painted in fresco by an Italian master. It is a room of noble proportions. Few churches in America are larger, and yet it seems in keeping with the style of the palace, the staircase — everything but the creature meant to inhabit it. How different are the moods in which one sees pic- tures ! To-day I am in the humor to give it to the painter's delusion. The scene is real. Asmodeus is at my elbow, and I am witched from spot to spot, in- visible myself, gazing on the varied scenes revealed only to the inspired vision of genius. A landscape opens.* It is one of the woody recess- es of Lake Nervi, at the very edge of " Dian's Mir- ror." The huntress queen is bathing with her nymphs. The sandal is half laced over an ankle that seems fit for nothing else than to sustain a goddess, when casting her eye on the lovely troop emerging from the water, she sees the unfortunate Calista sur- rounded by her astonished sisters, and fainting with shame. Poor Calista ! one's heart pleads for her. But how expressive is the cold condemning look in the beautiful face of her mistress queen ! Even the dogs have started from their reclining position on the grass, and stand gazing at the unfortunate, wondering at the silent astonishment of the virgin troop. Pardon her, imperial Dian ! Come to the baptism of a child ! It is a vision of Guido Reni's.f A young mother, apparently scarce sixteen, has brought her "first child to the altar. She kneels with it in her arms, looking earnestly into the face of the priest while he sprinkles the water on its pure forehead, and pronounces the words of consecra- tion. It is a most lovely countenance, made lovelier by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes are moist, her throat swells with emotion — my own sight dims while I gaze upon her. We have intruded on one of the most holy moments of nature. A band of girls, sisters by the resemblance, have accompanied the young mother, and stand, with love and wonder in their eyes, gazing on the face of the child. How strangely the mingled thoughts, crowding through their minds, are expressed in their excited features. It is a scene worthy of an audience of angels. We have surprised Giorgione's wife (the " Flora " of Titian, the " love in life " of Byron) looking at a sketch by her husband. It stands on his easel, out- lined in crayons, and represents Lucretia the moment before she plunges the dagger into her bosom. She was passing through his studio, and you see by the half suspended foot, that she stopped but for a momentary glance, and has forgotten herself in thoughts that have risen unaware. The head of Lucretia resembles her own, and she is wondering what Giorgione though! while he drew it. Did he resemble her to the Ro- man's wife in virtue as well as in feature ? There is an embarrassment in the expression of her face, as if she doubted he had drawn it half in mischief. We will leave the lovely Venetian to her thoughts. When she sits again to Titian, it will be with a colder modesty. Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene for you. It is an old man, who has thrust his head through a prison gate, and is looking into the street with the listless patience and curiosity of one whom habit has reconciled to his situation. His beard is neglected, his hair is slightly grizzled, and on his * By Franceschini. He passed his life with the Prince Lieehstenstein, and his pictures are found only in this collec- tion. He is a delicious painter, full of poetry, with the one fault of too voluptuous a style. f One of the loveliest pictures that divine painter ever drew. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 115 head sits a shabby fur cap, that has evidently shared all his imprisonment, and is quite past auy pride of appearance. What a vacant face! How perfectly he seems to look upon the street below, as upon some- thing with which he has nothing more to do. There is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past that. He looks at the playing children, and watches the zigzag trot of an idle dog with the quiet apathy of one who can find nothing better to help off the hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented, unthinking misery. Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot at his mother's knee, while she pares an apple for him ! With what an amused and playful love she istens to his hurrying entreaties, stealing a glance at him as he pleads, with a deeper feeling than he will be able to comprehend for years ! It is one of the commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with spec- ulation ! On — on — what an endless gallery ! I have seen twelve rooms, with forty or fifty pictures in each, and there are thirteen halls more! The delusion begins to fade. These are pictures merely. Beautiful ones, however ! If language could convey to your eye the impressions that this waste and wealth of beauty have conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture. There is not an indifferent one here. All Italy to- gether has not so many works by the Flemish mas- ters as are contained in this single gallery — certainly none so fine. A most princely fortune for many gen- erations must have been devoted to its purchase. I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by ' Corregio. They were the gems of the galleries in which they exist, but always small, and seemed to me to want a certain finish. Here is a Corregio, a large picture, and no miniature ever had so elaborate a beauty. It melts into the eye. It is a conception of female beauty so very extraordinary, that it seems to j me it must become, in the mind of every one who sees ! it, the model and the standard of all loveliness. It is j a nude Venus, sitting lost in thought, with Cupid j asleep in her lap. She is in the sacred retirement of \ solitude, and the painter has thrown into her attitude ' and expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all presence, that you feel like a daring intruder while you gaze upon the picture. Surely such softness of color- ing, such faultless proportions, such subdued and yet eloquent richness of teint in the skin, was never before attained by mortal pencil. I am here, some five thou- sand miles from America, yet would I have made the • voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this rav- j ishing image of woman. Iu the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of female beauty, both in degree and in variety, than his ' anticipations had promised. Three or four heads at the most, of the many hundreds that he sees, are im- | printed in his memory, and serve as standards in his ! future observations. Even when standing before the i most celebrated pictures, one often returns to recollec- tions of living beauty in his own country, by which j the most glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suf- fer in comparison. In my own experience this has been often true, and it is perhaps the only thing in j which my imagination of foreign wonders was too I fervent. To this Venus of Corregio's, however, I j unhesitatingly submit all knowledge, all conception j even, of female loveliness. I have seen nothing in | life, imagined nothing from the descriptions of poets, that is any way comparable to it. It is matchless. In one of the last rooms the servitor unlocked two handsome cases, and showed me, with a great deal of circumstance, two heads by Denner. They were an old man and his wife — two hale, temperate, good old country gossips — but so curiously finished ! Every pore was painted. You counted the stiff stumps of the goodman's beard as you might those of a living person, till you were tired. Every wrinkle looked as if a month had been spent in elaborating it. The man said they were extremely valuable, and I certainly never saw anything more curiously and perhaps use- lessly wrought. Near them was a capital picture of a drunken fellow, sitting by himself and laughing heartily at his own per- formance on the pipe. It was irresistible, and I join- ed in the laugh till the long suite of halls rung again. Landscapes by Van Delen — such as I have seen engravings of in America, and sighed over as unreal — the skies, the temples, the water, the soft mountains, the distant ruins, seemed so like the beauty of a dream. Here, they recall to me even lovelier scenes in Italy — atmospheres richer than the painter's pallet can imi- tate, and ruins and temples whose ivy-grown and mel- ancholy grandeur are but feebly copied at the best Come, Karl ! I am bewildered with these pictures. You have twenty such galleries in Vienna, you say! I have seen enough for to-day, however, and we will save the Belvidere till to-morrow. Here ! pay the servitor, and the footman, and the porter, and let us get into the open air. How common look your Vi- ennese after the celestial images we have left behind ! And, truly, this is the curse of refinement. The faces we should have loved else, look dull ! The forms that were graceful before, move somehow heavily. I have entered a gallery ere now, thinking well of a face that accompanied me, and I have learned indifference to it, by sheer comparison, before coming away. We return through the Kohlmarket, one of tl e most fashionable streets of Vienna. It is like a fancy-ball. Hungarians, Poles, Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Molda- vians, Greeks, Turks, all dressed in their national and striking costumes, promenade up and down, smoking all, and none exciting the slightest observation. Every third window is a pipe-shop, and they show, by their splendor and variety, the expensiveness of the passion. Some of them are marked "two hundred dollars." The streets reek with tobacco smoke. Y r ou never catch a breath of untainted air within the Glacis. Your hotel, your cafe, your coach, your friend, are all redolent of the same disgusting odor. LETTEB LXXVI. THE PALACE OF SCHOENBRUNN HIETZING, THE SUMMER RETREAT OF THE WEALTHY VIENNESE — COUNTRY- HOUSE OF THE AMERICAN CONSUL — SPECIMEN OF PURE DOMESTIC HAPPINESS IN A GERMAN FAMILY — SPLENDID VILLAGE BALL — SUBSTANTIAL FARE FOR THE LADIES CURIOUS FASHION OF CUSHIONING THE WINDOWS GERMAN GRIEF — THE UPPER BELVIDERE PALACE — ENDLESS QUANTITY OF FICTURES. Drove to Schoenbrunn. It is a princely palace, some three miles from the city, occupied at present by the emperor and his court. Napoleon resided here during his visit to Vienna, and here his son died — the two circumstances which alone make it worth much trou- ble to see. The afternoon was too cold to hope to meet the emperor in the grounds, and being quite satisfied with drapery and modern paintings, I content- ed myself with having driven through the court, and kept on to Hictzing. This is a small" village of country-seats within an hour's drive of the city — another Jamaica-Plains, or Dorchester in the neighborhood of Boston. It is the summer retreat of most of the rank and fashion of Vienna. The American consul has here a charming country-house, buried in trees, where the few of our countrymen who travel to Austria find the most hospi- table of welcomes. A bachelor friend of mine from New-York is domesticated in the village with a German 116 PENC1LL1NGS BY THE WAY. family. I was struck with the Americanism of their manners. The husband and wife, a female relative and an intimate friend of the family, were sitting in the garden engaged in grave, quiet, sensible conversation. They had passed the afternoon together. Their man- ners were affectionate to each other, but serious and respectful. When I entered, they received me with kindness, and the conversation was politely changed to French, which they all spoke fluently. Topics were started, in which it was supposed I would be interested, and altogether the scene was one of the simplest and purest domestic happiness. This seems to you, I dare say, like the description of a very common thing, but I have not seen such a one before since I left my coun- try. It is the first family I have found in two years' travel who lived in, and seemed sufficient for, them- selves. It came over me with a kind of feeling of refreshment. In the evening there was a ball at a public room in the village. It was built in the rear of a cafe, to which we paid about thirty cents for entrance. I was not prepared for the splendor with which it was got up. The hall was very large and of beautiful proportions, built like the interior of a temple, with columns on the four sides. A partition of glass divided it from a sup- per-room equally large, in which were set out perhaps fifty tables, furnished with a carte, from which each person ordered his supper when he wished it, after the fashion of a restaurant. The best band in Vienna filled the orchestra, led by the celebrated Strauss, who has bee 1 honored for his skill with presents from half the monarchs of Europe. The ladies entered, dressed in perfect taste, a la Parisienne, but the gentlemen (hear it, Basil Hall and Mrs. Trollope !) came in frock coats and boots, and danced with their hats on ! It was a public ball, and there was, of course, a great mixture of society ; but I was assured that it was attended constantly by the most respectable people of the village, and was as respecta- ble as anything of the kind in the middle classes. There were, certainly, many ladies in the company of elegant manners and appearance, and among the gen- tlemen I recognised two attaches to the French em- bassy, whom I had known in Paris, and several Austrian gentlemen of rank were pointed out to me among the dancers. The galopade and the waltz were the only dances, and dirty boots and hats to the contrary not- withstanding, it was the best waltzing I ever saw. They danced with a soul. The best part of it was the supper. They danced and eat — danced and eat, the evening through. It was quite the more important entertainment of the two. The most delicate ladies present returned three and four times to the supper, ordering fried chicken, salads, cold meats, and beer, again and again, as if every waltz created a fresh appetite. The bill was called for, the ladies assisted in making the change, the tankard was drained, and off they strolled to the ball-room to engage with renewed spirit in the dance. And these, positively, were ladies who, in dress, manners, and mod- est demeanor, might pass uncriticised in any society in the world ! Their husbands and brothers attended them, and no freedom was attempted, and I am sure it would not have been permitted even to speak to a lady without a formal introduction. We left most of the company supping at a late hour, and I drove into the city, amused with the ball, and reconciled to any or all of the manners which travellers in America find so peculiarly entertaining. These cold winds from the Danube have given me a rheumatism. I was almost reconciled to it this morning, however, by a curtain-scene which I should have missed but for its annoyance. I had been driven out of my bed at daylight, and was walking my room between the door and the window, when a violent knocking in the street below arrested my attention. A respectable family occupies the house opposite, con- sisting of a father and mother and three daughters, the least attractive of whom has a lover. I can not well avoid observing them whenever I am in my room, for every house in Vienna has a leaning cushion on the window for the elbows, and the ladies of all classes are upon them the greater part of the day. A handsome carriage, servants in livery, and other circumstances, leave no doubt in my mind that my neighbors are rather of the better class. The lover stood at the street door with a cloak on his arm, and a man at his side with his portmanteau. He was going on a journey and had come to take leave of his mistress. He was let in by a gaping servant, who looked rather astonished at the hour he had chosen for his visit, but the drawing-room windows were soon thrown open, and the lady made her appearance with her hair in papers and other marks of a hasty toilet. My room is upon the same floor, and as I paced to and fro, the narrowness of the street in a manner forced them upon my observation. The scene was a very violet one, and the lady's tears flowed without restraint. After twenty partings at least, the lover scarce getting to the door before he returned to take another embrace, he finally made his exit, and the lady threw herself on a sofa and hid her face — for five minutes ! I had began to feel for her, although her swollen eyes added very unnecessarily to her usual plainness, when she rose and rang the bell. The servant appeared and disap- peared, and in a few minutes returned with a ham, a loaf of bread, and a mug of beer ! and down sets my sentimental miss and consoles the agony of parting with a meal that I would venture to substitute in quan- tity for any working man's lunch. I went to bed and rose at nine, and she was sitting at breakfast with the rest of the family, playing as good a knife and fork as her sisters, though, I must admit, with an expression of sincere melancholy in her coun- tenance. The scene, I am told by my friend the consul, was perfectly German. They eat a great deal, he says, in affliction. The poet writes : — " They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings." For silent read hungry. The Upper Belvidere, a palace containing eighteen large rooms, filled with pictures. This is the imperial gallery and the first in Austria. How can I give you an idea of perhaps five hundred masterpieces ! You see here now, and by whom Italy has been strip- ped. They have bought up all Flanders one would think, too. In one room here are are twenty-eight superb Vandykes. Austria, in fact, has been growing rich while every other nation on the continent has been growing poor, and she has purchased the treas- ures of half the world at a discount.* It is wearisome writing of pictures, one's language is so limited. I must mention one or two in this col- lection, however, and I will let you off entirely on the Esterhazy, which is nearly as fine. Cleopatra dying. She is represented younger than usual and with a more fragile and less queenly style of beauty than is common. It is a fair slight creature of seventeen, who looks made to depend for her very breath upon affection, and is dying of a broken heart. It is painted with great feeling, and with a soft and de- lightful tone of color which is peculiar to the artist. It is the third of Guido Cagnacci's pictures that I have •Besides the three galleries of the Belvidere, Leichsten- stein, and Esterhazy, which contain as many choice masters as Rome and Florence together, the guide-book refers the traveller to sixty-four private galleries of oil paintings, well worth his attention, and to ticenty-five private collections of engravings and antiquities. We shall soon be obliged to go to Vienna to study the arts, at this rate. They have only no sculpture. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 117 seen. One was the gem of a gallery at Bologna, and was bought last summer by Mr. Cabot of Boston. The wife of Potiphar is usually represented as a woman of middle age, with a full voluptuous person. She is so drawn, T remember, in the famous picture in the Barberini palace at Rome, said to be the most ex- pressive thing of its kind in the world. Here is a painting, less dangerously expressive of passion, but full of beauty. She is eighteen at the most, fair, del- icate, and struggles with the slender boy, who seems scarce older than herself, more like a sister from whom a mischievous brother has stolen something in sport. Her partly disclosed figure has all the incomplete slightness of a girl. The handsome features of Jo- seph express more embarrassment than anger. The habitual courtesy to his lovely mistress is still there, his glance is just averted from the snowy bosom tow- ard which lie is drawn, but in the firmly curved lip the sense of duty sits clearly defined, and evidently will triumph. I have forgotten the painter's name. His model must have been some innocent girl whose mod- est beauty led him away from his subject. Called by another name the picture were perfect. A portrait of Count Wallenstein, by Vandyke. It looks a man, in the fullest sense of the word. The pendant to it is the Countess Turentaxis, and she 13 a woman he might well have loved — calm, lofty, and pure. They are pictures I should think would have an influence on the character of those who saw them habitually. Here is a curious picture by Schnoer — Mephistoph- eles tempting Faust. The scholar sits at his table, with a black letter volume open before him, and appa- ratus of all descriptions around. The devil has en- tered in the midst of his speculations, dressed in black like a professor, and stands waiting the decision of Faust, who gazes intently on the manuscript held in his hand. His fingers are clenched, his eyes start from his head, his feet are braced, and the devil eyes him with a side glance, in which malignity and satis- faction are admirably mingled. The features of p"aust are emaciated, and show the agitation of his soul very powerfully. The points of his compasses, globes, and instruments, emit electric sparks toward the infernal visiter; his lamp burns blue, and the picture altogeth- er has the most diabolical effect. It is quite a large painting, and just below, by the same artist, hangs a small, simple, sweet Madonna. It is a singular con- trast in subjects by the same hand. A portrait of the Princess Esterhazy, by Angelica Kauffman — a beautiful woman, painted in the pure, touching style of that interesting artist. Then comes a Cleopatra dropping the pearl into the cup. How often, and how variously, and how admi- rably always, the Egyptian queen is painted ! I nev- er have seen an indifferent one. In this picture the painter seems to have lavished all he could conceive of female beauty upon his subject. She is a glorious creature. It reminds me of her own proud descrip- tion of herself, when she is reproaching Antony to one of her maids, in the "The False One" of Beaumont and Fletcher : — " To prefer The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe, Before the life of love and soul of beauty .'" I have marked a great many pictures in this collec- tion I can not describe without wearying you, yet I feel unwilling to let them go by. A female, representing religion, feeding a dove from a cup, a most lovely thing by Guido ; portraits of Gerard Douw and Rembrandt, by themselves ; Rubens's children, a boy and girl ten or twelve years of age, one of the most finished paint- ings I ever saw, and entirely free from the common dropsical style of coloring of this artist ; another por- trait of Giorgione's u-ife, the fiftieth that I have seen, at least, yet a face of which one would never become weary ; a glowing landscape by Fischer, the first by this celebrated artist I have met ; and last (for this is mere catalogue-making), a large picture representing the silting of the English 'parliament in the time of Pitt. It contains about a hundred portraits, among which those of Pitt and Fox are admirable. The great prime minister stands speaking in the foreground, and Fox sits on the opposite side of the house listen- ing attentively with half a smile on his features. It is a curious picture to find in Vienna. One thing more, however — a Venus, by Lampi. It kept me a great while before it. She lies asleep on a rich couch, and, apparently in her dream, is pressing a rose to her bosom, while one delicate foot, carelessly thrown back, is half imbedded in a superb cushion supporting a crown and sceptre. It is a lie, by all ex- perience. The moral is false, but the picture is de licious. LETTER LXXVII. DEPARTURE FROM VIENNA — THE EIL-WAGON — MOTLEY QUALITY OF THE PASSENGERS — THUNDERSTORM IN THE MOUNTAINS OF STYRIA TRIESTE SHORT BEDS OF THE GERMANS — GROTTO OF ADELSBURG ; CURIOUS BALL-ROOM IN THE CAVERN NAUTICAL PREPARA- TIONS FOR A DANCE ON BOARD THE UNITED STATES SWEPT AWAY BY THE BORA — ITS SUCCESSFUL TER- MINATION. I left Vienna at daylight in a diligence nearly as capacious as a steamboat — inaptly called the eil-wagon. A Friuli count with a pair of cavalry mustaches^ his wife, a pretty Viennese of eighteen, scarce married a year, two fashionable looking young Russians, an Aus- trian midshipman, a fat Gratz lawyer, a trader from the Danube, and a young Bavarian student, going to seek his fortune in Egypt, were my companions. The social habits of continental travellers had given me thus much information by the end of the first post. We drove on with German regularity, three days and three nights, eating four meals a-day (and very good ones), and improving hourly in our acquaintance. The Russians spoke all our languages. The Friulese and the Bavarian spoke everything but English, and the lady, the trader, and the Gratz avocat, were confined to their vernacular. It was a pretty idea of Babel when the conversation became general. We were coursing the bank of a river, in one of the romantic passes of the mountains of Styria, with a dark thunder-storm gathering on the summit of a crag overhanging us. I was pointing out to one of my companions a noble ruin of a castle seated very loftily on the edge of one of the precipices, when a streak of the most vivid lightning shot straight upon the northernmost turret, and the moment after several large masses rolled slowly down the mountain-side. It was so like the scenery in a play, that I looked at my companion with half a doubt that it was some op- tical delusion. It reminded me of some of Martin's engravings. The sublime is so well imitated in our day that one is less surprised than he would suppose when nature produces the reality. The night was very beautiful when we reached the summit of the mountain above Trieste. The new moon silvered the little curved bay below like a polish- ed shield, and right in the path of its beams lay the two frigates like a painting. I must confess that the comfortable cot swinging in the ward-room of the " United States " was the prominent thought in my mind as I gazed upon the scene. The fatigue of three days and nights' hard driving had dimmed rv eye for the picturesque. Leaving my compan u v 118 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY the short beds* and narrow coverlets of a German ho- tel, 1 jumped into the first boat at the pier, and in a few minutes was alongside the ship. How musical is the hail of a sentry in one's native tongue, after a short habituation to the jargon of foreign languages ! 44 Boat ahoy !" It made my heart leap. The officers had just returned from Venice, some over land by the Friuli and some by the steamer through the gulf, and were sitting round the table laughing with profession- al merriment over their various adventures. It was getting back to country and friends and home. I accompanied the commodore's family yesterday in a visit to the Grotto of Adelsburg. It is about thirty miles back into the Friuli mountains, near the prov- ince of Cariola. We arrived at the nearest tavern at three in the afternoon, and subscribing our names upon the magistrate's books, took four guides and the requisite number of torches, and started on foot. A half hour's walk brought us to a large, rushing stream, which, after turning a mill, disappeared with violence into the mouth of a broad cavern, sunk in the base of a mountain. An iron gate opened on the nearest side, and lighting our torches, we received an addition of half a dozen men to our party of guides, and entered. We descended for ten or fifteem minutes, through a capacious gallery of rock, up to the ankles in mud, and feeling continually the drippings exuding from the roof, till by the echoing murmurs of dashing wa- ter we found ourselves approaching the bed of a sub- terraneous river. We soon emerged in a vast cavern, whose height, though we had twenty torches, was lost in the darkness. The river rushed dimly below us, at the depth of perhaps fifty feet, partially illuminated by a row of lamps, hung on a slight wooden bridge by which we were to cross to the opposite side. We descended by a long flight of artificial stairs, and stood upon the bridge. The wildness of the scene is indescribable. A lamp or two glimmered faintly from the lofty parapet from which we had de- scended, the depth and breadth of the surrounding cave could only be measured by the distance of the echoes of the waters, and beneath us leaped and foamed a dark river, which sprang from its invisible channel, danced a moment in the faint light of our lamps, and was lost again instantly in darkness. It brought with it, from the green fields through which it had come, a current of soft warm air, peculiarly de- lightful after the chilliness of the other parts of the cavern ; there was a smell of new-mown hay in it which seemed lost in the tartarean blackness around. Our guides led on, and we mounted along staircase on the opposite side of the bridge. At the head of it stood a kind of monument, engraved with the name of the emperor of Austria, by whose munificence the staircase had been cut and the conveniences for stran- gers provided. We turned hence to the right, and entered a long succession of natural corridors, roofed with stalactites, with a floor of rock and mud, and so even and wide that the lady under my protection had seldom occasion to leave my arm. In the narrowest part of it, the stalactites formed a sort of reversed grove, with the roots in the roof. They were of a snowy white, and sparkled brilliantly in the light of the torches. One or two had reached the floor, and formed slender and beautiful sparry columns, upon which the names of hundreds of visiters were written in pencil. The spars grew white as we proceeded, and we were constantly emerging into large halls of the size of hand- some drawing-rooms, whose glittering roofs, and sides * A German bed is never over five feet in length, and pro- portioaately narrow. The sheets, blankets, and coverlets, are cut exactly to the size of the bed's surface, so that there is no tucking up. The bed-clothes seem made for cradles. It is easy to imaging how a tall person slaeps in them. lined with fantastic columns, seemed like the brilliant frost-work of a crystallized cavern of ice. Some of the accidental formations of the stalagmites were very curious. One large area was filled with them of the height of small plants. It was called by the guides the "English Garden." A.t the head of another sa- loon, stood a throne, with a stalactite canopy above it, so like the work of art, that it seemed as if the sculp- tor had but left the finishing undone. We returned part of the way we had come, and took another branch of the grotto, a little more on the descent. A sign above informed us that it Was the 44 road to the infernal regions." We walked on an hour at a quick pace, stopping here and there to observe the oddity of the formations. In one place, the sta- lactites had enclosed a room, leaving only small open- ings between the columns, precisely like the grating of a prison. In another, the ceiling lifted out of the reach of torch-light, and far above us we heard the deep-toned beat as upon a muffled-bell. It was a thin circular sheet of spar, called "the bell," to which one of the guides had mounted, striking upon it with a bil- let of wood. We came after a while to a deeper descent, which opened into a magnificent and spacious hall. It is called "the ballroom," and used as such once a year, on the occasion of a certain Illyrian festa. The floor has been cleared of stalagmites, the roof and sides are ornamented beyond all art with glittering spars, a nat- ural gallery with a balustrade of stalactites contains the orchestra, and side-rooms are all around where supper might be laid, and dressing-rooms offered in the style of a palace. I can imagine nothing more magnificent than such a scene. A literal description of it even would read like a fairy tale. A little farther on, we came to a perfect representa- tion of a waterfall. The impregnated water had fallen on a declivity, and with a slightly ferruginous tinge of yellow, poured over in the most natural resemblance to a cascade after a rain. We proceeded for ten or fifteen minutes, and found a small room like a chapel, with a pulpit, in which stood one of the guides, who gave us, as we stood beneath, an Illyrian exhortation. There was a sounding-board above, and I have seen pulpits in old gothic churches that seemed at a first glance, to have less method in their architecture. The last thing we reached, was the most beautiful. From the cornice of a long gallery, hung a thin, translucent sheet of spar, in the graceful and waving folds of a cur- tain; with a lamp behind, the hand could be seen through any part of it. It was perhaps twenty feet in length, and hung five or six feet down from the roof of the cavern. The most singular part of it was the fringe. A ferruginous stain ran through it from one end to the other, with the exactness of a drawn line, and thence to the curving edge a most delicate rose- teint faded gradually down like the last flush of sunset through a silken curtain. Had it been a work of art, done in alabaster, and stained with the pencil, it would have been thought admirable. The guide wished us to proceed, but our feet were wet, and the air of the cavern was too chill. We were at least four miles, they told us, from the entrance, having walked briskly for upward of two hours. The grotto is said to extend ten miles under the moun- tains, and has never been thoroughly explored. Par- ties have started with provisions, and passed forty-eight hours in it without finding the extremity. It seems to me that any city I ever saw might be concealed in its caverns. I have often tried to conceive of the grot- toes of Antiparos, and the celebrated caverns of our own country, but I received here an entirely new idea of the possibility of space under ground. There is no conceiving it unseen. The river emerges on the other side of the mountain, seven or eight miles from its first entrance. PENC1LL1NGS BY THE WAY. 119 We supped and slept at the little albergo of the vil- lage, and returned the next day to an early dinner. Trieste.— A ball on board the United States. The guns were run out of the ports; the main and mizen- masts were wound with red and white bunting; the capstan was railed with arms and wreathed with flowers; the wheel was tied with nose-gays; the American eagle stood against the mainmast, with a 6tar of midshipmen's swords glittering above it; fes- toons of evergreens were laced through the rigging; the companion-way was arched with hoops of green leaves and roses ; the decks were tastefully chalked ; the commodore's skylight was piled with cushions and covered with red damask for an ottoman; seats were laid along from one carronade to the other; and the whole was enclosed with a temporary tent lined throughout with showy flags, and studded all over with bouquets of all the flowers of lllyria. Chande- liers made of bayonets, battle-lanterns, and caudles in any quantity, were disposed all over the hall. A splen- did supper was set out on the gun-deck below, draped in with flags. Our own and the Constellation's boats were to be at the pier at niue o'clock to bring off the ladies, and at noon everything promised of the brightest. First, about four in the afternoon came up a saucy- looking cloud from the westernmost peak of the Friuli. Then followed from every point toward the north, an extending edge of a broad solid black sheet which rose with the regularity of a curtain, and began to send down a wind upon us which made us look anxiously to our ball-room bowlines. The midshipmen were all forward, watching it from the forecastle. The lieu- tenants were in the gangway, watching it from the ladder. The commodore looked seriously out of the larboard cabin port. It was as grave a ship's company as ever looked out for a shipwreck. The country about Trieste is shaped like a bellows, and the city and harbor lie in the nose. They have a wind that comes down through the valley, called the " bora," which several times in the year is strong enough to lift people from their feet. We could see, by the clouds of dust on the mountain roads, that it was coming. At six o'clock the shrouds began to creak ; the white tops flew from the waves in showers of spray, and the roof of our sea-palace began to shiver in the wind. There was no more hope. We had waited even too long. All hands were called to take down the chandeliers, sword-stars, and ottomans, and before it was half done, the storm was upon us ; the bunting was flying and flapping, the nicely-chalked decks were swashed with rain, and strown with leaves of flowers, and the whole structure, the taste and labor of the ship's company for two days, was a watery wreck. Lieutenant C , who had had the direction of the whole, was the officer of the deck. He sent for his pea-jacket, and leaving him to pace out his watch among the ruins of his imagination, we went below to get early to bed, and forget our disappointment in sleep. The next morning the sun rose without a veil. The "blue Friuli" looked clear and fresh; the southwest wind came over softly from the shore of Italy, and we commenced retrieving our disaster with elastic spirit. Nothing had suffered seriously except the flowers, and boats were despatched ashore for fresh supplies, while the awnings were lifted higher and wider than before, the bright-colored flags replaced, the arms polished and arranged in improved order, and the decks re- chalked with new devices. At six in the evening ev- erything was swept up, and the ball-room astonished even ourselves. It was the prettiest place for a dance in the world. The ship has an admirable band of twenty Italians, collected from Naples and other ports, and a fanciful orchestra was raised for them on the terboard side of the mainmast. They struck up a march as the first boatful of ladies stepped upon the deck, and in the course of half an hour the waltzing commenced with at least two hundred couples, while the ottoman and seats under the hammock-cloths were filled with spec tators. The frigate has a lofty poop, and there was room enough upon it for two quadrilles after it had served as a reception-room. It was edged with a tem- porary balustrade, wreathed with flowers and studded with lights, and the cabin beneath (on a level with the main ball-room), was set out with card-tables. From the gangway entrance, the scene was like a brilliant theatrical ballet. An amusing part of it was the sailors' imitation on the forward decks. They had taken the waste shrub- bery and evergreens, of which there was a great quan- tity, and had formed a sort of grove, extending all round. It was arched with festoons of leaves, with quantities of fruit tied among them ; and over the en- j trance was suspended a rough picture of a frigate with ! the inscription, " Free trade and sailors' rights:' The j forecastle was ornamented with cutlasses and one or I two nautical transparencies, with pistols and miniature | ships interspersed, and the whole lit up handsomely. The men were dressed in their white duck trowsers and blue jackets, and sat round on the guns playing at draughts, or listening to the music, or gazing at the ladies constantly promenading fore and aft, and to me this was one of the most interesting parts of the spec- tacle. Five hundred weather-beaten and manly faces are a fine sight anywhere. The dance went gayly on. The reigning belle was an American, but we had lovely women of all nations among our guests. There are several wealthy Jewish families in Trieste, and their dark-eyed daughters, we may say at this distance, are full of the thoughtful loveliness peculiar to the race. Then we had Illyrians and Germans, and — Terpsichore be our witness — how they danced ! My travelling companion, the Count of Friuli, was there; and his little Viennese wife, though she spoke no Christian language, danced as featly as a fairy. Of strangers passing through the Trieste, we had several of distinction. Among them was a fascinating Milanese marchioness, a relative of Manzoni's, the novelist (and as enthusiastic and elo quent a lover of her country as I ever listened to on the subject of oppressed Italy), and two handsome young men, the counts Neipperg, sons-in-law to Maria Louisa, who amused themselves as if they had seen nothing better in the little dutchy of Parma. We went below at midnight to supper, and the ladies came up with renewed spirit to the dance. It was a brilliant scene indeed. The officers of both ships, in full uniform, the gentlemen from shore, mostly mili- tary, in full dress, the gayety of the bright red bunting, laced with white and blue, and studded, wherever they would stand, with flowers, and the really uncommon number of beautiful women, with the foreign features and complexions so rich and captivating to our eyes, produced altogether an effect unsurpassed by anything I have ever seen even at the court fetes of Europe. The daylight gun fired at the close of a galopade, and the crowded boats pulled ashore with their lovely freight by the broad light of morning. LETTER LXXVIII. TRIESTE, ITS EXTENSIVE COMMERCE — HOSPITALITY OF MR. MOORE — RUINS OF POLA — IMMENSE AMPHITHEATRE VILLAGE OF FOLA COAST OF DALMATIA, OF APULIA AND CALABRIA — OTRANTO — SAILS FOR THE ISLES OF GREECE. Trieste is certainly a most agreeable place. Its streets are beautifully paved and clean, its nouses new 120 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. and well built, and its shops as handsome and as well stocked with every variety of thing as those of Paris. Its immense commerce brings all nations to its port, and it is quite the commercial centre of the continent. The Turk smokes cross-legged in the cafe, the English merchant has his box in the country and his snug establishment in town, the Italian has his opera and his wife her cavalier, the Yankee captain his respecta- ble boarding-house, and the German his four meals a day at a hotel died brown with tobacco. Every nation is at home in Trieste. The society is beyond what is common in a European mercantile city. The English are numerous enough to support a church, and the circle, of which our hospitable consul is the centre, is one of the most refined and agreeable it has been my happiness to meet. The friends of Mr. Moore have pressed every possible civility and kindness upon the commodore and his officers, and his own house has been literally our home on shore. It is the curse of this volant life, otherwise so attractive, that its frequent partings are bitter in proportion to its good fortune. We make friends but to lose them. We got under way with a light breeze this morning, and stole gently out of the bay. The remembrance of a thousand kindnesses made our anchors lift heavily. We waved our handkerchiefs to the consul, whose balconies were filled with his charming family watching our departure, and, with a freshening wind, disappeared around the point, and put up our helm for Pola. The ruins of Pola, though among the first in the world, are seldom visited. They lie on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, at the head of a superb natural bay, far from any populous town, and are seen only by the chance trader who hugs the shore for the land- breeze, or the Albanian robber who looks down upon them with wonder from the mountains. What their age is I can not say nearly. The country was con- quered by the Romans about one hundred years before the time of our Savior, and the amphitheatre and tem- ples were probably erected soon after. We ran into the bay, with the other frigate close astern, and anchored off a small green island which shuts in the inner harbor. There is deep water up to the ancient town on either side, and it seems as if nature had amused herself with constructing a harbor incapable of improvement. Pola lay about two miles from the sea. It was just evening, and we deferred our visit to the ruins till morning. The majestic amphitheatre stood on a gentle ascent, a mile from the ship, goldenly bright in the flush of sunset ; the pleasant smell of the shore stole over the decks, and the bands of the two frigates played alternately the evening through. The receding mountains of Istria changed their light blue veils gradually to gray and sable, and with the pure stars of these enchanted seas, and the shell of a new moon bending over Italy in the west, it was such a night as one remembrances like a friend. The Con- stellation was to part from us here, leaving us to pursue our voyage to Greece. There were those on board who had brightened many of our " hours ashore," in these pleasant wanderings. We pulled back to our own ship, after a farewell visit, with regrets deepened by crowds of pleasant remembrances. The next morning we pulled ashore to the ruins. The amphitheatre was close upon the sea, and, to my surprise and pleasure, there was no cicerone. A con- templative donkey was grazing under the walls, but there was no other living creature near. We looked at its vast circular wall with astonishment. The coli- seum at Rome, a larger building of the same descrip- tion, is, from the outside, much less imposing. The whole exterior wall, a circular pile one hundred feet high in front, and of immense blocks of marble and granite, is as perfect as when the Roman workman hewed the last stone. The interior has been nearly all removed. The well-hewn blocks of the many rows of seats were too tempting, like those of Rome, to the barbarians who were building near. The circle of the arena, in which the gladiators and wild beasts of these then new-conquered provinces fought, is still marked by the foundations of its barrier. It measures two hundred and twenty-three feet. Beneath it is a broad and deep canal, running toward the sea, filled with marble columns, still erect upon their pedestals, used probably fori he introduction of waterfor the naumachia. The whole circumference of the amphitheatre is twelve hundred and fifty-six feet, and the thickness of the ex- terior wall seven feet six inches. Its shape is oblong, the length being four hundred and thirty-six feet, and the breadth three hundred and fifty. The measure- ments were taken by the captain's orders, and are doubt- less critically correct. We loitered about the ruins several hours, finding in every direction the remains of the dilapidated in- terior. The sculpture upon the fallen capitals and fragments of frieze was in the highest style of ornament. The arena is overgrown with rank grass, and the crevi- ces in the walls are filled with flowers. A vineyard, with its large blue grape just within a week of ripe- ness, encircles the rear of the amphitheatre. The boat's crew were soon among them, much better amu- sed than they could have been by all the antiquities in Istria. We walked from the amphitheatre to the town ; a miserable village built around two antique temples, one of which still stands alone, with its fine corinthian columns, looking just ready to crumble. The other is incorporated barbarously with the guard-house of the place, and is a curious mixture of beautiful sculpture and dirty walls. The pediment, which is still perfect, in the rear of the building, is a piece of carving, worthy of the choicest cabinet of Europe. The thieveries from the amphitheatre are easily detected. There is scarce a beggar's house in the village, that does not show a bit or two of sculptural marble upon its front. At the end of the village stands a triumphal arch, recording the conquests of a Roman consul. Its front, toward the town, is of Parian marble, beautifully chiselled. One recognises the solid magnificence of that glorious nation, when he looks on these relics of their distant conquests, almost perfect after eighteen hundred years. It seems as if the foot-print of a Roman were eternal. We stood out of the little bay, and with a fresh wind, ran down the coast of Dalmatia, and then cross- ing to the Italian side, kept down the ancient shore of Apulia and Calabria to the mouth of the Adriatic. I have been looking at the land with the glass, as we ran smoothly along, counting castle after castle built boldly on the sea, and behind them, on the green hills, the thickly built villages, with their smoking chimneys and tall spires, pictures of fertility and peace. It was upon these shores that the Barbary corsairs descended so often during the last century, carrying off for eastern harems, the lovely women of Italy. We are just off Otranto, and a noble old castle stands frowning from the extremity of the Cape. We could throw a shot into its embrasures as we pass. It might be the "Castle of Otranto," for the romantic looks it has from the sea. We have out-sailed the Constellation, or we should part from her here. Her destination is France ; and we should be to-morrow amid the *Isles of Greece. The pleasure of realizing the classic dreams of one's boyhood, is not to be expressed in a line. I look for- ward to the succeeding month or two as to the " red- letter" chapter of my life. Whatever I may find the • It Avas to this joint (the ancient Hydrantum) that Pyrrhus proposed to build a bridge from Greece — only sixty miles ! He deserved to ride on an elephant. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 121 reality, my heart has glowed warmly and delightfully with the anticipation. Commodore Patterson is, fortunately for me, a scholar and a judicious lover of the arts, and loses no opportunity, consistently with his duty, to give his officers the means of examining the curious and the beautiful in these interesting seas. The cruise, thus far, has been one of continually ming- led pleasure and instruction, and the best of it, by every association of our early days, is to come. LETTER LXXIX. THE IONIAN ISLES LORD AND LADY NUGENT COR- FU GREEK AND ENGLISH SOLDIERS — COCKNEYISM THE GARDENS OF ALCINOUS ENGLISH OFFICERS ALBANIANS DIONISIO SALOMOS, THE GREEK POET GREEK LADIES DINNER WITH THE ARTILLERY- MESS. This is proper dream-land. The "Isle of Ca- lypso,"* folded in a drapery of blue air, lies behind, fading in the distance, "the Acroceraunian mountains of old name," which causht Byron's eye as he entered Greece, are piled up before us on the Albanian shore, and the Ionian sea is rippling under our bow, breath- ing, from every wave, of Homer, and Sappho, and " sad Penelope." Once more upon Childe Harold's footsteps. I closed the book at Rome, after following him for a summer through Italy, confessing, by many pleasant recollections, that " Not in vain He wore his sandal shoon, and scallop shell." I resume it here, with the feeling of Thalaba when he caught sight of the green bird that led him through the desert. It lies open on my knee at the second canto, describing our position, even to the hour : " 'Twas on a Grecian autumn's gentle eve Childe Harold hailed Leucadia's cape afar ; A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave." We shall lie off-and-on to-night, and go in to Corfu in the morning. Two Turkish vessels-of-war, with the crescent flag flying, lie in a small cove a mile olf, on the Albanian shore, and by the discharge of mus- ketry our pilot presumes that they have accompanied the sultan's tax-gatherer, who gets nothing from these wild people without fighting for it. The entrance to Corfu is considered pretty, but the English flag flying over the forts, divested ancient Corcyra of its poetical associations. It looked to me a commonplace seaport, glaring in the sun. The "Gardens of Alcinous" were here, but who could im- agine them, with a red-coated sentry posted on every corner of the island. The lord high commissioner of the Ionian Isles, Lord Nugent, came off to the ship this morning in a kind of Corfiate boat, called a Scampavia, a greyhound- looking craft, carrying sail enough for a schooner. She cut the water like the wing of a swallow. His lordship was playing sailor, and was dressed like the mate of one of our coasters, and his manners were as bluff*. He has a fine person, however, and is said to be a very elegant man when he chooses it. He is the author of the "Life and Times of John Hampden," and Whig, of course. Southey has lately reviewed him rather bitterly in the Quarterly. Lady N. is lit- erary, too, and they have written between them a book of tales called (I think) "Legends of the Lilies," of which her ladyship's half is said to be the better. Went on shore for a walk. Greeks and English * Kano, which disputes it with Uozo. near Malta. soldiers mix oddly together. The streets are narrow, and crowded with them in about equal proportions. John Bull retains his red face, and learns no Greek. We passed through the Bazar, and bad English was the universal language. There is but one square in the town, and round its wooden fence, enclosing a dusty area without a blade of grass, were riding the English officers, while the regimental band played in the centre. A more arid and cheerless spot never pained the eye. The appearance of the officers, re- taining all their Bond street elegance and mounted upon English hunters, was in singular contrast with the general shabbiness of the houses and people. I went into a shop at a corner to inquire for the resi- dence of a gentleman to whom I had a letter. "It's werry 'ot, sir," said a little red-faced woman behind the counter, as I went out, " perhaps you'd like a glass of rater." It was odd to hear the Wapping dialect in the "isles of Greece." She sold green groceries, and wished me to recommend her to the /jofficers. Mrs. Mary Flack's "grocery" in the gardens of Alcinous. " The wild Albanian kirtled to the knee," walks through the streets of Corfu, looking unlike and supe- rior to everything about him. I met several in re- turning to the boat. Their gait is very lofty, and the snow-white juktanilla, or kirtle, with its thousand folds, sways from side to side as they walk, with a most showy effect. Lord Byron was very much captivated with these people, whose capital (just across the strait from Corfu) he visited once or twice in his travels through Greece. Those I have seen are all very tall, and have their prominent features, with keen eyes and limbs of the most muscular proportions. The com- mon English soldiers look like brutes beside them. The placard of a theatre hung on the walls of a church. A rude picture of a battle between the Greeks and Turks hung above it, and beneath was written, in Italian, " Honor the representation of the immortal deeds of your hero Marco Bozzaris.'" It is singular that even a pack of slaves can find pleasure in a remembrance that reproaches every breath they draw. Called on Lord Nugent with the commodore. The governor, sailor, author, antiquary, nobleman (for he is all these, and a jockey, to boot), received us in a calico morning-frock, with his breast and neck bare, in a large library lumbered with half-packed antiquities and strewn with straw. Books, miniatures of his family (a lovely one of Lady Nugent among them), Whig pamphlets, riding-whips, spurs, minerals, hammer and nails, half- eaten cakes, plans of fortifications, printed invitations to his own balls and dinners, military reports, Turkish pistols, and, lastly, his own just printed answer to Mr. Southey's review of his book, occupied the table. He was reading his own production when we entered. His lordship mentioned, with great apparent satisfaction, a cruise he had taken some years ago with Commodore Chauncey. The conversation was rather monologue than dialogue; his excellency seeming to think, with Lord Bacon, that "the honorablest part of talk was to give the occasion, and then to moderate and pass to something else." He started a topic, exhausted and changed it with the same facility and rapidity with which he sailed his scampavia. An engagement with the artillery-mess prevented my acceptance of an invi- tation to dine with him to-morrow, a circumstance I rather regret, as he is said to be, at his own table, one of the most polished and agreeable men of his time. Thank Heaven, revolutionsdo not affect the climate ! The isle that gave a shelter to the storm-driven Ulys- ses is an English barrack, but the same balmy air that fanned the blind eyes of old Homer blows over it still. " The breezes," says Landor, beautifully, " are the children of eternity." I never had the hair lifted so pleasantly from my temples as to-night, driving into the interior of the island. The gardening of Alcinous 122 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. seems to have been followed up by nature. The rhodo- dendron, the tamarisk, the almond, cypress, olive, and rig, luxuriate in the sweetest beauty everywhere. There was a small party in the evening at the house of the gentleman who had driven me out, and among other foreigners present were the count Dionisio Sal- omos, of Zante, and the Cavaliere Andrea Mustoxidi, both men of whom I had often heard. The first is almost the only modern Greek poet, and his "hymns," principally patriotic, are in the common dialect of the country, and said to be full of fire. He is an exces- sively handsome man, with large, dark eyes, almost ef- feminate in its softness. His features are of the clear- est Greek chiselling as faultless as a statue, and are stamped with nature's most attractive marks of refine- ment and feeling. I can imagine Anacreon to have resembled him. Mustoxidi has been a conspicuous man in the late chapter of Grecian history. He was much trusted by Capo d'Istria, and among other things had the whole charge of his school at Egina. An Italian exile (a Modenese, and a very pleasant fellow), took me aside when I asked something of his history, and told me a story of him, which proves either that he was a dis- honest man, or (no new truth) that conspicuous men are liable to be abused. A valuable donation of books was given by some one to the school library. They stood on the upper shelves, quite out of reach, and Mustoxidi was particular in forbidding all approach to them. Some time after his departure from the island, the library was committed to the charge of another person, and the treasures of the upper shelves were found to be — painted boards ! His physiognomy would rather persuade me of the truth of the story. He is a small man, with a downcast look, and a sly, gray eye, almost hidden by his projecting eyebrows. His features are watched in vain for an open expres- sion. The ladies of the party were principally Greeks. None of them were beautiful, but they had the mel- ancholy, retired expression of face which one looks for, knowing the history of their nation. They are unwise enough to abandon their picturesque national costume, and dress badly in the European style. The servant-girls, with their hair braided into the folds of their turbans, and their open laced bodices and sleeves are much more attractive to the stranger's eye. The liveliest of the party, a little Zantiote girl of eighteen, with eyes and eyelashes that contradicted the merry laugh on her lips, sang us an Albanian song to the guitar, very sweetly. Dined to-day with the artillery-mess, in company with the commodore and some of his officers. In a place like this, the dinner naturally is the great cir- cumstance of the day. The inhabitants do not take kindly to their masters, and there is next to no society for the English. They sit down to their soup after the evening drive, and seldom rise till midnight. It was a gay dinner, as dinners will always be where the whole remainder of what the " day may bring forth" is abandoned to them, and we parted from our hospit- able entertainers, after four or five hours " measured with sands of gold." We must do the English the justice of confessing the manners of their best bred men to be the best in the world. It is inevitable that one should bear the remainder of the nation little love. Neither the one class nor the other, doubtless, will ever seek it at our hands. But mutual hospitality may soften so much of our intercourse as happens in the traveller's way, and without loving John Bull bet- ter, all in all, one soon finds out in Europe that the dog and the lion are not more unlike, than the race of bagmen and runners with which our country is overrun, and the cultivated gentlemen of England. On my right sat a captain of the corps, who had spent the last summer at the Saratoga Springs. We found any number of mutual acquaintances, of course, and I was amused with the impressions which some of the fairest of my friends had made upon a man who had passed years in the most cultivated society of Eu- rope. He liked America, with reservations. He pre- ferred our ladies to those of any other country ex- cept England, and he had found more dandies in one hour in Broadway than he should have met in a week in Regent-street. He gave me a racy scene or two from the City Hotel, in New York, but he doubt- ed if the frequenters of a public table in any country in the world were, on the whole, so well-mannered. If Americans were peculiar for anything, he thought it was for confidence in themselves and tobacco-chewing. LETTER LXXX. CORFU — UNPOPULARITY OF BRITISH RULE — SUPERSTI- TION OF THE GREEKS ACCURACY OF THE DESCRIP- TIONS IN THE ODYSSEY — ADVANTAGE OF THE GREEK COSTUME — THE PAXIAN ISLES — CAPE LEUCAS, OR SAPPHO'S LEAP — BAY OF NAVARINO, ANCIENT FY- Los — MODON — CORAN's BAY — CAPE ST. ANGELO — ISLE OF CYTHERA. Corfu. — Called on one of the officers of the tenth this morning, and found lying on his table two books upon Corfu. They were from the circulating library of the town, much thumbed, and contained the most unqualified strictures on the English administration in the islands. In one of them, by a Count or Colonel Boig de St. Vincent, a Frenchman, the Corfiotes were taunted with their slavish submission, and called upon to shake off the yoke of British dominion in the most inflammatory language. Such books in Italy or France would be burnt by the hangman, and prohibi- ted on penalty of death. Here, with a haughty con- sciousness of superiority, which must be galling enough to an Ionian who is capable of feeling, they circulate uncensured in two languages, and the officers of the abused government read them for their amuse- ment, and return them coolly to go their rounds among the people. They have twenty-five hundred troops upon the island, and they trouble themselves little about what is thought of them. They confess that their government is excessively unpopular, the officers are excluded from the native society, and the soldiers are scowled upon in the streets. The body of St. Spiridion was carried through the streets of Corfu to-day, sitting bolt upright in a sedan- chair, and accompanied by the whole population. He is the great saint of the Greek church, and such is his influence, that the English government thought prop- er, under Sir Frederick Adam's administration, to compel the officers to walk in the procession. The saint was dried at his death, and makes a neat, black mummy, sans eyes and nose, but otherwise quite per- fect. He was carried to-day by four men in a very splendid sedan, shaking from side to side with the mo- tion, preceded by one of the bands of music from the English regiments. Sick children were thrown under the feet of the bearers, half dead people brought to the doors as he passed, and every species of disgust- ing mummery practised. The show lasted about four hours, and was, on the whole, attended with more, marks of superstition than anything I found in Italy. I was told that the better educated Christians of the Greek church, disbelieve the saint's miracles. The whole body of the Corfiote ecclesiastics were in the procession, however. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 123 I passed the first watch in the hammock-nettings to- night, enjoying inexpressibly the phenomena of this brilliant climate. The stars seem burning like lamps in the absolute clearness of the atmosphere. Meteors shoot constantly with a slow liquid course, over the sky. The air comes off from the land laden with the breath of the wild thyme, and the water around the ship is another deep blue heaven, motionless with its studded constellations. The frigate seems suspended between them. We have little idea, while conning an irksome school-task, how strongly the "unwilling lore" is rooting itself in the imagination, The frigate lies perhaps a half mile from the most interesting scenes of the Odyssey. I have been recalling from the long neglected stores of memory, the beautiful descriptions of the court of King Alcinous, and of the meeting of his matchless daughter with Ulysses. The whole web of the poet's fable has gradually unwound, and the lamps ashore, and the outline of the hills, in the deceiving dimness of night, have entered into the de- lusion with the facility of a dream. Every scene in Homer may be traced to this day, the blind old poet's topography was so admirable. It was over the point of land sloping down to the right, that the Princess Nausicaa, went with her handmaids to wash her bridal robes in the running streams, The description still guides the traveller to the spot where the damsels of the royal maid spread the linen on the grass, and com- menced the sports that waked Ulysses from his slum- bers in the bed of leaves. Ashore with one of the officers this morning, amu- sing ourselves with trying on dresses in a Greek tailor's shop. It quite puts one out of conceit with these miserable European fashions. The easy and flowing juktanilla, the unembarrassed leggins, the open sleeve of the collarless jacket leaving the throat exposed, and the handsome close-binding girdle from it, seems to me the very dress dictated by reason and nature. The richest suit in the shop, a superb red velvet, wrought with gold, was priced at one hundred and forty dollars. The more sober colors were much cheaper. A dress lasts several years. We made our farewell visits to the officers of the English regiments, who had overwhelmed us with hos- pitality during our stay, and went on board to get un- der way with the noon breeze. We were accompa- nied to the ship, not as the hero of Homer, when he left the same port, by three damsels of the royal train, bearing, " one a tunic, another a rich casket, and a third bread and wine" for his voyage, but by Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Wilson, soldiers' wives, and washerwomen, with baskets of hurriedly dried linen, pinned, every bundle, with a neat bill in shillings and half-pence Ulysses slept all the way from Corcyra to Ithaca. He lost a great deal of fine scenery. The passage between Corfu and Albania is beautiful. We ran past the southern cape of the island with a free wind, and are now off the Paxian Isles, where, according to Plutarch, Emilanus, the rhetorician, voyaging by night, " heard a voice louder than human, announcing the death of Pan." A "schoolboy midshipman" is breaking the same silence with " on deck, all hands ! on deck, all of you!" Off the mouth of the Alpheus. If he still chases Arethusa under the sea, aud she makes straight for Sicily, her bed is beneath our keel. The moon is pouring her broad light over the ocean, the shadows of the rigging on the dcek lis in clear and definite lines, the sailors of the watch sit around upon the guns in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of snowy sail spread aloft, is stealing through the water with the noiseless motion of a swan. Even the gal- lant man-of-war seems steeped in the spirit of the scene. The hour wants but an " Ionian Myrrha " to fill the last void of the heart. Cape Leucas on the lee — the scene of Sappho's leap. We have coursed down the long shore of ancient Leu- cadia, and the precipice to which lovers came from all parts of Greece for an oblivious plunge is shining in the sun, scarce a mile from the ship. The beautiful Grecian here sung her last song, and broke her lyre and died. The leap was not always so tragical, there are two lovers, at least, on record (Maces of Euthro turn, and Cephalosson of Deioneos), who survived the fall, and were cured effectually by salt water. It was a common resource in the days of Sappho, and Stra- bo says that they were accustomed to check their de- scent by tying birds and feathers to their arms. Fe- males, he says, were generally killed by the rapidity of the fall, their frames being too slight to bear the shock ; but the men seldom failed to come safe to shore. The sex has not lost its advantages since the days of Phaon. We have caught a glimpse of Ithaca through the isles, the land " Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave," and which Ulysses loved, non quia larga, sed quia sua — the most natural of reasons. We lose Childe Har- old's track here. He turned to the left into the gulf of Lepanto. We shall find him again at Athens. Missolonghi, where he died, lies about twenty or thirty miles on our lee, and it is one, of several places in the gulf, that I regret to pass so near, unvisited. Entering the bay of Navarino. A picturesque and precipitous rock, filled with caves, nearly shuts the mouth of this ample harbor. We ran so close to it, that it might have been touched from the deck with a tandem whip. On a wild crag to the left, a small, white marble monument, with the earth still fresh about it, marks the grave of some victim of the late naval battle. The town and fortress, miserable heaps of dirty stone, lie in the curve of the southern shore. A French brig-of-war is at anchor in the port, and broad, barren hills, stretching far away on every side, complete the scene before us. We run up the har- bor, and tack to stand out again, without going ashore. Not a soul is to be seen, and the bay seems the very sanctuary of silence. It is difficult to conceive, that but a year or two ago, the combined fleets of Europe, were thundering among these silent hills, and hun- dreds of human beings lying in their blood, whose bones are now whitening in the sea beneath. Our pi- lot was in the fight, on board an English frigate. He has pointed out to us the position of the different fleets, and among other particulars, he tells me, that when the Turkish ships were boarded, Greek sailors were found chained to the guns, who had been com- pelled, at the muzzle of the pistol, to fight against the cause of their country. Many of them must thus have perished in the vessels that were sunk. Navarino was the scene of a great deal of fight- ing, during the late Greek revolution. It was in- vested, while in possession of the Turks, by two thou- sand Pelopennesians and a band of Ionians, and the garrison were reduced to such a state of starvation, as to eat their slippers. They surrendared at last, under promise that their lives should be spared; but the news of the massacre of the Greek patriarchs and clergy, at Adrianople, was received at the moment, and the exasperated troops put their prisoners to death, without mercy. 124 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. The peaceful aspect of the place is better suited to its poetical associations. Navarino was the ancient Pylos, and it is here that Homer brings Telemachus in search of his father. He finds old Nestor and his sons sacrificing on the seashore to Neptune, with nine altars, and at each five hundred men. I should think the modern town contained scarce a twentieth of this number. Rounding the little fortified town of Modon, under full sail. It seems to be built on the level of the wa- ter, and nothing but its high wall and its towers are seen from the sea. This, too, has been a much con- tested place, and remained in possession of the Turks till after the formation of the provisional government under Mavrocordato. It forms the southwestern point of the Morea, and is a town of great antiquity. King Philip gained his first battle over the Athenians here, some thousands of years ago ; and the brave old Miu- alis beat the Egyptian fleet in the same bay, without doubt in a manner quite as deserving of as long a re- membrance. It is like a city of the dead — we can not even see a sentinel on the wall. Passed an hour in the mizen-chains with " the Cor- sair" in my hand, and " Coran's Bay'" opening on the lee. With what exquisite pleasure one reads, when he can look off from the page, and study the scene of the poet's fiction : — " In Coran's bay floats many a galley light, Through Coran's lattices the lamps burn bright For Seyd, the pacha, makes a feast to-night," It is a small, deep bay, with a fortified town, on the western shore, crowned on the very edge of the sea, with a single, tall tower. A small aperture near the top, helps to realize the Corsair's imprisonment, and his beautiful interview with Gulnare : — " In the high chamber of his highest tower, Sate Conrad fettered in the pacha's power," etc. The Pirate's Isle is said to have been Poros, and the original of the Corsair himself, a certain Hugh Crevelier, who filled the iEgean with terror, not many years ago. Made the Cape St. Angelo, the southern point of the Peloponnesus, and soon after the island of Cythe- ra, near which Venus rose from the foam of the sea. We are now running northerly, along the coast of an- cient Sparta. It is a mountainous country, bare and rocky, and looks as rude and hardy as the character of its ancient sons. I have been passing the glass in vain along the coast, to find a tree. A small hermitage stands on the desolate extremity of the Cape, and a Greek monk, the pilot tells me, has lived there many years, who comes from his cell, and stands on the rock with his arms outspread to bless the passing ship. I looked for him in vain. A French man-of-war bore down upon us a few minutes ago, and saluted the commodore. He ran so close, that we could see the features of his officers on the poop. It is a noble sight at sea, a fine ship pas- sing, with all hercanvass spread, with the added rapid- ity of your own course and hers. The peal of the guns in the midst of the solitary ocean, had a singular effect. The echo came back from the naked shores of Sparta, with a warlike sound, that might have stir- red old Leonidas in his grave. The smoke rolled away on the wind, and the noble ship hoisted her roy- als once more, and went on her way. We are ma- king for Napoli di Romania, with a summer breeze, and hope to drop anchor beneath its fortress, at sun- set. LETTER LXXXI. THE HARBOR OF NAPOLI — TRICOUPI AND MAVROCOR- DATO, OTHo's CABINET COUNSELLORS — COLONEL GOR- DON KING OTHO THE MISSES ARMANSPERGS PRINCE OF SAXE MIAULIS, THE GREEK ADMIRAL — EXCURSION TO ARGOS, TRE ANCIENT TERYNTHUS. Napoli di Romania. — Anchored in the harbor of Napoli after dark. An English frigate lies a little in, a French and Russian brig-of-war astern, and two Greek steamboats, King Otho's yacht, and a quantity of caiques, fill the inner port. The fort stands a hun- dred feet over our heads on a bold promontory, and the rocky Palamidi soars a hundred feet still higher, on a crag that thrusts its head sharply into the clouds, as if it would lift the little fortress out of eyesight. The town lies at the base of the mountain, an irregu- lar looking heap of new houses ; and here, at present, resides the boy-king of Greece, Otho the first. His predecessors were Agamemnon and Perseus, who, some three thousand years ago (more or less, I am not certain of my chronology), reigned at Argos and Mycenae, within sight of his present capitol. Went ashore with the commodore, to call on Tri- coupi and Mavrocordato, the king's cabinet counsel- lors. We found the former in a new stone house, slenderly furnished, and badly painted, but with an entry full of servants, in handsome Greek costumes. He received the commodore with the greatest friend- liness. He had dined on board the Constitution six years before, when his prospects were less promising than now. He is a short, stout man, of dark com- plexion, and very bright black eyes, and looks very honest and very vulgar. He speaks English perfectly. He shrugged bis shoulders when the commodore allu- ded to having left him fighting for a republic, and said anything was better than anarchy. He spoke in the highest terms of my friend, Dr. Howe (who was at Napoli with the American provisions, when Grivas held the Palamidi). Greece, he said, had never a bet- ter friend. Madam Tricoupi (the sister of Prince Mavrocordato) came in presently with two very pretty children. She spoke French fluently, and seemed an accomplished woman. Her family had long furnished the Prince Hospodars of Wallachia, and though not a beautiful woman, she has every mark of the gentle blood of the east. Colonel Gordon, the famous Phil- hellene, entered, while we were there. He was an in- timate friend of Lord Byron's, and has expended the best part of a large fortune in the Greek cause. He is a plain man, of perhaps fifty, with red hair and freckled face, and features and accent very Scotch. I liked his manners. He had lately written a book upon Greece, which is well spoken of in some review that has fallen in my way. Went thence to Prince Mavrocordato's. He occu- pies the third story of a very indifferent house, fur- nished with the mere necessaries of life. A shabby sofa, a table, two chairs, and a broken tumbler, hold- ing ink and two pens, is the inventory of his drawing- room. He received us with elegance and courtesy, and presented us to his wife, a pretty and lively little Constantinopolitan, who chattered French like a mag- pie. She gave the uncertainty of their residence un- til the seat of government was decided on, as the apol- ogy for their lodgings, and seemed immediately to forget that she was not in a palace. Mavrocordato is a strikingly handsome man, with long, curling black hair, and most luxuriant mustaches. His mouth is bland, and his teeth uncommonly beautiful; but with- out being able to say where it lies, there is an expres- sion of guile in his face, that shut my heart to him. He is getting fat, and there is a shade of red in the PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. 125 clear olive of his cheek, which is very uncommon in this country. The commodore remarked that he was very thin when he was here six years before. The settlement of affairs in Greece, has probably relieved him from a great deal of care. Presented, with the commodore, to King Otho. Tricoupi officiated as chamberlain, dressed in a court suit of light-blue, wrought with silver. The royal residence is a comfortable house, built by Capo d'ls- tria, in the principal street of Napoli. The king's aid, a son of Marco Bozzaris, a very fine, resolute- looking young man of eighteen, received us in the antechamber, and in a few minutes the door of the inner room was thrown open. His majesty stood at the foot of the throne (a gorgeous red velvet arm- chair, raised on a platform, and covered with a splendid canopy of velvet), and with a low bow to each of us as we entered, he addressed his conversation immedi- ately, and without embarrassment, to the commodore. I had leisure to observe him closely for a few minutes. He appears about eighteen. He was dressed in an exceedingly well cut, swallow-tailed coat, of very light blue, with a red standing collar, wrought with silver. The same work upon a red ground, was set between the buttons of the waist, and upon the edges of the skirts. White pantaloons, and the ordinary straight court-sword, completed his dress. He is rather tall, and his figure is extremely light and ele- gant. A very flat nose, and high cheek-bones, are the most marked features of his face ; his hair is straight, and of a light brown, and with no claim to beauty ; the expression of his countenance is manly, open, and prepossessing. He spoke French fluently, though with a German accent, and went through the usual topics of a royal presentation (very much the same all over the world) with grace and ease. In the few re- marks which he addressed to me, he said that he promised himself great pleasure in the search for an- tiquities in Greece. He bowed us out after an audi- ence of about ten minutes, no doubt extremely happy to exchange his court-coat and our company for a ri- ding-frock and saddle. His horse and a guard of twelve lancers were in waiting at the door. The king usually passes his evenings with the Miss- es Armanspergs, the daughters of the president of the regency. They accompanied him from Munich, and are the only ladies in his realm with whom he is ac- quainted. They keep a carriage, which is a kind of wonder at Napoli ; ride on horseback in the English style, very much to the amusement of the Greeks; and give soirees once or twice a week, which are par- ticularly dull. One of the three is a beautiful girl, and if policy does not interfere, is likely to be Queen j of Greece. The Count Armansperg is a small, shrewd-looking man, with a thin German countenance, ! and agreeable manners. He is, of course, the real kins; of Greece. The most agreeable man I found in Napoli, was the king's uncle, the prince of Saxe. at present in command of his army. He is a tall, and uncommon- ly handsome soldier, of perhaps thirty-six years, and, with all the air of a man of high birth, has the open and frank manners of the camp. He has been twice on board the ship, and seemed to consider his ac- quaintance with the commodore's family as a respite liom exile. The Bavarian officers in his suite spoke nothing but the native German, and looked like mere beef-eaters. The prince returns in two years, and when the king is of age, his Bavarian troops leave him, and he commits himself to the country. Hired the only two public vehicles in Napoli, and set off with the commodore's family, on an excursion to the ancient cities in the neighborhood. We left the gate built by the Venetians, and still adorned with a bas relief of a winged lion, at nine o'clock of a clear Grecian summer's day. Auguries were against us. Pyrrhusdid the same thing with his elephants and his army, one morning about two thousand years ago, and was killed before noon ; and our driver stopped his horses a half mile out of the gate, and told us very gravely that the evil eye was upon him. He had dream- ed that he had found a dollar the night before — a cer- tain sign by the laws of witchcraft in Greece, that he should lose one. He concluded by adding anothei dollar to the price of each carriage. We passed the house of old Miaulis, the Greek ad- miral, a pretty cottage a mile from the city, and imme- diately after came the ruins of the ancient Terynthvs, the city of Hercules. The wails, built of the largest hewn stones in the world, still stand, and will till time ends. It would puzzle modern mechanics to carry them away. We drove along the same road upon which Autolycus taught the young hero to drive a chariot, and passing ruins and fragments of columns strewn over the whole length of the plain of Argos, stopped under a spreading aspen tree, the only shade within reach of the eye. A dirty khan stood a few yards off, and our horses were to remain here while we ascended the hills to Mycenae. It was a hot walk. The appearance of ladies, as we passed through a small Greek village on our way, drew out all the inhabitants, and we were accompa- nied by about fifty men, women, and children, resem- bling very much in complexion and dress, the Indians of our country. A mile from our carriages we arrived at a subterranean structure, built in the side of the hill, with a door toward the east, surmounted by the hewn stone so famous for its size among the antiqui- ties of Greece. It shuts the tomb of old Agamemnon. The interior is a hollow cone, with a small chamber at the side, and would make "very eligible lodgings for a single gentleman," as the papers say. We kept on up the hill, wondering that the "king of many islands and of all Argos," as Homer calls him, should have built his city so high in this hot cli- mate. We sat down at last, quite fagged, at the gate of a city built only eighteen hundred years before Christ. A descendant of Perseus brought us some water in a wooden piggin, and somewhat refreshed, we went on with our examination of the ruins. The mere weight of the walls has kept them together three thousand six hundred years. Yon can judge how im- moveable they must be. The antiquarians call them the "cyclopean walls of Mycenae ;" and nothing less than a giant, I should suppose, would dream of heav- ing such enormous masses one upon the other. " The gate of the Lions," probably the principal entrance to the city, is still perfect. The bas-relief from which it takes its name, is the oldest sculptured stone in Eu- rope. It is of green basalt, representing two lions rampant, very finely executed, and was brought from Egypt. An angle of the city wall is just below, and the ruins of a noble aqueduct are still visible, follow- ing the curve of the opposite hill, and descending to Mycenae on the northern side. 1 might bore you now with a long chapter on antiquities (for, however dry in the abstract, they are exceedingly interesting on the spot), but I let you off. Those who like them will find Sphon and Wheeler, Dodwell, Leake, and Gell, diffuse enough for the most classic enthusiasm. We descended by a rocky ravine, in the bosom of which lay a well with six large fig-trees growing at its brink. A woman, burnt black with the sun, was draw- ing water in a goat-skin, and we were too happy to get into the shade, and, in the name of Pan, sink delicacy and ask for a drink of water. 1 have seen the time when nectar in a cup of gold would have been less re- freshing. We arrived at the aspen about two o'clock, and made preparations for our dinner. The sea-breeze had sprung up, and came freshly over the plain of 126 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. Argos. We put our claret in a goat-skin of water hung at one of the wheels, the basket was produced, the ladies sat in the interior of the carriage, and the commodore and his son and myself, made tables of the footboards ; and thus we achieved a meal which, if meals are measured by content, old King Danaus and his fifty daughters might have risen from their graves to envy us. A very handsome Greek woman had brought us water and stood near while we were eating, and ma- king over to her the remnants of the ham and its condiments and the empty bottles, with which she seemed made happy for a day, we went on our way to Argos. " Rivers die," it is said, "as well as men and cities." We drove through the bed of " Father Inachus," which was a i-espectable river in the time of Homer, but which, in our day, would be puzzled to drown a much less thing than a king. Men achieve immor- tality in a variety of ways. King Inachus might have been forgotten as the first Argive ; but by drowning himself in the river which afterward took his name, every knowledge-hunter that travels is compelled to look up his history. So St. Nepomuc became the guardian of bridges by breaking his neck over one. The modern Argos occupies the site of the ancient. It is tolerably populous, but it is a town of most wretch- ed hovels. We drove through several long streets of mud houses with thatched roofs, completely open in front, and the whole family huddled together on the clay floor, with no furniture but a flock bed in the I corner. The first settlement by Deucalion and Pyr- rha, on the sediment of the deluge, must have looked like it. Mud, stones, and beggars, were all we saw. Old Pyrrhus was killed here, after all his battles, by a tile from a house-top; but modern Argos has scarce a roof high enough to overtop his helmet. We left our carriages in the street, and walked to the ruins of the amphitheatre. The brazen thalamos in which Dante was confined when Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, was near this spot, the supposed site of most of the thirty temples once famous in Argos. Some solid brick walls, the seats of the amphithea- tre cut into the solid rock of the hill, the rocky acrop- olis above, and twenty or thirty horses tied together, and treading out grain on a thrashing-floor in the open field, were all we found of ancient or picturesque in the capitol of the Argives. A hot, sultry afternoon, was no time to weave romance from such materials. We returned to our carriages, and while the Greek was getting his horses into their harness, we entered a most unpromising cafe for shade and water. A bil- liard-table stood in the centre; and the high, broad bench on which the Turks seat themselves, with their legs crooked under them, stretched around the wall. The proprietor was a Venetian woman, who sighed, as she might well, for a gondola. The kingdom of Aga- memnon was not to her taste. After waiting awhile here for the sun to get behind the hills of Sparta, we received a message from our coachman, announcing that he was arrested. The " evil eye" had not glanced upon him in vain. There was no returning without him, and I walked over with the commodore to see what could be done. A fine- looking man sat cross-legged on a bench, in the upper room of a building, adjoining a prison, and a man with a pen in his hand, was reading the indictment. The driver had struck a child who was climbing on his wheel. I pleaded his case in "choice Italian," and after half an hour's delay, they dismissed him, exact- ing a dollar as a security for reappearance. It was a curious verification of his morning's omen. We drove on over the plain, met the king, five camels, and the Misses Armanpergs, and were on board soon after sunset. LETTER LXXXII. VISIT FROM KING OTHO AND MIAULIS — VISITS AN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN FRIGATE — BEAUTY OF THE GRECIAN MEN LAKE LEMA — THE HERM10NICAS SINUS — HYDRA EFINA. Napoli di Romania. — Went ashore with one of the officers, to look for the fountain of Canathus. Its waters had the property (vide Pausanias) of renewing the infant purity of the women who bathed in them. Juno used it once a year. We found but one natural spring in all Napoli. It stands in a narrow street, filled with tailors, and is adorned with a marble font bearing a Turkish inscription. Two girls were drawing water in skins. We drank a little of it, but found nothing peculiar in the taste. Its virtues are confined probably to the other sex. The king visited the ship. As his barge left the pier, the vessels of war in the harbor manned their yards and fired the royal salute. He was accompanied by young Bozzaris and the prince, his uncle, and dressed in the same uniform in which he received us at our presentation. As he stepped on the deck, and was received by Commodore Patterson, I thought 1 had never seen a more elegant and well-proportioned man. The frigate was in her usual admirable order, and the king expressed his surprise and giatification at every turn. His questions were put with uncommon judgment for a landsman. We had heard, indeed, on board the English frigate which brought him from Trieste, that he lost no opportunity of learning the duties and management of the ship, keeping watch with the midshipmen, and running from one deck to the other at all hours. After going thoroughly through the ship, the commodore presented him to his family. He seemed very much pleased with the ease and frank- ness with which he was received, and seating himself with our fair countrywomen in the after-cabin, pro- longed his visit to a very unceremonious length, con- versing with the most unreserved gayety. The yards were manned again, the salutes fired once more, and the king of Greece tossed his oars for a moment under the stern, and pulled ashore. Had the pleasure and honor of showing Miaulis through the ship. The old man carne on board very modestly, without even announcing himself, and as he addressed one of the officers in Italian, 1 was struck with his noble appearance, and offered my services as interpreter. He was dressed in the Hydriote costume, the full blue trowsers gathered at the knee, a short open jacket worked with black braid, and a red scull-cap. His lieutenant, dressed in the same costume, a tall, superb-looking Greek, was his only attendant. He was quite at home on board, comparing the " United States" continually to the Hellas, the American-built frigate which he commanded. Every one on board was struck with the noble simplicity and dignity of his address. I have seldom seen a man who impressed me more. He requested me to express his pleasure at his visit, and his friendly feelings to the commodore, and invited us to his country-house, which he pointed out from the deck, just without the city. Every officer in the ship uncovered as he passed. The gratification at seeing him was universal. He looks worthy to be one of the " three" that Byron demanded, in his im- passioned verse, " To make a new Thermopylae." Returned visits of ceremony with the commodore, to the English and Russian vessels of war. The British frigate Madagascar is about the size of the United States, but not in nearly so fine a condition. The superior cleanliness and neatness of arrangement on PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 127 board our own ship are indisputable. The cabin of Captain Lyon (who is said to be one of the best officers in the English service), was furnished in almost oriental luxury, and, what I should esteem more, crowded with the choicest books. He informed us that of his twenty- four midshipmen, nine were sons of noblemen, and possessed the best family influence on both father's and mother's side, and several of the remainder had high claims for preferment. There is small chance there, one would think, for commoners. Captain Lyon spoke in the highest terms of his late passenger, King Otho, both as to disposition and talent. Somewhere in the iEgean, one of his Bavarian servants fell overboard, and the boatswain jumped after him, and sustained him till the boat was lowered to his relief. On his reaching the deck, the king drew a valuable repeater from his pocket, and presented it to him in the presence of the crew. He certainly has caught the " trick of royalty" in its perfection. The guard presented, the boatswain " piped us over the side," and we pulled alongside the Russian. The file of marines drawn up in honor of the commodore on her quarterdeck, looked like so many standing bears. Features and limbs so brutally coarse I never saw. The officers, however, were very gentlemanly, and the vessel was in beautiful condition. In inquiring after the health of the ladies on board our ship, the captain and his lieutenant rose from their seats and made a low bow — a degree of chivalrous courtesy very uncommon, I fancy, since the days of Sir Piercie Shafton. I left his imperial majesty's ship with an improved impres- sion of him. They are a gallant-looking people, the Greeks. By- ron says of them, "all are beautiful, very much re- sembling the busts of Alcibiades." We walked be- yond the walls of the city this evening, on the plain of Argos. The whole population were out in their Sunday costumes, and no theatrical ballet was ever more showy than the scene. They are a very affec- tionate people, and walk usually hand in hand, or sit upon the rocks at the road side, with their arms over each other's shoulders ; and their picturesque attitudes and lofty gait, combined with the flowing beauty of their dress, give them all the appearance of heroes on the stage. I saw literally no handsome women, but the men were magnificent, almost without exception. Among others, a young man passed us with whose personal beauty the whole party were struck. As he went by he laid his hand on his breast and bowed to the ladies, raising his red cap, with its flowing blue tassel, at the same time with perfect grace. It was a young man to whom I had been introduced the day previous, a brother of Mavromichalis, the assassin of Capo d'Istrias. He is about seventeen, tall and straight as an arrow, and has the eye of a falcon. His family is one of the first in Greece ; and his brother who was a fellow of superb beauty, is said to have died in the true heroic style, believing that he had rid his country of a tyrant. The view of Napoli and the Palamidi from the plain, with its back ground of the Spartan mountains, and the blue line of the Argolic gulf between, is very fine. The home of the Nemean lion, the lofty hill rising above Argos, was enveloped in a black cloud as the sun set on our walk, the short twilight of Greece thickened upon us, and the white, swaying juktanillas of the Greeks striding past, had the effect of spirits gliding by in the dark. The king, with his guard of lancers on a hard trot, passed us near the gate, followed close by the Misses Armansperg, mounted on fine Hungarian horses. His majesty rides beautifully, and the effect of the short high-DOOM flag; on the "tips of the lances, and the tall Polish caps with their cord and tassels, is highly pic- turesque. Made an excursion with the commodore across the gulf, to Lake Lerna, the home of the hydra. We saw nothing save the half dozen small marshy lakes, whose overflow devastated the country, until they were dam- med by Hercules, who is thus poetically said to have killed a many-headed monster. We visited, near-by, " the mills," which were the scene of one of the most famous battles of the late struggle. The mill is sup- plied by a lovely stream, issuing from beneath a rock, and running a short course of twenty or thirty rods to the sea. It is difficult to believe that human blood has ever stained its pure waters. Left Napoli with the daylight breeze, and are now entering the Hermionicus Sinus A more barren land never rose upon the eye. The ancients considered this part of Greece so near to hell, that they omitted to put the usual obolon into the hands of those who died here, to pay their passage across the Styx. Off the town of Hydra. This is the birthplace of Miaulis, and its neighbor island, Spesia, that of the sail- or heroine Bobolina. It is a heap of square stone hous- es set on the side of a hill, without the slightest refer- ence to order. I see with the glass, an old Greek smoking on his balcony, with his feet over the railing, and half a dozen bare-legged women getting a boat into the water on the beach. The whole island has a desolate and steril aspect. Across the strait, directly opposite the town, lies a lovely green valley, with ol ive groves and pastures between, and hundreds of gray cattle feeding in all the peace of Arcadia. I have seen such pictures so seldom of late, that it is like a medi cine to my sight. " The sea and the sky," after a while, " lie like a load on the weary eye." In passing two small islands just now, we caught a glimpse between them of the "John Adams," sloop- of-war, under full sail in the opposite direction. Five minutes sooner or later we should have missed her. She has been cruising in the archipelago a month or two, waiting the commodore's arrival, and has on board, despatches and letters, which make the meeting a very exciting one to the officers. There is a general stir of expectation on board, in which my only share is that of sympathy. She brings her news from Smyrna, to which port, though my course has been errant enough, you will scarce have thought of directing a letter for Anchored off" the island of Egina, a mile from the town. The rocks which King iEacus (since Judge TEacus of the infernal regions) raised in the harbor to keep off the pirates, prevent our nearer approach. A beautiful garden of oranges and figs close to our an- chorage, promises to reconcile us to our position. The little bay is completely shut in by mountainous islands, and the sun pours down upon us, unabated bv the " wooing Egean wind." LETTER LXXXIII. THE MAID OF ATHENS ROMANCE AND REALITY AMERICAN BENEFACTIONS TO GREECE A GREEK WIFE AND SCOTTISH HUSBAND SCHOOL OF CAPC D'ISTRIAS GRECIAN DISINTERESTEDNESS RUINS OF THE MOST ANCIENT TEMPLE BEAUTY OF THE GRECIAN LANDSCAPE HOPE FOR THE LAND OF EPAMINONDAS AND ARISTIDES. Island of Egina. — The "Maid of Athens," in the very teeth of poetry, has become Mrs. Black of Egina! The beautiful Teresa Makri, of whom Byron asked back his heart, of whom Moore and Hobhouse, and 128 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. the poet himself have written so much and so passion- ately, has forgotten the sweet burtheu of the sweet- est of love songs, and taken the unromantic name, and followed the unromantic fortunes, of a Scotch- man ! The commodore proposed that we should call upon her on our way to the temple of Jupiter, this morning. We pulled up to the town in the barge, and landed on the handsome pier built by Dr. Howe (who expended thus, most judiciously, a part of the provisions sent from our country in his charge), and, finding a Greek in the crowd, who understood a little Italian, we were soon on our way to Mrs. Black's. Our guide was a fine, grave-looking man of forty, with a small cockade on his red cap, which indicated that he was some way in the service of the government. He laid his hand on his heart, when I asked him if he had known any Americans in Egina. " They built this," said he, pointing to the pier, the handsome granite posts of which we were passing at the moment. " They gave us bread, and meat, and clothing, when we should otherwise have perished." It was said with a look and tone that thrilled me. I felt as if the whole debt of sympathy which Greece owes our country, were repaid by this one energetic expression of grat- itude. We stopped opposite a small gate, and the Greek went in without cards. It was a small stone house of a story and a half, with a rickety flight of wooden steps at the side, and not a blade of grass or sign of a flower in court or window. If there had been but a geranium in the porch, or a rose-tree by the gate, for descrip- tion's sake. Mr. Black was out — Mrs. Black was in. We walk- ed up the creaking steps, with a Scotch terrier barking and snapping at our heels, and were met at the door by, really, a very pretty woman. She smiled as I apologized for our intrusion, and a sadder or a sweeter smile I never saw. She said her welcome in a few, simple words of Italian, and I thought there were few sweeter voices in the world. I asked her if she had not learned English yet. She colored, and said, " No, signore !" and the deep spot in her cheek faded gradu- ally down, in teints a painter would remember. Her husband, she said, had wished to learn her language, and would never let her speak English. I began to feel a prejudice against him. Presently, a boy of per- haps three years, came into the room — an ugly, white- headed, Scotch-looking little ruffian, thin-lipped and freckled, and my aversion for Mr. Black became quite decided. "Did you not regret leaving Athens?" I asked. " Very much, signore," she answered with half a sigh ; " but my husband dislikes Athens." Horrid Mr. Black ! thought I. I wished to ask her of Lord Byron, but I had heard that the poet's admiration had occasioned the usual scandal attendant on every kind of pre-eminence, and her modest and timid manners, while they assured me of her purity of heart, made me afraid to venture where there was even a possibility of wounding her. She sat in a drooping attitude on the coarsely-covered divan, which occupied three sides of the little room, and it was difficult to believe that any eye but her husband's had ever looked upon her, or that the "wells of her heart" had ever been drawn upon for anything deeper than the simple duties of a wife and mother. She offered us some sweetmeats, the usual Greek compliment to visiters, as we rose to go, and laying her hand upon her heart, in the beautiful custom of the country, requested me to express her thanks to the commodore for the honor he had done her in call- ing, and to wish him and his family every happiness. A servant-girl, very shabbily dressed, stood at the side door, and we offered her some money, which she might have taken unnoticed. She drew herself up very coldly, and refused it, as if she thought we had quite mistaken her. In a country where gifts of the kind are so universal, it spoke well for the pride of the family, at least. I turned after we had taken leave, and made an apology to speak to her again ; for, in the interest of the general impression she had made upon me, I had forgotten to notice her dress, and I was not sure that I could remember a single feature of her face. We had called unexpectedly of course, and her dress was very plain. A red cloth cap bound about the temples, with a colored shawl, whose folds were mingled with large braids of dark brown hair, and decked with a tassel of blue silk, which fell to her left shoulder, formed her head-dress. In other respects she was dressed like a European. She is a little above the middle height, slightly and well formed, and walks weakly, like most Greek women, as if her feet were too small for her weight. Her skin is dark and clear, and she has a color in her cheek and lips that looks to me consumptive. Her teeth are white and regular, her face oval, and her forehead and nose form the straight line of the Grecian model — one of the few in- stances I have ever seen of it. Her eyes are large, and of a soft, liquid hazel, and this is her chief beauty. There is that " looking out of the soul through them," which Byron always described as constituting the love- liness that most moved him. I made up my mind, as we walked away, that she would be a lovely woman anywhere. Her horrid name, and the unpreposses- sing circumstances in which we found her, had un- charmed, I thought, all poetical delusion that would naturally surround her as the "Maid of Athens." We met her as simple Mrs. Black, whose Scotch hus- band's terrier had worried us at her door, and we left her, feeling that the poetry which she had called forth from the heart of Byron, was her due by every law of loveliness. From the house of the maid of Athens we walked to the school of Capo d'Istrias. It is a spacious stone quadrangle, enclosing a court handsomely railed and gravelled, and furnished with gymnastic apparatus. School was out, and perhaps a hundred and fifty boys were playing in the area. An intelligent-looking man accompanied us through the museum of antiqui- ties, where we saw nothing very much worth noticing, after the collections of Rome, and to the library, where there was a superb bust of Capo d'Istrias, done by a Roman artist. It is a noble head, resembling Wash- ington. We bought a large basket of grapes for a few cents in returning to the boat, and offered money to one or two common men who had been of assistance to us, but no one would receive it. I italicise the remark, be- cause the Greeks are so often stigmatized as utterly mercenary. We pulled along the shore, passing round the point on which stands a single fluted column, the only re- mains of a magnificent temple of Venus, and, getting the wind, hoisted a sail, and ran down the northern side of the island five or six miles, till we arrived op- posite the mountain on which stands the temple of Jupiter Panhetlenios. The view of it from the sea was like that of a temple drawn on the sky. It occu- pies the very peak of the mountain, and is seen many miles on either side by the mariner of the Egean. A couple of wild-looking, handsome fellows, bare- headed and barelegged, with shirts and trowsers reaching to the knee, lay in a small caique under the shore; and, as we landed, the taller of the two laid his hand on his breast, and offered to conduct us to the temple. The ascent was about a mile. We toiled over ploughed fields, with here and there a cluster of fig trees, wild patches of rock and brier. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 129 and an occasional wall, and arrived breathless at the top, where a cool wind met us from the other side of the sea with delicious refreshment. We sat down among the ruins of the oldest temple of Greece after that of Corinth. Twenty-three noble columns still lifted their heads over us, after braving the tempests of more than two thousand years. The ground about was piled up with magnificent frag- ments of marble, preserving, even in their fall, the sharp edges of the admirable sculpture of Greece. The Doric capital, the simple frieze, the well-fitted frustra, might almost be restored in the perfection with which they were left by the last touch of the chisel. The view hence comprised a classic world. There was Athens ! The broad mountain over the intensely blue gulf at our feet was Hy mettus, and a bright white summit as of a mound between it and the sea, glitter- ing brightly in the sun, was the venerable pile of tem- ples in the Acropolis. To the left, Corinth was dis- tinguishable over its low isthmus, and Megara and Salamis, and following down the wavy line of the mountains of Attica, the promontory of Sunium, mod- ern Cape Colonna, dropped the horizon upon the sea. One might sit out his life amid these loftily-placed ruins, and scarce exhaust in thought the human his- tory that has unrolled within the scope of his eye. We passed two or three hours wandering about among the broken columns, and gazing away to the main and the distant isles, confessing the surpassing beauty of Greece. Yet have its mountains scarce a green spot, and its vales are treeless and uninhabited, and all that constitutes desolation is there, and strange as it may seem, you neither miss the verdure, nor the people, nor find it desolate. The outline of Greece, in the first place, is the finest in the world. The mountains lean down into the valleys, and the plains swell up to the mountains, and the islands rise from the sea, with a mixture of boldness and grace alto- gether peculiar. In the most lonely parts of the Egean, where you can see no trace of a human foot, it strikes you like a foreign land. Then the atmos- phere is its own, and it exceeds that of Italy, far. It gives it the look of a landscape seen through a faintly- teinted glass. Soft blue mists of the most rarefied and changing shapes envelop the mountains on the clear- est day, and without obscuring the most distant points perceptibly, give hill and vale a beauty that surpasses that of verdure. I never saw such air as I see in Greece. It has the same effect on the herbless and rocky scenery about us, as a veil over the face of a woman. The islander who had accompanied us to the tem- ple, stood on a fragment of a column, still as a statue, looking down upon the sea toward Athens. His fig- ure for athletic grace of mould, and his head and fea- tures, for the expression of manly beauty and charac- ter, might have been models to Phidias. The beau- tiful and poetical land, of which he inherited his share of unparalleled glory, lay around him. I asked myself why it should have become, as it seems to be, the de- spair of the philanthropist. Why should its people, who, in the opinion of Child Harold, are "nature's fa- vorites still," be branded and abandoned as irreclaima- ! blc rogues, and the source to which we owe, even to j this day, our highest models of taste, be neglected and ' forgotten ? The nine days' enthusiasm for Greece has died away, and she has received a king from a j family of despots. But there seems to me in her very j beauty, and in the still superior qualities of her chil- I dren, wherever they have room for competition, a promise of resuscitation. The convulsions of Europe may leave her soon to herself, and the slipper of the Turk, and the hand of the Christian, once lifted fairly from her neck, she will rise, and stand up amid these imperishable temples, once more/re« / LETTER LXXXIV. ATHENS — RUINS OF THE PARTHENON THE ACROPO- LIS TEMPLE OF THESEUS THE OLDEST OF ATHE- NIAN ANTIQUITIES BURIAL-PLACE OF THE SON OF MIAULIS REFLECTIONS ON STANDING WHERE PLATO TAUGHT, AND DEMOSTHENES HARANGUED BAVARI- AN SENTINEL TURKISH MOSQUE, ERECTED WITHIN THE SANCTUARY OF THE PARTHENON WRETCHED HABITATIONS OF THE MODERN ATHENIANS. Egean Sea. — We got underway this morning, and stood toward Athens, followed by the sloop-of-war, John Adams, which had come to anchor under our stern the evening of our arrival at Egina. The day 19 like every day of the Grecian summer, heavenly. The stillness and beauty of a new world lie about us. The ships steal on with their clouds of canvass just filling in the li°ht breeze of the Egean, and withdrawing the eye from the lofty temple crowning the mountain on our lee, whose shining columns shift slowly as we pass ; we could believe ourselves asleep on the sea. I have been repeating to myself the beautiful reflection of Servius Sulpitius, which occurs in his letter of condo- lence to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, written on this very spot. *"On my return from Asia," he says, " as I was sailing from Egina toward Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me. Egina was behind, Megara before me ; Piraeus on the right, Corinth on the left; all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturn- ed and buried in the ruins ; upon this sight, I could not but presently think within myself, ' Alas ! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcases of so many cities lie here ex- posed before me in one view.' " The columns of the Parthenon are easily distin- guishable with the glass, and to the right of the Acrop- olis, in the plain, I see a group of tall ruins, which by the position must be near the banks of the llissus. I turn the glass upon the sides of the mount Hymettus, whose beds of thyme, "the long, long summer gilds," and I can scarce believe that the murmur of the bees is not stealing over the water to my ear. Can this be Athens? Are these the same isles and mountains Al- cibiades saw, returning with his victorious galleys from the Hellespont ; the same that faded on the long gaze of the conqueror of Salamis, leaving his ungrateful country for exile : the same that to have seen, for a Roman, was to be complete as a man; the same whose proud dames wore the golden grasshopper in their hair, as a boasting token that they had sprung from the soil ; the same where Pericles nursed the arts, and Socrates and Plato taught "humanity," and Epicurus walked with his disciples, looking for truth? What an offset are these thrilling thoughts, with the nearing view in my sight, to a whole calendar of common mis- fortune! Dropped anchor in the Piraeus, the port of Athens. The city is five miles in the interior, and the "arms of Athens," as the extending walls were called, stretch- ed in the times of the republic from the Acropolis to the sea. The Piraeus, now nearly a deserted port, with a few wretched houses, was then a large city. It wants an hour to sunset, and I am about starting with one of the officers to walk to Athens. Five miles more sacred in history than those be- tween the Piraeus and the Acropolis, do not exist in the world. We walked them in about two hours, with a golden sunset at our backs, and the excitement inseparable from an approach to "the eye of Greece," giving elasticity to our steps. Near the Parthenon, • " Ex Asia rediens," etc.— I have given the translation frorn Middleton's Cicero. 130 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. which had been glowing in a flood of saffron light be- fore us, the road separated, and taking the right, we entered the city by its southern gate. A tall Greek, who was returning from the plains with a gun on his shoulder, led us through the narrow streets of the modern town to a hotel, where a comfortable supper, of which the most attractive circumstance to me was some honey from Hymettus, brought us to bed-time. We were standing under the colonnades of the temples of Theseus, the oldest, and the best preserved of the antiquities of Athens, at an early hour. We walked around it in wonder. The sun that threw in- ward the shadows of its beautiful columns, had risen on that eastern porch for more than two thousand years, and it is still the transcendent model of the world. The Parthenon was a copy of it. The now venerable and ruined temples of Rome, were built in its proportions when it was already an antiquity. The modern edifices of every civilized nation are considered faulty only as they depart from it. How little dream- ed the admirable Grecian, when its proportions rose gradually to his patient thought, that the child of his teeming imagination would be so immortal! The situation of the Theseion has done much to preserve it. It stands free of the city, while the Par- thenon and the other temples of the Acropolis, being within the citadel, have been battered by every assail- ant, from the Venetian to the ikonoklast and the Turk. It looks at a little distance like a modern structure, its parts are so nearly perfect. It is only on coming close to the columns that you see the stains in the marble to be the corrosion of the long-feeding tooth of ages. A young Englishman is buried within the nave of the temple, and the son of Miaulis, said to have been a young man worthy of the best days of Greece, lies in the eastern porch, with the weeds growing rank over his grave. We passed a handsome portico, standing alone amid a heap of ruins. It was the entrance to the ancient Agora. Here assembled the people of Athens, the constituents and supporters of Pericles, the first pos- sessors of these god-like temples. Here were sown, in the ears of the Athenians, the first seeds of glory and sedition, by patriots and demagogues, in the stir- ring days of Plataea and Marathon. Here was it first whispered that Aristides had been too long called " the just," and that Socrates corrupted the youth of Athens. And, for a lighter thought, it was here that the wronged wife of Alcibiades, compelled to come forth publicly and sign her divorce, was snatched up in the arms of her brilliant, but dissolute husband, and carried forcibly home, forgiving him, woman-like, with but half a repentance. The feeling with which I read the story when a boy, is strangely fresh in my memory. We hurried on to the Acropolis. The ascent is winding and difficult, and, near the gates, encumbered with marble rubbish. Volumes have been written on the antiquities which exist still within the walls. The greater part of four unrivalled temples are still lifted to the sun by this tall rock in the centre of Athens, the majestic Parthenon, visible over half Greece, towering above all. A Bavarian soldier received our passport at the gate. He was resting the butt of his musket on a superb bas-relief, a fragment from the ruins. How must the blood of a Greek boil to see a barbarian thus set to guard the very sanctuary of his glory. We stood under the portico of the Parthenon, and looked down on Greece. Right through a broad gap in the mountains, as if they had been swept away that Athens might be seen, stood the shining Acropolis of Corinth. I strained my eyes to see Diogenes lying under the walls, and Alexander standing in his sun- shine. "Sea-born Salamis" was beneath me, but the "ships by thousands" were not there, and the king had vanished from his " rocky throne" with his " men and nations." JEgina lay far down the gulf, folded in its blue mist, and I strained my sight to see Aristides wandering in exile on its shore. " Mars Hill," was within the sound of my voice, but its Areopagus was deserted of its judges, and the intrepid apostle was gone. The rostrum of Demosthenes, and the acad- emy of Plato, and the banks of the llissus, where Soc- rates and Zeno taught, were all around me, but the wily orator, and the, philosopher "on whose infant lips the bees shed honey as he slept," and he whose death and doctrine have been compared to those of Christ, and the self-denying stoic, were alike departed. Si- lence and ruin brood over all ! I walked through the nave of the Parthenon, passing a small Turkish mosque (built sacrilegiously by the former Disdar of Athens, within its very sanctuary), and mounted the southeastern rampart of the Acrop- olis. Through the plain beneath ran the classic ll- issus, and on its banks stood the ruins of the temple of Jupiter Olympus, which I had distinguished with the glass in coming up the Egean. The llissus was nearly dry, but a small island covered with verdure di- vided its waters a short distance above the temple, and near it were distinguishable the foundations of the Lyceum. Aristotle and his Peripatetics ramble there no more. A herd of small Turkish horses were feed- ing up toward Hymettus, the only trace of life in a valley that was once alive with the brightest of the tides of human existence. The sun poured into the Acropolis with an inten sity I have seldom felt. The morning breeze had died away, and the glare from the bright marble ruins was almost intolerable to the eye. I climbed around over the heaps of fragmented columns, and maimed and fallen statues, to the northwestern corner of the cita- adel, and sat down in the shade of one of the embra- sures to look over toward Plato's academy. The part of the city below this corner of the wall was the an- cient Pelasgicum. It was from the spot where I sat that Parrhesiades, the fisherman, is represented in Lucian to have angled for philosophers, with a hook baited with gold and figs. The academy (to me the most interesting spot of Athens) is still shaded with olive groves, as in the time of Plato. The Cephissus, whose gentle flow has mingled its murmur with so much sweet philosophy, was hidden from my sight by the numberless trees. I looked toward the spot with inexpressible interest. I had not yet been near enough to dispel the illusion. To me, the academy was still beneath those silvery olives in all its poetic glory. The "Altar of Love" still stood before the entrance; the temple of Prome- theus, the sanctuary of the Muses, the statues of Plato and of the Graces, the sacred olive, the tank in the coal gardens, and the tower of the railing Timon, were all there. I could almost have waited till even- ing to see Epicurus and Leontium, Socrates and As- pasia, returning to Athens. We passed the Tower of the Winds, the ancient Klepsydra or water-clock of Athens, in returning to the hotel. The Eight Winds sculptured on the oc- tagonal sides, are dressed according to their tempera- tures, six of them being more or less draped, and the remaining two nude. It is a small marble building, more curious than beautiful. Our way lay through the sultry streets of modern Athens. I can give you an idea of it in a single sen- tence. It is a large village, of originally mean houses, pulled down to the very cellars, and lying choked in its rubbish. A* large square in ruins after a fire in one of our cities, looks like it. It has been destroyed so often by Turks and Greeks alternately, that scarce one stone is left upon the other. The inhabitants thatch over one corner of these wretched and dusty holes with PENCILLLNGS BY THE WAY. 131 maize stalks and straw, and live there like beasts. The fineness of the climate makes a roof almost unneces- sary for eight months in the year. The consuls and authorities of the place, and the missionaries, have tolerable houses, but the paths to them are next to impracticable for the rubbish. Nothing but a Turk- ish horse, which could be ridden up a precipice, would ever pick his way through the streets. LETTER LXXXV. THE "LANTERN OF DEMOSTHENES" — BYRON's RESIDENCE IN ATHENS — TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPUS, SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS IN BUILDING SUPERSTITIOUS FANCY OF THE ATHENIANS RESPECTING ITS RUINS — HERMIT- AGE OF A GREEK MONK — PETARCHES, THE ANTIQUA- RY AND POET, AND HIS WIFE, SISTER TO THE " MAID OF ATHENS" — MUTILATION OF A BASSO RELIEVO BY AN ENGLISH OFFICER THE ELGIN MARBLES — THE CARY- ATIDES—LORD BYRON'S AUTOGRAPH ATTACHMENT Or THE GREEKS TO DR. HOWE — THE SLIDING STONE A SCENE IN THE ROSTRUM OF DEMOSTHENES. Took a walk by sunset to the Ilissus. I passed, on the way, the " Lantern of Demosthenes," a small oc- tagonal building of marble, adorned with splendid col- umns and a beautifully-sculptured frieze, in which it is said the orator used to shut himself for a month, with his head half shaved, to practise his orations. The Franciscan convent, Byron's residence while in Athens, was built adjoining it. It is now demolished. The poet's name is written with his own hand on a marble slab of the wall. I left the city by the gate of Hadrian, and walked on to the temple of Jupiter Olympus. It crowns a small elevation on the northern bank of the Ilissus. It was onre beyond all comparison the largest and most costly building in the world. During seven hundred years it employed the attention of the rulers of Greece, from Pisistratus to Hadrian, and was never quite completed. As a ruin it is the most beautiful object I ever saw. Thirteen columns of Pentelic marble, partly connect- ed by a frieze, are all that remain. They are of the flowery Corinthian order, and sixty feet in height, ex- clusive of base or capital. Three perfect columns stand separate from the rest, and lift from the midst of that solitary plain with an effect that, to my mind, is one of the highest sublim- ity. The sky might rest on them. They seem made to sustain it. As I lay on the parched grass and gazed on them in the glory of a Grecian sunset, they seemed to me proportioned for a continent. The mountains I saw between them were not designed with more am- plitude, nor corresponded more nobly to the sky above. The people of Athens have a superstitious reverence for these ruins. Dodwell says, "The single column toward the western extremity was thrown down, many years ago. by a Turkish voivode, for the sake of the materials, which were employed in constructing the great mosque of the bazar. The Athenians relate, that, after it was thrown down, the three others nearest it were heard to lament the loss of their sister! and these nocturnal lamentations did not cease till the sacrilegious voivode was destroyed by poison. Two of the columns, connected by one immense slab, are surmounted by a small building, now in ruins, but once the hermitage of a Greek monk. Here he passed his life, seventy feet in the air, sustained by two of the most graceful columns of Greece. A basket, lowered by a line, was filled by the pious every morn- ing, but the romantic eremite was never seen. With the lofty Acropolis crowned with temples just bevond him, the murmuring Ilissus below, the thyme-covered sides of Hymettus to the south, and the "blue Egean | stretching away to the west, his eye, at least, could never tire. There are times when I could envy him his lift above the world. I descended to the Fountain of Callirhne, which gushes from beneath a rock in the bed of the Jlissus, just below the temple. It is the scene of the death of the lovely nymph-mother of Ganymede. The twi- light air was laden with the fragrant thyme, and the songs of the Greek laborers returning from the fields came faintly over the plains. Life seems too short, when every breath is a pleasure. I loitered about the clear and rocky lip of the fountain, till the pool below reflected the stars in its trembling bosom. The lamps began to twinkle in Athens, Hesperus rose over Mount Pentelicus like a blazing lamp, the sky over Salamis faded down to the sober teint of night, and the columns of the Parthenon mingled into a single mass of shade. And so, I thought, as I strolled back to the city, con- cludes a day in Athens — one, at least, in my life, for j which it is worth the trouble to have lived. "• I was again in the Acropolis the following morning. Mr. Hill had kindly given me a note to Petarches the king's antiquary, a young Athenian, who married the sister of the Maid of Athens.* AVe went together through the ruins. They have lately made new exca- vations, and some superb bassi-relieii are among the discoveries. One of them represented a procession leading victims to sacrifice, and was quite the finest thing I ever saw. The leading figure was a superb female, from the head of which the nose had lately been barbarously broken. The face of the enthusi- astic antiquary flushed while I was lamenting it. It was done, he told me, but a week before, by an officer of the English squadron then lying at the Piraeus. Petarches detected it immediately, and sent word to the admiral, who discovered the heartless Goth in a j nephew of an English duke, a midshipman of his own ship. I should not have taken the trouble to men- | tion so revolting a circumstance if I had not seen, in a | splendid copy of the "Illustrations of Byron's Travels [ in Greece," a most virulent attack on the officers of j the Constellation, and Americans generally, for the same thing. Who but Englishmen have robbed Athens, and Egina, and all Greece ? Who but Eng- lishmen are watched like thieves in their visits to every place of curiQsity in the world ? Where is the superb caryatid of the Erechtheion? stolen, with such bar- barous carelessness, too, that the remaining statues and the superb portico they sustained are tumblingto the ground ! The insolence of England's laying such sins at the door of another nation is insufferable. For my own part, I can not conceive the motive for carrying away a fragment of a statue or a column. I should as soon think of drawing a tooth as a specimen of some beautiful woman I had seen in my travels. And how one dare show such a theft to any person of taste, is quite as singular. Even when a whole column or statue is carried away, its main charm is gone with the association of the place. I venture to presume, that no person of classic feeling ever saw Lord Elgin's marbles without execrating the folly that could bring them from their bright, native sky, to the vulgar atmo- sphere of London. For the love of taste, let us dis- countenance such barbarisms in America. The Erechtheion and the adjoining temple are gems of architecture. The small portico of the caryatides (female figures, in the place of columns, with their hands on their hips) must have been one of the most exquisite things in Greece. One of them (fallen in consequence of Lord Elgin's removal of the sister * You will recollect what Byron says of these three girls in one of his letters to Dr. Drtiry : " I had almost forgot to tell you, that I am dying for love of three Greek girls, at Athens, sisters. I lived in the same house. Teresa, Mar- cama, and Katinka, are the names of these divinities ail under fifteen." 132 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. statue), lies headless on the ground, and the remaining ones are badly mutilated, but they are very, very beau- tiful. I remember two in the Villa Albani, at Rome, brought from some other temple in Greece, and con- sidered the choicest gems of the gallery. We climbed up to the sanctuary of the Erechtheion, in which stood the altars to the two elements to which the temples were dedicated. The sculpture around the cornices is still so sharp that it might have been finished yesterday. The young antiquary alluded to Byron's anathema against Lord Elgin, in Chile Har- old, and showed me, on the inside of the capital of one of the columns, the place where the poet had written his name. It was, as he always wrote it, sim- ply " Byron," in small letters, and would not be noticed by an ordinary observer. If the lover, as the poet sings, was jealous of the star his mistress gazed upon, the sister of the " Maid of Athens" may well be jealous of the Parthenon. Petarches looks at it and talks of it with a fever in his eyes. I could not help smiling at his enthusiasm. He is about twenty-five, of a slender person, with downcast, melancholy eyes, and looks the poet ac- cording to the most received standard. His reserved manners melted toward me on discovering that I knew our countryman, Dr. Howe, who, he tells me, was his groomsman (or the corresponding assistant at a Greek wedding), and to whom he seems, in common with all his countrymen, warmly attached. To a man of his taste, I can conceive nothing more gratifying than his appointment to the care of the Acropolis. He spends his day there with his book, attending the few travel- lers who come, and when the temples are deserted, he sits down in the shadow of a column, and reads amid the silence of the ruins he almost worships. There are {ew vocations in this envious world so separated from the jarring passions of our nature. Passed the morning on horseback, visiting the an- tiquities without the city. Turning by the temple of Theseus, we crossed Mars Hill, the seat of the Are- opagus, and passing a small valley, ascended the Pnyx. On the right of the path we observed the rock of the hill worn to the polish of enamel by friction. It was an almost perpendicular descent of six or seven feet, and steps were cut at the sides to mouni to the top. It is the famous sliding stone, believed by the Athenians to possess the power of determining the sex of unborn children. The preference of sons, if the polish of the stone is to be trusted, is universal in Greece. The rostrum of Demosthenes was above us on the side of the hill facing from the sea. A small platform is cut into the rock, and on either side a seat is hewn out, probably for the distinguished men of the state. The audience stood on the side-hill, and the orator and his listeners were in the open air. An older ros- trum is cut into the summit of the hill, facing the sea. It is said that when the maritime commerce of Greece began to enrich the lower classes, the thirty tyrants turned the rostrum toward the land, lest their orators should point to the ships of the Piraeus, and remind the people of their power. Scene after scene swept through my fancy as I stood on the spot. I saw Demosthenes, after his first unsuc- cessful oration, descending with a dejected air toward the temple of Theseus, followed by old Eunomas ;* abandoning himself to despair, and repressing the fiery consciousness within him as a hopeless ambition. I saw him again, with the last glowing period of a Phil- * " However, in his first address to the people, he was laughed at and interrupted by their clamors ; for the violence of his manner threw him into a confusion of periods, and a distortion of his argument. At last, upon his quitting the assembly, Eunomus, the Thriasian, a man now extremely old. found him wandering in a dejected condition in the Piraeus, and took upon him to set him right."' — Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes. lipic on his lips, standing on this rocky eminence, his arm stretched toward Macedon ; his eye flashing with success, and his ear catching the low murmur of the crowd below, which told him he had moved his coun- try as with the heave of an earthquake. I saw the calm Aristides rise, with his mantle folded majestically about him ; and the handsome Alcibiades waiting with a smile on his lips to speak ; and Socrates, gazing on his wild but winning disciple with affection and fear. How easily is this bare rock, whereon the eagle now alights unaffrighted, repeopled with the crowding shadows of the past. LETTER LXXXVI. THE PRISON OF SOCRATES— TURKISH STIRRUPS AND SADDLES — FLATo's ACADEMY — THE AMERICAN MIS- SIONARY SCHOOL AT ATHENS THE SON OF PETARCHES AND NEPHEW OF "MRS. BLACK OF EGINA." Athens. — We dismounted at the door of Socrates' 's prison. A hill between the Areopagus and the sea, is crowned with the remains of a showy monument to a Roman pro-consul. Just beneath it the hill forms a low precipice, and in the face of it you see three low entrances to caverns hewn in the solid rock. The farthest to the right was the room of the Athenian guard, and within it is a chamber with a round ceiling, which the sage occupied during the thirty days of his imprisonment. There are marks of an iron door which separated it from the guard-room, and through the bars of this he refused the assistance of his friends to escape, and held those conversations with Crito, Plato, and others, which have made his name immortal. On the day upon which he was doomed to die, he was re- moved to the chamber nearest the Acropolis, and here the hemlock was presented to him. A shallower ex- cavation between, held an altar to the gods; and after his death, his body was here given to his friends. Nothing, except some of the touching narrations of scripture, ever seemed to me so affecting as the history of the death of Socrates. It has been likened (I think, not profanely), to that of Christ. His virtuous life, his belief in the immortality of the soul and a future state of reward and punishment, his forgiveness of his ene- mies and his godlike death, certainly prove him, in the absence of revealed light, to have walked the " darkling path of human reason" with an almost in- spired rectitude. I stood in the chamber which had received his last breath, not without emotion. The rocky walls about me had witnessed his composure as he received the cup from his weeping jailer; the roughly-hewn floor beneath my feet had sustained him, as he walked to and fro, till the poison had chilled his limbs ; his last sigh, as he covered his head with his mantle and expired, passed forth by that low por- tal. It is not easy to be indifferent on spots like these. The spirit of the place is felt. We can not turn back and touch the brighter links of that " fleshly chain," in which all human beings since the creation have been bound alike, without feeling, even through the rusty coil of ages, the electric sympathy. Socrates died here ! The great human leap into eternity, the inevit- able calamity of our race, was here taken more nobly than elsewhere. Whether the effect be to " fright us from the shore," or, to nerve us by the example, to look more steadily before us, a serious thought, almost of course a salutary one, lurks in the very air. We descended the hill and galloped our small Turk- ish horses at a stirring pace over the plain. The short stirrup and high peaked saddle of the country, are (at least to men of my length and limb) uncomfortable contrivances. With the knees almost up to the chin, one is compelled, of course, to lean far over the horse's PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 133 head, and it requires all the fullness of Turkish trousers to conceal the awkwardness of the position. We drew rein at the entrance of the " olive grove." Our horses walked leisurely along the shaded path between the trees, and we arrived in a few minutes at the site of Plato's academy. The more ethereal portion of my pleasure in seeing it must be in the recollection. The Cephissus was dry, the noon-day sun was hot, and we were glad to stop, with throbbing temples, under a cluster of fig-trees, and eat the delicious fruit, forget- ting all the philosophers incontinently. We sat in our saddles, and a Greek woman, of great natural beauty, though dressed in rags, bent down the boughs to our reach. The honey from the over-ripe figs, dropped upon us as the wind shook the branches. Our dark- eyed and bright-lipped Pomona served us with a grace aod cheerfulness that would draw me often to the neighborhood of the academy if I lived in Athens. I venture to believe that Phryne herself, in so mean a dress, would scarce have been more attractive. We kissed our hand to her as our spirited horses leaped the hollow with which the trees were encircled, and passing the mound sacred to the Furies, where QZdipus was swallowed up, dashed over the sultry plain once more, and were soon in Athens. I have passed most of my leisure hours here in a scene I certainly did not reckon in anticipation, among the pleasures of a visit to Athens — the American mis- sionary school. We have all been delighted with it, from the commodore to the youngest midshipman. Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been here some four or five years, and have attained their present degree of suc- cess in the face of every difficulty. Their whole number of scholars from the commencement, has been upward of three hundred ; at present they have a hundred and thirty, mostly girls. We found the school in a new and spacious stone building on the site of the ancient "market," where Paul, on his visit to Athens, "disputed daily with those that met with him." A large court-yard, shaded partly with a promegranate-tree, separates it from the marble portico of the Agora, which is one of the finest remains of antiquity. Mrs. Hill was in the midst of the little Athenians. Two or three serious-looking Greek girls were assisting her in regulating their move- ments, and the new and admirable system of combined instruction and amusement was going on swimmingly. There were, perhaps, a hundred children in the bench- es, mostly from three to six or eight years of age; dark-eyed, cheerful little creatures, who looked as if their •■ birthright of the golden grasshopper" had made them nature's favorites as certainly as in the days when their ancestor-mothers settled questions of philosophy. They marched and recited, and clapped their sun- burnt hands, and sung hymns, and I thought I never had seen a more gratifying spectacle. I looked around in vain for one who seemed discontented or weary. Mrs. Hill's manner to them was most affectionate. She governs, literally, with a smile. I selected several little favorites. One was a fine fellow of two to three years, whose name I inquired immediately. He was Plato Petarches, the nephew of the " maid of Athens," and the son of the second of the three girls so admired by Lord Byron. Another was a girl of six or seven, with a face, surpassing, for expressive beauty, that of any child I ever saw. She was a Hydriote by birth, and dressed in the costume of the islands. Her little feet were in Greek slippers ; her figure was prettily set off with an open jacket, laced with buttons from the shoulder to the waist, and her head was enveloped in a figured handkerchief, folded gracefully in the style of a turban, and brought under her chin, so as to show suspended a rich me- tal'ic fringe. Her face was full, but marked with childish dimples, and her mouth and eyes, as beautiful as ever those expressive features were made, had a re- tiring seriousness in them, indescribably sweet. She looked as if she had been born in some scene of Turk- ish devastation, and had brought her mother's heart- ache into the world. At noon, at the sound of a bell, they marched out, clapping their hands in time to the instructer's voice, and sealed themselves in order upon the portico, in front of the school. Here their baskets were given them, and each one produced her dinner and ate it with the utmost propriety. It was really a beautiful scene. It is to be remembered that here is educated a class of human beings who were else deprived of instruction by the universal custom of their country. The females of Greece are suffered to grow up in ignorance. One who can read and write is rarely found. The school has commenced fortunately at the most favorable mo- ment. The government was in process of change, and an innovation was unnoticed in the confusion that at a later period might have been opposed by the preju- dices of custom. The king and the president of the regency, Count Armansperg, visited the school fre- quently during their stay in Athens, and expressed their thanks to Mrs. Hill warmly. The Countess Armansperg called repeatedly to have the pleasure of sitting in the school-room for an hour. His majes- ty, indeed, could hardly find a more useful subject in his realm. Mrs. Hill, with her own personal efforts, has taught more than one hundred children to read the Bible! How few of us can write against our names an equal offset to the claims of human duty ? Circumstances made me acquainted with one or two wealthy persons residing in Athens, and I received from them a strong impression of Mr. Hill's useful- ness and high standing. His house is the hospitable resort of every stranger of intelligence and respecta- bility. Mr. King and Mr. Robinson, missionaries of the Foreign Board, are absent at Psera. Their families are here. I passed my last evening among the magnificent ruins on the banks of the Ilissus. The next day was occupied in returning visits to the families who had been polite to us, and, with a farewell of unusual re- gret to our estimable missionary friends, we started on horseback to return by a gloomy sunset to the Piraeus. I am looking more for the amusing than the useful in my rambles about the world, and I confess I should not have gone far out of my way to visit a missionary station anywhere. But chance has thrown this of Athens across my path, and I record it as a moral spectacle to which no thinking person could be indif- ferent. I freely say I never have met with an equal number of my fellow-creatures, who seemed to me so indisputably and purely useful. The most cavilling mind must applaud their devoted sense of duty, bear- ing up against exile from country and friends, priva- tions, trial of patience, and the many, many ills inevi- table to such an errand in a foreign land, while even the coldest politician would find in their efforts the best promise for an enlightened renovation of Greece. Long after the twilight thickened immediately about us, the lofty Acropolis stood up, bathed in a glow of light from the lingering sunset. I turned back to gaze upon it with an enthusiasm I had thought laid on the shelf with my half-forgotten classics. The intrinsic beauty of the ruins of Greece, the loneliness of their situation, and the divine climate in which, to use By- ron's expression, they are "buried," invest them with an interest which surrounds no other antiquities in the world. I rode on, repeating to myself Milton's beau- tiful description : " Look ! on the Egean a city stands Built nobly ; pure the air and light the soil • 134 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. Athens — the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence ; native to famous wits Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, City or suburban, studious walks or shades. See, there the olive-groves of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long. There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound Of bees' industrious murmurs, oft invites To studious musing ; there Ilissus rolls His whispering stream ; within the walls there view The schools of ancient sages, his who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world ."' LETTER LXXXVII. THE PIRAEUS — THE SACRA VIA — RUINS OF ELEUSIS — GI- GANTIC MEDALLION — COSTUME OF THE ATHENIAN WO- MEN — THE TOMB OF THEMISTOCLES — THE TEMPLE OF MINERVA — AUTOGRAPHS. PirjEus. — With a basket of ham and claret in the stern-sheets, a cool awning over our heads, and twelve men at the oars, such as the coxswain of Themistocles' galley might have sighed for, we pulled away from the ship at an early hour, for Eleusis. The conqueror of Salamis delayed the battle for the ten o'clock breeze, and as nature (which should be called he instead of she, for her constancy) still ruffles the Egean at the same hour, we had a calm sea through the strait, where once lay the " ships by thousands." We soon rounded the point, and shot along under the " Rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis." It is a bare, bold precipice, a little back from the sea, and commands an entire view of the strait. Here sat Xerxes, "on his throne of gold,* with many secreta- ries about him to write down the particulars of the ac- tion." The Athenians owed their victory to the wis- dom of Themistocles, who managed to draw the Per- sians into the strait (scarce a cannon shot across just here), where only a small part of their immense fleet could act at one time. The wind, as the wily Greek had foreseen, rose at the same time, and rendered the lofty-built Persian ships unmanageable ; while the Athenian galleys, cut low to the water, were easily brought into action in the most advantageous position. It is impossible to look upon this beautiful and lovely spot and imagine the stirring picture it presented. The wild sea-bird knows no lonelier place. Yet on that rock once sat the son of Darius, with his royal purple floating to the wind, and, below him, within these rocky limits, lay " one thousand two hundred ships-of-war, and two thousand transports," while be- hind him, on the shores of the Piraeus, were encamped H seven hundred thousand foot, and four hundred thousand horse" — "amounting," says Potter, in his notes, " with the retinue of women and servants that attended the Asiatic princes in their military expedi- tions, to more than five millions.' 1 '' How like a king must the royal Persian have felt, when " He counted them at break of day !" With an hour or two of fast pulling, we opened into the broad bay of Eleusis. The first sabbath after the creation could not have been more absolutely silent. Megara was away on the left, Eleusis before us at the distance of four or five miles, and the broad plains where agriculture was first taught by Triptolemus, the poetical home of Ceres, lay an utter desert in the sunshine. Behind us, between the mountains, de- scended the Sacra Via, by which the procession came from Athens to celebrate the "Eleusinian mysteries" — • So says Phanodemus, quoted by Plutarch. The commen- tators upon the tragedy of iEschylus on this subject, say it was a " silver chair," and that it " was afterward placed in the temple of Minerva, at Athens, with the golden-hilted c'saeter of Mardonius." a road of five or six miles, lined, in the time of Peri- cles, with temples and tombs. I could half fancy the scene as it was presented to the eyes of the invading Macedonians — when the procession of priests and vir- gins, accompanied by the whole population of Athens, wound down into the plain, guarded by the shining spears of the army of Alcibiades. It is still doubtful, I believe, whether these imposing ceremonies were the pure observances of a lofty and sincere superstition, or the orgies of licentious saturnalia. We landed at Eleusis, and were immediately sur- rounded by a crowd of people, as simple and curious in their mannets, and resembling somewhat in their dress and complexion, the Indians of our country. The ruins of a great city lay about us, and their huts were built promiscuously among them. Magnificent fragments of columns and blocks of marble interrupted the path through the village, and between two of the houses lay, half buried, a gigantic medallion of Pen- telic marble, representing, in alto relievo, the body and head of a warrior in full armor. A hundred men would move it with difficulty. Commodore Patterson attempted it six years ago, in the Constitution, but his launch was found unequal to its weight. The people here gathered more closely around the ladies of our party, examining their dress with childish curiosity. They were doubtless the first females ever seen at Eleusis in European costume. One of the ladies happening to pull off her glove, there was a general cry of astonishment. The brown kid had clearly been taken as the color of the hand. Some curiosity was then shown to see their faces, which were coveted with thick green veils, as a protection against the sun. The sight of their complexion (in any country remarkable for a dazzling whiteness) com- pleted the astonishment of these children of Ceres. We, on our part, were scarcely less amused with their costumes in turn. Over the petticoat was worn a loose jacket of white cloth reaching to the knee, and open in front — its edges and sleeves wrought very tastefully with red cord. The head-dress was com- posed entirely of money. A fillet of gold sequins was first put, a la feroniere. around the forehead, and a close cap, with a throat-piece like the gorget of a hel- met, fitted the scull exactly, stitched with coins of all values, folded over each other according to their sizes, like scales. The hair was then braided and fell down the back, loaded also with money. Of the fifty or six- ty women we saw, I should think one half had money on her head to the amount of from one to two hundred dollars. They suffered us to examine them with per- fect good humor. The greater proportion of pieces were paras, a small and thin Turkish coin of very small value. Among the larger pieces were dollars of all nations, five-franc pieces, Sicilian piastres, Tuscan colonati, Venetian swansicas, etc., etc. I doubted much whether they were not the collections of some piratical caique. There is no possibility of either spending or getting money within many miles of Ele- usis, and it seemed to be looked upon as an ornament which they had come too lightly by to know its use. We walked over the foundations of several large temples with the remains of their splendor lying un- valued about them, and at half a mile from the village came to the " well of Proserpine," whence, say the poets, the ravished daughter of Ceres emerged from the infernal regions on her visits to her mother. The modern Eelusinians know it only as a well of the purest water. On our return, we stopped at the southern point of the Piraeus, to see the tomb of Themistocles. We were directed to it by thirteen or fourteen frusta of enormous columns, which once formed the monument to his memory. They buried him close to the edge of the sea, opposite Salamis. The continual beat of the waves for so many hundred years has worn away PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. 135 the promontory, and his sarcophagus, which was laid in a grave cut in the solid rock, is now filled by every swell from the Egean. The old hero was brought back from his exile to be gloriously buried. He could not lie better for the repose of his spirit (if it returned with his bones from Argos). The sea on which he beat the haughty Persians with his handful of galleys, sends every wave to his feet. The hollows in the rock around his grave are full oPsnowy salt left by the evaporation. You might scrape up a bushel within six feet of him. It seems a natural tribute to his memory.* On a high and lonely rock, stretching out into the midst of the sea, stands a solitary temple. As far as the eye can reach, along the coast of Attica and to the distant isles, there is no sign of human habitation. There it stands, lifted into the blue sky of Greece, like the unreal "fabric of a vision." Cape Colomia and its "temple of Minerva," were familiar to my memory, but my imagination had pic- tured nothing half so beautiful. As we approached it from the sea, it seemed so strangely out of place, even for a ruin, so far removed from what had ever been the haunt of man, that I scarce credited my eyes. We could soon count them — thirteen columns of sparkling marble, glittering in the sun. The sea-air keeps them spotlessly white, and, until you approach them nearly, they have the appearance of a structure, from its freshness, still in the sculptor's hands. The boat was lowered, anuVthe ship lay otf-and-on while we landed near the rocks where Falconer was shipwrecked, and mounted to the temple. The sum- mit of the promontory is strewn with the remains of M the fallen columns, and their smooth surfaces are ' thickly inscribed with the names of travellers. Among | others, I noticed Byron's and Hobhouse's, and that; of the agreeable author of " A year in Spain." Byron, J | by the way, mentions having narrowly escaped robbery ' here, by a band of Mainote pirates. He was surprised swimming off the point, by an English vessel contain- ing some ladies of his acquaintance. He concludes the " Isles of Greece" beautifully with an allusion to it by its ancient name : — " Place me on Sunium's marbled steep," etc. The view from the summit is one of the finest in all Greece. The isle where Plato was sold as a slave, and where Aristides and Demosthenes passed their days in exile, stretches along the west ; the wide Egean, sprinkled with here and there a solitary rock, herbless, but beautiful in its veil of mist, spreads away from its feet to the southern line of the horizon, and crossing each other almost imperceptibly on the light winds of this summer sea, the red-sailed caique of Greece, the merchantmen from the Dardanelles, and the heavy men-of-war of England and France, cruis- ing wherever the wind blows fairest, are seen like broad-winged and solitary birds, lying low with spread pinions upon the waters. The place touched me. I shall remember it with an affection. There is a small island close to Sunium, which was fortified by one of the heroes of the Iliad on his return from Troy — why, heaven only knows. It was here, too, that Phrontes, the pilot of Menelaus, died and was buried. We returned on board after an absence of two hours from the ship, and are steering now straight for the Dardanelles. The plains of Marathon are but a few hours north of our course, and I pass them unwilling- ly ; but what is there one would not see? Greece lies behind, and I have realized one of my dearest dreams in rambling over its ruins. Tiavel is an appe- tite that " grows by what it feeds on." * Langhorne says in his not^s on Plutarch, " There is the genuine attic salt in most of the retorts and observations of themselves. His wit seems to have been equal to his military and political capacity." LETTER LXXXVIII. MYTILENE— THE TOMB OF ACHILLES — TURKISH BURYING GROUND LOST REPUTATION OF THE SCAMANDER ASIATIC SUNSETS VISIT TO A TURKISH BEY THE CASTLES OF THE DARDANELLES — TURKISH BATH, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Lesbos to windward. A caique, crowded with people, is running across our bow, all hands singing a wild chorus (perhaps the Lesboun carmen), most merrily. The island is now called Mytilene, said to be the greenest and most fertile of the Mediterranean. The Lesbean wine is still good, but they have had no poetesses since Sappho. Cause and effect have quar- relled, one would think. Tenedos on the lee. The tomb of Achilles is dis- tinguishable with the glass on the coast of Asia. The column which Alexander "crowned and anointed and danced around naked," in honor of the hero's ghost, stands above it no longer. The Macedonian wept over Achilles, says the schoolbook, and envied him the blind bard who had sung his deeds. He would have dried his tears if he had known that his pas seul would be remembered as long. Tenedos seems a pretty island as we near it. It was here that the Greeks hid, to persuade the Tro- jans that they had abandoned the siege, while the wooden horse was wheeled into Troy. The site of the city of Priam is visible as we get nearer the coa^t of Asia. Mount Ida and the marshy valley of the Scamander are appearing beyond Cape Sigrcum, and we shall anchor in an hour between Europe and Asia, in the mouth of the rapid Dardanelles. The wind is not strong enoueh to stem the current that sets down like a mill-race from the sea of Marmora. Went ashore on the Asian side for a ramble. We landed at the strong Turkish castle that, with another on the European side, defends the strait, and passing under their bristling batteries, entered the small Turk- ish town in the rear. Our appearance excited a great deal of curiosity. The Turks, who were sitting cross- legged on the broad benches extending like a tailor's board, in front of the cafes, stopped smoking as we passed, and the women, wrapping up their own faces more closely, approached the ladies of our party, and lifted their veils to look at them with the freedom of our friends at Eleusis. We came unaware upon two squalid wretches of women in turning a corner, who pulled their ragged shawls oyer their heads with looks of the greatest resentment at having exposed their faces to us. A few minutes' walk brought us outside of the town. An extensive Turkish grave-yard lay on the left. Between fig-trees and blackberry bushes it was a green spot, and the low tombstones of the men, crowned each with a turban carved in marble of the shape befitting the sleeper's rank, peered above the grass like a congregation sitting in a uniform head- dress at a field-preaching. Had it not been for the female graves, which were marked with a slab like ours, and here and there the tombstone of a Greek, carved, after the antique, in the shape of a beautiful shell, the effect of an assemblage sur I'herbe would have been ludicrously perfect. We walked on to the Scamander. A rickety bridge gave us a passage, toll free, to the other side, where we sat round the rim of a marble well, and ate delicious grapes, stolen for us by a Turkish boy from a near vineyard. Six or seven camels were feeding on the unenclosed plain, picking a mouthful and then lifting their long, snaky necks into the air to swallow ; a stray- horseman, with the head of his bridle decked with red tassels and his knees up to his chin.scoured the bridle path to the mountains ; and three devilish-looking buffaloes scratched their hides and rolled up theii 136 PEiNCILLINGS BY THE WAY. fiendish green eyes under a bramble-hedge near the river. Voila ! a scene in Asia. The poets lie, or the Scamander is as treacherous as Macassar. Venus bathed in its waters before con- tending for the prize of beauiy adjudged to her on this very Mount Ida that I see covered with brown grass in the distance. Her hair became "flowing gold" in the lavation. My friends compliment me upon no change after a similar experiment. My long locks (run riot with a four months' cruise) are as dingy and untractable as ever, and, except in the increased brownnessof a Mediterranean complexion, the cracked glass in the state-room of my friend the lieutenant gives me no encouragement of a change. It is soft water, and runs over fine white sand ; but the fountain of Callirhoc, at Athens (she was the daughter of the Scamander, and, like most daughters, is much more attractive than her papa), is softer and clearer. Per- haps the loss of the Scamander's virtues is attributable to the cessation of the tribute paid to the god in Helen's time. The twilights in this part of the world are unpar- alleled — but I have described twilights and sunsets in Greece and Italy till I am ashamed to write the words. Each one comes as if there never had been and never were to be another, and the adventures of the day, however stirring, are half forgotten in its glory, and seem, in comparison, unworthy of description ; but one look at the terms that might describe it, written on paper, uncharms even the remembrance. You must come to Asia and feel sunsets. You can not get them by paying postage. At anchor, waiting for a wind. Called to-day on the Bey Effendi, commander of the two castles, "Eu- rope" and " Asia," between which we lie. A pokerish- looking dwarf, with ragged beard and high turban, and a tall Turk, who I am sure never smiled since he was born, kicked off their slippers at the threshold, and ushered us into a chamber on the second story. It was a luxurious little room, lined completely with cushions, the muslin-covered pillows of down leaving only a place for the door. The divan was as broad as a bed, and, save the difficulty of rising from it, it was perfect as a lounge. A ceiling of inlaid woods, em- browned with smoke, windows of small panes fantas- tically set, and a place lower than the floor for the attendants to stand and leave their slippers, were all that was peculiar else. The bey entered in a few minutes, with a pipe- bearer, an interpreter, and three or four attendants. He was a young man, about twenty, and excessively handsome. A clear, olive complexion, a mustache of silky black, a thin, aquiline nose, with almost trans- parent nostrils, cheeks and chin rounded into a perfect oval, and mouth and eyes expressive of the most reso- lute firmness, and, at the same time, girlishly beautiful, completed the picture of the finest-looking fellow I have seen within my recollection. His person was very slight, and his feet and hands small, and particu- larly well shaped. Like most of his countrymen of latter years, his dress was half European, and much less becoming, of course, than the turban and trowser. Pantaloons, rather loose, a light fawn-colored short- jacket, a red cap, with a blue tassel, and stockings, without shoes, were enough to give him the appear- ance of a dandy half through his toilet. He entered with an indolent step, bowed, without smiling, and, throwing one of his feet under him, sunk down upon the divan, and beckoned for his pipe. The Turk in attendance kicked off his slippers, and gave him the long tube with its amber mouth-piece, setting the bowl inlo a basin in the centre of the room. The bey put it c?. Lis handsome lips, and drew till the smoke mounted to the ceiling, and then handed it, with a graceful gesture, to the commodore. The conversation went on through two interpreta- tions. The bey's interpreter spoke Greek and Turk- ish, and the ship's pilot, who accompanied us, spoke Greek and English, and the usual expressions of good feeling, and offers of mutual service, were thus passed between the puffs of the pipe with sufficient facility. The dwarf soon entered with coffee. The small gilded cups had about the capacity of a goodwife's thimble, and were covered with gold tops to retain the aroma. The fragrance of the rich berry filled the room. We acknowledged, at once, the superiority of the Turkish manner of preparing it. It is excessively strong, and drunk without milk. I looked into every corner while the attendants were removing the cups, but could see no trace of a book. Ten or twelve guns, with stocks inlaid with pearl and silver, two or three pair of gold-handled pistols, and a superb Turkish cimeter and belt, hung upon the walls, but there was no other furniture. We rose, after a half hour's visit, and were bowed out by the handsome effendi, coldly and politely. As we passed under the walls of the castle, on the way to the boat, we saw six or seven women, probably a part of his harem, peeping from the embrasures of one of the bastions. Their heads were wrapped in white, one eye only left visible. It was easy to imagine them Zuleikas after having seen their master. Went ashore at Castle Europe, with one or two of the officers, to take a bath. An old Turk, sitting upon his hams, at the entrance, pointed to the low door at his side, without looking at us, and we descended, by a step or two, into a vaulted hall, with a large, circular ottoman in the centre, and a very broad divan all around. Two tall young mussulmans, with only tur- bans and waistcloths to conceal their natural propor- tions, assisted us to undress, and led us into a stone room, several degrees warmer than the first. We walked about here for a few minutes, and, as we began to perspire, were taken into another, filled with hot vapor, and, for the first moment or two, almost intol- erable. It was shaped like a dome, with twenty or thirty small windows at the top, several basins at the sides into which hot water was pouring, and a raised stone platform in the centre, upon which we were all requested, by gestures, to lie upon our backs. The perspiration, by this time, was pouring from us like rain. I lay down with the others, and a Turk, a dark- skinned, fine-looking fellow, drew on a mitten of rough grass cloth, and, laying one hand upon my breast to hold me steady, commenced rubbing me, without water, violently. The skin peeled off under the fric- tion, and I thought he must have rubbed into the flesh repeatedly. Nothing but curiosity to go through the regular operation of a Turkish bath prevented my crying out " enough !" He rubbed away, turning me from side to side, till the rough glove passed smoothly all over my body and limbs, and then, handing me a pair of wooden slippers, suffered me to rise. I walked about for a few minutes, looking with surprise at the rolls of skin he had taken from me, and feeling almost transparent as the hot air blew upon me. In a few minutes my mussulman beckoned to me to follow him to a smaller room, where he seated me on a stone beside a fount of hot water. He then made some thick soap-suds in a basin, and, with a handful of fine flax, soaped and rubbed me all over again, and a few dashes of the hot water, from a wooden saucer, completed the bath. The next room, which had seemed so warm on our entrance, was now quite chilly. "We remained here until we were dry, and then returned to the hall in which our clothes were left, where beds were prepared on the divans, and we were covered in warm cloths, and left to our repose. The disposition to sleep was PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 137 almost irresistible. We rose in a short time, and went to the coffee-house opposite, when a cup of strong coffee, and a hookah smoked through a highly orna- mented glass bubbling with water, refreshed us deli- riously. I have had ever since a feeling of suppleness and lightness, which is like wings growing at my feet. It is certainly a very great luxury, though, unquestion- ably, most enervating as a habit. LETTER LXXXIX. A TURKISH PIC-NIC, ON THE PLAIN OF TROY — FINGERS VS. FORKS — TRIESTE — THE BOSCHETTO — GRACEFUL FREEDOM OF ITALIAN MANNERS — A RURAL FETE — FIREWORKS AMATEUR MUSICIANS. Dardanelles. — The oddest invitation I ever had in my life was from a Turkish bey to a. fete champetre, on the ruins of Troy ! We have just returned, full of wassail and pillaw, by the light of an Asian moon. The morning was such a one as you would expect in the countiy where mornings were first made. The sun was clear, but the breeze was fresh, and as we sat on the bey's soft divans, taking coffee before starting, I turned my cheek to the open window, and confessed the blessing of existence. We were sixteen, from the ship, and our boat was attended by his interpreter, the general of his troops, the governor of Bournabashi (the name of the Turkish town near Troy), and a host of attendants on foot and horseback. His cook had been sent forward at day- light with the provisions. The handsome bey came to the door, and helped to mount us upon his own horses, and we rodfe off, with the whole population of the village assembled to see our departure. We forded the Scamander, near the town, and pushed on at a hard gallop over the plain. The bey soon overtook us upon a fleet gray mare, caparisoned with red trappings, holding an um- brella over his head, which he courteously offered to the commodore on coming up. We followed a grass path, without hill or stone, for nine or ten miles, and after having passed one or two hamlets, with their open thrashing-floors, and crossed the Simois, with the water to our saddle-girths, we left a slight rising ground by a sudden turn, and descended to a cluster of trees, where the Turks sprang from their horses, and made signs for us to dismount. It was one of nature's drawing-rooms. Thickets of brush and willows enclosed a fountain, whose clear waters were confined in a tank, formed of marble slabs, from the neighboring ruins. A. spreading tree above, and soft meadow-grass to its very tip, left nothing to wish but friends and a quiet mind to perfect its beau- ty. The cook's fires were smoking in the thicket, the horses were grazing without saddle or bridle in the pasture below, and we lay down upon the soft, Turk- ish carpets, spread beneath the trees, and reposed from our fatigues for an hour. The interpreter came when the sun had slanted a little across the trees, and invited us to the bey's gar- dens, hard by. A path, overshadowed with wild brush, led us round the little meadow to a gate, close to the fountain-head of the Scamander. One of the common cottages of the country stood upon the left, and in front of it a large arbor, covered with a grape-vine, was underlaid with cushions and carpets. Here we reclined, and coffee was brought us with baskets of grapes, figs, quinces, and pomegranates, the bey and his officers waiting on us themselves with amusing assiduity. The people of the house, meantime, were sent to the fields for green corn, which was roasted for us, and this with nuts, wine, and conversation, and a ramble to the source of the Simois, which bursts from a cleft in the rock very beautifully, whiled away the hours till dinner. About four o'clock we returned to the fountain. A white muslin cloth was laid upon the grass between the edge and the overshadowing tree, and all around it were spread the carpets upon which we were to re- cline while eating. Wine and melons were cooling in the tank, and plates of honey and grapes, and new- made butter (a great luxury in the archipelago), stood on the marble rim. The dinner might have fed Pri- am's army. Haifa lamb, turkeys, and chickens, were the principal meats, but there was, besides, " a rabble route*' of made dishes, peculiar to the country, of in- gredients at which I could not hazard even a conjec- ture. We crooked our legs under us with some awkward- ness, and producing our knives and forks (which we had brought with the advice of the interpreter), com- menced, somewhat abated in appetite by too liberal a lunch. The bey and his officers sitting upright, with their feet under them, pinched off bits of meat dexter- ously with the thumb and forefinger, passing from one to the other a dish of rice, with a large spoon, which all used indiscriminately. It is odd that eating with the fingers seemed only disgusting to me in the bey. His European dress probably made the peculiarity more glaring. The fat old governor who sat beside me was greased to the elbows, and his long grey beard was studded with rice and drops of gravy to his girdle. He rose when the meats were removed, and waddled off to the stream below, where a wash in the clean water made him once more a presentable person. It is a Turkish custom to rise and retire while the dishes are changing, and after a little ramble through the meadow, we returned to a lavish spread of fruits and honey, which concluded the repast. It is doubted where Troy stood. The reputed site is a rising ground, near the fountain of Bournabashi, to which we strolled after dinner. We found nothing but quantities of fragments of columns, believed by antiquaries to be the ruins of a city, that sprung up and died long since Troy. We mounted and rode home by a round moon, whose light filled the air like a dust of phosphoric sil- ver. The plains were in a glow with it. Our Indian summer nights, beautiful as they are, give you no idea of an Asian moon. The bey's rooms were lit, and we took coffee with him once more, and, fatigued with pleasure and ex- citement, got to our boats, and pulled up against the arrowy current of the Dardanelles to the frigate ******** A long, narrow valley, with precipitous sides, com- mences directly at the gate of Trieste, and follows a small stream into the mountains of Friuli. It is a very sweet, green place, and studded on both sides with cottages and kitchen-gardens, which supply the city with flowers and vegetables. The right hand slope is called the Boschetto, and is laid out with pret- ty avenues of beach and elm as a public walk, while, at every few steps, stands a bowling-alley or drinking arbor, and here and there a trim little restaurant, just large enough for a rural party. It is, perhaps, a mile and a half in length, and one grand cafe in the centre, usually tempts the better class of promenaders into the expense of an ice. It was a Sunday afternoon, and all Trieste was pour- ing out to the Boschetto. I had come ashore with one of the officers, and we fell into the tide. Few spots in the world are so variously peopled as this thriving seaport, and we encountered every style of dress and feature. The greater part were Jewesses. How instantly the most common observer distinguish- es them in a crowd ! The clear sallow skin, the sharp black eye and broad eyebrow, the aqueline nose, the small person, the slow, cautious step of the old, and 138 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. the quick, restless one of the young, the ambitious or- naments, and the look of cunning, which nothing but the highest degree of education does away, mark the race with the definiteness of another species. We strolled on to the end of the walk, amused con- stantly with the family groups sitting under the trees with their simple repast of a fritata and a mug of beer, perfectly unconscious of the presence of the crowd. There was something pastoral and contented in the scene that took my fancy. Almost all the female promenaders were without bonnets, and the mixture of the Greek style of head-dress with the Parisian coiffure, had a charming effect. There was just enough of fashion to take off the vulgarity. We coquetted along, smiled upon by here and there a group that hid visited the ship, and on our return sat down at a table in front of the cafe, surrounded by some hundreds of people of all classes, conversing and eating ices. I thought as I glanced about me, how oddly such a scene would look in America. In the broad part of an open walk, the whole town passing and repassing, sat elegantly dressed ladies with their husbands or lovers, mothers with their daughters, and occasionally a group of modest girls alone, eating or drinking with as little embarrassment as at home, and preserving toward each other that courtesy of deport- ment which in these classes of society can result only from being so much in public. Under the next tree to us sat an excessively pretty woman with two gentlemen, probably her husband and cavalier. I touched my hat to them as we seated ourselves, and this common courtesy of the country was returned with smiles that put us instantly upon the footing of a half acquaintance. A caress to the lady's greyhound, and an apology for smoking, pro- duced a little conversation, and when they rose to leave us, the compliments of the evening were exchanged with a cordiality that in America would scarce follow an acquaintance of months. I mention it as an every- day instance of the kind-hearted and open manners of Europe. It is what makes these countries so agree- able to the stranger and the traveller. Every cafe, on a second visit, seems like a home. We were at a rural fete last night, given by a wealthy merchant of Trieste, at his villa in the neighborhood. We found the company assembled on a terraced ob- servatory, crowning a summer-house, watching the sunset over one of the sweetest landscapes in the world. We were at the head of a valley broken at the edge of the Adriatic by the city, and beyond spread the golden waters of the gulf toward Venice, headed in on the right by the long chain of the Friuli. The coun- try around was green and fertile, and small white vil- las peeped out everywhere from the foliage, evidences of the prosperous commerce of the town. We watch- ed the warm colors out of the sky, and the party hav- ing by this time assembled, we walked through the long gardens to a house open with long windows from the ceilino; t the floor, and furnished only with the light and luxurious arrangement of summer. Music is the life of all amusement within the reach of Italy, and the waltzing was mingled with perform- ances on the piano (and very wonderful ones to me) by an Italian count and his friend, a German. They played duetts in a style I have seldom heard even by professors. The supper was fantastically rural. The table was spread under a large tree, from the branches of which was trailed a vine, by a square frame of lattice-work in the proportions of a pretty saloon. The lamps were hung in colored lanterns among the branches, and the trunk of the tree passed through the centre of the ta- ble hollowed to receive it. The supper was sumptu- ously splendid, and the effect of the party within, seen from the grounds about, through the arched and vine- concealed doors, was the most picturesque imaginable. A waltz or two followed, and we were about calling for our horses, when the whole place was illuminated with a discharge of fireworks. Every description of odd figures was described in flame during the hour they detained us, and the bright glare on the trees, and the figures of the party strolling up and down the gravelled walks, was admirably beautiful. They do these things so prettily here ! We were invited out on the morning of the same day, and ex- pected nothing but a drive and a cup of tea, and we found an entertainment worthy of a king. The sim- plicity and frankness with which we were received, and the unpretendingness of the manner of introducing the amusements of the evening, might have been lessons in politeness to nobles. A drive to town by starlight, and a pull off to the ship in the cool and refreshing night air, concluded a day of pure pleasure. It has been my good fortune of late to number many such. LETTER XC THE DARDANELLES— VISIT FROM THE PACHA— HIS DELIGHT AT HRARING THE PIANO TURKISH FOUNTAINS — CARA- VAN OF MULES LADEN WITH GRAPES— TURKISH MODE OF LIVING — HOUSES, CAFES, AND WOMEN THE MOSQUE AND THE MUEZZIN — AMERICAN CONSUL OF THE DARDA- NELLES, ANOTHER CALEB QUOTEM. Coast of Asia. — We have lain in the mouth of the Dardanelles sixteen mortal days, waiting for a wind. ! Like Don Juan (who passed here on his way to Con stantinople) — " Another time we might have liked to see 'em, But now are not much pleased with Cape Sigaeum.'' An occasional trip with the boats to the watering-place, a Turkish bath, and a stroll in the bazar of the town behind the castle, gazing with a glass at the tombs of Ajax and Achilles, and the long, undulating shores of Asia, eating often and sleeping much, are the only appliances to our philosophy. One can not always be thinking of Hero and Leander, though he lie in the Hellespont. A merchant-brig from Smyrna is anchored just astern of us, waiting like ourselves for this eternal northeaster to blow itself out. She has forty or fifty passengers for Constantinople, among whom are the wife of an American merchant (a Greek lady), and Mr. Schaufner,a missionary, in whom I recognised a quon- dam fellow student. They were nearly starved out on board the brig, as she was provisioned but for a few days, and the commodore has courteously offered them a passage in the frigate. Fifty or sixty sail lie below Castle Europe, in the same predicament. With the " cap of King Erricus," this cruising, pleasant as it is would be a thought pleasanter to my fancy. Still wind-bound. The angel that " Looked o'er my almanac And crossed out my ill-days," suffered a week or so to escape him here. Not that the ship is not pleasant enough, and the climate de- serving of its Sybarite fame, and the sunsets and stars as much brighter than those of the rest of the world, as Byron has described them to be (vide letter to Leigh Hunt), but life has run in so deep a current with me of late, that the absence of incident seems like water without wine. The agreeable stir of travel, the incomplete adventure, the change of costumes and scenery, the busy calls upon the curiosity and the imagination, have become, in a manner, very breath to me. Hitherto upon the cruise, we have scarce ever been more than one or two days at a time out of port. Elba, Sicily. Naples, Vienna, the Ionian PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 139 Isles, and the various ports of Greece have come and gone so rapidly, and so entirely without exertion of my own, that I seem to have lived in a magic panorama. After dinner on one day I visit a city here, and the day or two after, lounging and reading and sleeping mean- while quietly at home, I find myself rising from table, hundreds of miles farther to the north or east, and another famous city before me, having taken no care, and felt no motion, nor encountered danger or fatigue. A summer cruise in the Mediterranean is certainly the perfection of sight-seeing. With a sea as smooth as a river, and cities of interest, classical and mercantile, everywhere on the lee, I can conceive of no class of persons to whom it would not be delightful. A com- pany of pleasure, in a private vessel, would see all Greece and Italy with less trouble and expense than is common on a trip to the lakes. " All hands up anchor !" The dog-vane pojnts at last to Constantinople. The capstan is manned, the sails loosed, the quarter-master at the wheel, and the wind freshens every moment from the "sweet south." " Heave round merrily !" The anchor is dragged in by this rushing Hellespont, and holds on as if the bridge of Xerxes were tangled about the flukes. " Up she comes at last," and yielding to 'her broad canvass, the gallant frigate begins to make headway against the current. There is nothing in the whole world of senseless matter, so like a breathing creature as a ship ! The energy of her motion, the beauty of her shape and contrivance, and the ease with which she is managed by the one mind upon her quarter-deck, to whose voice she is as obedient as the courser to the rein, inspire me with daily admiration. I have been four months a guest in this noble man-of-war, and to this hour, 1 never set my foot on her deck without a feeling of fresh wonder. And then Cooper's novels read in a ward-room as grapes eat in Tuscany. It were missing one of the golden leaves of a life not to have thumbed them on a cruise. The wind has headed us off again, and we have dropped anchor just below the castles of the Darda- nelles. We have made but eight miles, but we have new scenery from the ports, and that is something to a weary eye. I was as tired of "the shores of Ilion" as ever was Ulysses. The hills about our present anchorage are green and boldly marked, and the frowning castles above us give that addition to the landscape which is alone wanting on the Hudson. Sestos and Abydos are six or seven miles up the stream. The Asian shore (I should have thought it a pretty circumstance, once, to be able to set foot either in Europe or Asia in five minutes) is enlivened by numbers of small vessels, tracking up with buffa- loes, against wind and tide. And here" we lie, says the old pilot, without hope till the moon changes. The "■fickle moon," quotha ! I wish my friends were half as constant ! The pacha of the Dardanelles has honored us with a visit. He came in a long caique, pulled by twenty stout rascals, his excellency of "two tails" silting on a rich carpet on the bottom of the boat with his boy of a year old in the same uniform as himself, and his suite of pipe and slipper-bearers, dwarf and executioner, sitting cross-legged about him. He was received with the guard and all the honor due his rank. His face is that of a cold, haughty, and reso- lute, but well-born man, and his son is like him. He looked at everything attentively, without expressing any surprise, till he came to the pianoforte, which one of the ladies played to his undisguised delight. It was the first he had ever seen. He inquired, through his interpreter, if she had not been all her life in learning. The poet says, " The seasons of the year conae in like masquers." To one who had made their ac- quaintance in New-England, most of the months would literally pass incog, in Italy. But here is hon- est October, the same merry old gentleman, though I meet him in Asia, and I remember him, last year, at the baths of Lucca, as unchanged as here. It has been a clear, bright, invigorating day, with a vitality in the air as rousing to the spirits as a blast from the " horn of Astolpho." I can remember just such a day ten years ago. It is odd how a little sunshine will cling to the memory when loves and hates that, in their time, convulsed the very soul, are so easily for- gotten. We heard yesterday that there was a Turkish village seven or eight miles in the mountains on the Asian side, and, as a variety to the promenade on the quar- ter-deck, a ramble was proposed to it. We landed, this morning, on the bold shore of the Dardanelles, and, climbing up the face of a sand-hill, struck across a broad plain, through bush and brier, for a mile. On the edge of a ravine we found a pretty road, half hedged over with oak and hemlock, and a mounted Turk, whom we met soon after, with a gun across his pummel, and a goose looking from his saddle-bag, directed us to follow it till we reached the village. It was a beautiful path, flecked with the shade of leaves of all the variety of eastern trees, and refreshed with a fountain at every mile. About half way we stopped at a spring welling from a rock, under a large fig-tree, from which the water poured, as clear as crystal, into seven tanks, and one after the other rip- pling away from the last into a wild thicket, whence a stripe of brighter green marked its course down the mountain. It was a spot worthy of Tempe. We seated ourselves on the rim of the rocky basin, and, with a drink of bright water, and a half hour's repose, re-commenced our ascent, blessing the nymph of the fount, like true pilgrims of the east. A few steps beyond we met a caravan of the pacha's tithe-gatherers, with mules laden with grapes ; the turbaned and showily-armed drivers, as they came winding down the dell, produced the picturesque effect of a theatrical ballet. They laid their hands on their breasts, with grave courtesy as they ap- proached, and we helped ourselves to the ripe, blush- ing clusters, as the panniers went by, with Arcadian freedom. We reached the summit of the ridge a little before noon, and turned our faces back for a moment to catch the cool wind from the Hellespont. The Dar- danelles came winding out from the hills, just above Abydos, and sweeping past the upper castles of Europe and Asia, rushed down by Tenedos into the archipel- ago. Perhaps twenty miles of its course lay within our view. Its colors were borrowed from the divine sky above, and the rainbow is scarce more varied or brighter. The changing purple and blue of the mid- stream, specked with white crests, the crysoprase green of the shallows, and the dies of the various depths along the shore, gave it the appearance of a vein of transparent marble, inlaid through the valley. The frigate looked like a child's boat on its bosom. To our left, the tombs of Ajax and Achilles were just dis- tinguishable in the plains of the Scamander, and Troy (if Troy ever stood), stood back from the sea, and the blue-wreathed isles of the archipelago bounded the reach of the eye. It was a view that might "cure a month's grief in a day." We descended now into a kind of cradle valley, yellow with rich vineyards. It was alive with people gathering in the grapes. The creaking wagons filled the road, and shouts and laughter rang over the moun- tain-sides merrily. The scene would have been Italian, but for the Turbans peering out everywhere from the leaves, and those diabolical-looking buffaloes in the 140 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. wagons. The village was a mile or two before us, and we loitered on, entering here and there a vineyard, where the only thing evidently grudged us was our peep at the women. They scattered like deer as we stepped over the walls. Near the village we found a grave Turk, of whom one of the officers made some inquiries, which were a part of our errand to the mountains. It may spoil the sentiment of my description, but, in addition to the poetry of the ramble, we were to purchase beef for the mess. His bullocks were out at grass (feeding in pas- toral security, poor things!), and he invited us to his house, while he sent his boy to drive them in. I rec- ognised them, when they came, as two handsome steers, which had completed the beauty of an open glade, in the centre of a clump of forest trees, on our route. The pleasure they have afforded the eye will be repeated upon the palate — a double destiny not ac- corded to all beautiful creatures. Our host led us up a flight of rough stone steps to the second story of his house, where an old woman sat upon her heels, rolling out paste, and a younger one nursed a little Turk at her bosom. They had, like every man, woman, or child I have seen in this country, superb eyes and noses. No chisel could im- prove the meanest of them in these features. Our friend's wife seemed ashamed to be caught with her face uncovered, but she offered us cushions on the floor before she retired, and her husband followed up her courtesy with his pipe. We went thence to the cafe, where a bubbling hookah, a cup of coffee, and a divan, refreshed us a little from our fatigues. While the rest of the party were lingering over their pipes, I took a turn through the village in search of the house of the aga. After strolling up and down the crooked streets for half an hour, a pretty female figure, closely enveloped in her veil, and showing, as she ran across the street, a dainty pair of feet in small yellow slippers, attracted me into the open court of the best-looking house in the village. The lady had disappeared, but a curious-looking car- riage, lined with rich Turkey carpeting and cushions, and covered with red curtains, made to draw close in front, stood in the centre of the court. I was going up to examine it, when an old man, with a beard to his girdle, and an uncommonly rich turban, stepped from the house, and motioned me angrily away. A large wolf-dog, which he held by the collar, added em- phasis to his command, and I retreated directly. A giggle and several female voices from the close- ly-latticed window, rather aggravated the mortifica- tion. I had intruded on the premises of the aga, a high offence in Turkey, when a woman is in the case. It was " deep i' the afternoon," when we arrived at the beach, and made signal for a boat. We were on board as the sky kindled with the warm colors of an Asian sunset — a daily offset to our wearisome deten- tion which goes far to keep me in temper. My fear is that the commodore's patience is not "so good a con- tinuer" as this " vento maledetto," as the pilot calls it, and in such a case I lose Constantinople most provo- kingiy. Walked to the Upper Castle Asia, some eight miles above our anchorage. This is the main town on the Dardanelles, and contains forty or fifty thousand in- habitants. Sestos and Abydos are a mile or two farther up the strait. We kept along the beach for an hour or two, passing occasionally a Turk on horseback, till we were stopped by a small and shallow creek without a bridge, just on the skirts of the town. A woman with one eye peep- ing from her veil, dressed in a tunic of fine blue cloth, stood at the head of a large drove of camels on the other side, and a beggar with one eye, smoked his pipe on the sand at a little distance. The water was knee- deep, and we were hesitating on the brink when the beggar offered to carry us across on his back — a task he accomplished (there were six of us) without taking his pipe from his mouth. 1 tried in vain to get a peep at the camel-driver's wife or daughter, but she seemed jealous of showing even her eyebrow, and I followed on to the town. The Turks live differently from every other people, I believe. You walk through their town and see every individual in it, except perhaps the women of the pacha. Their houses are square boxes, the front side of which lifts on a hinge in the day time, expo- sing the whole interior, with its occupants squatted in the corners or on the broad platform where their trades are followed. They are scarce larger than boxes in the theatre, and the roof projects into the middle of the street, meeting that of the opposite neighbor, so that the pavement between is always dark and cool. The three or four Turkish towns I have seen, have the appearance of cabins thrown up hastily after a fire. You would not suppose they were intended to last more than a month at the farthest. We roved through the narrow streets an hour or more, admiring the fine-bearded old Turks, smoking cross-legged in the cafes, the slipper-makers with their gay morocco wares in goodly rows around them, the wily Jews with their high caps and caftans (looking, crouched among their merchandise, like the "venders of old bottles and abominable lies," as they are drawn in the plays of Queen Elizabeth's time), the muffled and gliding spectres of the moslem women, and the livelier-footed Greek girls, in their velvet jackets and braided hair, and by this time we were kindly disposed to our dinners. On our way to the consul's, where we were to dine, we passed a mosque. The minaret (a tall peaked tower, about of the shape and proportions of a pencil- case) commanded a view down the principal streets; and a stout fellow, with a sharp clear voice, leaned over the balustrade at the top, crying out the invita- tion to prayer in a long drawling sing-song, that must have been audible on the other side of the Hellespont. Open porches, supported by a paling extended all around the church, and the floors were filled with kneeling Turks, with their pistols and ataghans lying beside them. I had never seen so picturesque a con- gregation. The slippers were left in hundreds at the threshold, and the bare and muscular feet and legs, half concealed by the full trowsers, supported as earnest a troop of worshippers as ever bent fore- head to the ground. I left them rising from a flat prostration, and hurried after my companions to dinner. Our consul of the Dardanelles is an American. He is absent just now, in search of a runaway female slave of the sultan's ; and his wife, a gracious Italian, full of movement and hospitality, does the honors of his house in his absence. He is a physician as well as consul and slave-catcher, and the presents of a hand-organ, a French clock, and a bronze standish, rather prove him to be a favorite with the " brother of the sun." We were smoking the hookah after dinner, when an intelligent-looking man, of fifty or so, came in to pay us a visit. He is at present an exile from Con- stantinople, by order of the grand seignior, because a brother physician, his friend, failed in an attempt to cure one of the favorites of the imperial harem ! This is what might be called " sympathy upon com- pulsion." It is unnecessary, one would think, to make friendship more dangerous than common human treachery renders it already. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 141 LETTER XCI. TURKISH MILITARY LIFE A VISIT TO THE CAMP TURKISH MUSIC SUNSETS THE SEA OF MARMORA. A half hour's walk brought us within sight of the pacha's camp. The green and white tents of five thou- sand Turkish troops were pitched on the edge of a stream, partly sheltered by a grove of noble oaks, and defended by wicker batteries at distances of thirty or forty feet. We were stopped by the sentinel on guard, while a message was sent in to the pacha for permis- sion to wait upon him. Meantime a number of young officers came out from their tents, and commenced examining our dresses with the curiosity of boys. One put on my gloves, another examined the cloth of my coat, a third took from me a curious stick I had purchased at Vienna, and a more familiar gentleman took up my hand, and after comparing it with his own black fingers, stroked it with an approving smile that was meant probably as a compliment. My compan- ions underwent the same review, and their curiosity was still unsated when a good-looking officer, with his cimeter under his arm, came to conduct us to the commander-in-chief. The long lines of tents were bent to the direction of the stream, and, at short distances, the silken ban- ner stuck in the ground under the charge of a senti- nel, and a divan covered with rich carpets under the shade of the nearest tree, marked the tent of an offi- cer. The interior of those of the soldiers exhibited merely a stand of muskets and a raised platform for bed and table, covered with coarse mats, and decked with the European accoutrements now common in Turkey. It was the middle of the afternoon, and most of the officers lay asleep on low ottomans, with their tent-curtains undrawn, and their long chibouques beside them, or still at their lips. Hundreds of sol- diers loitered about, engaged in various occupations, sweeping, driving their tent-stakes more firmly into the ground, cleaning arms, cooking, or with their heels under them playing silently at dominoes. Half the camp lay on the opposite bank of the stream, and there was repeated the same warlike picture, the white uniform and the loose red cap with its gold bul- lion and blue tassel, appearing and disappearing be- tween the rows of tents, and the bright red banners clinging to the staff* in the breathless sunshine. We soon approached the splendid pavilion of the pacha, unlike the rest in shape, and surrounded bv a quantity of servants, some cooking at the root of a tree, and all pursuing their vocation with a singular earnestness. A superb banner of bright crimson silk, wrought with long lines of Turkish characters, prob- ably passages from the Koran, stood in a raised socket guarded by two sentinels. Near the tent, and not far from the edge of the stream, stood a gayly-painted kiosk, not unlike the fantastic summer-houses some- times seen in a European garden, and here our con- ductor stopped, and kicking off his slippers, motioned for us to enter. We mounted the steps, and passing a small en- trance-room filled with guards, stood in the presence of the commander-in-chief. He sat on a divan, cross- legged, in a military frock-coat wrought with gold on the collar and cuffs, a sparkling diamond crescent on his breast, and a cimeter at his side, with a belt richly wrought, and held by a buckle of dazzling brilliants. His aid sat beside him, in a dress somewhat similar, j and both appeared to be men of about forty. The j pacha is a stern, dark, soldier like man, with a thick, i straight beard as black as jet, and features which look ] incapable of a smile. He bowed without rising when we entered, and motioned for us to be seated. A little conversation passed between him and the consul's son, who acted as our interpreter, and coffee came in almost immediately. There was an aroma about it which might revive a mummy. The small china- cups, with thin gold filagree sockets, were soon emp- tied and taken away, and the officer in waiting intro- duced a soldier to go through the manual exercise by way of amusing us. He was a powerful fellow, and threw his muske about with so much violence, that I feared every mo- ment, the stock, lock, and barrel, would part compa- ny. He had taken off his shoes before venturing into the presence of his commander, and looked oddly enough, playing the soldier in his stockings. I was relieved of considerable apprehension when he order- ed arms, and backed out to his slippers. The next exhibition was that of a military band. A drum-major, with a proper gold-headed stick, wheeled some sixty fellows with all kinds of instru- ments under the windows of the kiosk, and with a whirl of his baton, the harmony commenced. I could just detect some resemblance to a march. The drums rolled, the "■ear-piercing fifes" fulfilled their destiny, and trombone, serpent, and horn, showed of what they were capable. The pacha got upon his knees to lean out of the window, and, as I rose from my low seat at the same time, he pulled me down beside him, and gave me half his carpet, patting me on the back, and pressing me to the window with his arm over my neck. I have observed frequently among the Turks this singular familiarity of manners both to strangers and one another. It is an odd contrast with their ha- bitual gravity. The sultan, I think unwisely, has introduced the Europeau uniform into his army. With the excep- tion of the Tunisian cap, which is substituted for the thick and handsome turban, the dress is such as is worn by the soldiers of the French army. Their tai- lors are of course bad, and their figures, accustomed only to the loose and graceful costume of the east, are awkward and constrained. I never saw so uncouth a set of fellows as the five thousand mussulmans in this army of the Dardanelles; and yet in their Turk- ish trowsers and turban, with the belt stuck full of arms, and their long mustache, they would be as mar- tial-looking troops as ever followed a banner. We embarked at sunset to return to the ship. The shell-shaped caique, with her tall sharp extremities and fantastic sail, yielded to the rapid current of the Hellespont; and our two boatmen, as handsome a brace of Turks as ever were drawn in a picture, pull- ed their legs under them more closely, and commen- ced singing the alternate stanzas of a villanous duet. The helmsman's part was rather humorous, and his merry black eyes redeemed it somewhat, but his fel- low was as grave as a dervish, and howled as if he were ferrying over Xerxes after his defeat. If I were to live in the east as long as the wander- ing Jew, I think these heavenly sunsets, evening after evening, scarce varying by a shade, would never be- come familiar to my eye. They surprise me day after day, like some new and brilliant phenomenon, though the thoughts which they bring, as it were by a habit contracted of the hour, are almost always the same. The day, in these countries where life flows so thick- ly, is engrossed, and pretty busily too, by the present. The past comes up with the twilight, and wherever I may be, and in whatever scene mingling, my heart breaks away, and goes down into the west with the sun. I am at home as duly as the bird settles to her nest. It was natural in paying the boatman, after such a musing passage, to remember the poetical justice of Uhland in crossing the ferry : — " Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee ! Take ! I give it willingly ; For, invisibly to thee, Spirits twain have crossed with m* !" 142 PENC1LL1NGS BY THE WAY. I should have paid for one other seat, at least, by this fanciful tariff. Our unmusical mussulmans were content, however, and' we left them to pull back against the tide, by a star that cast a shadow like a meteor. The moon changed this morning, and the wind, that in this clime of fable is as constant to her as En- dymion, changed too. The white caps vanished from the hurrying waves of the Dardanelles, and after an hour or two of calm, the long-expected breeze came tripping out of Asia, with oriental softness, and is now leading us gently up the Hellespont. As we passed between the two castles of the Darda- nelles, the commodore saluted the pacha with nine- teen guns, and in half an hour we were off Abydos, where our friend from the south has deserted us, and we are compelled to anchor. It would be unclassical to complain of delay on so poetical a spot. It is beau- tiful, too. The shores on both the Asian and Euro- pean sides are charmingly varied and the sun lies on them, and on the calm strait that links them, with a beauty worthy of the fair spirit of Hero. A small Turkish castle occupies the site of the " torch-lit tower" of Abydos, and there is a corresponding one at Sestos. The distance between looks little more than a mile — not a surprising feat for any swimmer, I should think. Lady-loves in our day, alas ! are not won so lightly. The current of the Hellespont, how- ever, remains the same, and so does the moral of Le- ander's story. The Hellespont of matrimony may be crossed with the tide. The deuse is to get back ! Lampsacus on the starboard-bow, and a fairer spot lies on no river's brink. Its trees, vineyards, and cot- tages, slant up almost imperceptibly from the water's edge, and the hills around have the look " of a clean and quiet privacy,'' with a rural elegance that might tempt Shakspere's Jaques to come and moralize. By the way, there have been philosophers here. Did not Alexander forgive the ciry its obstinate defence for the sake of Anaximenes ? There was a sad dog of a deity worshipped here about that time. I take a fresh look at it from the port, as I write. Pastures, every one with a bordering of tall trees, cat- tle as beautiful as the daughter of Ianchus, lanes of wild shrubbery, a greener stripe through the fields like the track of a stream, and smoke curling from every cluster of trees, telling as plainly as the fancy can read, that there is both poetry and pillow at Lamp- sacus. Just opposite stands the modern Gallipoli, a Turk- ish town of some thirty thousand inhabitants, at the head of the Hellespont. The Hellespont gets broad- er here, and a few miles farther up we open into the Sea of Marmora. A French brig-of-war, that has been hanging about us for a fortnight (watching our movements in this unusual cruise for an American frigate, perhaps), is just ahead, and a quantity of sail are stretching off on the southern tack, to make the best use of their new sea room for beating up to Constantinople. We hope to see Seraglio Point to-morrow. Mr. Hodgson, the secretary of our embassy to Turkey, has just come on board from the Smyrna packet, and the agreeable preparations for going on shore, are al- ready on the stir. I do not find that the edge of curi- osity dulls with use. Thcprospect of seeing a strange city to-morrow, produces the same quick-pulsed emo- tion that I felt in the diligence two years ago, rattling over the last post to Paris. The entrances to Flor- ence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Athens, are marked each with as white a stone. He may " gather no moss" who rolls about the world ; but that which the gold of the careful can not buy — pleasure — when the soul is most athirst for it, grows under his feet. Of the many daily reasons I find to thank Providence, not the least is that of being what Clodio calls himself in the play "a here-and-thereian." LETTER XCII. GALLIPOLI — ARISTOCRACY OF BEARDS — TURKISH SHOP- KEEPERS THE HOSPITABLE JEW AND HIS LOVELY DAUGHTER UNEXPECTED RENCONTRE CONSTANTI- NOPLE — THE BOSPHORUS, THE SERAGLIO, AND THE GOLDEN HORN. What an image of life it is ! The good ship dash- es bravely on her course — the spray flies from her prow — her sheets are steady and full — to look up to her spreading canvass, and (eel her springing away be- neath, you would not give her " for the best horse the sun has in his stable." The next moment, hey ! the foresail is aback! the wind baffles and dies, the ripples sink from the sea, the ship loses her "way," and the pennant drops to the mast in a breathless calm ! " Clear away the anchor !" and here we are till this " crab in the ascendant" that makes "all our affairs go backward," yields to our better stars. We went ashore to take a stroll through the streets of Gallipoli (the ancient Gallipoli of Thrace) as a sop to our patience. A deeply-laden Spanish merchant lay off the pier, with a crew of red-capped and olive- complexioned fellows taking in grain from a Turkish caique, and a crowd of modern Thraciaus, in the noble costumes and flowing beards of the country, closed around us as we stepped from the boat. A street of cafes led from the end of the pier, and as usual, they were all crowded with Turks, leaning, forward over their slippers, and crossing their long chibouques as they conversed together. It is odd that even the habit of a life can make their painful and unnatural posture an agreeable one. Yet they will sit with their legs crooked under them, in a way that strains the unaccustomed knee till it cracks again, motionless by the hour together. I had no idea till I came to Turkey how rare "a beauty is a handsome beard. Here no, man shaves, and there is as great a difference in beards as in stature. The men of rank that we have seen, might have been picked out anywhere by their superior beauty in this respect. It grows vilely, it seems to me, on scoun- drels. The beggars ashore, the low Jews who board us with provisions, the greater part of the soldiers and petty shopkeepers of the towns, have all some mark in their beards that nature never intended them for gentlemen. Your smooth chin is a great leveller, trust me ! These Turkish towns have a queer look altogether. Gallipoli is so seldom touched by a Christian foot, that it preserves all its peculiarities entire, and is likely to do so for the next century. We walked on, ascend- ing a narrow street completely shut in by the roofs of the low houses meeting above. There are no car- riages or carts, and the Turks glide over the stones in their loose slippers with an indolent shuffle that seems rather to add to the silence. You hear no voice, for they seldom speak, and never above the key of a bas- soon ; and what with the odd costumes, long beards, grave faces, and twilight darkness all about you, it is like a scene on the stage when the lights are lowered in some incantation scene. Each street is devoted to some one trade. We first got among the grocers. Every shop was a fellow to the other, containing an old Turk squatted among soap, jars of oil, raisins, olives, pickled fish, and swee* meats, and everything within his reach. He would sell you his whole stock in trade without taking his pipe from his mouth, or disturbing his yellow slipper. The next turn brought us into the Jews' quarter. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 143 They were nil tailors, and their shops were as dark as Erebus. The light crept through the chinks in the roof, falling invariably on the same aquiline nose and ragged beard, with now and then a pair of copper spec- tacles, while in the back of the dim tenement sat an olJ woman with a group of handsome little Hebrews, (they are .always handsome when very young, with their clear 3kins and dark eyes) the whole family stitching away most diligently. It was laughable to see how every shop in the street presented the same picture. We then got among the slipper-makers, and vile work they turned out. We were hesitating between two turnings when an old Jew, with a high lamb's- wool cap and long black caftan, rather shabby for wear, addressed me in a sort of lingua Franca, half Italian, half French, with a sprinkling of Spanish, and inquiring whether I belonged to the frigate in the har- bor, offered to supply us with provisions, etc., etc. I declined his services, and he asked us directly to his house to take coffee, as plump a non sequitur as I have met in my travels. We followed the old man to a very secluded part of the town, stopping a moment by the way to look at the remains of an old fort built by the Genoese in the stout times of Andrea Doria. (Where be their gal- leys now ?) Hajji (so he was called, he said, from having been to Jerusalem) stopped at last at the door of a shabby house, and throwing it open with a hos- pitable smile, bade us welcome. We mounted a creak- ing stair, and found things within better than the prom- ise of the exterior. One half the floor of the room was raised perhaps a foot, and matted neatly, and a nicely carpeted and cushioned divan ran around the three sides, closed at the two extremities by a lattice- work like the arm of a sofa. The windows were set in fantastical arabesque frames, the upper panes coarse- ly colored, but with a rich effect, and the view hence stretched over the Hellespont toward the south, with a delicious background of the valleys about Lampsacus. No palace window looks on a fairer scene. The broad strait was as smooth as the amber of the old Hebrew's pipe, and the vines that furnished Themistocles with wine during his exile in Persia, looked of as golden a green in the light of the sunset, as if the honor of the tribute still warmed their classic juices. The rich Turkish coffee was brought in by an old woman, who left her slippers below as she stepped upon the mat, and our host followed with chibouques and a renewed welcome. A bright pair of eyes had been peeping for some time from one of the chambers, and with Hajji's permission I called out a graceful creature of fourteen, with a shape like a Grecian Cu- pidon, and a timid sweetness of expression that might have descended to her from the gentle Ruth of scrip- ture. There are lovely beings all over the world. It were a desert else. But I did not think to find such a diamond in a Hebrew's bosom. I have forgotten to mention her hair, which was very remarkable. I thought at first it was died with henna. It covered her back and shoulders in the greatest profusion, braid- ed near the head, and floating below in glossy and silken curls of a richness you would deny nature had you seen it in a painting. The color was of the deep burnt brown of a berry, almost black in the shade, but catching the light at every motion like threads of gold. In my life I have seen nothing so beautiful. It was the "hair lustrous and smiling" of quaint old Burton.* There was something in it that you could scarce avoid associating with the character of the wearer — as if it stole its softness from some inborn gentleness in her heart. I shall never thread my fingers through such locks again ! We shook our kind host by the hand, and stepped * " Hair lustrous and smiling. The trope is none of mine. Alneus Sylvius hath nines ridevtc*."— Anatomy of Melancholy . gingerly down in the fading twilight to our boat. As we were crossing an open space between the bazars, two gentlemen in a costume half European half Ori- ental, with spurs and pistols, and a quantity of dust on their mustaches, passed, and immediately turned and called me by name. The last place in which 1 should have looked for acquaintances, would be GalHpoli. They were two French exquisites whom I had known at Rome, travelling to Constantinople with no more serious object, I dare be sworn, than to return with long beards from the east. They had just arrived on horseback, and were looking for a khan. I commend- ed them to my old friend the Jew, who offered at once to lodge them at his house, and we parted in this by- corner of Thrace, as if we had but met for the second time in a morning stroll to St. Peter's. We lay till noon in the glassy harbor of Gallipoli, and then the breeze came slowly up the Hellespont, its advancing edge marked by a crowd of small sail keeping even pace with its wings. We soon opened into the extending sea of Marmora, and the cloudy island of the same name is at this moment on our lee. The sun is setting gorgeously over the hills of Thrace, and thankful for sea-room once more, and a good breeze, we make ourselves certain of seeing Constan- tinople to-morrow. We were ten miles distant when I came on deck this morning. A long line of land with a slightly- waving outline began to emerge from the mist of sun- rise, and with a glass I could distinguish the cluster- ing masses and shining eminences of a distant and far extending city. We were approaching it with a cloud of company. A Turkish ship-of-war with the cres- cent and star fluttering on her blood-red flag, a French cutter bearing the handsome tri-color at her peak, and an uncounted swarm of merchantmen, taking advan- tage of the newly-changed wind, were spreading every thread of canvass, and stretching on as eagerly as we toward the metropolis of the east. There was some- thing in the companionship which elated me. It seemed as if all the world shared in my anticipations — as if all the world were going to Constantinople. I approached the mistress of the east with different feelings from that which had inspired me in entering the older cities of Europe. The interest of the latter sprang from the past. Rome, Florence, Athens, were delightful from the store of history and poetry I brought with me and had accumulated in my youth — from what they once were, and for that of which they preserved the ruins. Constantinople, on the contrary, is still the gem of the Orient — still the home of the superb Turk, and the resort of many nations of the east— still all that fires curiosity and excites the ima- gination in the descriptions of the traveller. I was doming to a living city, full of strange people and strange costumes, language, and manners. It was, to the places I had seen, like the warm and breathing woman perfect in life, to the interesting but lifeless and mutilated statue. As the distance lessened, the tall, slender, glittering minarets of a hundred mosques were first distinguish- able. Towers, domes, and dark spots of cypresses next emerged to the eye, and a sea of buildings, fol- lowed undulating in many swells and widening along the line of the sea as if we were approaching a conti- nent covered to its farthest limits with one unbroken city. We kept on with unslackened sail to the shore which seemed closed before us. A few minutes open- ed to us a curving bay, winding in and lost to the eye behind a swelling eminence, and as if mosques, towers, and palaces, had spread away and opened to receive us 144 PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. into their bosom, we shot into the heart of a busy city, and dropped anchor at the feet of a cluster of hills, studded from base to summit with buildings of inde- scribable splendor. An American gentleman had joined us in the Dar- danelles, and stood with us, looking at the transcen- dant panorama. M What is this lovely point, gemmed with gardens and fantastic palaces, and with every va- riety of tree and building on its gentle slope descend- ing so gracefully to the sea ?" The Seraglio ! " What is this opening of bright water, crowded with shipping, and sprinkled with these fairy boats so gayly decked and so slender, shooting from side to side like the crossing flight of a thousand arrows ?" The Golden Horn, that winds up through the city and terminates in the valley of Sweet Waters ! " And what is this other stream, opening into the hills to the east, and lined with glit- tering palaces as far as the eye can reach ?" The Bosphorus. " And what is this, and that, and the other exquisite and surpassing beauty — features of a scene to which the earth surely has no shadow of a parallel!" Patience ! patience ! We have a month before us, and we will see. LETTER XCIII. CONSTANTINOPLE — AN ADVENTURE WITH THE DOGS OF STAMBOUL— THE SULTAN'S KIOSK THE BAZARS — GEORGIANS — SWEETMEATS— HINDOOSTANEE FAKEERS TURKISH WOMEN AND THEIR EYES THE JEWS — A TOKEN OF HOME THE DRUG-BAZAR OPIUM-EATERS. The invariable '■'■Where am 27" with which a trav- eller awakes at morning was to me never more agree- ably answered. At Constantinople ! The early ship- of-war summons to "turn out," was obeyed with alacrity, and with the first boat after breakfast I was set ashore at Tophana, the landing-place of the Frank quarter of Stnmboul. A row of low-built cafes, with a latticed enclosure and a plentiful shade of plane-trees on the right; a large square, in the centre of which stood a magnifi- cent Persian fountain, as large as a church, covered with lapis-lazuli and gold, and endless inscriptions in Turkish; a mosque buried in cypresses on the left ; a hundred indolent-looking, large-trousered, mustached, and withal very handsome men, and twice the number of snarling, wolfish, and half starved dogs, are some of the objects which the first glance, as I stepped on shore, left on my memory. I had heard that the dogs of Constantinople knew and hated a Christian. By the time I had reached the middle of the square, a wretched puppy at my heels had succeeded in announcing the presence of a stranger. They were upon me in a moment from every heap of garbage, and every hole and corner. I was beginning to be seriously alarmed, standing per- fectly still, with at least a hundred infuriated dogs bark- ing in a circle around me, when an old Turk, selling sherbet under the shelter of the projecting roof of the Persian fountain, came kindly to my relief. A stone or two well aimed, and a peculiar cry, which I have since tried in vain to imitate, dispersed the hungry wretches, and I took a glass of the old man's raisin- water, and pursued my way up the street. The circumstance, however, had discolored my anticipa- tions; nothing looked agreeably to me for an hour after it. I ascended through narrow and steep lanes, between rows of small wooden houses, miserably built and painted, to the main street of the quarter of Pera. Here live all Christians and Christian ambassadors, and here T found our secretary of legation, Mr. H., who kindly offered to accompany me to old Stam- boul. We descended to the water-side, and stepping into an egg-shell caique, crossed the Golden Horn, and landed on a pier between the sultan's green kiosk and the seraglio. I was fortunate in a. companion who knew the people and spoke the language. The red- trousered and armed kervas, at the door of the kiosk, took his pipe from his mouth, after a bribe and a little persuasion, and motioned to a boy to show us the in- terior. A circular room, with a throne of solid silvei embraced in a double colonnade of marble pillars, and covered with a roof laced with lapis lazuli and gold, formed the place from which Sultan Mahmoud for- merly contemplated, on certain days, the busy and beautiful panorama of his matchless bay. The kiosk is on the edge of the water, and the poorest caikjee might row his little bark under its threshold, and fill his monarch's eye, and look on his monarch's face with the proudest. The green canvass curtains, which envelop the whole building, have, for a long time, been unraised, and Mahmoud is oftener to be seen on horse- back, in the dress of a European officer, guarded by troops in European costume and array. The change is said to be dangerously unpopular. We walked on to the square of Sultana Valide. Its large area was crowded with the buyers and sellers of a travelling fair — a sort of Jews' market held on differ- ent days in different parts of this vast capital. In Turkey every nation is distinguished by its dress, and almost as certainly by its branch of trade. On the right of the gate, under a huge plane-tree, shedding its yellow leaves among the various wares, stood the booths of a group of Georgians, their round and rosy- dark faces (you would know their sisters must be half houris) set off with a tall black cap of curling wool, their small shoulders with a tight jacket studded with silk buttons, and their waists with a voluminous silken sash, whose fringed ends fell over their heels as they sat cross-legged, patiently waiting for custom. Hard- ware is the staple of their shops, but the cross-pole in front is fantastically hung with silken garters and tas- selled cords, and their own Georgian caps, with a gay crown of cashmere, enrich and diversify the shelves. I bought a pair or two of blushing silk garters of a young man, whose eyes and teeth should have been a woman's, and we strolled on to the next booth. Here was a Turk, with a table covered by a broad brass waiter, on which was displayed a tempting array of mucilage, white and pink, something of the consis- tency of blanc-mange. A dish of sugar, small gilded saucers, and long-handled, flat, brass spoons, with a vase of rose-water, completed his establishment. The grave mussulman cut, sugared, and scented the por- tions for which we asked, without condescending to look at us or open his lips, and, with a glass of mild and pleasant sherbet from his next neighbor, as im moveable a Turk as himself, we had lunched, ex- tremely to my taste, for just five cents American cur- rency. A little farther on I was struck with the appearance of two men, who stood bargaining with a Jew. My friend knew them immediately as fakeers, or religious devotees, from Hindoostan. He addressed them in Arabic, and, during their conversation often minutes, I studied them with some curiosity. They were sin- gularly small, without any appearance of dwarfishness, their limbs and persons slight, and very equally and gracefully proportioned. Their features were abso- lutely regular, and, though small as a child's of ten or twelve years, were perfectly developed. They appear- ed like men seen through an inverted opera-glass. An exceedingly ashy, olive complexion, hair of a kind of glittering black, quite unlike in texture and color any PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 145 I have ever before seen ; large, brilliant, intense black eyes, and lips (the most peculiar feature of all), of lustreless black* completed the portraits of two as remarkable-looking men as I have anywhere met. Their costume was humble, but not unpicturesque- A well-worn sash of red silk enveloped the waist in many folds, and sustained trousers tight to the legs, but of the Turkish ampleness over the hips. Their small feet, which seemed dried up to the bone, were bare. A blanket, with a hood marked in a kind of arabesque figure, covered their shoulders, and a high- quilted cap, with a rim of curling wool, was pressed down closely over the forehead. A crescent-shaped tin vessel, suspended by a leather strap to the waist, and serving the two purposes of a charity-box, and a receptacle for bread and vegetables, seemed a kind of badge of their profession. They were lately from Hindoostan, and were begging their way still farther into Europe. They received our proffered alms with- out any mark of surprise or even pleasure, and laying their hands on their breasts, with countenances per- fectly immoveable, gave us a Hindoostanee blessing, and resumed their traffic. They see the world, these rovers on foot ! And I think, could I see it myself in no other way, I would e'en take sandal and scrip, and traverse it as dervish or beggar ! The alleys between the booths were crowded with Turkish women, who seemed the chief purchasers. 1 he effect of their enveloped persons, and eyes peer- ing from the muslin folds of the yashmack, is droll to a stranger. It seemed to me like a masquerade, and the singular sound of female voices, speaking through several thicknesses of a stuff, bound so close on the mouth as to show the shape of the lips exactly, per- fected the delusion. It reminded me of the half- smothered tones beneath the masks in carnival-time. A clothes-bag with yellow slippers would have about as much form, and might be walked about with as much grace as a Turkish woman. Their fat hands, the finger-nails dyed with henna, and their unexcep- tionably magnificent eyes, are all that the stranger is permuted to peruse. It is strange how universal is the beauty of the eastern eye. I have looked in vain hitherto, for a small or an unexpressive one. It is quite startling to meet the gaze of such large liquid orbs, bent upon you from their long silken fringes, with the unwinking steadiness of look common to the females of this country. Wrapped in their veils, they seem unconscious of attracting attention, and turn and look you lull in the face, while you seek in vain for a pair of lips to explain by their expression the meaning of such particular notice. The Jew is more distinguishable at Constantinople than elsewhere. He is compelled to wear the dress oi his tribe (and its "badge of sufferance," too), and you will find him, wherever there is trafficking to be done, in a small cap, not ungracefully shaped, twisted about with a peculiar handkerchief of a small black print and set back so as to show the whole of his na- tional high and narrow forehead. He is always good- humored and obsequious, and receives the curse with which his officious offers of service are often repelled, with a smile, and a hope that he may serve you another time. One of them, as we passed his booth, called our attention to some newly-opened bales, bearing the Stamp, "TREMONT MILL, LOWELL, MASS." It was a long distance from home to meet such familiar words ! We left the square of the sultan mother, and entered a street of confectioners. The east is famous for its sweetmeats, and truly a more tempting array never tinoile a Ind i i C fi,H e t t ™ n y of them in the streets of Constan- Th?.y ool as ii ,hl> r * ,llstin p i «hing feature of their race. bene y a h°t h e sk n ^ ™ n dead ~ as if the blood ^ dried visited the Christmas dream of a schoolboy. Even Felix, the palissier nonpareil of Paris, might take a lesson in jellies. And then for "candy" of all colors of the rainbow (not shut enviously in with pitiful glass cases, but piled up to the ceiling in a shop all in the street, as it might be in Utopia, with nothing to pay), it is like a scene in the Arabian Nights. The last part of the parenthesis is almost true, for with a small coin of the value of two American cents, I bought of a certain kind called, in Turkish, "peace to your throat" (they call things by such poetical names 'in the east), the quarter of which I could not have eaten, even in my best "days of sugar-candy." The women of Constantinople, I am told, almost live on confection- ary. They eat incredible quantities. The sultan's eight hundred wives and women employ five hundred cooks, and consume two thousand Jive hundred pounds of sugar daily .' It is probably the most expensive item of the seraglio kitchen. A turn or two brought us to the entrance of a long dark passage, of about the architecture of a covered bridge in our country. A place richer in the oriental and picturesque could scarce be found between the Danube and the Nile. It is the bazar of drugs. As your eye becomes accustomed to the light, you dis- tinguish vessels of every size and shape, ranged along the receding shelves of a stall, and filled to the uncov- ered brim with the various productions of the Orient. The edges of the baskets and jars are turned over '^hh rich colored papers (a peculiar color to every drug), and broad spoons of boxwood are crossed on the top. There is the henna in a powder of deep brown, with an envelope of deep Tyrian purple, and all the precious gums in their jars, golden-leafed, and spices and dies and medicinal roots, and above hang anatomies of curious monsters, dried and stuffed, and in the midst of all, motionless as the box of sulphur beside him, and almost as yellow, sits a venerable Turk, with his beard on his knees, and his pipe-bowl thrust away over his drugs, its ascending smoke-curls his only sign of life. This class of merchants is famous for opium-eaters, and if. you pass at the right hour, you find the large eye of the silent smoker dilated and wandering, his fingers busy in tremulously counting his spicewood beads, and the roof of his stall wreathed with clouds of smoke, the vent to every species of eastern enthusiasm. If you address him, he smiles, and puts his hand to his forehead and breast, but con- descends to answer no question till it is thrice reitera- ted, and then in the briefest word possible, he answers wide of your meaning, strokes the smoke out of his mustache, and slipping the costly amber between h's lips, abandons himself again to his exalted revery. I write this after being a week at Constantinople, du- ring which the Egyptian bazar has been my frequent and most fancy-stirring lounge. Of its forty mer- chants, there is not one whose picturesque features are not imprinted deeply in my memory. I have idled up and down in the dim light, and fingered the soft henna, and bought small parcels of incense-wood for my pastille lamp, studying the remarkable faces of the unconscious old mussulmans, till my mind became somehow tinctured of the east, and (what will be bet- ter understood) my clothes steeped in the mixed and agreeable odors of the thousand spices. Where are the painters, that they have never found this mine of admirable studies ? There is not a corner of Con- stantinople, nor a man in its streets, that were not a novel and a capital subject for the pencil. Pray, Mr. Cole, leave things that have been painted so often, as aqueducts and Italian ruins (though you do make de- licious pictures, and could never waste time or pencils on anything), and come to the east for one single book of sketches ! How I have wished I was a painter since I have been here ! 146 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER XCIV. THE SULTAN'S PERFUMER ETIQUETTE OF SMOKING TEMPTATIONS FOR PURCHASERS — EXQUISITE FLA- VOR OF THE TURKISH PERFUMES THE SLAVE- MARKET OF CONSTANTINOPLE SLAVES FROM VA- RIOUS COUNTRIES, GREEK, CIRCASSIAN, EGYPTIAN, PERSIAN AFRICAN FEMALE SLAVES AN IMPRO- VISATRICE EXPOSURE FOR SALE CIRCASSIAN BEAUTIES PROHIBITED TO EUROPEANS FIRST SIGHT OF ONE, EATING A PIE SHOCK TO ROMAN- TIC FEELINGS— BEAUTIFUL ARAB GIRL CHAINED TO THE FLOOR THE SILK-MERCHANT A CHEAP PURCHASE. An Abyssinian slave, with bracelets on his wrists and ankles, a white turban, folded in the most approv- ed fashion around his curly head, and a showy silk sash about his waist, addressed us in broken English as we passed a small shop on the way to theBezestein. His master was an old acquaintance of my polyglot friend, and, passing in at a side door, we entered a dimly-lighted apartment in the rear, and were receiv- ed, with a profusion of salaams, by the sultan's per- fumer. For a Turk, Mustapha Effendi was the most voluble gentleman in his discourse that I had yet met in Stamboul. A sparse gray beard just sprinkled a pair of blown-up cheeks, and a collapsed double chin that fell in curtain folds to his bosom, a mustache, of seven or eight hairs on a side, curled demurely about the corners of his mouth, his heavy, oily black eyes twinkled in their pursy recesses, with the salacious good humor of a satyr; and, as he coiled his legs under him on the broad ottoman in the corner, his boneless body completely lapped over them, knees and all, and left him, apparently, bolt upright on his trunk, like a man amputated at the hips. A string of beads in one hand, and a splendid narghile, or rose-water pipe in the other, completed as fine a picture of a mere ani- mal as I remember to have met in my travels. My learned friend pursued the conversation in Turk- ish, and, in a few minutes, the , black entered, with pipes of exquisite amber filled with the mild Persian tobacco. Leaving his slippers at the door, he drop- ped upon his knee, and placed two small brass dishes in the centre of the room to receive the hot pipe- bowls, and, with a showy flourish of his long, naked arm, brought round the rich mouth-pieces to our lips. A spicy atom of some aromatic composition, laid in the centre of the bowl, removed from the smoke all that could offend the most delicate organs, and, as I looked about the perfumer's retired sanctum, and my eye rested on the small heaps of spice-woods, the gilded pastilles, the curious bottles of ottar of ro- ses and jasmine, and thence to the broad, soft divans extending quite around the room, piled in the corners with cushions of down, I thought Mustapha, the per- fumer, among those who lived by traffic, had the cleanliest and most gentleman-like vocation. Observing that I smoked but little, Mustapha gave an order to his familiar, who soon appeared, with two small gilded saucers; one containing a jelly of incom- parable delicacy and whiteness, and the other a can- died liquid, tinctured with quince and cinnamon. My friend explained to me that I was to eat both, and that Mustapha said, " on his head be the injury it would do me." There needed little persuasion. The cook to a court of fairies might have mingled sweets less delicately. t For all this courtesy Mustapha finds his offset in the opened hearts of his customers, when the pipes are smoked out, and there is nothing to delay the offer of his costly wares. First calling for a jar of jessa- mine, than which the sultan himself perfumes his beard with no rarer, he turned it upside down, and, leaning toward me, rubbed the moistened cork over my nascent mustache, and waited with a satisfied cer- tainty for my expression of admiration as it " ascended me into the brain." There was no denying that it was of a celestial flavor. He held up his fingers : " One ? two ? three ? ten ? How many bottles shall your slave fill for you?" It was a most lucid panto- mime. An interpreter would have been superfluous. The ottar of roses stood next on the shelf. It was the best ever sent from Adrianople. Bottle after bot- tle of different extracts was passed under nasal review; each, one might think, the triumph of the alchymy of flowers, and of each a specimen was laid aside foi me in a slender vial, dexterously capped with vellum, and tied with a silken thread by the adroit Abyssinian. I escaped emptying my purse by a single worthless coin, the fee I required for my return boat over the Golden Horn — but I had seen Mustapha, the per fumer. My friend led the way through several intricate windings, and passing through a gateway, we entered a circular area, surrounded with a single building di vided into small apartments, faced with open porches. It was the slave-market of Constantinople. My first idea was to look round for Don Juan and Johnson. In their place we found slaves of almost every eastern nation, who looked at us with an " I wish to heaven that somebody would buy us" sort of an expression, but none so handsome as Haidee's lover. In a low cellar, beneath one of the apartments, lay twenty or thirty white men chained together by the legs, and with scarce the covering required by decency. A small-featured Arab stood at the door, wrapped in a purple-hooded cloak, and Mr. H. addressing him in Arabic, inquired their nations. He was not their master, but the stout fellow in the corner, he said, was a Greek by his regular features, and the boy chained to him was a Circassian by his rosy cheek and curly hair, and the black-lipped villain with the scar over his forehead, was an Egyptian, doubtless, and the two that looked like brothers, were Georgians or Persians, or perhaps Bulgarians. Poor devils ! they lay on the clay floor with a cold easterly wind blowing in upon them, dispirited and chilled, with the prospect of being sold to a task-master for their best hope of relief. A shout of African laughter drew us to the other side of the bazar. A dozen Nubian-damsels, flat-nos- ed and curly-headed, but as straight and fine-limbed as pieces of black statuary, lay around on a platform in front of their apartment, while one sat upright in the middle, and amused her companions by some nar- ration accompanied by grimaces irresistibly ludicrous. Each had a somewhat scant blanket, black with dirt, and worn as carelessly as a lady carries her shawl. Their black, polished frames were disposed about, in postures a painter would scarce call ungraceful, and no start or change of attitude when we approached be- trayed the innate coyness of the sex. After watching the improvisatrice awhile, we were about passing on, when a man came out from the inner apartment, and beckoning to one of them to follow him, walked into the middle of the bazar. She was a tall, arrow- straight lass of about eighteen, with the form of a nymph, and the head of a baboon. He commenced by crying in a voice that must have been educated in the gallery of a minaret, setting forth the qualities of the animal at his back, who was to be sold at public auction forthwith. As he closed his harangue he slipped his pipe back into his mouth, and lifting the scrimped blanket of the ebon Venus, turned her twice round, and walked to the other side of the bazar, where his cry and the exposure of the submissive wench were repeated. We left him to finish his circuit, and walked on in search of the Circassian beauties of the market. Several turbaned slave-merchants were sitting round a manghal, or brass vessel of coals, smoking or making PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 147 their coffee, in one of the porticoes, and my friend ad- dressed one of them with an inquiry on the subject. " There were Circassians in the bazar," he said, " but there was an express firman, prohibiting the exposing or selling of them to Franks, under heavy penalties." We tried to bribe him. It was of no use. He point- ed to the apartment in which they were, and, as it was upon the ground floor, I took advice of modest assu- rance, and approaching the window, sheltered my eyes with my hand, and looked in. A great, fat girl, with a pair of saucer-like black eyes, and cheeks as red and round as a cabbage-rose, sat facing the window, de- vouring a pie most voraciously. She had a small car- pet spread beneath her, and sat on one of her heels, with a row of fat, red toes, whose nails were tinged with henna, just protruding on the other side from the folds of her ample trousers. The light was so dim that I could not see the features of the others, of whom there were six or seven in groups in the cor- ners. And so faded the bright colors of a certain boyish dream of Circassian beauty ! A fat girl eating a pie! As we were about leaving the bazar, the door of a small apartment near the gate opened, and disclosed the common cheerless interior of a chamber in a khan In the centre burned the almost extinguished embers of a Turkish nianghal, and, at the moment of my passing, a figure rose from a prostrate position, and exposed, as a shawl dropped from her face in rising, the exquisitely small features and bright olive skin of an Arab girl. Her hair was black as night, and the bright braid of it across her forehead seemed but ano- ther shade of the warm dark eye that lifted its heavy and sleepy lids, and looked out of the accidentally opened door as if she were trying to remember how she had dropped out of "Araby the blest" upon so cheerless a spot. She was very beautiful. I should have taken her for a child, from her diminutive size, but for a certain fulness in the limbs and a womanly ripeness in the bust and features. The same dusky lips which give the males of her race a look of ghastliness, either by contrast with a row of dazzlingly white teeth, or from their round and perfect chiselling, seemed in her almost a beauty. I had looked at her several min- utes before she chose to consider it as impertinence. At last she slowly raised her little symmetrical figure (the '• Barbary shape" the old poets talk of), and slip- ping forward to reach the latch, I observed that she was chained by one of her ankles to a ring in the floor. To think that only a " malignant and a turbaned Turk" may possess such a Hebe ! Beautiful creature ! Your lot, " By some o'er-hasty angel was misplaced, In Fate's eternal volume." And yet it is very possible she would eat pies, too ! We left the slave-market, and wishing to buy apiece of Brusa silk for a dressing-gown, my friend conduct- ed me to a secluded khan in the neighborhood of the far-famed "burnt column." Entering by a very mean door, closed within by a curtain, we stood on fine In- dian mats in a large room, piled to the ceiling with silks enveloped in the soft satin-paper of the east. Herea«;ain coffee must be handed round before a sin- gle fold of the old Armenian's wares could see the light, and fortunate it is, since one may not courteous- ly refuse it, that Turkish coffee is very delicious, and served in acorn cups for size. A handsome boy took away the little filagree holders at last, and the old tra- der, setting his huge calpack firmly on his shaven head, began to reach down his costly wares. I had never seen such an array. The floor was soon like a shivered rainbow, almost paining the eye with the brilliancy and variety of beautiful fabrics. And all this to tempt the taste of a poor description-monger, who wanted but a plain robe de chambre to conceal from a chance visiter the poverty of an unmade toilet! There were stuffs of gold for a queen's wardrobe ; there were gauze-like fabrics interwoven with flowers of silver ; and there was no leaf in botany, nor device in antiquity, that was not imitated in their rich border- ings. I laid my hand on a plain pattern of blue and silver, and half-shutting my eyes to imagine how I should look in it, resolved upon the degree of deple- tion which my purse could bear, and inquired the price. As "green door and brass knocker" says of his charges in the farce, it was " ridiculously trifling." It is a cheap country, the east ! A beautiful Circas- sian slave for a hundred dollars (if you are a Turk), and an emperor's dressing-gown for three ! The Ar- menian laid his hand on his breast, as if he had made a good sale of it, the coffee-bearer wanted but a sous, and that was charity ; and thus, by a mere change of place, that which were but a gingerbread expenditure becomes a rich man's purchase. LETTER XCV. THE BOSPHORUS TURKISH PALACES THE BLACK SEA BUYUKDERE. We left the ship with two caiques, each pulled by three men, and carrying three persons, on an excur- sion to the Black sea. We were followed by the captain in his fast-pulling gig with six oars, who pro- posed to beat the feathery boats of the country in a twenty miles' pull against the tremendous current of the Bosphorus. The day was made for us. We coiled ourselves a la Turque, in the bottom of the sharp caique, and as our broad-brimmed pagans, after the first mile, took off their shawled turbans, unwound their cashmere girdles, laid aside their gold-broidered jackets, and with nothing but the flowing silk shirt and ample trousers to embarrass their action, commenced "giv- ing way," in long, energetic strokes — I say, just then, with the sunshine and the west wind attempered to half a degree warmer than the blood (which I take to be the perfection of temperature), and a long, long autumn day, or two, or three before us, and not a thought in the company that was not kindly and joy- ous — just then, I say, I dropped a "white stone" on the hour, and said, " Here is a moment, old Care, that has slipped through your rusty fingers ! You have pinched me the past somewhat, and you will doubtless mark your cross on the future — but the present, by a thousand pulses in this warm frame laid along in the sunshine, is care-free, and the last hour of Eden came not on a softer pinion !" We shot along through the sultan's fleet (some eighteen or twenty lofty ships-of-war, looking, as they lie at anchor in this narrow strait, of a supernatural size), and then, nearing the European shore to take advantage of the counter-current, my kind friend, Mr. H., who is at home on these beautiful waters, began to name to me the palaces we were shooting by, with many a little history of their occupants between, to which in a letter, written with a traveller's haste, and in moments stolen from fatigue, or pleasure, or sleep, I could not pretend to do justice. The Bosphorus is quite — there can be no manner of doubt of it — the most singularly beautiful scenery in the world. From Constantinople to the Black Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the two shores of Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each with its splendid palace or two, iis mosque and mina- rets, and its hundred small houses buried in trees, each with its small dark cemetery of cypresses ana turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley stretch- 148 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. ing back into the hills, of which every summit and swell is crowned with a fairy kiosk. There is no tide, and the palaces of the sultan and his ministers, and of the wealthier Turks and Armenians, are built half over the water, and the ascending caique shoots beneath his window, within the length of the owner's pipe ; and with his own slender boat lying under the stairs, the luxurious oriental makes but a step from the cush- ions of his saloon to those of a conveyance, which bears him (so built on the water's edge is this mag- nificent capital) to almost every spot that can require his presence. A beautiful palace is that of the " Marble Cradle," or Beshiktash, the sultan's winter residence. Its bright gardens with latticed fences (through which, as we almost touched in passing, we saw the gleam of the golden orange and lemon trees, and the thousand flowers, and heard the splash of fountains and the singing of birds) lean down to the lip of the Bospho- rus, and declining to the south, and protected from everything but the sun by an enclosing wall, enjoy, like the terrace of old King Rene, a perpetual sum- mer. The brazen gates open on the water, and the palace itself, a beautiful building, painted in the ori- ental style, of a bright pink, stands between the gar- dens, with its back to the wall. The summer palace, where the " unmuzzled lion" as his flatterers call him, resides at present, is just above on the Asian side, at a village called Beylerbey. It is an immense building, painted yellow, with white cornices, and has an extensive terrace-garden, rising over the hill behind. The harem has eight projecting wings, each occupied by one of the sultan's lawful wives. Six or seven miles from Constantinople, on the European shore, stands the serai of the sultan's eldest sister. It is a Chinese-looking structure, but exceed- ingly picturesque, and like everything else on the Bosphorus, quite in keeping with the scene. There is not a building on either side, from the Black sea to Marmora, that would not be ridiculous in other coun- tries; and yet, here, their gingerbread balconies, imi- tation perspectives, lattices, bird-cages, and kiosks, seem as naturally the growth of the climate as the pomegranate and the cypress. The old maid sultana lives here with a hundred or two female slaves of con- dition, a little emperess in an empire sufficiently large (for a woman), seeing no bearded face, it is presumed, except her black eunuchs' and her European physi- cian's, and having, though a sultan's sister, less liberty than she gives even her slaves, whom she permits to marry if they will. She can neither read nor write, and is said to be fat, indolent, kind, and childish. A little farther up, the sultan is repairing a fantas- tical little palace for his youngest sister, Esmeh Sul- tana, who is to be married to Haleil Pacha, the com- mander of the artillery. She is about twenty, and, report says, handsome and spirited. Her betrothed was a Georgian slave, bought by the sultan when a boy, and advanced by the usual steps of favoritism. By the laws of imperial marriages in this empire, he is to be banished to a distant pachalik after living with his wife a year, his connexion with blood-royal making him dangerously eligible to the throne. His bride remains at Stamboul, takes care of her child (if she has one), and lives the remainder of her life in a wid- ow's seclusion, with an allowance proportioned to her rank. His consolation is provided for by the mussul- man privilege of as many more wives as he can sup- port. Heaven send him resignation — if he needs it notwithstanding. The hakim, or chief physician to the sultan, has a handsome palace on the same side of the Bosphorus; and the Armenian seraffs, or bankers, though com- pelled, like all rayahs, to paint their houses of a dull lead color (only a mussulman may live in a red house in Constantinople), are said, in those dusky-looking tenements, to maintain a luxury not inferior to that of the sultan himself. They have a singular effect, those black, funereal houses, standing in the fore- ground of a picture of such light and beauty ! We pass Orta-Jceni, the Jew village, the Arnaout- keni, occupied mostly by Greeks ; and here, if you have read " the Armenians," you are in the midst of its most stirring scenes. The story is a true one, not much embellished in the hands of the novelist, and there, on the hill opposite, in Anatolia, stands iht house of the heroine's father, the old seraff Oglou and, behind the garden, you may see the small cot- tage, inhabited, secretly, by the enamored Constan- tine, and here, in the pretty village of Bebec, lives, at this moment, the widowed and disconsolate Veronica, dressed ever in weeds, and obstinately refusing all so- ciety but her own sad remembrance. I must try to see her. Her " husband of a night" was compelled to marry again by the hospodar, his father (but this is not in the novel, you will remember), and there is late news that his wife is dead, and the lovers of romance in Stamboul are hoping he will return and make a happier sequel than the sad one in the story. The "orthodox catholic Armenian, broker and money- changer to boot," who was to have been her forced husband, is a very amiable and good-looking fellow, now in the employ of our charge d'affaires as second dragoman. We approach Roumeli-Hissar, a jutting point al- most meeting a similar projection from the Asian shore, crowned, like its vis-a-vis, with a formidable battery. The Bosphorus here is but half an arrow- flight in width, and Europe and Asia, here at their nearest approach, stand looking each other in the face, like boxers, with foot forward, fist doubled, and a most formidable row of teeth on either side. The current scampers through between the two castles, as if happy to get out of the way, and, up-stream, it is hard pulling for a caique. They are beautiful points, however, and I am ashamed of my coarse simile, when I remember how green was the foliage that half en- veloped the walls, and how richly picturesque the hills behind them. Here, in the European castle, were executed the greater part of the janisaries, hun- dreds in a day, of the manliest frames in the empire, thrown into the rapid Bosphorus, headless and strip- ped, to float, unmourned and unregarded, to the sea. Above Roumeli-Hissar, the Bosphorus spreads again, and a curving bay, which is set Iikc a mirror, in a frame of the softest foliage and verdure, is pointed out as a spot at which the crusaders, Godfrey of Bou- illon and Raymond of Toulouse encamped on their way to Palestine. The hills beyond this are loftier, and the Giant's mountain, upon which the Russian army encamped at their late visit to the Porte, would be a respectable eminence in any country. At its foot, the strait expands into quite a lake, and on the European side, in a scoop of the shore, exquisitely placed, stand the diplomatic villages of Terapia and Buyukdere. The English, French, Russian, Aus- trian and other flags were flying over a half dozen of the most desirable residences I have seen since Italy. We soon pulled the remaining mile or two, and our spent caikjees drew breath, and lay on their oars in the Black sea. The waves were breaking on the " blue Symplegades," a mile on our left, and, before us, tow- ard the Cimmerian, Bosphorus, and, south, towar Colchis and Trebizond, spread one broad, blue waste of waters, apparently as limitless as the ocean. The Black sea is particularly blue. We turned our prow to the west, and I sighed to remember that I had reached my farthest step into the east. Henceforth I shall be on the return. I sent a long look over the waters to the bright lands PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 149 beyond, so famed in history and fiction, and wishing for even a metamorphosis into the poor sea-bird flying above us (whose travelling expenses Nature pays), I lay back in the boat with a " change in the spirit of my dream." We stopped on the Anatolian shore to visit the ruins of a fine old Genoese castle, which looks over the Black sea, and after a lunch upon grapes and cof- fee, at a small village at the foot of the hill on which it stands, we embarked and followed our companions. Running down with the current to Buyukdere, we landed and walked along the thronged and beautiful shore to Terapia, meeting hundreds of fair Armenians and Greeks (all beautiful, it seemed to me), issuing forth for their evening promenade, and, with a call of ceremony on the English ambassador, for whom I had letters, we again took to the caique, and fled down with the current like a bird. Oh, what a sunset was there ! We were to dine and pass the night at the country- house of an English gentleman at Bebec, a secluded and lovely village, six or eight miles from Constanti- nople. We reached the landing as the stars began to glimmer, and, after one of the most agreeable and hos- pitable entertainments I remember to have shared, we took an early breakfast with our noble host, and re- turned to the ship. I could wish my friends no brighter passage in their lives than such an excursion as mine to the Black sea. LETTER XCVI. THE GOLDEN HORN AND ITS SCENERY — THE SULTAN'S "WIVES AND ARABIANS — THE VALLEY OF SWEET WA- TERS — BEAUTY OF THE TURKISH MINARETS — THE MOSQUE OF SULYMANYE — MUSSULMANS AT THEIR DE- VOTIONS THE MUEZZIN THE BAZAR OF THE OPIUM- EATERS — THE MAD-HOUSE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, AND DESCRIPTION OF ITS INMATES — THEIR WRETCHED TREATMENT — THE HIPPODROME AND THE MOSQUE OF SULTAN ACHMET — THE JANIZARIES — REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE. The " Golden Horn" is a curved arm of the sea, the broadest extremity meeting the Bosphorus and forming the harbor of Constantinople, and the other tapering away till it is lost in the " Valley of Sweet Waters." It curls through the midst of the " seven- hilled" city, and you cross it whenever you have an errand in old Stamboul. Its hundreds of shooting caiques, its forests of merchantmen and men-of-war, its noise and its confusion, are exchanged in scarce ten minutes of swift pulling for the breathless and Eden -like solitude of a valley that has not its parallel, I am inclined to think, between the Mississippi and the Caspian. It is called in Turkish khyat-khana. Opening with a gentle curve from the Golden Horn, it winds away into the hills toward Belgrade, its long and even hollow, thridded by a lively stream, and carpeted by a broad belt of unbroken green sward swelling up to the enclosing hills, with a grass so ver- dant and silken that it seems the very floor of faery. In the midst of its longest stretch to the eye (perhaps two miles of level meadow) stands a beautiful serai of the sultan's, unfenced and open, as if it had sprung from the lap of the green meadow like a lily. The stream runs by its door, and over a mimic fall whose lip is of scolloped marble, is built an oriental kiosk, all carving and gold, that is only too delicate and fantas- tical for reality. Here, with the first grass of spring, the sultan sends his fine-footed Arabians to pasture; and here come the ladies of his harem (chosen, women and horses, for much the same class of qualities), and in the long summer afternoons, with mounted eunuchs on the hills around, forbidding on pain of death, all approach to the sacred retreat, they venture to drop their jeal- ous veils and ramble about in their unsunned beauty. After a gallop of three or four miles over the broad waste table plains, in the neighborhood of Constanti- nople, we checked our horses suddenly on the brow of a precipitous descent, with this scene of beauty spread out before us. I had not yet approached it by water, and it seemed to me as if the earth had burst open at my feet, and revealed some realm of enchant- ment. Behind me, and away beyond the valley to the very horizon, I could see only a trackless heath, brown and treeless, while a hundred feet below lay a strip of very Paradise, blooming in all the verdure and heaven- ly freshness of spring. We descended slowly, and crossing a bridge half hidden by willows, rode in upon the elastic green sward (for myself ) with half a feeling of profanation. There were no eunuchs upon the hills, however, and our spirited Turkish horses threw their wild heads into the air, and we flew over the ver- dant turf like a troop of Delhis, the sound of the hoofs on the yielding carpet scarcely audible. The fair palace in the centre of this domain of loveliness was closed, and it was only after we had walked around it that we observed a small tent of the prophet's green couched in a small dell on the hill-side, and containing probably the guard of its imperial master. We mounted again and rode up the valley for two or three miles, following the same level and verdant curve, the soft carpet broken only by the silver thread of the Barbyses, loitering through it on its way to the sea. A herd of buffaloes, tended by a Bulgarian boy, stretched on his back in the sunshine, and a small caravan of camels bringing wood from the hills, and keeping to the soft valley as a relief to their spongy feet, were the only animated portions of the landscape. I think I shall never form to my mind another picture of romantic rural beauty (an employment of the ima- gination I am much given to when out of humor with the world) that will not resemble the " Valley of Sweet Waters" — the khyat-khdna of Constantinople. " Poor Slingsby" never was here.* The lofty mosque of Sulymanye, the bazars of the opium-eaters, and the Timar-hanc, or mad-house of Constantinople, are all upon one square in the highest part of the city. We entered the vast court of the mosque from a narrow and filthy street, and the im- pression of its towering plane-trees and noble area, and of the strange, but grand and costly pile in its centre, was almost devotional. An inner court, enclosed by a kind of romanesque wall, contained a sacred marble fountain of light and airy architecture, and the portico facing this was sustained by some of those splendid and gigantic columns of porphyry and jasper, the spoils of the churches of Asia Minor, f I think the most beautiful spire that rises into the • Irving says, in one of his most exquisite passages — " He who has sallied forth into the world like poor Slingsby, full of sunny anticipations, finds too soon how different the distant scene becomes when visited. The smooth place roughens as he approaches ; the wild place becomes tame and barren ; the fairy teints that beguiled him on, still fly to the distant hill, or gather upon the land he has left behind, and every part of tt" landscape is greener than the spot he stands on." Full of nv «.. - and beautiful expression as this is, I, for one, have not found it true. Bright as 1 had imagined the much-sung lands beyond the water, I have found many a scene in Italy and the east that has more than answered the craving for beauty in my heart. Val d'Arno, Vallombrosa, Venice, Temi, Tivoli, Albano, the Isles of Greece, the Bosphorus, and the matchless valley I have described, have, with a hundred other spots less famous, far outgone in their exquisite reality, even the bright- est of my anticipations. The passage is not necessarily limit- ed in its meaning to scenery, however, and of moral disappoint- ment it is beautifully true. There is many a . " poor Slings- by," the fate of whose sunny anticipations of life it describes but too faithfully. t Sulymanye was built of the ruins of the church, St. Eu- phemia, at Chalcedonia. 150 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. sky is the Turkish minaret. If I may illustrate an object of such magnitude by so trifling a comparison, it is exactly the shape and proportions of an ever- pointed pencil-case — the silver bands answering to the encircling galleries, one above another, from which the muezzin calls out the hour of prayer. The min- aret is painted white, the galleries are fantastically carved, and rising to the height of the highest steeples in our country (four and sometimes six to a single mosque), these slender and pointed fingers of devotion seem to enter the very sky. Remembering, dear reader, that there are two hundred and twenty mosques, and three hundred chapels in Constantinople, raising, perhaps, in all, a thousand minarets to heaven, you may get some idea of the magnificence of this seven- hilled capital of the east. It was near the hour of prayer, and the devout mus- sulmans were thronging into the court of Sulymanye by every gate. Passing the noble doors, with their strangely-carved arches of arabesque, which invite all to enter but the profaning foot of the Christian, the turbaned crowd repaired first to the fountains. From the walls of every mosque, by small conduits pouring into a marble basin, flow streams of pure water for the religious ablutions of the* faithful. The mussulman approaches, throws off" his flowing robe, steps out of his yellow slippers, and unwinds his voluminous tur- ban with devout deliberateness. A small marble step, worn hollow with pious use, supports his foot while he washes from the knee downward. His hands and arms, with the flowing sleeve of his silk shirt rolled to the shoulder, receive the same lavation, and then, washing his face, he repeats a brief prayer, resumes all but his slippers, and enters the mosque barefooted. The mihrab (or niche indicating the side toward the tomb of the prophet), fixes his eye. He folds his hands together, prays a moment standing, prostrates himself flat on his face toward the hallowed quarter, rises upon his knees, and continues praying and pros- trating himself for perhaps half an hour. And all this process is required by the mufti, and performed by every good mussulman five times a day ! A rigid ad- herence to it is almost universal among the Turks. In what an odor of sanctity would a Christian live, who should make himself thus "familiar with heaven !" As the muezzin from the minaret was shouting his last " mashallah!" with a voice like a man calling out from the clouds, we left the court of the majestic mosque, with Byron's reflection : — "Alas ! man makes that great which makes him little !" and, having delivered ourselves of this scrap of poeti- cal philosophy, we crossed over the square to the opium-eaters. A long row of half-ruined buildings, of a single sto- ry, with porticoes in front, and the broad, raised plat- form beneath, on which the Turks sit cross-legged at public places, is the scene of what was once a pecu- liarly oriental spectacle. The mufti has of late years denounced the use of opium, and the devotees to its sublime intoxication have either conquered the habit, or what is more probable, indulge it in more secret places. The shops are partly ruinous, and those that remain in order are used as cafes, in which, however, it is said that the dangerous drug may still be procured. My companion inquired of a good-humored-looking caffejee whether there was any place at which a con- firmed opium-eater could be seen under its influence. He said there was an old Turk, who was in the habit of frequenting his shop, and, if we could wait an hour or two, we might see him in the highest state of in- toxication. We had no time to spare, if the object had been worth our while. And here, thought I, as we sal down and took a cup of coffee in the half-ruined cafe, have descended upon the delirious brains of these noble drunkards, the vis- ions of Paradise so glowingly described in books — visions, it is said, as far exceeding the poor invention of the poet, as the houris of the prophet exceed the fair damsels of this world. Here men, otherwise in their senses, have believed themselves emperors, war- riors, poets ; these wretched walls and bending roof the fair proportions of a palace ; this gray old caffejee a Hylas or a Ganymede. Here men have come to cast off, for an hour, the dull thraldom of the body ; to soar into the glorious world of fancy at a penalty of a thousand times the proportion of real misery ; to sacrifice the invaluable energies of health, and delib- erately poison the very fountain of life, for a few brief moments of magnificent and phrensied blessedness. It is powerfully described in the "Opium-Eater" of De Quincy. At the extremity of this line of buildings, by a nat- ural proximity, stands the Timar-hane. We passed the porter at the gate without question, and entered a large quadrangle, surrounded with the grated windows of cells on the ground-floor. In every window was chained a maniac. The doors of the cells were all open, and, descending by a step upon the low stone floor of the first, we found ourselves in the presence of four men chained to rings, in the four corners, by massy iron collars. The man in the window sat crouched together, like a person benumbed (the day was raw and cold as December), the heavy chain of his collar hanging on his naked breast, and his shoul- ders imperfectly covered with a narrow blanket. His eyes were large and fierce, and his mouth was fixed in an expression of indignant sullenness. My compan-* ion asked him if he were ill. He said he should be well, if he were out — that he was brought there in a fit of intoxication two years ago, and was no more crazy than his keeper. Poor fellow ! It might easi- ly be true! He lifted his heavy collar from his neck as he spoke, and it was not difficult to believe that misery like his for two long years would, of itself, de- stroy reason. There was a better dressed man in the opposite corner, who informed us, in a gentlemanly voice, that he had been a captain in the sultan's army, and was brought there in the delirium of a fever. He was at a loss to know, he said, why he was imprisoned still. We passed on to a poor, half naked wretch in the last stage of illness and idiocy, who sat chattering to himself, and, though trembling with the cold, inter- rupted his monologue continually with fits of the wildest laughter. Farther on sat a young man of a face so full of intellectual beauty, an eye so large and mild, a mouth of such mingled sadness and sweet- ness, and a forehead so broad, and marked so nobly, that we stood, all of us, struck with a simultaneous feeling of pity and surprise. A countenance more beaming with all that is admirable in human nature, I have never seen, even in painting. He might have sat to Da Vinci for the "beloved apostle." He had tied the heavy chain by a shred to a round of the grating, to keep its weight from his neck, and seemed calm and resigned, with all his sadness. My friend spoke to him, but he answered obscurely, and, seeing that our gaze disturbed him, we passed unwillingly on. Oh, what room there is in the world for pity ! If that poor prisoner be not a maniac (as he may not be), and, if nature has not falsified in the structure of his mind the superior impress on his features, what Prome- theus-like agony has he suffered ! The guiltiest felon is better cared for. And allowing his mind to be a wreck, and allowing the hundred human minds, in the same cheerless prison, to be certainly in ruins, oh what have they done to be weighed down with iron on their necks, and exposed, like caged beasts, shivering and naked, to the eye of pitiless curiosity? I have visited lunatic asylums in France, Italy, Sicily, and Germany, but, culpably neglected as most of them are, I have seen nothing comparable to this in horror. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 151 " Is he never unchained ?" we asked. " Never !" And yet, from the ring to the iron collar, there was just chain enough to permit him to stand upright ! There were no vessels near them, not even a pitcher of water. Their dens were cleansed and the poor suf- ferers fed at appointed hours, and, come wind or rain, there was neither shutter nor glass to defend them from the inclemency of the weather. We entered most of the rooms, and found in all the same dampness, filth, and misery. One poor wretch had been chained to the same spot for twenty years. The keeper said he never slept. He talked all the night long. Sometimes at mid-day his voice would j cease, and his head nod for an instant, and then with a start as if he feared to be silent, he raved on with the same incoherent rapidity. He had been a dervish. His collar and chain were bound with rags, and a tat- tered coat was fastened up on the inside of the window, forming a small recess in which he sat, between the room and the grating. He was emaciated to the last j degree. His beard was tangled and filthy, his nails curled over the ends of his fingers, and his appear- ance, save only an eye of the keenest lustre, that of a wild beast. In the last room we entered, we found a good-look- ing young man, well dressed, healthy, composed, and having every appearance of a person in the soundest state of mind and body. He saluted us courteously, and told my friend that he was a renegade Greek. He had turned mussulman a year or two ago, had lost his reason, and so was brought here. He talked of it quite as a thing of course, and seemed to be entirely satis- fied that the best had been done for him. One of the party took hold of his chain. He winced as the col- lar stirred on his neck, and said the lock was on the outside of the window (which was true), and that the boys came in and tormented him by pulling it some- times. " There they are," he said, pointing to two or three children who had just entered the court, and were running round from one prisoner to another. We bade him good morning, and he laid his hand to his breast and bowed with a smile. As we passed tow- ard the gate, the chattering lunatic on the opposite side screamed after us, the old dervish laid his skinny hands on the bars of his window, and talked louder and faster, and the children, approaching close to the poor creatures, laughed with delight at their excite- ment. It was a relief to escape to the common sights and sounds of the city. We walked on to the Hippo- drome. The only remaining beauty of this famous square is the unrivalled mosque of Sultan Achmet, which, though inferior in size to the renowned Santa Sophia, is superior in elegance both within and with- out. Its six slender and towering minarets are the handsomest in Constantinople. The wondrous obe- lisk in the centre of the square, remains perfect as in the time of the Christian emperors, but the brazen tri- pod is gone from the twisted column, and the serpent- like pillar itself is leaning over with its brazen folds to its fall. Here stood the barracks of the powerful Janisaries, and from the side of Sultan Achmet the cannon were levelled upon them, as they rushed from the confla- gration within. And here, when Constantinople was the "second Rome," were witnessed the triumphal processions of Christian conquest, the march of the crusaders, bound for Palestine, and the civil tumults which Justinian, walking among the people with the gospel in his hand, tried in vain to allay ere they burnt the great edifice built of the ruins of the temple of Solomon. And around this now neglected area, the captive Gelimer followed in chains the chariot of the conquering Belisarius, repeating the words of Solo- mon, " Yanity of vanities! all is vanity!" while the conquerer himself, throwing aside his crown, prostra- ted himself at the feet of the beautiful Theodora, raised from a Roman actress to be the Christian em- peress of the east. From any elevated point of the city, you may still see the ruins of the palace of the renowned warrior, and read yourself a lesson on hu- man vicissitudes, remembering the school-book story of " an obolon for Belisarius !" The Hippodrome was, until late years, the constant scene of the games of the jereed. With the destruc- tion of the Janizaries, and the introduction of Euro- pean tactics, this graceful exercise has gone out of fashion. The east is fast losing its picturesqueness. Dress, habits, character, everything seems to be un- dergoing a gradual change, and when, as the Turks themselves predict, the moslem is driven into Asia, this splendid capital will become another Paris, and with the improvements in travel, a summer in Con- stantinople will be as little thought of as a tour in Ita- ly. Politicians in this part of the world predict such a change as about to arrive. LETTER XCVI1 SULTAN MAHMOUD AT HIS DEVOTIONS — COMPARATIVE SPLENDOR OF PAPAL, AUSTRIAN, AND TURKISH EQUIP- AGES — THE SULTAN'S BARGE OR CAIQUE DESCRIP- TION OF THE SULTAN — VISIT TO A TURKISH LANCAS- TERIAN SCHOOL — THE DANCING DERVISHES — VISIT FROM THE SULTAN'S CABINET THE SERASK1ER AND THE CAPITAN PACHA— HUMBLE ORIGIN OF TURKISH DIGNITARIES. I had slept on shore, and it was rather late before 1 remembered that it was Friday (the moslem Sunday), and that Sultan Mahmoud was to go in state to mosque at twelve. I hurried down the precipitous street of Pera, and, as usual, escaping barely with my life from the Christian-hating dogs of Tophana, em- barked in a caique, and made all speed up the Bos- phorus. There is no word in Turkish for faster, but I was urging on my caikjees by a wave of the hand and the sight of a bishlik (about the value of a quarter of a dollar), when suddenly a broadside was fired from the three-decker, Mahmoudier, the largest ship in the world, and to the rigging of every man-of-war in the fleet through which l^was passing, mounted, simulta- neously, hundreds of blood-red flags, filling the air about us like a shower of tulips and roses. Imagine twenty ships-of-war, with yards manned, and scarce a line in their rigging to be seen for the flaunting of colors ! The jar of the guns, thundering in every di- rection close over us, almost lifted our light boat out of the water, and the smoke rendered our pilotage be- tween the ships and among their extending cables rather doubtful. The white cloud lifted after a few minutes, and, with the last gun, down went the flags all together, announcing that the " Brother of the Sun" had left his palace. He had but crossed to the mosque of the small vil- lage on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, and was already at his prayers when I arrived. His body-guard was drawn up before the door, in their villanous Eu- ; ropean dress, and, as their arms were stacked, 1 pre- ! sumed it would be some time before the sultan reap- i peared, and improved the interval in examining the handja-bashes, or state-caiques, lying at the landing. I have arrived at my piesent notions of equipage by three degrees. The pope's carriages at Rome, rather astonished me. The emperor of Austria's sleighs di- minished the pope in my admiration, and the sultan's caiques, in their turn, "pale the fires" of the emperor of Austria. The handja-bash is built something like the ancient galley, very high at the prow and stern, carries some fifty oars, and has a roof over her poop, 152 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. supported by four columns, and loaded with the most sumptuous ornaments, the whole gilt brilliantly. The prow is curved over, and wreathed into every possible device that would not affect the necessary lines of the model ; her crew are dressed in the beautiful costume of the country, rich and flowing, and with the costly and bright-colored carpets hanging over her side, and the flashing of the sun on her ornaments of gold, she is really the most splendid object of state equipage (if I may be allowed the misnomer) in the world. I was still examining the principal barge, when the troops stood to their arms, and preparation was made for the passing out of the sultan. Thirty or forty of his highest military officers formed themselves into two lines from the door of the mosque to the landing, and behind them were drawn up single files of soldiers. I took advantage of the respect paid to the rank of Commodore Patterson, and obtained an excellent po- sition, with him, at the side of the caique. First is- sued from the door two Georgian slaves, bearing cen- sers, from which they waved the smoke on either side, and the sultan immediately followed, supported by the capitan-pacha, the seraskier, and Haleil Pacha (who is to marry the Sultana Esmeh). He walked slowly down to the landing, smiling and talking gayly with the seraskier, and, bowing to the commodore in pas- sing, stepped into his barge, seated himself on a raised sofa, while his attendants coiled their legs on the car- pet below, and turned his prow across the Bosphorus. I have, perhaps, never set my eyes on a handsomer man than Sultan Mahmoud. His figure is tall, straight, and manly, his air unembarrassed and digni- fied, and his step indicative of the well-known firmness of his character. A superb beard of jetty blackness, with a curling mustache, conceals all the lower part of his face ; the decided and bold lines of his mouth just marking themselves when he speaks. It is said he both paints and dies his beard, but a manlier brown upon a cheek, or a richer gloss upon a beard, I never saw. His eye is described by writers as having a doomed darkness of expression, and it is certainly one that would well become a chief of bandits — large, steady, and overhung with an eyebrow like a thunder- cloud. He looks the monarch. The child of a ser- aglio (where mothers are chosen for beauty alone) could scarce escape being handsome. The blood of Circassian upon Circassian is in his veins, and the wonder is, not that he is the handsomest man in his empire, but that he is not the greatest slave. Our " mother's humor," they say, predominates in our mixtures. Sultan Mahmoud, however, was marked by nature for a throne. I accompanied Mr. Goodell and Mr. Dwight, Ameri- can missionaries at Constantinople, to visit a Lancas- trian school established with their assistance in the Turkish barracks. The building stands on the ascent of one of the lovely valleys that open into the Bos- phorus, some three miles from the city, on the Euro- pean side. We were received by the colonel of the regiment, a young man of fine appearance, with the diamond crescent and star glittering on the breast of his military frock, and after the inevitable compliment of pipes and coffee, the drum was beat and the soldiers called to school. The sultan has an army of boys. Nine tenths of those I have seen are under twenty. They marched in, in single file, and facing about, held up their hands at the word of command, while a subaltern looked that each had performed the morning ablution. They were healthy-looking lads, mostly from the interior provinces, whence they are driven down like cattle to fill the ranks of their sovereign. Duller-looking sub- jects for an idea it has not been my fortune to see. The Turkish alphabet hung over the teacher's desk (the colonel is the schoolmaster, and takes the great- est interest in his occupation), and th? front seats are faced with a long box covered with sand, in which the beginners write with their fingers. It is fitted with a slide that erases the clumsy imitation when completed, and seemed to me an ingenious economy of ini and paper. (I would suggest to the minds of the benevo- lent, a school on the same principle for beginners in poetry. It would save the critics much murder, and tend to the suppression of suicide.) The classes hav- ing filed into their seats, the school opened with a prayer by the colonel. The higher benches then commenced writing, on slates and paper, sentences dictated from the desk, and I was somewhat surprised at the neatness and beauty of the characters. We passed afterward into another room where arith- metic and geography were taught, and then mounted to an apartment on the second story occupied by stu- dents in military drawing. The proficiency of all was most creditable, considering the brief period during which the schools have been in operation — something less than a year. Prejudiced as the Turks are against European innovation, this advanced step toward im provement tells well. Our estimable and useful mis sionaries appear, from the respect everywhere shown them, to be in high esteem, and with the sultan's en- ergetic disposition for reform, they hope everything in the way of an enlightened change in the moral condi tion of the people. Went to the chapel of the dancing dervishes. It is a beautiful marble building, with a court-yard orna- mented with a small cemetery shaded with cypresses, and a fountain enclosed in a handsome edifice, and defended by gilt gratings from the street of the suburb of Pera, in which it stands. They dance here twice a week. We arrived before the hour, and were de- tained at the door by a soldier on guard, who would not permit us to enter without taking off our boots — a matter, about which, between straps and their very muddy condition, we had some debate. The dervishes began to arrive before the question was settled, and one of them, a fine-looking old man, inviting us to enter, Mr. H. explained the difficulty. " Go in," said he, " go in !" and turning to the more scrupulous mussulman with the musket, as he pushed us within the door, " stupid fellow !" said he, " if you had been less obstinate, they would have given you a bakshish"'' (Turkish for a fee). He should have said less reli- gious — for the poor fellow looked horror-struck as our dirty boots profaned the clean white Persian matting of the sacred floor. One would think, " the nearer the church the farther from God," were as true here as it is said to be in some more civilized countries. It was a pretty, octagonal interior, with a gallery, the mihrab or niche indicating the direction of the prophet's tomb, standing obliquely from the front of the building. Hundreds of small lamps hung in the area, just out of the reach of the dervishes' tall caps, and all around between the gallery ; a part of the floor was raised, matted, and divided from the body of the church by a balustrade. It would have made an exceedingly pretty ball-room. None but the dervishes entered within the paling, and they soon began to enter, each advancing first toward the mihrab, and going through fifteen or twen- ty minutes' prostrations and prayers. Their dress is very humble. A high, white felt-cap, without a rim, like a sugar-loaf enlarged a little at the smaller end, protects the head, and a long dress of dirt-colored cloth, reaching quite to the heels and bound at the waist with a girdle, completes the costume. They look like men who have made up their minds to seem religious, and though said to be a set of very good fel- lows, they have a Mawworm expression of face gener- ally, which was very repulsive. I must except the chief of the sect, however, who entered when all the rest had seated themselves on the floor, and after a PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 153 brief genuflection or two, took possession of a rich Angora carpet placed for him near the mihrab. He was a small old man, distinguished in his dress only by the addition of a green band to his cap (the sign of his pilgrimage to Mecca) and the entire absence of the sanctimonious look. Still he was serious, and there was no mark in his clear, intelligent eye and amiable features, of any hesitancy or want of sincerity in his devotion. He is said to be a learned man, and he is certainly a very prepossessing one, though he would be taken up as a beggar in any city in the Uni- ted States. It is a thing one learns in " dangling about the world," by the way, to form opinions of men quite independently of their dress. After sitting a while in quaker meditation, the brotherhood rose one by one (there were ten of them I think), and marched round the room with their toes turned in, to the music of a drum and a Persian flute, played invisibly in some part of the gallery. As they passed the carpet of the cross-legged chief, they twist- ed dexterously and made three salaams, and then raising their arms, which they held out straight during the whole dance, they commenced twirling on one foot, using the other after the manner of a paddle to keep up the motion. I forgot to mention that they laid aside their outer dresses before commencing the dance. They remained in dirty white tunics reaching to the floor, and very full at the bottom, so that with the regular motion of their whirl, the wind blew them out into a circle, like what the girls in our country call " making cheeses." They twisted with surprising exactness and rapidity, keeping clear of each other, and maintaining their places with the regularity of machines. I have seen a great deal of waltzing, but I think the dancing dervishes for precision and spirit, might give a lesson even to the Germans. We left them twisting. They had been going for half an hour, and it began to look very like perpetual motion- Unless their brains are addled, their devo- tion, during this dizzy performance at least, must be quite suspended. A man who could think of his Maker, while revolving so fast that his nose is indis- tinct, must have some power of abstraction. The frigate was visited to-day by the sultan's cab- inet. The seraskier pacha came alongside first in his state caique, and embraced the commodore as he stepped upon the deck, with great cordiality. He is a short, fat old man, with a snow-white beard, and so bow-legged as to be quite deformed. He wore the red Fez cap of the army, with a long blue frock-coat, the collar so tight as nearly to choke him, and the body not shaped to the figure, but made to fall around him like a sack. The red, bloated skin of his neck fell over, so as almost to cover the gold with which the collar was embroidered. He was formerly capitan pacha, or admiral-in-chief of the fleet, and though a good-humored, merry-looking old man, has shown himself, both in his former and present capacity, to be wily, cold, and a butcher in cruelty. He possesses unlimited influence over the sultan, and though nom- inally subordinate to the grand vizier, is really the second if not the first person in the empire. He was originally a Georgian slave. The seraskier was still talking with the commodore in the gang-way, when the present capitan pacha mounted the ladder, and the old man, who is under- stood to be at feud with his successor, turned abruptly away and walked aft. The capitan pacha is a tall, slender man, of precisely that look and manner which we call gentlemanly. His beard grows untrimmed in the Turkish fashion, and is slightly touched with gray. His eye is anxious, but resolute, and he looks like a man of resource and ability. His history is as singu- lar as that of most other great men in Turkey. He was a slave of Mohammed Ali, the rebellious pacha of Egypt. Being intrusted by his master with a brig and cargo for Leghorn, he sold vessel and lading, lived like a gentleman in Italy for some years with the proceeds, and as the best security against the retribu- tion of his old master, offered his services to the sultan, with whom Ali was just commencing hostilities. Na- val talent was in request, and he soon arrived at his present dignity. He is said to be the only officer in the fleet who knows anything of his profession. Haleil Pacha arrived last. The sultan's future son- in-law is a man of perhaps thirty-five. He is light- complexioned, stout, round-faced, and looks, like a respectable grocer, " well to do in the world." He has commanded the artillery long enough to have ac quired a certain air of ease and command, and carries the promise of good fortune in his confident features. He is to be married almost immediately. He, too, was a Georgian, sent as a present to the sultan. The three dignitaries made the rounds of the ship and then entered the cabin, where the pianoforte (a novelty to the seraskier and Haleil Pacha, and to most of the attendant officers), and the commodore's agree- able society and champagne, promised to detain them the remainder of the day. They were like children with a holyday. I was engaged to dine on shore, and left them on board. In a country where there is no education and no rank, except in the possession of present power, it is not surprising that men should rise from the lowest class to the highest offices, or that they should fill those offices to the satisfaction of the sultan. Yet it is curious to hear their histories. An English phy- sician, who is frequently called into the seraglio, and whose practice among all the families in power gives him the best means of information, has entertained me not a little with these secrets. I shall make use of them when I have more leisure, merely mentioning here, in connexion with the above accounts, that the present grand vizier was a boatman on the Bosphorus, and the commander of the sultan's body-guard, a shoemaker! The latter still employs all his leisure in making slippers, which he presents to the sultan and his friends, not at all ashamed of his former voca- tion. So far, indeed, are any of these mushroom offi- cers from blushing at their origin, that it is common to prefix the name of their profession to the title of pacha, and they are addressed by it as a proper name. This is one respect in which their European educa- tion will refine them to their disadvantage. LETTER XCVIII. THE GRAND BAZAR OF CONSTANTINOPLE, AND ITS IN- FINITE VARIETY OF "WONDERS — SILENT SHOPKEEP- ERS — FEMALE CURIOSITY — ADVENTURE WITH A BLACK-EYED STRANGER THE BEZESTEIN — THE STRONG-HOLD OF ORIENTALISM — PICTURE OF A DRA- GOMAN — THE KIBAUB-SHOP ; A DINNER WITHOUT KNIVES, FORKS, OR CHAIRS — CISTERN OF THE THOU- SAND AND ONE COLUMNS. Bring all the shops of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, together around the City Hall, remove their fronts, pile up all their goods on shelves facing the street, cover the whole with a roof, and metamor- phose your trim clerks into bearded, turbaned, and solemn old mussulmans, smooth Jews, and calpacked and rosy Armenians, and you will have something like the grand bazar of Constantinople. You can scarce- ly get an idea of it, without bavins; been there. It is a city under cover. You walk all day, and day after I day, from one street to another, winding and turning, 154 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. and trudging up hill and down, and never go out of doors. The roof is as high as those of our three-sto- ry houses, and the dim light so favorable to shop-keep- ers, comes struggling down through skylights, never cleaned except by the rains of heaven. Strolling through the bazar is an endless amuse- ment. It is slow work, for the streets are as crowded as a church-aisle after service ; and, pushed aside one moment by a bevy of Turkish ladies, shuffling along in their yellow slippers, muffled to the eyes, the next by a fat slave carrying a child, again by a kervas armed to the teeth, and clearing the way for some coming dignitary, you find your only policy is to draw in your elbows, and suffer the motley crowd to shove you about at their pleasure. Each shop in this world of traffic may be two yards wide. The owner sits cross-legged on the broad counter below, the height of a chair from the ground, and hands you all you want without stirring from his seat. One broad bench or counter runs the length of the street, and the different shops are only divided by the slight partition of the shelves. The purchaser seats himself on the counter, to be out of the way of the crowd, and the shopman spreads out his goods on his knees, never condescending to open his lips except to tell you the price- If he exclaims " bono" or "calo," (the only words a real Turk ever knows of an- other language), he is stared at by his neighbors as a man would be in Broadway who should break out with an Italian bravura. Ten to one, while you are examining his goods, the bearded trader creeps through the hole leading to his kennel of a dormitory in the rear, washes himself and returns to his coun- ter, where, spreading his sacred carpet in the direction of Mecca, he goes through his prayers and prostra- tions, perfectly unconscious of your presence, or that of the passing crowd. No vocation interferes with his religious duty. Five times a day, if he were run- ning from the plague, the mussulman would find time for prayers. The Frank purchaser attracts a great deal of curi- osity. As he points to an embroidered handkerchief, or a rich shawl, or a pair of gold-worked slippers, Turkish ladies of the first rank, gathering their yash- macks securely over their faces, stop close to his side, not minding if they push him a little to get nearer the desired article. Feeling not the least timidity, ex- cept for their faces, these true children of Eve exam- ine the goods in barter, watch the stranger's counte- nance, and if he takes off his glove, or pulls out his purse, take it up and look at it, without even saying " by your leave." Their curiosity often extends to your dress, and they put out their little henna-stained fingers and pass them over the sleeve of your coat with a gurgling expression of admiration at its fine- ness, or if you have rings or a watch-guard, they lift your hand or pull out your watch with no kind of scruple. I have met with several instances of this in the course of my rambles. But a day or two ago I found myself rather more than usual a subject of cu- riosity. I was alone in the street of embroidered handkerchiefs (every minute article has its peculiar bazar), and wishing to look at some of uncommon beauty, I called one of the many Jews always near a stranger to turn a penny by interpreting for him, and was soon up to the elbows in goods that would tempt a female angel out of Paradise. As I was selecting one for a purchase, a woman plumped down upon the seat beside me, and fixed her great, black, unwinking eyes upon my face, while an Abyssinian slave and an- other white woman, both apparently her dependants, stood respectfully at her back. A small turquoise ring (the favorite color in Turkey), first attracted her attention. She took up my hand, and turned it over in her soft, fat fingers, and dropped it again without saying a word. I looked at my interpreter, but he seemed to think it nothing extraordinary, and I went on with my bargain. Presently my fine-eyed friend pulled me by the sleeve, and as I leaned toward her. rubbed her forefinger very quickly over my cheek, looking at me intently all the while. I was a little disturbed with the lady's familiarity, and asked my Jew what she wanted. I found that my rubicund com- plexion was something uncommon among these dark- skinned orientals, and she wished to satisfy herself that I was not painted ! I concluded my purchase, and putting the parcel into my pocket, did my prettiest at an oriental salaam, but to my mortification, the lady only gathered up her yashmack, and looked surprised out of her great eyes at my freedom. My Constanti- nople friends inform me that I am to lay no " unction to my soul" from her notice, such liberties being not at all particular. The husband exacts from his half- dozen wives only the concealment of their faces, and they have no other idea of impropriety in public. In the centre of the bazar, occupying about as much space as the body of the City Hall in New York, is what is called the bezestein. You descend into it from four directions by massive gates, which are shut, and all persons excluded, except between seven and twelve of the forenoon. This is the core of Constantinople — the soul and citadel of oriental- ism. It is devoted to the sale of arms and to costly articles only. The roof is loftier and the light more dim than in the outer bazars, and the merchants who occupy its stalls, are old and of established credit. Here are subjects for the pencil ! If you can take your eye from those Damascus sabres, with their jew- elled hilts and costly scabbards, or from those gemmed daggers and guns inlaid with silver and gold, cast a glance along that dim avenue and see what a range there is of glorious old gray beards, with their snowy turbans ! These are the Turks of the old regime, be- fore Sultan Mahmoud disfigured himself with a coat like a " dog of a Christian," and broke in upon the customs of the orient. These are your opium-eaters, who smoke even in their sleep, and would not touch wine if it were handed them by houris ! These are your fatalists, who would scarce take the trouble to get out of the way of a lion, and who are as certain of the miracle of Mohammed's coffin as of the length of the pipe, or of the quality of the tobacco of Shiraz ! I have spent many an hour in the bezestein, steep- ing my fancy in its rich orientalism, and sometimes trying to make a purchase for myself or others. It is curious to see with what perfect indifference these old cross-legs attend to the wishes of a Christian. I was idling round one day with an English traveller, whom I had known in Italy, when a Persian robe of singu- lar beauty hanging on one of the stalls arrested my companion's attention. He had with him his Turk- ish dragoman, and as the old merchant was smoking away and looking right at us, we pointed to the dress over his head, and the interpreter asked to see it. The mussulman smoked calmly on, taking no more notice of us than of the white clouds curling through his beard. He might have sat for Michael Angelo's Mo- ses. Thin, pale, calm, and of a statue-like repose of countenance and posture, with a large old-fashioned turban, and a curling beard half mingled with gray, his neck bare, and his fine bust enveloped in the flow- ing and bright colored drapery of the east — I had never seen a more majestic figure. He evidently did not wish to have anything to do with us. At last I took out my snuff-box, and addressing him with " ef- fendi !" the Turkish title of courtesy, laid my hand on my breast and offered him a pinch. Tobacco in this unaccustomed shape is a luxury here, and the amber mouth-piece emerged from his mustache, and putting his three fingers into my box, he said u pek Me.'" the Turkish ejaculation of approval. He then PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 155 made room for us on his carpet and with a cloth meas- ure took the robe from its nail, and spread it before us. My friend bought it unhesitatingly for a dressing- gown, and we spent an hour in looking at shawls, of prices perfectly startling, arms, chalices for incense, spotless amber for pipes, pearls, bracelets of the time of Sultan Selim, and an endless variety of " things rich and rare." The closing of the bezestein gates interrupted our agreeable employment, and our old friend gave us the parting salaam very cordially for a Turk. I have been there frequently since, and never pass without offering my snuff-box, and taking a whiff or two from his pipe, which I cannot refuse, though it is not out of his mouth, except when offered to a friend, from sunrise till midnight. One of the regular " lions" of Constantinople is a kibaub shop, or Turkish restaurant. In a ramble with our consul, the other day, in search of the newly-dis- covered cistern of a " thousand and one columns," we found ourselves, at the hungry hour of twelve, op- posite a famous shop near the slave-market. I was rather staggered at the first glance. A greasy fellow, with his shirt rolled to his shoulders, stood near the door, commending his shop to the world by slapping on the flank a whole mutton that hung beside him, while, as a customer came in, he dexterously whipped out a slice, had it cut in a twinkling into bits as large as a piece of chalk (I have stopped five minutes in vain, to find a better comparison), strung upon a long iron skewer, and laid on the coals. My friend is an old Constantinopolitan, and had eaten kibaubs before. He entered without hesitation, and the adroit butcher, giving his big trowsers a fresh hitch, and tightening his girdle, made a new cut for his " narrow legged" customers, and wished us a good appetite (the Turks look with great contempt on our tight pantaloons, and distinguish us by this epithet). We got up on the platform, crossed our legs under us as well as we could, and I can not deny that the savory missives that occasionally reached my nostrils, bred a gradual rec- onciliation between my stomach and my eyes. In some five minutes, a tin platter was set between us, loaded with piping hot kibaubs, sprinkled with salad, and mixed with bits of bread ; our friend the cook, by way of making the amiable, stirring it up well with his fingers as he brought it along. As Mo- dely says in the play, " In love or mutton, I generally fall to without ceremony," but, spite of its agreeable flavor, I shut my eyes, and selected a very small bit, before I commenced upon the kibaubs. It was very good eating, I soon found out, and, my fingers once greased (for we are indulged with neither knife, fork, nor skewer, in Turkey), I proved myself as good a trencher-man as my friend. The middle and lower classes of Constantinople live between these shops and the cafes. A dish of kibaubs serves them for dinner, and they drink coffee, which they get for about half a cent a cup, from morning till night. We paid for our mess (which was more than any two men could eat at once, unless very hungry), twelve cents. We started again with fresh courage, in search of the cistern. We soon found the old one, which is an immense excavation, with a roof, supported by five hundred granite columns, employed now as a place for twisting silk, and escaping from its clamorous denizens, who rushed up after us to the daylight, beg- ging paras, we took one of the boys for a guide, and soon found the object of our search. Knocking at the door of a half-ruined house, in one of the loneliest streets of the city, an old, sore-eyed Armenian, with a shabby calpack, and every mark of extreme poverty, admitted us, pettishly demanding our entrance money, before he let us pass the thresh- old. Flights of steps, dangerously ruinous, led us down, first into a garden, far below the level of the street, and thence into a dark and damp cavern, the bottom of which was covered with water. As the eye became accustomed to the darkness, we could distin- guish tall and beautiful columns of marble and gran- ite, with superb corinthian capitals, perhaps thirty feet in height, receding as far as the limits of our obscured sight. The old man said there were a thousand of them. The number was doubtless exaggerated, but we saw enough to convince us, that here was covered up, almost unknown, one of the mostly and magnificent works of the Christian emperors of Constantinople LETTER XCIX. BELGRADE — THE COTTAGE OF LADY MONTAGUE — TURK- ISH CEMETERIES— NATURAL TASTE OF THE MOSLEMS FOR THE PICTURESQUE A TURKISH CARRIAGE WASH- ERWOMEN SURPRISED— GIGANTIC FOREST TREES— THE RESERVOIR RETURN TO CONSTANTINOPLE. I left Constantinople on horseback with a party of officers, and two American travellers in the east, early on one of nature's holyday mornings, for Belgrade. We loitered a moment in the small Armenian ceme- tery, the only suburb that separates the thickly crowd- ed street from the barren heath that stretches away from the city on every side to the edge of the horizon. It is singular to gallop thus from the crowded pave- ment, at once into an uncultivated and unfenced des- ert. We are so accustomed to suburban gardens that the traveller wonders how the markets of this over- grown and immense capital are supplied. A glance back upon the Bosphorus,and toward the Asian shore, and the islands of the sea of Marmora, explains the secret. The waters in every direction around this sea-girdled city are alive with boats, from the larger kachambas and sandals to the egg-shell caique, swarm- ing into the Golden Horn in countless numbers, la- den with every vegetable of the productive east. Jt is I said, however, that it is dangerous to thrive too near the eye of the sultan. The summary mode for rewarding , favorites and providing for the residence of ambassa- dors, by the simple confiscation of the prettiest estate desirably situated, is thought to have something to do with the barrenness of the immediate neighborhood. The Turks carry their contempt of the Christian even beyond the grave. The funereal cypress, so sin- gularly beautiful in its native east, is permitted to throw its dark shadows only upon turbaned tombstones. The Armenian rayah, the oppressed Greek, and the more hated Jew, slumber in their unprotected graves on the open heath. It almost reconciles one to the haughtiness and cruelty of the Turkish character, however, to stand on one of the " seven hills" of Stamboul, and look around upon their own beautiful cemeteries. On every sloping hill side, in every rural nook, in the court of the splendid mosque, stands a dark nekropolis, a small city of the dead, shadowed so thickly by the close-growing cypresses, that the light of heaven penetrates but dimly. You can have no conception of the beauty it adds to the landscape. And then from the bosom of each, a slender minaret shoots into the sky as if pointing out the flight of the departed spirit, and if you enter within its religious darkness, you find a taste and elegance unknown in more civilized countries, the humblest headstone let- tered with gold, and the more costly sculptured into forms the most sumptuous, and fenced and planted with flowers never neglected. In the east, the graveyard is not, as with us, a place abandoned to its dead. Occupying a spot of chosen loveliness it is resorted to by women and children, and on holydays by men, whose indolent natures find hap- 156 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. piness enough in sitting on the green bank around the resting-place of their relatives and friends. Here, while their children are playing around them, they smoke in motionless silence, watching the gay Bos- phorus or the busier curve of the Golden Horn, one of which is visible from every cemetery in the Stam- boul. Occasionally you see large parties of twenty or thirty, sitting together, their slight feast of sweetmeats and sherbet spread in some grassy nook, and the sur- rounding headstones serving as leaning-places for the women, or bounds for the infant gambols of the gayly- dressed little mussulmans. Whatever else we may deny the Turk, we must al- low him to possess a genuine love for rural beauty. The cemeteries we have described, the choice of his dwelling on the Bosphorus, and his habit of resorting, whenever he has leisure, to some lovely scene to sit the livelong day in the sunshine, are proof enough. And then all over the hills, both in Anatolia and Rou- melia, wherever there is a fine view or a greener spot than elsewhere, you find the small sairgah, the grassy platform on which he spreads his carpet, and you may look in vain for a spot better selected for his purpose. Things are sooner seen than described (I wish it were as agreeable to describe as to see them !) and all this digression, and much more which I spare the reader, is the fruit of five minutes' reflection while the suridjee tightens his girths in the Armenian burying- ground. The turbaned Turk once more in his saddle then we will canter on some three miles, if you please, over as naked a heath as the sun looks upon, to the " Valley of Sweet Waters." I have described this, I think, before. We live to learn, and my intelligent friend tells me, as we draw rein, and wind carefully down the steep descent, that the site of the sultan's romantic serai, in the bosom of the valley, was once occupied by the first printing-press established in Tur- key — the fruit of an embassy to the court of Louis the fifteenth, by Mehemet Effendi, in the reign of Ach- met the third. And thus having delivered myself of a fact, a thing for which I have a natural antipathy in writing, let us gallop up the velvet brink of the Bar- byses. We had kept our small Turkish horses to their speed for a mile, with the enraged suridjee crying after us at the top of his voice, " ya-wash ! ya-tvash /" (slowly, slowly!) when, at a bend of the valley, right through the midst of its velvet verdure, came rolling along an aruba, loaded with ladies. This pretty word signifies in Turkish a carriage, and the thing itself re- minds you directly of the fantastic vehicles in which fairy queens come upon the stage. First appear two gray oxen, with their tails tied to a hoop bent back from the end of the pole, their heads and horns and the long curve of the hoop decked with red and yel- low tassels so profusely, that it looks at a distance like a walking clump of hollyhocks. As you pass the poor oxen (almost lifted off their hind legs by the straining of the hoop upon their tails), a four-wheeled vehicle makes its appearance, the body and wheels carved elaborately and gilt all over, and the crimson cover rolled up just so far as to 'show a cluster of veil- ed women, cross-legged upon cushions within, and riding in perfect silence !'* A eunuch or a very old Turk walks at the side, and thus the moslem ladies " take Tcaif" as it is called — in other words go-a-pleas- uring. But a prettier sight than this gay affair rolling noiselessly over the pathless green sward of the Valley of Sweet Waters, you may not see in a year's travel. A beautiful Englishwoman, mounted (if I may dare to write it) on a more beautiful Arabian, came flying * Whether the difficulty of talking through the yashmack, which is drawn tight over the mouth and nose, may account for it, or whether they have another race of the sex in the east, I am not prepared to say, but Turkish women are re- markable for their taciturnity . toward us as we approached the head of the valley, the long feathers in her riding-cap all but brushing our admiring eyes out as she passed, and other living riling met we none till we drew up in the edge of the forest of Belgrade. A half hour brought us to a bold de- scent, and through the openings in the wood we caught a glimpse of the celebrated retreat of Lady Montague, a village, tossed into the lap of as bright a dell as the sun looks upon in his journey. A lively brook, that curls about in the grass like a silver flower worked in- to the green carpet, overcomes at last its unwillingness to depart, and vanishes from the fair scene under a clump of willows ; and, as if it knew it was sitting for its picture, there must needs be a group of girls with their trowsers tucked up to the knee, washing away so busily in the brook, that they did not see that half a dozen Frank horsemen were upon them, and their for- gotten yashmacks all fallen about their shoulders! We dismounted, and finding (what I never saw be- fore) a re^-headed Frenchman, walking about in his slippers, we inquired for the house of Lady Montague. He had never heard of her ! A cottage, a little sepa- rated from the village, untenanted, and looking as if it should be hers, stood on a swell of the valley, and we found by the scrawled names and effusions of travel- lers upon the gates, that we were not mistaken in se- lecting it for the shrine of our sentiment. I am sorry to be obliged to add, that in the roman- tic forest of Belgrade, we listened to the calls of mor- tal hunger. With some very sour wine, however, we did drink to the memory of Lady Mary and the "fair Fatima," washing down with the same draught as brown bread as ever I saw, and some very indiffer- ent filberts. We mounted once more, and followed our silent guide across the brook, politely taking it below the spot where our naiads of the stream were washing, and following its slender valley for a mile, arrived at one of the gigantic bendts, for which the place is famous. To give romance its proper precedence over reality, however, I must first mention, that on the soft bank of the artificial lake, which I shall presently describe, Constantine Ghika, disguised as a shepherd, stole an interview with the fair Veronica, and in the wild forest to the right, they wandered till they lost their way ; an adventure of which they only regretted the sequel, finding it again ! If you have not read " The Arme- nians," this pretty turn in my travels is thrown away upon you. The valley of Belgrade widens and rounds into a lake-shaped hollow just here, and across it, to form a reservoir for the supply of the city by the aqueducts of Valens and Justinian, is built a gigantic marble wall. There is no water just now, which, for a lake, is rather a deficiency; but the vast white wall only stands up against the sky, bolder and more towering, and coming suddenly upon it in that lonely place, you might take it, if the " fine phrensy" were on you, for the barrier of some enchanted demesne. We passed on into the forest, winding after an al- most invisible path, up hill and down dale, till we came to the second bendt. This, and the third, which is near by, are larger and of more ornamental architecture than the first, and the forest around them is one in which, if he turned his back on the lofty walls, a wild Indian would feel himself at home. I have not seen such trees since I left America ; clear of all underwood, and the long vistas broken only by the trunk of some noble oak, fallen aslant, it has for miles the air of a grand old wilderness, unprofaned by axe or fire. In the midst of such scenery as this, to ride up to the majestic bendt, faced with a front like a temple, and crowned by a marble balustrade, with a salient and rais ed crescent in the centre, like a throne for some mon- arch of the forest, it must be a more staid imagination than mine that would not feel a touch of the knight PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 15? of La Mancha, and spur up to find a gate, and a bugle to blow a blast for the warder ! It is just the looking place I imagined for an enchanted castle, when read- ing my first romances. Farther on in the forest we found several circular structures, like baths, sunk in the earth, with flights of steps winding to the bottom, but with the same gi- gantic trees growing at their very rim, and nothing near them to show the purpose of their costly mason- ry. We stopped to form a conjecture or two with the aid of the genus loci, but the surly suridjee, probably at a loss to comprehend the object of looking into a hole full of dead leaves, chose to put his horse to a gallop ; and having no Veronica to make a romance of a lost path, we left our conjectures to gallop after. We reached the waste plains above the city at sun- set, and turned a little out of our way to enter through the Turkish cemetery (poetically called by Mr. Mac- Farlane " death's coronal"), on the summit and sides of the hill behind Pera. Broad daylight, as it was still without, it was deep twilight among its thick- planted cypresses ; and our horses, starting at the tall, white tombstones, hurried through its damp hollows and emerged on a brow overlooking the bright and crowded Bosphorus, bathed at the moment in a flood of sunset glory. I said again, as I reined in my horse and gazed down upon those lovely waters, there is no such scene of beauty in the world ! And again I say, " poor Slingsby" never was here ! LETTER C. SCUTARI — TOMB OF THE SULTANA VALIDE — MOSQUE OF THE HOWLING DERVISHES — A CLERICAL SHOEMAKER — VISIT TO A TURKISH CEMETERY — BIRD's-EYE VIEW OF STAMBOUL AND ITS ENVIRONS — SERAGLIO-POINT — THE SEVEN TOWERS. Pulled over to Scutari in a caique, for a day's ramble. The Chrysopolis, the " golden city" of the ancients, forms the Asian side of the bay, and, though reckoned, generally, as a part of Constantinople, is in itself a large and populous capital. It is built on a hill, very bold upon the side washed by the sea of Marmora, but leaning toward the seraglio, on the op- posite shore, with the grace of a lady (Asia) bowing to her partner (Europe). You will find the simile very beautifully elaborated in the first chapter of " The Armenians." We strolled through the bazar awhile, meeting, oc- casionally, a caravan of tired and dusty merchants, coming in from Asia, some with Syrian horses, and some with uusky, Nubian slaves, following barefoot, in their blankets ; and, emerging from the crowded street upon a square, we stopped a moment to look at the cemetery and gilded fountains of a noble mosque. Close to the street, defended by a railing of gilt iron, and planted about closely with cypresses, stands a small temple of airy architecture, supported on four slender columns, and enclosed by a net of gilt wire, forming a spacious aviary. Within sleeps the Sultana Valide. Her costly monument, elaborately inscribed in red and gold, occupies the area of this poetical sepulchre ; small, sweet-scented shrubs half bury it in their rich flowers, and birds of the gayest plumage flutter and sing above her in their beautiful prison. If the soul of the departed sultana is still susceptible of sentiment, she must look down with some complacen- cy upon the disposition of her " mortal coil." I have not seen so fanciful a grave in my travels. We ascended the hill to the mosque of the Howling Dervishes. It stands in the edge of the great cemetery of Scutari, the favorite burial-place of the Turks. The self-torturing worship of this singular class of devotees takes place only on a certain day of the week, and we found the gates closed. A small cafe stood opposite, sheltered by large plane-trees, and on a bench at the door, sat a dervish, employed in the un- clerical vocation of mending slippers. Calling for a cup of the fragrant Turkish coffee, we seated our- selves on ihe matted bench beside him, and, entering into conversation, my friend and he were soon upon the most courteous terms. He laid down his last, and accepted a proffered narghile, and, between the heavily- drawn puffs of the bubbling vase, gave us some infor- mation respecting his order, of which the peculiarity that most struck me was a law compelling them to follow some secular profession. In this point, at least, they are more apostolic than the clergy of Christen- dom. Whatever may be the dervish's excellence as a " mender of souls," thought I, as I took up the last, and looked at the stitching of the bright new patch, (may I get well out of this sentence without a pun !) I doubt whether there is a divine within the Christian pale who could turn out so pretty a piece of work in any corresponding calling. Our coffee drunk and our chibouques smoked to ashes, we took leave of our papoosh-mending friend, who laid his hand on his breast, and said, with the expressive phraseology of the east, "You shall be welcome again." We entered the gloomy shadow of the vast ceme- tery, and found its cool and damp air a grateful ex- change for the sunshine. The author of Anastasius gives a very graphic description of this place, throwing in some horrors, however, for which he is indebted to his admirable imagination. I never was in a more agreeable place for a summer-morning's lounge, and, as I sat down on a turbaned headstone, near the tomb of Mohammed the second's horse, and indulged in a train of reflections arising from the superior distinc- tion of the brute's ashes over those of his master, I could remember no place, except Plato's Academy at Athens, where I had mused so absolutely at my ease. We strolled on. A slender and elegantly-carved slab, capped with a small turban, fretted and gilt, ar- rested my attention. " It is the tomb," said my com- panion, " of one of the ichoglans or sultan's pages. The peculiar turban is distinctive of his rank, and the inscription says, he died at eighteen, after having seen enough of the world ! Similar sentiments are to be found on almost every stone." Close by stood the ambitious cenotaph of a former pacha of Widin, with a swollen turban, crossed with folds of gold, and a foot- stone painted and carved, only less gorgeously than the other; and under his name and titles was written, " I enjoyed not the icorld." Farther on, we stopped at the black-banded turban of a cadi, and read again, un- derneath, " / took no pleasure in this evil world." You would think the Turks a philosophizing people, judg- ing by these posthumous declarations ; but one need not travel to learn that tombstones are sad liars. The cemetery of Scutari covers as much ground as a city. Its black cypress pall spreads away over hill and dale, and terminates, at last, on a long point pro- jecting into Marmora, as if it would pour into the sea the dead it could no longer cover. From the Arme- nian village, immediately above, it forms a dark, and not unpicturesque foreground to a brilliant picture of the gulf of Nicomedia and the clustering Princes' isl- ands. With the economy of room which the Turks practise in their burying-grounds, laying the dead, literally, side by side, and the immense extent of this forest of cypresses, it is probable that on no one spot on the earth are so many of the human race gathered together. We wandered about among the tombs till we began to desire to see the cheerful light of day, and crossing toward the height of Bulgurlu. commenced its ascent, with the design of descending jy the other side to the Bosphorus. and returning, by caique, to the city. 158 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. Walking leisurely on between fields of the brightest cultivation, we passed, half way up, a small and rural serai, the summer residence of Esmeh Sultana, the younger sister of the sultan, and soon after stood, well breathed, on the lofty summit of Bulgurlu. The con- stantly-occurring sairgahs, or small grass platforms, for spreading the carpet and " taking kaif" show how well the Turks appreciate the advantages of a position commanding, perhaps, views unparallelled in the world for their extraordinary beauty. But let us take breath and look around us. We stood some three miles back from the Bospho- rus, perhaps a thousand feet above its level. There lay Constantinople ! The " temptation of Satan" could not have been more sublime. It seemed as if all the " kingdoms of the earth" were swept confused- ly to the borders of the two continents. From Serag- lio Point, seven miles down the coast of Roumelia, the eye followed a continued wall ; and from the same point, twenty miles up the Bosphorus, on either shore, stretched one crowded and unbroken city ! The star- shaped bay in the midst, crowded with flying boats ; the Golden Horn sweeping out from behind the hills, and pouring through the city like a broad river, stud- ded with ships ; and, in the palace-lined and hill-shel- tered Bosphorus, the sultan's fleet at anchor, the lofty men-of-war flaunting their blood-red flags, and thrust- ing their tapering spars almost into the balconies of the fairy dwellings, and among the bright foliage of the terraced gardens above them. Could a scene be more strangely and beautifully mingled ? But sit down upon this silky grass, and let us listen to my polyglot friend, while he explains the details of the panorama. First, clear over the sea of Marmora, you observe a snow-white cloud resting on the edge of the horizon. That is Olympus. Within sight of his snowy sum- mit, and along toward the extremity of this long line of eastern hills, lie Bithynia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and the whole scene of the apostles' travels in Asia Minor ; and just at his feet, if you will condescend to be modern, lies Brusa, famous for its silks, and one of the most populous and thriving of the sultan's cities. Returning over Marmora by the Princes' Islands, at the western extremity of Constan- tinople, stands the Fortress of the Seven Towers, where fell the Emperor Constantine Palaeologus, where Othman the second was strangled, where refrac- tory ambassadors are left to come to their senses and the sultan's terms, and where, in short, that "zealous public butcher," the seraskier, cuts any Gordian knot that may tangle his political meshes ; and here was the famous " Golden Gate," attended no more by its " fifty porters with white wands," and its crowds of " ichoglans and mutes, turban-keepers, nail-cutters, and slipper-bearers," as in the days of the Selims. Between the Seven Towers and the Golden Horn you may count the " seven hills" of ancient Stam- boul, the towering arches of the aqueduct of Valens, crossing from one to the other, and the swelling dome and gold-tipped minarets of a hundred imperial mosques crowning and surrounding their summits. What an orient look do those gallery-bound and sky- piercing shafts give to the varied picture ! There is but one " Seraglio Point" in the world. Look at that tapering cape, shaped like a lady's foot, projecting from Stamboul toward the shore of Asia, and dividing the bay from the sea of Marmora. It is cut off from the rest of the city, you observe, by a high wall, flanked with towers, and the circumference of the whole seraglio may be three miles. But what a gem of beauty it is ! In what varied foliage its un- approachable palaces are buried, and how exquisitely gleam from the midst of the bright leaves its gilded cupolas, its gay balconies, its airy belvideres, and its glittering domes ! And mark the height of those dark and arrowy cypresses, shooting from every corner of its imperial gardens, and throwing their deep shad- ows on every bright cluster of foliage, and every gild- ed lattice of the sacred enclosure. They seem to re- mind one, that amid all its splendor and with all its secluded retirement, this gorgeous sanctuary of roy- alty has been stained, from its first appropriation by the monarchs of the east till now, with the blood of victims to the ambition of its changing masters. The cypresses are still young over the graves of an uncle and a brother, whose cold murder within those lovely precincts prepared the throne for the present sultan. The seraglio, no longer the residence of Mahmoud himself, is at present occupied by his children, two noble boys, of whom one, by the usual system, must fall a sacrifice to the security of the other. Keeping on toward the Black sea, we cross the Golden Horn to Pera, the European and diplomatic quarter of the city. The high hill on which it stands overlooks all Constantinople ; and along its ridge toward the beautiful cemetery on the brow, runs the principal street of the Franks, the promenade of the dragoman exquisites, and the Broadway of shops and belles. Here meet, on the narrow pave, the veiled Armenian, who would die with shame to show her chin to a stranger, and the wife of the European mer- chant, in a Paris hat and short petticoats, mutually each other's sincere horror. Here the street is some- what cleaner, the dogs somewhat less anti-Christian, and hat and trowsers somewhat less objects of con- tempt. It is a poor abortion of a place, withal, nei- ther Turkish nor Christian ; and nobody who could claim a shelter for his head elsewhere, would take the whole of its slate-colored and shingled palaces as a gift. Just beyond is the mercantile suburb of Galata, which your dainty diplomatist would not write on his card for an embassy, but for which, as being honestly what it calls itself, I entertain a certain respect, want- ing in my opinion of its mongrel neighbor. Heavy gates divide these different quarters of the city, and if you would pass after sunset, you must anoint the hinges with a piastre. LETTER CI. BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS — SUMMER-PALACE OF THE SULTAN ADVENTURE WITH AN OLD TURKISK WO- MAN — THE FEAST OF BAIRAM THE SULTAN HIS OWN BUTCHER HIS EVIL PROPENSITIES — VISIT TO THE MOSQUES— A FORMIDABLE DERVISH SANTA SOPHIA — MOSQUE OF SULTAN ACHMET — TRACES OF CHRISTIAN- ITY. From this elevated point, the singular effect of a desert commencing from the very streets of the city is still more observable. The compact edge of the me- tropolis is visible even upon the more rural Bospho- rus, not an enclosure or a straggling house venturing to protrude beyond the closely pressed limit. To re- peat the figure, it seems, with the prodigious mass of habitations on either shore, as if all the cities of both Europe and Asia were swept to their respective bor- ders, or as if the crowded masses upon the long ex- tending shores were the depositeof some mighty over- flow of the sea. From Pera commence the numerous villages, sep- arated only by name, which form a fringe of peculiarly light and fantastic architecture to the never-wearying Bosphorus. Within the small limit of your eye, up- on that silver link between the two seas, there are fifty valleys and thirty rivers, and an imperial palace on ev- ery loveliest spot from the Black Sea to Marmora The Italians say, " See Naples and die !" but for Ne pies I would read Stamboul and the Bosphorus. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 159 Descending unwillingly from this enchanting spot, we entered along glen, closed at the water's edge by the sultan's summer-palace, and present residence of Beylerbey. Half way down, we met a decrepit old woman, toiling up the path, and my friend, with a Wordsworthian passion for all things humble and sim- ple, gave her the Turkish good-morrow, and inquired her business at the village. She had been to Stavros, to sell ten paras' worth of herbs — about one cent of our currency. He put a small piece of silver into her hand, while, with the still strong habit of Turkish modesty, she employed the other in folding her tatter- ed yashmack so as to conceal her features from the gaze of strangers. She had not expected charity. " What is this for?" she asked, looking at it with some surprise. " To buy bread for your children, mother ?" " Effendi !" said the poor old creature, her voice trem- bling, and the tears streaming from her eyes, " My children are all dead ! There isno one now betwccnme and Allah /" It were worth a poet's while to live in the east. Like the fairy in the tale, they never open their lips but they " speak pearls." We took a caique at the mosque of Sultan Selim, at Beylerbey, and floated slowly past the imperial pal- ace. Five or six eunuchs, with their red caps and Ions; blue dresses, were talking at a high tenor in the courtyard of the harem, and we gazed long and ear- nestly at the fine lattices above, concealing so many of the picked beauties of the empire. A mandolin, very indifferently strummed in one of the projecting wings, betrayed the employment of some fair Fatima, and there was a single moment when we could see, by the relief of a corner window, the outline of a female fig- ure ; but the caique floated remorselessly on, and our busy imaginations had their own unreal shadows for their reward. As we approached the central facade the polished brazen gates flew open, and a band of thirty musicians came out and ranged themselves on the terrace beneath the palace-windows, announcing, in their first flourish, that Sultan Mahmoud had thrust his fingers into his pilaw, and his subjects were at lib- erty to dine. Not finding their music much to our taste, we ordered the caikjees to assist the current a little, and shooting past Stavros, we put across the strait from the old palace of Shemsheh the vizier, and, in a few minutes, 1 was once more in my floating home, under the " star-spangled banner." Constantinople was in a blaze last night, with the illumination for the approach of the Turkish feast of Bairam. The minarets were extremely beautiful, their encircling galleries hung with colored lamps, and il- luminated festoons suspended from one to the other. The ships of the fleet were decked also with thousands of lamps, and the effect was exceedingly fine, with the reflection in the Bosphorus, and the waving of the suspended lights in the wind. The sultan celebrates the festa by taking a virgin to his bed, and sacrificing twenty sheep with his own hand. I am told by an in- telligent physician here, that this playing the butcher is an every-day business with the " Brother of the Sun," every safe return from a ride, or an excursion in his sullaneliie caique, requiring him to cut the throat of his next day's mutton. It may account partly for the excessive cruelty of character attributed to him. Among other bad traits, Mahmoud is said to be very avaricious. It is related of his youth, that he was permitted occasionally, with his brother (who was murdered to make room for him on the throne), to walk out in public on certain days with their governor; and that, upon these occasions, each was intrusted with a purse to be expended in charity. The elder brother soon distributed his piastres, and borrowed of his attendants to continue his charities ; while Mah- moud quietly put the purse in his pocket, and added it to his private hoard on his return. It is said, too, that he has a particular passion for upholstery, and in his frequent change from one serai to another, allows no nail to be driven without his supervision. Add to this a spirit of perverse contradiction, so truculenl that none but the most abject flatterers can preserve his favor, and you have a pretty handful of offsets against a character certainly not without some royal qualities. With one of the Reis Eftendi's and one of the se raskier's officers, followed by four kcrvasses in the Turkish military dress, and every man a pair of slip- pers in his pocket, we accompanied the commodore, to-day, on a visit to the principal mosques. Landing first at Tophana, on the Pera side, we en- tered the court of the new mosque built by the pres- ent sultan, whose elegant exterior of white marble and two freshly gilded minarets we had admired daily, ly- ing at anchor without sound of the muezzin. The morning prayers were just over, and the retiring Turks looked, with lowering brows, at us, as we pulled oft our boots on the sacred threshold. We entered upon what, but for the high pulpit, I should have taken for rather a superb ball-room. An unencumbered floor carpeted gayly,a small arabesque gallery over the door quite like an orchestra, chande- liers and lamps in great profusion, and walls painted of the brightest and most varied colors, formed an inte- rior rather wanting in the "dim religious light" of a place of worship. We were shuffling around in our slippers from one side to the other, examining the marble Mihrab and the narrow and towering pulpit, when a ragged and decrepit dervish, with hispapoosh- es in his hand, and his toes and heels protruding from a very dirty pair of stockings, rose from his prayers and began walking backward and forward, eying us ferociously and muttering himself into quite a pas- sion. His charity for infidels was evidently at a low ebb. Every step we took upon the holy floor seemed to add to his fury. The kcrvasses observed him, but his sugar-loaf cap carried some respect with it, and they evidently did not like to meddle with him. He followed us to the door, fixing his hollow gray eyes with a deadly glare upon each one as he went out, and the Turkish officers seemed rather glad to hurry us out of his way. He left us in the vestibule, and we mount- ed a handsome marble staircase to a suite of apart- ments above, communicating with the sultan's private gallery. The carpets here were richer, and the divans with which the half dozen saloons were surrounded, were covered with the most costly stuffs of the east. The gallery was divided from the area of the mosque by a fine brazen grating curiously wrought, and its centre occupied by a rich ottoman, whereon the im- perial legs are crossed in the intervals of his prostra- tions. It was about the size and had the air altogeth- er of a private box at the opera. We crossed the Golden Horn, and passing the eu- nuch's guard, entered the gardens of the seraglio on our way to Santa Sophia. An inner wall still separa- ted us from the gilded kiosks, at whose latticed win- dows peering above the trees, we might have clearly perused the features of any peeping inmate ; but the little cross bars revealed nothing but their own provo- king eye of the size of a roseleaf in the centre, and we reached the upper gate without even a glimpse of a waved handerchief to stir our chivalry to the res- cue. A confused mass of buttresses without form or or- der, is all that you are shown for the exterior of that » wonder of the world," the mosque of mosques, the renowned Santa Sophia. We descended a dark av- enue, and leaving our boots in a vestibule that the horse of Mohammed the second, if he was lodged as ambitiously living as dead, would have disdained for his stable, we entered the vaulted area. A long breath 160 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. nnd an admission of its almost attributable supernatural grandeur, followed our too hasty disappointment. It is indeed a " vast and wondrous dome !" Its dimensions are less than those of St. Peter's, at Rome, but its effect, owing to its unity and simplicity of design, is, I think superior. The numerous small galleries let into its sides add richness to it without impairing its apparent magnitude, and its vast floor, upon which a single in- dividual is almost lost, the sombre colors of its walls untouched probably for centuries, and the dim sepul- chral light that struggles through the deep-niched and retiring windows, form altogether an interior from which the imagination returns, like the dove to the ark, fluttering and bewildered. Our large party separated over its wilderness of a floor, and each might have had his hour of solitude, had the once Christian spirit of the spot (or the pres- ent pagan demon) affected him religiously. I found, myself, a singular pleasure in wandering about upon the elastic mats (laid four or five thick all over the floor), examining here a tattered banner hung against the wall, and there a rich cashmere which had covered the tomb of the prophet ; on one side a slab of trans- parent alabaster from the temple of Solomon (a strange relic for a Mohammedan mosque !) and on the other, a dark Mihrab surrounded by candles of incred- ible proportions, looking like the marble columns of some friezeless portico. The four " six-winged cher- ubim" on the roof of the dome, sole remaining trace as they are of the religion to which the building was first dedicated, had better been left to the imagination. They are monstrous in Mosaic. It is said that the whole interior of the mosque is cased beneath its dusky plaster with the same costly Mosaic which cov- ers the ceiling. To make a Mohammedan mosque of a Christian church, however, it was necessary to erase Christian emblems from the walls ; besides which the Turks have a superstitious horror of all imitative arts, considering the painting of the human features par- ticularly, as a mockery of the handiwork of Allah. We went hence to the more modern mosque of Sul- tan Achmet, which is an imitation of Santa Sophia within, but its own beautiful prototype in exterior. Its spacious and solemn court, its six heaven-piercing minarets, its fountains, and the mausoleums of the sultans, with their gilded cupolas and sarcophagi cov- ered with cashmeres (the murdering sultan and his murdered brothers lying in equal splendor side-by- side!), are of a style of richness peculiarly oriental and imposing. We visited in succession Sultan Bajazet, Sulymanye, and Sultana Valide, all of the same ara- besque exterior and very similar within. The descrip- tion of one leaves little to be said of the other, and, with the exception of Santa Sophia, of which I should like to make a lounge when I am in love with my own company, the mosques of Constantinople are a kind of " lion" well killed in a single visit. LETTER CII. UNERRING DETECTION OF FOREIGNERS — A CARGO OF ODALISQUES — THE FANAR, OR QUARTER OF THE GREEKS — STREET OF THE BOOKSELLERS — ASPECT OF ANTIQUITY — PURCHASES — CHARITY FOR DOGS AND PIGEONS — PUNISHMENT OF CANICIDE — A BRIDAL PRO- CESSION — TURKISH FEMALE PHYSIOGNOMY. Pulling up the Golden Horn to-day in a caique without any definite errand (a sort of excursion par- ticularly after my own heart), I was amused at the caikjee's asking my companion, who shaves clean like a Christian, and has his clothes from Regent street, and looks for aught I can see, as much like a foreigner in Constantinople as myself, " in what vessel I had ar rived." We asked him if he had ever seen either of us before. "No!" How then did he know that my friend, who had not hitherto spoken a word of Turk- ish, was not as lately arrived as myself? What is it that so infallibly, in every part of the world, distin guishes the stranger ? We passed under the stern of an outlandish-looking vessel just dropping her anchor. Her deck was crowd- ed with men and women in singular costumes, and near the helm, apparently under the protection of a dark-visaged fellow in a voluminous turban, stood three young, and, as well as we could see, uncommonly pretty girls. The captain answered to our hail that he was from Trebizond, and his passengers were slaves . for the bazar. How redolent of the east ! Were one but a Turk, now, to forestall the market and barter for a pair of those dark eyes while they are still full of surprise and innocence ! We landed at the Fanar. Bow-windows crowded with fair faces, in enormous pink turbans, naked shoulders (which I am already so orientalized as to think very indecent), puffed curls and pinched waists, reminded us at every step that we were in a Christian quarter of Constantinople. From this paltry and mis- erable suburb, spring the modern princes of Greece, the Mavrocordatos, and Ghikas, the Hospodars of Wallachia and Moldavia, the subtle, insinuating, in- triguing, but talented and ever-successful Fanariotes. One hears so much of them in Europe, and so much is made of a stray scion from the very far-traced root of Paloeologus or some equally boasted blood of the Fanar (I met a Fanariote princess G — at the baths of Lucca last year, whom I except from every dispara- ging remark), that he is a little disappointed with the dirty alleys and the stuffed windows, shown him as the hereditary homes of these very sounding names. There are a hundred families at least in the Fanar, that trace their origin back to no less than an imperial stock, and there is not a house in the whole quarter that would pass in our country for a respectable barn. In personal appearance they are certainly very inferior to any other race of their ownnation. The Albanians, and the Greeks I saw at Napoli and in the Morea, were (except the North American Indians) the finest people, physically, I have ever been among; while it would be difficult to find a more diminutive and degenerate- looking body of men and women, than swarm in this nest of Grecian princes. We re-entered our little bark, and gliding along leisurely through the crowd of piades, kachambas, and caiques, landed at Stamboul, and walked on toward the bazar. Always discovering new passages in that labyrinth of shops, we found ourselves after an hour's' rambling, in a long street of booksellers. This is rath- er the oldest and narrowest part of the bazar, and the light of heaven meets with the additional interruption of two rows of pillars with arched friezes standing in the middle of the street. On entering the literary twi- light of the passage in the rear of these columns, the classic nostril detects instantly the genuine odor of manuscript, black-letter, and ancient binding ; and the trained eye, accustomed to the dim niches of libraries, wanders over the well-piled shelves with their quaint rows of volumes in vellum, and appreciates at once their varied riches. Here is nothing of the complex- ion of a shelf at the Harpers', or the Hendees', or the Careys' — no fresh and uncut novel, no new-born poem, no political pamphlet or gay souvenir ! And the price- less treasures of learning are not here doled out by a talkative publisher or dapper clerk, skilled only in the lettered backs of the volumes he barters. But in som- bre and uneven rows, or laid in heaps, whose order is not in their similarity of binding, but in the correspon- dence of their contents, lie venerable and much-thumb- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 161 ed tomes of Arabic or Persian ; while the venerable bibliopole, seated motionless on his hams, with his gray beard reaching to his crossed slippers, peruses an illuminated volume of Hafiz, lifting his eyes from the page only to revolve some sweet image in his mind, and murmur a low " pekke !" of approbation. We had stepped back into the last century. Here was the calamus still in use. The small, brown reed, not yet superseded by the more useful but less classic quill, stood in every clotted inkstand, and nothing less than the purchase of a whole scrivener's furniture, from a bearded bookworm, whose benevolent face took my fancy, would suffice my enthusiasm. Not to waste all our oriental experience at a single stall, we strolled farther on to buy an illuminated Hafiz. We stopped simultaneously before an old Armenian who seemed, by his rusty calpack and shabby robe, to be something poorer than even his plainly-clad neighbors ; for in I Turkey, as elsewhere, he who lives in a world of his j own, has but a slender portion in that of the vulgar. A choice-looking volume lay open upon one of the old man's knees, while from a wooden bowl he was eating hastily a pottage of rice. His meal was evi- dently an interruption. He had not even laid aside his book. There was something in his handling of the volume, as he took down a pocket-sized Hafiz, that showed an ! affection for the author. He turned it over with a | slight dilation of countenance, and opening it with a careful thumb, read a line in mellifluous Persian. I ! took it from him open at the place, and marked the passage with my nail, to look for it in the transla- tion. With my cheaply-bought treasures in my pockets, we turned up the street of the diamond-merchants, { and making a single purchase more in the bazar, of a t tcsbih or Turkish rosary of spice-wood, emerged to the open air in the neighborhood of the mosque of Sultan Bajazet. Whether slipping the pagan beads through my fingers affected me "devoutly, or whether it was the mellow humor of the moment, I felt a disposition to forgive my enemies, and indulge in an act of Moham- medan piety — feeding the unowned dogs of the street. We stepped into a baker's shop, and laid out a piastre in bread, and were immediately observed and surround- ed, before we could break a loaf, by twenty or thirty as ill-looking curs, as ever howled to the moon. Hav- ing distributed about a dozen loaves, and finding that our largess had by no means satisfied the appetites of the expecting rabble, we found ourselves embarrassed to escape. Nothing but the baker's threshold prevent- ed them from jumping upon us, in their eagerness, and the array of so many formidable mouths, ferocious with hunger, was rather staggering. The baker drew off the hungry pack at last, by walking round the corner with a loaf in his hand, while we made a speedy exit, patted on the back in passing by several of the j assembled spectators. It is surprising that the Turks can tolerate this filthy breed of curs, in such extraordinary numbers. They have a whimsical punishment for killing one of them. The dead dog is hung by his heels, so'that his nose | just touches the ground, and the canicide is compelled | to heap wheat about him, till he is entirely covered ; j the wheat is then given to the poor, and the dog buried at the expense of the culprit. There are, probably, five dogs to every man in Constantinople, and besides ! their incessant barking, they often endanger the lives of children and strangers. MacFarlane, I think, tells the story of a drunken sea-captain, who was entirely devoured by the dogs at Tophana ; nothing being found of him in the morning but his "indigestible pis- tail!" ' a We entered the court of Sultan Bajazet, and found the majestic plane-trees that shadow its arabesque 11 fountains, bending beneath the weight of hundreds of pensionary pigeons. Here, as at several of the mosques, an old man sits by the gate, whose business it is to expend the alms given him in distributing grain to these sacred birds. Not to be outdone in piety, my friend gave the blind old Turk a piastre ; and, as he arose and unlocked the box beneath him, the pigeons descended about us in such a cloud, as literally to darken the air. Handful after handful was then thrown among them, and the beautiful creatures ran over our feet and fluttered round us with a fear- lessness that sufficiently proved the safety in which they haunted the sacred precincts. In a few minutes they soared altogether again to the trees, and their mussulman-feeder resumed his seat upon the box to wait for another charity. A crowd of women at the harem gate, in the rear of the seraskier's palace, attracted our attention. Upon inquiry, we found that he had married a daugh- ter to one of the sultan's military officers, and the bri- dal party was expected presently to come out in aru- bahs, and make the tour of the Hippodrome, on the way to the house of the bridegroom. We wiled away an hour returning the gaze of curiosity bent upon us from the idle and bright eyes of a hundred women, and the first of the gilded vehicles made its appearance ; though in the same style of ornament with the one I have already described, it differed in being drawn by horses, and having a frame top, with small round mir- rors set in the corners. Within sat four very young women, one of whom was the bride ; but which, we found no one who could tell us. It is no description of a face in the east to say, that the eyes were dark, and the nose regular — all that the jealous yashmack permitted us to ascertain of the beauty of the bride. Their eyes are all dark, and their noses are all regular; the Turkish nose differing from the Grecian, as that of the Antinous from the Apollo, only in its more vo- luptuous fullness, and a nostril less dilated. Four darker pairs of eyes, however, and four brows of whiter orb, never pined in a harem, or were reflected in those golden-rimmed mirrors; and as the twelve succeeding arubas rattled by, and in each suit four young women, with the same eternal dark eyes, "full of sleep," and the same curved and pearly forehead, and noses like the Antinous, I thought of toujours pcrdrix, and felt that if there had been but one with a slight toss in that prominent member, it would not have been dis- pleasing. In a conversation with a Greek lady the other day, she remarked that the veils of the Turkish ladies con- ceal no charms. Their mouths, she says, are gener- ally coarse, and their teeth, from the immoderate use of sweetmeats, or neglect, or some other cause, almost universally defective. How far the interest excited by these hidden features may have jaundiced the eyes of my fair informer, I can not say ; but as a general fact, uneducated women, whatever other beauties they may possess, have rarely expressive or agreeable mouths. Nature forms and colors the nose, the eyes, the fore- head, and the complexion ; but the character, from the cradle up, moulds gradually to its own inward changes, the plastic and passion-breathing lines of the lips. Allowing this, it would be rather surprising if there was a mouth in all Turkey that had more than a pretty silliness at the most — the art of dying their finger-nails, and painting their eyebrows, being the highest branches of female education. How they came by these " eyes that teach us what the sun is made of," the vales of Georgia and Circassia best can tell. * And so having rambled away a sunny autumn day, and earned some little appetite, if not experience, we will get out of Stamboul, before the sunset guard makes us prisoners, and climb up to our dinner in Pera. 162 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER CHI. THE PERFECTION OF BATHING — PIPES — DOWNY CUSH- IONS — COFFEE RUBBING DOWN "CIRCULAR JUS- TICE," AS DISPLAYED IN THE RETRIBUTION OF BOILED LOBSTERS — A DELUGE OF SUDS THE SHAM- PqO — LUXURIOUS HELPS TO IMAGINATION — A PEDES- TRIAN EXCURSION STORY OF AN AMERICAN TAR, BURDENED WITH SMALL CHANGE — BEAUTY OF THE TURKISH CHILDREN — A CIVILIZED MONSTER GLIMPSE AT SULTAN MAHMOUD IN AN ILL HUMOR. "Time is (not) money" in the east. We were three hours to-day at the principal bath of Constan- tinople, going through the ordinary process of the establishment, and were out-stayed, at last, by two Turkish officers who had entered with us. During this time, we had each the assiduous service of an attendant, and coffee, lemonade and pipes ad libitum, for the consideration of half a Spanishdollar. Although I have once described a Turkish bath, the metropolitan " pomp and circumstance" so far exceed the provincial in this luxury, that I think I shall be excused for dwelling a moment upon it again. The dressing-room opens at once from the street. We descended half a dozen steps to a stone floor, in the centre of which stood a large marble fountain. Its basin was kept full by several jets d'cau, which threw their silver curves into the air, and the edge was set round with narghiles (or Persian water-pipes with glass vases), ready for the smokers of the mild tobac- co of Shiraz. The ceiling of this large hall was lofty, and the sides were encircled by three galleries, one above the other, with open balustrades, within which the bathers undressed. In a corner sat several attend- ants, with only a napkin around their waists, smoking till their services should be required ; and one who had just come from the inner bath, streaming with perspiration, covered himself with cloths, and lay crouched upon a carpet till he could bear, with safety, the temperature of the outer air. A half-naked Turk, without his turban, looks more a Mephistopheles than a Ganymede, and I could scarce forbear shrinking as this shaven-headed troop of servitors seized upon us, and, without a word, pull- ed off our boots, thrust our feet into slippers, and led us up into the gallery to undress. An ottoman, piled with cushions, and overhung, on the wall, by a small mirror, was allotted to each, and with the assistance of my familiar (who was quite too familiar!) I found myself stripped nolens volens, and a snowy napkin, with a gold-embroidered edge, twisted into a becom- ing turban around my head. We were led immediately into the first bath, a small room, in which the heat, for the first breath or two, seemed rather oppressive. Carpets were spread for us on the warm marble floor, and crossing our legs, with more ease than when cased in our un-oriental pantaloons, we were served with pipes and coffee of a delicious flavor. After a half hour, the atmosphere, so warm when we entered, began to feel chilly, and we were taken by the arm, and led by our speechless mussulman, through an intermediate room, into the grand bath. The heat here seemed to me, for a moment, almost intolerable. The floor was hot, and the air so moist with the suffocating vapor, as to rest like mist upon the skin. It was a spacious and vaulted room, with, perhaps, fifty small square windows in the dome, and four arched recesses in the sides, supplied with marble seats, and small reservoirs of hot and cold water. In the centre was a broad platform, on which the bather was rubbed and shampooed, occupied, just then, by two or three dark-skinned Turks, lying on their backs, with their eyes shut, dreaming, if one might judge by their countenances, of Paradise. After being left to walk about for half an hour, by this time bathed in perspiration, our respective demons seized upon us again, and led us to the marble seats in the recesses. Putting a rough mitten on the right hand, my Turk then commenced upon my breast, scouring me, without water or mercy, from head to foot, and turning me over on my face or my back, without the least " by-your-leave" expression in his countenance, and with an adroitness which, in spite of the novelty of my situation, I could not but admire. I hardly knew whether the sensation was pleasurable or painful. I was less in doubt presently, when he seated me upright, and, with the brazen cup of the fountain, dashed upon my peeled shoulders a quantity of half boiling water. If what Barnacle, in the play, calls " a circular justice," existed in the world, I should have thought it a judgment for eating of lobsters. My familiar was somewhat startled at the suddenness with which I sprang upon my feet, and, turning some cold water into the reservoir, laid his hand on his breast, and looked an apology. The scalding was only momentary, and the qualified contents of the succeeding cups highly grateful. We were left again, for a while, to our reflections, and then reappeared our attendants, with large bowls of the suds of scented soap, and small bunches of soft Angora wool. With this we were tenderly washed, and those of my companions who wished it were shav- ed. The last operation they described as peculiarly agreeable, both from the softened state of the skin and dexterity of the operators. Rinsed once more with warm water, our snowy tur- bans were twisted around our heads again, cloths were tied about our waists, and we returned to the second room. The transition from the excessive heat within, made the air, that we had found oppressive when we entered, seem disagreeably chilly. We wrapped our- selves in our long cloths, and, resuming our carpets, took coffee and pipes as before. In a kw minutes we began to feel a delightful glow in our veins, and then our cloths became unpleasantly warm, and, by the time we were taken back to the dressing-room, its cold air was a relief. They led us to the ottomans, and, piling the cushions so as to form a curve, laid us upon them, covered with clean white cloths, and bringing us sherbets, lemonade, and pipes, dropped upon their knees, and commenced pressing our limbs all over gently with their hands. My sensations during the half hour that we lay here were indescribably agreea- ble. I felt an absolute repose of body, a calm, half- sleepy languor in my whole frame, and a tranquillity of mind, which, from the busy character of the scenes in which ] was daily conversant, were equally unusual and pleasurable. Scarce stirring a muscle or a nerve, I lay the whole hour, gazing on the lofty ceiling, and listening to the murmur of the fountain, while my si- lent familiar pressed my limbs with a touch as gentle as a child's, and it seemed to me as if pleasure was breathing from every pore of my cleansed and softened skin. I could willingly have passed the remainder of the day upon the luxurious couch. I wonder less than ever at the flowery and poetical character of the oriental literature, where the mind is subjected to in- fluences so refining and exhilarating. One could hardly fail to grow a poet, I should think, even with this habit of eastern luxury alone. If I am to con- ceive a romance, or to indite an epithalamium, send me to the bath on a day of idleness, and, covering me up with their snowy and lavendered napkins, leave me till sunset ! With a dinner in prospect at a friend's house, six or eight miles up the Bosphorus, we started in the morning on foot, with the intention of seeing Sultan PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 163 Mahmoud go to mosque, by the way. We stop- ped a moment to look into the marble pavilion, con- taining the clocks of the mosque of Tophana, and drank at the opposite pavilion, from the brass cup chained in the window, and supplied constantly from the fountain within, and then kept on through the long street to the first village of Dolma-baktchi, or the Garden of Gourds. Determined, with the day before us, to yield to eve- ry temptation on the road, we entered a small cafe, overlooking a segment of the Bosphorus, and while the acorn-sized cups were simmering on the manghal, my friend entered into conversation in Arabic, with a tawny old Egyptian, who sat smoking in the corner. He was a fine specimen of the " responsible-looking'' oriental, and had lately arrived from Alexandria on business. Pleasant land of the east ! where, to be the pink of courtesy, you must pass your snuff-box, or your tobacco-pouch to the stranger, and ask him those questions of his " whereabouts," so impertinent in more civilized Europe ! After a brief dialogue, which was Hebrew to me, our Alexandrian, knocking the ashes from his pipe, commenced a narration with a great deal of expressive gesture, at which my friend seemed very provokingly amused. I sipped my coffee, and wondered what could have lead one of these silent gray-beards into an amusing story, till a pause gave me an opportunity to ask a translation. Hearing that we were Ameri- cans, the Egyptian had begun by asking whether there was a superstition in our country against receiving back money in change. He explained his question by saying that he was in a cafe, at Tophana, when a boat's crew, from the American frigate, waiting for some one at the landing, entered, and asked for coffee. They drank it very quietly, and one of them gave the cafejee a dollar, receiving in change a handful of the shabby and adulterated money of Constantinople. Jack was rather surprised at getting a dozen cups of coffee, and so much coin for his dollar, and requested the boy, by signs, to treat the company at his ex- pense. This was done, the Turks all acknowledging the courtesy by laying their hands upon their fore- heads and breasts, and still Jack's money lay heavy in his hands. He called for pipes, and they smoked awhile; but finding still that his riches were not per- ceptibly diminished, he hitched up his trousers, and with a dexterous flirt, threw his piastres and pares all round upon the company, and rolled out of the cafe. From the gravity of the other sailors at this remarka- ble flourish, the old Egyptian and his fellow cross-legs had imagined it to be a national custom ! Idling along through the next village, we turned to admire a Turkish child, led by an Abyssinian slave. There is no country in the world where the children are so beautiful, and this was a cherub of a boy, like one of Domenichino's angels. As we stopped to look at him, the little fellow commenced crying most lustily. " Hush ! my rose !" said the Abyssinian, " these are good Franks ! these are not the Franks that eat chil- dren! hush!" It certainly takes the nonsense out of one to travel. I should never have thought it possible, if I had not been in Turkey, that I could be made a bugbear to scare a child! We passed the tomb of Frederick Barbarossa, get- ting between the walls of the palaces on the water's edge, continual and incomparable views of tbe Bos- phorus, and arrived at Beshiktash (or the marble cra- dle), just as the troops were drawn up to the door of the mosque. We took our stand under a plane-tree, in the midst of a crowd of women, and presently the noisy band struck up the sultan's march, and the led horses appeared in sight. They came on with their grooms and their rich housings, a dozen matchless Arabians, scarce touching the ground with their pran- cings ! Oh how beautiful they were ! Their delicate limbs, their small, veined heads and fiery nostrils, their glowing, intelligent eyes, their quick, light, bounding action, their round bodies, trembling with restrained and impatient energy, their curved, haughty necks, and dark manes flowing wildly in the wind! El Bo- rak, the mare of the prophet, with the wings of a bird, was not lighter or more beautiful. The sultan followed, preceded by his principal offi- cers, with a stirrup-holder running at each side, and mounted on a tame-looking Hungarian horse. He wore the red Fez cap, and a cream-colored cloak, which covered his horse to the tail. His face was lowering, his firm, powerful jaw, set in an expression of fixed displeasure, and his far-famed eye had a fierceness within its dark socket, from which 1 invol- untarily shrank. The women, as he came along, set up a kind of howl, according to their custom, but he looked neither to the right nor left, and seemed totally unconscious of any one's existence but his own. He was quite another-looking man from the Mahmoud I had seen smiling in his handja-bash on the Bosphorus. As he dismounted and entered the mosque, we went on our way, moralizing sagely on the novel subject of human happiness — our text, the cloud on the brow of a sultan, and the quiet sunshine in the bosoms of two poor pedestrians by the way-side. LETTER CIV. PUNISHMENT OF CONJUGAL INFIDELITY — DROWNING IN THE BOSPHORUS FREQUENCY OF ITS OCCURRENCE AC- COUNTED FOR — A BAND OF WILD R0UMEL10TES — THEIR PICTURESQUE APPEARANCE ALI PACHA, OF YANINA — A TURKISH FUNERAL — FAT WIDOW OF SUL- TAN SELIM— A VISIT TO THE SULTAN'S SUMMER PAL- ACE — A TRAVELLING MOSLEM — UNEXPECTED TOKEN OF HOME. A Turkish woman was sacked and thrown into the Bosphorus this morning. I was idling away the day in the bazar and did not see her. The ward-room steward of the "United States," a very intelligent man, who was at the pier when she was brought down to the caique, describes her as a young woman of twenty-two or three years, strikingly beautiful ; and with the exception of a short quick sob in her throat, as if she had wearied herself out with weeping, she was quite calm and submitted composedly to her fate. She was led down by two soldiers, in her usual dress, her yashmack only torn from her face, and rowed off to the mouth of the bay, where the sack was drawn over her without resistance. The plash of her body in the sea was distinctly seen by the crowd who had followed her to the water. It is horrible to reflect on these summary execu- tions, knowing as we do, that the poor victim is taken before the judge, upon the least jealous whim of her husband or master, condemned often upon bare suspi- cion, and hurried instantly from the tribunal to this violent and revolting death. Any suspicion of com- merce with a Christian particularly, is, with or without evidence, instant ruin. Not long ago, the inhabitants of Arnamt-Jceni, a pretty village on the Bosphorus. were shocked with the spectacle of a Turkish woman and a younc: Greek, hanging dead from the shutters of a window on the water's-side. He had been de- tected in leaving her house at daybreak, and in less than an hour the unfortunate lovers had met their fate. They are said to have died most heroically, em- bracing and declaring their attachment to the last. Such tragedies occur every week or two in Con- stantinople, and it is not wonderful, considering the 164 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. superiority of the educated and picturesque Greek to his brutal neighbor, or the daring and romance of Eu- ropeans in the pursuit of forbidden happiness. The liberty of going and coming, which the Turkish wo- men enjoy, wrapped only in veils, which assist by their secrecy, is temptingly favorable to intrigue, and the self-sacrificing nature of the sex, when the heart is concerned, shows itself here in proportion to the de- mand for it. An eminent physician, who attends the seraglio of the sultan's sister, consisting of a great number of women, tells me that their time is principally occupied in sentimental correspondence, by means of flowers, with the forbidden Greeks and Armenians. These platonic passions for persons whom they have only seen from their gilded lattices, are their only amuse- ment, and they are permitted by the sultana, who has herself the reputation of being partial to Franks, and old as she is, ingenious in contrivances to obtain their society. My intelligent informant thinks the Turkish women, in spite of their want of education, somewhat remarkable for their sentiment of character. With two English travellers, whom I had known in Italy, I pulled out of the bay in a caique, and ran down under the wall of the city, on the side of the sea of Marmora. For a mile or more we were be- neath the wall of the seraglio, whose small water- gates, whence so many victims have found " Their way to Marmora without a boat ;" <ire beset, to the imaginative eye of the traveller, with the dramatis personce of a thousand tragedies. One smiles to detect himself gazing on an old postern, with his teeth shut hard together, and his hair on end, in the calm of a pure, silent, sunshiny morning of September! We landed some seven miles below, at the Seven Towers, and dismissed our boat to walk across to the Golden Horn. Our road was outside of the triple walls of Stamboul, whose two hundred and fifty towers look as if they were toppling after an earthquake, and are overgrown superbly with ivy. Large trees, root«g[ in the crevices, and gradually bursting the thick walls, overshadow entirely their once proud turrets, and for the whole length of the five or six miles across, it is one splendid picture of decay. I have seen in no country such beautiful ruins. At the Adrianople gate, we found a large troop of horsemen, armed in the wild manner of the east, who had accompanied a Roumeliote chief from the mount- ains. They were not allowed to enter the city, and, with their horses picketed on the plain, were lying about in groups, waiting till their leader should con- clude his audience with the seraskier. They were as cut-throat looking a set as a painter would wish to see. The extreme richness of eastern arms, mounted showily in silver, and of shapes so cumbersome, yet picturesque, contrasted strangely with their ragged ca- potes, and torn legging, and their way-worn and weary countenances. Yet they were almost without excep- tion fine-featured, and of a resolute expression of face, and they had flung themselves, as savages will, into attitudes that art would find it difficult to im- prove. Directly opposite this gate stand five marble slabs, indicating the spots in which are buried the heads of Ali Pacha, of Albania, his three sons and grandson. The inscription states, that the rebel lost his head for having dared to aspire to independence. He was a brave old barbarian, however, and, as the worthy chief of the most warlike people of modern times, one stands over his grave with regret. It would have been a classic spot had Byron survived to visit it. No event in his tvavels made more impression on his mind than the pacha's detecting his rank by the beauty of his hands. His fine description of the wild court of Yanina, in Childe Harold, has already made the poet's return of immortality, but had he survived the revolu- tion in Greece, with his increased knowledge of the Albanian soldier and his habits, and his esteem for the old chieftain, a hero so much to his taste would have been his most natural theme. It remains to be seen whether the age or the language will produce another Byron to take up the broken thread. As we were poring over the Turkish inscription, four men, apparently quite intoxicated, came running and hallooing from the city gate, bearing upon their shoulders a dead man in his bier. Entering the cem- etery, they went stumbling on over the footstones, tos- sing the corpse about so violently, that the helpless limbs frequently fell beyond the limits of the rude barrow, while the grave-digger, the only sober person, save the dead man, in the company, followed at his best speed, with his pick-axe and shovel. These ex- traordinary bearers set down their burden not far from the gate, and, to my surprise, walked laughing off like men who had merely engaged in a moment's frolic by the way, while the sexton, left quite alone, composed a little the posture of the disordered body, and sat down to get breath for his task. My Constantinopolitan friend tells me that the Ko- ran blesses him who carries a dead body forty paces on its way to the grave. The poor are thus carried out to the cemeteries by voluntary bearers, who, after they have completed their prescribed paces, change with the first individual whose reckoning with heaven may be in arrears. The corpse we had seen so rudely borne on its last journey, was, or had been, a middle-aged Turk. He had neither shroud nor coffin, but " Lay like a gentleman taking a snoose," in his slippers and turban, the bunch of flowers on his bosom the only token that he was dressed for any par- ticular occasion. We had not time to stay and see his grave dug, and "his face laid toward the tomb of the prophet." We entered the Adrianople gate, and crossed the triangle, which old Stamboul nearly forms, by a line approaching its hypothenuse. Though in a city so thickly populated, it was one of the most lonely walks conceivable. We met, perhaps, one individual in a street ; and the perfect silence, and the cheerless look of the Turkish houses, with their jealously closed windows, gave it the air of a city devastated by the plague. The population of Constantinople is only seen in the bazars, or in the streets bordering on the Golden Horn. In the extensive quarter occupied by dwelling-houses only, the inhabitants, if at home, oc- cupy apartments opening on their secluded gardens, or are hidden from the gaze of the street by their fine dull-colored lattices. It strikes one with melancholy after the gay balconies and open doors of France and Italy ! We passed the Eskai serai, the palace in which the imperial widows wear their chaste weeds in solitude ; and, weary with our long walk, emerged from the si- lent streets at the bazar of wax-candles, and took caique for the Argentopolis of the ancients, the " Sil- ver city" of Galatia. The thundering of guns from the whole Ottoman fleet in the Bosphorus announced, some, days since, that the sultan had changed his summer for his winter serai, and the commodore received yesterday, a firman to visit the deserted palace of Beylerbey. We left the frigate at an early hour, our large party of officers increased by the captain of the Acteon, sloop-of-war, some gentlemen of the English ambas- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 165 sador'9 household, and several strangers who took ad- vantage of the commodore's courtesy to enjoy a privi- lege granted so very rarely. As we pulled up the strait, some one pointed out the residence, on the European shore, of the once fa- vorite wife, and now fat widow, of Sultan Selim. She is called by the Turks, the " boneless sultana," and is the model of shape by the oriental standard. The poet's lines, '< Who turned that little waist with so much care, And shut perfection in so small a ring ?" though a very neat compliment in some countries, would be downright rudeness in the East. Near this jelly in weeds lives a venerable Turk, who was once ambassador to England. He came back too much enlightened, and the mufti immediately procured his exile, for infidelity. He passes his day, we are told, in looking at a large map hung on the wall before him, and wondering at Tiis own travels. We were received at the shining brazen gate of Beylerbey, by Hamik Pacha (a strikingly elegant man, just returned from a mission to England), depu- ted by the sultan to do the honors. A side-door in- troduced us immediately to the grand hall upon the lower floor, which was separated only by four marble pillars, and a heavy curtain rolled up at will, from the gravel walk of the garden in the rear. We ascended thence by an open staircase of wood, prettily inlaid, to the second floor, which was one long suite of spa- cious rooms, built entirely in the French style, and thence to the third floor, the same thing over again. It was quite like looking at lodgings in Paris. There was no furniture, except an occasional ottoman turned with its face upon another, and a prodigious quantity of French musical clocks, three or four in every room, and all playing in our honor with an amusing confusion. One other article, by the way — a large, common, American rocking-chair! The poor thing stood in a great gilded room, all alone, looking pitia- bly home-sick. I seated myself in it, malgre a thick coat of dust upon the bottom, as I would visit a sick countryman in exile. The harem was locked, and the polite pacha regret- ted that he had no orders to open it. We descended to the gardens, which rise by terraces to a gim-crack temple and orangery, and having looked at the sultan's poultry, we took our leave. If his pink palace in Eu- rope is no finer than his yellow palace in Asia, there is many a merchant in America better lodged than the padishah of the Ottoman empire. We have not seen the old seraglio, however, and in its inaccessible re- cesses, probably, moulders that true oriental splendor which this upholsterer monarch abandons in his rage for the novel luxuries of Europe. LETTER CV. FAREWELL TO CONSTANTINOPLE— EUROPE AND THE EAST COMPARED — THE DEPARTURE — SMYRNA, THE GREAT MART FOR FIGS — AN EXCURSION INTO ASIA MINOR — TRAVELLING EQUIPMENTS — CHARACTER OF THE HAJJIS — ENCAMPMENT OF GIPSIES — A YOUTHFUL HEBE — NOTE — HORROR OF THE TURKS FOR THE "UNCLEAN ANIMAL" — AN ANECDOTE. I have spent the last day or two in farewell visits to my favorite haunts in Constantinople. I galloped up the Uosphorus, almost envying les ames damnces that skim so swiftly and perpetually from the Symplegades to Marmora, and from Marmora back to the Symple- gades. I took a caique to the Valley of Sweet Wa- ters, and rambled away an hour on its silken sward. 1 lounged a morning in the bazars, smoked a parting- pipe with my old Turk in the Bezestein, and exchang- ed a last salaam with the venerable Armenian book- seller, still poring over his illuminated Hafiz. And last night, with the sundown boat waiting at the pier, I loitered till twilight in the small and elevated ceme- tery between Galata and Pera, and, with feelings of even painful regret, gazed my last upon the matchless scene around me. In the words of the eloquent author of Anastasius, when taking the same farewell, " For the last time, my eye wandered over the dim- pled hills, glided along the winding waters, and dived into the deep and delicious dells, in which branch out its jagged shores. Reverting from these smiling out- lets of its sea-beat suburbs to its busy centre, I sur- veyed, in slow succession, every chaplet of swelling cupolas, every grove of slender minarets, and every avenue of glittering porticoes, whose pinnacles dart their golden shafts from between the dark cypress- trees into the azure sky. I dwelt on them as on things I never was to behold more ; and not until the evening had deepened the veil it cast over the varied scene from orange to purple, and from purple to the sable hue of night, did I tear myself away from the impres- sive spot. I then bade the city of Constantine fare- well for ever, descended the high-crested hill, stepped into the heaving boat, turned my back upon the shore, and sank my regrets in the sparkling wave, across which the moon had already flung a trembling bar of silvery light, pointing my way, as it were, to other unknown regions." There are few intellectual pleasures like that of finding our own thoughts and feelings well described by another ! I certainly would not live in the east; and when I sum up its inconveniences and the deprivations to which the traveller from Europe, with his refined wants, is subjected, I marvel at the heart-ache with which I turn my back upon it, and the deep die it has infused into my imagination. Its few peculiar luxu- ries do not compensate for the total absence of com- fort ; its lovely scenery can not reconcile you to wretched lodgings; its picturesque costumes and po- etical people, and golden sky, fine food for a summer's fancy as they are, can not make you forget the civili- zed pleasures you abandon for them — the fresh litera- ture, the arts and music, the refined society, the ele- gant pursuits, and the stirring intellectual collision of the cities of Europe. Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople ! If we could compel all our senses into one, and live by the pleasures of the eye, it were a paradise untran- scended. The Bosphorus — the superb, peculiar, in- comparable Bosphorus ! the dream-like, fairy-built se- raglio ! the sights within the city so richly strange, and the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely fair ! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunt- ing your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swift- ness and elegance of your darting caique upon the waters ! In what land is the priceless sight such a treasure ? Where is the fancy so delicately and di- vinely pampered ? Every heave at the capstan-bars drew upon my heart ; and when the unwilling anchor at last let go its hold, and the frigate swung free with the outward cur- rent, I felt as if, in that moment, I had parted my hold upon a land of faery. The dark cypresses and golden pinnacles of Seraglio Poinv, and the higher shafts of Sophia's sky-touching minarets were the last objects in my swiftly receding eye, and, in a short hour or two, the whole bright vision had sunk below the horizon. We crossed Marmora, and shot down the rapid Dardanelles in as many hours aa a passage up had oc- 166 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAV. cupied days, and, rounding the coast of Anatolia, en- tered between Mitylene and the Asian shore, and, on the third day, anchored in the bay of Smyrna. " Everybody knows Smyrna," says Mac Farlane, " it is such a place for figs /" It is a low-built town, at the head of the long gulf, which bears its name, and, with the exception of the high rock immediately over it, topped by the ruins of an old castle, said to imbody in its walls the ancient Christian church, it has no very striking features. Extensive gardens spread away on every side, and, without exciting much of your admiration for its beauty, there is a look of peace and rural comfort about the neighborhood that affects the mind pleasantly. Almost immediately on my arrival, I joined a party for a few days' tour in Asia Minor. We were five, and, with a baggage-horse, and a mounted suridjee, our caravan was rather respectable. Our appoint- ments were orientally simple. We had each a Turk- ish bed (alias, a small carpet), a nightcap, and a "copyhold" upon a pair of saddlebags, containing certain things forbidden by the Koran, and therefore not likely to be found by the way. Our attendant was a most ill-favored Turk, whose pilgrimage to Mecca (he was a hajji, and wore a green turban) had, at least, imparted no sanctity to his visage. If he was not a rogue, nature had mis-labelled him, and I shelter my want of charity under the Arabic proverb : " Distrust thy neighbor if he has made a hajji ; if he has made two, make haste to leave thy house." We wound our way slowly out of the narrow and ill-paved streets of Smyrna, and passing through the suburban gardens, yellow with lemons and oranges, crossed a small bridge over the Hermus. This is the favorite walk of the Smyrniotes, and if its classic river, whose "golden sands" (here, at least), are not golden, and its " Bath of Diana" near by, whose waters would scarce purify her "silver bow," are something less than their sounding names ; there is a cool, dark ceme- tery beyond, less famous, but more practicable for sen- timent, and many a shadowy vine and drooping tree in the gardens around, that might recompense lovers, perhaps, for the dirty labyrinth of the intervening suburb. We spurred away over the long plain of Hadjilar, leaving to the right and left the pretty villages, orna- mented by the summer residences of the wealthy mer- chants of Smyrna, and in two or three hours reached a small lone cafe, at the foot of its bounding range of mountains. We dismounted here to breathe our horses, and while coffee was preparing, I discovered, in a green hollow hard by, a small encampment of gipsies. With stones in our hands, as the cafejee told us the dogs were troublesome, we walked down into the little round-bottomed dell, a spot selected with " a lover's eye for nature," and were brought to bay bv a dozen noble shepherd-dogs, within a few yards of their outer tent. The noise brought out an old sunburnt woman, and two or three younger ones, with a troop of boys, who called in the dogs, and invited us kindly within their limits. The tents were placed in a half circle, with their doors inward, and were made with extreme neat- ness. There were eight or nine of them, very small and low, with round tops, the cloth stretched tightly over an inner frame, and bound curiously down on the outside with beautiful wicker-work. The curtains at the entrance were looped up to admit the grateful sun, and the compactly arranged interiors lay open to our prying curiosity. In the rounded corner farthest from the door, lay uniformly the same goat-skin beds, flat on the ground, and in the centre of most of them, stood a small loom, at which the occupant plied her task like an automaton, not betraying by any sign a consciousness of our presence. They sat cross-leg- ged like the Turks, and had all a look of habitua. sternness, which, with their thin, strongly-marked gipsy features, and wild eyes, gave them more the ap- pearance of men. It was the first time I had ever re- marked such a character upon a class of female faces, and I should have thought I had mistaken their sex, if their half-naked figures had not put it beyond a doubt. The men were probably gone to Smyrna, as none were visible in the encampment, As we were about returning, the curtain of the largest tent, which had been dropped on our entrance, was lifted cautiously, by a beautiful girl, of perhaps thirteen, who, not remarking that I was somewhat in the rear of my companions, looked after them a moment, and then fastening back the dingy folds by a string, return- ed to her employment of swinging an infant in a small wicker hammock, suspended in the centre of the tent. Her dark, but prettily-rounded arm, was decked with a bracelet of silver pieces, and just between two of the finest eyes I ever saw, was suspended by a yellow thread, one of the small gold coins of Constantinople. Her softly-moulded bust was entirely bare, and might have served for the model of a youthful Hebe. A girdle around her waist sustained loosely a long pair of full Turkish trousers, of the color and fashion usu- ally worn by women in the east, and, caught over her hip, hung suspended by its fringe the truant shawl that had been suffered to fall from her shoulders and expose her guarded beauty. I stood admiring her a full minute, before I observed a middle-aged woman in the opposite corner, who, bending over her work, was fortunately as late in observing my intrusive presence. As I advanced half a step, however, my shadow fell into the tent, and starting with surprise, she rose and dropped the curtain. We remounted, and I rode on, thinking of the vision of loveliness I was leaving in that wild dell. We travel a great way to see hills and rivers, thought I, but, after all, a human being is a more interesting object than a mountain. I shall remember the little gipsy of Hadjilar, long after I have forgotten Hermus and Sypilus. Our road dwindled to a mere bridle-path, as we ad- vanced, and the scenery grew wild and barren. The horses were all sad stumblers, and the uneven rocks gave them every apology for coming down whenever they could forget the spur, and so we entered the broad and green valley of Yackerhem (I write it as I heard it pronounced), and drew up at the door of a small hovel, serving the double purpose of a cafe and a guard-house. A Turkish officer of the old regime, turbanned and cross-legged, and armed with pistols and ataghan, sat smoking on one side the brazier of coals, and the cafejee exercised his small vocation on the other. Be- fore the door, a raised platform of greensward, and a marble slab, facing toward Mecca, indicated the place for prayer ; and a dashing rider of a Turk, who had kept us company from Smyrna, flying past us and dropping to the rear alternately, had taken off his slip- pers at the moment we arrived, and was commencing his noon devotions. We gathered round our commissary's saddle-bags, and shocked our mussulman friends, by producing the unclean beast* and the forbidden liquor, which, with the delicious Turkish coffee, never belter than in these wayside hovels, furnished forth a traveller's meal. * Talking of hams, two of the sultan's chief eunuchs ap- plied to an English physician, a friend of mine, at Constan- tinople, to accompany them on board the American frigate. I engaged to wait on board for them on a certain day, but they did not make their appearance. They gave, as their apology, that they could not defile themselves by entering a ship, polluted by the presence of that unclean animal, the hog. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 167 LETTER CVI. NATURAL STATUE OF NIOBE — THE THORN OF SYRIA AND ITS TRADITION APPROACH TO MAGNESIA HERED- ITARY RESIDENCE OF THE FAMILY OF BEY-OGLOU — CHARACTER OF ITS PRESENT OCCUPANT— THE TRUTH ABOUT ORIENTAL CARAVANSERAIS COMFORTS AND APPLIANCES THEY YIELD TO TRAVELLERS FIGARO OF THE TURKS— THE PILAW — MORNING SCENE AT THE DEPARTURE — PLAYFUL FAMILIARITY OF A SOL- EMN OLD TURK — MAGNIFICENT PROSPECT FROM MOUNT CYPILUS. Threk or four hours more of hard riding brought us to a long glen, opening upon the broad plains of Lydia. We were on the look-out here for the " natu- ral statue of Niobe," spoken of by the ancient writers as visible from the road in this neighborhood; but there was nothing that looked like her, un.ess she vas, as the poet describes her, a " Niobe, all tears," and runs down toward the Sarabat, in what we took to be only a very pretty mountain rivulet. It served for simple fresh water to our volunteer companion, who darted off an hour before sunset, and had finished his ablutions and prayers, and was rising from his knees as we overtook him upon its grassy border. Almost the only thing that grows in these long mountain passes, is the peculiar thorn of Syria, said to be the same of which our Savior's crown was plaited. It differs from the common species, in having a hooked thorn alter- nating with the straight, adding cruelly to its power of laceration. It is remarkable that the flower, at this season withering on the bush, is a circular golden- colored leaf, resembling exactly the radiated glory usually drawn around the heads of Christ and the Virgin. Amid a sunset of uncommon splendor, firing every peak of the opposite range of hills with an effulgent red, and filling the valley between with an atmosphere of heavenly purple, we descended into the plain. Mount Sijpilus, in whose rocks the magnetic ore is said to have been first discovered, hung over us in bold precipices ; and, rounding a projecting spur, we came suddenly in sight of the minarets and cypresses of Magnesia (not pronounced as if written in an apothecary's bill), the ancient capital of the Ottoman empire. On the side of the ascent, above the town, we ob- served a large isolated mansion, surrounded with a wall, and planted about with noble trees, looking, with the exception that it was too freshly painted, like one of the fine old castle palaces of Italy. It was something very extraordinary for the east, where no man builds beyond the city wall, and no house is very much larger than another. It was the hereditary residence, we afterward discovered, of almost the only noble family in Turkey — that of the Bey-Oglou. You will recollect Byron's allusion to it in the "Bride of Abydos :" " We Moslem reck not much of blood, But yet the race of Karaisman, Unchanged, unchangeable hath stood, First of the bold Timareot bands Who won, and well can keep, their lands ; Enough that he who comes to woo Is kinsman of the Bey-Oglou." I quote from memory, perhaps incorrectly. The present descendant is still in possession of the title, and is said to be a liberal-minded and hospitable old Turk, of the ancient and better school. His cam- els are the finest that come into Smyrna, and are fa- mous for their beauty and appointments. Our devout companion left us at the first turning in the town, laving his hand to his breast in gratitude for having been suffered to annoy us all day with his brilliant equitation, and we stumbled in through the increasing shadows of twilight to the caravanserai. It is very possible that the reader has but a slender conception of an oriental hotel. Supposing it, at least, from the inadequacy of my own previous ideas, I shall allow myself a little particularity in the description of the conveniences which the travelling Zuleikas and Fatimas, the Maleks and Othmans, of eastern story, encounter in their romantic journeys. It was near the farther outskirt of the large city of Magnesia (the accent, I repeat, is on the penult), that we found the way encumbered with some scores of kneeling camels, announcing our vicinity to a khan. A large wooden building, rather off its perpendicular, with a great many windows, but no panes in them, and only here and there a shutter "hanging by the eye- lids," presently appeared, and entering its hospitable gateway, which had neither gate nor porter, we dis- mounted in a large court, lit only by the stars, and pre-occupied by any number of mules and horses An inviting staircase led to a gallery encircling the whoie area, from which opened thirty or forty small doors ; but, though we made as much noise as could be expected of as many men and horses, no waiter looked over the balustrade, nor maid Cicely, nor Bon- iface, or their corresponding representatives in Tur- key, invited us in. The suridjee looked to his horses, which was his business, and to look to ourselves was ours ; though, with our stiff limbs and clamorous ap- petites, we set about it rather despairingly. The Figaro of the Turks is a cafcjee, who, besides shaving, making coffee, and bleeding, is supposed to be capable of every office required by man. He is generally a Greek, the Mussulman seldom having sufficient facility of character for the vocation. In a few minutes, then, the nearest Figaro was produced, who, scarce dissembling his surprise at the improvi- dence of travellers who went about without pot or kettle, bag of rice or bottle of oil, led the way with his primitive lamp to our apartment. We might have our choice of twenty. Having looked at the other nineteen, we came back to the first, reconciled to it by sheer force of comparison. Of its two windows, one alone had a shutter that would fulfil its destiny. It contained neither chair, table, nor utensil of any description. Its floor had not been swept, nor its walls whitewashed since the days of Timour the Tar- tar. "Kalo! Kalo!" (Greek for you will be very comfortable), cried our commissary, throwing down some old mats to spread our carpets upon. But the mats were alive with vermin, and, for sweep- ing the room, the dust would not have been laid till midnight. So we threw down our carpets up- on the floor, and driving from our minds the too luxurious thoughts of clean straw, and a corner in a warm barn, sat down, by the glimmer of a flaring taper, to wait, with what patience we might, for a chicken still breathing freely on his roost, and turn our backs as ingeniously as possible on a chilly December wind, that came in at the open window, as if it knew the caravanserai were* free to all comers. There is but one circumstance to add to this faithful description — and it is one which, in the minds of ma- ny very worthy persons, would turn the scale in favor of the hotels of the east, with all their disadvantages — there was nothing to pay ! Ali Bey, in his travels, predicts the fall erf the Otto- man empire from the neglected state of the khans; this inattention to the public institutions of hospitali- ty, being a falling away from the leading Mussulman virtue. They never gave the traveller more than a shelter, however, in their best days ; and to enter a cold, unfurnished room, after a day's hard travel, even if the floor were clean, and the windows would shut, is rather comfortless. Yet such is eastern travel, and the alternative is to take " the sky for a great-coat, and find as soft a stone as possible foryour pillow. We gathered around our pilaw, which came in the 168 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. progress of time, and consisted of a chicken, buried in a handsomely-shaped cone of rice and butter, form- ing, with a large crater-like black bowl in which it stood, the cloud of smoke issuing from its peak, and the lava of butter flowing down its sides, as pretty a miniature Vesuvius, as you would find in a modeller's window in the Toledo. Encouraging that sin in Christians, which they would not commit themselves, they brought us some wine of the country, the sin of drinking which, one would think, was its own sufficient punishment. With each a wooden spoon, the imme- diate and only means of communication between the dish and the mouth, we soon solved the doubtful problem of the depth of the crater, and then casting lots who should lie next the window to take off the edge of the December blast, we improved upon some hints taken from the fig-packers of Smyrna, and with an economy of exposed surface, which can only be learned by travel, disposed ourselves in a solid body to sleep. The tinkling of the camels' bells awoke me as the day was breaking, and my toilet being already made, I sprang readily up and descended to the court of the caravanserai. It was an eastern scene, and not an un- poetical one. The patient and intelligent camels were kneeling in regular ranks to receive their loads, com- plaining in a voice almost human, as the driver flung the heavy bales upon the saddles too roughly, while the small donkey, no larger than a Newfoundland dog, leader of the long caravan, took his place at the head of the gigantic file, pricking back his long ears as if he were counting his spongy-footed followers, as they fell in behind him. Here and there knelt six or seven, with their unsightly humps still unburdened, eating with their peculiar deliberateness from small heaps of provender, and scattered over the adjacent fields, wandered separately the caravan of some indo- lent driver, browsing upon the shrubs, and looking oc- casionally with intelligent expectation toward the khan, for the appearance of their tardy master. Over all rose the mingled music of the small bells, with which their gay-covered harness was profusely cover- ed, varied by the heavy beat of the larger ones borne at the necks of the leading and last camels of the fde, while the retreating sounds of the caravans already on their march, came in with the softer tones which com- pleted its sweetness. In a short time my companions joined me, and we started for a walk in the town. The necessity of at- tending the daylight prayers, makes all Mussulmans early risers, and we found the streets already crowded, and the merchants and artificers as busy as at noon. Turning a corner to get out of the way of a row of butchers, who were slaughtering sheep revolting]}' in front of their stalls, we met two old Turks coming from the mosque, one of whom, with the familiarity of manners which characterizes the nation, took from my hand a stout English riding-whip which I carried, and began to exercise it on the bag-like trousers of his friend. After amusing himself a while in this manner, he returned the whip, and, patting me con- descendingly on the cheek, gave me two figs from his voluminous pocket, and walked on. Considering that I stand six feet in my stockings, an unwieldy size, you may say, for a pet, this freak of the old Magnesian would seem rather extraordinary. Yet it illustrates the Turkish manners, which, as I have often had oc- casion to notice, are a singular mixture of profound gravity and the most childish simplicity. We found a few fine old marble columns in the porches of the mosques, but one Turkish town is just like another, and after an hour or two of wandering about among the wooden houses and narrow streets, we returned to the khan, and, with a cup of coffee, mounted and resumed our journey. I have never seen a finer plain than that of Magne- sia. With an even breadth of seven or eight miles, its length can not be less than fifty or sixty, and throughout its whole extent it is one unbroken picture of fertile field and meadow, shut in by two lofty ranges of mountains, and watered by the full and winding Hermus. Without fence, and almost without human habitation, it is a noble expanse to the eye, possessing all the untrammelled beauty of a wilderness without its detracting inutility. It is literally " clothed with flocks." As we rode on under the eastern brow of Mount Sypilus, and struck out more into the open plain, as far as we could distinguish by the eye, spread the snowy sheep in hundreds, at merely separating distances, checkered here and there by a herd of the tall jet-black goats of the east, walking onward in slow and sober procession, with the solemn state of a fu- neral. The road was lined with camels, coming into Smyrna by this grand highway of nature, and bring- ing all the varied produce of Asia Minor to barter in its busy mart. We must have passed a thousand in our day's journey. LETTER CVII. THE EYE OF THE CAMEL — ROCKY SEPULCHRES — VIR- TUE OF AN OLD PASSPORT, BACKED BY IMPUDENCE TEMPLE OF CYBELE — PALACE OF CROESUS — AN- CIENT CHURCH OF SARDIS — RETURN TO SMYRNA. Unsightly as the camel is, with its long snaky neck, its frightful hump, and its awkward legs and ac- tion, it wins much upon your kindness with a little acquaintance. Its eye is exceedingly fine. There is a lustrous, suffused softness in the large hazel orb that is the rarest beauty in a human eye, and so remarka- ble is this feature in the camel, that I wonder it has never fallen into use as a poetical simile. They do not shun the gaze of man like other animals, and I pleased myself often when the suridjee slackened his pace, with riding close to some returning caravan, and exchanging steady looks in passing with the slow-pa- ced camels. It was like meeting the eye of a kind old man. The face of Mount Sypilus, in its whole extent, is excavated into sepulchres. They are mostly ancient, and form a very singular feature in the scenery. A range of precipices, varying from one to three hundred feet in height, is perforated for twenty miles with these airy depositories for the dead, many of them a hun- dred feet from the plain. Occasionally they are ex- tended to considerable caves, hewn with great labor in the rock, and probably from their numerous niches, intended as family sepulchres. They are now the convenient eyries of great numbers of eagles, which circle continually around the summits, and poise themselves on the wing along the sides of these lone- ly mountains, in undisturbed security. We arrived early in the afternoon at Casabar, a pretty town at the foot of Mount Tmolus. Having eaten a melon, the only thing for which the place is famous, we proposed to go on to Achmet-lee, some three hours farther. The suridjee, however, whose horses were hired by the day, had made up his mind to sleep at Casabar, and so we were at issue. Our stock of Turkish was soon exhausted, and the haji' was coolly unbuckling the girths of the baggage- horse without condescending even to answer our ap- peal with a look. The mussulman idlers of the cafe opposite, took their pipes from their mouths and smiled. The gay cqfejee went about his arrangements for our accommodation, quite certain that we were there for the night. I had given up the point myself, when one of my companions, with a look of the most PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 169 confident triumph, walked up to the suridjee, and tap- ping him on the shoulder, held before his eyes a paper with the seal of the pacha of Smyrna in broad char- acters at the top. After the astonished Turk had looked at it for a moment, he commenced in good round English, and poured upon him a volume of in- coherent rhapsody, slapping the paper violently with his hand and pointing to the road. The effect was in- stantaneous. The girth was hastily rebuckled, and the frightened suridjee put his hand to his head in to- ken of submission, mounted in the greatest hurry and rode out of the court of the caravanserai. The cafe- jee made his salaam, and the spectators wished us re- spectfully a good journey. The magic paper was an old passport, and our friend had calculated securely on the natural dread of the incomprehensible, quite sure that there was not more than one man in the village that could read, and none short of Smyrna who could understand his English. The plain between Casabar and Achmet-lee, is quite a realization of poetry. It is twelve miles of soft, bright green-sward, broken only with clumps of luxu- riant oleanders, an occasional cluster of the " black tents of Kedar" with their flocks about them, and here and there a loose and grazing camel indolently lifting his broad foot from the grass as if he felt the coolness and verdure to its spongy core. One's heart seems to stay behind as he rides onward through such places. The village of Achmet-lee consists of a coffee- house with a single room. We arrived about sunset, and found the fireplace surrounded by six or seven Turks squatted on their hams, travellers like ourselves, who had arrived before us. There was fortunately a second fireplace, which was soon blazing with fagots of fir and oleander, and with a pilaw between us, we crooked our tired legs under us on the earthen floor, and made ourselves as comfortable as a total absence of every comfort would permit. The mingled smoke of tobacco and the chimney drove me out of doors as soon as our greasy meal was finished, and the con- trast was enough to make one in love with nature. The moon was quite full, and pouring her light down through the transparent and dazzling sky of the east with indescribable splendor. The fires of twenty or thirty caravans were blazing in the fields around, and the low cries of the camels and the hum of voices from the various groups, were mingled with the sound of a stream that came noisily down its rocky chan- nel from the nearest spur of Mount Tmolus. I walk- ed up and down the narrow camel-path till midnight ; and if the kingly spirits of ancient Lydia did not keep me company in the neighborhood of their giant graves, it was perhaps because the feet that trod down their ashes came from a world of which Croesus and Abyat- tis never heard. •» The sin of late rising is seldom chargeable upon an earthen bed, and we were in the saddle by sunrise, breathing an air that, after our smoky cabin, was like a spice-wind from Arabia. Winding round the base of the chain of mountains which we had followed for twenty or thirty miles, we ascended a little, after a brisk trot of two or three hours, and came in sight of the citadel of ancient Sardis, perched like an eagle's nest on the summit of a slender rock. A natural ter- race, perhaps a hundred feet above the plain, expand- ed from the base of the hill, and this was the com- manding site of the capital of Lydia. Dividing us from it ran the classic and " golden-sanded" Pactolus, descending from the mountains in a small, narrow val- ley, covered with a verdure so fresh, that it requires some power of fancy to realize that a crowded empire ever swarmed on its borders. Crossing the small, bright stream, we rode along the other bank, winding up its ascending curve, and dismounted at the ruins of the temple of Cybele, a heap of gigantic frag- ments strewn confusedly over the earth, with two ma- jestic columns rising lone and beautiful into the air. A. Dutch artist, who was of our party, spread his drawing-board and pencils upon one of the fallen Ionic capitals, the suridjee tied his horses' heads to- gether, and laid himself at his length upon the grass, and the rest of us ascended the long steep hill to the citadel. With some loss of breath, and a battle with the dogs of a gipsy encampment, hidden so as almost to be invisible among the shrubbery of the hill-side, we stood at last upon a peak, crested with one totter- ing remnant of a wall, the remains of a castle whose foundations have crumbled beneath it. It looks as if the next rain must send the whole mass into the valley. It puzzled my unmihtary brain to conceive how Alexander and his Macedonians climbed these airy precipices, if taking the citadel was a part of his con- quest of Lydia. The fortifications in the rear have a sheer descent from their solid walls of two or three hundred perpendicular feet, with scarce a vine cling- ing by the way. I left my companions discussing the question, and walked to the other edge of the hill, overlooking the immense plains below. The tumuli which mark the sepulchres of the kings of Lydia, rose like small hills on the opposite and distant bank of the Hermus. The broad fields, which were once the "wealth of Crcesus," lay still fertile and green along the banks of their historic river. Thyatira and Phila- delphia were almost within reach of my eye, and I stood upon Sardis — in the midst of the sites of the Seven Churches. Below lay the path of the myriad armies of Persia, on their march to Greece ; here Alexander pitched his tents after the battle of Grani- cus, wiling away the winter in the lap of captive Lydia : and over the small ruin just discernible on the southern bank of the Pactolus, " the angel of the church of Sardis" brooded with his protecting wings till the few who had " not defiled their garments," were called to " walk in white," in the promised reward of the apocalypse. We descended again to the temple of Cybele, and mounting our horses, rode down to the palace of Crcesus. Parts of the outer walls, the bases of the portico, and the marble steps of an inner court, are all that remain of the splendor that Solon was called upon in vain to admire. With the permission of six or seven storks, whose coarse nests were built upon the highest points of the ruins, we selected the broadest of the marble blocks, lying in the deserted area, and spreading our traveller's breakfast upon it, forgot even the kingly builder in our well-earned appetites. There are three parallel walls remaining of the an- cient church of Sardis. They stand on a gentle slope, just above the edge of the Pactolus, and might easily be rebuilt into a small chapel, with only the materials within them. There are many other ruins on the site of the city, but none designated by a name. We loi- tered about, collecting relics, and indulging our fan- cies, till the suridjee reminded us of the day's journey before us, and with a drink from the Pactolus, and a farewell look at the beautiful Ionic columns standing on its lonely bank, we put spurs to our horses and gal- loped once more down into the valley. Our Turkish saddles grew softer on the third day's journey, and we travelled more at ease. I found the freedom and solitude of the wide and unfenced coun- try growing at every mile more upon my liking. The heart expands as one gives his horse the rein and gal- lops over these wild paths without toll-gate or obsta- cle. I can easily understand the feeling of Ali Bey on his return to Europe from the east. Our fourth day's journey lay through the valley be- tween Tmolus and Semering — the fairest portion of the dominion of Timour the Tartar. How graceful- ly shaped were those slopes to the mountains ! How bright the rivers ! How green the banks! How like 170 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. a new created and still unpeopled world it seemed, with every tree and flower and fruit the perfect model of its kind ! Leaving the secluded village of Nymphi nested in the mountains on our left, as we approached the end of our circuitous journey, we entered early in the af- ternoon the long plains of Hadjilar, and with tired horses and (malgre romance) and an agreeable antici- pation of Christian beds and supper, we dismounted in Smyrna at sunset. LETTER CVIII. SMYRNA — CHARMS OF ITS SOCIETY — HOSPITALITY OF FOREIGN RESIDENTS THE MARINA — THE CASINO A NARROW ESCAPE FROM THE PLAGUE— DEPARTURE OF THE FRIGATE HIGH CHARACTER OF THE AMER- ICAN NAVY— A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT AND GRATI- TUDE — THE FAREWELL. What can I say of Smyrna? Its mosques and bazars scarce deserve description after those of Con- stantinople. It has neither pictures, scenery, nor any peculiarities of costume or manners. There are no " lions" here. It is only one of the most agreeable places in the world, exactly the sort of thing, that (without compelling private individuals to sit for their portraits),* is the least describable. Of the fortnight of constant pleasure that I have passed here, I do not well know how I can eke out half a page that would amuse you. The society of Smyrna has some advantages over that of any other city I have seen. It is composed entirely of the families of merchants, who, separated from the Turkish inhabitants, occupy a distinct quar- ter of the town, are responsible only to their consuls, and having no nobility above, and none but dependants below them, live in a state of cordial republican equal- ity that is not found even in America. They are of all nations, and the principal languages of Europe are spoken by everybody. Hospitality is carried to an extent more like the golden age than these " days of iron ;" and, as a necessary result of the free mixture of languages and feelings, there is a degree of infor- mation and liberality of "sentiment among them, uni- ted to a free and joyous tone of manners and habits of living, that is quite extraordinary in men of their care- fraught profession. Our own country, I am proud to say, is most honorably represented. There is no trav- eller to the east, of any nation, who does not carry away with him from Smyrna, grateful recollections of one at least whose hospitality is as open as his gate. This living over warehouses of opium, I am inclined to think, is healthy for the heart. After having seen the packing of figs, wondered at the enormous burdens carried by the porters, ridden to Bougiar and the castle on the hill, and admired the caravan of the Bey-Oglou, whose camels are the handsomest that come into Smyrna, one has nothing to do but dine, dance, and walk on the Marina. The last is a circumstance the traveller does well not to miss. A long street extends along the bay, lined with * A courteous old traveller, of the last century, whose book I have somewhere fallen in with, indulges his recollections of Smyrna with less scruples, " Mrs. B.," he says, " who has travelled a great deal, is mistress of both French and Italian. The Misses W. are all amiable young ladies. A Miss A., whose name is expressive of the passion she inspires, without being beautiful, possesses a je ne seals quoi, which fascinates more than beauty itself. Not to love her, one must never have seen her. And who would not be captivated by the vivacity of Miss B.?" How charming thus to go about the world, describing the fairest of its wonders, instead of stupid mountains and rivers ! the houses of the rich merchants of the town, and for the two hours before sunset, every family is to be seen sitting outside its door upon the public pavement, while beaux and belles stroll up and down in all the gayety of perpetual holyday. They are the most out- of-doors people, the Smyrniotes, that I have ever seen. And one reason perhaps is, that they have a beauty which has nothing to fear from the daylight. The rich, classic, glowing faces of the Greeks, the paler and livelier French, the serious and impassioned Ital- ian, the blooming English, and the shrinking and fra- gile American, mingle together in this concourse of grace and elegance like the varied flowers in the gar- den. I would match Smyrna against the world for beauty. And then such sociability, such primitive cordiality of manners as you find among them ! It is quite a Utopia. You would think that little republic of merchants, separate from the Christian world on a heathen shore, had commenced cle novo, from Eden — ignorant as yet of jealousy, envy, suspicion, and the other ingredients with which the old world min- gles up its refinements. It is a very pleasant place, Smyrna ! The stranger, on his arrival, is immediately introdu- ced to the Casino — a large palace, supported by the subscription of the residents, containing a reading- room, furnished with all the gazettes and reviews of Europe, a ball-room frequently used, a coftee-room whence the delicious mocha is brought to you when- ever you enter, billiard-tables, card-rooms, etc., etc. The merchants are all members, and any member can introduce a stranger, and give him all the privileges of the place during his stay in the city. It is a cour- tesy that is not a little drawn upon. English, French, and American ships-of-war are almost always in the port, and the officers are privileged guests. Every traveller to the east passes by Smyrna, and there are always numbers at the Casino. In fact, the hospitali- ty of this kindest of cities, has not the usual demerit of being rarely called upon. It seems to have grown with the demand for it. Idling away the time very agreeably at Smyrna, waiting for a vessel to go — I care not where. I have offered myself as a passenger in the first ship that sails. I rather lean toward" Palestine and Egypt, but there are no vessels for Jaffa or Alexandria. A brig, crowded with hajjis to Jerusalem, sailed on the first day of my arrival at Smyrna, and I was on the point of a hasty embarkation, when my good angel, in the shape of a sudden caprice, sent me off to Sardis. The plague broke out on board immediately on leaving the port, and nearly the whole ship's company perished at sea! There are plenty of vessels bound to Trieste and the United States, but there would be nothing new to me in lllyria and Lombardy ; and much as I love my country, I am more enamored for the present of my " sandal-shoon." Besides, I have a yearning to the south, and the cold " Bora" of that bellows-like Adri- atic, and the cutting winter winds of my native shore, chill me even in the thought. Meantime I breathe an air borrowed by December of May, and sit with my windows open, warming myself in a broad beam of the soft sun of Asia. With such " appliances," even suspense is agreeable. The commodore sailed this morning for his winter quarters in Minorca. I watched the ship's prepara- tions for departure from the balcony of the hotel, with a heavy heart. Her sails dropped from the yards, her head turned slowly outward as the anchor brought away, and with a light breeze in her topsails the gal- lant frigate moved majestically down the harbor, and PENC1LLINGS BY THE WAY. 171 in an hour was a speck on the horizon. She had been my home for more than six months. T had seen from her deck, and visited in her boats some of the fairest portions of the world. She had borne me to Cicily, to Illyria, to the Isles and shores of Greece, to Marmora and the Bosphorus, and the thousand lovely pictures with which that long summer voyage had stored my memory, and the thousand adventures and still more numerous kindnesses and courtesies, linked with these interesting scenes, crowded on my mind as the noble ship receded from my eye, with an emotion that I could not repress. There is a "pomp and circumstance" about a man- of-war, which is exceedingly fascinating. Her impo- sing structure and appearance, the manly and deferen- tial etiquette, the warlike appointment and impressive order upon her decks, the ready and gallantly manned boat, the stirring music of the band, and the honor and attention with which her officers are received in every port, conspire in keeping awake an excitement, a kind of chivalrous elation, which, it seems to me, would almost make a hero of a man of straw. From the hoarse " seven bells, sir !" with which you are turned out of your hammock in the morning, to the blast of the bugle and the report of the evening gun, it is one succession of elevating sights and sounds, without any of that approach to the ridicu- lous which accompanies the sublime or the impres- sive on shore. From the comparisons I have made between our own and the ships-of-war of other nations, I think we may well be proud of our navy. I had learned in Eu- rope, long before joining the "United States," that the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to Americans afloat, than to a continent they think as far oil at least as the moon, They see our men-of-war, *nd they know very well what they have done, and from the appearance and character of our officers, what they might do again — and there is a tangibility in the deductions from knowledge and eyesight, which beats books and statistics. I have heard Englishmen deny, one by one, every claim we have to political and moral superiority ; but I have found no one illiberal enough to refuse a compliment, and a handsome one, to Yankee ships, I consider myself, I repeat, particularly fortunate to have made a cruise on board an American frigate. It is a chapter of observation in itself, which is worth much to any one. But, in addition to this, it was my good fortune to have happened upon a cruise directed by a mind full of taste and desire for knowledge, and a cruise which had for its principal objects improve- ment and information. Commodore Patterson knew 'he ground well, and was familiar with the history and localities of the interesting countries visited by the ship, and every possible facility and encouragement was given by him to all to whom the subjects and pla- ces were new. An enlightened and enterprising trav- eller himself, he was the best of advisers and the best and kindest of guides. I take pleasure in recording almost unlimited obligations to him. And so, to the gallant ship — to the " warlike world within" — to the decks I have so often promenaded, and the moonlight watches I have so often shared — to the groups of manly faces I have learned to know so well — to the drum-beat and the bugle-call, and the stir- ring music of the band — to the hammock in which I swung and slept so soundly, and last and nearest my heart, to the gay and hospitable mess with whom for six happy months I have been a guest and a friend, whose feelings I have learned but to honor my country more, and whose society has become to me even a painful want — to all this catalogue of happiness, I am bidding a heavy-hearted farewell. Luck and Heaven's blessing to ship and company ! LETTER CIX. RETURN TO ITALY BOLOGNA MALIBRAN PARMA NIGHTINGALES OF LOMBARDY FIACENZA AUSTRI- AN SOLOIERS — THESIMPLON — MILAN — RESEMBLANCE TO PARIS THE CATHEDRAL GUERCINO'S HAGAR MILANESE COFFEE. Milan. — My fifth journey over the Apennines — dull of course. On the second evening we were at Bo logna. The long colonnades pleased me less than be fore, with their crowds of foreign officers and ill- dressed inhabitants, and a placard for the opera, announcing Malibran's last night, relieved us of the prospect of a long evening of weariness. The divine music of La Norma and a crowded and brilliant au- dience, enthusiastic in their applause, seemed to in- spire this still incomparable creature even beyond her wont. She sang with a fulness, an abandonment, a passionate energy and sweetness that seemed to come from a soul rapt and possessed beyond control, with the melody it had undertaken. They were never done calling her on the stage after the curtain had fallen. After six reappearances, she came out once more to the footlights, and murmuring something inaudible from her lips that showed strong agitation, she pressed her hands together, bowed till her long hair, falling over her shoulders, nearly touched her feet, and re- tired in tears. She is the siren of Europe for me! I was happy to have no more to do with the Duke of Modena, than to eat a dinner in his capital. We did " not forget the picture," but my inquiries for it were as fruitless as before. I wonder whether the au- thor of the Pleasures of Memory has the pleasure of remembering having seen the picture himself! " Tas- soni's bucket which is not the true one," is still shown in the tower, and the keeper will kiss the cross upon his fingers, that Samuel Rogers has written a false line. At Parma we ate parmesan and saw the Correggio. The angel who holds the book up to the infant Sa- vior, the female laying her cheek to his feet, the countenance of the holy child himself, are creations that seem apart from all else in the schools of paint- ing. They are like a group, not from life, but from heaven. They are superhuman, and, unlike other pictures of beauty which stir the heart as if they re- sembled something one had loved or might have loved, these mount into the fancy like things transcending sympathy, and only within reach of an intellectual and elevated wonder. This is the picture that Sir Thomas Lawrence returned six times in one day to see. It is the only thing I saw to admire in thedutchy of Maria Louisa. An Austrian regiment marched in- to the town as we left it, and an Italian at the gate told us that the dutchess had disbanded her last troops of the country, and supplied their place with these yel- low and black Croats and Illyrians. Italy is Austria now to the foot of the Apennines — if not to the top of Radicofani. Lombardy is full of nightingales. They sing by day, however (as not specified in poetry). They are up quite as early as the lark, and the green hedges are alive with their gurgling and changeful music till twilight. Nothing can exceed the fertility of these endless plains. They are four or five hundred miles of uninterrupted garden. The same eternal level road, the same rows of elms and poplars on either side, the same long, slimy canals, the same square, vine- laced, perfectly green pastures and cornfields, the same shaped houses, the same-voiced beggars with the same sing-song whine, and the same villanous Austrians poring over your passports and asking to be paid for it, from the Alps to the Apennines. It is wearisome, spite of green leaves and nightingales. A bare rock or a good brigand-looking mountain would so refresh the eye ! 172 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. At Piacenza, one of those admirable German bands was playing in the public square, while a small corps of picked men were manoeuvred. Even an Italian, I should think, though he knew and felt it was the mu- sic of his oppressors, might have been pleased to lis- ten. And pleased they seemed to be — for there were hundreds of dark-haired and well-made men, with faces and forms for heroes, standing and keeping time to the well-played instruments, as peacefully as if there were no such thing as liberty, and no meaning in the foreign uniforms crowding them from their own pavement. And there were the women of Piacenza, nodding from the balconies to the white mustaches and padded coats strutting below, and you would nev- er dream Italy thought herself wronged, watching the exchange of courtesies between her dark-eyed daugh- ters and these fair-haired coxcombs. We crossed the Po, and entered Austria's nominal dominions. They rummaged our baggage as if they smelt republicanism somewhere, and after showing a strong disposition to retain a volume of very bad poetry as suspicious, and detaining us two long hours, they had the modesty to ask to be paid for letting us off lightly. When we declined it, the chef threatened us a precious searching "the next time.''' How wil- lingly I would submit to the annoyance to have that next time assured to me ! Every step I take toward the bounds of Italy, pulls so upon my heart ! As most travellers come into Italy over the Simplon, Milan makes generally the first enthusiastic chapter in their books. I have reversed the order myself, and have a better right to praise it from comparison. For exterior, there is certainly no city in Italy comparable to it. The streets are broad and noble, the buildings magnificent, the pavement quite the best in Europe, and the Milanese (all of whom I presume I have seen, for it is Sunday, and the streets swarm with them), are better dressed, and look " better to do in the world" than the Tuscans, who are gayer and more Italian, and the Romans, who are graver and vastly handsom- er. Milan is quite like Paris. The showy and mir- ror-lined cafes, the elegant shops, the variety of strange people and costumes, and a new gallery lately opened in imitation of the glass-roofed passages of the French capital, make one almost feel that the next turn will bring him upon the Boulevards. The famous cathedral, nearly completed by Napo- leon, is a sort of Aladdin creation, quite too delicate and beautiful for the open air. The filmly traceries of gothic fretwork, the needle-like minarets, the hun- dreds of beautiful statues with which it is studded, the intricate, graceful, and bewildering architecture of ev- ery window and turret, and the frost-like frailness and delicacy of the whole mass, make an effect altogether upon the eye that must stand high on the list of new sensations. It is a vast structure withal, but a mid- dling easterly breeze, one would think in looking at it, would lift it from its base and bear it over the Atlan- tic like the meshes of a cobweb. Neither interior nor exterior impresses you with the feeling of awe com- mon to other large churches. The sun struggles through the immense windows of painted glass stain- ing every pillar and carved cornice with the richest hues, and wherever the eye wanders it grows giddy with the wilderness of architecture. The people on their knees are like paintings in the strong artificial light, the checkered pavement seems trembling with a quivering radiance, the altar is far and indistinct, and the lamps burning over the tomb of Saint Carlo, shine out from the centre like gems glistening in the midst of some enchanted hall. This reads very like rhap- sody, but it is the way the place impressed me. It is like a great dream. Its excessive beauty scarce seems constant while the eye rests upon it. The Brera is a noble palace, occupied by the pub- lic galleries of statuary and painting. I felt on leav- ing Florence that I could give pictures a very long holyday. To live on them, as one does in Italy, is like dining from morn till night. The famous Guer- cino, is at Milan, however, the " Hagar," which By- ron talks of so enthusiastically, and I once more sur- rendered myself to a cicerone. The picture catches your eye on your first entrance. There is that har- mony and effect in the. color that mark a masterpiece, even in a passing glance. Abraham stands in the cen- tre of the group, a fine, prophet-like, " green old man," with a mild decision in his eye, from which there is evidently no appeal. Sarah has turned her back, and you can just read in the half-profile glance of her face, that there is a little pity mingled in her hard-hearted approval of her rival's banishment. But Hagar — who can describe the world of meaning in her face ? The closed lips have in them a calm in- credulousness, contradicted with wonderful nature in the flushed and troubled forehead, and the eyes red with long weeping. The gourd of water is hung over her shoulder, her hand is turning her sorrowful boy from the door, and she has looked back once more, with a large tear coursing down her cheek, to read in the face of her master if she is indeed driven forth for ever. It is the instant before pride and despair close over her heart. You see in the picture that the next moment is the crisis of her life. Her gaze is strain- ing upon the old man's lips, and you wait breathlessly to see her draw up her bending form, and depart in proud sorrow for the wilderness. It is a piece of pow- erful and passionate poetry. It affects you like noth- ing but a reality. The eyes get warm, and the heart beats quick, and as you walk away you feel as if a load of oppressive sympathy was lifting from your heart. I have seen little else in Milan, except Austrian sol- diers, of whom there are fifteen thousand in this sin- gle capital ! The government has issued an order to officers not on duty, to appear in citizen's dress, it is supposed to diminish the appearance of so much military preparation. For the rest, they make a kind of coffee here, by boiling it with cream, which is bet- ter than anything of the kind either in Paris or Con- stantinople ; and the Milanese are, for slaves, the most civil people I have seen, after the Florentines. There is little English society here; I know not why, except that the Italians are rich enough to be exclu- sive and make their houses difficult of access to stran- gers. LETTER CX. A MELANCHOLY PROCESSION — LAGO MAGGIORE — ISOLA BELLA — THE SIMPLON — MEETING A FELLOW-COUN- TRYMAN — THE VALLEY OF THE RHONE. In going out of the gates of Milan, we met a cart full of peasants, tied together and guarded by gens d'armes, the fifth sight of the kind that has crossed us since we passed the Austrian border. The poor fel- lows looked very innocent and very sorry. The ex- tent of their offences probably might be the want of a passport, and a desire to step over the limits of his majesty's 'possessions. A train of beautiful horses, led by soldiers along the ramparts, the property of the Austrian officers, were in melancholy contrast to their sad faces. The clear snowy Alps soon came in sight, and their cold beauty refreshed us in the midst of a heat that prostrated every nerve in the system. It is only the first of May, and they are mowing the grass every- where on the road, the trees are in their fullest leaf, the frogs and nightingales singing each other down, and the grasshopper would be a burden. Toward night PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 173 we crossed the Sardinian frontier, and in an hour were set down at an auberge on the bank of Lake Maggi- ore, in the little town of Arona. The mountains on the other side of the broad and mirror-like water, are speckled with ruined castles, here and there a boat is leaving iis long line of ripples behind in its course, the cattle are loitering home, the peasants sit on the benches before their doors, and all the lovely circum- stances of a rural summer's sunset are about us, in one of the very loveliest spots in nature. A very old Florence friend is my companion, and what with mu- tual reminiscences of sunny Tuscany, and the deep- est love in common for the sky over our heads, and the green land around us, we are noting down " red days" in our calendar of travel. We walked from Arona by sunrise, four or five miles along the borders of Lake Maggiore. The kind- hearted peasants on their way to the market raised their hats to us in passing, and I was happy that the greet- ing was still " buon gior-no." Those dark-lined moun- tains before us were to separate me too soon from the mellow accents in which it was spoken. As yet, how- ever, it was all Italian — the ultra-marine sky, the clear, half-purpled hills, the inspiring air — we felt in every pulse that it was still Italy. We were at Baveno at an early hour, and took a boat for Isola Bella. It looks like a gentleman's villa afloat. A boy would throw a stone entirely over it in any direction. It strikes you like a kind of toy as you look at it from a distance, and getting nearer, the illu- sion scarcely dissipates — for, from the water's edge, the orange-laden terraces are piled one above another like a pyramidal fruit-basket, the villa itself peers above like a sugar castle, and it scarce seems real enough to land upon. We pulled round to the north- ern side, and disembarked at a broad stone staircase, where a cicerone, with a look of suppressed wisdom, common to his vocation, met us with the offer of his services. The entrance-hall was hung with old armor, and a magnificent suite of apartments above, opening on all sides upon the lake, was lined thickly with pictures, none of them remarkable except one or two land- scapes by the savage Tempesta. Travellers going the other way would probably admire the collection more than we. We were glad to be handed over by our pragmatical custode to a pretty contadino, who an- nounced herself as the gardener's daughter, and gave us each a bunch of roses. It was a proper com- mencement to an acquaintance upon Isola Bella. She led the way to the water's edge, where, in the foun- dations of the palace, a suite of eight or ten spacious rooms is constructed a la grotte — with a pavement laid of small stones of different colors, walls and roof of fantastically set shells and pebbles, and statues that seem to have reason in their nudity. The only light came in at the long doors opening down to the lake, and the deep leather sofas, and dark cool atmosphere, with the light break of the waves outside, and the long views away toward Isola Madra, and the far-off* oppo- site shore, composed altogether a most seductive spot for an indolent humor and a summer's day. I shall keep it as a cool recollection till sultry summers trouble me no more. But the garden was the prettiest place. The lake is lovely enough any way ; but to look at it through perspectives of orange alleys, and have the blue mountains broken by stray branches of tulip-trees, clumps of crimson rhododendron, and clusters of cit- ron, yellower than gold ; to sit on a garden-seat in the shade of a thousand roses, with sweet-scented shrubs and verbenums, and a mixture of novel and delicious perfumes embalming the air about you, and gaze up at snowy Alps and sharp precipices, and down upon a broad smooth mirror in which the islands lie like clouds, and over which the boats are silently creeping with their white sails, like birds asleep in the sky — why (not to disparage nature), it seems to my poor judgment, that these artificial appliances are an im- provement even to Lago Maggiore. On one side, without the villa walls, are two or three small houses, one of which is occupied as a hotel ; and here, if I had a friend with matrimony in his eye, would I strongly recommend lodgings for the honey- moon. A prettier cage for a pair of billing doves no poet would conceive you. We got on to Domo d'Ossola to sleep, saying many an oft-said thing about the entrance to the valleys of the Alps. They seem common when spoken of, these romantic places, but they are not the less new in the glow of a first impression. We were a little in start of the sun this morning, and commenced the ascent of the Simplon by a gray summer's dawn, before which the last bright star had not yet faded. From Domo d'Ossola we rose direct- ly into the mountains, and soon wound into the wildest glens by a road which was flung along precipices and over chasms and waterfalls like a waving riband. The horses went on at a round trot, and so skilfully are the difficulties of the ascent surmounted, that we could not believe we had passed the spot that from below hung above us so appallingly. The route follows the foaming river Vedro, which frets and plunges along at its side or beneath its hanging bridges, with the im- petuosity of a mountain torrent, where the stream is swollen at every short distance with pretty waterfalls, messengers from the melting snows on the summits. There was one, a water-slide rather than a fall, which I stopped long to admire. It came from near the peak of the mountain, leaping at first from a green clump of firs, and descending a smooth inclined plane, of perhaps two hundred feet. The effect was like dra- pery of the most delicate lace, dropping into festoons from the hand. The slight waves overtook each other and mingled and separated, always preserving their el- liptical and foaming curves, till, in a smooth scoop near the bottom, they gathered into a snowy mass, and leaped into the Vedro in the shape of a twisted shell. If wishing could have witched it into Mr. Cole's sketch-book, he would have a new variety of water for his next composition. After seven hours' driving, which scarce seemed as- cending but for the snow and ice and the clear air it brought us into, we stopped to breakfast at the village of Simplon, "three thousand, two hundred and six- teen feet above the sea level." Here we first realized that we had left Italy. The landlady spoke French and the postillions German ! My sentiment lias grown threadbare with travel, but I don't mind confes- sing that the circumstance gave me an unpleasant thickness in the throat. I threw open the southern window, and looked back toward the marshes of Lom- bardy, and if I did not say the poetical thing, it was because " It is the silent grief that cuts the heart-strings." In sober sadness, one may well regret any country where his life has been filled fuller than elsewhere of sunshine and gladness ; and such, by a thousand en- chantments, has Italy been to me. Its climate is life in my nostrils, its hills and valleys are the poetry of such things, and its marbles, pictures, and palaces, be- set the soul like the very necessities of existence. You can exist elsewhere, but oh! you live in Italy ! I was sitting by my English companion on a sledge in front of the hotel, enjoying the sunshine, when the diligence drove up, and six or eight young men alight- ed. One of them, walking up and down the road to get the cramp of a confined seat out of his legs, ad- dressed a remark to us in English. We had neither of us seen him before, but we exclaimed simultane- ously, as he turned away, "That's an American." 174 PENCILLING^ BY THE WAY. " How did you know he was not an Englishman ?" I asked. " Because," said my friend, " he spoke to us without an introduction and without a reason, as Eng- lishmen are not in the habit of doing, and because he ended his sentence with 'sir,' as no Englishman does except he is talking to an inferior, or wishes to insult you. And how did you know it ?" asked he. " Partly by instinct," I answered, "but more, because, though a traveller, he wears a new hat that cost him ten dollars, and a new cloak that cost him fifty (a pe- culiarly American extravagance), because he made no inclination of his body either in addressing or leaving us, though his intention was to be civil, and because he used fine dictionary words to express a common idea, which, by the way, too, betrays his southern breeding. And, if you want other evidence, he has : ust asked the gentleman near him to ask the conduc- teur something about his breakfast, and an American is the only man in the world that ventures to come abroad without at least French enough to keep him- self from starving." It may appear ill-natured to write down such criticisms on one's own countryman; but the national peculiarities by which we are distin- guished from foreigners, seemed so well defined in this instance, that I thought it worth mentioning. We found afterward that our conjecture was right. His name and country were on the brass plate of his port- manteau in most legible letters, and I recognised it di- rectly as the address of an amiable and excellent man, of whom I had once or twice heard in Italy, though I had never before happened to meet him. Three of the faults oftenest charged upon our countrymen, are over-fine clothes, over-fine words, and over-fine, or over- free manners ! From Simplon we drove two or three miles between heaps of snow, lying in some places from ten to six feet deep. Seven hours before, we had ridden through fields of grain almost ready for the harvest. After passing one or two galleries built over the road to pro- tect it from the avalanches where it ran beneath the loftier precipices, we got out of the snow, and saw Brig, the small town at the foot of the Simplon, on the other side, lying almost directly beneath us. It looked as if one might toss his cap down into its pretty gar- dens. Yet we were four or five hours in reaching it, by a road that seemed in most parts scarcely to descend at all. The views down the valley of the Rhone, which opened continually before us, were of exquisite beauty. The river itself, which is here near its source, looked like a meadow rivulet in its silver windings, and the gigantic Helvetian Alps which rose in their snow on the other side of the valley, were glittering in the slant rays of a declining sun, and of a grandeur of size and outline which diminished, even more than distance, the river and the clusters of villages at their feet. LETTER CXI. SWITZERLAND— LA VALAIS THE CRETINS AND THE GOITRES A FRENCHMAN'S OPINION OF NIAGARA LAKE LEMAN CASTLE OF CHILLON ROCKS OF MEIL- LERIE — REPUBLICAN AIR MONT BLANC GENEVA THE STEAMER — PARTING SORROW. We have been two days and a half loitering down through the Swiss canton of Valais, and admiring ev- ery hour the magnificence of these snow-capped and green-footed Alps. The little chalets seem just lodg- ed by accident on the crags, or stuck against slopes so steep, that the mowers of the mountain-grass are lit- erally let down by ropes to their dizzy occupation. The goats alone seem to have an exemption from all ordinary laws of gravitation, feeding against cliffs which it makes one giddy to look on only ; and the short-waisted girls, dropping a courtesy and blushing as they pass the stranger, emerge from the little moun- tain-paths, and stop by the first spring, to put on their shoes and arrange their ribands coquetishly, before entering the village. The two dreadful curses of these valleys meet one at every step — the cretins, or natural fools, of which there is at least one in every family ; and the goitre or swelled throat, to which there is hardly an exception among the women. It really makes travelling in Switzerland a melancholy business, with all its beau- ty ; at every turn in the road, a gibbering and mowing idiot, and in every group of females, a disgusting ar- ray of excrescences too common even to be concealed. Really, to see girls that else were beautiful, arrayed in all their holyday finery, but with a defect that makes them monsters to the unaccustomed eye, their throats swollen to the size of their heads, seems to me one of the most curious and pitiable things I have met in I my wanderings. Many attempts have been made to account for the growth of the goitre, but it is yet un- explained. The men are not so subject to it as the women, though among them, even, it is frightfully common. But how account for the continual produc- tion by ordinary parents of this brute race of cretins 1 They all look alike, dwarfish, large-mouthed, grinning, and of hideous features and expression. It is said that the children of strangers, born in the valley, are very likely to be idiots, resembling the cretin exactly. It seems a supernatural curse upon the land. The Valaisians, however, consider it a blessing to have one in the family. The dress of the women of La Valais is excessive- ly unbecoming, and a pretty face is rare. Their man- ners are kind and polite, and at the little auberges, where we have stopped on the road, there have been a cleanliness and a generosity in the supply of the table, which prove virtues among them not found in Italy. At Turttmann, we made a little excursion into the mountains to see a cascade. It falls about a hundred feet, and has just now more water than usual from the melting of the snows. It is a pretty fall. A French- man writes in the book of the hotel, that he has seen Niagara and Trenton Falls, in America, and that they do not compare with the cascade of Turttmann ! From Martigny the scenery began to grow richer, and after passing the celebrated Fall of the Pisse- vache (which springs from the top of a high Alp al- most into the road, and is really a splendid cascade), we approached Lake Leman in a gorgeous sunset. We rose a slight hill, and over the broad sheet of wa- ter on the opposite shore, reflected with all its towers in a mirror of gold, lay the castle of Chilian. A bold green mountain, rose steeply behind, the sparkling vil- lage of Vevey lay farther down on the water's edge ; and away toward the sinking sun, stretched the long chain of the Jura, teinted with all the hues of a dol- phin. Never was such a lake of beauty — or it never sat so pointedly for its picture. Mountains and water, chateaux and shallops, vineyards and verdure, could do no more. We left the carriage and walked three or four miles along the southern bank, under the " Rocks of Meillerie," and the spirit of St. Preux's Julie, if she haunt the scene where she caught her death, of a sunset in May, is the most enviable of ghosts. I do not wonder at the prating in albums of Lake Leman. For me, it is (after Val d'Arno from Fiezoli) the ne plus ultra of a scenery Paradise. We are stopping for the night at St. Gingoulf, on a swelling bank of the lake, and we have been lying under the trees in front of the hotel till the last per- ceptible teint is gone from the sky over Jura. Two pedestrian gentlemen, with knapsacks and dogs, have PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 17* just arrived, and a whole family of French people, in- cluding parrots and monkeys, came in before us, and are deafening the house with their chattering. A cup of coffee, and then good night ! My companion, who has travelled all over Europe on foot, confirms my opinion that there is no drive on the continent equal to the forty miles between the rocks of Meillerie and Geneva, on the southern bank of the Leman. The lake is not often much broader than the Hudson, the shores are the noble mountains sung so gloriously by Childe Harold; Vevey, Lau- sanne, Copet, and a string of smaller villages, all fa- mous in poetry and story, fringe the opposite water's edge with cottages and villages, while you wind for ever along a green lane following the bend of the shore, the road as level as your hall pavement, and green hills massed up with trees and verdure, over- shadowing you continually. The world has a great many sweet spots in it, and I have found many a one which would make fitting scenery for the brightest act of life's changeful drama — but here is one, where it seems to me as difficult not to feel genial and kindly, as for Taglioni to keep from floating away like a smoke- curl when she is dancing in La Bayadere. We passed a bridge and drew in a long breath to try the difference in the air — we were in the republic of Geneva. It smelt very much as it did in the do- minions of his majesty of Sardinia — sweet-brier, haw- thorn, violets and all. I used to think when I first came from America, that the flowers (republicans by na- ture as well as birds) were less fragrant under a mon- archy. Mont Blanc loomed up very white in the south, hut like other distinguished persons of whom we form an opinion from the description of poets, the " monarch of mountains" did not seem to me so very superior to his fellows. After a look or two at him as we ap- proached Geneva, I ceased straining my head out of the cabriolet, and devoted my eyes to things more within the scale of my affections — the scores of lovely villas sprinkling the hills and valleys by which we ap- proached the city. Sweet — sweet places they are to be sure ! And then the month is May, and the straw- bonneted and white-aproned girls, ladies and peasants alike, were all out at their porches and balconies, lov- er-like couples were sauntering down the park-lanes, one servant passed us with a tri-cornered blue billet- doux between his thumb and finger, the nightingales were singing their very hearts away to the new-blown roses, and a sense of summer and seventeen, days of sunshine and sonnet-making, came over me irresisti- bly. I should like to see June out in Geneva. The little steamer that makes the tour of Lake Le- man, began to " phiz" by sunrise directly under the windows of our hotel. We were soon on the pier, where our entrance into the boat was obstructed by a weeping cluster of girls, embracing and parting very unwillingly with a young lady of some eighteen years, who was lovely enough to have been wept for by as many grown-up gentlemen. Her own tears were un- der better government, though her sealed lips showed that she dared not trust herself with her voice. After another and another lingering kiss, the boatman ex- pressed some impatience, ancl she tore herself from their arms and stepped into the waiting batteau. We were soon along side the steamer, and sooner under way, and then, having given one wave of her hand- kerchief to the pretty and sad group on the shore, our fair fellow-passenger gave way to her feelings, and sinking upon a seat, burst into a passionate flood of tears. There was no obtruding on such sorrow, and the next hour or two were employed by my imagina- tion in filling up the little drama of which we" had seen but the touching conclusion. I was pleased to find the boat (a new one) called the " Winkelreid," in compliment to the vessel which makes the same voyage in Cooper's " Headsman of Berne." The day altogether had begun like a chap ter in a romance. " Lake Leman wooed us with its crystal face," but there was the filmiest conceivable veil of mist over its unruffled mirror, and the green uplands that rose from its edge had a softness like dreamland upon their verdure. I know not whether the tearful girl whose head was drooping over the railing felt the sympathy, but I could not help thanking nature for her in my heart, the whole scene was so of the complexion of her own feelings. I could have "thrown my ring in- to the sea," like Policrates Samius, " to have cause for sadness too." The "Winkelreid" has (for a republican ste.amer) rather the aristocratical arrangement of making those who walk aft the funnel pay twice as much as those who choose to promenade forward — for no earthly reason that I can divine, other than that those who I pay dearest have the full benefit of the oily gases from the machinery, while the humbler passenger breathes the air of heaven before it has passed through that improving medium. Our youthful Niobe, two French I ladies not particularly pretty, an Englishman with a fishing-rod and gun, and a coxcomb of a Swiss artist I to whom I had taken a special aversion at Rome, from j a criticism I overheard upon my favorite picture in the Colonna, my friends and myself, were the exclusive inhalers of the oleaginous atmosphere of the stern. I A crowd of the ark's own miscellaneousness thronged j the forecastle — and so you have the programmed' a day on Lake Leman. LETTER CXII. LAKE LEMAN— AMERICAN APPEARANCE OF THE GENE- VESE — STEAMBOAT ON THE RHONE — GIBBON AND ROUS- SEAU — ADVENTURE OF THE LILIES — GENEVESE JEW- ELLERS — RESIDENCE OF VOLTAIRE BTRON's NIGHT- CAP — Voltaire's walking-stick and stockings. The water of Lake Leman looks very like other water, though Byron and Shelley were nearly drowned in it ; and Copet, a little village on the Helvetian side, where we left three women and took up one man (the village ought to be very much obliged to us), is no Paradise, though Madame de Stael made it her resi- dence. There are Paradises, however, with very short distances between, all the way down the northern shore ; and angels in them, if women are angels — a specimen or two of the sex being visible with the aid of the spyglass, in nearly every balcony and belvi- dere, looking upon the water. The taste in country- houses seems to be here very much the same as in New England, and quite unlike the half-palace, half-castle style common in Italy and France. Indeed the dress, physiognomy, and manners of old Geneva might make an American Genevese fancy himself at home on the Leman. There is that subdued decency, that grave respectableness, that black-coated, straight-haired, saint-like kind of look which is universal in the small towns of our country, and which is as unlike France and Italy, as a playhouse is unlike a methodist chap- el. You would know the people of Geneva were Calvinists, whisking through the town merely in a dil- igence. I lost sight of the town of Morges, eating a tete-a- tete breakfast with my friend in the cabin. Switzer- land is the only place out of America where one gets cream for his coffee. I cry Morges mercy on that plea. We were at Lausanne at eleven, having steamed forty miles in five hours. This is not quite up to the ilmty-milers on the Hudson, of which I see ac- 176 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. counts in the papers, but we had the advantage of not being blown up either going or coming, and of look- ing for a continuous minute on a given spot in the scenery. Then we had an iron railing between us and that portion of the passengers who prefer garlic to lavender-water, and we achieved our breakfast without losing our tempers or complexions in a scramble. The question of superiority between Swiss and Amer- ican steamers, therefore, depends very much on the value you set on life, temper, and time. For me, as my time is not measured in " diamond sparks," and as my life and temper are the only gifts with which fortune has blessed me, I prefer the Swiss. Gibbon lived at Lausanne, and wrote here the last chapter of his History of Rome — a circumstance which he records with an affection. It is a spot of no ordinary beauty, and the public promenade, where we sat and looked over to Vevey and Chillon, and the Rocks of Meillerie, and talked of Rousseau, and agreed that it tvas a scene "faite pour une Julie, pour une Claire, et pour un Saint Preux," is one of the pla- ces where, if I were to " play statue," I should like to grow to my seat, and compromise merely for eye- sight. We have one thing against Lausanne, howev- er — it is up hill and a mile from the water; and if Gibbon walked often from Ouchet at noon, and "lard- ed the way" as freely as we, I make myself certain he was not the fat man his biographers have drawn him. There were some other circumstances at Lausanne which interested us — but which criticism has decided can not be obtruded upon the public. We looked about for "Julie" and " Claire," spite of Rousseau's " ne les y cherchez jms," and gave a blind beggar a sous (all he asked) for a handful of lilies-of-the-valley, pitying him ten times more than if he had lost his eyes out of Switzerland. To be blind on Lake Le- man ! blind within sight of Mont Blanc ! We turned back to drop another sous into his hat, as we reflected upon it. The return steamer from Vevey (I was sorry not to go to Vevey for Rousseau's sake, and as much for Cooper's), took us up on its way to Geneva, and we had the advantage of seeing the same scenery in a dif- ferent light. Trees, houses, and mountains, are so much finer seen against the sun, with the deep shad- ows toward you ! Sitting by the stern, was a fat and fair Frenchwo- man, who, like me, had bought lilies, and about as many. With a very natural facility of dramatic po- sition, I imagined it had established a kind of sympa- thy between us, and proposed to myself, somewhere in the fair hours, to make it serve as an introduction. She went into the cabin after a while, to lunch on cut- lets and beer, and returned to the deck without her lilies. Mine lay beside me, within reach of her four fingers ; and as I was making up my mind to offer to replace her loss, she coolly took them up, and without even a French monosyllable, commenced throwing them overboard, stem by stem. It was very clear she had mistaken them for her own. As the last one flew over the tafferel, the gentleman who paid for la bierre et les cottelettes, husband or lover, came up with a smile and a flourish, and reminded her that she had left her bouquet between the mustard and the beer- bottle. Sequitur, a scene. The lady apologized, and I disclaimed ; and the more I insisted on the delight she had given me by throwing my pretty lilies into Lake Leman, the more she made herself unhappy, and insisted on my being inconsolable. One should come abroad to know how much may be said upon throwing overboard a bunch of lilies ! The clouds gathered, and we had some hopes of a storm, but the " darkened Jura" was merely dim, and the "live thunder" waited for another Childe Harold. We were at Geneva at seven, and had the whole pop- ulation to witness our debarkation. The pier where we landed, and the new bridge across the outlet of the Rhone, are the evening promenade. The far-famed jewellers of Geneva are rather an aristocratic class of merchants. They are to be sought in chambers, and their treasures are produced box by box, from locked drawers, and bought, if at all, with- out the pleasure of " beating down." They are, with- al, a gentlemanly class of men ; and, of the principal one, as many stories are told as of Beau Brummel. He has made a fortune by his shop, and has the man- ners of a man who can afford to buy the jewels out of a king's crown. We were sitting at the table d'hote, with about forty people, on the first day of our arrival, when the ser- vant brought us each a gilt-edged note, sealed with an elegant device ; invitations, we presumed, to a ball, at least. Mr. So-and-so (I forget the name), begged pardon for the liberty he had taken, and requested us to call at his shop in the Rue de Rhone, and look at his varied assortment of bijouterie. A card was en- closed, and the letter in courtly English. We went, of course ; as who would not? The cost to him was a sheet of paper, and the trouble of sending to the hotel for a list of the new arrivals. I recommend the system to all callow Yankees, commencing a " push- ing business." Geneva is full of foreigners in the summer, and it has quite the complexion of an agreeable place. The environs are, of course, unequalled, and the town it- self is a stirring and gay capital, full of brilliant shops, handsome streets and promenades, where everything is to be met but pretty women. Female beauty would come to a good market anywhere in Switzerland. We have seen but one pretty girl (our Niobe of the steam- er) since we lost sight of Lombardy. They dress well here, and seem modest, and have withal an air of style, but of some five hundred ladies, whom I may have seen in the valley of the Rhone and about this neighborhood, it would puzzle a modern Apelles to compose an endurable Venus. I understand a fair countrywoman of ours is about taking up her resi- dence in Geneva ; and if Lake Leman does not " woo her," and the " live thunder" leap down from Jura, the jewellers, at least, will crown her queen of the Canton, and give her the tiara at cost. I hope "Maria Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs" will forgive me for having gone to Ferney in an omnibus ! Voltaire lived just under the Jura, on a hill-side, over- looking Geneva and the lake, with a landscape before him in the foreground that a painter could not im- prove, and Mont Blanc and its neighbor mountains, the breaks to his horizon. At six miles off, Geneva looks very beautifully, astride the exit of the Rhone from the lake ; and the lake itself looks more like a broad river, with its edges of verdure and its outer- frame of mountains. We walked up an avenue to a large old villa, embosomed in trees, where an old gar- dener appeared, to show us the grounds. We said the proper thing under the tree planted by the philos- opher, fell in love with the view from twenty points, met an English lady in one of the arbors, the wife of a French nobleman to whom the house belongs, and were bowed into the hall by the old man and handed over to his daughter to be shown the curiosities of the interior. These were Voltaire's rooms, just as he left them. The ridiculous picture of his own apoth- eosis, painted under his own direction, and represent- ing him offering his Henriade to Apollo, with all the authors of his time dying of envy at his feet, occupies the most conspicuous place over his chamber-door. Within was his bed, the curtains nibbled quite bare by relic-gathering travellers; a portrait of the Emper- ess Catherine, embroidered by her own hand, and pre- sented to Voltaire ; his own portrait and Frederick the Great's, and many of the philosophers', including PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 177 Franklin. A little monument stands opposite the fireplace, with the inscription u ?non esprit est partout, et mon cceur est id." It is a snug little dormitory, opening with one window to the west ; and, to those who admire the character of the once illustrious oc- cupant, a place for very tangible musing. They showed us afterward his walking-stick, a pair of silk- stockings he had half worn, and a night-cap. The last article is getting quite fashionable as a relic of ge- nius. They show Byron's at Venice. LETTER CXIII. PRACTICAL BATHOS OF CELEBRATED PLACES — TRAV- ELLING COMPANIONS AT THE SIMPLON — CUSTOM- HOUSE COMFORTS TRIALS OF TEMPER — CONQUERED AT LAST ! — DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF FRANCE, ITALY, AND SWITZERLAND— FORCE OF POLITENESS. Whether it was that I had offended the genius of the spot, by coming in an omnibus, or from a desire I never can resist in such places, to travesty and ridicule the mock solemnity with which they are exhibited, certain it is that I left Ferney, without having encoun- tered, even in the shape of a more serious thought, the spirit of Voltaire. One reads the third canto of Childe Harold in his library, and feels as if "Lau- sanne and Ferney" should be very interesting places to the traveller, and yet when he is shown Gibbon's bow- er by a fellow scratching his head and hitching up his trousers the while, and the nightcap that enclosed the busy brain from which sprang the fifty brilliant tomes on his shelves, by a country-girl, who hurries through her drilled description, with her eye on the silver douceur in his fingers, he is very likely to rub his hand over his eyes, and disclaim, quite honestly, all preten- sions to enthusiasm. And yet, 1 dare say, I shall have a great deal of pleasure in remembering that I have been at Ferney. As an English traveller would say, " I have done Voltaire !" Quite of the opinion that it was not doing justice to Geneva to have made but a three days' stay in it, re- gretting not having seen Sismondi and Simond, and a whole coterie of scholars and authors, whose home it is, and with a mind quite made up to return to Swit- zerland, when my beaux jours of love, money, and leis- ure, shall have arrived, I crossed the Rhone at sunrise, and turned my face toward Paris. The Simplon is much safer travelling than the pass of the Jura. We were all day getting up the moun- tains by roads that would make me anxious if there were a neck in the carriage I would rather should not be broken. My company, fortunately, consisted of three Scotch spinsters, who would try any precipice of the Jura, I think, if there were a lover at the bot- tom. If the horses had backed in the wrong place, it would have been to all three, I am sure, a deliverance from a world in whose volume of happiness " their leaf By some o'er-hasty angel was misplaced." As to my own neck and my friend's, there is a special providence for bachelors, even if they were of impor- tance enough to merit a care. Spinsters and bache- lors, we all arrived safely at Rousses, the entrance to France, and here, if I were to write before repeating the alphabet, you would see what a pen could do in a passion. The carriage was stopped by three custom-house officers, and taken under a shed, where the doors were closed behind it. We were then required to dismount and give our honors that we had nothing new in the way of clothes; no "jewelry; no unused manufac- tures of wool, thread, or lace ; no silks or floss silk ; no polished metals, plated or varnished ; no toys, (ex- 12 cept a heart each); nor leather, glass, or crystal man ufactures." So far, I kept my temper. Our trunks, carpet-bags, hat-boxes, dressing-cases, and portfeuilles, were then dismounted and critically examined — every dress and article unfolded ; shirts, cravats, unmentionables and all, and searched thor- oughly by two ruffians, whose fingers were no im- provement upon the labors of the washerwoman. In an hour's time or so we were allowed to commence re- packing. Still, I kept my temper. We were then requested to walk into a private room, while the ladies, for the same purpose, were taken, by a woman, into another. Here we were requested to unbutton our coats, and, begging pardon for the liber- ty, these courteous gentlemen thrust their hands into our pockets, felt in our bosoms, pantaloons, and shoes, examined our hats, and even eyed our " pet curls" very earnestly, in the expectation of finding us cram- med with Geneva jewelry. Still, I kept my temper. Our trunks were then put upon the carriage, and a sealed string put upon them, which we were not to cut till we arrived in Paris. (Nine days !) They then de- manded to be paid for the sealing, and the fellows who had unladen the carriage were to be paid for their la- bor. This done, we were permitted to drive on. Still. I kept my temper! We arrived, in the evening, at Morez, in a heavy rain. We were sitting around a comfortable fire, and the soup and fish were just brought upon the table. A soldier entered and requested us to walk to the po- lice-office. " But it rains hard, and our dinner is just ready." The man in the mustache was inexorable. The commissary closed his office at eight, and we must go instantly to certify to our passports, and get new ones for the interior. Cloaks and umbrellas were brought, and, bon grc, mal gre, we walked half a mile in the mud and rain to a dirty commissary, who kept us waiting in the dark fifteen minutes, and then, ma- king out a description of the person of each, demand- ed half a dollar for the new passport, and permitted us to wade back to our dinner. This had occupied an hour, and no improvement to soup or fish. Still, I kept my temper — rather ! The next morning, while we were forgetting the annoyances of the previous night, and admiring the new-pranked livery of May by a glorious sunshine, a civil arretez vous brought up the carriage to the door of another custom-house ! The order was to dismount, and down came once more carpet-bags, hat-boxes, and dressing-cases, and a couple of hours were lost again in a fruitless search for contraband articles. When it was all through, and the officers and men paid as be- fore, we were permitted to proceed with the gracious assurance that we should not be troubled again till we got to Paris ! I bade the commissary good morning, felicitated him on the liberal institutions of his coun- try and his zeal in the exercise of his own agreeable vocation, and — I am free to confess — lost my temper! Job and Xantippe's husband! could I help it! I confess I expected better things of France. In Italy, where you come to a new dukedom every half- day, you do not much mind opening your trunks, for they are petty princes and need the pitiful revenue of contraband articles and the officer's fee. Yet even they leave the person of the traveller sacred ; and where in the world, except in France, is a party trav- elling evidently for pleasure subjected twice at the same border to the degrading indignity of a search ! Ye " hunters of Kentucky"— thank heaven that you can go into Tennessee without having your "plunder" overhauled and your pockets searched by successive parties of scoundrels, whom you are to pay "by order of the government" for their trouble ! The Simplon, which you pass in a day, divides two nations, each other's physical and moral antipodes. 178 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. The handsome, picturesque, lazy, unprincipled Ital- ian, is left in the morning in his own dirty and exorbi- tant inn ; and, on the evening of the same day, having crossed but a chain of mountains, you find yourself in a clean auberge, nestled in the bosom of a Swiss valley, another language spoken around you, and in the midst of a people who seem to require the virtues they possess to compensate them for more than their share of uncomeliness. You travel a day or two down the valley of the Rhone, and when you are become reconciled to cretins and goitres, and ill-dressed and worse formed men and women, you pass in another single day the chain of the Jura, and find yourself in France — a country as different from both Switzerland and Italy as they are from each other. How is it that these diminutive cantons preserve so completely their nationality ? It seems a problem to the traveller who passes from one to the other without leaving his car- riage. One is compelled to like France in spite of himself. You are no sooner over the Jura than you are enslav- ed, past all possible ill-humor, by the universal polite- ness. You stop for the night at a place, which, as my friend remarked, resembles an inn only in its in- attention, and after a bad supper, worse beds, and every kind of annoyance, down comes my lady-hostess in the morning to receive her coin, and if you can fly into a passion with such a cap, and such a smile, and such a " bon jour,' 1 ' 1 you are of less penetrable stuff than man is commonly made of. I loved Italy, but detested the Italians. I detest France, but I can not help liking the French. " Po- liteness is among the virtues," says the philosopher. Rather, it takes the place of them all. What can you believe ill of a people whose slightest look toward you is made up of grace and kindness. We are dawdling along thirty miles a day through Burgundy, sick to death of the bare vine-stakes, and longing to see a festooned vineyard of Lombardy. France is such an ugly country ! The diligences lumber by, noisy and ludicrous ; the cow-tenders wear cocked hats ; the beggars are in the true French ex- treme, theatrical in all their misery; the climate is rainy and cold, and as unlike that of Italy as if a thousand leagues separated them, and the roads are long, straight, dirty, and uneven. There is neither pleasure nor comfort, neither scenery nor antiquities, nor accommodations for the weary — nothing but po- liteness. And it is odd how it reconciles you to it all. LETTER CXIV. ARIS AND LONDON — REASONS FOR LIKING PARIS — JOY- OtJSNESS OF ITS CITIZENS — LAFAYETTE'S FUNERAL ROYAL RESPECT AND GRATITUDE — ENGLAND — DOVER — ENGLISH NEATNESS AND COMFORT, AS DISPLAYED IN THE HOTELS, WAITERS, FIRES, BELL-ROPES, LAND- SCAPES, WINDOW-CURTAINS, TEA-KETTLES, STAGE- COACHES, HORSES, AND EVERYTHING ELSE — SPECIMEN OF ENGLISH RESERVE THE GENTLEMAN DRIVER OF FASHION A CASE FOR MRS. TROLLOPE. It is pleasani to get back to Paris. One meets ev- erybody there one ever saw ; and operas and coffee, Taglioni and Leontine Fay, the belles and the Boule- vards, the shops, spectacles, life, lions, and lures to every species of pleasure, rather give you the impres- sion that, outside the barriers of Paris, time is wasted in travel. What pleasant idlers they look ! The very shop- keepers seem standing behind their counters for amusement. The soubrette who sells you a cigar, or ties a crape on your arm (it was for poor old Lafayette), is coiffed as for a ball ; the frotteur who takes the dust from your boots, sings his lovesong as he brushes away, the old man has his bouquet in his bosom, and the beggar looks up at the new statue of Napoleon in the Place Vendome — everybody has some touch of fancy, some trace of a heart on the look-out, at least, for pleasure. I was at Lafayette's funeral. They buried the old patriot like a criminal. Fixed bayonets before and behind his hearse, his own National Guard disarmed, and troops enough to beleaguer a city, were the hon- ors paid by the " citizen king" to the man who had made him ! The indignation, the scorn, the bitter- ness, expressed on every side among the people, and the ill-smothered cries of disgust as the two empty royal carriages went by, in the funeral train, seemed to me strong enough to indicate a settled and univer- sal hostility to the government. I met Dr. Bowring on the Boulevard after the fu- neral was over. I had not seen him for two years, but he could talk of nothing but the great event of the day — " You have come in time," he said, " to see how they carried the old general to his grave ! What would they say to this in America ? Well — let them go on ! We shall see what will come of it ! They have buried Liberty and Lafayette together — our last hope in Europe is quite dead with him !" After three delightful days in Paris we took the northern diligence ; and, on the second evening, hav- ing passed hastily through Montreuil, Abbeville, Bou- logne, and voted the road the dullest couple of hun- dred miles we had seen in our travels, we were set down in Calais. A stroll through some very indiffer- ent streets, a farewell visit to the last French cafe we were likely to see for a long time, and some unsatis- factory inquiries about Beau Brummel, who is said to live here still, filled up till bedtime our last day on the continent. The celebrated Countess of Jersey was on board the steamer, and some forty or fifty plebeian stomachs shared with her fashionable ladyship and ourselves the horrors of a passage across the channel. It is rather the most disagreeble sea I ever traversed, though I have seen "the Euxine," " the roughest sea the trav- eller e'er s in," etc., according to Don Juan. I was lying on my back in a berth when the steamer reached her moorings at Dover, and had neither eyes nor disposition to indulge in the proper sentiment on approaching the " white cliffs" of my fatherland. I crawled on deck, and was met by a wind as cold as December, and a crowd of rosy English faces on the pier, wrapped in cloaks and shawls, and indulging cu- riosity evidently at the expense of a shiver. It was the first of June ! My companion led the way to a hotel, and we were introduced by English waiters (I had not seen such a thing in three years, and it was quite like being wait- ed on by gentlemen), to two blazing coal fires in the " coffee-room" of the " Ship." Oh what a comfort- able place it appeared ! A rich Turkey carpet snug- ly fitted, nice-rubbed mahogany tables, the morning papers from London, bellropes that would ring the bell, doors that would shut, a landlady that spoke Eng- lish, and was kind and civil ; and, though there were eight or ten people in the room, no noise above the rustle of a newspaper, and positively, rich red damask curtains, neither second-hand nor shabby, to the win- dows ! A greater contrast than this to the things that answer to them on the continent, could scarcely be imagined. Malgre all my observations on the English, whom I have found everywhere the most open-hearted and social people in the world, they are said by themselves and others to be just the contrary ; and, presuming they were different in England, I had made up my mind to seal my lips in all public places, and be con- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 17£ scious of nobody's existence but my own. There were several elderly persons dining at the different ta- bles ; and one party, of a father and son, waited on by their own servants in livery. Candles were brought in, the different cloths were removed; and, as my com- panion had gone to bed, I took up a newspaper to keep me company over my wine. In the course of an hour, some remark had been addressed to me, provo- cative of conversation, by almost every individual in the room ! The subjects of discussion soon became general, and I have seldom passed a more social and agreeable evening. And so much for the first speci- men of English reserve! The fires were burning brilliantly, and the coffee- room was in the nicest order when we descended to our breakfast at six the next morning. The tea-kettle sung on the hearth, the toast was hot, and done to a turn, and the waiter was neither sleepy nor uncivil — all, again, very unlike a morning at a hotel in la belle France. The coach rattled up to the door punctually at the hour ; and, while they were putting on my way-worn baggage, 1 stood looking in admiration at the carriage and horses. They were four beautiful bays, in small, neat harness of glazed leather, brass-mounted, their coats shining like a racer's, their small, blood-looking heads curbed up to stand exactly together, and their hoofs blacked and brushed with the polish of a gentle- man's boots. The coach was gaudily painted, the only thing out of taste about it ; but it was admirably built, the wheel-horses were quite under the coach-man's box, and the whole affair, though it would carry twelve or fourteen people, covered less ground than a French one-horse cabriolet. It was altogether quite a study. We mounted to the top of the coach ; " all right," said the ostler, and away shot the four fine creatures, turning their small ears, and stepping together with the ease of a cat, at ten miles in the hour. The dri- ver was dressed like a Broadway idler, and sat in his place, and held his " ribands" and his tandemwhip with a confident air of superiority, as if he were quite convinced that he and his team were beyond criticism — and so they were ! I could not but smile at con- Hasting his silence and the speed and ease with which we went along, with the clumsy, cumbrous diligence or vetturino, and the crying, whipping, cursing and ill-appointed postillions of France and Italy. It seems odd, in a two hours' passage, to pass over such strong lines of national difference — so near, and not even a shading of one into the other. England is described always very justly, and always in the same words : " it is all one garden." There is not a cottage between Dover and London (seventy miles), where a poet might not be happy to live. I saw a hundred little spots I coveted with quite a heart- ache. There was no poverty on the road. Every- body seemed employed, and everybody well-made and healthy. The relief from the deformity and disease of the way-side beggars of the continent was very striking. We were at Canterbury before I had time to get ac- customed to my seat. The horses had been changed twice ; the coach, it seemed to me, hardly stopping while it was done ; way-passengers were taken up and put down, with their baggage, without a word, and in half a minute; money was tossed to the keeper of the turnpike gate as we dashed through ; the wheels went over the smooth road without noise, and with scarce a sense of motion — it was the perfection of travel. The new driver from Canterbury rather astonished me. He drove into London every day, and was more of a " swell:' 1 He owned the first team himself, four blood horses of great beauty, and it was a sight to see him drive them ! His language was free from all slang, and very gentlemanlike and well chosen, and he dis- cussed everything. He found out that I was an Amer- ican, and said we did not think enough of the memo- ry of Washington. Leaving his bones in the miser- able brick tomb, of which he had read descriptions, was not, in his opinion, worthy of a country like mine. He went on to criticise Julia Grisi (the new singer just then setting London on fire), hummed airs from " II Pirata," to show her manner; sang an English song like Braham ; gave a decayed count, who sat on the box, some very sensible advice about the management of a wild son ; drew a comparison between French and Italian women (he had travelled) ; told us who the old count was in very tolerable French, and preferred Edmund Kean and Fanny Kemble to all actors in the world. His taste and his philosophy, like his driving, were quite unexceptionable. He was, withal, very handsome, and had the easy and respectful manners of a well-bred person. It seemed very odd to give him a shilling at the end of the journey. At Chatham we took up a very elegantly dressed young man, who had come down on a fishing excur- sion. He was in the army, and an Irishman. We had not been half an hour on the seat together, before he had discovered, by so many plain questions, that I was an American, a stranger in England, and an acquaint- ance of a whole regiment of his friends in Malta and Corfu. If this had been a Yankee, thought I, what a chapter it would have made for Basil Hall or Mad- ame Trollope ! With all his inquisitiveness I liked my companion, and half-accepted his offer to drive me down to Epsom the next day to the races. I know no American who would have beaten that on a stage- coach acquaintance. LETTER CXV. FIRST VIEW OF LONDON — THE KING'S BIRTH-DAY — PROCESSION OF MAIL-COACHES — REGENT STREET LADY BLESSINGTON — THE ORIGINAL PELHAM BUL- WER, THE NOVELIST — JOHN GALT — D'lSRAELI, THE AUTHOR OF VIVIAN GREY — RECOLLECTIONS OF BY- RON — INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN OPINIONS ON ENG- LISH LITERATURE. London. — From the top of Shooter's Hill we got our first view of London — an indistinct, architectural mass, extending all round to the horizon, and half en- veloped in a dim and lurid smoke. " That is St. Paul's ! — there is Westminster Abbey ! — there is the Tower of London!" What directions were these to follow for the first time with the eye! From Blackheath (seven or eight miles from the centre of London), the beautiful hedges disappeared, and it was one continued mass of buildings. The houses were amazingly small, a kind of thing that would -do for an object in an imitation perspective park, but the soul of neatness pervaded them. Trellises were nailed between the little windows, roses quite overshadowed the low doors, a painted fence enclosed the hand's breadth of grass-plot, and very, oh, very sweet faces bent over lapfuls of work beneath the snowy and looped -up curtains. It was all home-like and amiable. There was an affectionatencss in the mere outside of every one of them. After crossing Waterloo Bridge, it was busy work for the eyes. The brilliant shops, the dense crowds of people, the absorbed air of every passenger, the lovely women, the cries, the flying vehicles of every description, passing with the most dangerous speed — accustomed as I am to large cities, it quite made me dizzy. We got into a "jarvey" at the coach-office, and in half an hour I was in comfortable quarters, with windows looking down St. James street, and the most agreeable leaf of my life to turn over. " Great emotions interfere little with the mechanical operations 180 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. of life," however, and I dressed and dined, though it was my first hour in London. I was sitting in the little parlor alone over a fried sole and a mutton cutlet, when the waiter came in, and pleading the crowded state of the hotel, asked my permission to spread the other side of the table for a clergyman. I have a kindly preference for the cloth, and made not the slightest objection. Enter a fat man, with top-boots and a hunting-whip, rosy as Bac- chus, and excessively out of breath with mounting one flight of stairs. Beefsteak and potatoes, a pot of porter, and a bottle of sherry followed close on his heels. With a single apology for the intrusion, the reverend gentleman fell to, and we ate and drank for a while in true English silence. " From Oxford, sir, I presume," he said at last, pushing back bis plate, with an air of satisfaction. " No, I had never the pleasure of seeing Oxford." "R — e — ally ! may I take a glass of wine with you, sir?" We got on swimmingly. He would not believe I had never been in England till the day before, but his cordiality was no colder for that. We exchanged port and sherry, and a most amicable understanding found its way down with the wine. Our table was near the window, and a great crowd began to collect at the cor- ner of St. James' street. It was the king's birth-day, and the people were thronging to seethe nobility come in state from the royal levee. The show was less splendid than the same thing in Rome or Vienna, but it excited far more of my admiration. Gaudiness and tinsel were exchanged for plain richness and perfect fitness in the carriages and harness, while the horses were incomparably finer. My friend pointed out to me the different liveries as they turned the corner into Piccadilly, the duke of Wellington's among others. I looked hard to see his grace ; but the two pale and beautiful faces on the back seat, carried nothing like the military nose on the handles of the umbrellas. The annual procession of mail-coaches followed, and it was hardly less brilliant. The drivers and guard in their bright red and gold uniforms, the admi- rable horses driven so beautifully, the neat harness, the exactness with which the room of each horse was calculated, and the small space in which he worked, and the compactness and contrivance of the coaches, formed altogether one of the most interesting specta- cles I have ever seen. My friend, the clergyman, with whom I had walked out to see them pass, criticised the different teams con amore, but in language which I did not always understand. I asked him once for an explanation ; but he looked rather grave, and said something about " gammon," evidently quite sure that my ignorance of London was a mere quiz. We walked down Piccadilly, and turned into, be- yond all comparison, the most handsome street I ever saw. The Toledo of Naples, the Corso of Rome, the Kohl-market of Vienna, the Rue de la Paix and Bou- levards of Paris, have each impressed me strongly with their magnificence, but they are really nothing to Regent-street. I had merely time to get a glance at it before dark ; but for breadth and convenience, for the elegance and variety of the buildings, though all of the same scale and material, and for the brilliancy and expensiveness of the shops, it seemed to me quite absurd to compare it with anything between New York and Constantinople — Broadway and the Hippo- drome included. It is the custom for the king's tradesmen to illumi- nate their shops on his majesty's birth-night, and the principal streets on our return were in ablaze of light. The crowd was immense. None but the lower order seemed abroad, and I can not describe to you the effect on my feelings on hearing my language spoken by every man, woman, and child, about me. It seemed a completely foreign country in every other respect, dif- ferent from what I had imagined, different from my own and all that I had seen, and coming to it last, it seemed to me the farthest off and strangest country of all — and yet the little sweep, who went laughing through the crowd, spoke a language that 1 had heard attempted in vain by thousands of educated people, and that I had grown to consider next to unattainable by others, and almost useless to myself. Still, it did not make me feel at home. Everything else about me was too new. It was like some mysterious change in my own ears — a sudden power of comprehension, such as a man might feel who was cured suddenly of deafness. You can scarcely enter into my feelings till you have had the changes of French, Italian, Ger- man, Greek, Turkish, Illyrian, and the mixtures and dialects of each, rung upon your hearing almost ex- clusively, as I have for years. I wandered about as if I were exercising some supernatural faculty in a dream. A friend in Italy had kindly given me a letter to Lady Blessington, and with a strong curiosity to see this celebrated lady, I called on the second day after my arrival in London. It was " deep i' the after- noon," but I had not yet learned the full meaning of " town hours." " Her ladyship had not come down to breakfast." I gave the letter and my address to the powdered footman, and had scarce reached home when a note arrived inviting me to call the same evening at ten. In a long library lined alternately with splendidly bound books and mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room, opening upon Hyde Park, 1 found Lady Blessington alone. The picture to my eye as the door opened was a very lovely one. A wo- man of remarkable beauty half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp, suspend- ed from the centre of the arched ceiling ; sofas, couches, ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room ; enamel tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every corner, and a delicate white hand relieved on the back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of its diamond rings. As the servant mentioned my name, she rose and gave me her hand very cor- dially, and a gentleman entering immediately after, she presented me to her son-in-law, Count D'Orsay, the well known Pelham of London, and certainly the most splendid specimen of a man and a well-dressed one that I had ever seen. Tea was brought in imme- diately, and conversation went swimmingly on. Her ladyship's inquiries were principally about America, of which, from long absence I knew very little. She was extremely curious to know the de- grees of reputation the present popular authors of England enjoy among us, particularly Bulwer, Gait, and D'lsraeli (the author of Vivian Grey). " If you will come to-morrow night," she said, "you will see Bulwer. I am delighted that he is popular in Ameri- ca. He is envied and abused by all the literary men of London, for nothing, I believe, except that he gets five hundred pounds for his books and they fifty, and knowing this, he chooses to assume a pride (some people call it puppyism), which is only the armor of a sensitive mind, afraid of a wound. He is to his friends the most frank and gay creature in the world, and open to boyishness with those who he thinks under- stand and value him. He has a brother, Henry, who is as clever as himself in a different vein, and is just now publishing a book on the present state of France. Bulwer's wife, you know, is one of the most beautiful women in London, and his house is the resort of both fashion and talent. He is just now hard at work on a new book, the subject of which is the last days of Pompeii. The hero is a Roman dandy, who wastes himself in luxury, till this great catastrophe rouses him and develops a character of the noblest capabili- ties. Is Gait much liked ?" PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 181 t answered to the best of my knowledge that he was not. His life of Byron was a stab at the dead body of the noble poet, which, for one, I never could forgive, and his books were clever, but vulgar. He was evidently not a gentleman in his mind. This was the opinion I had formed in America, and I had never heard another. <• . . t " I am sorry for it," said Lady B., "for he is the dearest and best old man in the world. I know him well. He is just on the verge of the grave, but comes to see me now and then, and if you had known how shockingly Byron treated him, you would only won- der at his sparing his memory so much." " Nil morluis~nisi bonum" I thought would have been a better course. If he had reason to dislike him, he had better not have written since he was dead. " Perhaps — perhaps. But Gait has been all his life miserably poor, and lived by his books. That must be his apology. Do you know the D'Israeli's in America ?" I assured her ladyship that the " Curiosities of Lit- erature," by the father, and " Vivian Grey and Con- tarini Fleming," by the son, were universally known. " I am pleased at that, too, for I like them both. D'Israeli the elder, came here with his son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him. He is very fond of him, and as he was going away, he patted him on the head, and said to me, " take care of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but he wants ballast. 1 1 am glad he has the honor to know you, for you will check him sometimes when I am away !" D'Israeli, j the elder, lives in the country, about twenty miles j from town, and seldom comes up to London. He is a very plain old man in his manners, as plain as his son is the reverse. D'Israeli, the younger, is quite his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with tal- ent, but very soigyit of his curls, and a bit of a cox- comb. There is no reverse about him, however, and he is the only joyous dandy I ever saw." I asked if the account I had seen in some American paper of a literary celebration at Canandaigua, and the engraving of her ladyship's name with some others upon a rock, was not a quiz. "Oh, by no means. I was equally flattered and amused by the whole affair. I have a great idea of taking a trip to America to see it. Then the letter, commencing ' Most charming countess — for charm- ing you must be since you have written the conversa- tions of Lord Byron' — oh, it was quite delightful. I have shown it to everybody. By the way, I receive a great many letters from America, from people I never heard of, written in the most extraordinary style of compliment, apparently in perfectly good faith. I hardly know what to make of them." I accounted for it by the perfect seclusion in which great numbers of cultivated people live in our coun- try, who, having neither intrigue, nor fashion, nor twenty other things to occupy their minds as in Eng- land, depend entirely upon books, and consider an author who has given them pleasure as a friend. America, I said, has probably more literary enthusiasts than any country in the world ; and there are thou- sands of romantic minds in the interior of New Eng- land, who know perfectly every writer this side the water, and hold them all in affectionate veneration, scarcely conceivable by a sophisticated European. If it were not for such readers, literature would be the most thankless of vocations. I, for one, would never write another line. " And do you think these are the people who write to me? If I could think so, I should be exceedingly happy. People in England are refined down to such heartlessness — criticism, private and public, is so in- terested and so cold, that it is really delightful to know there is a more generous tribunal. Tndeed I think all our authors now are beginning to write for America. We think already a great deal of your praise or censure." I asked if her ladyship had known manv Amer icans. "Not in London, but a great many abroad. I was with Lord Blessington in his yacht at Naples, when the American fleet was lying there, eight or ten years ago, and we were constantly on board your ships. I knew Commodore Creighton and Captain Deacon ex- tremely well, and liked them particularly. They were with us, either on board the yacht or the frigate every evening, and I remember very well the bands playing always ' God save the King' as we went up the side. Count D'Orsay here, who spoke very little English at that time, had a great passion for Yankee Doodle, and it was always played at his request." The count, who still speaks the language with a very slight accent, but with a choice of words that shows him to be a man of uncommon tact and ele- gance of mind, inquired after several of the officers, whom I have not the pleasure of knowing. He seem- ed to remember his visits to the frigate with great pleasure. The conversation, after running upon a va- riety of topics, which I could not with propriety put into a letter for the public eye, turned very naturally upon Byron. I had frequently seen the Countess Guiccioli on the continent, and I asked Lady Blessing- ton if she knew her. " No. We were at Pisa when they were living to- gether, but though Lord Blessington had the greatest curiosity to see her, Byron would never permit it. « She has a red head of her own,' said he, ' and don't like to show it.' Byron treated the poor creature dreadfully ill. She feared more than she loved him." She had told me the same thing herself in Italy. It would be impossible, of course, to make a full and fair record of a conversation of some hours. I have only noted one or two topics which I thought most likely to interest an American reader. During all this long visit, however, my eyes were very busy in finishing for memory a portrait of the celebrated and beautiful woman before me. The portrait of Lady Blessington in the Book of Beauty is not unlike her, but it is still an unfavorable likeness. A picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence hung opposite me, taken, perhaps, at the age of eighteen, which is more like her, and as captivating a represent- ation of a just matured woman, full of loveliness and love, the kind of creature with whose divine sweet- ness the gazer's heart aches, as ever was drawn in the painter's most inspired hour. The original is now (she confessed it very frankly) forty. She looks something on the sunny side of thirty. Her person is full, but preserves all the fineness of an admirable shape ; her foot is not crowded in a satin slipper, for which a Cinderella might long be looked for in vain, and her complexion (an unusually fair skin, with very dark hair and eyebrows), is of even a girlish delicacy and freshness. Her dress of blue satin (if I am de- scribing her like a milliner, it is because I have here and there a reader of the Mirror in my eye who will be amused by it), was cut low and folded across her bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round and sculpture-like curve and whiteness of a pair of ex- quisite shoulders, while her hair dressed close to her head, and parted simply on her forehead with a rich fcrronier of turquoise, enveloped in clear outline a head with which it would be difficult to find a fault. Her features are regular, and her mouth, the most ex- pressive of them, has a ripe fulness and freedom of play, peculiar to the Irish physiognomy, and expres- sive of the most unsuspicious good humor. Add to all this a voice merry and sad by turns, but always mu- sical, and manners of the most unpretending elegance, yet even more remaikable for their winning kindaess, 182 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. and you have the most prominent traits of one of the most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen. Remembering her talents and her rank, and the un- envying admiration she receives from the world of fashion and genius, it would be difficult to reconcile her lot to the "doctrine of compensation." There is one remark I may as well make here, with regard to the personal descriptions and anecdotes with which my letters from England will of course be fill- ed. It is quite a different thing from publishing such letters in London. America is much farther off from England than England from America. You in New York read the periodicals of this country, and know everything that is done or written here, as if you lived within the sound of Bow-bell. The English, how- ever, just know of our existence, and if they get a general idea twice a year of our progress in politics, they are comparatively well informed. Our periodi- cal literature is never even heard of. Of course, there can be no offence to the individuals themselves in anything which a visiter could write, calculated to convey an idea of the person or manners of distin- guished people to the American public. I mention it lest, at first thought, I might seem to have abused the hospitality or frankness of those on whom letters of introduction have given me claims for civility. LETTER CXVL THE LITERATI OF LONDON. Spent my first day in London in wandering about the finest part of the West End. It is nonsense to compare it to any other city in the world. From the Horse-Guards to the Regent's Park alone, there is more magnificence in architecture than in the whole of any other metropolis in Europe, and I have seen the most and the best of them. Yet this, though a walk of more than two miles, is but a small part even of the fashionable extremity of London. I am not easily tired in a city ; but I walked till I could scarce lift my feet from the ground, and still the parks and noble streets extended before and around me as far as the eye could reach, and strange as they were in real- ity, the names were as familiar to me as if my child- hood had been passed among them. " Bond Street," " Grosvenor Square," " Hyde Park," look new to my eye, but they sound very familiar to my ear. The equipages of London are much talked of, but they exceed even description. Nothing could be more perfect, or apparently more simple than the gentle- man's carriage that passes you in the street. Of a modest color, but the finest material, the crest just vis- ible on the panels, the balance of the body upon its springs true and easy, the hammercloth and liveries of the neatest and most harmonious colors, the harness slight and elegant, and the horses " the only splendid thing" in the establishment — is a description that an- swers the most of them. Perhaps the most perfect thing in the world, however, is a St. James's-street stanhope or cabriolet, with its dandy owner on the whip-seat, and the " tiger" beside him. The attitudes of both the gentleman and the " gentleman's gentle- man" are studied to a point, but nothing could be more knowing or exquisite than either. The whole affair, from the angle of the bell-crowned hat (the prevailing fashion on the steps of Crockford's at pres- ent), to the blood legs of the thorough-bred creature in harness, is absolutely faultless. I have seen many subjects for study in my first day's stroll, but I leave the men and women and some other less important fea- tures of London for maturer observation. In the evening I kept my appointment with Lady Blessington. She had deserted her exquisite library for the drawing-room, and sat, in fuller dress, with six or seven gentlemen about her. I was presented im- mediately to all, and when the conversation was re- sumed, 1 took the opportunity to remark the distin- guished coterie with which she was surrounded. Nearest me sat Smith, the author of " Rejected Ad- dresses" — a hale, handsome man, apparently fifty, with white hair, and a very nobly-formed head and physiognomy. His eye alone, small and with lids contracted into an habitual look of drollery, betrayed the bent of his genius. He held a cripple's crutch in his hand, and though otherwise rather particularly well dressed, wore a pair of large Indiarubber shoes — the penalty he was paying doubtless for the many good dinners he had eaten. He played rather an aside in the conversation, whipping in with a quiz or a witticism whenever he could get an opportunity, but more a lis- tener than a talker. On the opposite side of Lady B. stood Henry Bul- wer, the brother of the novelist, very earnestly en- gaged in a discussion of some speech of O'Connell's. He is said by many to be as talented as his brother, and has lately published a book on the present state of France. He is a small man, very slight and gen- tleman-like, a little pitted with the smallpox, and of very winning and persuasive manners. I liked him at the first glance. His opponent in the argument was Fonblanc, the famous editor of the Examiner, said to be the best political writer of his day. I never saw a much worse face — sallow, seamed, and hollow, his teeth irregular, his skin livid, his straight black hair uncombed and straggling over his forehead — he looked as if he might be the gentleman Whose " coat was red, and whose breeches were blue." A hollow, croaking voice, and a small, fiery black eye, with a smile like a skeleton's, certainly did not improve his physiognomy. He sat upon his chair very awk- wardly, and was very ill-dressed, but every word he uttered showed him to be a man of claims very su- perior to exterior attraction. The soft musical voice, and elegant manner of the one, and the satirical sneer- ing tone and angular gesture of the other, were in very strong contrast. A German prince, with a star on his breast, trying with all his might, but, from his embarrassed look, quite unsuccessfully, to comprehend the drift of the argument, the Duke de Richelieu, whom I had seen at the court of France, the inheritor of nothing but the name of his great ancestor, a dandy and a fool, making no attempt to listen ; a famous traveller just returned from Constantinople ; and the splendid per- son of Count D'Orsay in a careless attitude upon the ottoman, completed the cordon. I fell into conversation after a while with Smith, who, supposing I might not have heard the names of the others, in the hurry of an introduction, kindly took the trouble to play the dictionary, and added a graphic character of each as he named him. Among other things he talked a great deal of America, and asked me if I knew our distinguished coun- tryman, Washington Irving. I had never been so fortunate as to meet him. " You have lost a great deal," he said, "for never was so delightful a fellow. I was once taken down with him into the country by a merchant, to dinner. Our friend stopped his carriage at the gate of his park, and asked us if we would walk through his grounds to the house. Irving refused and held me down by the coat, so that we drove on to the house together, leaving our host to follow on foot. ' 1 make it a principle,' said Irving, ' never to walk with a man through his own grounds. I have no idea of praising a thing whether I like it or not. You and 1 will do them to-morrow morning by ourselves.' " The PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 183 rest of the company had turned their attention to Smith as he began his story, and there was a univer- sal inquiry after Mr. Irving. Indeed the first ques- tions on the lips of every one to whom I am intro- duced as an American, are of him and Cooper. The latter seems to me to be admired as much here as abroad, in spite of a common impression that he dis- likes the nation. No man's works could have higher praise in the general conversation that followed, though several instances were mentioned of his having shown an unconquerable aversion to the English when in Eng- land. Lady Blessington mentioned Mr. Bryant, and I was pleased at the immediate tribute paid to his de- lightful poetry by the talented circle around her. Toward twelve o'clock, " Mr. Lytton Bulwer" was announced, and enter the author of Pelham. I had made up my mind how he should look, and between prints and descriptions thought I could scarcely be mistaken in my idea of his person. No two things could be more unlike, however than the ideal Mr. Bulwer in my mind and the real Mr. Bulwer who fol- lowed the announcement. Imprimis, the gentleman who entered was not handsome. I beg pardon of the boarding-schools — but he really was not. The engra- ving of him published some time ago in America is as much like any other man living, and gives you no idea of his head whatever. He is short, very much bent in the back, slightly knock-kneed, and, if my opinion in such matters goes for anything, as ill-dressed a man for a gentleman, as you will find in London. His fig- ure is slight and very badly put together, and the only commendable point in his person, as far as I could see, was the smallest foot I ever saw a man stand up- on. Au teste, I liked his manners extremely. He ran up to Lady Blessington, with the joyous heartiness of a boy let out of school ; and the " how d'ye, Bul- v,er!" went round, as he shook hands with everybody, in the style of welcome usually given to "the best fel- low in the world." As I had brought a letter of in- troduction to him from a friend in Italy, Lady Bles- sington introduced me particularly, and we had a long conversation about Naples and its pleasant society. Bulwer's head is phrenologically a fine one. His forehead retreats very much, but is very broad and well marked, and the whole air is that of decided men- tal superiority. His nose is aquiline, and far too large for proportion, though he conceals its extreme prom- inence by an immense pair of red whiskers, which en- tirely conceal the lower part of his face in profile. His complexion is fair, his hair profuse, curly, and of a light auburn, his eye not remarkable, and his mouth contradictory, I should think, of all talent. A more good-natured, habitually-smiling, nerveless expression could hardly be imagined. Perhaps my impression is an imperfect one, as he was in the highest spirits, and was not serious the whole evening for a minute — but it is strictly and faithfully my impression. I can imagine no style of conversation calculated to be more agreeable than Bulwer's. Gay, quick, va- rious, half-satirical, and always fresh and different from everybody else, he seemed to talk because he could not help it, and infected everybody with his spirits. I can not give even the substance of it in a letter, for it was in a great measure local or personal. A great deal of fun was made of a proposal by Lady Blessing- ton, to take Bulwer to America and show him at so much a head. She asked me whether I thought it would be a good speculation. I took upon myself to assure her ladyship, that, provided she played showman, the "concern," as they would phrase it in America, would be certainly a profitable one. Bulwer said he would rather go in disguise and hear them abuse his books. It would be pleasant, he thought, to hear the opinions of people who judged him neither as a mem- ber of parliament nor a dandy — simply a book-maker. Smith asked him if he kept an amanuensis. " No," he said, " I scribble it all out myself, and send it to the press in a most ungentlemanlike hand, half print and half hieroglyphic, with all its imperfections on its head, and correct in the proof— very much to the dis- satisfaction of the publisher, who sends me in a bill of sixteen pounds six shillings and fourpence for extra corrections. Then I am free to confess I don't know grammar. Lady Blessington, do you know grammar? I detest grammar. There never was such a thing heard of before Lindley Murray. I wonder what they did for grammar before his day ! Oh, the delicious blunders one sees when they are irretrievable ! And the best of it is, the critics never get hold of them. Thank Heaven for second editions, that one may scratch out his blots, and go down clean and gentleman-like to posterity !" Smith asked him if he had ever re- viewed one of his own books. " No — but I could ! And then how I should like to recriminate and defend myself indignantly ! I think I could be preciously severe. Depend upon it nobody knows a book's de- fects half so well as its author. I have a great idea of criticising my works for my posthumous memoirs. Shall I, Smith ? Shall I, Lady Blessington ?" Bulwer's voice, like his brother's, is exceedingly lover-like and sweet. His playful tones are quite de- licious, and his clear laugh is the soul of sincere and careless merriment. It is quite impossible to convey in a letter scrawled literally between the end of a late visit and a tempting pillow, the evanescent and pure spirit of a conversa- tion of wits. I must confine myself, of course, in such sketches, to the mere sentiment of things that con- cern general literature and ourselves. " The Rejected Addresses" got upon his crutches about three o'clock in the morning, and I made my exit with the rest, thanking Heaven, that, though in a strange country, my mother-tongue was the language of its men of genius. LETTER CXVII. LONDON— VISIT TO A RACE-COURSE — GIPSIES — THE PRIN- CESS VICTORIA SPLENDID APPEARANCE OF THE ENG LISH NOBILITY A BREAKFAST WITH ELIA AN1 BRIDGET ELIA MYSTIFICATION— CHARLES LAMB'S OPINION OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. I have just returned from Ascot races. Ascot Heath, on which the course is laid out, is a high plat- form of land, beautifully situated on a hill above Windsor Castle, about twenty-five miles from Lon- don. I went down with a party of gentlemen in the morning and returned at evening, doing the distance with relays of horses in something less than three hours. This, one would think, is very fair speed, but we were passed continually by the " bloods" of the road, in comparison with whom we seemed getting on rather at a snail's pace. The scenery on the way was truly English — one series of finished landscapes, of every variety of combination. Lawns, fancy-cottages, manor-houses, groves, roses and flower-gardens, make up England. It surfeits the eye at last. You could not drop a poet out of the clouds upon any part of it I have seen, where, within five minutes' walk, he would not find himself in Paradise. We flew past Virginia Water and through the sun- flecked shades of Windsor Park, with the speed of the wind. On reaching the Heath, we dashed out of the road, and cutting through fern and brier, our experi- enced whip put his wheels on the rim of the course, as near the stands as some thousands of carriage* 184 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. arrived before us would permit, and then, caution- ing us to take the bearings of our position, least we should lose him after the race, he took off his horses, and left us to choose our own places. A thousand red and yellow flags were flying from as many snowy tents in the midst of the green heath ; ballad-signers and bands of music were amusing their little audiences in every direction ; splendid markees covering gambling-tables, surrounded the winning- post ; groups of country people were busy in every bush, eating and singing, and the great stands were piled with row upon row of human heads waiting anxiously for the exhilarating contest. Soon after we arrived, the king and royal family drove up the course with twenty carriages, and scores of postillions and outriders in red and gold, flying over the turf as majesty flies in no other country ; and, immediately after, the bell rang to clear the course for the race. Such horses ! The earth seemed to fling them off as they touched it. The lean jockeys, in their party-colored caps and jackets, rode the fine- limbed, slender creatures up and down together, and then returning to the starting-post, off they shot like so many arrows from the bow. Whiz! you could tell neither color nor shape as they passed across the eye. Their swiftness was in- credible. A horse of Lord Chesterfield's was rather the favorite; and for the sake of his great-grand- father, I had backed him with my small wager. " Glaucus is losing," said some one on the top of a carriage above me, but round they swept again, and I could just see that one glorious creature was doubling the leaps of every other horse, and in a moment Glaucus and Lord Chesterfield had won. The course between the races is a promenade of some thousands of the best-dressed people in Eng- land, I thought I had never seen so many handsome men and women, but particularly men. The nobility of this country, unlike every other, is by far the man- liest and finest looking class of its population. The contadini of Rome, the lazzaroni of Naples, the pay- sans of France, are incomparably more handsome than their superiors in rank, but it is strikingly differ- ent here. A set of more elegant and well-propor- tioned men than those pointed out to me by my friends as the noblemen on the course, I never saw, except only in Greece. The Albanians are seraphs to look at. Excitement is hungry, and after the first race our party produced their baskets and bottles, and spread- ing out the cold pie and champaign upon the grass, between the wheels of the carriages, we drank Lord Chesterfield's health and ate for our own, in an al fresco style worthy of Italy. Two veritable Bohe- mians, brown, black-eyed gipsies, the models of those I had seen in their wicker tents in Asia, profited by the liberality of the hour, and came in for an upper crust to a pigeon pie, that, to tell the truth, they seemed to appreciate. Race followed race, but T am not a contributor to the Sporting Magazine, and could not give you their merits in comprehensible terms if I were. In one of the intervals, I walked under the king's stand, and saw her majesty, the queen, and the young Princess Victoria, very distinctly. They were listen- ng to a ballad-singer, and leaning over the front of the box with an amused attention, quite as sincere, apparently, as any beggar's in the ring. The queen is the plainest woman in her dominions, beyond a doubt. The princess is much better-looking than the pictures of her in the shops, and, for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting. She will be sold, poor thing — bar- tered away by those great dealers in royal hearts, whose grand calculations will not be much consolation to her if she happens to have a taste of her own. [The following sketch was written a short time pre- vious to the death of Charles Lamb.] Invited to breakfast with a gentleman in the temple to meet Charles Lamb and his sister — " Elia and Bridget Elia." I never in my life had an invitation more to my taste. The essays of Elia are certainly the most charming things in the world, and it has been for the last ten years my highest compliment to the literary taste of a friend to present him with a copy. Who has not smiled over the humorous description of Mrs. Battle? Who that has read Elia would not give more to see him than all the other authors of his time put together ? Our host was rather a character. I had brought a letter of introduction to him from Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, living at Florence, with a request that he would put me in a way of seeing one or two men about whom I had a curiosity, Lamb more particularly. 1 could not have been recommended to a better person. Mr. R. is a gentleman who everybody says, should have been an author, but who never wrote a book. He is a pro- found German scholar, has travelled much, is the inti- mate friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb, has breakfasted with Goethe, travelled with Wordsworth through France and Italy, and spends part of every summer with him, and knows everything and every- body that is distinguished — in short, is, in his bach- elor's chambers in the temple, the friendly nucleus of a great part of the talent of England. I arrived a half hour before Lamb, and had time to learn some of his peculiarities. He lives a little out of London, and is very much of an invalid. Some family circumstances have tended to depress him very much of late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he scarce shows a trace of what he was. He was very much pleased with the American reprint of his Elia, though it contains several things which are not his — written so in his style, however, that it is scarce a wonder the editor should mistake them. If I remember right, they were "Valentine's Day," the " Nuns of Caverswell," and " Twelfth Night." He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into the belief of one of his grave inventions. His amusing biographical sketch of Liston was in this vein, and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that it was authentic, and written in perfectly good faith. Liston was highly enraged with it, and Lamb was delighted in proportion. There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful, forward bent, his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful deepset eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it expressed most humor or feeling, good nature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other things which passed over it by turns, I can not in the least be certain. His sister, whose literary reputation is associated very closely with her brother's, and who, as the original of " Bridget Elia," is a kind of object for literary affection, came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire. They both seemed quite at home in our friend's chambers, and as there was to be no one else, we immediately drew round the break- fast table. I had set a large arm chair for Miss Lamb, " Don't take it, Mary," said Lamb, pulling it away from her very gravely, " it appears as if you were go- ing to have a tooth drawn." The conversation was very local. Our host and his PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 185 guest had not met for some weeks, and they had a great deal to say of their mutual friends. Perhaps in this way, however, I saw more of the author, for his manner of speaking of them and the quaint humor with which he complained of one, and spoke well of another, was so in the vein of his inimitable writings, that I could have fancied myself listening to an audible composition of a new Elia. Nothing could be more delightful than the kindness and affection between the brother and the sister, though Lamb was continually taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with the most singular gravity upon every topic that was started. " Poor Mary !" said he, " she hears all of an epigram but the point." "What are you saying of me, Charles?" she asked. "Mr. Willis," said he, raising his voice, " admires your Confessions of a Drunkard very much, and I was saying that it was no merit of yours, that you understood the subject." We had been speaking of this admirable essay (which is his own) half an hour before. The conversation turned upon literature after awhile, and our host, the templar, could not express himself strongly enough in admiration of Webster's speeches, which he said were exciting the greatest attention among the politicians and lawyers of England. Lamb said, " I don't know much of American authors. Mary, there, devours Cooper's novels with a ravenous appetite, with which I have no sympathy. The only American book I ever read twice, was the 'Journal of Edward Woolman,' a quaker preacher and tailor, whose character is one of the finest I ever met with. He tells a story or two about negro slaves, that brought the tears into my eyes. I can read no prose now, though Hazlitt sometimes, to be sure — but then Hazlitt is worth all modern prose writers put together." Mr. R. spoke of buying a book of Lamb's a few days before, and I mentioned my having bought a copy of Elia the last day I was in America, to send as a parting gift to one of the most lovely and talented women in our country. " What did you give for it ?" said Lamb. " About seven and sixpence." " Permit me to pay you that," said he, and with the utmost earnestness he counted put the money upon the table. " I never yet wrote anything that would sell," he continued. " I am the publisher's ruin. My last poem won't sell a copy. Have you seen it, Mr. . Willis?" V I had not. "It's only eighteen pence, and I'll give you six- pence toward it ;" and he described to me where I should find it sticking up in a shop-window in the Strand. Lamb ate nothing, and complained in a querulous tone of the veal pie. There was a kind of potted fish (of which I forget the name at this moment) which he had expected our friend would procure for him. He inquired whether there was not a morsel left perhaps in the bottom of the last pot. Mr. R. was not sure. " Send and see," said Lamb, " and if the pot has been cleaned, bring me the cover. I think the sight of it would do me good." The cover was brought, upon which there was a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it with a reproachful look at his friend, and then left the table and began to wander round the room with a broken, uncertain step, as if he almost forgot to put one leg before the other. His sister rose after awhile, and commenced walking up and down very much in the same manner on the opposite side of the table, and in the course of half an hour they took their leave. To any one who loves the writings of Charles Lamb with but half my own enthusiasm, even these little particulars of an hour passed in his company, will have an interest. To him who does not, they will seem dull and idle. Wreck as he certainly is, and must be, however, of what he was, I would rather have seen him for that single hour, than the hundred and one sights of London put together. LETTER CXVIII. DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON's — BtlLWER, D'ISRAELI. PROCTER, FONBLANC, ETC. ECCENTRICITIES OF BECKFORD, AUTHOR OF VATHEK D'iSRAELl's EX- TRAORDINARY TALENT AT DESCRIPTION. Dined at Lady Blessington's, in company with sev- eral authors, three or four noblemen, and a clever ex- quisite or two. The authors were Bulwer, the novel- ist, and his brother, the statist; Procter (better known as Barry Cornwall), D'Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey ; and Fonblanc, of the Examiner. The princi- pal nobleman was Lord Durham, and the principal exquisite (though the word scarce applies to the mag- nificent scale on which nature has made him, and on which he makes himself), was Count D'Orsay. There were plates for twelve. I had never seen Procter, and, with my passionate love for his poetry, he was the person at table of the most interest to me. He came late, and as twilight was just darkening the drawing-room, I could only see that a small man followed the announcement, with a remarkably timid manner, and a very white forehead. D'Israeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat. Pat- ent leather pumps, a white stick, with a black cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him, even in the dim light, rather a conspicuous object. Bulwer was very badly dressed, as usual, and wore a flashy waistcoat of the same description as D'Israeli's. Count D'Orsay was very splendid, but very undefina- ble. He seemed showily dressed till you looked to particulars, and then it seemed only a simple thing, well fitted to a very magnificent person. Lord Albert Conyngham was a dandy of common materials ; and my Lord Durham, though he looked a young man, if he passed for a lord at all in America, would pass for a very ill-dressed one. For Lady Blessington, she is one of the most hand- some and quite the best-dressed woman in London ; and, without farther description, I trust the readers of the Mirror will have little difficulty in imagining a scene that, taking a wild American into the account, was made up of rather various material. The blaze of lamps on the dinner table was very fa- vorable to my curiosity, and as Procter and D'Israeli sat directly opposite me, I studied their faces to ad- vantage. Barry Cornwall's forehead and eye are all that would strike you in his features. His brows are heavy ; and his eye, deeply sunk, has a quick, restless fire, that would have struck me, I think, had I not known he was a poet. His voice has the huskiness and elevation of a man more accustomed to think than converse, and it was never heard except to give a brief and very condensed opinion, or an illustration, admirably to the point, of the subject under discus- sion. He evidently felt that he was only an observer in the party. D'Israeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, would seem a victim to consumption. His eye is as black as Erebus, and has the most mocking and lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, 186 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraor- dinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy mass of jet black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctiously, " With thy incomparable oil, Macassar !" The anxieties of the first course, as usual, kept every mouth occupied for awhile, and then the dan- dies led off with a discussion of Count D'Orsay's rifle match (he is the best rifle shot in England), and va- rious matters as uninteresting to transatlantic readers. The new poem, Philip Van Artevelde, came up after awhile, and was very much over-praised (me judice). Bulwer said, that as the author was the principal wri- ter for the Quarterly Review, it was a pity it was first praised in that periodical, and praised so unqualifiedly. Procter said nothing about it, and I respected his si- lence ; for, as a poet, he must have felt the poverty of the poem, and was probably unwilling to attack a new aspirant in his laurels. The next book discussed was Beckford's Italy, or rather the next author, for the writer of Vathek is more original, and more talked of than his books, and just now occupies much of the attention of London. Mr. Beckford has been all his life enormously rich, has luxuriated in every country with the fancy of a poet, and the refined splendor of a Sybarite, was the admiration of Lord Byron, who visited him at Cintra, was the owner of Fonthill, and, plies fort encore, his is one of the oldest families in England. What could such a man attempt that would not be considered ex- traordinary ! D'Israeli was the only one at table who knew him, and the style in which he gave a sketch of his habits and manners, was worthy of himself. I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he clothed his description. There Were, at least, five words in every sentence that must have been very much astonished at the use they were put to, and yet no oth- ers apparently could so well have conveyed his idea. He talked like a race-horse approaching the winning- post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of expression flung out in every burst. It is a great pity he is not in parliament.* The particulars he gave of Beckford, though strip- ped of his gorgeous digressions and parentheses, may be interesting. He lives now at Bath, where he has built a house on two sides of the street, connected by a covered bridge a la Ponte de Sospiri, at Venice. His servants live on one side, and he and his sole companion on the other. This companion is a hide- ous dwarf, who imagines himself, or is, a Spanish duke ; and Mr. Beckford for many years has support- ed him in a style befitting his rank, treats him with all the deference due to his tide, and has, in general, no other society (I should not wonder, myself, if" it turned out a woman) ; neither of them is often seen, and when in London, Mr. Beckford is only to be ap- proached through his man of business. If you call, he is not at home. If you would leave a card or ad- dress him a note, his servant has strict orders not to take in anything of the kind. At Bath he has built a high tower, which is a great mystery to the inhabitants. Around the interior, to the very top, it is lined with books, approachable with a light spiral staircase ; and in the pavement below, the owner has constructed a * I have been told that he stood once for a London borough. A coarse fellow came up at the hustings, and said to him, " I should like to know on what ground "you stand here, sir?" On my head, sir !" answered D'Israeli. The populace had not read Vivian Grey, however, and he lost his election. double crypt for his own body, and that of his dwarf companion, intending, with a desire for human neigh- borhood which has not appeared in his life, to leave the library to the city, that all who enjoy it shall pass over the bodies below. Mr. Beckford thinks very highly of his own books, and talks of his early production (Vathek) in terms of unbounded admiration. He speaks slightingly of Byron, and of his praise, and affects to despise utterly the popular taste. It appeared altogether, from D'ls- raeli's account, that he is a splendid egotist, determin- ed to free life as much as possible from its usual fet- ters, and to enjoy it to the highest degree of which his genius, backed by an immense fortune, is capable. He is reputed, however, to be excessively liberal, and to exercise his ingenuity to contrive secret charities in his neighborhood. Victor Hugo and his extraordinary novels came next under discussion ; and D'Israeli, who was fired with his own eloquence, started off, apropos des bottes, with a long story of an empalement he had seen in Upper Egypt. It was as good, and perhaps as authen- tic, as the description of the chow-chow-tow in Vivian Grey. He had arrived at Cairo on the third day after the man was transfixed by two stakes from hip to shoulder, and he was still alive ! The circumstantial- ity of the account was equally horrible and amusing. Then followed the sufferer's history, with a score of murders and barbarities, heaped together like Martin's Feast of Belshazzar, with a mixture of horror and splendor that was unparalleled in my experience of improvisation. No mystic priest of the Corybantes could have worked himself up into a finer phrensy of language. Count D'Orsay kept up, through the whole of the conversation and narration, a running fire of witty pa- rentheses, half French and half English ; and, with champaign in all the pauses, the hours flew on very dashingly. Lady Blessington left us toward midnight, and then the conversation took a rather political turn, and something was said of O'Connell. D'Israeli's lips were playing upon the edge of a champaign glass, which he had just drained, and off he shot again with a description of an interview he had had with the agi- tator the day before, ending in a story of an Irish dra- goon who was killed in the peninsula. His name was Sarsfield. His arm was shot off, and he was bleeding to death. When told that he could not live, he called for a large silver goblet, out of which he usually drank his claret. He held it to the gushing artery and filled it to the brim with blood, looked at it a moment, turn- ed it out slowly upon the ground, muttering to him- self, " If that had been shed for old Ireland !" and ex- pired. You can have no idea how thrillingly this lit- tle story was told. Fonblanc, however, who is a cold political satirist, could see nothing in a man's "de- canting his claret," that was in the least sublime, and so Vivian Grey got into a passion and for awhile was silent. Bulwer asked me if there was any distinguished literary American in town. I said, Mr Slidell, one of our best writers, was here. " Because," said he, " I received a week or more ago a letter of introduction by some one from Wash- ington Irving. It lay on the table, when a lady came in to call on my wife, who seized upon it as an auto- graph, and immediately left town, leaving me with neither name nor address." There was a general laugh and a cry of "Pelham! Pelham !" as he finished his story. Nobody chose to believe it. " I think the name was Slidell," said Bulwer. " Slidell !" said D'Israeli, " I owe him two-pence, by Jove !" and he went on in his dashing way to nar- rate that he had sat next Mr. Slidell at a bull-fight in Seville, that he wanted to buy a fan to keep off the PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 187 flies, and having nothing but doubloons in his pocket, Mr. S. had lent him a small Spanish coin to that value, which he owed him to this day. There was another general laugh, and it was agreed that on the whole the Americans were 'done.' Apropos to this, DTsraeli gave us a description in a gorgeous, burlesque, galloping style, of a Spanish bullfight; and when we were nearly dead with laugh- ing at it, some one made a move, and we went up to Lady Blessington in the drawing-room. Lord Dur- ham requested her ladyship to introduce him particu- larly to D'Israeli (the effect of his eloquence). I sat down in the corner with Sir Martin Shee, the presi- dent of the Royal Academy, and had a long talk about Allston and Harding and Cole, whose pictures he knew ; and " somewhere in the small hours," we took our leave, and Procter left me at my door in Caven- dish street, weary, but in a better humor with the world than usual. LETTER CXIX. «HE ITALIAN OPERA — MADEMOISELLE GRISI — A GLANCE AT LORD BROUGHAM MRS. NORTON AND LORD SEF- TON — RAND, THE AMERICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER AN EVENING PARTY/ AT BULWER's — PALMY STATE OF LITERATURE IN MODERN DATS — FASHIONABLE NEG- LECTOF FEMALES PERSONAGES PRESENT SHIEL THE ORATOR, THE PRINCE OF MOSCOWA, MRS. LEICESTER STANHOPE, THE CELEBRATED BEAUTY, ETC., ETC. Went to the opera to hear Julia Grisi. I stood out he first act in the pit, and saw instances of rudeness *■ " Fop's-alley," which I had never seen approached n three years on the continent. The high price of tickets, one would think, and the necessity of appear- ing in full dress, would keep the opera clear of low- ered people ; but the conduct to which I refer seemed io excite no surprise and passed off without notice, though, in America, there would have been ample matter for at least four duels. Grisi is young, very pretty, and an admirable actress — three great advantages to a singer. Her voice is under absolute command, and she manages it beauti- fully, but it wants the infusion of soul — the gushing, uncontrollable, passionate feeling of Malibran. You merely feel that Grisi is an accomplished artist, while Malibran melts all your criticism into love and admi- ration. I am easily moved by music, but I came away without much enthusiasm for the present pas- sion of London. The opera-house is very different from those on the continent. The stage only is lighted abroad, the single lustre from the ceiling just throwing that clair obscure over the boxes so favorable to Italian com- plexions and morals. Here, the dress circles are lighted with bright chandeliers, and the whole house sits in such a blaze of light as leaves no approach even, to a lady, unseen. The consequence is that people here dress much more, and the opera, if less interesting to the habitue., is a gayer thing to the many. I went up to Lady Blessington's box for a moment, and found Strangways, the traveller, and several other distinguished men with her. Her ladyship pointed out to me Lord Brougham, flirting desperately with a pretty woman on the opposite side of the house, his mouth going with the convulsive twitch which so dis- figures him, and his most unsightly of pug-noses in the strongest relief against the red lining behind. There never was a plainer man. The Honorable Mrs. Norton. Sheridan's daughter and poetess, sat nearer to us, looking like a queen, certainly one of the most beautiful women I ever looked upon ; and the gastronomic and humpbacked Lord Sefton, said to be the best judge of cookery in the world, sat in the " dandy's omnibus," a large box on a level with the stage, leaning forward with his chin on his knuckles, and waiting with evident impatience for the appearance of Fanny Elssler in the ballet. Beauty and all, the English opera-house surpasses anything I have seen in the way of a spectacle. An evening party at Bulwer's. Not yet perfectly initiated in London hours, I arrived not far from eleven and found Mrs. Bulwer alone in her illumina- ted rooms, whiling away an expectant hour in playing with a King Charles spaniel, that seemed by his fond- ness and delight to appreciate the excessive loveliness of his mistress. As far off as America, I may express even in print an admiration which is no heresy in London. The author of Pelham is a younger son and de- pends on his writings for a livelihood, and truly, measuring works of fancy by what they will bring, (not an unfair standard perhaps), a glance around his luxurious and elegant rooms is worth reams of puff in the quarterlies. He lives in the heart of the fash- ionable quarter of London, where rents are ruinously extravagant, entertains a great deal, and is expensive in all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford, Pelham, and Aram — (it would seem) most excellent good bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman seated on the costly ottoman before me, waiting to receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought that old close-fisted literature never had better reason for his partial largess. I half forgave the miser for starving a wilderness of poets. One of the first persons who came was Lord By- ron's sister, a thin, plain, middle-aged woman, of a very serious countenance, and with very cordial and pleasing manners. The rooms soon filled, and two professed singers went industriously to work in their vocation at the piano ; but, except one pale man, with staring hair, whom I took to be a poet, nobody pre- tended to listen. Every second woman has some strong claim to beauty in England, and the proportion of those who just miss it, by a hair's breadth as it were — who seem really to have been meant for beauties by nature, but by a slip in the moulding or pencilling are imperfect copies of the design — is really extraordinary. One after another entered, as I stood near the door with my old friend Dr. Bowring for a nomenclator, and the word " lovely" or " charming," had not passed my lips before some change in the attitude, or unguarded animation had exposed the flaw, and the hasty hom- age (for homage it is, and an idolatrous one, that we pay to the beauty of woman) was coldly and unspar- ingly retracted. From a goddess upon earth to a slighted and unattractive trap for matrimony is a long step, but taken on so slight a defect sometimes as, were they marble, a sculptor would etch away with his nail. I was surprised (and I have been struck with the same thing at several parties I have attended in Lon- don), at the neglect with which the female part of the assemblage is treated. No young man ever seems to dream of speaking to a lady, except to ask her to dance. There they sit with their mammas, their hands hung over each other before them in the re- ceived attitude ; and if there happens to be no dancing (as at Bulwer's), looking at a print, or eating an ice, is for them the most enlivening circumstance of the evening. As well as I recollect, it is better managed in America, and certainly society is quite another thing in France and Italy. Late in the evening a charming girl, who is the reigning belle of Naples, came in with her mother from the opera, and I made the remark to her. " I detest England for that very reason." she said frankly. " It is the fash- 188 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. ion in London for the young men to prefer everything to the society of women. They have their clubs, their horses, their rowing matches, their bunting and betting, and everything else is a bore ! How different are the same men at Naples ! They can never get enough of one there ! We are surrounded and run after, " ' Our poodle dog is quite adored, Our sayings are extremely quoted,' and really one feels that one is a belle." She men- tioned several of the beaux of last winter who had re- turned to England. u Here I have been in London a month, and these very men that were dying for me, at my side every day on the Strada Nuova, and all but fighting to dance three times with me of an evening, have only left their cards ! Not because they care less about me, but because it is • not the fashion' — it would be talked of at the club, it is 'knowing' to let us alone." There were only three men in the party, which was a very crowded one, who could come under the head of beaux. Of the remaining part, there was much that was distinguished, both for rank and talent. Sheil, the Irish orator, a small, dark, deceitful, but talented-looking man, with a very disagreeable squeak- ing voice, stood in a corner, very earnestly engaged in conversation with the aristocratic old earl of Clar- endon. The contrast between the styles of the two men, the courtly and mild elegance of one, and the uneasy and half-bred, but shrewd earnestness of the other, was quite a study. Fonblanc of the Examiner, with his pale and dislocated-looking face, stood in the door-way between the two rooms, making the amiable with a ghastly smile to Lady Stepney. The ' bilious Lord Durham,' as the papers call him, with his Bru- tus head, and grave, severe countenance, high-bred in his appearance, despite the worst possible coat and trousers, stood at the pedestal of a beautiful statue, talking politics with Bowring ; and near them, leaned over a chair the Prince Moscowa, the son of Marshal Ney, a plain, but determined-looking young man, with his coat buttoned up to his throat, unconscious of everything but the presence of the Honorable Mrs. Leicester Stanhope, a very lovely woman, who was enlightening him in the prettiest English French, upon some point of national differences. Her hus- band, famous as Lord Byron's companion in Greece, and a great liberal in England, was introduced to me soon after by Bulwer ; and we discussed the bank and the president, with a little assistance from Bow- ring, who joined us with a paean for the old general and his measures, till it was far into the morning. LETTER CXX. breakfast with barky cornwall — luxury of the followers of the modern muse beauty of the dramatic sketches gains procter a Wife — hazlitt's extraordinary taste for the picturesque in women — coleridge's opinion of cornwall. Breakfasted with Mr. Procter (known better as Barry Cornwall). I gave a partial description of this most delightful of poets in a former letter. In the dazzling circle of rank and talent with which he was surrounded at Lady Blessington's, however, it was difficult to see so shrinkingly modest a man to advan- tage, and with the exception of the keen gray eye, liv- ina: with thought and feeling, I should hardly have rec- ognised him at home for the same person. Mr. Procter is a barrister ; and his " whereabout" is more like that of a lord chancellor than a poet proper. With the address he had given me at parting, I drove to a large house in Bedford square ; and, not accustomed to find the children of the Muses waited on by servants in livery, I made up my mind as I walked up the broad staircase, that I was blundering upon some Mr. Procter of the exchange, whose re- spect for his poetical namesake, I hoped would smooth my apology for the intrusion. Buried in a deep mo- rocco chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I found the poet himself — choice old pictures, filling every nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings in all the corners ; and, more important for the nonce, a breakfast table at the poet's elbow, spicily set forth, not with flowers or ambrosia, the canonical food of rhymers, but with cold hams and ducks, hot rolls and butter, coffee-pot and tea-urn — as sensible a breakfast, in short, as the most unpoetical of men could desire. Procter is indebted to his poetry for a very charm- ing wife, the daughter of Basil Montagu, well known as a collector of choice literature, and the friend and patron of literary men. The exquisite beauty of the Dramatic Sketches interested this lovely woman in his favor before she knew him, and far from worldly-wise as an attachment so grounded would seem, I never saw two people with a more habitual air of happiness. I thought of his touching song, " How many summers, love, Hast thou been mine ?" and looked at them with an irrepressible feeling of envy. A beautiful girl, of eight or nine years, the " golden-tressed Adelaide," delicate, gentle and pen- sive, as if she was born on the lip of Castaly, and knew she was a poet's child, completed the picture of happiness. The conversation ran upon various authors, whom Proctor had known intimately. Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Keats, Shelley, and others , and of all he gave me interesting particulars, which I could not well re- peat in a public letter. The account of Hazlitt's death-bed, which appeared in one of the magazines, he said was wholly untrue. This extraordinary writer was the most reckless of men in money matters, but he had a host of admiring friends who knew his char- acter, and were always ready to assist him. He was a great admirer of the picturesque in women. He was one evening at the theatre with Procter, and pointed out to him an Amazonian female, strangely dressed in black velvet and lace, but with no beauty that would please an ordinary eye. " Look at her !" said Hazlitt, " isn't she fine ? — isn't she magnificent ? Did you ever see anything more Titianesque ?"* After breakfast, Procter took me into a small closet adjoining his library, in which he usually writes. There was just room in it for a desk and two chairs, and around were piled in true poetical confusion, his favorite books, miniature likenesses of authors, manu- scripts, and all the interesting lumber of a true poet's corner. From a drawer, veiy much thrust out of the way, he drew a volume of his own, into which he pro- ceeded to write my name — a collection of songs, pub- lished since I have been in Europe, which I had never seen. I seized upon a worn copy of the Dramatic Sketches, which I found crossed and interlined in every direction. " Don't look at them," said Procter, they are wretched things, which should never have been printed, or at least with a world of correction. You see how I have mended them ; and, some day, perhaps, I will publish a corrected edition, since I can * The following story has been told me by another gentle- man. Hazlitt was married to an amiable woman, and divor- ced, after a few years, at his own request. He left London, and returned with another wife. The first thing he did was to send to his first wife to borrow five pounds ! She had not so much in the world, but she sent to a friend (the gentleman who told me the story), borrowed it, and sent it to him ! It seems to me theie is a whole drama in this single fact. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. not get them back." He took the book from my hand, and opened to " The Broken Heart," certainly the most highly-finished and exquisite piece of pathos in the language, and read it to me with his alterations. It ma to "gild refined gold and paint the lily." I would recommend to the lovers of Barry Cornwall, to keep their original copy, beautifully as he has polish- ed his lines anew. On a blank leaf of the same copy of the Dramatic Sketches, I found some indistinct writing in pencil. "Oh! don't read that," said Procter, "the book was given me some years ago by a friend at whose house Coleridge had been staying, for the sake of the criti- cisms that great man did me the honor to write at the end." I insisted on reading them, however, and his wife calling him out presently, I succeeded in copying them in his absence. He seemed a little annoyed, but on my promising to make no use of them in England, he allowed me to retain them. They are as follows: " Barry Cornwall is a poet, me saltern judice, and in that sense of the word in which I apply it to Charles Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the au- thors of which I should not yet feel impelled so to designate. " The faults of these poems are no less things of hope than the beauties. Both are just what they ought to be : i. e. now. " If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledge, so .1 poet can not be a great poet, but as being likewise and in- clusively an historian and a naturalist in the light as well as the life of philosophy. All other men's worlds are his chaos. " Hints — Not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to se- duce into effeminacy. "Not to permit beauties by repetition to become man- nerism. " To be jealous of fragmentary composition as epicurism of genius — apple-pie made all of quinces. " Item. That dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and passion, not thought or passion hid in the dregs of poetry. " Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures, etc. They will all find their place sooner or later, each in the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is language, ergo successive, ergo every the smallest star must be seen singly. " There are not five metrists in the kingdom whose works are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to speak so plainly ; but B. C. is a man of genius, and it de- pends on himself {competence protecting him from gnawing and distracting cares) to become a rightful poet — i. e. a great man. " Oh, for such a man ; worldly prudence is transfigured in- to the high spiritual duty. How generous is self-interest in him whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton, is the mother tongue. " A map of the road to Paradise drawn in Purgatory on the confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819." I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his company, with the impression that he makes upon every one — of a man whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an affectionate husband, a business-man of the closest habits of industry — one reads his strange imaginations, and passionate, high-wrought, and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which most to wonder — the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his books. LETTER CXXI. AN EVENING AT LADY BLESSINGTON's — ANECDOTES OF MOORE, THE POET — TAYLOR, THE PLATONIST — POLI- TICS — ELECTION OF SPEAKER — PRICES OF BOOKS. I am obliged to " gazette" Lady Blessington rather more than I should wish, and more than may seem delicate to those who do not know the central position she occupies in the circle of talent in London. Her soirees and dinner-parties, however, are literally the single and only assemblages of men of genius, without reference to party — the only attempt at a republic of letters in the world of this great, envious, and gifted metropolis. The pictures of literary life, in which my countrymen would be most interested, therefore, are found within a very small compass, presuming them to prefer the brighter side of an eminent charac- ter, and presuming them (is it a presumption?) not to possess that appetite for degrading the author to the man by an anatomy of his secret personal failings, which is lamentably common in England. Having premised thus much, I go on with my letter. I drove to Lady Blessington's an evening or two since, with the usual certainty of finding her at home, as there was no opera, and the equal certainty of find- ing a circle of agreeable and eminent men about her. She met me with the information that Moore was in town, and an invitation to dine with her whenever she should be able to prevail upon " the little Bacchus" to give her a day. D'Israeli, the younger, was there, and Dr. Beattie, the king's physician (and author, unacknowledged, of "The Heliotrope"), and one or two fashionable young noblemen. Moore was naturally the first topic. He had appear- ed at the opera the night before, after a year's ruializ ing at " Slopperton cottage," as fresh and young and witty as he ever was known in his youth — (for Moore must be sixty at least). Lady B. said the only dif- ference she could see in his appearance was the loss of his curls, which once justified singularly his title of Bacchus, flowing about his head in thin, glossy, elastick tendrils, unlike any other hair she had ever seen, and comparable to nothing but the rings of the vine. He is now quite bald, and the change is very- striking. D'Israeli regretted that he should have been met, exactly on his return to London, with the savage but clever article in Eraser's Magazine on his pla- giarisms. " Give yourself no trouble about that," said Lady B. " for you may be sure he will never see it. Moore guards against the sight and knowledge of criticism as people take precautions against the plague. He reads few periodicals, and but one news- paper. If a letter comes to him from a suspicious quarter, he burns it unopened. If a friend mentions a criticism to him at the club, he never forgives him ; and, so well is this understood among his friends, that he might live in London a year, and all the magazines might dissect him, and he would probably never hear of it. In the country he lives on the estate of Lord Lansdown, his patron and best friend, with half a dozen other noblemen within a dinner-drive ; and he passes his life in this exclusive circle, like a bee in amber, perfectly preserved from everything that could blow rudely upon him. He takes the world en pJiil- osophe, and is determined to descend to his grave per fectly ignorant if such things as critics exist." Some- body said tliis was weak, and D'Israeli thought it was wise, and made a splendid defence of his opinion, as usual, and I agreed with D'Israeli. Moore deserves a medal, as the happiest author of his day, to possess the power. A remark was made in rather a satirical tone upon Moore's worldliness and passion for rank. " He was sure," it was said, " to have four or five invitations to dine on the same day, and he tormented himself with the idea that he had not accepted perhaps the most ex- clusive. He would get off from an engagement with a countess to dine with a marchioness, and from a marchioness to accept the later invitation of a dutchess ; and as he cared little for the society of men, and would sing and be delightful only for the applause of women, it mattered little whether one circle was more talented than another. Beauty was one of his passions, but rank and fashion were all the rest." This rather left-handed portrait was confessed by all to be just. Lady B. herself making no comment 190 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. upon it. She gave, as an offset, however, some par- ticulars of Moore's difficulties from his West Indian appointment, which left a balance to his credit. " Moore went to Jamaica with a profitable appoint- ment. The climate disagreed with him, and he re- turned home, leaving the business in the hands of a confidential clerk, who embezzled eight thousand pounds in the course of a few months and absconded. Moore's politics had made him obnoxious to the gov- ernment, and he was called to account with unusual severity; while Theodore Hook, who had been re- called at this very time from some foreign appoint- ment for a deficit of twenty thousand pounds in his accounts, was never molested, being of the ruling party. Moore's misfortune awakened a great sympa- thy among his friends. Lord Lansdowne was the first to offer his aid. He wrote to Moore, that for many years he had been in the habit of laying aside from his income eight thousand pounds, for the en- couragement of the arts and literature, and that he should feel that it was well disposed of for that year if Moore would accept it, to free him from his difficul- ties. It was offered in the most delicate and noble manner, but Moore declined it. The members of " White's" (mostly noblemen) called a meeting, and (not knowing the amount of the deficit) subscribed in one morning twenty-five thousand pounds, and wrote to the poet that they would cover the sum, whatever it might be. This was declined. Longman and Murray then offered to pay it, and wait for their re- muneration from his works. He declined even this, and went to Passy with his family, where he econo- mized and worked hard till it was cancelled." This was certainly a story most creditable to the poet, and it was told with an eloquent enthusiasim that did the heart of the beautiful narrator infinite credit. I have given only the skeleton of it. Lady Blessington went on to mention another circumstance, very honorable to Moore, of which I had never before heard. " At one time two different counties of Ire- land sent committees to him, to offer him a seat in parliament; and as he depended on his writings for a subsistence, offering him at the same time twelve hundred pounds a year while he continued to repre- sent them. Moore was deeply touched with it, and said no circumstance of his life had ever gratified him so much. He admitted that the honor they proposed him had been his most cherished ambition, but the necessity of receiving a pecuniary support at the same time was an insuperable obstacle. He could never enter parliament with his hands tied, and his opinions and speech fettered, as they would be irresistibly in such circumstances." This does not sound like " jump-up-and-kiss-me Tom Moore," as the Irish ladies call him ; but her ladyship vouched for the truth of it. It was worthy of an old Roman. By what transition I know not, the conversation turned on Platonism, and D'Israeli (who seemed to have remembered the shelf on which Vivian Grey was to find " the latter Platonists" in his father's library) " flared up," as a dandy would say, immediately. His wild, black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips quiver- ed and poured out eloquence ; and a German profes- sor, who had entered late, and the Russian charge d'affaires, who had entered later, and a whole ottoman- full of noble exquisites, listened with wonder. He gave us an account of Taylor, almost the last of the celebrated Platonists, who worshipped Jupiter in a back parlor in London a few years ago with undoubted sincerity. He had an altar and a brazen figure of the Thunderer, and performed his devotions as regularly as the most pious sacerdos of the ancients. In his old age he was turned out of the lodgings he had occu- pied for a great number of years, and went to a friend in much distress to complain of the injustice. He had "only attempted to worship his gods according to the dictates of his conscience." "Did you pay your bills?" asked the friend. "Certainly." " Then what is the reason ?" " His landlady had taken offence at his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in his back parlor!" The story sounded very Vivian-Grey-ish, and every- body laughed at it as a very good invention ; but D'Israeli quoted his father as his authority, and it may appear in the Curiosities of Literature — where, however, it will never be so well told as by the extra- ordinary creature from whom we had heard it. February 22d, 1835. — The excitement in London about the choice of a speaker is something startling. It took place yesterday, and the party are thunderstruck at the non-election of Sir Manners Sutton. This is a terrible blow upon them, for it was a defeat at the out- set ; and if they failed in a question where they had the immense personal popularity of the late speaker to assist them, what will they do on general questions? The house of commons was surrounded all day with an excited mob. Lady told me last night that she drove down toward evening, to ascertain the result (Sir C. M. Sutton is her brother-in-law), and the crowd surrounded her carriage, recognising her as the sister of the tory speaker, and threatened to tear the coronet from the pannels. " We'll soon put an end to your coronets," said a rapscallion in the mob. The tories were so confident of success that Sir Robert Peel gave out cards a week ago for a soiree to meet Speaker Sutton, on the night of the election. There is a general report in town that the whigs will impeach the duke of Wellington ! This looks like a revolution, does it not ? It is very certain that the duke and Sir Robert Peel have advised the king to dissolve parliament again, if there is any difficulty in getting on with the government. The duke was dining with Lord Aberdeen the other day, when some one at table ventured to wonder at his accepting a subordi- nate office in the cabinet he had himself formed. "If I could serve his majesty better," said the patrician soldier, " I would ride as king's messenger to-mor- row !" He certainly is a remarkable old fellow. Perhaps, however, literary news would interest you more. Bulwer is publishing in a volume his papers from the New Monthly. I met him an hour age in Regent-street, looking, what is called in London, "uncommon seedy!" He is either the worst or the best dressed man in London, according to the time of day or night you see him. D'Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey, drives about in an open carriage, with Lady S , looking more melancholy than usual. The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about bringing an action against him, which will finish his career, unless he can coin the damages in his brain. Mrs. Hemans is dying of consumption in Ireland. I have been passing a week at a country house, where Miss Jane Porter, Miss Pardoe, and Count Krazinsky (author of the Court of Sigismund), are domiliciated for the present. Miss Porter is one of her own heroines, grown old — a still handsome and noble wreck of beauty. Miss Pardoe is nineteen, fairhaired sentimental, and has the smallest feet and is the best waltzer I ever saw, but she is not otherwise pretty. The Polish count is writing the life of his grand- mother, whom I should think he strongly resembled in person. He is an excellent fellow, for all that. 1 dined last week with Joanna Baillie, at Hampstead — the most charming old lady I ever saw. To-day I dine with Longman to meet Tom Moore, who is living incog, near this Nestor of publishers at Hampstead. Moore is fagging hard on his history of Ireland. I shall give you the particulars of all these things in my letters hereafter. Poor Elia — my old favorite — is dead. I consider it one of the most fortunate things that ever hap- pened to me to have seen him. I think I sent you in PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 191 one of my letters an account of my breakfasting in company with Charles Lamb and his sister (" Bridget Elia,") in the Temple. The exquisite papers on his life and letters in the Atheneum, are by Barry Corn- wall. Lady Blessington's new book makes a great noise. Living as she does twelve hours out of the twenty-four in the midst of the most brilliant and mind-exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how she found the time. Yet it was written in six weeks. Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any other author's except Bulwer. Do you know the real prices of books ? Bulwer gets fifteen hundred pounds — Lady B. four hundred, Honorable Mrs. Norton txvo hundred and fifty, Lady Charlotte Bury two hundred, Grattan three hundred and most others below this. Captain Marryat's gross trash sells immensely about Wapping and Portsmouth, and brings him five or six hundred the book — but that can scarce be called lit- erature. D'Israeli can not sell a book at all, I hear ? Is not that odd ? I would give more for one of his novels than for forty of the common saleable things about town. The authoress of the powerful book called Two Old Men's Tales, is an old unitarian lady, a Mrs. Marsh. She declares she will never write another book. The other was a glorious one, though! LETTER CXXII. LONDON THE POET MOORE LAST DAYS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT MOORE'S OPINION OF O'CONNELL ANACREON AT THE PIANO DEATH OF BYRON A SUPPRESSED ANECDOTE. I called on Moore with a letter of introduction, and met him at the door of his lodgings. I knew him instantly from the pictures I had seen of him, but was surprised at the diminutiveness of his person. He is much below the middle size, and with his white hat and long chocolate frock-coat, was far from prepossessing in his appearance. With this ma- terial disadvantage, however, his address is gentleman- like to a very marked degree, and I should think no one could see Moore without conceiving a strong liking for him. As I was to meet him at dinner, I did not detain him. In the moment's conversation that passed, he inquired very particularly after Wash- ington Irving, expressing for him the warmest friend- ship, and asked what Cooper was doing. I was at Lady Blessington's at eight. Moore had not arrived, but the other persons of the party — a Russian count, who spoke all the languages of Europe as well as his own; a Roman banker, whose dynasty is more powerful than the pope's; a clever English nobleman, and the " observed of all observers," Count D'Orsay, stood in the window upon the park, killing, as they might, the melancholy twilight half hour preceding dinner. " Mr. Moore !" cried the footman at the bottom of the staircase. " Mr. Moore !" cried the footman at the top. And with his glass at his eye, stumbling over an ottoman between his near-sightedness and the darkness of the room, enter the poet. Half a glance tells you that he is at home on a carpet. Sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington (of whom he was a lover when she was sixteen, and to whom some of the sweetest of his songs were written), he made his compliments, with a gayety and an ease combined with a kind of worshipping deference that was worthy of a prime-minister at the court of love. With the gentlemen, all of whom he knew, he had the frank, merry manner of a confident favorite, and he was greeted like one. He went from one to the other, straining back his head to look up at them (for, sin- gularly enough, every gentleman in the room was six feet high and upward), and to every one he said some- thing which, from any one else, would have seemed peculiarly felicitous, but which fell from his lips as il his breath was not more spontaneous. Dinner was announced, the Russian handed down "miladi," and I found myself seated opposite Moore, with a blaze of light on his Bacchus head, and the mirrors with which the superb octagonal room is pan- nelled reflecting every motion. To see him only at table, you would think him not a small man. His principal length is in his body, and his head and shoul- ders are those of a much larger person. Consequently he sits tall, and with the peculiar erectness of head and neck, his diminutiveness disappears. The soup vanished in the busy silence that beseems it, and as the courses commenced their procession, Lady Blessington led the conversation with the bril- liancy and ease for which she is remarkable over all the women of her time. She had received from Sir William Gell, at Naples, the manuscript of a volume upon the last days of Sir Walter Scott. It was a melancholy chronicle of imbecility and the book was suppressed, tfut there were two or three circumstances narrated in its pages which were interesting. Soon after his arrival at Naples, Sir Walter went with his physician and one or two friends to the great museum. It happened that on the same day a large collection of students and Italian literati were assembled, in one of the rooms, to discuss some newly-discovered man- uscripts. It was soon known that the " Wizard of the North" was there, and a deputation was sent immedi- ately to request him to honor them by presiding at their session. At this time Scott was a wreck, with a memory that retained nothing for a moment, and limbs almost as helpless as an infant's. He was drag- ging about among the relics of Pompeii, taking no interest in anything he saw, when their request was made known to him through his physician. "No, no," said he, "I know nothing of their lingo. Tell them I am not well enough to come." He loitered on, and in about half an hour after, he turned to Dr. H. and said, " Who was that you said wanted to see me?" The doctor explained. "I'll go," said he, "they shall see me if they wish it ;" and, against the advice of his friends, who feared it would be too much for his strength, he mounted the staircase, and made his appearance at the door. A burst of enthusiastic cheers welcomed him on the threshold, and forming in two lines, many of them on their knees, they seized his hands as he passed, kissed them, thanked him in their passionate language for the delight with which he had filled the world, and placed him in the chair with the most fervent expressions of gratitude for his condescension. The discussion went on. but not understanding a syllable of the language, Scott was soon wearied, and his friends observing it, pleaded the state of his health as an apology, and he rose to take his leave. These enthusiastic children of the south crowded once more around him, and with exclama- tions of affection and even tears, kissed his hands once more, assisted his tottering steps, and sent after him a confused murmur of blessings as the door closed on his retiring form. It is described by the writer as the most affecting scene he had ever witnessed. Some other remarks were made upon Scott, but the parole was soon yielded to Moore, who gave us an account of a visit he made to Abbotsford when its illustrious owner was in his pride and prime. " Scott,' he said, "was the most manly and natural character in the world. You felt when with him, that he was the soul of truth and heartiness. His hospitality was as simple and open as the day, and he lived freely 192 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. himself, and expected his guests to do so. I remem- ber his giving us whiskey at dinner, and Lady Scott met my look of surprise with the assurance that Sir Walter seldom dined without it. He never ate or drank to excess, but he had no system, his constitu- tion was herculean, and he denied himself nothing. I went once from a dinner-party with Sir Thomas Lawrence to meet Scott at Lockhart's. We had hardly entered the room when we were set down to a hot supper of roast chickens, salmon, punch, etc., etc., and Sir Walter ate immensely of everything. What a contrast between this and the last time I saw him in London! He had come down to embark for Italy — broken quite down in mind and body. He gave Mrs. Moore a book, and I asked him if lie would make it more valuable by writing in it. He thought I meant that he should write some verses, and said, ' Oh I never write poetry now.' I asked him to write only his own name and hers, and he attempted it, but it was quite illegible." Some one remarked that Scott's life of Napoleon was a failure. "I think little of it," said Moore; "but after all, it was an embarrassing task, and Scott did what a wise man would do — made as much of his subject as was pblitic and necessary, and no more." • " It will not live," said some one else; " as much because it is a bad book, as because it is the life of an individual." "But what an individual!" Moore replied. "Vol- taire's life of Charles the Twelfth was the life of an in- dividual, yet that will live and be read as long as there is a book in the world, and what was he to Napo- leon ?" O'Connell was mentioned. " He is a powerful creature," said Moore, " but his eloquence has done great harm both to England and Ireland. There is nothing so powerful as oratory. The faculty of ' thinking on his legs,' is a tremendous engine in the hands of any man. There is an undue admiration for this faculty, and a sway permitted to it which was always more dangerous to a country than anything else. Lord Althorpis a wonderful instance of what a man may do without talking. There is a general confidence in him — a universal belief in his honesty, which serves him instead. Peel is a fine speaker, but, admirable as be had been as an opposi- tionist, he failed when he came to lead the house. O'Connell would be irresistible were it not for the two blots on his character — the, contributions in Ireland for his support, and his refusal to give satisfaction to the man he is still coward enough to attack. They may say what they will of duelling, it is the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school, which made a man responsible for his words, was the better. I must confess I think so. Then, in O'Connell's case, he had not made his vow against duelling when Peel challenged him. He ac- cepted the challenge, and Peel went to Dover on his way to France, where they were to meet ; and O'Con- nell pleaded his wife's illness, and delayed till the law interfered. Some other Irish patriot, about the same time, refused a challenge on account of the illness of his daughter, and one of the Dublin wits made a good epigram on the two : — 11 1 Some men, with a horror of slaughter, Improve on the scripture command, And ■ honor their' wife and daughter — ' That their days may be long in the land. ' ' The great period of Ireland's glory was between '82 and '98, and it was a time when a man almost lived with a pistol in his hand. Grattan's dying advice to his son, was, « Be always ready with the pistol !' He j^ttfitMut never hesitated a moment. At one time, there was a kind of conspiracy to fight him out of the world. On some famous question, Corrie was em- ployed purposely to bully him, and made a personal attack of the grossest virulence. Grattan was so ill, at the time, as to be supported into the house between two friends. He rose to reply ; and first, without al- luding to Corrie at all, clearly and entirely overturned every argument he had advanced that bore upon the question. He then paused a moment, and stretching out his arm, as if he would reach across the house, said, ' For the assertions the gentleman has been pleased to make with regard to myself, my answer here is, they are false! elsewhere it would be — a blow ." They met, and Grattan shot him through the arm. Corrie proposed another shot, but Grattan said, 'No! let the curs fight it out!' and they were friends ever after. I like the old story of the Irish- man who was challenged by some desperate black- guard. ' Fight him ." said he, ' I would sooner go to my grave without a fight!' Talking of Grattan, is it not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time ? Look at the Irish newspapers. The whole country in convul- sion — people's lives, fortunes, and religion, at stake, and not a gleam of talent from one year's end to the other. It is natural for sparks to be struck out in a time of violence like this — but Ireland, for all that is worth living for, is dead! You can scarcely reckon Shiel of the calibre of her spirits of old, and O'Con- nell, with all his faults, stands ' alone in his glory.' " The conversation I have thus run together is a mere skeleton, of course. Nothing but a short-hand re- port could retain the delicacy and elegance of Moore's language, and memory itself can not imbody again the kind of frost-work of imagery which was formed and melted on his lips. His voice is soft or firm as the subject requires, but perhaps the word gentleman- ly describes it better than any other. It is upon a natural key, but, if I may so phrase it, it is fused with a high-bred affectation, expressing deference and courtesy, at the same time that its pauses are con- structed peculiarly to catch the ear. It would be dif- ficult not to attend him while he is talking, though the subject were but the shape of a wine-glass. Moore's head is distinctly before me while I write, but I shall find it difficult to describe. His hair, which curled once all over it in long tendrils, unlike anybody else's in the world, and which probably sug- gested his soubriquet of "Bacchus," is diminished now to a few curls sprinkled with gray, and scattered in a single ring above his ears. His forehead wrinkled, with the exception of a most prominent development of the organ of gayety, which, singu- larly enough, shines with the lustre and smooth pol- ish of a pearl, and is surrounded by a semicircle of lines drawn close about it, like entrenchments against Time. His eyes still sparkle like a champaign bub- ble, though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red, of the tinge of an October leaf, that seems enamelled on his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the most characteris- tic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, slight and changeable as an aspen ; but there is a set-up look about the lower lip, a determination of the mus cle to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can almost see wit astride upon it. It is written legi bly with the imprint of habitual success. It is arch confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright glean of fancy was breaking on him. The slightly-tossed nose confirms the fun of the expression, and altogeth er it is a face that sparkles, beams, radiates, — every thing but feels. Fascinating beyond all men as he i* Moore looks like a worldling. PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 193 This description maybe supposed to have occupied the hour after Lady Blessing ton retired from the ta- ble ; for with her vanished Moore's excitement, and everybody else seemed to feel that light had gone out of the room. Her excessive beauty is less an inspi- ration than the wondrous talent with which she draws from every person around her his peculiar excellence. Talking better than anybody else, and narrating, par- ticularly, with a graphic power that I never saw ex- celled, this distinguished woman seems striving only to make others unfold themselves ; and never had dif- fidence a more apprehensive and encouraging listener. But this is a subject with which I should never be done. We went up to coffee, and Moore brightened again over his chasse-cafe, and went glittering on with criti- cisms on Grisi, the delicious songstress now ravishing the world, whom he placed above all but Pasta ; and whom he thought, with the exception that her legs were too short, an incomparable creature. This in- troduced music very naturally, and with a great deal of difficulty he was taken to the piano. My letter is getting long, and I have no time to describe his sing- ing. It is well known, however, that its effect is only equalled by the beauty of his own words; and, for one, I could have takeu him into my heart with my delight. He makes no attempt at music. It is a kind of admirable recitative, in which every shade of thought is syllabled and dwelt upon, and the senti- ment of the song goes through your blood, warming you to the very eyelids, and starting your tears, if you have soul or sense in you. I have heard of women's fainting at a song of Moore's ; and if the burden of it answered by chance to a secret in the bosom of the listener, I should think, from its comparative effect upon so old a stager as myself, that the heart would break with it. We all sat around the piano, and after two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over the keys awhile, and sang " When first I met thee," with a pathos that beggars description. W T hen the last word had faltered out, he rose and took Lady Blessington's hand, said good-night, and was gone before a word was uttered. For a full minute after he had closed the door no one spoke. I could have wished, for myself, to drop silently asleep where I sat, with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my heart. " Here's a health to thee, Tom Moore !" 1 was in company the other evening where West- macott, the sculptor, was telling a story of himself and Leigh Hunt. They were together one day at Fiesole, when a butterfly, of an uncommon sable color, alighted on Westmacott's forehead, and re- mained there several minutes. Hunt immediately cried out, " The spirit of some dear friend is depart- ed," and as they entered the gate of Florence on their return, some one met them and informed them of the death of Byron, the news of which had at that mo- ment arrived. I have just time before the packet sails to send you an anecdote that is bought out of the London papers. A nobleman, living near Belgrave square, received a visit a day or two ago from a police officer, who sta- ted to him, that he had a man-servant in his house, who had escaped from Botany Bay. His lordship was somewhat surprised, but called up the male part of his household, at the officer's request, and passed them in review. The culprit was not among them. Th«j officer then requested to see the female part of the establishment ; and, to the inexpressible astonish- ment of the whole household, he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the lady's confidential maid, and in- formed her she was his prisoner. A change of dress 13 was immediately sent for, and miladi's dressing-maid was remetamorphosed into an effeminate-looking fellow, and marched off to a new trial. It is a most extraordinary thing that he had lived unsuspected in the family for nine months, performing all the func- tions of a confidential Abigail, and very much in favor with his unsuspecting mistress, who is rather a serious person, and would as soon have thought of turning out to be a man herself. It is said, that the husband once made a remark upon the huskiness of the maid's voice, but no other comment was ever made reflecting in the least upon her qualities as a member of the beau sexe. The story is quite authentic, but hushed up out of regard to the lady. LETTER CXXIII. IMMENSITY OF LONDON — VOYAGE TO LEITH — SOCIETY OF THE STEAM-PACKET ANALOGY BETWEEN SCOTCH AND AMERICAN MANNERS — STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH ON BOARD EDINBURGH — UNEXPECT- ED RECOGNITION. Almost giddy with the many pleasures and occu- pations of London, I had outstayed the last fashiona- ble lingerer; and, on appearing again, after a fort- night's confinement with the epidemic of the season, I found myself almost without an acquaintance, and was driven to follow the world. A preponderance of letters and friends determined my route toward Scot- land. One realizes the immensity of London when he is compelled to measure its length on a single errand. I took a cab at my lodgings at nine in the evening, and drove six miles through one succession of crowded and blazing streets to the East India Docks, and with the single misfortune of being robbed on the way of a valuable cloak, secured a birth in the Monarch steam- er, bound presently for Edinburgh. I found the drawing-room cabin quite crowded, cold supper on the two long tables, everybody very busy with knife and fork, and whiskey-and-water and broad Scotch circulating merrily. All the world seem- ed acquainted, and each man talked to his neighbor, and it was as unlike a ship's company of dumb Eng lish as could easily be conceived. I had dined too late to attack the solids, but imitating my neighbor's potation of whiskey and hot water, I crowded in be- tween two good-humored Scotchmen, and took the happy color of the spirits of the company. A small j centre-table was occupied by a party who afforded '■ considerable amusement. An excessively fat old wo- | man, with a tall scraggy daughter and a stubby little old fellow, whom they called "pa;" and a singular man, a Major Somebody, who seemed showing them up, composed the quartette. Noisier women I never ; saw, nor more hideous. They bullied the waiter, were facetious with the steward, and talked down all the united buzz of the cabin. Opposite me sat a pale, ' severe-looking Scotchman, who had addressed one or j two remarks to me ; and, upon an uncommon burst of uproariousness, he laughed with the rest, and re- marked that the ladies were excusable, for they were doubtless Americans, and knew no better. " It strikes me," said I, " that both in manners and accent they are particularly Scotch." "Sir!" said the pale gentleman. " Sir !" said several of my neighbors on the right and left. I repeated the remark. " Have you ever been in Scotland ?" asked the pale gentleman, with rather a ferocious air. " No, sir ! Have you ever been in America ?" " No, sir ! but I have read Mrs. Trollope." 194 PENCILLINGS BY THE WA\ " And I have read Cyril Thornton ; and the man- ners delineated in Mrs. Trollope, I must say, are rather elegant in comparison." I particularized the descriptions I alluded to, which will occur immediately to those who have read the novel I have named ; and then confessing I was an American, and withdrawing my illiberal remark, which I had only made to show the gentleman the injustice and absurdity of his own, we called for another tass of whiskey, and became very good friends. Heaven knows I have no prejudice against the Scotch, or any other nation — but it is extraordinary how universal the feeling seems to be against America. A half hour in- cog, in any mixed company in England I should think would satisfy the most rose-colored doubter on the subject. We got under way at eleven o'clock, and the pas- sengers turned in. The next morning was Sunday. It was fortunately of a " Sabbath stillness;" and the open sea through which we were driving, with an easy south wind in our favor, graciously permitted us to do honor to as substantial a breakfast as ever was set be- fore a traveller, even in America. (Why we should be ridiculed for our breakfasts I do not know.) The "Monarch" is a superb boat, and, with the aid of sails and a wind right aft, we made twelve miles in the hour easily. I was pleased to see an observance of the Sabbath which had not crossed my path before in three years' travel. Half the passengers at least took their bibles after breakfast, and devoted an hour or two evidently to grave religious reading and reflec- tion. With this exception, I have not seen a person with the Bible in his hand, in travelling over half the world. The weather continued fine, and smooth water tempted us up to breakfast again on Monday. The wash-room was full of half-clad men, but the week- day manners of the passengers were perceptibly gayer. The captain honored us by taking the head of the" ta- ble, which he had not done on the day previous, and his appeaiance was hailed by three general cheers. When the meats were removed, a gentleman rose, and, after a very long and parliamentary speech, proposed the health of the captain. The company stood up, ladies and all, and it was drank with a "tremendous "hip-hip-hurrah," in bumpers of whiskey. They don't do that on the Mississippi, I reckon. If they did, the travellers would be down upon us, " I guess," out-Hamiltoning Hamilton. We rounded St. Abb's head into the Forth, at five, in the afternoon, and soon dropped anchor oft' Leith. The view of Edinburgh, from the water, is, ] think, second only to that of Constantinople. The singular resemblance, in one or two features, to the view of Athens, as you approach from the Piraeus, seems to have struck other eyes than mine, and an imitation Acropolis is commenced on the Calton-hill, and has already, in its half-finished state, much the effect of the Parthenon. Hymettus is rather loftier than the Pentland-hills, and Pentelicus farther off and grander than Arthur's seat, but the old castle of Edinburgh is a noble and peculiar feature of its own, and soars up against the sky, with its pinnacle-placed turrets, su- perbly magnificent. The Forth has a high shore on either side, and, with the island of Inchkeith in its broad bosom, it looks more like a lake than an arm of the sea. It is odd what strange links of acquaintance will develop between people thrown together in the most casual manner, and in the most out-of-the-way places. I have never entered a steamboat in my life without finding, if hot an acquaintance, some one who should have been an acquaintance from mutual knowledge of friends. I thought, through the first day, that the Monarch would be an exception. On the second morning, however, a gentleman came up and called me by name. He was an American, and had seen me in Boston. Soon after, another gentleman addressed some remark to me, and, in a few minutes, we dis- covered that we were members of the same club in London, and bound to the same hospitable roof in Scotland. We went on, talking together, and I hap- pened to mention having lately been in Greece, when one of a large party of ladies, overhearing the remark, turned, and asked me, if I had met Lady in my travels. I had met her at Athens, and this was her sister. I found I had many interesting particulars of the delightful person in question which were new to them, and, sequilur, a friendship struck up immedi- ately between me and a party of six. You would have never dreamed, to have seen the adieux on the landing, that we had been unaware of each other's ex- istence forty-four hours previous. Leith is a mile or more from the town, and we drove into the new side of Edinburgh — a splendid city of stone — and, with my English friend, I was soon in- stalled in a comfortable parlor at Douglas's — an hotel to which the Tremont, in Boston, is the only parallel. It is built of the same stone and is smaller, but it has a better situation than the Tremont, standing in a magnificent square, with a column and statue to Lord Melville in the centre, and a perspective of a noble street stretching through the city from the opposite side. We dined upon grovse, to begin Scotland fairly, and nailed down our sherry with a tass o' Glenlivet, and then we had still an hour of daylight for a ramble LETTER CXXIV. EDINBURGH — A SCOTCH BREAKFAST — THE CASTLE - PALACE OF HOLYROOD — QUEEN MARY — RIZZIO — CHARLES THE TENTH. It is an odd place, Edinboro'. The old town and the new are separated by a broad and deep ravine, planted with trees and shrubbery ; and across this, on a level with the streets on either side, stretches a bridge of a most giddy height, without which ail com- munication would apparently be cut oft'. " Auld Reekie" itself looks built on the back-bone of a ridgy crag, and towers along on the opposite side of the ravine, running up its twelve-story houses to the sky in an ascending curve, till it terminates in the frown- ing and battlemented castle, whose base is literally on a mountain top in the midst of the city. At the foot of this ridge, in the lap of the valley, lies Holyiood- house ; and between this and the castle runs a single street, part of which is the old Canongate. Princes' street, the Broadway of the new town, is built along the opposite edge of the ravine facing the long, many- windowed walls of the Canongate, and from every part of Edinboro' these singular features are con- spicuously visible. A more striking contrast than exists between these two parts of the same city could hardly be imagined. On one side a succession of splendid squares, elegant granite houses, broad and well-paved streets, columns, statues, and clean sidewalks, thinly promenaded and by the well-dressed exclusively — a kind of wholly grand and half-deserted city, which has been built too ambitiously for its population — and on the other, an antique wilderness of streets and " wynds," so narrow and lofty as to shut out much of the light of heaven ; a thronging, busy, and particu- larly dirty population, sidewalks almost impassable from children and other respected nuisances ; and altogether, between the irregular and massive archi- tecture, and the unintelligible jargon agonizing the air about you, a most outlandish and strange city. Paris is not more unlike Constantinople than one side of PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 195 Edinboro' is unlike the other. Nature has probably placed " a great gulf" between them. We toiled up the castle to see the sunset. Oh, but it was beautiful! I have no idea of describing it ; but Edinboro', to me, will be a picture seen through an atmosphere of powdered gold, mellow as an eve on the rampagna. We looked down on the surging sea of architecture below us, and whether it was the wavy clou liness of a myriad of reeking chimneys, or whether it was a fancy Glenlivet-born in my eye, the city seemed to me like a troop of war-horses, rearing into the air with their gallant riders. The singular boldness of the hills on which it is built, and of the Cragfl and mountains which look down upon it, and the impressive lift of its towering architecture into the sky, gaye it altogether a look of pride and warlikeness that answers peculiarly to the chivalric history of Scot- lauil. And so much for the first look at " Auld Reekie." My friend had determined to have what he called a "flare-up" of a Scotch breakfast, and we were set down the morning after our arrival, at nine, to cold grouse, salmon, cold beef, marmalade, jellies, honey, five kinds of bread, oatmeal cakes, coffee, tea, and toast ; and I am by no means sure that that is all. It is a fine country in which one gets so much by the simple order of " breakfast at nine." We parted after having achieved it, my companion going before me to Dumbartonshire; and, with a "wee callant" for a guide, I took my way to Holy- rood. At the very foot of Edinboro' stands this most inter- esting of royal palaces — a fine old pile, though at the first view rather disappointing. It might have been in the sky, which was dun and cold, or it might have been in the melancholy story most prominent in its history, but it oppressed me with its gloom. A rosy cicerone in petticoats stepped out from the porter's lodge, and rather brightened my mood with her smile and courtesy, and I followed on to the chapel royal, built, Heaven knows when, but in a beautiful state of gothic ruin. The girl went on with her knitting and her well-drilled recitation of the sights upon which those old fretted and stone traceries had let in the light ; and I walked about feeding my eyes upon its hoar and touching beauty, listening little till she came to the high altar, and in the same broad Scotch monot- ony, and with her eyes still upon her work, hurried over something about Mary Queen of Scots. She was married to Darnley on the spot where I stood ! The mechanical guide was accustomed evidently to an interruption here, and stood silent a minute or two to give my surprise the usual grace. Poor, poor Mary ! I had the common feeling, and made probably the same ejaculation that thousands have made on the spot, that I had never before realized the melancholy romance of her life half so nearly. It had been the sadness of an hour before — a feeling laid aside with the book that recorded it — now it was, as it were, a pity and a grief for the living, and I felt struck with it as if it had happened yesterday. If Rizzio's harp had sounded from her chamber, it could not have seemed more tangibly a scene of living story. " And through this door they dragged the murdered favorite; and here under this stone, he was buried !" •' Yes, sir." " Poor Rizzio !" " I'm thinkin' that's a', sir !" It was a broad hint, but I took another turn down the nave of the old ruin, and another look at the scene of the murder, and the grave of the victim. " And this door communicated with Mary's apart- ments!" M Yes — ye hae it a' the noo !" I paid my shilling, and exit. On inquiry for the private apartments, I was directed to another Girzy, who took me up to a suite of rooms appropriated to the use of the earl of Breadalbane, and furnished very much like lodgings for a guinea a week in London. " And which was Queen Mary's chamber?" " Ech ! sir ! It's t'ither side. I dinna show that." "And what am I brought here for?" " Y'e cam' yoursell !" With this wholesome truth, I paid my shilling again, and was handed over to another woman, who took me into a large hall containing portraits of Robert Bruce, Baliol, Macbeth, Queen Mary, and some forty other men and women famous in Scotch story ; and nothing is clearer than that one patient person sat to the painter for the whole. After " doing" these, I was led with extreme deliberativeness through a suite of unfurnished rooms, twelve, I think, the only interest of which was their having been ten- anted of late by the royal exile of France. As if any- body would give a shilling to see where Charles the Tenth slept and breakfasted ! I thanked Heaven that I stumbled next upon the right person, and was introduced into an ill-lighted room, with one deep window looking upon the court, and a fireplace like that of a country inn — the state chamber of the unfortunate Mary. Here was a chair she embroidered — there was a seat of tarnished velvet, where she sat in state with Darnley — the very grate in the chimney that she had sat before — the mirror in which her fairest face had been imaged — the table at which she had worked — the walls on which her eyes had rested in her gay and her melancholy hours — all, save the touch and mould of time, as she lived in it and left it. It was a place for a thousand thoughts. The woman led on. We entered another room — her chamber. A small, low bed, with tattered hang- ings of red and figured silk, tall, ill-shapen posts, and altogether a paltry look, stood in a room of irregular shape ; and here, in all her peerless beauty, she had slept. A small cabinet, a closet merely, opened on the right, and in this she was supping with Rizzio, when he was plucked from her and murdered. We went back to the audience-chamber to see the stain of his blood on the floor. She partitioned it off after his death, not bearing to look upon it. Again — "poor Mary !" On the opposite side was a similar closet, which served as her dressing-room, and the small mirror, scarce larger than your hand, which she used at her toilet. Oh for a magic wand, to wave back, upon that senseless surface, the visions of beauty it has re- flected ! LETTER CXXV. DALHOUSIE CASTLE — THE EARL AND COUNTESS — ANTI- QUITY OF THEIR FAMILY. Edinboro' has extended to "St. Leonard's," and the home of Jeanie Deans is now the commencement of the railway ! How sadly is romance ridden over by the march of intellect ! With twenty-four persons and some climbers be- hind, I was drawn ten miles in the hour by a single horse upon the Dalkeith railroad, and landed within a mile of Dalhousie Castle. Two "wee callants" here undertook my portmanteau, and in ten minutes more I was at the rustic lodge in the park, the gate of which swung hospitably open with the welcome announce- ment that I was expected. An avenue of near three quarters of a mile of firs, cedars, laburnums, and larches, wound through the park to the castle ; and dipping over the edge of a deep and wild dell, I found the venerable old pile below me, its round towers and 96 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. battlemented turrets frowning among the trees, and forming with the river, which swept round its base, one of the finest specimens imaginable of the feudal picturesque.* The nicely gravelled terraces, as I ap- proached, the plate-glass windows and rich curtains, diminished somewhat of the romance; but I am not free to say that the promise they gave of the luxury within did not offer a succedaneum. I was met at the threshold by the castle's noble and distinguished master, and as the light modern gothic door swung open on its noiseless hinges, I looked up at the rude armorial scutcheon above, and at the slits for the portcullis chains and the rough hollows in the walls which had served for its rest, and it seemed to me that the kind and polished earl, in his velvet cap, and the modern door on its patent hinges, were pleas- ant substitutes even for a raised drawbridge and a hel- meted knight. I beg pardon of the romantic, if this be treason against Delia Crusca. The gong had sounded its first summons to dinner, and I went immediately to my room to achieve my toilet. I found myself in the south wing, with a glo- rious view up the valley of the Esk, and comforts about me such as are only found in a private chamber in England. The nicely-fitted carpet, the heavy cur- tains, the well-appointed dressing-table, the patent grate and its blazing fire (for where is a fire not welcome in Scotland ?) the tapestry, the books, the boundless bed, the bell that will ring, and the servants that anticipate the pull oh, you should have pined for comfort in France and Italy to know what this cat- alogue is worth. After dinner, Lady Dalhousie, who is much of an invalid, mounted a small poney to show me the grounds. We took a winding path away from the door, and descended at once into the romantic dell over which the castle towers. It is naturally a most wild and precipitous glen, through which the rapid Esk pursues its way almost in darkness; but, leaving only the steep and rocky shelves leaning over the river with their crown of pines, the successive lords of Dalhou- sie have cultivated the banks and hills around for a park and a paradise. The smooth gravel walks cross and interweave, the smoother lawns sink and swell with their green bosoms, the stream dashes on mur- muring below, and the lofty trees shadow and over- hang all. At one extremity of the grounds are a flow- er and a fruit garden, and beyond it the castle-farm ; at the other, a little village of the family dependants, with their rose-imbowered cottages ; and, as far as you would ramble in a day, extend the woods and glades, and hares leap across your path, and pheasants and partridges whirr up as you approach, and you may fa- tigue yourself in a scene that is formed in every fea- ture from the gentle-born and the refined. The labor and the taste of successive generations can alone cre- ate such an Eden. Primogeniture ! I half forgive thee. The various views of the castle from the bottom of the dell are perfectly beautiful. With all its internal refinement, it is still the warlike fortress at a little dis- tance, and bartizan and battlement bring boldly back the days when Bruce was at Hawtbornden (six miles distant), and Lord Dalhousie's ancestor, the knightly Sir Alexander Ramsay, defended the ford of the Esk, and made himself a name in Scottish story in the days of Wallace and the Douglasses. Dalhousie was be- sieged by Edward the first and by John of Gaunt, among others, and being the nearest of a chain of cas- tles from the Esk to the Pentland Hills, it was the scene of some pretty fighting in most of the wars of Scotland. * " The castle of Dalhousie upon the South-Esk, is a strong and large castle, with a large wall of aslure work going round about the same, with a tower upon ilk corner thereof."— Grose's Antiquities. Lord Dalhousie showed me a singular old bridle- bit, the history of which is thus told in Scott's Tales of a Grandfather : " Sir Alexander Ramsay having taken by storm the strong castle of Roxburgh, the king bestowed on him the office of sheriff of the county, which was before engaged by the knight of Liddesdale. As this was placing another person in his room, the knight of Liddesdale altogether forgot his old friendship for Ramsay, and resolved to put him to death. He came suddenly upon him with a strong party of men while he was administering justice at Hawick. Ramsay, having no suspicion of injury from the hands of his old comrade, and having few men with him, was easily overpowered ; and. be- ing wounded, was hurried away to the lonely castle of the Hermitage, which stands in the middle of the morasses of Liddesdale. Here he was thrown into a dungeon (with his horse) where he had no other sustenance than some grain which fell down from a granary above ; and, after lingering awhile in that dreadful condition, the brave Sir Alexander Ramsay died. This was in 1412. Nearly four hundred and fifty years afterward, that is, about forty years ago. a mason, digging among the ruins of Hermitage Castle, broke into a dungeon, where lay a quantity of chaff, some human bones and a bridle-bit, which were supposed to mark the vault as the place of Ramsay's death, 'the bridle-bit was given to grandpapa, who presented it to the present gallant earl of Dalhousie, a brave soldier, like his ancestor, Sir Alexander Ramsay, from whom he is lineally descended." There is another singular story connected with the family which escaped Sir Walter, and which has never appeared in print. Lady Dalhousie is of the ancient family of Coulston, one of the ancestors of which, Brown of Coulston, married the daughter of the fa- mous Warlock of Gifford, described in Marmion. As they were proceeding to the church, the wizard lord stopped the bridal procession beneath a pear-tree, and plucking one of the pears, he gave it to his daughter, telling her that he had no dowry to give her, but that as long as she kept that gift, good fortune would never desert her or her descendants. This was in 1270, and the pear is still preserved in a silver box. About two centuries ago, a maiden lady of the family chose to try her teeth upon it, and very soon after two of the best farms of the estate were lost in some litigation— the only misfortune that has befallen the inheritance of the Coulstons in six centuries — thanks (perhaps) to the Warlock pear ! LETTER CXXVI. SPORTING AND ITS EQUIPMENTS — BOSLIN CASTM AND CHAPEL. The nominal attraction of Scotland, particularly at this season, is the shooting. Immediately on your arrival, you are asked whether you prefer a flint or a percussion lock, and (supposing that you do not travel with a gun, which all Englishmen do), a double-bar- relled Manton is appropriated to your use, the game- keeper fills your powder and shot-pouches, and waits with the dogs in a leash till you have done your break- fast ; and the ladies leave the table, wishing you a good day's sport, all as matters of course. I would rather have gone to the library. An aver- sion to walking, except upon smooth flag-stones, a poetical tenderness on the subject of " putting birds out of misery," as the last office is elegantly called, and hands much more at home with a goose-quill than a gun, were some of my private objections to the "or- der of the day." Between persuasion and a most truant sunshine, I was overruled, however; and, with a silent prayer that I might not destroy the hopes of my noble host, by shooting his only son, who was to be my companion and instructer, I shouldered the proffered Manton and joined the game-keeper in the park , PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. )97 Lord Ramsay and his man looked at me with some astonishment as I approached, and I was equally sur- prised at the young nobleman's metamorphosis. From the elegant Oxonian I had seen at breakfast, he was transformed to a figure something rougher than his highland dependant, in a woollen shooting-jacket, that might have been cut in Kentucky, pockets of any ■ number and capacity, trousers of the coarsest plaid, j hob-nailed shoes, and leather gaiters, and a manner of handling his gun that would have been respected on the Mississippi. My own appearance in high- Steeled French boots and other corresponding geerfor a tramp over stubble and marsh, amused them equally ; but my wardrobe was exclusively metropolitan, and there was no alternative. The dogs were loosed from their leash and bounded away, and crossing the Esk under the castle walls, ! we found our way out of the park, and took to the open fields. A large patch of stubble was our first ground, and with a " hie away !" from the game- keeper, the beautiful setters darted on before, their tails busy with delight and their noses to the ground, first dividing, each for a wall-side, and beating along till they met, and then scouring toward the centre, as regularly, as if every step were guided by human reason. Suddenly they both dropped low into the stubble, and with heads eagerly bent forward and the intensest gaze upon a spot, a yard or more in advance, stood as motionless as stone. ' A covey, my lord !" | said the game-keeper, and, with our guns cocked, we ! advanced to the dogs, who had crouched, and lay as still, while we passed them, as if their lives depended upon onr shot. Another step, and whirr! whirr! a dozen partridges started up from the furrow, and j while Lord Ramsey cried " Now !" and reserved his ! fire to give me the opportunity, I stood stock still in my surprise, and the whole covey disappeared over ■ the wall. My friend laughed, the game- keeper smiled, and the dogs hied on once more. J mended my shooting in the course of the morning, but it was both exciting and hard work. A heavy shower soaked us through, without extracting the slightest notice from my companion; and on we trudged through peas, beans, turnips, and corn, mud- ! died to the knees and smoking with moisture, exces- sively to the astonishment, I doubt not, of the produc- tions of Monsieur Clerx, of the Rue Vivienne, which ' were reduced to the consistency of brown paper, and those of my London tailor, which were equally en- | titled to some surprise at the use they were put to. It was quite beautiful, however, to see the ardor and training of the dogs; their caution, their obedience, j and their perfect understanding of every motion of their master. I found myself interested quite beyond j fatigue, and it was only when we jumped the park i paling and took it once more leisurely down the grav- ; el-walks, that [ realized at what an expense of mud, I water, and weariness, my day's sport had been pur- chased. Mejn. Never to come to Scotland again without hob-nailed shoes and a shooting-jacket. Rode over to Roslin castle. The country between Dalhousie castle and Roslin, including the village of I Lasswade, is of uncommon loveliness. Lasswade itself clings to the two sides of a small valley, with its village church buried in trees, and the country-seat I of Lord Melvill looking down upon it, from its green woods ; and away over the shoulder of the hill, swell the forests and rocks which imbosom Hawthornden (the residence of Drummond, the poet, in the days of Ben Jonson), and the Pentltad Hills, with their bold outline, form a background that completes the pic- ture. We left our horse3 at the neighboring inn, and walked first to Roslin chapel. This little gem of florid architecture is scarcely a ruin, so perfect are its arches and pillars, its fretted cornices and its painted windows. A whimsical booby undertook the cicei one, with a long cane-pole to point out the beauties We entered the low side-door, whose stone thresh old the feet of Cromwell's church-stabled troopers assisted to wear, and walked at once to a singular col- umn of twisted marble, most curiously carved, stand- ing under the choir. Our friend with the cane-pole, who had condescended to familiar Scotch on the way, took his distance from the base, and drawing up his feet like a soldier on drill, assumed a most extraordi- nary elevation of voice, and recited its history in a declamation of which I could only comprehend the words " A?t'braham and Isaac." I saw by the direc- tion of the pole that there was a bas-relief of the Father of the Faithful, done on the capital, but for the rest I was indebted to Lord Ramsay, who did it into English as follows : " The master-mason of this chapel, meeting with some difficulties in the execu- tion of his design, found it necessary to go to Rome for information, during which time his apprentice carried on the work, and even executed some parts concerning which his master had been most doubtful; particularly this fine fluted column, ornamented with wreaths of foliage and flowers twisting spirally round it. The master on his return, stung with envy at this proof of the superior abilities of his apprentice, slew him by a blow of his hammer." The whole interior of the chapel is excessively rich. The roof, capitals, key-stones, and architraves, are covered with sculptures. On the architrave joining the apprentice's pillar to a smaller one, is graved the sententious inscription, "Forte est vinum, fortior est rex, fortiores sunt mulieres ; super omnia vincit Veritas." It has been built about four hundred years, and is, 1 am told, the most perfect thing of its kind in Scot- land. The ruins of Roslin castle are a few minutes walk beyond. They stand on a kind of island rock, in the midst of one of the wildest glens of Scotland, sepa- rated from the hill nearest to the base by a drawbridge, swung over a tremendous chasm. I have seen nothing so absolutely picturesque in my travels. The North Esk runs its dark course, unseen, in the ravine below ; the rocks on every side frown down upon it in black shadows, the woods are tangled and apparently path- less, and were it not for a most undeniable two-story farm-house, built directly in the court of the old cas- tle, you might convince yourself that foot had never approached it since the days of Wallace. The fortress was built by William St. Clair, of whom Grose writes: "He kept a great court and was royally served at his own table in vessels of gold and silver; Lord Dirleton being his master-household; Lord Borthwick his cup-bearer, and Lord Fleming his carver; in whose absence they had deputies to at- tend, viz : Stewart, Laird of Drumlanrig ; Tweddie, Laird of Drumerline; and Sandilands, Laird of Cal- der. He had his halls and other apartments richly adorned with embroidered hangings. He flourished in the reigns of James the First and Second. His princess, Elizabeth Douglas, wr* served by seventy- five gentlewomen, whereof fifty- hree were daughters of noblemen, all clothed in velvets and silks, with their chains of gold and other ornaments, and was attended by two hundred riding gentlemen in all her journeys ;" and, if it happened to be dark w hen she went to Edinburgh, where her lodgings were at the foot of the Black Fryar's Wynd, eighty lighted torches were carried before her." With a scrambling walk up the glen, which is. as says truly Mr. Grose, *« inconceivably romantic." we returned to our horses, and rode back to our dinner at Dalhousie, delighted with Roslin castle, and uncom- monly hungry. 198 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER CXXVII. "CHRISTOPHER NORTH" — MR. BLACKWOOD— THE ET- TRICK SHEPHERD LOCKHART — NOCTES AMBROSIAN^E WORDSWORTH — SOTJTHEY CAPTAIN HAMILTON AND HIS BOOK ON AMERICA — PROFESSOR WILSON'S FAMILY, ETC. One of my most valued letters to Scotland was an introduction to Professor Wilson — the " Christopher North" of Blackwood, and the well-known poet. The acknowledgment of the reception of my note came with an invitation to breakfast the following morning, at the early hour of nine. The professor's family were at a summer residence in the country, and he was alone in his house in Gloucester-place, having come to town on the melan- choly errand of a visit to poor Blackwood — (since dead). I was punctual to my hour, and found the poet standing before the fire with his coat-skirts ex- panded — a large, muscular man, something slovenly in his dress, but with a manner and face of high good humor, and remarkably frank and prepossessing ad- dress. While he was finding me a chair, and saying civil things of the noble friend who had been the me- dium of our acquaintance, I was trying to reconcile my idea of him, gathered from portraits and descrip- tions, with the person before me. I had imagined a thinner and more scholar-like lo'oking man, with a much paler face, and a much more polished exterior. His head is exceedingly ample, his eye blue and rest- less, his mouth full of character, and his hair, of a very light sandy color, is brushed up to cover an in- cipient baldness, but takes very much its own way, and has the wildness of a Highlander's. He has the stamp upon him of a remarkable man to a degree sel- dom seen, and is, on the whole, fine-looking and cer- tainly a gentleman in his appearance ; but (I know not whether the impression is common) I expected in Christopher North, a finished and rather over-refined man of the world of the old school, and I was so far disappointed. The tea was made, and the breakfast smoked upon the table, but the professor showed no signs of being aware of the fact, and talked away famously, getting up and sitting down, walking to the window and standing before the fire, and apparently carried quite away with his own too rapid process of thought. He talked of the American poets, praised Percival and Pierpont more particularly ; expressed great pleasure at the criticisms of his own works that had appeared in the American papers and •magazines — and still the toast was getting cold, and with every move he seemed less and less aware of the presence of breakfast. There were plates and cups for but two, so that he was not waiting for another guest, and after half an hour had thus elapsed, I began to fear he thought he had already breakfasted. Jf I had wished to remind him of it, however, 1 should have had no opportunity, for the stream of his eloquence ran on without a break ; and eloquence it certainly was. His accent is very broadly Scotch, but his words are singularly well chosen, and his illustrations more novel and poetical than those of any man I ever conversed with. He spoke of Blackwood, returning to the subject repeat- edly, and always with a softened tone of voice and a more impressive manner, as if his feelings were entire- ly engrossed by the circumstances of his illness. " Poor Blackwood," he said, setting his hands togeth- er, and fixing his eyes on the wall, as if he were solil- oquising with the picture of the sick man vividly be- fore him, " there never was a more honest creature, or a better friend. I have known him intimately for years, and owe him much ; and I could lose no friend that would affect me more nearly. There is some- thing quite awful in the striking down thus of a fa- miliar companion by your side — the passing away — the death — the end forever of a man you have been accustomed to meet as surely as the morning or even- ing, and have grown to consider a part of your exis- tence almost. To have the share he took in your thoughts thrown back upon you — and his aid and counsel and company with you no more. His own mind is in a very singular state. He knows he is to die, and he has made every preparation in the most composed and sensible manner, and if the subject is alluded to directly, does not even express a hope of recovery ; yet, the moment the theme is changed, he talks as if death were as far from him as ever, and looks forward, and mingles himself up in his remarks on the future, as if he were to be here to see this and the other tiling completed, and share with you the ad- vantage for years to come. What a strange thing it is — this balancing between death and life — standing on the edge of the grave, and turning, first to look into its approaching darkness, and then back on the famil- iar and pleasant world, yet with a certain downward progress, and no hope of life, beyond the day over your head !" I asked if Blackwood was a man of refined literary taste. M Yes," he said, " I would trust his opinion of a book sooner than that of any man I know. He might not publish everything he approved, for it was his bu- siness to print only things that would sell ; and, there- fore, there are perhaps many authors who would com- j plain of him ; but, if his opinion had been against my own, and it had been my own book, I should believe he was right and give up my own judgment. He was a patron of literature, and it owes him much. He is a loss to the world-" I spoke of the " Nodes." He smiled, as you would suppose Christopher North would do, with the twinkle proper of genuine hilarity in his eye, and said, "Yes, they have been very popular. Many people in Scotland believe them to be transcripts of real scenes, and wonder how a pro- fessor of moral philosophy can descend to such ca- rousings, and poor Hogg comes in for his share of abuse, for they never doubt he was there and said everything that is put down for him." "How does the Shepherd take it?" "Very good humoredly, with the exception of one or two occasions, when cockney scribblers have visit- ed him in their tours, and tried to flatter him by con- vincing him he was treated disrespectfully. But five minutes' conversation and two words of banter restore his good humor, and he is convinced, as he ought to be, that he owes half his reputation to the Noctes." " What do you think of his Life of Sir Walter, which Lockhart has so butchered in Fraser?" "Did Lockhart write that ?" " I was assured so in London." " It was a barbarous and unjustifiable attack; and, oddly enough, I said so yesterday to Lockhart him- self, who was here, and he differed from*me entirely. Now you mention it, I think from his manner, he must have written it." " Will Hogg forgive him ?" " Never ! never! I do not think he knows yet who has done it, but I hear that he is dreadfully exaspera- ted. Lockhart is quite wrong. To attack an old man, with gray hairs, like the Shepherd, and accuse him so flatly and unnecessarily of lie upon lie — oh, it was not right!" " Do you think Hogg misrepresented facts wil- fully ?" " No, oh no ! he is perfectly honest, no doubt, and quite revered Sir Walter. He has an unlucky inac- curacy of mind, however; and his own vanity, which is something quite ridiculous, has given a coloring to his conversations with Scott, which puts them in a PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAY 199 very false light ; and Sir Walter, who was the best natured of men, may have said the things ascribed to him iu a variety of moods, such as no one can under- stand who does not know what a bore Hogg must sometimes have been at Abbottsford. Do you know Lockhart .'" " No, I do not. He is almost the only literary man in London I have not met ; and I must say, as the editor of the Quarterly, and the most unfair and un- principled critic of the day, I have no wish to know him. I never heard him well spoken of. I probably have met a hundred of his acquaintances, but I have not yet seen one who pretended to be his friend." "Yet there is a great deal of good in Lockhart. I allow all you say of his unfairness and severity; but if he were sitting there, opposite you, you would find him the mildest and most unpresumingof men, and so he appears in private life always." " Not always. A celebrated foreigner, who had been very intimate with him, called one morning to deprecate his severity upon Baron DTIaussez's book in a forthcoming review. He did his errand in a friendly way, and, on taking his leave, Lockhart, with much ceremony, accompanied him down to his car- riage. ' Pray don't give yourself the trouble to come down,' said the polite Frenchman. ' 1 make a point of doing it, sir;' said Lockhart, with a very offensive manner, 'for I understand from your friend's book, that we are not considered a polite nation in France.' Nothing certainly could be more ill-bred and in- sulting." " Still it is not in his nature. I do believe that it is merely an unhappy talent he has for sarcasm, with which his heart has nothing to do. When he sits down to review a book, he never thinks of the author or his feelings. He cuts it up with pleasure, because he does it with skill in the way of his profession, as a surgeon dissects a dead body. He would be the first to show the man a real kindness if he stood before him. I have known Lockhart long. He was in Ed- inboro' a great while, and when he was writing ' Va- lerius,' we were in the habit of walking out together every morning, and when we reached a quiet spot in the country, he read to me the chapters as he wrote them. He finished it in three weeks. I heard it all thus by piecemeal as it went on, and had much diffi- culty in persuading him that it was worth publishing. He wrote it very rapidly, and thought nothing of it. We used to sup together with Blackwood, and that was the real origin of the ' Noctes.' " "At Ambrose's?" " At Ambrose's." "But is there such a tavern, really?" "Oh, certainly. Anybody will show it to you. It is a small house, kept in an out-of-the-way corner of the town, by Ambrose, who is an excellent fellow in his way, and has had a great influx of custom in con- sequence of his celebrity in the Noctes. We were there one night very late, and had all been remarkably gay and agreeable. ' What a pity,' said Lockhart, 4 that some short-hand writer had not been here to take down the good things that have been said at this supper.' The next day he produced a paper called 4 Noctes Ambros\7lll3^, , and that was the first. I con- tinued them afterward." 44 Have you no idea of publishing them separately? I think a volume or two should be made of the more poetical and critical parts, certainly. Leaving out the politics and the meiely local topics of the day, no book could be more agreeable." 44 It was one of the things pending when poor Blackwood was taken ill. But, will you have some breakfast?" The breakfast had been cooling for an hour, and T most willingly acceded to his proposition. Without rising, he leaned back, with his chair still toward the fire, and seizing the tea-pot as if it were a sledge- hammer, he poured from one cup to the other with- out interrupting the stream, overrunning both cup and saucer, and partly flooding the tea-tray. He then set j the cream toward me with a carelessness which near- [ ly overset it, and in trying to reach an egg from the cen- tre of the table, broke two. He took no notice of his own awkwardness, but drank his cup of tea at a single draught, ate his egg in the same expeditious manner, and went on talking of the Noctes and Lockhart and Blackwood, as if eating his breakfast were rather a troublesome parenthesis in his conversation. After a while he digressed to Wordsworth and Southey, and asked me if I was going to return by the Lakes. I proposed doing so. 44 I will give you letters to both, if you haven't j them. I lived a long time in that neighborhood, and know Wordsworth perhaps as well as any one. Many a day T have walked over the hills with him, and listen- j ed to his repetition of his own poetry, which of course ; filled my mind completely at the time, and perhaps I started the poetical vein in me, though I can not agree { with the critics that my poetry is an imitation of ! Wordsworth's." 44 Did Wordsworlh repeat any other poetry than his own ?" 44 Never in a single instance, to my knowledge. He is remarkable for the manner in which he is wrapped up in his own poetical life. He thinks of nothing else. Everything ministers to it. Everything is done with reference to it. He is all and only a poet." 44 Was the story true that was told in the papers of his seeing, for the first time, in a large company some new novel of Scott's, in which there was a motto ta- ken from his works ; and that he went immediately to the shelf and took down one of his own volumes and read the whole poem to the party, who were waiting for a reading of the new book ?" 44 Perfectly true. It happened in this very house. Wordsworth was very angry at the paragraph, and I believe accused me of giving it to the world. I was as much surprised as himself, however, to see it in print." 44 What is Southey's manner of life ?" 44 Walter Scott said of him that he lived too much with women. He is secluded in the country, and sur- rounded by a circle of admiring friends who glorify every literary project he undertakes, and persuade him in spite of his natural modesty, that he can do nothing wrong or imperfectly. He has great genius and is a most estimable man." 44 Hamilton lives on the Lakes too — does he not ?" 44 Yes. How terribly he was annoyed by the re- view of his book in the North American. Who wrote it?" 44 1 have not heard positively, but I presume it was Everett. I know nobody else in the country who holds such a pen. He is the American Junius." 44 It was excessively clever but dreadfully severe, and Hamilton was frantic about it. I sent it to him myself, and could scarce have done him a more un- gracious office. But what a strange »hing it is that nobody can write a good book on America ! The ri- diculous part of it seems to me that men of common sense go there as travellers, and fill their books with scenes such as they may see everyday within five minutes' walk of their own doors, and call them Amer- ican. Vulgar people are to be found all over the world, and I will match any scene in Hamilton or Mrs. Trollope, any day or night, here in Edinburgh. I have always had an idea that I should be the best traveller in America myself. I have been so in the habit of associating with people of every class in my own country, that 1 am better fitted to draw the proper distinctions, I think, between what is universal over the world or peculiar to America." 2Q0 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. ** I promise you a hearty welcome, if you should be inclined to try." " I have thought seriously of it. It is, after all, not more than a journey to Switzerland or Italy, of which we think nothing, and my vacation of five months would give me ample time, I suppose, to run through the principal cities. I shall do if, I think." I asked if he had written a poem of any length within the last few years. " No, though I am always wishing to do it. Many things interfere with my poetry. In the first place I am obliged to give a lecture once a day for six months, and in the summer it is such a delight to be released, and get away into the country with my girls and boys, that I never put pen to paper till I am driven. Then Blackwood is a great care ; and, greater objection still, I have been discouraged in various ways by criticism. It used to gall me to have my poems called imitations of Wordsworth and his school ; a thing I could not see myself, but which was asserted even by those who praised me, and which modesty forbade I should dis- avow. I really can see no resemblance between the Isle of Palms and anything of Wordsworth's. I think I have a style of my own, and as my ain bairn, I think better of it than other people, and so pride prevents my writing. Until late years, too, I have been the subject of much political abuse, and for that I should not have cared if it were not disagreeable to have children and servants reading it in the morning papers, and a fear of giving them another handle in my poetry was another inducement for not writing." I expressed my surprise at what he said, for, as far as I knew the periodicals, Wilson had been a singu- larly continued favorite. "Yes, out of this immediate sphere, perhaps — but it requires a strong mind to suffer annoyance at one's lips, and comfort oneself with the praise of a distant and outer circle of public opinion. I had a family growing up. of sons and daughters, who felt for me more than I should have felt for myself, and 1 was an- noyed perpetually. Now, these very papers praise me, and I really can hardly believe my eyes when I open them and find the same type and imprint ex- pressing such different opinions. It is absurd to mind such weathercocks; and, in truth, the only people worth heeding or writing for are the quiet readers in the country, who read for pleasure, and form sober opinions apart from political or personal prejudice. I would give more for the praise of one country clergy- man and his family than I would for the momentary admiration of a whole city. People in towns require a constant plantasmagoria, to keep up even the re- membrance of your name. What books and authors, what battles and heroes, are forgotten in a day !" My letter is getting too long, and I must make it shorter, as it is vastly less agreeable than the visit it- self. Wilson went on to speak of his family, and his eyes kindled with pleasure in talking of his children. He invited me to stop and visit him at his place near Selkirk, in my way south, and promised me that I should see Hogg, who lived not far off. Such in- ducement was scarce necessary, and I made a half promise to do it and left him, after having passed sev- eral hours of the highest pleasure in his fascinating society. LETTER CXXYIII. LORD JEFFREY AND HIS FAMILY — LORD BROUGHAM COUNT FLAHAULT POLITICS THE " GREY" BALL ABERDEEN— GORDON CASTLE. 1 was engaged to dine with Lord Jeffrey on the same day that I had breakfasted with Wilson, and the opportunity of contrasting so closely these two dis- tinguished men, both editors of leading Reviews, yet of different politics, and no less different minds, per- sons, and manners, was highly gratifying. At seven o'clock I drove to Moray-place, the Gros- venor-square of Edinburgh. I was not sorry to be early, for never having seen my host, nor his lady (who, as is well known, is an American), I had some little advantage over the awkwardness of meeting a large party of strangers. After a few minutes' con- versation with Mrs. Jeffrey, the door was thrown quickly open, and the celebrated editor of the Edin- burgh, the distinguished lawyer, the humane and learned judge, and the wit of the day, par excellence, entered with his daughter. A frank, almost merry smile, a perfectly unceremonious, hearty manner, and a most playful and graceful style of saying the half- apologetic, half-courteous things, incident to a first meeting after a letter of introduction, put me at once at my ease, and established a partiality for him, im- promptu, in my feelings. Jeffrey is rather below the middle size, slight, rapid in his speech and motion, never still, and glances from one subject to another, with less abruptness and more quickness than any man I had ever seen. His head is small, but compact and well-shaped ; and the expression of his face, when serious, is that of quick and discriminating earnestness. His voice is rather thin, but pleasing : and if I had met him incidentally, I should have de- scribed him, I think, as a most witty and well-bred gentleman of the school of Wilkes and Sheridan. Perhaps as distinguishing a mark as either his wit or his politeness, is an honest goodness of heart ; which, however it makes itself apparent, no one could doubt, who had been with Jeffrey ten minutes. To my great disappointment, Mrs. Jeffrey informed me that Lord Brougham, who was their guest at the time, was engaged to a dinner, given by the new lord advocate to Earl Grey. I had calculated much on seeing two such old friends and fellow-wits as Jeffrey and Brougham at the same table, and I could well believe what my neighbor told me at dinner, that it was more than a common misfortune to have missed it. A large dinner-party began to assemble, some dis- tinguished men in the law among them, and last of all was announced Lady Keith, rather a striking and very fashionable person, with her husband, Count Flahault, who, after being Napoleon's aid-de-camp at the battle of Waterloo, offered his beauty and talents, both very much above the ordinary mark, to the above named noble heiress. I have seen few as striking-looking men as Count Flahault, and never a foreigner who spoke English so absolutely like a native of the country. The great " Grey dinner" had been given the day before, and politics were the only subject at table. It had been my lot to be thrown principally among to- ries (conservatives is the new name), since my arrival in England, and it was difficult to rid myself at once of the impressions of a fortnight just passed in the castle of a tory earl. My sympathies in the " great and glorious" occasion, were slower than those of the company, and much of their enthusiasm seem- ed to me overstrained. Then I had not even dined with the two thousand whigs under the pavilion, and as I was incautious enough to confess it, I was rallied upon having fallen into bad company, and altogether entered less into the spirit of the hour than I could have wished. Politics are seldom witty or amusing, and though I was charmed with the good sense and occasional eloquence of Lord Jeffrey, I was glad to get up stairs after dinner to chasse-cafe and the ladies We were all bound to the public ball that evening and at eleven I accompanied my distinguished host tc PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 201 the assembly-room. Dancing; was going on with great spirit when we entered ; Lord Grey's statesman- like head was bowing industriously on the platform ; Lady Grey and her daughters sat looking on from the same elevated position, and Lord Brougham's ugliest and shrewdest of human faces, flitted about through the crowd, good fellow to everybody, and followed by all eyes but those of the young. One or two of the Scotch nobility were there, but whigism is not popu- lar among Us hautes volailles, and the ball, though crowded, was but thinly sprinkled with " porcelain." I danced till three o'clock, without finding my part- ners better or worse for their politics, and having ag- gravated a temporary lameness by my exertions, went home with a leg like an elephant to repent my aban- donment of tory quiet. Two or three days under the hands of the doctor, with the society of a Highland crone, of whose cease- less garrulity over my poultices and plasters I could not understand two consecutive words, fairly finished my patience, and abandoning with no little regret a charming land route to the north of Scotland, I had myself taken, "this side up," on board the steamer for Aberdeen. The loss of a wedding in Perthshire by the way, of a week's deer-shooting in the forest of Athol, and a week's fishing with a noble friend at Kinrara (long-standing engagements all), I lay at the door of the whigs. Add to this Loch Leven, Cairn- Gorm, the pass of Killicrankie, other sights lost on that side of Scotland, and I paid dearly for " the Grey ball." We steamed the hundred and twenty miles in twelve hours, paying about three dollars for our pas- sage. I mention it for the curiosity of a cheap thing in this country. I lay at Aberdeen four days, getting out but once, and then for a drive to the " Marichal College," the alma mater of Dugald Dalgetty. It is a curious and rather picturesque old place, half in ruins, and is about being pulled down. A Scotch gentleman, who was a fellow-passenger in the steamer, and who lived in the town, called on me kindly twice a day, brought me books and papers, offered me the use of his car- riage, and did everything for my comfort that could have been suggested by the warmest friendship. Con- sidering that it was a casual acquaintance of a day, it speaks well, certainly, for the " Good Samaritanism" of Scotland. I took two places in the coach at last (one for my leg), and bowled away seventy miles across the coun- try, with the delightful speed of these admirable con- veyances, for Gordon Castle. I arrived at Lochabers, a small town on the estate of the duke of Gordon, at three in the afternoon, and immediately took a post- chaise for the castle, the gate of which was a stone's throw from the inn. The immense iron gate surmounted by the Gordon arms, the handsome and spacious stone lodges on either side, the canonically fat porter in white stock- ings and gay livery, lifting his hat as he swung open the massive portal, all bespoke the entrance to a noble residence. The road within was edged with velvet sward, and rolled to the smoothness of a terrace-walk, the winding avenue lengthened away before, with trees of every variety of foliage ; light carriages pass- ed me driven by ladies or gentlemen bound on their afternoon airing ; a groom led up and down two beau- tiful blood-horses, prancing along, with side-saddles and morocco stirrups, and keepers with hounds and terriers ; gentlemen on foot, idling along the walks, and servants in different liveries, hurrying to and fro, betokened a scene of busy gayety before me. I had hardly noted these various circumstances, before a suddri curve in the road brought the castle into view, a vast~toi*» pile with castellated wings, and in another moment I was at the door, where a dozen lounging and powdered menials were waiting on a party of ladies and gentlemen to their several carriages. It was the moment for the afternoon drive. LETTER CXXIX. GORDON CASTLE — COMPANY THERE — THE PARK — PUKE OF GORDON — PERSONAL BEAUTY OF THE ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. The last phaeton dashed away and my chaise advanced to the door. A handsome boy, in a kind of page's dress, immediately came to the window, address- ed me by name, and informed me that his grace was out deer-shooting, but that my room was prepared, and he was ordered to wait on me. I followed him through a hall lined with statues, deers' horns, and armor, and was ushered into a large chamber, look- ing out on a park, extending with its lawns and woods to the edge of the horizon. A more lovely view never feasted human eye. " Who is at the castle ?" I asked, as the boy busied himself in unstrapping my portmanteau. M Oh, a great many, sir." He stopped in his occu- pation and began counting on his fingers. "There's Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Claud Hamilton and Lady Harriette Hamilton (them's his lordship's two step- children, you know, sir), and the Dutchess of Rich- mond and Lady Sophia Lennox, and Lady Keith, and Lord Mandeville and Lord Aboyne, and Lord Stor- mont and Lady Stormont, and Lord Morton and Lady Morton, and Lady Alicia, and and and twenty more, sir." " Twenty more lords and ladies ?" " No, sir ! that's all the nobility." "And you can't remember the names of the others?" " No, sir." He was a proper page. He could not trouble his memory with the names of commoners. "And how many sit down to dinner?" " Above thirty, sir, besides the duke and dutchess." "That will do." And off tripped my slender gen- tleman with his laced jacket, giving the fire a terrible stir-up in his way out, and turning back to inform me that the dinner hour was seven precisely. It was a mild, bright afternoon, quite warm for the end of an English September, and with a fire in the room, and a soft sunshine pouring in at the windows, a seat by the open casement was far from disagreea- ble. I passed the time till the sun set, looking out on the park. Hill and valley lay between my eye and the horizon ; sheep fed in picturesque flocks ; and small fallow deer grazed near them ; the trees were planted, and the distant forest shaped by the hand of taste ; and broad and beautiful as was the expanse taken in by the eye, it was evidently one princely possession. A mile from the castle wall, the shaven sward extended in a carpet of velvet softness, as bright as emerald, stud- ded by clumps of shrubbery, like flowers wrought elegantly on tapestry, and across it bounded occa- sionaly a hare, and the pheasants fed undisturbed near the thickets, or a lady with flowing riding-dress and flaunting feather, dashed into sight upon her fleet blood-palfrey, and was lost the next moment in the woods, or a boy put his pony to its mettle up the ascent, or a gamekeeper idled into sight with his gun in the hollow of his arm, and his hounds at his heels —and all this little world of enjoyment and luxury, and beauty, lay in the hand of one man, and was created by his wealth in these northern wilds of Scot- land, a day's journey almost from the possession of 202 PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAY. another human being. I never realized so forcibly the splendid result of wealth and primogeniture. The sun set in a blaze of fire among the pointed firs crowning the hills, and by the occasional prance of a horse's feet on the gravel, and the roll of rapid wheels, and now and then a gay laugh and merry voices, the different parties were returning to the castle. Soon after a loud gong sounded through the gallery, the signal to dress, and I left my musing oc- cupation unwillingly to make my toilet for an ap- pearance in a formidable circle of titled aristocrats, not one of whom I had ever seen, the duke himself a stranger to me, except through the kind letter of invita- tion lying upon the table. I was sitting by the fire imagining forms and faces for the different persoi : who had been named to me, when there was a knoc at the door, and a tall, white- haired gentleman, of n ble physiognomy, but singu- larly cordial address, en red, with the broad red riband of a duke across his b. jast, and welcomed me most heartily to the castle. The gong sounded at the next moment, and, in our way down, he named over his other guests, and prepared me in a measure for the introductions which followed. The drawing-room was crowded like a soiree. The dutchess, a very tall and very handsome woman, with a smile of the most winning sweetness, received me at the door, and I was presented successively to every person present. Din- ner was announced immediately, and the difficult question of precedence being sooner settled than I had ever seen it before in so large a party, we passed through files of servants to the dining-room. It was a large and very lofty hall, supported at the ends by marble columns, within which was stationed a band of music, playing delightfully. The walls were lined with full-length famiiy pictures, from old knights in armor to the modern dukes in kilt of the G trdon plaid; and on the sideboards stood services of gold plate, the most gorgeously massive, and the most beautiful in workmanship I have ever seen. There were, among the vases, several large coursing- cups, won by the duke's hounds, of exquisite shape and ornament. I fell into my place between a gentleman and a very beautiful woman, of perhaps twenty-two, neither of whose names I remembered, though I had but just been introduced. The duke probably anticipated as much, and as I took my seat he called out to me, from the top of the table, that I had upon my right, Lady , " the most agreeable woman in Scotland." It was unnecessary to say that she was the most lovely. I have been struck everywhere in England with the beauty of the higher classes, and as I looked around me upon the aristocratic company at the table, I thought I never had seen " heaven's image double- stamped as man and noble" so unequivocally clear. There were two young men and four or five young ladies of rank — and five or six people of more decided personal attractions could scarcely be found ; the style of form and face at the same time being of that cast of superiority which goes by the expressive name of " thoroughbred." There is a striking difference in this respect between England and the countries of the continent — the paysans of France and the contadini of Italy being physically far superior to their degen- erate masters; while the gentry and nobility of Eng- land differ from the peasantry in limb and feature as the racer differs from the dray-horse, or the grey- hound from the cur. The contrast between the man- ners of English and French gentlemen is quite as striking. The empressment, the warmth, the shrug and gesture of the Parisian ; and the working eye- brow, dilating or contracting eye, and conspirator-like action of the Italian in the most common conversation, are the antipodes of English high breeding. I should •;iy a North American Indian, in his more dignified phrase, approached nearer to the manner of an Eng- lish nobleman than any other person. The calm re- pose of person and feature, the self-possession under all circumstances, that incapability of surprise or dereglement, and that decision about the slightest circumstance, and the apparent certainty that he is acting absolutely comtne U faut, is equally "gentle- manlike" and Indianlike. You can not astonish an English gentleman. If a man goes into a fit at his side, or a servant drops a dish upon his shoulder, or he hears that the house is on fire, he sets down his wine- glass with the same deliberation. He has made up his mind what to do in all possible cases, and he does it. He is cold at a first introduction, and may bow stiffly (which he always does) in drinking wine with you, but it is his manner; and he would think an Englishman out of his senses, who should bow down to his very plate and smile as a Frenchman does on a similar oc- casion. Rather chilled by this, you are a little aston- ished when the ladies have left the table, and he closes his chair up to you, to receive an invitation to pass a month with him at his country-house, and to discover that at the very moment he bowed so coldly he was thinking how he should contrive to facilitate your plans for getting to him or seeing the country to advantage on the way. The band ceased playing when the ladies left the table, the gentlemen closed up, conversation assumed a merrier cast, coffee and chasse-cafe were brought in when the wines began to be circulated more slowly ; and at eleven, there was a general move to the draw- ing-room. Cards, tea, and music, filled up the time till twelve, and then the ladies took their departure and the gentlemen sat down to supper. I got to bed somewhere about two o'clock ; and thus ended an evening which 1 had anticipated as stiff and embar- rassing, but which is marked in my tablets as one of the most social and kindly 1 have had the good for- tune to record on my travels. I have described it, and shall describe others minutely — and I hope there is no necessity of reminding any one that my apology for thus disclosing scenes of private life has been already made. Their interest as sketches by an American of the society that most interests Ameri- cans, and the distance at which they are published, justify them, I would hope, from any charge of in- delicacy. LETTER CXXX. ENGLISH BREAKFASTS— SALMON FISHERY LORD ABER- DEEN MR. MC LANE — SPORTING ESTABLISHMENT OF GORDON CASTLE. I arose late on the first morning after my arrival at Gordon Castle, and found the large party already assembled about the breakfast-table. I was struck on entering with the different air of the room. The deep windows, opening out upon the park, had the effect of sombre landscapes in oaken frames; the troops of liveried servants, the glitter of plate, the music, that had contributed to the splendor of the scene the night before, were gone; the duke sat laughing at the head of the table, with a newspaper in his hand, dressed in a coarse shooting jacket and colored cravat; the dutchess was in a plain morning-dress and cap of the simplest character; and the high-born women about the table, whom I had left glittering with jewels, anr 1 dressed in all the attractions of fashion, appeared with the simplest coiffure and a toilet of studied plainness. The ten or twelve noblemen present were engrossed with their letters or newspapers over tea and toast ; and in them, perhaps, the transformation was still greater. The soigne man of fashion of the night be- PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 203 Tore, faultless in costume and distinguished in his ap- pearance, in the full force of the term, was enveloped now in a coat of fustian, with a coarse waistcoat of plaid, a gingham cravat, and hob-nailed shoes (for shooting), and in place of the gay hilarity of the sup- per-table, wore a face of calm indifference, and ate his breakfast and read the paper in a rarely broken silence. I wondered, as I looked about me, what would be the impression of many people in my own country, could they look in upon that plain party, aware that it was composed of the proudest nobility and the highest fashion of England. Breakfast in England is a confidential and uncere- monious hour, and servants are generally dispensed with. This is to me, I confess, an advantage it has over every other meal. I detest eating with twenty tall fellows standing opposite, whose business it is to watch me. The coffee and tea were on the table, with toast, muffins, oat-cakes, marmalade, jellies, fish, and all the paraphernalia of a Scotch breakfast ; and on the sideboard stood cold meats for those who liked them, j I and they were expected to go to it and help themselves. Nothing could be more easy, unceremonious, and af- fable, than the whole tone of the meal. One after another rose and fell into groups in the windows, or walked up and down the long room, and, with one or two others, I joined the duke at the head of the table, who gave us some interesting particulars of the salmon fisheries of the Spey. The privilege of fishing the river within his lands, is bought of him at the pretty sum of eight thousand pounds a year ! A salmon was brought in for me to see, as of remarkable size, which was not more than half the weight of our common American salmon. The ladies went off unaccompanied to their walks in the park and other avocations, those bound for the covers joined the game-keepers, who were waiting with their dogs in the leash at the stables ; some paired off to the billiard-room, and I was left with Lord Aber- deen in the breakfast-room alone. The tory ex-min- ister made a thousand inquiries, with great apparent interest, about America. When secretary for foreign affairs in the Wellington cabinet, he had known Mr. McLane intimately. He said he seldom had been so impressed with a man's honesty and straight-forward- ness, and never did public business with any one with more pleasure. He admired Mr. McLane, and hoped he enjoyed his friendship. He wished he might return as our minister to England. One such honorable, uncompromising man, he said, was worth a score of practised diplomatists. He spoke of Gallatin and Rush in the same flattering manner, but recurred continu- ally to Mr. McLane, of whom he could scarcely say enough. His politics would naturally lead him to ap- prove of the administration of General Jackson, but he seemed to admire the president very much as a man. Lord Aberdeen has the name of being the proudest and coldest aristocrat of England. It is amusing to see the person who bears such a character. He is of the middle height, rather clumsily made, with an ad- dress more of sober dignity than of pride or reserve. With a black coat much worn, and always too large for him, a pair of coarse check trousers very ill made, a waistcoal buttoned up to his throat, and a cravat of the most primitive neglige, his aristocracy is certainly not in his dress. His manners are of absolute simpli- city, amounting almost to want of style. He crosses his hands behind him, and balances on his heels ; in conversation his voice is low and cold, and he seldom smiles. Yet there is a certain benignity in his coun- tenance, and an indefinable superiority and high breed- ing in his simple address, that would betray his rank after a few minutes' conversation to any shrewd obser- ver. It is only in his manner toward the ladies of the party that he would be immediately distinguishable from men of It wer rank in society. Still suffering from lameness, I declined all invita- tions to the shooting parties, who started across the park, with the dogs leaping about them in a phrensy of delight, and accepted the dutchess's kind offer of a pony phaeton to drive down to the kennels. The duke's breed, both of setters and hounds, is celebrated throughout the kingdom. They occupy a spacious building in the centre of a wood, a quadrangle enclos- ing a court, and large enough for a respectable poor- house. The chief huntsman and his family, and per- haps a gamekeeper or two, lodge on the piemises, and the dogs are divided by palings across the court. 1 was rather startled to be introduced into the small en- closure with a dozen gigantic blood-hounds, as high as my breast, the keeper's whip in my hand the only defence. I was not easier for the man's assertion that, without it, they would "hae the life oot o' me in a crack." They came around me very quietly, and one immense fellow, with a chest like a horse, and a head of the finest expression, stood up and laid his paws on my shoulders, with the deliberation of a friend about to favor me with some grave advice. One can scarce believe these noble creatures have not reason like ourselves. Those slender, thorough-bred heads, large, speaking eyes, and beautiful limbs and graceful action, should be gifted with more than mere animal instinct. The greyhounds were the beauties of the kennel, however. I never had seen such perfect crea- tures. " Dinna tak' pains to caress 'em, sir," said the huntsman, " they'll only be hangit for it !" 1 asked for an explanation, and the man, with an air as if 1 was uncommonly ignorant, told me that a hound was hung the moment he betrayed attachment to any one, or in any way showed signs of superior sagacity. In cours- ing the hare, for instance, if the dog abandoned the scent to cut across and intercept the poor animal, he was considered as spoiling the sport. Greyhounds are valuable only as they obey their mere natural instinct, and if they leave the track of the hare, either in their own sagacity, or to follow their master, in intercepting it, they spoil the pack, and are hung without mercy. It is an object, of course, to preserve them what they usually are, the greatest fools as well as the handsom- est of the canine species, and on the first sign of at- tachment to their master, their death-warrant is signed. j They are too sensible to live. The dutchess told me I afterward that she had the greatest difficulty in saving j the life of the finest hound in the pack, who had com- mitted the sin of showing pleasure once or twice when j she appeared. The setters were in the next division, and really j they were quite lovely. The rare tan and black dog j of this race, with his silky, floss hair, intelligent muz- j zle, good-humored face and caressing fondness (lucky | dog ! that affection is permitted in his family!), quite excited my admiration. There were thirty or forty of these, old and young; and a friend of the duke's would as soon ask him for a church living as for the present of one of them. The former would be by much the smaller favor. Then there were terriers of four or five breeds, of one family of which (long-haired, long-bodied, short-legged and perfectly white little wretches) the keeper seemed particularly proud. I evidently sunk in his opinion for not admiring them. I passed the remainder of the morning in threading the lovely alleys and avenues of the park, miles after miles of gravel-walk, extending away in every direc- tion, with every variety of turn and shade, now a deep wood, now a sunny opening upon a glade, here along the bank of a stream, and there around the borders of a small lagoon, the little ponies flying on over the i smoothly-rolled paths, and tossing their mimicking | heads, as if they too enjoyed the beauty of the princely j domain. This, I thought to myself, as I sped on j through light and shadow, is very like what is called happiness : and this (if to be a duke were to enjoy it 204 PRNCILLINGS BY THE WAY. as I do with this fresh feeling of novelty and delight) is a condition of life it is not quite irrational to envy. And giving my little steeds the rein, I repeated to my- self Scott's graphic description, which seems written for the park of Gordon castle, and thanked Heaven for one more day of unalloyed happiness. " And there soft swept in velvet green, The plain with many a glude between, Whose tangled alleys far invade The depths of the bro vn forest shade : And the tall fern obscured the lawn, Fair shelter for the sportive fawn. There, tufted close with copse-wood green, "Was many a swelling hillock seen, And all around was verdure meet For pressure of the fairies' feet. The glossy valley loved the park, The yew-tree lent its shadows dark, And many an old oak worn and bare With all its shivered boughs was there." LETTER CXXXI. SCOTCH HOSPITALITY IMMENSE POSSESSIONS OF THE NOBILITY DUTCHESS' INFANT SCHOOL MANNERS OF HIGH LIFE THE TONE OF CONVERSATION IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA CONTRASTED. The aim of Scotch hospitality seems to be, to con- vince you that the house and all that is in it is your own, and you are at liberty to enjoy it as if you were, in the French sense of the French phrase, chez vous. The routine of Gordon castle was what each one chose to make it. Between breakfast and lunch the ladies were generally invisible, and the gentlemen rode or shot, or played billiards, or kept their rooms. At two o'clock, a dish or two of hot game and a profu- sion of cold meats were set on the small tables in the dining-room, and everybody came in for a kind of lounging half-meal, which occupied perhaps an hour. Thence all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the windows of which were drawn up carriages of all de- scriptions, with grooms, outriders, footmen, and sad- dle-horses for gentlemen and ladies. Parties were then made up for driving or riding, and from a pony- chaise to a phaeton and four, there was no class of vehicle which was not at your disposal. In ten min- utes the carriages were usually all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks of the Spey or the sea- side, some to the drives in the park, and with the de- lightful consciousness that, speed where you would, the horizon scarce limited the possession of your host, and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach, miles distant from the castle ; the herds of red deer trooping away from the sound of wheels in the silent park ; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves ; the hares scarce troubling themselves to get out of the length of the whip ; the stalking game-keepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest — there was something in this perpetual reminding of your privileges, which, as a novelty, was far from disagree- able. I could not at the time bring myself to feel, what perhaps would be more poetical and republican, that a ride in the wild and unfenced forest of my own country would have been more to my taste. The second afternoon of my arrival, I took a seat in the carriage with Lord Aberdeen and his daughter, and we followed the dutchess, who drove herself in a pony-chaise, to visit a school on the estate. Attached to a small gothic chapel, a few minutes drive from the castle, stood a building in the same style, appropriated to the instruction of the children of the duke's ten- antry. There were a hundred and thirty little crea- tures, from two years to five or six, and, like all infant schools in these days of improved education, ^as an interesting and affecting sight. The last one I had been in was at Athens, and though I missed here the dark eyes and Grecian faces of the iEgean, I saw health and beauty of a kind which stirred up more images of home, and promised, perhaps, more for the future. They went through their evolutions, and answered their questions, with an intelligence and cheerfulness that were quite delightful, and J was sor- ry to leave them even for a drive in the loveliest sun- set of a lingering day of summer. People in Europe are more curious about the com- parison of the natural productions of America with those of England, than about our social and political differences. A man who does not care to know whether the president has destroyed the bank, or the bank the president, or whether Mrs. Trollope has flattered the Americans or not, will be very much in- terested to know if the pine-tree in his park is com- parable to the same tree in America, if the same cat- tle are found there, or the woods stocked with the same game as his own. I would recommend a little study of trees particularly, and of vegetation gener ally, as valuable knowledge for an American coming abroad. I think there is nothing on which I have been so often questioned. The dutchess led the way to a plantation of American trees, at some distance from the castle, and stopping beneath some really no- ble firs, asked if our forest-trees were often larger, with an air as if she believed they were not. They were shrubs, however, compared to the gigantic pro- ductions of the west. Whatever else we may see abroad, we must return home to find the magnificence of nature. The number at the dinner-table of Gordon castle was seldom less than thirty, but the company was continually varied by departures and arrivals. No sensation was made by either one or the other. A travelling-carriage dashed up to the door, was disbur- dened of its load, and drove round to the stables, and the question was seldom asked, " Who is arrived ?" You were sure to see at dinner — and an addition of half a dozen to the party made no perceptible differ- ence in anything. Leave-takings were managed in the same quiet way. Adieus were made to the duke and dutchess, and to no one else except he happened to encounter the parting guest upon the staircase, or were more than a common acquaintance. In short, in every way the gene of life seemed weeded out, and if unhappiness or ennui found its way into the castle, it was introduced in the sufferer's own bosom. For me, I gave myself up to enjoyment with an abandon I could not resist. With kindness and courtesy in every look, the luxuries and comforts of a regal es- tablishment at my freest disposal; solitude when I pleased, company when I pleased, the whole visible horizon fenced in for the enjoyment of a household, of which I was a temporary portion, and no enemy except time and the gout, I felt as if I had been spirit- ed into some castle of felicity, and had not come by the royal mailcoach at all. The great spell of high life in this country seems to be repose. All violent sensations are avoided as out of taste. In conversation, nothing is so " odd" (a word, by the way, that in England means everything disagreeable) as emphasis or startling epithet, or ges- ture, and in common intercourse nothing so vulgar as any approach to " a scene." The high-bred English- man studies to express himself in the plainest words that will convey his meaning, and is just as simple and calm in describing the death of his friend, and just as technical, so to speak, as in discussing the weather. For all extraordinary admiration the word " capital" suffices; for all ordinary praise the word "nice!" for all condemnation in morals, manners, or religion, the word "odd!" To express yourself out of this sim- ple vocabulary is to raise the eyebrows of the whole PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 205 company at once, and stamp yourself under-bred, or a foreigner. This sounds ridiculous, but it is the exponent not only of good breeding, but of the true philosophy of social life. The general happiness of a party con- sists in giving every individual an equal chance, and in wounding no one's self-love. What is called an " overpowering person," is immediately shunned, for he talks too much, and excites too much attention. In any other country he would be called "amusing." I He is considered here as a mere monopolizer of the j general interest, and his laurels, talk he never so well, shadow the rest of the company. You meet your most intimate friend in society after a long separation, and he gives you his hand as if you had parted at breakfast. If he had expressed all he felt, it would have been "a scene," and the repose of the company j would have been disturbed. You invite a clever man ! to dine with you, and he enriches his descriptions with | new epithets and original words. He is offensive, j fie eclipses the language of your other guests, and is aut of keeping with the received and subdued tone to which the most common intellect rises with ease. Society on this footing is delightful to all, and the diffident man, or the dull man, or the quiet man, en- joys it as much as another. For violent sensations | you tnust go elsewhere. Your escape-valve is not at your neighbor's ear. There is a great advantage in this in another re- spect. Your tongue never gets you into mischief. The j " unsafeness of Americans" in society (I quote a phrase I have heard used a thousand times) arises wholly from the American habit of applying high- wrought language to trifles. I can tell one of my countrymen abroad by his first remark. Ten to one his first sentence contains a superlative that would make an Englishman imagine he had lost his senses. The natural consequence is continual misapprehen- sion, offence is given where none was intended, words that have no meaning are the ground of quarrels, and gentlemen are shy of us. A good-natured young nobleman, whom I sat next to at dinner on my first arrival at Gordon castle, told me he was hunting with Lord Abercorn when two very gentleman-like young men rode up and requested leave to follow the hounds, but in such extraordinary language that they were not at first understood. The hunt continued for some days, and at last the strangers, who rode well and were seen continually, were invited to dine with the principal nobleman of the neighborhood. They turned out to be Americans, and were every way well- bred and agreeable, but their extraordinary mode of expressing themselves kept the company in continual astonishment. They were treated with politeness, of course, while they remained, but no little fun was made of their phraseology after their departure, and the impression on the mind of my informant was very much against the purity of the English language, as spoken by Americans. I mention it for the benefit of those whom it may concern. LETTER CXXXII. DEPARTURE FROM GORDON CASTLE — THE PRETENDER — SCOTCH CHARACTER MISAPPREHENDED OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY — HIGHLAND CHIEFTAINS. Ten days had gone by like the ** Days of Thalaba," and I took my leave of Gordon Castle. It seemed to me, as I looked back upon it, as if I had passed a separate life there— so beautiful had been every object on which I had looked in that time, and so free from every mixture of ennui had been the hours from the first to the last, I have set them apart in my memory, those ten days, as a bright ellipse in the usual proces- sion of joys and sorrows. It is a little world, walled in from rudeness and vexation, in which 1 have lived a life. I took the coach for Elgin, and visited the fine old ruins of the cathedral, and then kept on to Invt /ness, passing over the " Blasted Heath," the tryst of Mac- beth and the witches. We passed within sight of Culloden Moor, at sunset, and the driver pointed out to me a lonely castle where the Pretender slept the night before the battle. The interest with which I had read the romantic history of Prince Charlie, in my boyhood, was fully awakened, for his name is still a watch-word of aristocracy in Scotland ; and the jacobite songs, with their half-warlike, half-melan- choly music, were favorites of the Dutchess of Gor- don, who sung them in their original Scotch, with an enthusiasm and sweetness that stirred my blood like the sound of a trumpet. There certainly never was a cause so indebted to music and poetry as that which was lost at Culloden. The hotel at Inverness was crowded with livery- servants, and the door inaccessible for carriages. I had arrived on the last day of a county meeting, and all the chieftains and lairds of the north and west of Scotland were together. The last ball was to be given that evening, and I was strongly tempted to go by four or five acquaintances whom I found in the hotel, but the gout was peremptory. My shoe would not go on, and I went to bed. I was limping about in the morning when a kind old baronet, whom I had met at Gordon Castle, when I was warmly accosted by a gentleman whom I did not immediately remember. On his reminding me that we had parted last on Lake Leman, however, I rec- ollected a gentlemanlike Scotchman, who had offered me his glass opposite Copet to look at the house of Madame de Stael, and whom 1 had left afterward at Lausanne, without even knowing his name. He in- vited me immediately to dine, and in about an hour or two after, called in his carriage, and drove me to a charming country-house, a few miles down the shore of Loch Ness, where he presented me to his family, and treated me in every respect as if I had been the oldest of his friends. 1 mention the circumstance for the sake of a comment on what seems to me a univer- sal error with regard to the Scotch character. Instead of a calculating and cold people, as they are always described by the English, they seem to me more a nation of impulse and warm feeling than any other I have seen. Their history certainly goes to prove a most chivalrous character in days gone by, and as far as I know Scotchmen, they preserve it still with even less of the modification of the times than other nations. The instance I have mentioned above, is one of many that have come under my own observation, and in many inquiries since, I have never found an Englishman, who had been in Scotland, who did not confirm my impression. I have not traded with them, it is true, and I have seen only the wealthier class, but still I think my judgment a fair one. The Scotch in England are, in a manner, what the Yankees are in the southern states, and their advantages of superior quickness and education have given them a success which is ascribed to meaner causes. I think (com- mon prejudice contradicenle) that neither the Scotch nor the English are a cold or an unfriendly people, but the Scotch certainly the farther remove from cold- ness of the two. Inverness is the only place I have ever been in where no medicine could be procured on a Sunday. I did not want, indeed, for other mementoes of the sacred- ness of the day. In the crowd of the public room of the hotel, half the persons at least, had either bible or prayer-book, and there was a hush through the house, and a gravity in the faces of the people passing in the ►06 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. street, that reminded me more of New-England than anything I have seen. I had wanted some linen washed on Saturday. " Impossible !" said the waiter, "no one does up linen on Sunday." Toward evening I wished for a carnage to drive over to my hospitable friend. Mine host stared, and I found it was in- decorous to drive out on Sunday. I must add, how- ever, that the apothecary's shop was opened after the second service, and that I was allowed a carriage on pleading my lameness. Inverness is a romantic-looking town, charmingly situated between Loch Ness and the Murray Firth, with the bright river Ness running through it, parallel to its principal street, and the most picturesque emi- nences in its neighborhood. There is a very singular elevation on the other side of the Ness, shaped like a ship, keel up, and rising from the centre of the plain, covered with beautiful trees. It is called, in Gaelic, Tonnaheuric, or the Hill of the Fairies. It has been in one respect like getting abroad aejain, to come to Scotland. Nothing seemed more odd to me on my first arrival in England, than having sud- denly ceased to be a " foreigner." I was as little at home myself, as in France or Turkey (much less than in Italy), yet there was that in the manner of every person who approached me which conveyed the presumption that 1 was as familiar with everything about me as himself. In Scotland, however, the Englishman is the "Sassenach," and a stranger; and, as I was always taken for one, I found myself once more invested with that agreeable consequence which accompanies it, my supposed prejudices consulted, my opinion about another country asked, and com- parisons referred to me as an exparte judge. I found here, as abroad, too, that the Englishman was expect- ed to pay more for trifling services than a native, and that he would be much more difficult about his ac- commodations, and more particular in his chance company. I was amused at the hotel with an instance of the want of honor shown " the prophet in his own country." I went down to the coffee-room for my break- fast about noon, and found a remarkably fashionable, pale, " Werter-like man," excessively dressed, but with all the air of a gentleman, sitting with the news- paper on one side of the fire. He offered me the paper after a few minutes, but with the cold, half- supercilious politeness which marks the dandy tribe, and strolled off to the window. The landlord entered presently, and asked me if I had any objection to breakfasting with that gentleman, as it would be a convenience in serving it up. " None in the world," I said " but you had better ask the other gentleman first." "Hoot !" said Boniface, throwing up his chin with an incredulous expression, "it's honor for the like o'him. He's joost a laddie born and brought up i' the toon. I kenn'd him weel." And so enter breakfast for two. I found my companion a well- bred man ; rather surprised, however, if not vexed, to discover that I knew he was of Inverness. He had been in the civil services of the East India Company for some years (hence his paleness), and had returned to Scotland for his health. He was not the least aware that he was known, apparently and he certainly had not the slightest trace of his Scotch birth. The landlord told me afterward that his parents were poor, ind he had raised himself by his own cleverness alone, and yet it was " honor for the like o' him" to sit at table with a common stranger ! The world is really very much the same all over. In the three days I passed at Inverness, I made the acquaintance of several of the warm-hearted Highland chiefs, and found great difficulty in refusing to go home with them. One of the "Lords of the Isles" was among the number, a handsome, high-spirited youth, who would have been the chivalrous Lord Ronald of a century ago, but was now only the best shot, the best rider, the most elegant man, and the most " capital fellow" in the west of Scotland. He had lost everything but his "Isle" in his London cam- paigns, and was beginning to listen to his friends' advice, and look out for a wife to mend his fortune and his morals. There was a peculiar style about all these young men, something very like the manner of our high-bred Virginians — a free, gallant self-posses- sed bearing, fiery and prompt, yet full of courtesy. I was pleased with them altogether. I had formed an agreeable acquaintance, on my passage from London to Edinburgh in the steamer, with a gentleman bound to the Highlands for the shooting season. He was engaged to pay a visit to Lord Lumley, with whom I had myself promised to pass a week, and we parted at Edinboro' in the hope of meeting at Kinrara. On my return from Dalhonsie, a fortnight after, we met by chance at the hotel in Edinboro', he having arrived the same day, and hav- ing taken a passage like myself for Aberdeen. We made another agreeable passage together, and he left me at the gate of Gordon castle, proceeding north on another visit. I was sitting in the coffee-room at Inverness, pondering how I should reach Kinrara, when, enter again my friend, to my great surprise, who informed me that Lord Lumley had returned to England. Disappointed alike in our visit, we took a passage together once more in the steamer from Inverness to Fort William for the following morning. It was a singular train of coincidences, but I was indebted to it for one of the most agreeable chance acquaintances I have yet made. LETTER CXXXIII. CALEDONIAN CANAL — DOGS ENGLISH EXCLUSIVENESS — ENGLISH INSENSIBILITY OF FINE SCENERY FLORA MACDONALD AND THE PRETENDER HIGHLAND TRAV- ELLING. We embarked early in the morning in the steamer which goes across Scotland from 6ea to sea, by the half-natural, half-artificial passage of the Caledonian canal. One long glen, as the reader knows, extends quite through this mountainous country, and in its bosom lies a chain of the loveliest lakes, whose ex- tremities so nearly meet, that it seems as if a blow of a spade should have run them together. Their differ- ent elevations, however, made it an expensive work in locks, and the canal altogether cost ten times the original calculation. I went on board with my London friend, who, from our meeting so frequently, had now become my estab- lished companion. The boat was crowded, yet moie with dogs than people ; for every man, I think, had his brace of terriers or his pointers, and every lady her hound or poodle, and they were chained to every leg of a sofa, chair, portmanteau, and fixture in the vessel. It was like a floating kennel, and every passenger was fully occupied in keeping the peace between his own dog and his neighbor's. The same thing would have been a much greater annoyance in any other country; but in Scotland the dogs are all of beautiful and thorough-bred races, and it is a pleasure to see them. Half as many French pugs would have been insuffer- able. We opened into Loch Ness immediately, and the scenery was superb. The waters were like a mirror: and the hills draped in mist, and rising one or two thousand feet directly from the shore, and nothing to break the wildness of the crags but the ruins of the constantly occurring castles, perched like eyries upon their summits. You might have had the same natural scenery in America, but the ruins and the thousand PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 207 associations would have been wanting ; and it is this, much more than the mere beauty of hill or lake, which makes the pleasure of travel. We ran close in to a green cleft in the mountains on the southern shore, in which stands one of the few old castles, still inhabited by the chief of his clan — that of Fraser of Lovat, so well-known in Scottish story. Our object was to visit the Fall of Foyers, in sight of which it stands, and the boat came to off the point, and gave us an hour for the excursion. It was a pretty stroll up through the woods, and we found a cascade very like the Turtmann in Switzerland, but with no remarkable feature which would make it interesting in description. I was amused after breakfast with what has always struck me on board English steamers — the gradual di- vision of the company into parties of congenial rank or consequence. Not for conversation — for fellow- travellers of a day seldom become acquainted — but, as if it was a process of crystallization, the well-bred and the hall-bred, and the vulgar, each separating to his natural neighbor, apparently from a mere fitness of propinquity. This takes place sometimes, but rarely and in a much less degree, on board an American steamer. There are, of course, in England, as with us, those who are presuming and impertinent, but an instance of it has seldom fallen under my observation. The English seem to have an instinct of each other's position in life. A gentleman enters a crowd, looks about him, makes up his mind at once from whom an advance of civility would be agreeable or the contrary, gets near the best set without seeming to notice them, and if any chance accident brings on conversation with his neighbors, you may be certain he is sure of his man. We had about a hundred persons on board (Miss Inverarity, the singer, among others), and I could see no one who seemed to notice or enjoy the lovely scenery we were passing through. I made the remark to my companion, who was an old stager in London fashion, fifty, but still a beau, and he was compelled to allow it, though piqued for the taste of his country- men. A baronet with his wife and sister sat in the corner opposite us, and one lady slept on the other's shoulder, and neither saw a feature of the scenery ex- cept by an accidental glance in changing her position. Yet it was more beautiful than most things I have seen that are celebrated, and the ladies, as my friend said, looked like " nice persons." I had taken up a book while we were passing the locks at the junction of Loch Ness and Loch Oich, and was reading aloud to my friend the interesting de- scription of Flora Macdouald's heroic devotion to Prince Charles Edward. A very lady-like girl, who sat next me, turned around as I laid down the book, and informed me, with a look of pleased pride, that the heroine was her grandmother. She was returning from the first visit she had ever made to the Isle (I think of Skye), of which the Macdonalds were the hereditary lords, and in which the fugitive prince was concealed. Her brother, an officer, just returned from India, had accompanied her in her pilgrimage, and as he sat on the other side of his sister he joined in the conversa- tion, and entered into the details of Flora's history with great enthusiasm. The book belonged to the boat, and my friend had b-ought it from below, and the coincidence was certainly singular. The present chief of the Macdonalds was on board, accompanying his relatives back to their home in Sussex; and on ar- riving at Fort William, where the boat stopped for the night, the young lady invited us to take tea with her at the inn ; and for so improvised an acquaintance, I have rarely made three friends more to my taste. We had decided to leave the steamer at Fort Wil- liam, and cross through the heart of Scotland to Loch Lomond. My companion was very fond of Loudon hours, and slept late, knowing that the cart— the only conveyance to be had in that country — would wait our time. I was lounging about the inn, and amusing myself with listening to the Gaelic spoken by every- body who belonged to the place, when the pleasant family with whom we had passed the evening, drove out of the yard (having brought their horses down in the boat), intending to proceed by land to Glasgow. We renewed our adieus, on my part with the sincerest regret, and I strolled down the road and watched them till they were out of sight, feeling that (selfish world as it is) there are some things that hole at least like impulse and kindness — so like, that 1 can make out of them a very passable happiness. We mounted our cart at eleven o'clock, and with a bright sun, a clear, vital air, a handsome and good- humored callant for a driver, and the most renowned of Scottish scenery before us, the day looked very auspicious. I could not help smiling at the appear- ance of my fashionable friend silting, with his well- poised hat and nicely-adjusted curls, upon the spring- less cross-board of a most undisguised and unscrupu- lous market-cart, yet in the highest good-humor with himself and the world. The boy sat on the shafts, and talked Gaelic to his horse ; the mountains and the lake, spread out before us, looked as if human eye had never profaned their solitary beauty, and I enjoyed it all the more, perhaps, that our conversation was of London and its delights : and the racy scandal of the distinguished people of that great Babel amused me in the midst of that which is most unlike it — pure and lovely nature. Everything is seen so much better by contrast! We crossed the head of Loch Linnhe, and kept down its eastern bank, skirting the water by a winding road directly under the wall of the mountains. We were to dine at Ballyhulish, and just before reaching it we passed the opening of a glen on the opposite side of the lake, in which lay, in a green paradise shut in by the loftiest rocks, one of the most enviable habi- tations I have ever seen. I found on inquiry that it was the house of a Highland chief, to whom Lord Dalhousie had kindly given me a letter, but my lame- ness and the presence of my companion induced me to abandon the visit ; and, hailing a fishing-boat, I despatched my letters, which were sealed, across the loch, and we kept on to the inn. We dined here ; and I just mention, for the information of scenery- hunters, that the mountain opposite Ballyhulish sweeps down to the lake with a curve which is even more ex- quisitely graceful than that of Vesuvius in its far-famed descent to Portici. That same inn of Ballyhulish, by the way, stands in the midst of a scene, altogether, that does not pass easily from the memory — a i^nely and sweet spot that would recur to one in a moment of violent love or hate, when the heart shrinks from the intercourse and observation of men. We found the travellers' book, at the inn, full of records of admiration, expressed in all degrees of dog- gerel. People on the road write very bad poetry. I found the names of one or two Americans, whom I knew, and it was a pleasure to feel that my enjoyment would be sympathized in. Our host had been a noble- man's travelling valet, and he amused us with his de- j scriptions of our friends, every one of whom he per- i fectly remembered. He had learned to use his eyes, at least, and had made very shrewd guesses at the con- dition and tempers of his visiters. His life, in that lonely inn, must be in sufficient contrast with his for- mer vocation. We had jolted sixteen miles behind our Highland horse, but he came out fresh for the remaining twenty j of our day's journey, and with cushions of dried and ! fragrant fern, gathered and put in by our considerate ' landlord, we crossed the ferry and turned eastward into the far-famed and much-boasted valley of Glencoe. The description of it must lie over till my next letter. 208 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER CXXX1V. INVARERDEN — TARBOT — COCKNEY TOURISTS — LOCH LO- MOND INVERSNADE — ROB ROY'S CAVE DISCOMFI- TURE — THE BIRTHPLACE OF HELEN M'GREGOR. We passed the head of the valley near Tyndrum, where M'Dougal of Lorn defeated the Bruce, and were half way up the wild pass that makes its southern outlet, when our Highland driver, with a shout of de- light, pointed out to us a red deer, standing on the very summit of the highest mountain above us. It was an incredible distance to see any living thing, but he stood clear against the sky, in a relief as strong as if he had been suspended in the air, and with his head up, and his chest toward us, seemed the true monarch of the wild. At Invarenden, Donald M'Phee begged for the dis- charge of himself a d his horse and cart from our service. He had co le with us eighty miles, and was afraid to venture fart er on his travels, having never before been twenty miles from the Highland village where he lived. It was amusing to see the curiosity with which he looked about him, and the caution with which he suffered the hostler at the inn to take the black mare out of his sight. The responsibility of the horse and cart weighed heavily on his mind, and he expressed his hope to " get her back safe," with an apprehensive resolution that would have become a knight-errant guiding himself for his most perilous encounter. Poor Donald! how little he knew how wide is the world, and how very like one part of it is to another! Our host of Invarerden supplied us with another cart to take us down to Tarbot, and having dined with a waterfall-looking inn at each of our two opposite windows (the inn stands in a valley between two moun'ains), we were committed to the care of his eld- est boy, and jolted off for the head of Loch Lomond. I have never happened to see a traveller who had seen Loch Lomond in perfectly good weather. My companion had"been there every summer for several years, and believed it always rained under Ben Lo- mond. As we came in sight of the lake, however, the water looked like one sheet of gold-leaf, trembling, as if by the motion of fish below, but unruffled by wind; and if paradise were made so fair, and had such waters in its midst, I could better conceive than before, the unhappiness of Adam when driven forth. The sun was just setting, and the road descended immediately to the shore, and kept along under precipitous rocks, and slopes of alternate cultivation and heather, to the place of our destination. And a lovely place it is ! Send me to Tarbot when I would retreat from the world. It is an inn buried in a grove at the foot of the hills, and set in a bend of the lake shore, like a diamond upon an "orbed brow; 1 ' and the light in its kitchen, as we approached in the twilight, was as in- teresting as a ray of the "first water" from the same. We had now reached the route of the cockney tour- ists, and while we perceived it agreeably in the excel- lence of the hotel, we perceived it disagreeably in the price of the wines, and the presence of what my friend called " unmitigated vulgarisms" in the coffee-room. That is the worst of England. The people are vul- gar, but not vulgar enough. One dances with the lazzaroni at Naples, when he would scarce think of handing the newspaper to the "person" on a tour at Tarbot. Condescension is the only agreeable virtue, I have made up my mind. Well — it was moonlight. The wind was south and affectionate, and the road in front of the hotel " fleck'd with silver," and my friend's wife, and the correspond- ing object of interest to myself, being on the other side of Ben Lomond and the Tweed, we had nothing for it after supper but to walk up and down with one another, and talk of the past. In the course of our ramble, we walked through an open gate, and ascend- ing a gravel-walk, found a beautiful cottage, built be- tween two mountain streams, and ornamented with every device of taste and contrivance. The mild pure torrents were led over falls, and brought to the thresh- olds of bowers ; and seats, and bridges, and winding- paths, were distributed up the steep channels, in a way that might make it a haunt for Titania. It is the property, we found afterward, of a Scotch gentleman, and a great summer retreat of the celebrated Jeffrey, his friend. It was one more place to which my heart clung in parting. Loch Lomond still sat for its picture in the morn- ing, and after an early breakfast, we took a row-boat, with a couple of Highlanders, for Inversnade, and pulled across the lake with a kind of drowsy delight- fulness in the scene and air which I have never before found out of Italy. We overshot our destination a little to look into Rob Roy's Cave, a dark den in the face of the rock, which has the look of his vocation ; and then, pulling back along the shore, we were land- ed, in the spray of a waterfall, at a cottage occupied by the boatmen of this Highland ferry. From this point across to Loch Katrine, is some five miles, and the scene of Scott's novel of Rob Roy. It has been " done" so often by tourists, that I leave all particular description of the localities and scenery to the well- hammered remembrance of readers of magazines, and confine myself to my own private adventures. The distance between the lakes is usually perform- ed by ladies on donkeys, and by gentlemen on foot, but being myself rather tender-toed with the gout, my companion started off alone, and I lay down on the grass at Inversnade to wait the return of the long- eared troop, who were gone across with an earlier party. The waterfall and the cottage just above the edge of the lake, a sharp hill behind, closely wooded with birch and fir, and, on a green sward platform in the rear of the house, two Highland lasses and a lad- die, treading down a stack of new hay, were not bad circumstances in which to be left alone with the witch- eries of the great enchanter. I must narrate here an adventure in which my own part was rather a discomfiture, but which will show somewhat the manners of the people. My compan- ion had been gone half an hour, and I was lying at the foot of a tree, listening to the waterfall and look- ing off on the lake, and watching, by fits, the lad and lasses I have spoken of, who were building a haystack between them, and chattering away most unceasingly in Gaelick. The eldest of the girls was a tall, ill-fa- vored damsel, merry as an Oread, but as ugly as Don- ald Bean; and, after a while, I began to suspect, by the looks of the boy below, that I had furnished her with a new theme. She addressed some remark to me presently, and a skirmish of banter ensued, which ended in a challenge to me to climb upon the stack. It was about ten feet high, and shelving outward from the bottom, and my Armida had drawn up the ladder. The stack was built, however, under a high tree, and I was soon up the trunk, and, swinging oft" from a long branch, dropped into the middle of the stack. In the same instant, I was raised in a grasp to which I could offer no resistance, and, with a fling to which I should have believed the strength of few men equal, thrown clear of the stack to the ground. I alighted on my back, with a fall of, perhaps, twelve feet, and felt seri- ously hurt. The next moment, however, my gentle friend had me in her arms (I am six feet high in my stockings), and I was carried into the cottage, and laid on a flock bed, before I could well decide whether my back was broken or no. Whiskey was applied exter- nally and internally, and the old crone, who was the only inhabitant of the hovel, commenced a lecture in Gaelick, as I stood once more sound upon my legs, PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 209 which seemed to take effect upon the penitent, though her victim was no wiser for it. I took the opportunity to look at the frame which had proved itself of such vigorous power ; but, except arms of extraordinary length, she was like any other equally ugly, middle- sized woman. In the remaining half hour, before the donkeys arrived, we became the best of friends, and she set me off for Loch Katrine, with a caution to the ass-driver to take care of me, which that sandy-haired Highlander took as an excellent joke. And no won- der ! The long mountain-glen between these two lakes was the home of Rob Roy, and the Highlanders point out various localities, all commemorated in Scott's in- comparable story. The house where Helen M'Gregor was born lies a stone's throw off the road to the left, and Rob's gun is shown by an old woman who lives near by. He must have been rich in arms by the same token ; for, beside the well-authenticated one at Abbotsford, I have seen some dozen guns, and twice as many daggers and shot-pouches, which lay claim to the same honor. I paid my shilling to the old wo- man not the less. She owed it to the pleasure I had received from Sir Walter's novel. The view of Loch Lomond back from the highest point of the pass is incomparably fine; at least, when I saw it ; for sunshine and temperature, and the effect of the light vapors on the hills, were at their loveliest and most favorable. It looks more like the haunt of a robber and his caterans, probably, in its more com- mon garb of Scotch mist ; but, to my eye, it was a scene of the most Arcadian peace and serenity. I dawdled along the five miles upon my donkey, with something of an ache in my back, but a very health- ful and sunny freedom from pain and impatience at my heart. And so did not Baillie Nicol Jarvey make the same memorable journey. LETTER CXXXV. HIGHLAND HUT, ITS FURNITURE AND INMATES HIGHLAND AMUSEMENT AND DINNER " ROB ROY," AND SCENERY OF THE " LADY OF THE LAKE." The cottage-inn at the head of Loch Katrine, was tenanted by a woman who might have been a horse- guardsman in petticoats, and who kept her smiles for other cattle than the Sassenach. We bought her whiskey and milk, praised her butter, and were civil to the little Highland man at her breast; but neither mother nor child were to be mollified. The rocks were bare around, we were too tired for a pull in the boat, and three mortal hours lay between us and the nearest event in our history. I first penetrated, in the absence of our Hecate, to the inner room of the shieling. On the wall hung a broadsword, two guns, a trophy or two of deers' horns, and a Sunday suit of plaid, philibeg and short red coat, surmounted by a gallant bonnet and feather. Four cribs, like the births in a ship, occupied the farther side of the chamber, each large enough to contain two persons; a snow-white table stood between the windows; a six- penny glass, with an eagle's feather stuck in the frame, hung at such a height that, " though tall of my hands," I could just see my nose; and just under the ceiling on the left was a broad and capacious shelf, on which reposed apparently the old clothes of a century —a son of place where the gude-wife would have hidden Prince Charlie, or might rummage for her grandmother's baby-linen. The heavy steps of the dame came over the thresh- old, and I began to doubt, from the look in her eyes, *hciher I should get a blow of her hairy arm or a 1 1 " persuader" from the butt of a gun for my intrusion. " What are ye wantin' here ?" she speered at me, with a Helen-M'Gregor-to-Baillie-Nicol-Jarvie-sort- of-an expression. " I was looking for a potato to roast, my good wo- man." " Is that a' t Ye'll find it ayont, then !" and, point- ing to a bag in the corner, she stood while I subtract- ed the largest, and then followed me to the general kitchen and receiving-room, where I buried my int- provista dinner in the remains of the peat fire, and congratulated myself on my ready apology. What to do while the potato was roasting! My English friend had already cleaned his gun for amuse- ment, and I had looked on. We had stoned the pony till he had got beyond us in the morass, (small thanks to us, if the dame knew it !) We had tried to make a chicken swim ashore from the boat, we had fired away all my friend's percussion caps, and there was nothing for it but to converse a rigueur. We lay on our backs till the dame brought us the hot potato on a shovel, with oat-cake and butter, and, with this High- land dinner, the last hour came decently to its death. An Englishman, with his wife and lady's maid, came over the hills with a boat's crew; and a lassie who was not very pretty, but who lived on the lake and had found the means to get " Captain Rob" and his men pretty well under her thumb. We were all embarked, the lassie in the stern-sheets with the cap- tain; and ourselves, though we "paid the Scot," of no more consideration than our portmanteaus. I was amused, for it was the first instance I had seen in any country (my own not excepted), of thorough emanci- pation from the distinction of superiors and inferiors. Luckily the girl was bent on showing the captain to advantage, and by ingenious prompting and catechism, she induced him to do what probably was his custom when he could not better amuse himself — point out the localities as the boat sped on, and quote the Lady of the Lake, with an accent which made it a piece of good fortune to have " crammed" the poem before- hand. The shores of the lake are flat and uninteresting at the head, but, toward the scene of Scott's romance, they rise into bold precipices, and gradually become worthy of their celebrity. The Trosachs are a clus- ter of small, green mountains, strewn, or rather piled, with shrubs and mossy verdure, and from a distance you would think only a bird, or Ranald of the Mist, could penetrate their labyrinthine recesses. Captain Rob showed us successively the Braes of Balquidder, Rob Roy's birth and burial place, Benledi, and the eras; from which hung, by the well-woven skirts of braidcloth, the worthy baillie of Glasgow ; and, be- neath a precipice of remarkable wildness, the half- intoxicated steersman raised his arm and began to re- peat, in the most unmitigated gutterals : — " High o'er the south huge Benrenue Down to the lake his masses threw, Crags, knowls and mounds confusedly hurl'd The fragments of an earlier uurruld!" etc. I have underlined it according to the captain's ju- dicious emphasis, and in the last word have endeav- ored to spell after his remarkable pronunciation. Probably to a Frenchman, however, it would have seemed all very fine — for Captain Rob (I must do him justice, though he broke the strap of my portmanteau) was as good-looking a ruffian as you would sketch on a summer's tour. Some of the loveliest water I have ever seen in my life (and I am rather an amateur of that element — to look at), lies deep down at the bases of these divine. Trosachs. The usual approaches from lake to moun- tain (beach or sloping shore), are here dispensed with ; and, straight up from the deeD water, rise the green 210 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. precipices and bold and ragged rocks, overshadowing the glassy mirror below with teints like a cool corner in a landscape of Ruysdael's. It is something — (in- deed, on a second thought, exceedingly) like — Lake George ; only that the islands in this extremity of Loch Katrine lie closer together, and permit the sun no entrance except by a ray almost perpendicular. A painter will easily understand the effect of this — the loss of all that makes a surface to the water, and the consequent far depth to the eye, as if the boat in which you shot over it, brought with it its own water and sent its ripple through the transparent air. I write currente calamo, and have no time to clear up my meaning, but it will be evident to all lovers of nature. Captain Rob put up his helm for a little fairy green island, lying like a lapfull of green moss on the water, and, rounding a point, we ran suddenly into a cove sheltered by a tree, and in a moment the boat grated on the pebbles of a natural beach, perhaps ten feet in length. A flight of winding steps, made roughly of roots and stones, ascended from the water's edge. " Gentlemen and ladies !" said the captain, with a hiccup, "this is Ellen's Isle. This is the gnarled oak," (catching at a branch of the tree as the boat swung astern), " and you'll please to go up them steps, and I'll tell ye the rest in Ellen's bower." The Highland lassie sprang on shore, and we fol- lowed up the steep ascent, arriving breathless at last at the door of a fanciful bower, built by Lord Wil- loughby d'Eresby (the owner of the island), exactly after the description in the Lady of the Lake. The chairs were made of crooked branches of trees and covered with deer-skins, the tables were laden with armor and every variety of weapon, and the rough beams of the building were hung with antlers and other spoils of the chase. " Here's where she lived !" said the captain, with the gravity of a cicerone at the Forum, " and noo, if ye'll come out, I'll show you the echo !" We followed to the highest point of the island, and the Highlandman gave a scream that showed consid- erable practice, but I thought he would have burst his throat in the effort. The awful echo went round, "as mentioned in the bill of performance," every separate mountain screaming back the discord till you would have thought the Trosachs a crew of mocking giants. It was a wonderful echo, but, like most wonders, I could have been content to have had less for my money. There was a "small silver beach" on the mainland opposite, and above it a high mass of mountain. "There," said the captain, " gentlemen and ladies, is where Fitz-James bloio'd his bugle, and waited for the ' light shallop' of Ellen Douglas ; and here, where you landed and came up them steps, is where she brought him to the bower, and the very tree's still there (as you see'd me tak' hold of it), and over the hill, yonder, is where the gallant gray giv out and breathed his last, and (will you turn round, if you please, them that like's) yonder's where Fitz-James met Red Murdoch that killed Blanche of Devon, and right across this water sivum young Greme that dis- dained the regular boat, and I 'spose on that lower step set the old harper and Ellen many a time a-watch- ing for Douglas ; and now if you'd like to hear the echo once more" — " Heaven forbid" was the universal cry ; and, in fear of our ears, we put the bower between us and Captain Rob's lungs, and followed the Highland girl back to the boat. From Ellen's Isle to the head of the small creek, so beautifully described in the Lady of the Lake, the scenery has the same air of lavish and graceful vege- tation, and the same features of mingled boldness and oeauty. It was a spot altogether that one is sure to live much in with memory. I see it as clearly now as then. The whiskey had circulated pretty freely among the crew, and all were more or less intoxicated. Cap- tain Rob's first feat on his legs was to drop my friend's gun-case and break it to pieces, for which he instantly got a cuff between the eyes from the boxing dandy, that would have done the business for a softer head. The Scot was a powerful fellow, and I anticipated a row; but the tremendous power of the blow and the skill with which it was planted, quite subdued him. He rose from the grass as white as a sheet, but quietly shouldered the portmanteau with which he had fallen, and trudged on with sobered steps to the inn. We took a post-chaise immediately for Callender, and it was not till we were five miles from the foot of the lake, that I lost my apprehensions of an apparition of the Highlander from the darkening woods. We arrived at Callender at nine, and the next morning at sunrise were on our way to breakfast at Stirling. LETTER CXXXVI. SCOTTISH STAGES THOROUGH-BRED SETTER SCEN- ERY FEMALE PEASANTRY MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS STIRLING CASTLE. The lakes of Scotland are without the limits of stage-coach and post-horse civilization, and to arrive at these pleasant conveniences is to be consoled for the corresponding change in the character of the scenery. From Callander there is a coach to Stirling, and it was on the top of the " Highlander" (a brilliant red coach, with a picture of Rob Roy on the panels), that, with my friend and his dog, I was on the road, bright and early, for the banks of the Teith. I have scarce done justice, by the way, to my last-mentioned companion (a superb, thorough-bred setter, who answered to the derogatory appellation of Flirt") for he had accompa- nied me in most of my wanderings for a couple of months, and his society had been preferred to that of many a reasoning animal on the road, in the frequent dearth of amusement. Flirt's pedigree had been taken on trust by my friend, the dog-fancier, of whom he was bought, only knowing that he came of a famous race, belonging to a gentleman living some- where between Stirling and Callander; and to deter- mine his birthplace and get another of the same breed, was a greater object with his master than to see all the lakes and mountains of Caledonia. Poor Flirt was elevated to the highest seat on the coach, little aware that his reputation for birth and breeding depended on his recognising the scenes of his puppyhood — for if his former master had told truly, these were the fields where his young ideas had been taught a dog's share in shooting, and his unconscious tail and ears were now under watchful surveillance for a betrayal of his presumed reminiscences. The coach rolled on over the dew-damp road, cross- ing continually those bright and sparkling rivulets, which gladden the favored neighborhood of moun- tains; and the fields and farm-houses took gradually the look of thrift and care, which indicates an approach to a thickly-settled country. The castle of Doune, a lovely hunting-seat of the Queen of Scots, appeared in the distance, with its gray towers half buried in trees, when Flirt began to look before and behind, and take less notice of the shabby gentleman on his left, who, from sharing with him a volant breakfast of bread and bacon, had hitherto received the most of his at tention. We kept on at a pretty pace, and Flirt's tail shifted sides once or twice with a v^rv decided whis' : PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAV. 211 and his intelligent head gradually grew more erect upon his neck of white-and-tan. It was evident he had travelled the road before. Still on, and as the pellucid Teith began to reflect in her eddying mirror the towers of Castle Doune — a scene worthy of its ten- der and chivalrous associations — a suppressed whine and a fixed look over the fields to the right, satisfied us that the soul of the setter was stirring with the rec- ognition of the past. The coach was stopped and Flirt loosed from his chain, and, with a promise to join me at Stirling at dinner, my friend "hied away" the delighted dog over the hedge, and followed himself on foot, to visit, by canine guidance, the birthplace of this accomplished family. It was quite beautiful to see the fine creature beat the field over and over in his impatience, returning to his slower-footed master, as if to hurry him onward, and leaping about him with an extravagance eloquent of such unusual joy. I lost sight of them by a turning in the road, and reverted for consolation to that loveliest river, on whose green bank I could have lain (had I breakfasted) and dreamed till the sunset of the unfortunate queen, for whose soft eyes and loving heart it perhaps flowed no more brightly in the days of Ri/.zio, than now for mine and those of the early marketers to Stirling. The road was thronged with carts, and peasants in their best attire. The gentleman who had provided against the enemy with a brown-paper of bread and bacon, informed me that it was market-day. A very great proportion of the country people were women and girls, walking all of them barefoot, but with shoes in their hands, and gowns and bonnets that would have eclipsed in finery the bevy of noble ladies at Gordon Castle. Leghorn straw-hats and dresses of silk, with ribands of any quantity and brilliancy, were the com- monest articles. Feet excepted, however (for they had no triflers of pedestals, and stumped along the road with a sovereign independence of pools and peb- bles), they were a wholesome-looking and rather pret- ty class of females ; and, with the exception of here and there a prim lassie, who dropped her dress over her feet while the coach passed, and hid her shoes under her handkerchief, they seemed perfectly satis- fied with their own mode of conveyance, and gave us a smile in passing, which said very distinctly, " You'll be there before us, but it's only seven miles, and we'll foot it in time." How various are the joys of life ! I went on with the coach, wondering whether I ever could be reduced to find pleasure in walking ten miles barefoot to a fair — and back again ! I thought again of Mary, as the turrets of the proud castle where she was crowned became more distinct in the approach — but it is difficult in entering a crowded town, with a real breakfast in prospect and live Scotch- men about me, to remember with any continuous en- thusiasm even the most brilliant events of history. " Can history cui my hay or get my corn in ? Or can philosophy vend it in the market?" says somebody in the play, and with a similar thought I looked up at the lofty towers of the home of Scot- land's kings, as the "Highlander" bowled round its rocky base to the inn. The landlord appeared with his whire apron, "boots" with his ladder, the coach- man and guard with their hints to your memory ; and, having ordered breakfast of the first, descended the "convenience" of the second, and received a tip of the hat for a shilling to the remaining two, I was at liberty to walk up stairs and while away a melancholy half hour in humming such charitable stanzas as would come uncalled to my aid. " Oh for a plump fat leg of mutton, Veal, lamb, capon, pig and cony, None is happy but a glutton, None an ass but who wants money." So sang the servant of Diogenes, with an exception J able morality, which, nevertheless, it is difficult to get j out of one's head at Stirling, if one has not already breakfasted. I limped up the long street leading to the castle, stopping on the way to look at a group of natives who were gaping at an advertisement just stuck to the wall, offering to take emigrants to New- York on terms "ri- diculously trifling." Remembering the " bannocks o' barley meal" I had eaten for breakfast, the haddocks and marmalade, the cold grouse and porridge, I longed to pull Sawney by the coat, and tell him he was just as well where he was. Y r et the temptation of the Greenock trader, "cheap and nasty" though it were, was not uninviting to me ! I was met on the drawbridge of the castle by a trim corporal, who offered to show me the lions for a con- sideration. I put myself under his guidance, and he took me to Queen Mary's apartments, used at present for a mess-room, to the chamber where Earl Douglas was murdered, etc., etc., etc., in particulars which are accurately treated of in the guide-books. The pipers were playing in the court, and a company or two of a Highland regiment, in their tartans and feathers, were under parade. This was attractive metal to me, and I sat down on a parapet, where I soon struck up a friend- ship with a curly-headed varlet, some four years old, who shouldered my stick without the ceremony of " by-your-leave," and commenced the drill upon an unwashed regiment of his equals in a sunshiny corner below. It was delightful to see their gravity and the military air with which they cocked their bonnets and stuck out their little round stomachs at the word of command. My little Captain Cockchafer returned my stick like a knight of honor, and familiarly climbed upon my knee to repose after his campaign, very much j to the surprise of his mother, who was hanging out to | dry, what looked like his father's inexpressibles, from a window above, and who came down and apologized in the most unmitigated Scotch for the liberty the " babby" had taken with " his honor." For the child of a camp-follower, it was a gallant boy, and I remem- ber him better than the drill-sergeant or the piper. On the north side of Stirling Castle the view is bounded "by the Grampians and laced by the winding Teith; and just under the battlements lies a green hollow, called the " King's Knot." where the gay tour- naments were held, and the "Ladies' Hill," where sat the gay and lovely spectators of the chivalry of Scot- land. Heading Hill is near it, where James executed Albany and his sons, and the scenes and events of his- tory and poetry are thickly sown at your feet. Once recapitulated, however — the Bruce and the Douglas, Mary and the " Gudeman of Ballengiech," once hon- ored in memory — the surpassing beauty of the pros- pect from Stirling towers, engross the fancy and fill the eye. It was a day of predominant sunshine, with here and there the shadow of a cloud darkening a field of stubble or a bend of the river, and I wandered round from bastion to bastion, never sated with gazing, and returning continually to the points from which the corporal had hurried me on. There lay the Forth — here Bannockburn and Falkirk, and all bathed and flooded with beauty. Let him who thinks the earth ill-looking, peep at it through the embrasures of Stir- ling Castle. My friend, the corporal, got but sixteen pence a day, "and had a wife and children — but much as I should dislike all three as disconnected items, I envied him his lot altogether. A garrison life at Stirling, and plenty of leisure, would reconcile one almost to wife and children and a couple of pistareens per diem. 212 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. LETTER CXXXVII. SCOTCH SCENERY — A RACE — CHEAPNESS OF LODGINGS IN EDINBURGH — ABBOTTSFORD— SCOTT LORD DAL- HOTJSIE — THOMAS MOORE — JANE PORTER — THE GRAVE OF SCOTT. I was delighted to find Stirling rather worse than Albany in the matter of steamers. I had a running fight for my portmanteau and carpet-bag from the hotel to the pier, and was at last embarked in entirely the wrong boat, by sheer force of pulling and lying. They could scarce have put me in a greater rage be- tween Cruttenden's and the Overslaugh. The two rival steamers, the " Victory" and the "Ben Lomond," got under way together; the former, in which I was a compulsory passenger, having a flagelet and a bass-drum by way of a band, and the other a dozen lusty performers and most of the com- pany. The river was very narrow and the tide down, and though the other was the better boat, we had the bolder pilot and were lighter laden and twice as des- perate. I found my own spunk stirred irresistibly after the first mile. We were contending against odds, and there was something in it that touched my Americanism nearly. We had three small boys mounted on the box over the wheel, who cheered and waved their hats at our momentary advantages ; but the channel was full of windings, and if we gained on the larboard tack we lost on the starboard. When- ever we were quite abreast, and the wheels touched with the narrowness of the river, we marched our flagelet and bass-drum close to the enemy and gave them a blast " to wake the dead," taking occasion, during our moments of defeat, to recover breath and ply the principal musician with beer and encourage- ment. It was a scene for Cooper to describe. The two pilots stood broad on their legs, every muscle on the alert : and though Ben Lomond wore the cleaner jacket, Victory had the " varminter" look. You would have bet on Victory to have seen the man. He was that wickedest of all wicked-looking things, a wicked Scotchman — a sort of saint-turned-sinner. The expression of early good principles was glazed over with drink and recklessness, like a scene from the Inferno painted over a Madonna of Raphael's. It was written in his face that he was a transgressor against knowledge. We were perhaps, a half-dozen passen- gers, exclusive of the boys, and we rallied round our Bardolph-nosed hero and applauded his skilful manoeu- vres ; sun, steam and excitement together, producing a temperature on deck that left nothing to dread from the boiler. As we approached a sharp bend in the course of the stream, I perceived by the countenance of our pilot, that it was to be a critical moment. The Ben Lomond was a little ahead, but we had the advan- tage of the inside of the course, and very soon, with the commencement of the curve, we gained sensibly on the enemy, and I saw clearly that we should cut her off by a half-boat's length. The three boys on the wheel began to shout, the flagelet made all split again with "the Campbells are comin'," the brass-drum was never so belabored, and " Up with your helm !" cried every voice, as we came at the rate of twelve miles in the hour sharp on to the angle of mud and i bulrushes, and, to our utter surprise, the pilot jammed down his tiller, and ran the battered nose of the Victory plump in upon the enemy's forward quarter ! j The next moment we were going it like mad down j the middle of the river, and far astern stuck the Ben Lomond in the mud, her paddles driving her deeper j at every stroke, her music hushed, and the crowd on I her deck standing speechless with amazement. The I flagelet and bass-drum marched aft and played louder j than ever, and we were soon in the open Frith, get- j ting on merrily, but without competition, to the sleep- j ing isle of Inchkeith. Lucky Victory ! luckier pilot! to have found an historian ! How many a red-nosed Palinurus — how many a bass-drum and flagelet, have done their duty as well, yet achieved no immortality. I was glad to see "Auld Reekie" again, though the influx of strangers to the "Scientific Meeting" had over-run every hotel, and I was an hour or two with- out a home. I lit at last upon a good old Scotch- woman who had " a flat" to herself, and who, for the sum of one shilling and sixpence per diem, proposed to transfer her only boarder from his bed to a sofa, as long as I should wish to stay. I made a humane remonstrance against the inconvenience to her friend. " It's only a Jew," she said, "and they're na difficult, puir bodies!" The Hebrew came in while we were debating the point — a smirking gentleman, with very elaborated whiskers, much better dressed than the proposed usurper of his sanctum — and without the slightest hesitation professed that nothing would give him so much pain as to stand in the way of his land- lady's interest. So for eighteen pence (and I could not prevail on her to take another farthing) I had a Jew put to inconvenience, a bed, boots and clothes brushed, and Mrs. Mac to sit up forme till two in the morning — what the Jew himself would have called a " cheap article." I returned to my delightful headquarters at Dal- housie castle on the following day, and among many excursions in the neighborhood during the ensuing week, accomplished a visit to Abbottsford. This most interesting of all spots has been so minutely and so often described, that a detailed account of it would be a mere repetition. Description, however, has antici- pated nothing to the visiter. The home of Sir Walter Scott would possess an interest to thrill the hqart, if it were as well painted to the eye of fancy as the homes of his own heroes. It is a dreary country about Abbottsford, and the house itself looks from a distance like a small, low castle, buried in stunted trees, on the side of a long, sloping upland or moor. The river is between you and the chateau as you come down to Melrose from the north, and you see the gray towers opposite you from the road at the distance of a mile — the only habitable spot in an almost desolate waste of country. From the town of Melrose you approach Abbottsford by a long, green lane, and, from the height of the hedge, and the descending ground on which the house is built, you would scarce suspect its vicinity till you enter a small gate on the right and find yourself in an avenue of young trees. This conducts you im- mediately to the door, and the first effect on me was that of a spacious castle seen through a reversed glass. In fact it is a kind of castle cottage — not larger than what is often called a cottage in England, yet to the minutest point and proportion a model of an an- cient castle. The deception in the engravings of the place lies in the scale. It seems like a vast building as usually drawn. One or two hounds were lounging round the door ; but the only tenant of the place was a slovenly house- maid, whom we interrupted in the profane task of scrubbing the furniture in the library. I could have pitched her and her scrubbing-brushes out of the window with a good will. It really is a pity that this sacred place, with its thousand valuable and irreplacea- ble curiosities, should be so carelessly neglected. We were left to wander over the house and the museum as we liked. I could have brought away (and nothing is more common than this species of theft in England) twenty things from that rare collection, of which the value could scarce be estimated. The pistols and dagger of Rob Roy, and a hundred equally valuable and pocketable things, lay on f he shelves unprotected, quite at the mercy of th<> ill-disposed, to say nothing PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. 213 of the merciless " cleanings" of the housemaid. The present Sir Walter Scott is a captain of dragoons, with his regiment in Ireland, and the place is never occupied by the family. Why does not Scotland buy Abbottsford, and secure to herself, while it is still per- fect, the home of her great magician, and the spot that to after ages would be, if preserved in its curious details, the most interesting in Great Britain? After showing us the principal rooms, the woman opened a small closet adjoining the study, in which hung the last clothes that Sir Walter had worn. There was the broad-skirted blue coat with large but- tons, the plaid trousers, the heavy shoes, the broad- rimmed hat and stout walking-stick — the dress in which he rambled about in the morning, and which he laid olf when he took to his bed in his last illness. She took down the coat and gave it a shake and a wipe of the collar, as if he were waiting to put it on again 1 It was encroaching somewhat on the province of Touchstone and Wamba to moralize on a suit of clothes — but I am convinced that I got from them a belter idea of Scott, as he was in his familiar hours, than any man can have who has seen neither him nor them. There was a character in the hat and shoes. The coat was an honest and hearty coat. The stout, rough walking-stick, seemed as if it could have belonged to no other man. I appeal to my kind friends and fellow-travellers who were there three days before me (I saw their names on the book), if the same impression was not made on them. 1 asked for the room in which Sir Walter died. She showed it to me, and the place where the bed had stood which was now removed. I was curious to see the wall or the picture over which his last looks must have passed. Directly opposite the foot of the bed hung a remarkable picture — the head of Mary Queen of Scots, in a dish taken after her execution. The features were composed and beautiful. On either side of it hung spirited drawings from the Tales of a Grand- father — one very clever sketch, representing the wife of a border-knight serving up her husband's spurs for dinner, to remind him of the poverty of the larder and the necessity of a foray. On the left side of the bed was a broad window to the west — the entrance of the last light to his eyes — and from hence had sped the greatest spirit that has walked the world since Shaks- pere. It almost makes the heart stand still to be silent and alone on such a spot. What an interest there is in the trees of Abbotts- ford — planted every one by the same hand that waved its wand of enchantment over the world ! One walks among them as if they had thoughts and memories. Everybody talks of Scott who has ever had the hap- piness of seeing him, and it is strange how interesting it is even when there is no anecdote, and only the most commonplace interview is narrated. I have heard, since I have been in England, hundreds of people describe their conversations with him, and never the dullest without a certain interest far beyond that of common topics. Some of these have been cele- brated people, and there is the additional weight that they were honored friends of Sir Walter's. Lord Dalhousie told me that he was Scott's play- fellow at the high school of Edinboro'. There was a peculiar arrangement of the benches with a head and foot, so that the boys sat above or below, according to their success in recitation. It so happened that the warmest seat in the school, that next to the stove, was about two from the bottom, and this Scott, who was a very good scholar, contrived never to leave. He stuck to his seat from autumn till spring, never so deficient as to get down, and never choosing to answer rightly if the result was to go up. He was very lame, and seldom shared in the sports of the other boys, but was a prodigious favorite, and loved to sit in the sun- shine, with a knot of boys around him telling stories. Lord Dalhousie's friendship with him was uninter- rupted through life, and he invariably breakfasted at the castle on his way to and from Edinboro'. I met Moore at a dinner-party not long since, and Scott was again (as at a previous dinner I have de- scribed) the subject of conversation. " He was the soul of honesty," said Moore. " When I was on a visit to him, we were coming up from Kelso at sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon, I quoted to him his own rule for seeing 'fair Melrose aright,' and pro- posed to stay an hour and enjoy it. 'Bah!' said Scott, ' / never saw it by moonlight.' We went, how- ever ; and Scott, who seemed to be on the most familiar terms with the cicerone, pointed to an empty ' niche and said to him, ' I think, by the way, that I have a Virgin and Child that will just do for your j niche. I'll send it to you!' 'How happy you have I made that man !' said I to him. ' Oh,' said Scott, 'it j was always in the way, and Madame S. is constantly grudging it house-room. We're well rid of it.'" " Any other man," said Moore, " would have allow- ed himself at least the credit of a kind action." I have had the happiness since I have been in Eng- : land of passing some weeks at a country-house where \ Miss Jane Porter was an honored guest, and, among a thousand of the most delightful reminiscences that ; were ever treasured, she has told me a great deal of I Scott, who visited at her mother's as a boy. She remembers him then as a good-humored lad, but very fond of fun, who used to take her younger sister (Anna Maria Porter) and frighten her by holding her out of ; the window. Miss Porter had not seen him since that ! age ; but, after the appearance of Guy Mannering, she heard that he was in London, and drove with a friend ; to his house. Not quite sure (as she modestly says) of being remembered, she sent in a note, saying, that if he remembered the Porters, whom he used to visit, Jane would like to see him, He came rushing to the ] door, and exclaimed, '■'■Remember you! Miss Porter!" \ and threw his arms about her neck and burst into ', tears. After this he corresponded constantly with the family, and about the time of his first stroke of par- 1 alysis, when his mind and memory failed him, the mother of Miss Porter died, and Scott sent a letter of condolence. It began — " Dear Miss Porter" — but, | as he went on, he forgot himself, and continued the letter as if addressed to her mother, ending it with — "And now, dear Mrs. Porter, farewell! and believe me yours for ever (as long as there is anything of me), Walter Scott." Miss Porter bears testimony, like every one else who knew him, to his greatheart- j edness no less than to his genius. I am not sure that others like as well as myself ! these " nothings" about men of genius. I would j rather hear the conversation between Scott and a peasant on the road, for example, than the most piquant anecdote of his brighter hours. I like a great mind in dishabille. We returned by Melrose Abbey, of which I can say nothing new, and drove to Dryburgh to see the grave of Scott. He is buried in a rich old Gothic corner of a ruin — fittingly. He chose the spot, and he sleeps well. The sunshine is broken on his breast by a fretted and pinnacled window, overrun with ivy, and the small chapel in which he lies is open to the air, and ornamented with the mouldering scutcheons of his race. There are few more beauti- ful ruins than Dryburgh Abbey, and Scott lies in its sunniest and most fanciful nook — a grave that seems divested of the usual horrors of a grave. We were ascending the Gala-water at sunset, and supped at Dalhousie, after a day crowned with thought and feeling. 214 PENC1LL1NGS BY THE WAY. LETTER CXXXVIII. BORDER SCENERY COACHMANSHIP ENGLISH COUN- TRY-SEATS THEIR EXQUISITE COMFORT OLD CUSTOMS IN HIGH PRESERVATION PRIDE AND STATELINESS OF THE LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE GENTRY THEIR CONTEMPT FOR PARVENUS. If Scott had done nothing else, he would have de- served well of his country for giving an interest to the barren wastes by which Scotland is separated from England. "A' the blue bonnets" must have had a melancholy march of it " Over the Border." From Gala-Water to Carlisle it might be anywhere a scene for the witches' meeting in Macbeth. We bowled away at nearly twelve miles in the hour, however, (which would unwind almost any " serpent of care" from the heart), and if the road was not lined with witches and moss-troopers, it was well macadamized. I got a treacherous supper at Howick, where the Douglas pounced upon Sir Alexander Ramsay ; and, recovering my good-humor at Carlisle, grew happier as the fields grew greener, and came down by Kendal and its emerald valleys with the speed of an arrow and the light-heartedness of its feather. How little the farmer thinks when he plants his hedges and sows his fields, that the passing wayfarer will anticipate the gleaners and gather sunshine from his ripening har- vest. I was admiring the fine old castle of Lancaster (now desecrated to the purposes of a county jail), when our thirteen-mile whip ran over a phaeton standing quietly in the road, and spilt several vvotnen and children, as you may say, en passant. The coach must arrive, though it kill as many as Juggernaut, and Jehu neither changed color, nor spoke a word, but laid the silk over his leaders to make up the back-water of the jar, and rattled away up the street, with the guard blowing the French horn to the air of " Smile again, my bonny lassie." Nobody threw stones after us ; the horses were changed in a minute and three quarters, and away we sped from the town of the " red nose." There was a cool, you- know-where-to-find-me sort of indifference in this ad- venture, which is peculiarly English. I suppose if his leaders had changed suddenly into griffins, he would have touched them under the wing and kept his pace. Bound on a visit to Hall in Lancashire, I left the coach at Preston. The landlady of the Red Lion became very suddenly anxious that I should not take cold when she found out the destination of her post-chaise. I arrived just after sunset at my friend's lodge, and ordering the postillion to a walk, drove leisurely through the gathering twilight to the Hall. It was a mile of winding road through the peculiarly delicious scenery of an English park, the game visible in every direction, and the glades and woods disposed with that breadth and luxuriance of taste that make the country-houses of England palaces in Arcadia. Anxious as I had been to meet my friend, whose hos- pitality I had before experienced in Italy, I was almost sorry when the closely-shaven sward and glancing lights informed me that my twilight drive was near its end. An arrival in a strange house in England seems, to a foreigner, almost magical. The absence of all the bustle consequent on the same event abroad, the silence, respectfulness, and self-possession of the ser- vants, the ease and expedition with which he is in- stalled in a luxurious room, almost with his second breath under the roof — his portmanteau unstrapped, his toilet laid out, his dress-shoes and stockings at his feet, and the fire burning as if he had sat by it all day — it is like the golden facility of a dream. " Din- ner at seven !" are the only words he has heard, and he finds himself (some three minutes having elapsed since he was on the road), as much at home as if he had lived there all his life, and pouring the hot water into his wash-basin with the feeling that comfort and luxury in this country are very much matters of course. The bell rings for dinner, and the new-comer finds his way to the drawing-room. He has not seen his host, perhaps, for a year, but his entree is anything but a scene. A cordial shake of the hand, a simple inquiry after his health, while the different members of the family collect in the darkened room, and the preference of his arm by the lady of the house to walk into dinner, are all that would remind him that he and his host had ever parted. The soup is criti- cised, the weather "resumed," as the French have it, gravity prevails, and the wine that he used to drink is brought him without question by the remembering butler. The stranger is an object of no more atten- tion than any other person, except in the brief " glad to see you," and the accompanying just perceptible nod with which the host drinks wine with him; and, not even in the abandon of after-dinner conversation, are the mutual reminiscences of the host and his friend suffered to intrude on the indifferent portion of I the company. The object is the general enjoyment, and you are not permitted to monopolize the sympa- : thies of the hour. You thus escape the aversion with which even a momentary favorite is looked upon J in society, and in your turn you are not neglected, or i bored with a sensation, on the arrival of another. In what other country is civilization carried to the same j rational perfection ? I was under the hands of a physician during the | week of my stay at Hall, and only crept out j with the lizards for a little sunshine at noon. There | was shooting in the park for those who liked it, and fox hunting in the neighborhood for those who could follow, but I was content (upon compulsion) to be in- nocent of the blood of hares and partridges, and the ditches of Lancashire are innocent of mine. The well-stocked library, with its caressing chairs, was a paradise of repose after travel ; and the dinner, with its delightful society, sufficed for the day's event. My host was himself very much of a cosmopolite; but his neighbors, one or two most respectable squires of the old school among them, had the usual charac- teristics of people who have passed their lives on one spot, and though gentlemanlike and good-humored, were rather difficult to amuse. I found none of the uproariousness which distinguished the Squire Wes- tern of other times. The hale fox-hunter was in white cravat and black coat, and took wine and poli- tics moderately ; and his wife and daughters, though silent and impracticable, were well-dressed, and mark- ed by that indefinable stamp of " blood" visible no less in the gentry than in the nobility of England. I was delighted to encounter at my friend's table one or two of the old English peculiarities, gone out nearer the metropolis. Toasted cheese and spiced ale — " familiar creatures" in common life — were here served up with all the circumstance that attended them when they were not disdained as the allowance of maids of honor. On the disappearance of the pastry, a massive silver dish, chased with the ornate elegance of ancient plate, holding coals beneath, and protected by a hinged cover, was set before the lady of the house. At the other extremity of the table stood a " peg tankard" of the same fashion, in the same mas- sive metal, with two handles, and of an almost fabu- lous capacity. Cold cheese and port were at a dis- count. The celery, albeit both modish and popular, was neglected. The crested cover erected itself on its hinge and displayed a flat surface, covered thinly with blistering cheese, with a soupcon of brown in its complexion, quivering and delicate, and of a most PENCILL1NGS BY THE WAY. 215 stimulating odor. A little was served to each guest and commended as it deserved, and then the flagon's lid was lifted in its turn by the staid butler, and the master of the house drank first. It went around with the sun, not disdained by the ladies' lips in passing, and came to me. something lightened of its load. As a stranger I was advised of the law before lifting it to ,ny head. Within, from the rim to the bottom, ex- tended a line of silver pegs, supposed to contain, in the depth from one to the other, a fair draught for each bibber. The flagon must not be taken from the lips, and the penalty of drinking deeper than the first peg below the surface, was to drink to the second a task for the friar of Copmanhurst. As the visible measure was of course lost when the tankard was dipped, it required some practice or a cool judgmeul not to exceed the draught. Raising it with my two hands, I -measured the distance witli my eye, and watched till the floating argosy of toast should swim beyond the reach of my nose. The spicy odor as- cended gratefully to the brain. The cloves and cin- namon clung in a dark circle to the edges. I drank without drawing breath, and complacently passed the flagon. As the sea of all settled to a calm, my next neighbor silently returned the tankard. I had exceed- ed the draught. There was a general cry of " drink ! drink!" and sounding my remaining capacity with the plummet of a long breath, I laid my hands once more on the vessel, and should have paid the penalty or perished in the attempt, but for the grace shown me as a foreigner, at the intercession of that sex dis- tinguished for its mercy. This adherence to the more hearty viands and cus- toms of olden time, by the way, is an exponent of a feeling sustained with peculiar tenacity in that part of England. Cheshire and Lancashire are the strong- hold of that race peculiar to this country, the gentry. In these counties the peerage is no authority for gen- tle birth. A title unsupported by centuries of hon- orable descent, is worse than nothing ; and there is many a squire, living in his immemorial " Ha/Z," who would not exchange his name and pedigree for the title of ninety-nine in a hundred of the nobility of England. Here reigns aristocracy. Your Baron Rothschild, or your new-created lord from the Bank or the Temple, might build palaces in Cheshire, and live years in the midst of its proud gentry unvisited. They are the cold cheese, celery, and port, in com- parison with the toasted cheese and spiced ale. LETTER CXXXIX. ENGLISH CORDIALITY AND HOSPITALITY, AND THE FEELINGS AWAKENED BY IT — LIVERPOOL, UNCOM- FORTABLE COFFEEHOUSE THERE — TRAVELLING AMER- ICANS — NEW YORK PACKETS — THE RAILWAY MAN- CHESTER. * England would be a more pleasant country to travel in if one's feelings took root with less facility. In the continental countries, the local ties are those of the mind and the senses. In England they are those of the affections. One wanders from Italy to Greece, and from Athens to Ephesus, and returns and departs again ; and, as he gets on shipboard, or mounts his horse or his camel, it is with a sigh over some picture or statue left behind, some temple or waterfall — per- haps some cook or vintage. He makes his last visit to the Fount of Egeria, or the Venus of the Tribune — to the Caryatides of the Parthenon, or the Casca- telles of Tivoli — or pathetically calls for his last bottle of untransferable lachryma christi, or his last coteletles yrovencales. He has "five hundred friends" like other people, and has made the usual continental inti- macies — but his valet-de-place takes charge of his adieus — (distributes his " p. p. c.'s" for a penny each), and he forgets and is fc.rgotten by those he leaves be- hind, ere his passport is recorded at the gates. In all these countries, it is only as a resident or a native that you are treated with kindness or admitted to the pen- etralia of domestic life. You are a bird of passage, expected to contribute a feather for every nest, but welcomed to none. In England this same disqualifi- cation becomes a claim. The name of a stranger opens the private house, sets you the chair of honor, prepares your bed, and makes everything that contrib- utes to your comfort or pleasure temporarily your own. And when you take your departure, your host has informed himself of your route, and provided you with letters to his friends, and you may go through the country from end to end, and experience every- where the same confiding and liberal hospitality. Ev ery foreigner who has come well introduced to Eng land, knows how unexaggerated is this picture. I was put upon the road again by my kind friend, and with a strong west wind coming off the Atlantic, drove along within sound of the waves, on the road to Liverpool. It was a mild wind, and came with a wel- come — for it was freighted with thoughts of home. Goethe says, we are never separated from our friends as long as the streams run down from them to us. Certain it is that distance seems less that is measured by waters and winds. America seemed near, with the ocean at my feet and only its waste paths between. I sent my heart over (against wind and tide) with a bles- sing and a prayer. t There are good inns, I believe, at Liverpool, but the coach put me down at the dirtiest and worst speci- men of a public house that I have encountered in England. As I was to stay but a night, I overcame the prejudice of the first coup d'ccil, and made the best of a dinner in the coffeeroom. It was crowded with people, principally merchants, I presumed, and the dinner-hour having barely passed, most of them were sitting over their wine or toddy at the small ta- bles, discussing prices or reading the newspapers. Near me were two young men, whose faces I thought familiar to me, and with a second look I resolved them into two of my countrymen, who, I found out presently by their conversation, were eating their first dinner in England. They were gentlemanlike young men, of good education, and I pleased myself with looking about and imagining the comparison they would draw, with their own country fresh in their recollection, between it and this. I could not help feeling how erroneous in this case would be a first im- pression. The gloomy coft'eeroom, the hurried and uncivil waiters, the atrocious cookery, the bad air, greasy tables, filthy carpet, and unsocial company — and this one of the most popular and crowded inns of the first commercial town in England ! My neighbors themselves, too, afforded me some little speculation. They were a fair specimen of the young men of our country, and after several years' exclusive conversance with other nations, I was curious to compare an un- travelled American with the Europeans around me. I was struck with the exceeding ambitiousncss of their style of conversation. Dr. Pangloss fymself would have given them a degree. They called nothing by its week-day name, and avoided with singular pertina- city exactly that upon which the modern English are as pertinaciously bent — a concise homeliness of phraseology. They were dressed much better than the people about them (who were apparently in the same sphere of life), and had on the whole a superior air — owing possibly to the custom prevalent in Ameri- ca of giving young men a university education before they enter into trade. Like myself, too, they had not yet learned the English accomplishment of total un- consciousness of the presence of othert. When not 216 PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. conversing they did not study profoundly the grain of the mahogany, nor gaze with solemn earnestness into the bottom of their wine-glasses, nor peruse, with the absorbed fixedness of Belshazzar, the figures on the wall. They looked about them with undisguised cu- riosity, ordered a great deal more wine than they wanted (very American, that!) and were totally with- out the self-complacent, self-amused, sober-felicity air which John Bull assumes after his cheese in a coffee- room. I did not introduce myself to my countrymen, for an American is the last person in the world with whom one should depart from the ordinary rules of society. Having no fixed rank either in their own or a foreign country, they construe all uncommon civility into either a freedom, or a desire to patronise, and the last is the unpardonable sin. They called after awhile for a " mint julep" (unknown in England), for slippers, (rather an unusual call also — gentlemen usually wear- ing their own), and, seemed very much surprised on asking for candles, at being ushered to bed by the chambermaid. I passed the next morning in walking about Liver- pool. It is singularly like New York in its general air, and quite like it in the character of its population. I presume I must have met many of my countrymen, for there were some who passed me in the street, whom I could have sworn to. In a walk to the American consul's (to whose polite kindness I, as well as all my compatriots, have been very much indebted), I was lucky enough to see a New York packet drive into the harbor under full sail — as gallant a sight as you would wish to see. It was blowing rather stiffly, and she run up to her anchorage like a bird, and taking in her canvass with the speed of a man-of-war, was lying in a few moments with her head to the tide, as neat and as tranquil as if she had slept for the last month at her moorings. I could feel in the air that came ashore from her, that 1 had letters on board. Anxious to get on to Cheshire, where, as they say of the mails, I had been due some days, and very anxious to get rid of the perfume of beer, beefsteaks, and bad soup, with which 1 had become impregnated at the inn, I got embarked in an omnibus at noon, and was taken to the railway. I was just in time, and down we dived into the long tunnel, emerging from the darkness at a pace that made my hair sensibly tighten and hold on with apprehension. Thirty miles in the hour is pleasant going when one is a little ac- customed to it. It gives one such a contempt for time and distance ! The whizzing past of the return trains, going in the other direction with the same ve- locity, making you recoil in one second, and a mile off* the next — was the only thing which, after a few minutes, I did not take to very kindly. There wer near a hundred passengers, most of them precisely the class of English which we see in our country — the fags of Manchester and Birmingham — a class, I dare say, honest and worthy, but much more to my taste in their own country than mine. I must confess to a want of curiosity touching spin- ning-jennies. Half an hour of Manchester contented me, yet in that half hour I was cheated to the amount of four-and-six-pence — unless the experience was worth the money. Under a sovereign I think it not worth while to lose one's temper, and I contented my- self with telling the man (he was a coach proprietor) as I paid him the second time for the same thing in the course of twenty minutes, that the time and trou- ble he must have had in bronzing his face to that de- gree of impudence gave him some title to the money. I saw some pretty scenery between Manchester and my destination, and having calculated my time very accurately, I was set down at the gates of Hall, as the dressing-bell for dinner came over the park upon the wind. I found another English welcome, passed three weeks amid the pleasures of English country life, departed as before with regrets, and with- out much more incident or adventure reached London on the first of November, and established mvself for the winter. END OF PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE, PREFACE. The " Letters from under a Bridge" were written in a secluded glen of the valley of the Susquehannah. The author after several years residence and travel abroad, made there, as he hoped, an altar of life-time tranquillity for his household-gods. Most of the letters were written in the full belief that he should pass there the remainder of his days. Inevitable necessity drove him again into active metropolitan life, and the remembrance of that enchanting interval of repose and rural pleasure seems to him, now, little but a dream. As picturing truly the color of his own mind, and the natural flow of his thoughts during a brief enjoyment of the kind of life alone best suited to his disposition as well as to his better nature, the book is interesting to himself and to those who love him. As picturing faithfully the charm of nature and seclusion, after years of intoxicated life in the gayest circles of the gayest cities of the world, it may be curious to the reader. LETTER I. My Dear Doctor : Twice in the year, they say, the farmer may sleep late in the morning — between hoeing and haying, and between harvest and thrash- ing. If I have not written to you since the frost was out of the ground, my apology lies distributed over the "spring-work," in due proportions among plough- ing, harrowing, sowing, plastering, and hoeing. We have finished the last — some thanks to the crows, who saved us the labor of one acre of corn, by eating it in the blade. Think what times we live in, when even the crows are obliged to anticipate their income ! When I had made up my mind to write to you, I cast about for a cool place in the shade — for, besides the changes which farming works upon my epidermis, I find some in the inner man, one of which is a vege- table necessity for living out-of-doors. Between five in the morning and "flower-shut," I feel as if four walls and a ceiling would stop my breath. Very much to the disgust of William (who begins to think it was infra dig. to have followed such a hob-nail from London), I showed the first symptom of this chair-and-carpet asthma, by ordering my breakfast under a balsam-fir. Dinner and tea soon followed; and now, if I go in-doors by daylight, it is a sort of fireman's visit — in and out with a long breath. I have worn quite a dial on the grass, working my chair around with the sun. "If ever you observed," (a phrase with which a neighbor of mine ludicrously prefaces every possible remark), a single tree will do very well to sit, or dine, or be buried under, but you can not write in the shade of it. Beside the sun-flecks and the light all around you, there is a want of that privacy, which is neces- sary to a perfect abandonment to pen and ink. I dis- covered this on getting as far as "dear Doctor," and, pocketing my tools, strolled away up the glen to bor- row "stool and desk" of Nature. Half open, like a broad-leafed book (green margin and silver type), the brook-hollow of Glenmary spreads wide as it drops upon the meadow, but above, like a book that deserves its fair margent, it deepens as you proceed. Not far from the road, its little rivulet steals forth from a shadowy ravine, narrow as you enter, then widening back to a mimic cataract ; and here, a child would say, is fairy parlor. A small platform (an island when the stream is swollen) lies at the foot of the fall, carpeted with the fine silky grass which thrives with shade and spray. The two walls of the ravine are mossy, and trickling with springs ; the trees over- head interlace, to keep out the sun; and down comes the brook, over a flight of precipitous steps, like chil- dren bursting out of school, and after a laugh at its own tumble, it falls again into a decorous ripple, and trips murmuring away. The light is green, the leaves of the overhanging trees look translucent above, and the wild blue grape, with its emerald rings, has wove all over it a basket-lattice so fine, that you would think it were done to order — warranted to keep out the hawk, and let in the humming-bird. With a yellow pine at my back, a moss cushion beneath, and a ledge of flat stone at my elbow, you will allow I had a secretary's outfit. I spread my paper, and mended my pen ; and then (you will pardon me, dear Doctor) I forgot you altogether. The truth is, these fanciful garnishings spoil work. Silvio Pellico had a better place to write in. If it had been a room with a Chi- nese paper (a bird standing; for ever on one leg, and a tree ruffled by the summer wind, and fixed with its leaves on edge, as if petrified with the varlet's impu- dence), the eye might get accustomed to it. But first 218 LETTERS 'FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. came a gold-robin, twittering out his surprise to find strange company in his parlor, yet never frighted from his twig by pen and ink. By the time I had sucked a lesson out of that, a squirrel tripped in without knock- ing, and sat nibbling at a last-year's nut, as if nobody but he took thought for the morrow. Then came an enterprising ant, climbing my knee like a discoverer ; and I wondered whether Fernando Cortes would have mounted so boldly, had the peak of Darien been as new-dropped between the Americas, as my leg by his ant-hill. By this time, a small dripping from a moss- fringe at my elbow betrayed the lip of a spring ; and, dislodging a stone, I uncovered a brace of lizards lying snug in the ooze. We flatter ourselves, thought I, that we drink first of the spring. We do not know always whose lips were before us. Much as you see of insect life, and hear of bird- music, as you walk abroad, you should lie perdu in a nook, to know how much is frighted from sight, and hushed from singing, by your approach. What worms creep out when they think you gone, and what chatterers go on with their story ! So among friends, thought I, as I fished for the moral. We should be wiser, if we knew what our coming hides and silences, but should we walk so undisturbed on our way ? You will see with half a glance, dear Doctor, that here was too much company for writing. I screwed up my inkstand once more, and kept up the bed of the stream till it enters the forest, remembering a still place by a pool. The tall pines hold up the roof high as an umbrella of Brobdignag, and neither water j brawls, nor small birds sing, in the gloom of it. Here, thought I, as far as they go, the circumstances are congenial. But, as Jean Paul says, there is a period of iife when the real gains ground upon the ideal; and to be honest, dear Doctor, I sat leaning on the shingle across my knees, counting my sky-kissing pines, and reckoning what they would bring in saw- logs — so much standing — so much drawn to the mill. Then there would be wear and tear of bob-sled, teamster's wages, and your dead-pull springs — the horses' knees. I had nearly settled the per and con- tra, when my eye lit once more on "my dear Doctor," staring from the unfilled sheet, like the ghost of a murdered resolution. " Since when," I asked, look- ing myself sternly in the face, " is it so difficult to be virtuous! Shall I not write when I have a mind? Shall I reckon pelf whether I will or no? Shall but- terfly imagination thrust iron-heart to the wall ? No !" I took a straight cut through my ruta-baga patch and cornfield, bent on finding some locality (out of doors it must be) with the average attractions of a sentry-box, or a church-pew. I reached the high- road, making insensibly for a brush dam, where I should sit upon a log, with my face abutted upon a wall of chopped saplings. I have not mentioned my dog, who had followed me cheerfully thus far, putting up now and then a partridge, to keep his nose in; but, on coming to the bridge over the brook, he made up his mind. "My master," he said (or looked), "will neither follow the game, nor sit in the cool. Chacun a son gout. I'm tired of this bobbing about for noth- ing in a hot sun." So, dousing his tail (which, "if you ever observed," a dog hoists, as a flag-ship does her pennant, only when the commodore is aboard), he sprung the railing, and spread himself for a snooze under the bridge. "Ben trovatoV said I, as I seated myself by his side. He wagged his tail half round to acknowledge the compliment, and I took to work like a hay-maker. I have taken some pains to describe these difficulties to you, dear Doctor, partly because I hold it to be fair, in this give-and-take world, that a man should know what it costs his fellow to fulfil obligations, but more especially, to apprize you of the metempsychose that is taking place in myself. You will have divined, ere this, that, in my out-of-doors life, I am approaching a degree nearer to Arcadian perfectability, and that, if 1 but manage to get a bark on and live by sap (spare your wit, sir), I shall be rid of much that is trouble- some, not to say expensive, in the matters of drink and integument. What most surprises me in the past, is, that I ever should have confined my free soul and body, in the very many narrow places and usages I have known in towns. I can only assimilate myself to a squirrel, brought up in a school-boy's pocket, and let out some June morning on a snake fence. The spring has been damp for corn, but I had planted on a warm hill-side, and have done better than my neighbors. The Owaga* creek, which makes a bend round my meadow before it drops into the Sus- quehannah (a swift, bright river the Owaga, with as much water as the Arno at Florence), overflowed my cabbages and onions, in the May freshet; but that touches neither me nor my horse. The winter wheat looks like "velvet of three-pile," and everything is out of the ground, including, in my case, the buck- wheat, which is not yet put in. This is to be an old- fashioned hot summer, and I shall sow late. The peas are podded. Did it ever strike you, by the way that the pious JEneas, famous through all ages for carrying old Anchises a mile, should, after all, yield glory to a bean. Perhaps you never observed, that this filial esculent grows up with his father on his back. In my "new light," a farmer's life seems to me what a manufacturer's might resemble, if his factory were an indigenous plant — machinery, girls, and all. What spindles and fingers it would take to make an orchard, if nature found nothing but the raw seed, and rain-water and sunshine were brought as far as a cotton bale! Your despised cabbage would be a prime article — if you had to weave it. Pumpkins, if they ripened with a hair-spring and patent lever, would be, "by'r lady," a curious invention. Yet these, which Aladdin nature produces if we but "rub the lamp," are more necessary to life than clothes or watches. In planting a tree (I write it reverently), it seems to me working immediately with the divine faculty. Here are two hundred forest trees set out with my own hand. Yet how little is my part in the glorious creatures they become ! This reminds me of a liberty I have lately taken with nature, which I ventured upon with proper diffi- dence, though the dame, as will happen with dames, proved less coy than was predicted. The brook at my feet, from its birth in the hills till it dropped into the meadow's lap, tripped down like a mountain-maid with a song, bright and unsullied. So it flowed by my door. At the foot of the bank, its song and sparkle ceased suddenly, and, turning under the hill, its waters disappeared among sedge and rushes. It was more a pity, because you looked across the meadow to the stately Owaga, and saw that its un- fulfilled destiny was to have poured its brightness into his. The author of Ernest Maltravers has set the fashion of charity to such fallings away. I made a new channel over the meadow, gravelled its bed, and grassed its banks, and (last and best charity of all) protected its recovered course with overshadowy trees. Not quite with so gay a sparkle, but with a placid and tranquil beauty, the lost stream glides over the meadow, and, Maltravers-like, the Owaga takes her lovingly to his bosom. The sedge and rushes are turned into a garden, and if you drop a flower into the brook at my door, it scarce loses a breath of its per- fume before it is flung on the Owaga, aud the Sus- quehannah robs him of it but with his life. I have scribbled away the hours till near noon, and * Corrupted now to Owego. Ochwaga was the Indian word, and means txMfl water. LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 219 it is time to see that the oxen get their potatoes. Faith ! it's a cool place under a bridge. Knock out the two ends of the Astor-house, and turn the Hudson through the long passage, and you will get an idea of it. The breeze draws through here deftly, the stone wall is cool to my back, and this floor of running water, be- sides what the air steals from it, sounds and looks re- freshingly. My letter has run on, till I am inclined to think the industry of running water "breeds i'the brain." Like the tin-pot at the cur's tail, it seems to overtake one with an admonition, if he but slack to breathe. Be not alarmed, dear Doctor, for, sans po- tatoes, my oxen will loll in the furrow, and though the brook run till doomsday, I must stop here. Amen. LETTER II. My Dear Doctor : I have just had a visit from the assessor. As if a man should be taxed for a house, who could be luxurious under a bridge ! I have felt a decided "call" to disclaim roof and thresh- old, and write myself down a vagabond. Fancy the variety of abodes open, rent-free, to a bridge-fancier. It is said among the settlers, that where a stranger finds a tree blown over (the roots forming, always, an upright and well-matted wall), he has only his house to finish. Cellar and chimney-back are ready done to his hand. But, besides being roofed, walled, and wa- tered, and better situated, and more plenty than over- blown trees — bridges are on no man's land. You are no " squatter," though you sit upon your hams. You may shut up one end with pine boughs, and you have a room a-la-mode — one large window open to the floor. The view is of banks and running water — ex- quisite of necessity. For the summer months I could imagine this bridge-gipsying delicious. What furniture might pack in a donkey-cart, would set forth a better apartment than is averaged in hotels (so yclept), and the saving to your soul (of sins commit- ted, sitting at a bell-rope, ringing in vain for water) would be worthy a conscientious man's attention. I will not deny that the bridge of Glenmary is a fa- vorable specimen. As its abutments touch my cot- tage-lawn, I was under the necessity of presenting the public with anew bridge, for which act of munificence I have not yet received the freedom of the town. Per- haps I am expected to walk through it when I please, without asking. The hitherward railing coming into the line of my fence, I have, in a measure, a private entrance; and the whole structure is overshadowed by a luxuriant tree. To be sure, the beggar may go down the bank in the road, and, entering by the other side, sit under it as well as I — but he is welcome. I like society sans- gene — where you may come in or go out without apology, or whistle, or take off your shoes. And I would give notice here to the beggary of Tioga, that in building a stone seat under the bridge, and laying the banks with green-sward, I intend no seques- tration of their privileges. I was pleased that a swal- low, who had laid her mud-nest against a sleeper overhead, took no offence at my improvements. Her three nestlings made large eyes when I read out what I have scribbled, but she drowses on without astonish- ment. She is a swallow of last summer, and has seen authors. A foot-passenger has just gone over the bridge, and, little dreaming there were four of us listening (the swallows and I), he leaned over the railing, and ventured upon a soliloquy. "Why don't he cut down the trees so's he can see out?" said my uncon- scious adviser. I caught the eye of the mother-swal- low, and fancied she was amused. Her swallowlings looked petrified at the sacrilegious suggestion. Bv the way, it is worthy of remark, that though h*>r little ones have been hatched a week, this estimable parent still sits upon their heads. Might not this continued incubation be tried with success upon backward chil- dren? We are so apt to think babies are finished when their bodies are brought into the world! For some minutes, now, I have observed an occa- sional cloud rising from the bottom of the brook, and, peering among the stones, I discovered one of the small lobsters with which the streams abound. (The naturalists may class them differently, but as there is but one, and he has all the armament of a lobster, though on the scale of a shrimp, the swallows agree with me in opinion that he should rank as a lobster.) So we are five. " Cocksnouns !" to borrow Scott's ejaculation, people should never be too sure that they are unobserved. When I first came under the bridge, I thought myself alone. This lobster puts me in mind of Talleyrand. You would say he is going backward, yet he gets on faster that way than the other. After all, he is a great man who can turn his reverses to account, and that I take to be, oftentimes, one of the chief secrets of great- ness. If I were in politics, I would take the lobster for my crest. It would be ominous, I fear, in poetry. You should come to the country now, if you would see the glory of the world. The trees have been co- quetting at their toilet, waiting for warmer weather; but now I think they have put on their last flounce and furbelow, spread their bustle, and stand to be ad- mired. They say "leafy June." To-day is the first of July, and though I give the trees my first morning regard (out-of-doors) when my eyes are clearest, I have not fairly thought till to-day, that the foliage was full. If it were not for lovers and authors, who keep vigil and count the hours, I should suspect there was foul play between sun and moon — a legitimate day made away with now and then. (The crime is not unknown in the upper circles. Saturn devoured his children.) There is a glory in potatoes — well hoed. Corn — the swaying and stately maize — has a visible glory. To see the glory of turnips, you must own the crop, and have cattle to fat — but they have a glory. Pease ! need no psean — they are appreciated. So are not cab- j bages, which, though beautiful as a Pompeian wine- cup, and honored above roses by the lingering of the dew, are yet despised of all handicrafts — save one. Apt emblem of ancient maidenhood, which is despised, like cabbages, yet cherishes unsunned in its bosom the very dew we mourn so inconsistently when rifled from the rose. Apropos — the delicate tribute in the last sentence shall serve for an expiation. In a journey I made through Switzerland, I had for chance-travelling com- panions, three Scotch ladies, of the class emulated by this chaste vegetable. They were intelligent, refined, and lady-like; yet in some Pencillings by the Way (sketched, perhaps, upon an indigestion of mountain cheese, or an acidity of bad wine — such things affect us) I was perverse enough to jot down a remark, more invidious than just. We are reached with a long whip for our transgressions, and, but yesterday, I re- ceived a letter from the Isle of Man, of which thus runs an extract : " In your description of a dangerous pass in Switzerland, you mention travelling in the same public conveyance with three Scotch spinsters, I and declare you would have been alarmed, had there been any neck in the carriage you cared for, and as- sert, that neither of your companions would have hesi- tated to leap from a precipice, had there been a lover at the bottom. Did either of us tell you so, sir ? Or what ground have you for this assertion ? You could not have judged of us by your own beautiful country- women, for they are proverbial for delicacy of feeling. You had not yet made the acquaintance of mine. VT«, therefore, nrast appropriate entirely to ourselves 220 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. the very flattering idea of having inspired such an opinion. Yet allow me to assure you, sir, that lovers are by no means so scarce in my native country, as you seem to imagine. No Scotchwoman need go either to Switzerland, or Yankee-land, in search of them. Permit me to say then, sir, that as the attack was so public, an equally public amende honorable is due to us." I make it here. I retract the opinion altogether. I do not think you " would have leaped from the preci- pice, had there been a lover at the bottom." On the contrary, dear Miss , I think you would have waited till he climbed up. The amende, I flatter my- self, could scarce be more complete. Yet I will make it stronger if you wish. As I look out from under the bridge, I see an oriel sitting upon a dog-wood tree of my planting. His song drew my eye from the paper. I find it difficult, now, not to take to myself the whole glory of tree, song, and plumage. By an easy delusion, I fancy he would not have come but for the beauty of the tree, and that his song says as much, in bird-recitative. I go back to one rainy day of April, when, hunting for maple saplings, I stopped under that graceful tree, in a sort of island jungle, and wondered what grew so fair that was so unfamiliar, yet with a bark like the plumage of the pencilled pheasant. The limbs grew curiously. A lance-like stem, and, at regular distan- ces a cluster of radiating branches, like a long cane thrust through inverted parasols. I set to work with spade and pick, took it home on my shoulder, and set it out by Glenmary brook, and there it stands to-day, in the full glory of its leaves, having just shed the white blossoms with which it kept holyday in June. Now the tree would have leaved and flowered, and the oriel, in black and gold, might perchance have swung and sung on the slender branch, which is still tilting with his effort in that last cadenza. But the fair pic- ture it makes to my eye, and the delicious music in my ear, seem to me no less of my own making and awaking. Is it the same tree, flowering unseen in the woods, or transplanted into a circle of human love and care, making a part of a woman's home, and thought of and admired whenever she comes out from her cottage, with a blessing on the perfume and ver- dure ? Is it the same bird, wasting his song in the thicket, or singing to me, with my whole mind afloat on his music, and my eyes fastened to his glittering breast ? So it is the same block of marble, unmoved in the caves of Pentelicus, or brought forth and wrought under the sculptor's chisel. Yet the sculp- tor is allowed to create. Sing on, my bright oriel ! Spread to the light and breeze your desiring finger, my flowering tree ! Like the player upon the organ, I take your glory to myself; though, like the hallelu- jah that burns under his fingers, your beauty and mu- sic worship God. There are men in the world whose misfortune it is to think too little of themselves — rari nantes in gur- gite vaslo. I would recommend to such to plant trees, and live among them. This suggesting to nature — working, as a master-mind, with all the fine mysteries of root and sap, obedient to the call — is very king-like. Then how elevating is the society of trees ! The ob- jection I have to a city, is the necessity, at every other step, of passing some acquaintance or other, with all his merits or demerits entirely through my mind — some man, perhaps, whose existence and vocation I have not suggested (as I might have done were he a tree) — whom I neither love, nor care to meet ; and yet he is thrust upon my eye, and must be noticed. But to notice him with propriety, I must remember what he is — what claims he has to my respect, my ci vility. I must, in a minute balance the account be tween my character and his, and if he speak to me, emember his wife and children, his last illness, his mishap or fortune in trade, or whatever else it is ne- cessary to mention in condolence or felicitation. A man with but a moderate acquaintance, living in a city, will pass through his mind each day, at a fair calculation, say two hundred men and women, witb their belongings. What tax on the memory ! Whal fatigue (and all profitless) to them and him ! " Sweep me out like a foul thoroughfare!" say I. " The town has trudged through me !" I like my mind to be a green lane, private to th« dwellers in my own demesne. I like to be bowed to as the trees bow, and have no need to bow back 01 smile. If I am sad, my trees forego my notice without offence. If I am merry, or whimsical, they do not suspect my good sense, or my sanity. We have a constant itching (all men have, I think) to measure ourselves by those about us. I would rather it should be a tree than a fop, or a politician, or a 'prentice. We grow to the nearest standard. We become Lilli- putians in Lilliput. Let me grow up like a tree. But here comes Tom Groom with an axe, as if he had looked over my shoulder, and started, apropos of trees. " Is it that big button-ball you'll have cut down, sir ?" " Call it a sycamore, Tom, and I'll come and see." It is a fine old trunk, but it shuts out the village spire, and must come down. Adieu, dear Doctor ; you may call this a letter if you will, but it is more like an essay. LETTER III. Dear Doctor: There are some things that grow more certain with time and experience. Among them, I am happier for finding out, is the affinity which makes us friends. But there are other matters which, for me, observation and knowledge only serve to perplex, and among these is to know whose " edu- cation has been neglected." One of the first new lights which broke on me, was after my first day in France. I went to bed with a newborn contempt, mingled with resentment, in my mind, toward my ven- erable alma mater. The three most important branches of earthly knowledge, I said to myself, are, to under- stand French when it is spoken, to speak it so as to be understood, and to read and write it with propriety and ease. For accomplishment in the last, I could refer to my diploma, where the fact was stated on in- destructible parchment. But, allowing it to speak the truth (which was allowing a great deal), there were the two preceding branches, in which (most culpably to my thinking) "my education had been neglected." . Could I have taken out my brains, and, by simmering in a pot, have decocted Virgil, Homer, Playfair, Dugald Stewart, and Copernicus, all five, into one very small Frenchman — (what they had taught me to what he could teach) — I should have been content, though the fiend blew the fire. I remember a beggarly Greek, who acquired an ascendency over eight or ten of us, gentlemen and scholars, travelling in the east, by a knowledge of what esculents, growing wild above the bones of Mil- tiades, were " good for greens." We were out of pro- visions, and fain to eat with Nebuchadnezzar. " Hang grammar!" thought I, "here's a branch in which my education has been neglected." Who was ever called upon in his travels to conjugate a verb ? Yet here, but for this degenerate Athenian, we had starved for our ignorance of what is edible in plants. I had occasion, only yesterday, to make a similar remark. I was in a crowded church, listening to a Fourth of July oration; what with one sort of caloric and what with another, it was very uncomfortable, and LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 221 a lady near me became faint. To get her out, was impossible, and there was neither fan, nor sal volatile, within twenty pews. The bustle, after awhile, drew the attention of an uncombed Yankee in his shirt- sleeves, who had stood in the aisle with his mouth open, gazing at the stage in front of the pulpit, and wondering, perhaps, what particular difference be- tween sacred and profane oratory, required this pains- taking exhibition of the speaker's legs. Compre- hending the state of the case at a single glance, the backwoodsman whipped together the two ends of his riding-switch, pulled his cotton handkerchief tightly over it, and, with this effective fan, soon raised a breeze that restored consciousness to the lady, besides cooling everybody in the vicinity. Here is a man, thought I, brought up to have his wits ready for an emergency. His " education has not been neglected." j To know nothing of sailing a ship, of farming, of carpentering, in short, of any trade or profession, may | be a proper, though sometimes inconvenient igno- j ranee. I only speak of such deficiencies, as a modest person will not confess without giving a reason — as a j man who can not swim will say he is liable to the cramp in deep water. With some reluctance, lately, i I have brought myself to look after such dropped threads in my own woof of acquisitions, in the hope i of mending them before they were betrayed by an exi- j gency. Trout-fishing is one of these. I plucked up | heart a day or two since, and drove to call upon a I young sporting friend of mine, to whom I confessed, ' plump, I never had caught a trout. I knew nothing i of flies, worms, rods, or hooks. Though I had seen in a book that " hog's down" was the material for the ; May-fly, I positively did not know on what part of that ; succulent quadruped the down was found. "Positively ?" " Positively !" My friend F. gravely shut the door to secure pri- , vacy to my ignorance, and took from his desk a vol- j U me — of flies ! Here was new matter ! Why, sir ! j your trout-fishing is a politician of the first water !\ Here were baits adapted to all the whims, weaknesses, | states of appetite, even counter-baits to the very cun- ning, of the fish. Taking up the "Spirit of the! Times" newspaper, his authority in all sporting mat- I tens, which he had laid down as I came in, he read a | recipe for the construction of one out of the many of j these seductive imitations, as a specimen of the labor bestowed on them. "The body is dubbed with hog's down, or light bear's hair mixed with yellow mohair, i whipped with pale floss silk, and a small strip of pea- j cock's herl for the head. The wings from the rayed { feathers of the mallard, dyed yellow ; the hackle from j the bittern's neck, and the tail from the long hairs of the sable or ferret." I cut my friend short midway in his volume, for, ever since my disgust at discovering that the perplexed grammar I had been whipped through was nothing but the art of talking correctly, which I could do be- fore I began, 1 have had an aversion to rudiments. "Frankly," said I, "dear F. my education has been i neglected. Will you take me with you, trout-fishing, i fish yourself, answer my questions, and assist me to j pick up the science in my own scrambling fashion?" He was good-natured enough to consent, and now, dear Doctor, you see to what all this prologue was tending. A day's trout-fishing may be a very com- mon matter to you, but the sport was as new to me as to the trout. I may say, however, that of the two, I took to the novelty of the thing more kindly. The morning after was breezy, and the air, without a shower, had become cool. 1 was sitting under the bridge, with my heels at the waters edge, reading a newspaper, while waiting for my breakfast, when a slight motion apprized me that the water had invaded my instep. I had been wishing the tun had drank less freely of my brook, and within a few minutes of the wish, it had risen, doubtless, from the skirt of a shower in the hills beyond us. "Come!" thought I, pulling my boots out of the ripple, " so should arrive favors that would be welcome — no herald, and no weary ex- pectation. A human gift so uses up gratitude with the asking and delaying." The swallow heard the in- creased babble of the stream, and came out of the air like a cimeter to see if her little ones were afraid, and the fussy lobster bustled about in his pool, as if there were more company than he expected. " Semper pa- ratus is a good motto, Mr. Lobster !" " I will look after your little ones, Dame Swallow !" I had scarce distributed these consolations among my family, when a horse crossed the bridge at a gallop, and the head of my friend F. peered presently over the railing. " How is your brook ?" "Rising, as you see!" It was evident there had been rain west of us, and the sky was still gray — good auspices for the fisher. In half an hour we were climbing the hill, with such contents in the wagon-box as my friend advised — the debris of a roast pig and a bottle of hock supposed to be included in the bait. As we got into the woods above (part of my own small domain), I could scarce help addressing my tall tenantry of trees. " Grow away, gentlemen," I would have said, had I been alone ; " I rejoice in your prosperity. Help your- selves to the dew and the sunshine ! If the showers are not sent to your liking, thrust your roots into my cellar, lying just under you, and moisten your clay without ceremony — the more the better." After all, trees have pleasant ways with them. It is something that they find their own food and raiment — something that they require neither watching nor care — some- thing that they know, without almanac, the proces- sions of the seasons, and supply, unprompted and unaided, the covering for their tender family of germes. So do not other and less profitable tenants. But it is more to me that they have no whims to be reasoned with, no prejudices to be soothed, no garrulity to re- ply or listen to. I have a peculiarity which this touches nearly. Some men "make a god of their belly;" some spend thought and cherishing on their feet, faces, hair; some few on their fancy or their reason, /am chary of my gift of speech. I hate to talk but for my pleasure. In common with my fel- low-men, I have one faculty which distinguishes me from the brute — an articulate voice. I speak (I am warranted to believe) like my Maker and his angels. I have committed to me an instrument no human art has ever imitated, as incomprehensible in its fine and celestial mechanism, as the reason which controls it. Shall 1 breathe on this articulate wonder at every fool's bidding ? Without reasoning upon the matter as I do now, I have felt indignant at the common ad- age, " words cost nothing!" It is a common saying in this part of the country, that " you may talk off ten dollars in the price of a horse." Those who have travelled in Italy, know well that in procuring any- thing in that country, from a post-carriage to a paper of pins, you pay so much money, so much talk — the less talk the more money. I commenced all my liar- gains with a compromise — "You charge me ten scudi, and you expect me to talk you down to five. I know the price and the custom. Now, I will give you seven and a half if you will let me off the talk." I should be glad if all buying and selling were done by signs. It seems to me that talking on a sordid theme invades and desecrates the personal dignity. The " scripta verba manent" has no terrors for me. I could write that without a thought, which I would put myself to great inconveniences to avoid saying. You, dear Doctor, among others, have often asked me how long I should be contented in the country. Comment, diable! ask. rather, how you are contented I'l'l LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. in a town ! Does not every creature, whose name may have been mentioned to you — a vast congrega tion of nothinglings — stop you in the street, and, will you, nill you, make you perform on your celestial or gan of speech — nay, even choose the theme out of his own littlenesses ? When and how do you possess your thoughts, and their godlike interpreter, in dignity and peace ? You are a man, of all others, worthy of the unsuggestive listening of trees. Your coinage of thought, profuse and worthy of a gift of utterance, is alloyed and depreciated by the promiscuous admix- tures of a town. Who ever was struck with the majesty of the human voice in the street ? Yet, who ever spoke, the meanest, in the solitude of a temple, or a wilderness, or, in the stillness of night — wher- ever the voice is alone heard — without an awe of his own utterance — a feeling as if he had exercised a gift, which had in it something of the supernatural ? The Indian talks to himself, or to the Great Spirit, in the woods, but is silent among men. We take many steps toward civilization as we get on in life, but it is an error to think that the heart keeps up with the manners. At least, with me, the perfection of ex- istence seems to be, to possess the arts of social life, with the simplicity and freedom of the savage. They talk of "unbridled youth!" Who would not have borne a rein at twenty, he scorns at thirty ? Who does not, as his manhood matures, grow more im- patient of restraint — more unwilling to submit to the conventional tyrannies of society — more ready, if there were half a reason for it, to break through the whole golden but enslaving mesh of society, and start fresh, with Nature and the instincts of life, in the wilderness. The imprisonment to a human eye may be as irksome as a fetter — yet they who live in cities are never loosed. Did you ever stir out of doors without remembering that you were seen ? I have given you my thoughts as I went by my tall foresters, dear Doctor, for it is a part of trout-fishing, as quaint Izaak held it, to be stirred to musing and revery by the influences of nature. In this free air, too, I scorn to be tied down to " the proprieties." Nay, if it come to that, why should I finish what I begin ? Dame swallow, to be sure, looks curious to hear the end of my first lesson with the angle. But no ! rules be hanged ! I do not live on a wild brook to be plagued with rhetoric. I will seal up my letter where I am, and go a-field. You shall know what we brought home in the basket when I write again. LETTER IV. My Dear Doctor: Your letters, like yourself, trav- el in the best of company. What should come with your last, but a note from our friend Stetson of the Astor, forwarding a letter which a traveller had left in II the bronze vase, with "something enclosed which feels like a key." "A Are?/," quotha ! Attar of jasmine, subtle as the breath of the prophet from Constantino- ple by private hand! No less! The small gilt bottle, with its cubical edge and cap of parchment, lies breath- ing before me. I think you were not so fortunate as to meet Bartlett, the draughtsman of the American sce- nery — the best of artists in his way, and the pleasantest of John Bulls, any way. He travelled with me a sum- mer here, making his sketches, and has since been sent by the same enterprising publisher (Virtue, of Ivy Lane), to sketch in the Orient. (" Stand by," as Jack savs, for something glorious from that quarter.) Well — pottering about the Bezestein, he fell in with my old friend Mustapha, the attar-merchant, who lift- ed the silk curtains for him, and over sherbet and spiced coffee in the inner divan, questioned him of America — a country which, to Mustapha's fancy, is as far beyond the moon as the moon is beyond the gilt tip of the seraglio. Bartlett told him the sky was round in that country, and the women faint and exquis- ite as his own attar. Upon which Mustapha took his pipe from his mouth, and praised Allah. After stro- king the smoke out of his beard, and rolling his idea over the whites of his eyes for a few minutes, the old merchant pulled from under his silk cushion, a visit- ing-card, once white, but stained to a deep orange with the fingering of his fat hand, unctuous from bath-hour to bath-hour with the precious oils he traffics in. When Bartlett assured him he had seen me in Amer- jica (it was the card I had given the old Turk at part- ing, that he might remember my name), he settled the curtains which divide the small apartment from the shop, and commanding his huge Ethiopian to watch the door, entered into a description of our visit to the forbidden recesses of the slave-market, of his pur- chase (for me), of the gipsy Maimuna, and some oth- er of my six weeks' adventures in his company — for Mustapha and I, wherever it might lie in his fat body, had a nerve in unison. We mingled like two drops of the oil of roses. At parting, he gave Bartlett this small bottle of jasmine, to be forwarded to me, with much love, at his convenience; and with the perfume of it in my nostrils, and the corpulent laugh of old Mustapha ringing in my ear, I should find it difficult at this moment, to say how much of me is under this bridge in Tioga, North America. I am not sure that my letter should not be dated " attar-shop, near the se- raglio" for there, it seems to me, I am writing. " Tor-mentingest growin' time, aint it !" says a neigh- bor, leaning over the bridge at this instant, and little thinking that on that breath of his I travelled from the Bosphorus to the Susquehannah. Really, they talk of steamers, but there is no travelling conveyance like an interruption. A minute since, I was in the capital of the Palaeologi, smoking a narghile in the Turk's shop. Presto! here I am in the county of Tiog', sit- ting under a bridge, with three swallows and a lobster (not three lobsters at a swallow — as you are very like- ly to read it in your own careless way), and no outlay for coals or canvass. Now, why should not this be re- duced to a science — like steam ! I'll lend the idea to the cause of knowledge. If a man may travel from Turkey to New York on a passing remark, what might be done on a long sermon ? At present the agent is irregular, so was steam. The performance of the journey, at present, is compulsory. So was travelling by steam before Fulton. The discoveries in animal magnetism justify the most sanguine hopes on the sub- ject, and "open up," as Mr. Bulwer would express it, a vast field of novel discovery. The truth is (I have been sitting a minute thinking it over), the chief obstacle and inconvenience in trav- elling is the prejudice in favor of taking the body with us. It is really a preposterous expense. Going abroad exclusively for the benefit of the mind, we are at no little trouble, in the first place, to provide the means for the body's subsistence on the journey (the mind not being subject to " charges") and then, besides trail- ing after us through ruins and galleries, a companion who takes no enjoyment in pictures or temples, and is perpetually incommoded by our enthusiasm, we un- dergo endless vexation and annoyance with the care of his baggage. Blessed be Providence, the mind is in- dependent of boots and linen. When the system above hinted at is perfected, we can leave our box-coats at home, item pantaloons for all weathers, item cravats, flannels, and innumerable hose. I shall use my port- manteau to send egas to market, with chickens in the two carpet-bags. My body I shall leave with the dai- ry-woman, to be fed at milking-time. Probably, how- ever, in the progress of knowledge, there will be some discovery by which it can be closed in the absence of the mind, like a town-house when the occupant is LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 223 in the country — blinds down, and a cobweb over the keyhole. In all the prophetic visions of a millenium, the chief obstacle to its progress is the apparently undiminish- ing necessity for the root of all evil. Intelligence is diffusing, law becoming less merciless, ladies driving hoops, and (I have observed) a visible increase of mar- riages between elderly ladies and very young gentle- men — the last a proof that the affections (as will be universally true in the milleninm) may retain their freshness in age. But among all these lesser begin- nings, the philanthropist has hitherto despaired, for to his most curious search, there appeared no symptom of beginning to live without money. May we not dis- cern in this system (by which the mind, it is evident, may perform some of the most expensive functions of the body), a dream of moneyless millenium — a first step toward that blessed era when " Biddle and dis- counts" will be read of like "Aaron and burnt-offer- ings" — ceremonies which once made it necessary for a high-priest, and an altar at which the innocent suf- .ered for the guilty, but which shall have passed away 'n the blessed progress of the millenium? If I may make a grave remark to you, dear Doctor, I think the whole bent and spirit of the age we live in, is, to make light of matter. Religion, which used to De seated in the heart, is, by the new light of Chan- ning, addressed purely to the intellect. The feelings and passions, which are bodily affections, have less to do with it than the mind. To eat with science and drink hard, were once passports to society. To think shrewdly and talk well, carry it now. Headaches were cured by pills, which now yield to magnetic fluid — nothing so subtle. If we travelled once, it must be by pulling of solid muscle. Rarefied air does it now better than horses. War has yielded to nego- tiation. A strong man is no better than a weak one. crimes. That the London Quarterly ever existed, will be classed with such historical enormities as the Inquisition, and torture for witchcraft; and "to be Lockharted" will mean, then, what "to be Burked" means now. You will say, dear Doctor, that I am the "ancient mariner" of letter-writers — telling my tale out of all apropos-ity. But after some consideration, I have made up my mind, that a man who is at all addicted to revery, must have one or two escape-valves — a journal, or a very random correspondence. For rea- sons many and good, I prefer the latter ; and the best of those reasons is my good fortune in possessing a friend like yourself, who is above " proprieties" (pro- sodically speaking), and so you have become to me, what Asia was to Prometheus — " When his being overflowed, Was like a golden chalice to bright wine, Which else had sunk into the thirsty dusk." Talking of trout. We emerged from the woods of Glenmary (you left me there in my last letter), and rounding the top of the hill, which serves for my sun- set drop-curtain, we ran down a mile to a brook in the bed of a low valley. It rejoices in no name, that I could hear of; but, like much that is uncelebrated, it has its virtues. Leaving William to tie the horse to a hemlock, and bring on the basket, we started up the stream, and coming to a cold spring, my friend sat down to initiate me into the rudiments of preparing the fly. A very gay-coated gentleman was selected, rather handsomer than your horse-fly, and whipped upon a rod quite too taper for a comparison. " What next?" " Take a bit of worm out of the tin box, and cover the barb of the hook !" " I will. Stay ! where are the bits ? 1 see nothing Electro-magnetism will soon do all the work of the || here but full-length worms, crawling about, with world, and men's muscles will be so much weight — j every one his complement of extremities — not a tail no more. The amount of it is, that we are graduaUy\\ astray." learning to do without our bodies. The next great dis- j j "Bah! pull a bit off !" covery will probably be some pleasant contrivance fori: " What ! you don't mean that I am to pull one of getting out of them, as the butterfly sheds his worm. | these squirming unfortunates in two ?" Then, indeed, having no pockets, and no " corpus" for " Certainly !" your "habeas" we can dispense with money and its! "Well, come! that seems to me rather a liberty, consequences, and lo ! the millenium! Having no j I grant you 'my education has been neglected,' but, stomachs to care for, there will be much cause of sin j my dear F., there is mercy in a guillotine. I had done away, for in most penal iniquities, the stomach ' made up my mind to the death of the fish, but this is at the bottom. Think what smoothness will follow preliminary — horror !" in " the cause of true love" — money coming never be- " Come ! don't be a woman !" tween! It looks ill for your profession, dear Doctor. "I wish I were— I should have a pair of scissors. We shall have no need of physic. The fee will go to Fancy having your leg pulled off, my good fellow. I him who " administers to the mind deceased" — prob- say it is due to the poor devil that the operation be as ably the clergy. {Mem. to put your children in the short as possible. Suppose your thumb slips?" church.) I am afraid crowded parties will go out of "Why, the worm feels nothing! Pain is in the fashion — it would be so difficult to separate one's imagination. Stay ! I'll do it for you — there ?" globule in case of " mixed society" — yet the extrica- What the remainder of the worm felt, I had no op- tion of gases might be improved upon. Fancy a| portunity of observing, as my friend thrust the tin box lady and gentleman made " common air" of, by "the i; into his pocket immediately ; but the "bit" which he mixture of their "oxygen and hydrogen !" (dropped into the palm of my hand, gave ever)- symp- What most pleases me in the'prospect of this Swe- torn of extreme astonishment, to say the least. The denborg order of things, is the probable improvement; passing of the barb of the hook three times through in the laws. In the physical age passing away, we j him, seemed rather to increase his vitality, and looked have legislated for the protection of the body, but no j to me as little like happiness as anything I ever saw pains or penalties for wounds upon its more sensitive on an excursion of pleasure. Far be it from me, to inhabitant — murder to break the snail's shell, but in- j| pretend to more sensibility than Christopher North, or nocent pastime to thrust a pin into the snail. In the!! Izaak Walton. The latter had his humanities; and new order of things, we shall have penal laws for the ! Wilson, of all the men I have ever seen, fames, most protection of the sensibilities— whether they be touch- . marked in his fine face, the philtre which bewitches ed through the fancy, the judgment, or the personal affection. But, emulous as I am of their fame as an- dignity. ' Those will be days for poets ! Critics will; glers, and modest as I should feel at introducing nino- be hanged— or worse. A sneer will be manslaughter, vations upon an art so refined, I must venture upon Ridicule will be a deadly weapon, only justifiable when some less primitive instrument than thumb and finger, used in defence of life. For scandal, imprisonment | ! for the dismemberment of worms. 1 must take from ten to forty years, at the mercv of the court, scissors. All attacks upon honor, honesty, or innocence, capital I T had never seen a trout caught in my life, and I do 224 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. not remember at this moment ever having, myself, caught a fish, of any genus or gender. My first les- son, of course, was to see the thing done. F. stole up to the bank of the stream, as if his tread might wake a naiad, and threw his fly into a circling, black pool, sparkling with brilliant bubbles, which coiled away from a small brook-leap in the shade. The same instant the rod bent, and a glittering spotted creature rose into the air, swung to his hand, and was dropped into the basket. Another fling, and a small trail of the fly on the water, and another followed. With the third, I felt a curious uneasiness in my el- bow, extending quickly to my wrist — the tingling of a newborn enthusiasm. F. had taken up the stream, and with his lips apart, and body bent over, like a mortal surprising some troop of fays at revel, it was not rea- sonable to expect him to remember his pupil. So, silently I turned down, and at the first pool threw in my fly. Something bright seemed born at the instant under it, and the slight tilting pull upon the pole, took me so much by surprise, that for a second 1 for- got to raise it. Up came the bright trout, raining the silver water from his back, and at the second swing through the air (for I had not yet learned the sleight of the fisher to bring him quick to hand), he dropped into the pool, and was gone. I had already begun to take his part against myself, and detected a pleased thrill, at his escape, venturing through my bosom. I sat down upon a prostrate pine, to new-Shylock my poor worm. The tin box was in F.'s pocket ! Come ! here was a relief. As to the wild-wood worms that might be dug from the pine-tassels under my feet, I was incapable of violating their forest sanctuary. I would fish no more. I had had my pleasure. It is not like pulling up a stick or a stone, to pull up a re- sisting trout. It is a peculiar sensation, unimaginable till felt. I should like to be an angler very well, but for the worm in my pocket. The brook at my feet, and around me, pines of the tallest lift, by thousands! You may travel through a forest, and look upon these communicants with the sky, as trees. But you can not sit still in a forest, alone, and silent, without feeling the awe of their pres- ence. Yet the brook ran and sang as merrily, in their black shadow, as in the open sunshine ; and the woodpecker played his sharp hammer on a tree ever- green for centuries, as fearlessly as on a shivering poplar, that will be outlived by such a fish-catcher as I. Truly, this is a world in which there is small rec- ognition of greatness. As it is in the forest, so it is in the town. The very gods would have their toes trod upon, if they walked without their wings. Yet let us take honor to ourselves above vegetables. The pine beneath me has been a giant, with his top in the clouds, but lies now unvalued on the earth. We rec- ognise greatness when it is dead. We are prodigal of love and honor when it is unavailing. We are, in something, above wood and stubble. I have fallen into a sad trick, dear Doctor, of preach- ing sermons to myself, from these texts of nature. Sometimes, like other preachers, I pervert the meaning and forget the context, but revery would lose its charm if it went by reason. Adieu ! Come up to Glenmary, and catch trout if you will. But I will have your worms decently drowned before boxed for use. I can not sleep o'nights, after slipping one of these harmless creatures out of his own mouth, in a vain attempt to pull him asunder. LETTER V. My dear Doctor: If this egg hatch without get- ting cold, or, to accommodate my language to your oity apprehension, if the letter I here begin comes to a finishing, it will be malgre blistering hands and weary back — the consequences of hard raking — of hay. The men are taking their four o'clock of cheese and cider in the meadow, and not having simplified my digestion as rapidly as my habits, I have retired to the shelter of the bridge, to be decently rid of the master's first bit, and pull at the pitcher. After employing my brains in vain, to discover why this par- ticular branch of farming should require cider and cheese (eaten together at no other season that I can learn), I have pulled out my scribble-book from the niche in the sleeper overhead, and find, by luck, one sheet of tabula rasa, upon which you are likely to pay eighteen pence to Amos Kendall. Were you ever in a hay-field, Doctor? I ask for information. Metaphorically, I know you " live in clover'" — meaning, the society of wits, and hock of a certain vintage — but seriously, did you ever happen to stand on the natural soil of the earth, oft' the pave- ment ? If you have not, let me tell you it is a very pleasant change. I have always fancied there was a mixture of the vegetable in myself; and I am con- vinced now, that there is something in us which grows more thriftily on fresh earth, than on flag-stones. There are some men indigenous to brick and mortar, as there are plants which thrive best with a stone on them ; but there are " connecting links'' between all j the varieties of God's works, and such men verge on | the mineral kingdom. I have seen whole geodes of j them, with all the properties of flints, for example. But in you, my dear Doctor, without flattery, I think j I see the vegetable, strong, though latent. You would thrive in the country, well planted and a little I pruned. I am not sure it would do to icater you free- i ly — but you want sunshine and fresh air, and a little bird to shake the " dew" out of your top. I see, from my seat under the bridge, a fair mead- ow, laid like an unrolled carpet of emerald, along the windings of a most bright and swift river. The first owner of it after the savage, all honor to his memory, sprinkled it with forest trees, now at their loftiest growth, here and there one, stately in the smooth grass, like a polished monarch on the foot-cloth of his throne. The river is the Owaga, and its opposite bank is darkened with thick wood, through which a j liberal neighbor has allowed me to cut an eye-path to i the village spire — a mile across the fields. From my I cottage door across this meadow-lawn, steals, with j silver foot, the brook I redeemed from its lost stray - ings, and, all along between brook and river, stand hay- j cocks, not fairies. Now, possess me as well of your whereabout — what you see from your window in Broadway! Is there a sapling on my whole arm that would change root-hold with you? The hay is heavy this year, and if there were less, I should still feel like taking oft" my hat to the meadow. There is nothing like living in the city, to impress one with the gratuitous liberality of the services rendered one in the country. Here are meadows now, that without hint or petition, pressing or encouragement, pay or consideration, nay, careless even of gratitude, shoot me up some billions of glass-blades, clover- flowers, white and red, and here and there a nodding regiment of lilies, tall as my chin, and it is under- stood, I believe, that I am welcome to it all. Now, you may think this is all easy enough, and the meadow is happy to be relieved ; but so the beggar might think of your alms, and be as just. But you have made the money you give him by the sweat of your brow. So has the meadow its grass. " It is estimated," says the Book of Nature, " that an acre of grass-land trans- pires, in twenty-four hours, not less than six thousand four hundred quarts of water." Sweat me that with- out a fee, thou " dollar a visit !" Here comes William from the post, with a handful of papers. The Mirror, with a likeness of Sprague. LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 225 A likeness in a mirror could scarce fail, one would think, and here, accordingly, he is, — the banker-poet, the Rogers of our country — fit as " as himself to be his parallel." Yet T have never seen that stern look on him. We know he bears the "globe"* on his back, like old Atlas, but he is more urbane than the world-bearer. He keeps a muscle unstrained for a smile. A more courteous gentleman stands not by Mammon's altar — no, nor by the lip of Helicon — yet | this is somehow stern. In what character, if you ; please, Mr. Harding ? Sat Plutus, or Apollo, astride \ your optic nerve when you drew that picture ? It may- be a look he has, but, fine head as it stands on paper, they who form from it an idea of the man, would be agreeably disappointed in meeting him. And this, which is a merit in most pictures, is a fault in one which posterity is to look at. Sprague has the reputation of being a most able financier. Yet he is not a rich man. Best evidence in the world that he puts his genius into his calcula- tions, for it is the nature of uncommon gifts to do good to all but their possessor. That he is a poet, and a true and high one, has been not so much ac- knowledged by criticism, nsfelt in the republic. The great army of editors, who paragraph upon one name, as an entry of college-boys will play upon one flute, , till the neighborhood would rather listen to a volun- tary upon shovel and tongs, have not made his name diurnal and hebdomadal ; but his poetry is diffused by more unjostled avenues, to the understandings and hearts of his countrymen. I, for one, think he is a better banker for his genius, as with the same power he would have made a better soldier, statesman, far- mer, what you will. I have seen excellent poetry from the hand of Plutus — (Biddle, I should have said, but I never scratch out to you) — yet he has but ruf- fled the muse, while Sprague has courted her. Our Theodore,f bien-aime, at the court of Berlin, writes a better despatch, I warrant you, than a fellow born of red tape and fed on sealing-wax at the department. I am afraid the genius of poor John Quincy Adams is more limited. He is only the best president we have had since Washington — not a poet, though he has a volume in press. Briareus is not the father of all who will have a niche. Shelley would have made an un- ; safe banker, for he was prodigal of stuff. Pope, Rogers, Crabbe, Sprague, Halleck, waste no gold, even in poetry. Every idea gets his due of those poets, and no more ; and Pope and Crabbe, by the same token, would have made as good bankers as Sprague and Rogers. We are under some mistake about genius, my dear Doctor. I'll just step in-doors, and find a definition of it in the library. Really, the sun is hot enough, as Sancho says, to fry the brains in a man's scull. " Genius," says the best philosophical book I know of, " wherever it is found, and to whatever purpose directed, is mental power. It distinguishes the man of fine phrensy, as Shakspere expresses it, from the man of mere phrensy. It is a sort of instantaneous in- sight that gives us knowledge without going to school for it. Sometimes it is directed to one subject, some- times to another; but under whatever form it exhibits itself, it enables the individual who possesses it, to make a wonderful, and almost miraculous progress in the line of his pursuit." Si non e vero, e ben trovato. If philosophy were more popular, we should have Irving for president, Halleck for governor of Iowa, and Bryant envoy to Texas. But genius, to the multitude, is a phantom without mouth, pockets, or hands — incapable of work, unaccustomed to food, ignorant of the uses of coin, • Mr. Sprague is cashier of the Globe Bank, Boston, t Theodore Fay, secretary of the American embassy to Prussia. 10 and unfit candidate, consequently, for any manner of loaves and fishes. A few more Spragues would leaven this lump of narrow prejudice. I wish you would kill off your patients, dear Doctor, and contrive to be with us at the agricultural show. I flatter myself I shall take the prize for turnips. By the way, to answer your question while I think of it, that is the reason why I am not at Niagara, " taking a look at the viceroy." I must watch my turnip-ling. I met Lord Durham once or twice when in London, and once at dinner at Lady Blessington's. I was ex- cessively interested, on that occasion, by the tactics of D'Israeli, who had just then chipped his political shell, and was anxious to make an impression on Lord Dur- ham, whose glory, still to come, was confidently fore- told in that bright circle. I rather fancy the dinner was made to give Vivian Grey the chance ; for her ladyship, benevolent to every one, has helped D'Isra- eli to " imp his wing," with a devoted friendship, of which he should imbody in his maturest work the delicacy and fervor. Women are glorious friends to stead ambition ; but effective as they all can be, few have the tact, and fewer the varied means, of the lady in question. The guests dropped in, announced but unseen, in the dim twilight ; and, when Lord Durham came, I could only see that he was of middle stature, and of a naturally cold address. Bulwer spoke to him, but he was introduced to no one — a departure from the custom of that maison sans-gene, which was ei- ther a tribute to his lordship's reserve, or a ruse on the part of Lady Blessington, to secure to D'Israeli the advantage of having his acquaintance sought — suc- cessful, if so ; for Lord Durham, after dinner, re- quested a formal introduction to him. But for D'Or- say, who sparkles, as he does everything else, out of rule, and in splendid defiance of others' dulness, the soup and the first half hour of dinner would have passed off, with the usual English fashion of earnest silence. I looked over my spoon at the future premier, a dark, saturnine man, with very black hair, combed very smooth, and wondered how a heart, with the tur- bulent ambitions, and disciplined energies which were stirring, I knew, in his, could be concealed under that polished and marble tranquillity of mien and manner. He spoke to Lady Blessington in an under-tone, re- plying with a placid serenity that never reached a smile, to so much of D'Orsay's champagne wit as threw its sparkle in his way, and Bulwer and D'Israeli were silent altogether. I should have foreboded a dull dinner if, in the open brow, the clear sunny eye, and unembarrassed repose of the beautiful and expressive mouth of Lady Blessington, I had not read the prom- ise of a change. It came presently. With a tact, of which the subtle ease and grace can in no way be con- veyed into description, she gathered up the cobweb threads of conversation going on at different parts of the table, and, by the most apparent accident, flung them into D'Israeli's fingers, like the ribands of a four- in-hand. And, if so coarse a figure can illustrate it, he took the whip-hand like a master. It was an ap- peal to his opinion on a subject he well understood, and he burst at once, without preface, into that fiery vein of eloquence which, hearing many times after, and always with new delight, have stamped D'Israeli on my mind as the most wonderful talker I have ever had the fortune to meet. He is anything but a de- claimed You would never think him on stilts. If he catches himself in a rhetorical sentence, he mocks at it in the next breath. He is satirical, contemptuous, pathetic, humorous, everything in a moment ; and his conversation on any subject whatever, embraces the omnibus rebus, et quibusdam aliis. Add to this, that D'Israeli's is the most intellectual face in England- pale, regular, and overshadowed with the most luxu- riant masses of raven-black hair ; and you will scarce wonder that, meeting him for the first time. Lord Dur- 22f3 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. ham was (as he was expected to be by the Aspasia of that London Academe), impressed. He was not car- ried away as we were. That would have been unlike Lord Durham. He gave his whole mind to the bril- liant meteor blazing before him ; but the telescope of judgment was in his hand — to withdraw at pleasure. He has evidently native to his blood, that great quality of a statesman — retenu. D'Israeli and he formed at the moment a finely contrasted picture. Understand- ing his game perfectly, the author deferred, constantly and adroitly, to the opinion of his noble listener, shap- ed his argument by his suggestions, allowed him to say nothing without using it as the nucleus of some new turn to his eloquence, and all this, with an appa- rent effort against it, as if he had desired to address himself exclusively to Lady Blessington, but was com- pelled, by a superior intellectual magnetism, to turn aside and pay homage to her guest. With all this in- stinctive management there was a flashing abandon in his language and choice of illustration, a kindling of his eye, and, what I have before described, a positive foaming at his lips, which contrasted with the warm but clear and penetrating eye of Lord Durham, his calm yet earnest features, and lips closed without com- pression, formed, as I said, a picture, and of an order worth remembering in poetry. Without meaning any disrespect to D'Israeli, whom I admire as much as any man in England, I remarked to my neighbor, a cele- brated artist, that it would make a glorious drawing of Satan tempting an archangel to rebel. Well — D'Israeli is in parliament, and Lord Durham on the last round but one of the ladder of subject greatness, The viceroy will be premier, no doubt ; but it is questionable if the author of Vivian Grey does more than carry out the moral of his own tale. Talking at a brilliant table, with an indulgent and su- perb woman on the watch for wit and eloquence, and rising in the face of a cold common-sense house of commons, on the look out for froth and humbug, are two different matters. In a great crisis, with the na- tion in a tempest, D'Israeli would flash across the darkness very finely — but he will never do for the calm right-hand of a premier. I wish him, I am sure, ev- ery success in the world : but I trust that whatever political reverses fall to his share, they will drive him back to literature. I have written this last sentence in the red light of sunset, and I must be out to see my trees watered, and my kine driven a-field after their milking. What a coverlet of glory the day-god draws about him for his repose ! I should like curtains of that burnt crimson. If I have a passion in the world, it is for that royal trade, upholstery; and so thought George the Fourth, and so thinks Sultan Mahmoud, who, with his own henna-tipped fingers, assisted by his assembled harem, arranges every fold of drapery in the seraglio. If po- etry fail, I'll try the profession some day en errand, and meantime let me go out and study one of the three hundred and sixty-five varieties of couch-drapery in the west. LETTER VI. Mr dear Doctor: Your letter contained « A few of the unpleasantest words That e'er were writ on paper !" Why should you not pass August at Glenmary? Have your patients bought you, body and soul ? Is there no "night-bell" in the city but yours? Have ypu no practice in the country, my dear Esculapius ? Faith ! I'll be ill ! By the time you reach here, I shall be a " case." I have not had a headache now in twenty years, and my constitution requires a change. I'll begin by eating the cucumbers we had saved for your visit, and you know the consequences. Mix me a pill for the cholera — first, second, or third stage of the disease, according to your speed — and come with what haste you may. If you arrive too late, you lose your fee, but I'll return your visit, by the honor of a ghost. By the way, as a matter of information, do you charge in such cases? Or, the man being dead, do you deduct for not feeling his pulse, nor telling him the name of his damaged organ in Latin ? It should be half-price, I think, these items off. Let me know by express mail, as one likes to be prepared. Since I wrote to you, I have added the Chemung river to my list of acquaintances. It was done a Vim- frovista, as most pleasant things are. We were dri- ving to the village on some early errand, and met a friend at the cross-roads, bound with an invalid to Avon Springs. He was driving his own horses, and proposed to us to set him a day's journey on his way. I had hay to cut, but the day was made for truants — bright, breezy, and exhilarating ; and as I looked over my shoulder, the only difficulty vanished, for there stood a pedlar chaffering for a horn-comb with a girl at a well. We provided for a night's toilet from his tin-box, and easing off the check-reins a couple of holes, to enlighten my ponies as to the change in their day's work, we struck into the traveller's trot, and sped away into the eye of a southwest breeze, happy as urchins when the schoolmaster is on a jury. When you come here, I shall drive you to the Narrows of the Susquehannah. That is a word, nota bene, which, in this degree of latitude, refers not at all to the breadth of the stream. It is a place where the mountain, like many a frowning coward, threatens to crowd its gentler neighbor, but gives room at its calm approach, and annoys nobody but the passer-by. The road between them, as you come on, looks etched with a thumb-nail along the base of the cliff, and you would think it a pokerish drive, making no allowance for perspective. The friable rock, however, makes rather a smooth single track, and if you have the in- side when you meet Farmer Giles or the stage-coach, you have only to set your hub against the rock, and "let them go by as likes." The majestic and tranquil river sweeps into the peaked shadow, and on again, with the disdain of a beauty used to conquer. It re- minded me of Lady Blessington's "do if you dare !" when the mob at the house of lords threatened to break her chariot windows. There was a calm cour- age in Miladi's French glove that carried her through, and so amid this mob of mountains, glides the Sus- quehannah to the sea. While I am here, let me jot down an observation worthy the notice of Mr. Capability Brown. This cliff falls into a a line of hills running from northwest to southeast, and by five in the summer afternoon, their tall shoulders have nudged the sun, and the long, level road at their bases lies in deep shadow, for miles along the Owaga and Susquehannah. " Consequence is," as my friend of the "Albany Daily" says, we can steal a march upon twilight, and take a cool drive be- fore tea. What the ruination shops on the west side of Broadway are to you, this spur of the Allega- nies is to me (minus the plate-glass, and the tempta- tions). I value this — for the afternoons in July and August are hot and long ; the breeze dies away, the flies get in-doors, and with the desire for motion, yet no ability to stir, one longs for a ride with Ariel through "the veins o' the earth." Mr. C. Brown now would mark me down, for this privilege of road well shaded, some twenty pound in the rent. He is a man in England who trades upon his taste. He goes to your country-seat to tell you what can be done with it — what are its unimproved advantages, what to do with your wood, and what with your water. He would rate this shady mountain as an eligibility in the LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 2*7 site, to be reckoned, of course, as income. A very I pleasant man is Mr. Brown ! It occurs to me, Doctor, that a new branch of this ] gentleman's profession might be profitable. Why not j set up a shop to tell penjjle what they can make of themselves ? I have a great mind to take out a patent I for the idea. The stock in trade would be two chairs I and a green curtain — (for taste, like rouge, should be j sold privately) — not expensive. I would advertise to see gentlemen in the morning, ladies in the evening, I " secresy in all cases strictly observed." Few people j of either sex know their own style. Your Madonna is apt to romp, for instance, and your romp to wear | her hair plain and a rosary. Few ladies know what eolon they look best in — whether smiles or tears are j most becoming, whether they appear to most advan- tage sitting, like Queen Victoria and Tom Moore (and | this involves a delicate question), or standing and | walking. The world is full of people who mistake \ their style — fish for your net every one. How many women are never charming till they forget themselves ! A belle is a woman who knows her weapons — colors, smiles, moods, caprices ; who has looked at her face in the glass like an artist, and knows what will lighten a defect or enhance a beauty. The art is as rare as the belle. " Pourquoy, my dear knight." Because taste is, where knowledge was before the discovery of printing — locked up with the first possessor. Why should it not be diffused ? What a refuge for reduced gentility would be such a vocation. What is now the disease of fortunes would be then their remedy ; pa- rents would cultivate a taste for eloquence in their children, because there is no knowing what they may come to — the reason, now, why they take pains to re- press it. I presume it is in consequence of the diffusion of printing that ignorance of the law is no apology for crime. Were "taste within reach of all (there might be dispensaries for the poor), that " shocking bad hat" of yours, my dear Doctor, would be a criminal offence. Our fat friend with the long-tailed coat, and the waist at his shoulder-blades, would be liable to fine for mis- informing the tailor as to the situation of his hips — the tailor of course not to blame, having nothing to go by. Two scandalous old maids together would be abated as a nuisance — as it is the quantity of tin-pots, which, in a concert upon that tintinnabulary instru- ment, constitutes a disturbance of the peace. The reform would be endless. I am not sure it could be extended to bad taste in literature, for, like rebellion, the crime would merge in the universality of the of- fenders. But it would be the general putting down of tame monsters, now loose on society. Pensez y ! What should you think of dining with a woman be- hind your chair worth seven hundred thousand pounds sterling — well invested? You may well stare — but unless a large number of sensible people are very much mistaken, you may do so any day, for some three shillings, at a small inn on the Susquehannah. Those who know the road, leave behind them a showy, porticoed tavern, new, and carefully divested of all trees and grass, and pull up at the door of the old inn at the place, a low, old-fashioned house, built on a brook-side, and with all the appearance of a comfort- able farmhouse, save only a leaning and antiquated sign-post. Here lives a farmer well off" in the world, a good-natured old man, who for some years has not meant to keep open tavern, but from the trouble of taking down his sign-post, or the habit, and acquaint- ance with travellers, gives all who come what chance fare may be under the roof, and at the old prices com- mon in days when the bill was not ridden by leagues of white paint and portico. His dame, the heiress, is a tall and erect woman of fifty ("or, by'r lady, three- score"), a smiling, intelligent, ready hostess, with the natural manners of a gentlewoman. Now and then, a pale daughter, unmarried, and twenty-four or younger, looks into the whitewashed parlor, and if the farmer is home from the field, he sits down with his hat on, and lends you a chat with a voice sound and hearty as the smell of day. It is altogether a pleasant place to loiter away the noon, and though it was early for din- ner when we arrived, we put up our horses (the men were all a-field), and Dame Raymond spread her white cloth, and set on her cherry-pie, while her daughter broiled for us the de quoi of the larder, in the shape of a salt mackerel. The key of the " bin" was in her pocket, and we were young enough, the dame said, as she gave it to us, to feed our own horses. This good woman, or this great lady, is the only daughter, as I understand it, of an old farmer ninety years of age, who has fallen heir to an immense fortune in England. He was traced out several years ago by the executors, and the proper testimonials of the property placed in his hands ; but he was old, and his child was well off and happy, and he refused to put himself to any trou- ble about it. Dame Raymond herself thought Eng- land a great way off; and the pride of her life is her fine chickens, and to go so far upon the strength of a few letters, leaving the farm and hen-roost to take care of themselves, was an undertaking which, she felt, jus- tified Farmer Raymond in shaking his head. Lately an enterprising gentleman in the neighborhood has taken the papers, and she consented to write to her father, who willingly made over to her all authority in the matter. The claim, I understand, is as well au- thenticated as paper evidence can make it, and the probability is, that in a few months Dame Raymond will be more troubled with her riches than she ever was with her chickens. We dined at our leisure, and had plenty of sharp gossip with the tall hostess, who stood to serve the tea from a side-table, and between our cups kept the flies from her tempting cherry-pie and brown sugar, with a large fan. I have not often seen a more shrewd and sensible woman, and she laughs and philosophizes about her large fortune in a way that satisfied me she would laugh just as cheerly if it should turn out a bubble. She said her husband had told her " it was best not to be proud, till she got her money." The only symptom that I detected of castle-building, was a hint she let slip of hoping to entertain travellers, some day, in a better house. I coupled this with another remark, and suspected that the new tavern, with its big portico and blazing sign, had not taken the wind out of her sails without offence, and that, perhaps, the only use of her money, on which she had determined, was to build a bigger and eclipse the intruder. I amused myself with watching her as she bustled about with old-fashioned anxiety to anticipate our wants, and fancying the changes to which the acquisi- tion of this immense fortune might introduce her in England. There was her daughter, whom a little mil- linery would improve into a very presentable heiress, cooking our mackerel ; while Mrs. Thwaites, the gro- cer's widow in London, with no more money probably, was beset by half the unmarried noblemen in England, Lord Lyndhurst, it is said, the most pressing. But speculation is endless, and you shall go down with your trout line, dear Doctor, and spin your own cob- webs while Dame Raymond cooks your fish. I have spun out my letter to such a length, that I have left myself no room to prate to you of the beau- ties of the Chemung, but you are likely to hear enough of it, for it is a subject with which I am just now something enamoured. I think you share with me my passion for rivers. If you have the grace to come and visit us, and I survive the cholera you have brought upon me, we will visit this new Naiad in com- pany^ and take Dame Raymond in our way. Adieu. 228 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. LETTER VII. I am of opinion, dear Doctor, that a letter to be read understanding^, should have marginal references to the state of the thermometer, the condition of the writer's digestion, and the quality of his pen and ink at the time of writing. These matters, if they do not affect a man's belief in a future state, very sensibly op erate upon his style of composition, sometimes (so with me at least), upon his sentiments and minor mor- als. Like most other pen-and-inklings in this be-printed country, I commenced authorship at precisely the wrong end — criticism. Never having put my hat upon more than one or two grown-up thoughts, I still feel myself qualified to pronounce upon any man's litera- ry stature from Walter Scott to whom you please — God forgive me ! I remember (under this delusion of Sathan) sitting down to review a book by one of the most sensible women in this country. It was a pleas- ant morning — favorable symptom for the author. I wrote the name of the book at the head of a clean sheet of Bath post, and the nib of my pen capered nimbly away into a flourish, in a fashion to coax praise out of a pumpkin. What but courtesy on so bright a morn- ing and with so smooth a pen ? I was in the middle of the page, taking breath after a long and laudatory sentence, when, paff ! through the window came a gust of air, labelled for the bare nerves. (If you have ever been in Boston, perhaps you have observed that an east wind, in that city of blue noses in June, gives you a sensation like being suddenly deprived of your skin.) In a shudder of disgust I bore down upon the dot of an i, and my pen, like an " over-tried friend," gave way under the pressure. With the wind in that same quarter, dexterity died. After vain efforts to mend my pen to its original daintiness, I amputated the nib to a broad working stump, and aimed it doggedly at the beginning of a new paragraph. But my wits had gone about with the grasshopper on the church- steeple. Nothing would trickle from that stumpy quill, either graceful or gracious ; and having looked through the book, but with a view to find matter to praise, I was obliged to run it over anew to forage for the east wind. "Hence the milk in the cocoa-nut," as the showman says of the monkey's stealing ch dren. I wrote a savage review, which the reader w expected to believe contained the opinions of the re- viewer ! ! Oh, Jupiter ! All this is to apologize, not for my own letter, which I intend to be a pattern of good humor, but for a pas- sage in your last (if written upon a hard egg you should have mentioned it in the margin), in which, apropos of my jaunt to the Chemung, you accuse me of being glad to get away from my hermitage. I could write you a sermon now on the nature of content, but you would say the very text is apocryphal. My "lastly," however, would go to prove that there is big- otry in retirement as in alhthings either good or pleas- ureable. The eye that never grows familiar with na- ture, needs freshening from all things else. A room, a chair, a musical instrument, a horse, a dog, the road you drive daily, and the well you drink from, are all more prized when left and returned to. The habit of turning back daily from a certain mile-stone, in your drive, makes that milestone after a while, a prison wall. It is pleasant to pass it, though the road beyond be less beautiful. If I were once more " brave Master Shoetie, the great traveller," it would irk me, I dare say, to ride thirty miles in a rail-car drawn by one slow horse- Yet it is a pleasant "lark" now, to run down to Ithaca for a night, in this drowsy conveyance, though I exchange a cool cottage for a fly-nest, "lav- endered linen" for abominable cotton, and the service of civil William for the " young lady that takes care of the chambers," I like the cobwebs swept out of my eyes. I like to know what reason I have to keep my temper among my household gods. I like to pay an extravagant bill for villanous entertainment abroad, and come back to escape ruin in the luxuries of home. Doctor! were you ever a vagabond for years togeth- er ? I know you have hung your hat on the south pole, but you are one of those " friend of the family" men, who will travel from Dan to Beersheba, and be at no charges for lodging. You can not understand, 1 think, the life from which I have escaped — the life of " mine ease in mine inn." Pleasant mockery ! You have never had the hotel fever — never sickened of the copperplate human faces met exclusively in those homes of the homeless — never have gone distracted at the eternal "one piece of soap, and the last occupant's tooth-brush and cigar !" To be slighted any hour of the evening for a pair of slippers and a tin candle- stick — to sleep and wake amid the din of animal wants, complaining and supplied — to hear no variety of hu- man tone but the expression of these baser necessities — to be waited on either by fellows who would bring your coffin as unconcernedly as your breakfast, or by a woman who is rude, because insulted when kind — to lie ways in strange beds — to go home to a house of stran- gers — to be weary without pity, sick without soothing, sad without sympathy — to sit at twilight by your lone- ly window, in some strange city, and, with a heart which a child's voice would dissolve in tenderness, to see door after door open and close upon fathers, broth- ers, friends, expected and welcomed by the beloved and the beloving — these are costly miseries against which I almost hourly weigh my cheaper happiness in a home I Yet this is the life pined after by the grown- up boy — the life called fascinating and mystified in ro- mance — the life, dear Doctor, for which even yourself can fancy I am " imping my wing" anew ! Oh, no ! I have served seven years for this Rachel of content- ment, and my heart is no Laban to put me off with a Leah. " A !" Imagine this capital letter laid on its back, and pointed south by east, and you have a pretty fair diagram of the junction of the Susquehannah and the Chemung. The note of admiration describes a su- perb line of mountains at the back of the Chemung valley, and the quotation marks express the fine bluffs that overlook the meeting of the waters at Athens. The cross of the letter (say a line of four miles), de- fines a road from one river to the other, by which travellers up the Chemung save the distance to the point of the triangle, and the area between is a broad plain, just now as fine a spectacle of teeming harvest as you would find on the Genesee. As the road touches the Chemung, you pass undei the base of a round mountain, once shaped like a sugar-loaf, but now with a top, o' the fashion of a schoolboy's hat punched in to drink from; the floor- worn edge of the felt answering to a fortification around the rim of the hill built by I should be obliged if you would tell me whom. They call it Spanish Hill, and the fortifications were old at the time of the passing through of Sullivan's ar- my. It is as pretty a fort as my Uncle Toby could have seen in Flanders, and was, doubtless, occupied by gentlemen soldiers long before the Mayflower moored off the rock of Plymouth. The tradition runs that an Indian chief once ascended it to look for Spanish gold ; but on reaching the top, was enveloped in clouds and thunder, and returned with a solemn command from the spirit of the mountain that no In- dian should ever set foot on it again. An old lady, who lives in the neighborhood (famous for killing two tories with a stone in her stocking), declares that the dread of this mountain is universal among the tribes, and that nothing would induce a red man to ascend it. This looks as if the sachem had found what he went LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 229 after ; and it is a modern fact, I understand, that a man hired to plough on the hill-side, suddenly left his em- ployer and purchased a large farm, by nobody knows what windfall of fortune. Half this mountain belongs to a gentleman who is building a country-seat on an exquisite site between it and the river, and to the kind- ness of his son and daughter, who accompanied us in our ascent, we are indebted for a most pleasant hour, and what information I have given you. I will slip in here a memorandum for any invalid, town-weary person, or new-married couple, to whom you may have occasion, in your practice, to recom- mend change of air. The house formerly occupied by this gentleman, a roomy mansion, in a command- ing and beautiful situation, is now open as an inn, and I know nowhere a retreat so private and desirable. It is near both the Susquehannah and the Chemung, the hills laced with trout-streams, four miles from Athens, and half way between Owegoand Elmira. The scen- ery all about is delicious, and the house well kept at country charges. My cottage is some sixteen miles off; and if you give any of your patients a letter to me, I will drive up and see them, with a posy and a pot of jelly. You will understand that they must be peo- ple who do not "add perfume to the violet." In my way — simple. I can in no way give you an idea of the beauty of the Chemung river from Brigham's Inn to Elmira. We entered immediately upon the Narrows — a spot where the river follows into a curve of the mountain, like an inlaying of silver around the bottom of an em- erald cup — the brightest water, the richest foliage — and a landscape of meadow between the horns of the crescent that would be like the finest park scenery in England, if the boldness of the horizon did not mix with it a resemblance, to Switzerland. We reached Elmira at sunset. What shall I say of it ? From a distance, its situation is most beauti- ful. It lies (since we have begun upon the alphabet) in the tail of a magnificent L, formed by the bright winding of the river. Perhaps the surveyor, instead of deriving its name from his sweetheart, called it L. mirabile — corrupted to vulgar comprehension, Elmi- ra. If he did not, he might, and I will lend him the etymology. The town is built against a long island, covered with soft green-sward, and sprinkled with noble trees ; a promenade of unequalled beauty and convenience, but that all which a village can muster of unsightli- ness has chosen the face of the river-bank " to turn its lining to the sun." Fie on you, Elmira ! I in- tend to get up a memorial to Congress, praying that the banks of rivers in all towns settled henceforth, shall be government property, to be reserved and planted for public grounds. It was the design of William Penn at Philadelphia, and think what a binding it would have been to his chequer-board. Fancy a pier and promenade along the Hudson at New York ! Imagine it a feature of every town in this land of glorious rivers ! There is a singular hotel at Elmira (big as a state- house, and be-turreted and be-columned according to the most approved system of impossible rent and charges to make it possible), in the plan of which, curious enough, the chambers were entirely forgotten. The house is all parlors and closets ! We were shown into superb drawing-rooms (one for each party), with pier-glasses, windows to the floor, expensive fur- niture, and a most polite landlord ; and began to think the civilization for which he had been looking east, had stepped over our heads and gone on to the Paci- fic. Excellent supper and civil service. At dark, two very taper mutton candles set on the superb mar- ble-table — but that was but a trifling incongruity. After a call from a pleasant friend or two, and a walk, we made an early request to be shown to our bed- rooms. The " young lady, that sometimes uses a broom for exercise," opened a closet-door with a look of la voila ! and left us speechless with astonishment, There was a bed of the dimensions of a saint's niche, but no window by which, if stifled, the soul could es- cape to its destination. Yet here we were, evidently abandoned on a hot night in July, with a door to shut if we thought it prudent, and a candle-wick like an ignited poodle-dog to assist in the process of suffoca- tion! I hesitated about calling up the landlord, for, as I said before, he was a most polite and friendly person ; and if we were to give up the ghost in that little room, it was evidently in the ordinary arrange- ments of the house. "Why not sleep in the parlor?" you will have said. So we did. But, like the king of Spain, who was partly roasted because nobody came to move back the fire, this obvious remedy did not at the instant occur to me. The pier-glass and other splendors of course did duty as bed-room furni- ture, and, I may say, we slept sumptuously. Our friends in the opposite parlor did as we did, but took the moving of the bed to be, tout bonnement, what the land- lord expected. I do not think so, yet I was well pleased with him and his entertainment, and shall stop at the " Eagle" incontinently — if I can choose my apartment. I am not sure but, in other parts of the house, the blood-thirsty architect has constructed some of these smothering places without parlors. God help the un- wary traveller! Talking of home (we were at home to dinner the next day), I wonder whether it is true that adverse for- tunes have thrown Mrs. Sigourney's beautiful home into the market. It is offered for sale, and the news- papers say as much. If so, it is pity, indeed. I was there once ; and to leave so delicious a spot must, 1 think, breed a heart-ache. In general, unless the re- verse is extreme, compassion is thrown away on those who leave a large house to be comfortable in a small one ; but she is a poetess, and a most true and sweet one, and has a property in that house, and in all its trees and flowers, which can neither be bought nor sold. It is robbery to sell it for its apparent value. You can understand, for "your spirit is touched to these fine issues," how a tree that the eye of genius has rested on while the mind was at work among its bright fancies, becomes the cradle and home of these fancies, The brain seems driven out of its workshop if you cut it down. So with walks. So with streams. So with the modifications of natural beauty seen thence habitually — sunrise, sunsetting, moonlight. In pecu- liar places these daily glories take peculiar effects, and in that guise genius becomes accustomed to recognise and love them most. Who can buy this at auction ! Who can weave this golden mesh in another tree — give the same voices to another stream — the same sun- set to other hills ? This fairy property, invisible as it is, is acquired slowly. Habit, long association, the con- nexion with many precious thoughts (the more pre- cious the farther between)* make it precious. To sell such a spot for its wood and brick, is to value Tom Moore for what he will weigh — Daniel Webster for his superficies. Then there uill be a time (I trust it is far off") when the property will treble even in sale- able value. The bee and the poet must be killed be- fore their honey is tasted. For how much more would Abbotsford sell now than in the lifetime of Scott ? For what could you buy Ferney — Burns's cottage — Shak- spere's house at Stratford ? I have not the honor of a personal acquaintance with Mrs. Sigourney, and can not judge with what philosophy she may sustain this reverse. But bear it well or ill, there can be no doubt it falls heavily ; and it is one of those instances, I think, where public feeling should be called on to interpose. But in what shape? I have always ad- mired the generosity and readiness with which actors play for the benefit of a decayed " brother of the sock." 230 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. Let American authors contribute to make up a volume, and let the people of Hartford, who live in the light of this bright spirit, head the subscription with ten thousand copies. You live among literary people, dear Doctor, and your " smile becomes you better than any man's in all Phrygia." You can set it afloat if you will. My name is among the W.'s, but I will be ready in my small turn. "Now God b'wi'you, good Sir Topas!" for on this sheet there is no more room, and I owe you but one. Correspondence, like thistles, " is not blown away till it hath got too high a top." Adieu. LETTER VIII Mr Dear Doctor : What can keep you in town during this insufferable hot solstice ? I can not fancy, unless you shrink from a warm welcome in the coun- try. It is too hot for enthusiasm, and I have sent the cart to the hay-field, and crept under the bridge in my slippers, as if I had found a day to be idle, though I promised myself to see the harvest home, without missing sheaf or winrow. Yet it must be cooler here than where you are, for I see accounts of drought on the seaboard, while with us every hot noon has bred its thunder-shower, and the corn on the dry hill-sides is the only crop not kept back by the moisture. Still, the waters are low, and the brook at my feet has de- pleted to a slender vein, scarce stouter than the pulse that flutters under your thumb in the slightest wrist in your practice. My lobster is missing — probably gone to " the springs." My swallowlets too, who have, "as it were, eat paper and drunk ink," have flitted since yesterday, like illiterate gipseys, leaving no note of their departure. " Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba." The old swallows circle about as if they expected them again. Heaven send they are not in some crammed pocket in that red school-house, unwilling listeners to the vexed alphabet, or, perhaps, squeezed to death in the varlet's perplexity at crook- ed S. I have blotted that last sentence like a school-boy, but between the beginning and the end of it, I have lent a neighbor my side-hill plough, besides answering, by the way, raiher an embarrassing question. My catechiser lives above me on the drink (his name for the river), and is one of those small farmers, common here, who live without seeing money from one year's end to the other. He never buys, he trades. He takes a bag of wheat, or a fleece, to the village for salt fish and molasses, pays his doctor in corn or honey, and "changes work" with the blacksmith, the sad- dler, and the shoemaker. He is a shrewd man withal, likes to talk, and speaks Yankee of the most Boeotian fetch and purity. Imagine a disjointed-looking En- celadus, in a homespun sunflower-colored coat, and small yellow eyes, expressive of nothing but the merest curiosity, looking down on me by throwing himself over the railing like a beggar's wallet of broken meats. " Good morning, Mr. Willis?/ !" From hearing my name first used in the possessive case, probably (Willis's farm, or cow), he regularly throws me in that last syllable. "Ah ! good morning !" (Looking up at the inter- ruption, I made that unsightly blot which you have just excused.) " You aint got no side-hill plough?" " Yes, I have, and I'll lend it to you with pleasure." "Wal! you're darn'd quick. I warnt a go'n' to ask you quite yet. Writin' to your folks at hum ?" "No!" "Making out a lease!" "No!" " How you do spin it off ! You haint always work'd on a farm, hare ye !" It is a peculiarity (a redeeming peculiarity, I think), of the Yankees, that though their questions are rude, they are never surprised if you do not answer them. I did not feel that the thermometer warranted me in going into the* history of my life to my overhanging neighbor, and I busied myself in crossing my t's and dotting my i's very industriously. He had a maggot in his brain, however, and must e'en be delivered of it. He pulled off a splinter or two from under the bridge with his long arms, and during the silence William came to me with a message, which he achieved with his English under-tone of respect. " Had to lick that boy some, to make him so darn'd civil, hadn't ye ?" " You have a son about his age, I think." " Yes ; but I guess he couldn't be scared to talk that way. What's the critter 'fear'd on ?" No answer. " You haint been a minister, have ye ?" "No!" "Wal ! they talk a heap about your place. I say, Mr. Wittisy, you aint nothing particular, be yeV You should have seen, dear Doctor, the look of eager and puzzled innocence with which this rather difficult question was delivered. Something or other had evidently stimulated my good neighbor's curiosi- ty, but whether I had been blown up in a steamboat, or had fatted a prize pig, or what was my claim to the digilo monstrari, it was more than half his errand to discover. I have put down our conversation, I be- lieve, with the accuracy of a short-hand writer. Now, is not this a delicious world in which, out of a mu- seum neither stuffed nor muzzled, you may find such an arcadian ? What a treasure he would be to those ancient mariners of polite life, who exist but to tell ! you of their little peculiarities ! | I have long thought, dear Doctor, and this reminds ! me of it, that there were two necessities of society un- fitted with a vocation. (If you know of any middle- ! aged gentlemen out of employment, I have no objec- tion to your reserving the suggestion for a private charity, but otherwise, I would communicate it to the world as a new light.) The first is a luxury which no hotel should be without, no neighborhood, no thor- oughfare, no editor's closet. I mean a professed, salaried, stationary, and confidential listener. Fancy the comfort of such a thing. There should be a well- dressed silent gentleman, for instance, pacing habitu- ally the long corridor of the Astor, with a single button on his coat of the size of a door-handle. You enter in a violent hurry, or with a mind tenanted to suit yourself, and some faineant babbler, weary of his emptiness, must needs take you aside, and rob you of two mortal hours, more or less, while he tells you his tale of nothing. If " a penny saved is a penny got," what a value it would add to life to be able to transfer this leech of precious time, by laying his hand polite- ly on the large button of the listener ! " Finish your story to this gentleman !" quoth you. Then, again, there is your unhappy man in hotels, newly arrived, without an acquaintance save the crisp and abbrevia- ting bar-keeper, who wanders up and down, silent- sick, and more solitary in the crowd about him than the hermit on the lone column of the temple of Jupi- ter. What a mercy to such a sufferer to be able to step to the bar, and order a listener. Or to send for him with a bottle of wine when dining alone (most particularly alone), at a table of two hundred ! Or to ring for him in number four hundred and ninety-three, of a rainy Sunday, with punch and cigars ! I am de- ceived in Stetstort of the Astor, if he is not philoso- pher enough to see the value of this suggestion " Baths in the house, and a respectable listener if de- sired," would be an attractive advertisement, let me promise you ! The other vocation to which I referred, would be LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 231 that of a sort of ambulant dictionary, used mostly at evening parties. It should be a gentleman not dis- tinguishable from the common animated wall-flower, except by some conventional sign, as a bit of blue rib- and in his button-hole. His qualifications should be to know all persons moving in the circle, and some- thing about them — to be up, in short, to the town gossip — what Miss Thing's expectations are — who " my friend" is with the died mustache — and which of the stout ladies on the sofa are the forecast shad- ows of coming balls, or the like desirablenesses. There are a thousand invisible cobwebs threaded through so- ciety, which the stranger is apt to cross a trovers — committing his enthusiasm, for instance, to the deaf ears of a fiancee ; or, from ignorance, losing opportu- nities of knowing the clever, the witty, and the famous — all of whom look, at a first glance, very much like other people. The gentleman with the blue riband, you see, would remedy all this. You might make for him after you bow to the lady of the house, and in ten minutes put yourself aw courant of the entire field. You might apply to him (if you had been absent to Santa Fe or the Pyramids) for the last new shibboleth, the town rage, the name of the new play or poem, the form and color of the freshest change in the kaleido- scope of society. It is not uncommon for sensible people to retire, and "sweep and garnish" their self- respect in a month's seclusion. It is some time before they become au fait again of what it is necessary to know of the follies of the hour. The graceful yet bitter wit, the unoffending yet pointed rally, the con- fidence which colors all defeats like successes, are del- icate weapons, the dexterity at which depends much on familiarity with the ground. What an advent to the diffident and the embarrassed would be such a profession ! How many persons of wit and spirit j there are in society blank for lack of confidence, who, with such a friend in the corner, would come out like magic-ink to the fire ! " Ma hardiesse" (says the as- piring rocket), " vient de mon ardeur /" But the de- vice would lose its point did it take a jack-o'-lantern for a star. Mention these little hints to your cleverest female friend, dear Doctor. It takes a woman to in- troduce an innovation. Since I wrote to you, I have been adopted by per- haps the most abominable cur you will see in your travels. I mention it to ward off the first impression i — for a dog gives a character to a house ; and I would : not willingly have a friend light on such a monster in j my premises without some preparation. His first ap- | parition was upon a small floss carpet at the foot of an j ottoman, the most luxurious spot in the house, of | which he had taken possession with a quiet impudence j that perfectly succeeded. A long, short-legged cur, of the color of spoiled mustard, with most base tail and erect ears — villanous in all his marks. Rather a dandy gentleman, from New- York, was calling on us when he was discovered, and presuming the dog to be his, we forbore remark ; and, assured by this chance indulgence, he stretched himself to sleep. The in- dignant outcry with which the gentleman disclaimed all knowledge of him, disturbed his slumber; and, not to leave us longer in doubt, he walked confidently across the room, and seated himself between my feet with a canine freedom I had never seen exhibited, ex- cept upon most familiar acquaintance. I saw clearly that our visiter looked upon my disclaimer as a " fetch." It would have been perilling my credit for veracity to deny the dog. So no more was said about him, and since that hour he has kept himself cool in my shad- ow. I have tried to make him over to the kitchen, but he will neither feed nor stay with them. I can neither outrun him on horseback, nor lose him by crossing ferries. Very much to the discredit of my taste, I am now never seen without this abominable follower — and there is no help for it, unless I kill him, which, since he loves me, would be worse than shoot- ing the albatross ; besides, I have at least a drachm (three scruples) of Pythagoreanism in me, and " fear to kill woodcock, lest I dispossess the soul of my grandam." I shall look to the papers to see what friend I have lost in Italy, or the East. I can think of some who would come to me thus. Adieu, dear Doctor. Send me a good name for my cur — for since he will have me, why I must needs be his, and he shall be graced with an appellation. I think his style of politics might be worth something in love. If I were the lady, it would make a fair be- ginning. But I will waste no more ink upon you. LETTER IX. My Dear Doctor : As they say an oyster should be pleased with his apotheosis in a certain sauce, I was entertained with the cleverness of your letter though you made minced-meat of my trout-fishing. Under correction, however, I still cover the barb of my " fly," and so I must do till I can hook my trout if he but graze the bait with his whisker. You are an alumnus of the gentle science, in which I am but a neophyte, and your fine rules presuppose the dexteri- ty of a practised angler. Now a trout (I have ob- served in my small way) will jump once at your naked fly ; but if he escape, he will have no more on't, un- less there is a cross of the dace in him. As it is a fish that follows his nose, however, the smell of the worm will bring him to the lure again, and if your awkward- ness give him time, he will stick to it till he has cleaned the hook. Probatum est. You may say this is unscientific, but, if I am to breakfast from the contents of my creel, I must be left with my worm and my ignorance. Besides — hang rules ! No two streams are alike — no two men (who are not fools) fish alike. Walton and Wilson would find some new " wrinkle," if they were to try these wild waters ; and, to generalize the matter, I have, out of mathematics, a distrust of rules, descriptions, manuals, etc., amounting to a 'phobia. Experience was always new to me. I do not seem to myself ever to have seen the Rome I once read of. The Venice I know is not the Venice of story nor of travellers' books. There are two Londons in my mind — one where I saw whole shelves of my library walking about in coats and petticoats, and another where there was nothing visible through the fog but fat men with tankards of porter — one memory of it all glittering with lighted rooms, bright and kind faces, men all manly, and women all womanly, and another memory (got from books) where every man was surly, and dressed in a buff waistcoat, and every woman a giantess, in riding-hat and boots. It is delightful to think how new everything is, spite of description. Never believe, dear Doctor, that there is an old world. There is no such place, on my honor ! You will find England, France, Italy, and the East, after all you have read and heard, as altogether new as if they were created by your eye, and were never sung, painted, nor be-written — you will indeed. Why — to be sure — what were the world else ? A pawnbroker's closet, where every traveller had left his clothes for you to wear after him ! No ! no ! Thanks to Providence, all things are new ! Pen and ink can not take the gloss off your eyes, nor can any man look through them as you do. I do not be- lieve the simplest matter — sunshine or verdure — has exactly the same look to any two people in the world. How much less a human face — a landscape — a broad kingdom ? Travellers are very pleasant people. They tell you what picture was produced in their brain by the things they saw ; but if they forestalled novelty by 232 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. that, I would as soon read them as beseech a thief to steal my dinner. How it looks to one pair of eyes .' would be a good reminder pencilled on the margin of many a volume. I have run my ploughshare, in this furrow, upon a root of philosophy, which has cured heart-aches for me ere now. I struck upon it almost accidentally, while administering consolation, years since, to a sen- sitive friend, whose muse had been consigned, alive and kicking, to the tomb, by a blundering undertaker of criticism. I read the review, and wrote on it with a pencil, " So thinks one man in fifteen millions;" and, to my surprise, up swore my dejected friend, like Mas- ter Barnardine, that he would " consent to die that day, for no man's persuasion." Since that I have made a practice of counting the enemy ; and trust me, dear Doctor, it is sometimes worth while not to run away without this little preliminary. A friend, for in- stance, with a most boding solemnity, takes you aside, and pulls from his pocket a newspaper containing a paragraph that is aimed at your book, your morals, perhaps your looks and manners. You catch the alarm from your friend's face, and fancy it is the voice of public opinion, and your fate is fixed. Your book is detestable, your character is gone. Your manners and features are the object of universal disapprobation. Stay ! count the enemy ! Was it decided by a conven- tion ? No ! By a caucus ? No ! By a vote on the deck of a steamboat ? No ! By a group at the cor- ner of the street, by a club, by a dinner-party ? No ! By whom then ? One small gentleman, sitting in a dingy corner of a printing-office, who puts his quill through your reputation as the entomologist slides a pin through a beetle — in the way of his vocation. No particular malice to you. He wanted a specimen of the genus poet, and you were the first caught. If there is no head to the pin (as there often is none), the best way is to do as the beetle does — pretend to be killed till he forgets you, and then slip off without a buzz. The only part of calumny that I ever found trouble- some was my friends' insisting on my being unhappy about it. I dare say you have read the story of the German criminal, whose last request that his head might be struck off while he stood engaged in conver- sation, was humanely granted by the provost. The executioner was an adroit headsman, and watching his opportunity, he crept behind his victim while he was observing the flight of a bird, and sliced off his bulb without even decomposing his gaze. It was suggest- ed to the sufferer presently that he was decapitated, but he thought not. Upon which one of his friends step- ped up, and begging he would take the pains to stir himself a little, his head fell to the ground. If the story be not true the moral is. In the many times I have been put to death by criticism, I have never felt incommoded, till some kind friend insisted upon it, and now that I can stand on a potato-hill in a circle of twice the diameter of a rifleshot, and warn oft" all trespassers, I intend to defy sympathy, and carry my top as long as it will stay on — behead me as often as you like, beyond my periphery. Still, though " The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby," it is very pleasant now and then to pounce upon a big- ger bird screaming in the same chorus. Nothing im- pairs the dignity of an author's reputation like a news- paper wrangle, yet one bold literary vulture struck down promptly and successfully serves as good a pur- pose as the hawk nailed to the barn door. But I do not live in the country to be pestered with resentments. I do not well know how the thoughts of them came under the bridge. I'll have a fence that shall keep out such stray cattle, or there are no posts and rails in philosophy. There is a little mental phenomenon, dear Doctor, which has happened to me of late so frequently, that I must ask you if you are subject to it, in the hope that your singular talent for analysis will give me the "pourquoy." I mean a sudden novelty in the impres- sion of very familiar objects, enjoyments, etc. For example, did it ever strike you all at once that a tree was a very magnificent production? After looking at lakes and rivers for thirty years (more or less), have you ever, some fine morning, caught sight of a very familiar stream, and found yourself impressed with its new and singular beauty ? I do not know that the mir- acle extends to human faces, at least in the same de- gree. I am sure that my old coat is not rejuvenes- cent. But it is true that from possessing the nil admirari becoming to a "picked man of countries" (acquired with some pains, I may say), I now catch myself smiling with pleasure to think the river will not all run by, that there will be another sunset to-mor- row, that my grain will ripen and nod when it is ripe, and such like every-day marvels. Have we scales that drop off our eyes at a " certain age ?" Do our senses renew as well as our bodies, only more ca- priciously? Have we a chrysalis state, here below, like that parvenu gentleman, the butterfly ? Still more interesting query — does this delicious novelty attach, later in life, or ever, to objects of affection — compensating for the ravages in the form, the dulness of the senses, loss of grace, temper, and all outward loveliness? I should like to get you over a flagon of tokay on that subject. There is a curious fact, I have learned for the first time in this wild country, and it may be new to you, that as the forest is cleared, new springs rise to the surface of the ground, as if at the touch of the sun- shine. The settler knows that water as well as herb- age will start to the light, and as his axe lets it in up- on the black bosom of the wilderness, his cattle find both pasture and drink, where, before, there had never been either well-head or verdure. You have yourself been, in your day, dear Doctor, " a warped slip of wilderness," and will see at once that there lies in this ordinance of nature a beautiful analogy to certain mor- al changes that come in upon the heels of more cul- tivated and thoughtful manhood. Of the springs that start up in the footsteps of thought and culture, the sources are like those of forest springs, unsuspect- ed till they flow. There is no divining-rod, whose dip shall tell us at twenty what we shall most relish at thirty. We do not think that with experience we shall have grown simple, that things we slight and overlook will have become marvels, that our advancement in worth will owe more to the cutting away of overgrowth in tastes than to their acquisition or nurture. I should have thought this change in myself scarce worth so much blotting of good paper, but for its bear- ing on a question that has hitherto given me no little anxiety. The rivers flow on to the sea, increasing in strength and glory to the last, but we have our pride and fulness in youth, and dwindle and fall away tow- ard the grave. How I was to grow dull to the ambi- tions and excitements which constituted my whole ex- istence — be content to lag and fall behind and forego emulation in all possible pursuits — in short, how I was to grow old contentedly and gracefully, has been to me a somewhat painful puzzle. With what should I be pleased ? How should I fill the vacant halls from which had fled merriment and fancy, and hope, and desire ? You can scarce understand, dear Doctor, with what pleasure I find this new spring in my path — the con- tent with which I admit the conviction, that without effort or self-denial, the mind may slake its thirst, and LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 233 the heart be satisfied with but the waste of what lies so near us. I have all my life seen men grow old. tranquilly and content, but I did not think it possible that /should. I took pleasure only in that which re- quired young blood to follow, and I felt that to look backward for enjoyment, would be at best but a diffi- cult resignation. Now let it be no prejudice to the sincerity of my philosophy, if, as a corollary, I beg you to take a farm on the Susquehumiah, and let us grow old in com- pany. I should think Fate kinder than she passes for, if I could draw you, and one or two others whom we know and " love with knowledge," to cluster about this — certainly one of the loveliest spots in nature, and, while the river glides by unchangingly, shape our- selves to our changes with a helping sympathy. Think of it, dear Doctor! Meantime I employ my- self in my rides, selecting situations on the river banks which I think would be to yours and our friends' liking ; and in the autumn, when it is time to trans- plant, I intend to suggest to the owners where trees might be wanted in case they ever sold, so that you will not lose even a season in your shrubbery, though you delay your decision. Why should we not renew Arcady ? God bless you. LETTER X. You may congratulate me on the safe getting in of my harvest, dear Doctor ; for I have escaped, as you may say, in a parenthesis. Two of the most destruc- tive hail-storms remembered in this part of the country have prostrated the crops of my neighbors, above and below — leaving not a blade of corn, nor an unbroken window ; yet there goes my last load of grain into the barn, well-ripened, and cut standing and fair. " Some bright little cherub, that sits up aloft, Keeps watch for the soul of poor Peter." I confess I should have fretted at the loss of my firstlinsrs more than for a much greater disaster in an- other shape. I have expended curiosity, watching, and fresh interest, upon my uplands, besides plaster and my own labor ; and the getting back five hundred bushels for five or ten, has been to me, through all its beauti- ful changes from April till now, a wonder to be en- joyed like a play. To have lost the denouement by a hail-storm, would be like a play with the fifth act omitted, or a novel with the last leaf torn out. Now, if no stray spark set fire to my barn, I can pick you out the whitest of a thousand sheaves, thrash them with the first frost, and send you a barrel of Glenmary flour, which shall be, not only very excellent bread, but should have also a flavor of wonder, admiration — all the feelings, in short, with which I have watched it, from seed-time to harvest. Yet there is many a dull dog will eat of it, and remark no taste of me ! And so there are men who will read a friend's book as if it were a stranger's — but we are not of those. If we love the man, whether we eat a potato of his raising, or read a verse of his inditing, there is in it a sweet- ness which has descended from his heart — by quill or hoe-handle. I scorn impartiality. If it be a virtue, Death and Posterity may monopolize it for me. I was interrupted a moment since by a neighbor, who, though innocent of reading and writing, has a coinage of phraseology, which would have told in authorship. A stray mare had broken into his peas, and he came to me to write an advertisement for the court-house door. After requesting the owner " to pay charges and take her away," in good round char- acters, I recommended to my friend, who was a good deal vexed at the trespass, to take a day's work out of her. " Why, I haint no job on the mounting," said he, folding up the paper very carefully. " It's a side- hill critter! Two off legs so lame, she can't stand even." It was certainly a new idea, that a horse with two spavins on a side, might be used with advantage on a hill-farm. While I was jotting it down for your bene- fit, my neighbor had emerged from under the bridge, and was climbing the railing over my head. "What will you do if he won't pay damages?" 1 cried out. " Put the types on to him .'" he answered : and, jumping into the road, strided away to post up his ad- vertisement. I presume, that "to put the types on to" a man, is to send the constable to him with a printed warrant ; but it is a good phrase. The hot weather of the last week has nearly dried up the brook, and, forgetting to water my young trees in the hurry of harvesting, a few of them have hung out the quarantine yellow at the top, and, I fear, will scarce stand it till autumn. Not to have all my hopes in one venture, and that a frail one, I have set about converting a magnificent piece of wild jungle into an academical grove — an occupation that makes one feel more like a viceroy than a farmer. Let me interest you in this metempsychosis; for, if we are to grow old together, as I proposed to you in my last, this grove will lend its shade to many a slippered noontide, and echo, we will hope, the philosophy of an old age, wise and cheerful. Aptly for my design, the shape of the grove is that of the Greek V. — the river very nearly encircling it ; and here, if I live, will I pass the Omega of my life ; and, if you will come to the christening, dear Doctor, so shall the grove be named, in solemn ceremony — The Omega. How this nobly-wooded and water-clasped little pen- insula has been suffered to run to waste, I know not. It contains some half-score acres of rich interval ; and, to the neglect of previous occupants of the farm, I prob- ably owe its gigantic trees, as well as its weedy under- growth, and tangled vines. Time out of mind (five years, in this country) it has been a harbor for wood- cocks, wood-ducks, minks, wild bees, humming birds, and cranes — (two of the latter still keeping possession) -=-«nd its labyrinth of tall weeds, interlaced with the low branches of the trees, was seldom penetrated, ex- cept once or twice a year by the sportsman, and as often by the Owaga in its freshet. Scarce suspecting the size of the trees within, whose trunks were entirely concealed, I have looked upon its towering mass of verdure but as a superb emerald wall, shutting the meadows in on the east — and, though within a lance- shot of my cottage, have neglected it, like my prede- cessors, for more manageable ground. I have enjoyed very much the planting of young wood, and the anticipation of its shade and splendor in Heaven's slow, but good time. It was a pleasure of Hope; and, to men of leisure and sylvan taste in Eng- land, it has been — literature bears witness — a pursuit full of dignity and happiness. But the redemption of a venerable grove from the wilderness, is an enjoyment of another measure. It is a kind of playing of King Lear backward — discovering the old monarch in his abandonment, and sweeping off his unnatural offspring, to bring back the sunshine to his old age, and give him room, with his knights, in his own domain. You know how trees that grow wild near water, in this country, put out foliage upon the trunk as well as the branches, covering it, like ivy, to the roots. It is a beautiful caprice of Nature ; but the grandeur of the dark and massive stem is entirely lost — and I have been as much surprised at the giant bodies we have developed, stripping off this unfitting drapery, as 234 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. Richard at the thewes and sinews of the uncowled friar of Copmanhurst. You can not fancy, if you have never exercised this grave authority, how many difficulties of judgment arise, and how often a jury is wanted to share the re- sponsibility of the irretrievable axe. I am slow to condemn ; and the death-blow to a living tree, how- ever necessary, makes my blood start, and my judg- ment half repent. There are, to-day, several under reprieve — one of them a beautiful linden, which I can see from my seat under the bridge, nodding just now to the wind, as careless of its doom as if it were sure its bright foliage would flaunt out the summer. In itself it is well worth the sparing and cherishing, for it is full of life and youth — and, could I transplant it to another spot, it would be invaluable. But, though full grown and spreading, it stands among giants, whose branches meet above it at twice its height ; and, while it contributes nothing to the shade, its smaller trunk looks a Lilliputian in Brobdignag, out of keep- ing and proportion. So I think it must come down — and, with it, a dozen in the same category — condemned, like many a wight who was well enough in his place, for being found in too good company. There is a superstition about the linden, by the way, to which the peculiarity in its foliage may easily | have given rise. You may have remarked, of course, that from the centre of the leaf starts a slender stem, j which bears the linden-flower. Our Savior is said, i by those who believe in the superstition, to have been crucified upon this tree, which has ever since borne ! the flowering type of the nails driven into it through his palms. Another, whose doom is suspended, is a ragged sycamore, whose decayed branches are festooned to the highest top by a wild grape-vine, of the most su- perb fruitfulness and luxuriance. No wife ever pleaded for a condemned husband with more eloquence than these delicate tendrils to me, for the rude tree with whose destiny they are united. I wish you were here, dear Doctor, to say spare it, or cut it down. In itself, like the linden, it is a splendid creature ; but, alas ! it spoils a long avenue of stately trees opening toward my cottage porch, and I fear policy must outweigh pity. I shall let it stand over Sunday, and fortify myself with an opinion. Did you ever try your hand, dear Doctor, at this forest-sculpture? It sounds easy enough to trim out a wood, and so it is, if the object be merely to produce butter-nuts, or shade-grazing cattle. But to thin, and trim, and cut down, judiciously, changing a "wild and warped slip of wilderness" into a chaste and studious grove, is not done without much study of the spot, let alone a taste for the sylvan. There are all the many effects of the day's light to be observed, how morning throws her shadows, and what protection there is from noon, and where is flung open an aisle to let in the welcome radiance of sunset. There is a view of water to be let through, perhaps, at the expense of trees otherwise ornamental, or an object to hide by shrubbery which is in the way of an avenue. I have lived here as long as this year's grasshoppers, and am constantly finding out something which should have a bearing on the disposition of grounds or the sculpture (permit me the word) of my wood and forest. I am sorry to finish "the Omega" without your counsel and taste ; but there is a wood on the hill which I will keep, like a cold pie, till you come to us, and we will shoulder our axes and carve it into likelihood together. And now here comes my Yankee axe (not curtal) which I sent to be ground when I sat down to scrawl you this epistle. As you owe the letter purely to its dulness (and mine), I must away to a half-felled tree, which I deserted in its extremity. If there were truth in Ovid, what a butcher I were ! Yet there is a groan when a tree falls, which sometimes seems to me more than the sundering of splinters. Adieu, dear Doctor, and believe that " Whate'er the ocean pales or sky inclips Is thine," if I can give it you by wishing. LETTER XI. The box of Rhenish is no substitute for yourself, dear Doctor, but it was most welcome — partly, per- haps, for the qualities it has in common with the gen- tleman who should have come in the place of it. The one bottle that has fulfilled its destiny, was worthy to have been sunned on the Rhine and drank on the Sus- quehannah, and I will never believe that anything can come from you that will not improve upon acquaint- ance. So I shall treasure the remainder for bright hours. I should have thought it superior even to the Tokay I tasted at Vienna, if other experiments had not apprized me that country life sharpens the universal relish. I think that even the delicacy of the palate is affected by the confused sensations, the turmoil, the vexations of life in town. You will say you have your quiet chambers, where you are as little disturbed by the people around you as I by my grazing herds. But, by your leave, dear Doctor, the fountains of thought (upon which the senses are not a little dependant) will not clear and settle over-night like a well. No — nor in a day, nor in two. You must live in the country to possess your bodily sensations as well as your mind, in tranquil control. It is only when you have forgot- ten streets and rumors and greetings — forgotten the whip of punctuality, and the hours of forced pleasures — only when you have cleansed your ears of the din of trades, the shuffle of feet, the racket of wheels, and coarse voices — only when your own voice, accustomed to contend against discords, falls, through the fragran' air of the country, into its natural modulations, in har- mony with the low key upon which runs all the music of nature — only when that part of the world which par took not of the fall of Adam, has had time to affect you with its tranquillity — only then that the dregs of life sink out of sight, and while the soul sees through its depths, like the sun through untroubled water, the senses lose their fever and false energy, and play their part, and no more, in the day's expenditure of time and pulsation. " Still harping on my daughter," you will say ; and I will allow that I can scarce write a letter to you with- out shaping it to the end of attracting you to the Sus- quehannah. At least watch when you begin to grow old, and transplant yourself in time to take root, and then we may do as the trees do — defy the weather till we are separated. The oak, itself, if it has grown up with its kindred thick about it, will break if left stand- ing alone ; and you and I, dear Doctor, have known the luxury of friends too well to bear the loneliness of an unsympathizing old age. Friends are not pebbles, lying in every path, but pearls gathered with pain, and rare as they are precious. We spend our youth and manhood in the search and proof" of them, and when Death has taken his toll we have too few to scatter — none to throw away. I, for one, will be a miser of mine. I feel the avarice of friendship growing on me with every year — tightening my hold and extending my grasp. Who at sixty is rich in friends ? The richest are those who have drawn this wealth of angels around them, and spent care and thought on the treasuring. Come, my dear Doctor ! I have chosen a spot on one of the loveliest of our bright rivers. Here is all that goes to make an Arcadia, except the friendly dwellers in its shade. I will choose your hill-side, and plant your grove, that the trees at least shall lose no time by your delay. Set a limit to your ambition. LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 235 achieve it, and come away. It is terrible to grow old amid the jostle and disrespectful hurry of a crowd. The academy of the philosophers was out of Athens. You can not fancy Socrates run against, in the mar- ket-place. Respect, which grows wild in the fields, requires watching and management in cities. Let us have an old man's Arcady — where we can slide our "slippered shoon" through groves of our own con- secrating, and talk of the world as tvithout — ourselves and gay philosophy within. I have strings pulling upon one or two in other lands, who, like our- selves, are not men to let Content walk unrecognised in their path. Slowly, but, I think, surely, they are drawing thitherward; and I have chosen places for their hearthstones, too, and shall watch, as I do for you, that the woodman's axe cuts down no tree that would be regretted, If the cords draw well, and Death take but his tithe, my shady "Omega" will soon learn voices to which its echo will for long years be familiar, and the Owaga and Susquehannah will join waters within sight of an old man's Utopia. " My sentiments better expressed" have come in the poet's corner of the Albion to-day — a paper, by the way, remarkable for its good selection of poetry. You will allow that these two verses, which are the closing ones of a piece called " The men of old," are above the common run of newspaper fugitives : — " A man's best things are nearest him, Lie close about his feet ; It is the distant and the dim That we are sick to greet : For flowers that grow our hands beneath We struggle and aspire, Our hearts must die except we breathe The air of fresh desire. " But, brothers, who up reason's hill Advance with hopeful cheer, O loiter not ! those heights are chill, As chill as they are clear. And still restrain your haughty gaze — The loftier that ye go, Remembering distance leaves a haze On all that lies below." The man who wrote that, is hereby presented with the freedom of the Omega. The first of September, and a frost ! The farmers from the hills are mourning over their buckwheat, but the river-mist saves all which lay low enough for its white wreath to cover ; and mine, though sown on the hill-side, is at mist-mark, and so escaped. Nature seems to intend that I shall take kindly to farming, and has spared my first crop even the usual calamities. I have lost but an acre of corn, I think, and that by the crows, who are privileged marauders, welcome at least to build in the Omega, and take their tithe with- out rent-day or molestation. I like their noise, though discordant. It is the minor in the anthem of nature — making the gay song of the blackbird, and the merry chirp of the robin and oriel, more gay and cheerier. Then there is a sentiment about the raven family, and for Shakspere's lines and his dear sake, I love them, " Some say the ravens foster forlorn children The while their own birds famish in their nests." The very name of a good deed shall protect them. Who shall say that poetry is a vain art, or that poets are irresponsible for the moral of their verse! For Burns's sake, not ten days since, I beat off my dog from the nest of a field-mouse, and forbade the mow- ers to cut the grass over her. She has had a poet for her friend, and her thatched roof is sacred. I should not like to hang about the neck of my soul all the evil that, by the last day, shall have had its seed in Byron's poem of the Corsair. It is truer of poetry than of most other matters, that " More water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of." But I am slipping into a sermon. Speaking of music, some one said here the other day, that the mingled hum of the sounds of nature, and the distant murmur of a city, produce, invariably, the note F in music. The voices of all tune, the blacksmith's anvil and the wandering organ, the church bells and the dustman's, the choir and the cart-wheel, the widow's cry, and the bride's laugh, the prisoner's clanking chain and the schoolboy's noise at play — at the height of the church steeple are one ! It is all "F" two hundred feet in air! The swallow can out- soar both our joys and miseries, and the lark — what are they in his chamber of the sun ! If you have any unhappiness at the moment of receiving this letter, dear Doctor, try this bit of philosophy. It's all F where the bird flies! You have no wings to get there, you say, but your mind has more than the six of the cherubim, and in your mind lies the grief you would be rid of. As Caesar says, " By all the gods the Romans bow before, I here discard my sickness." I'll be above F, and let troubles hang below. What a twopenny matter it makes of all our cares and vexa- tions. I'll find a boy to climb to the top of a tall pine I have, and tie me up a white flag, which shall be above high-sorrow mark henceforth. I will neither be elated or grieved without looking at it. It floats at " F," where it is all one ! Why, it will be a castle in the air, indeed — impregnable to unrest. Why not, dear Doctor! Why should we not set up a reminder, that our sorrows are only so deep — that the lees are but at the bottom, and there is good wine at the top — that there is an atmosphere but a little above us where our sorrows melt into our joys! No man need be un- happy who can see a grasshopper on a church vane. It is surprising how mere a matter of animal spirits is the generation of many of our bluest devils ; and it is more surprising that we have neither the memory to recall the trifles that have put them to the flight, nor the resolution to combat their approach. A man will be ready to hang himself in the morning for an annoyance that he has the best reason to know would scarce give him a thought at night. Even a dinner is a doughty devil-queller. How true is the apology of Menenius when Coriolanus had repelled his friend ! " He had not dined. The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then We pout upon the morning : are unapt To give or to forgive ; but when we have stufPd These pipes, and these conveyances of our blood, With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls Than in our priest-like fasts. Therefore I'll watch him Till he be dieted to my request." I have recovered my spirits ere now by a friend ask- ing me what was the matter. One seems to want but the suggestion, the presence of mind, the expressed wish, to be happy any day. My white flag shall serve me that good end! "Tut, man!" it shall say, "your grief is not grief where I am ! Send your imagination this high to be whitewashed !" Our weather to-day is a leaf out of October's book, soft, yet invigorating. The harvest moon seems to have forgotten her mantle last night, for there lies on the landscape a haze, that to be so delicate, should be born of moonlight. The boys report plenty of deer- tracks in the woods close by us, and the neighbors tell me they browse in troops on my buckwheat by the light of the moon, Let them ! I have neither trap nor gun on my premises, and Shakspere shall be (heir sentinel too. At least, no Robin or Diggory shall shoot them without complaint of damage ; though if you were here, dear Doctor, I should most likely bor- row a gun, and lie down with you in the buckwheat to see you bring down the fattest. And so do our par- tialities modify our benevolence. I fear I should com- pound for a visit by the slaughter of the whole herd. Perhaps you will come to shoot deer, and with that pleasant hope I will close my letter. 236 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. LETTER XII. I have nearly had by breath taken away this morn- ing, dear Doctor, by a grave assurance from a rail- road commissioner, that rive years hence I should "devour the way" between this and New York in seven hours. Close on the heels of this gentleman came an engineer of the canal, who promised me as trippingly, that in three years I should run in a packet- boat from my cottage to tide-water. This was in- tended, in both cases, I presume, to be very pleasant intelligence. With a little time, I dare say, I shall come to think it so. But I assure you at present, that, of all dwellers upon the canal route, myself, and the toads disentombed by the blasting of the rocks, are, perhaps, the most unpleasantly surprised — they, poor hermits, fancying themselves safe from the troubles of existence till dooms-day, and I as sure that my cot- tage was at a safe remove from the turmoil of city propinquity. If I am compelled to choose a hearthstone again (God knows whether Broadway will not reach bodily to this), I will employ an engineer to find me a spot, if indeed there be one, which has nothing behind it or about it, or in its range, which could by any chance make it a thoroughfare. There is a charm to me in an ira-navigable river, which brought me to the Sus- quehannah. I like the city sometimes, and I bless Heaven for steamboats ; but I love haunts where I neither see a steamboat nor expect the city. "What is the Hudson but a great highroad ? You may have your cottage, it is true, and live by the water-side in the shade, and be a hundred miles, more or less, from the city. But every half hour comes twanging through your trees, the clang of an untuneable bell informing you, whether you will or no, that seven hundred cits are seething past your solitude. You must be an ab- stracted student indeed if you do not look after the noisy intruder till she is lost to the eye. Then follow conjectures what news may be on board, what friends may be passing unknown, what celebrities or oddities, or wonders of beauty, may be mingling in the throng upon her decks ; and by the time you remember again that you are in the country, there sounds another bell, and another discordant whiz, and so your mind is plucked away to city thoughts and associations, while your body sits alone and discontented amid the trees. Now, for one, I like not this divorce. If I am to be happy, my imagination must keep my body company, and both must be in the country, or both in town. With all honor to Milton, who avers — " The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell,'* my mind to make a heaven, requires the society of its material half. Though my pores take in a palpable pleasure from the soft air of morning, my imagination feeds twice as bountifully, foraging amid the sunshine and verdure with my two proper eyes ; and in turn my fancy feeds more steadily when I breathe and feel what she is abroad in. Ask the traveller which were his unhappiest hours under foreign skies. If he is of my mind, he will say, they were those in which his thoughts (by letters or chance news) were driven irre- sistibly home, leaving his eyes blind and his ears deaf in the desert or the strange city. There are persons, I know, who make a pleasure of revery, and, walking on the pavement, will be dreaming of fields, and in the fields think only of the distractions of town. But with me, absent thoughts, unless to be rid of disagree- able circumstances, are a disease. When in health, I am all together, what there is of me — soul and body, head and heart — and a steamboat that should daily cut the line of my horizon with human interest enough on board to take my thoughts with her when she disap- peared, would, to my thinking, be a daily calamity. I thank God that the deep shades of the Omega lie be- tween my cottage and the track of both canal and rail- road. I live in the lap of a semicircle of hills, and the diameter, I am pleased to know, is shorter than the curve. There is a green and wholesome half mile, thickly wooded, and mine own to keep so, between my threshold and the surveyor's line, and like the laird's Jock, I shall be " aye sticking in a tree." Do not think, dear Doctor, that I am insensible tc the grandeur of the great project to connect Lake Erie with the Hudson by railroad, or that I do not feel a becoming interest in my country's prosperity. I would fain have a farm where my cattle and I can ruminatb without fear of falling asleep on a rail-track, or slip- ping into a canal ; but there is an imaginative and a bright side to these improvements, which I look on as often as on the other. What should prevent steam- posting, for example — not in confined and cramped carriages, suited to the strength of a pair of horses, but in airy and commodious apartments, furnished like a bachelor's lodgings, with bed, kitchen, and servants ? What should prevent the transfer of such a structure from railroad to canal-boat as occasion required ? In five years probably, there will pass through this village a railroad and a canal, by which, together, we shall have an unbroken chain of canal and railroad commu- nication with most of the principal seaboard cities of this country, and with half the towns and objects of curiosity in the west and north. I build a tenement on wheels, considerably longer than the accommodations of single gentlemen at ho- tels, with a small kitchen, and such a cook as pleases the genius of republics. The vehicle shall be fur- nished, we wih say, with tangent moveable rails, or some other convenience for wheeling off the track whenever there is occasion to stop or loiter. As 1 said before, it should be arranged also for transfer to a boat. In either case there shall be post-horses, as upon the English roads, ready to be put to at a mo- ment's warning, and capable, upon the railroad at least, of a sufficient rate of speed. What could be more delightful or more easy than to furnish this am- bulatory cottage with light furniture from your sta- tionary home, cram it with books, and such little re- finements as you most miss abroad, and, purchasing provisions by the way, travel under your own roof from one end of the country to the other ? Imagine me sending you word, some fine morning, from Jersey city, to come over and breakfast with me at my cot- tage, just arrived by railroad from the country? Or going to the Springs with a house ready furnished ? Or inviting you to accept of my hospitality during a trip to Baltimore, or Cincinnati, or Montreal ! The English have anticipated this luxury in their expensive private yachts, with which they traverse the Levant, and drink wine from their own cellars at Joppa and Trebizond ; but what is that to travelling the same distance on land, without storms or sea-sickness, with the choice of companions every hour, and at a hun- dredth part of the cost? The snail has been before us in the invention. I presume, dear Doctor, that even you would be obliged to fish around considerably to find Owego on the map ; yet the people here expect in a year or two to sit at their windows, and see all the fashion and curiosity, as well as the dignity and business of the world go by. This little village, to which pros- perity " Is as the osprey to the fish, who takes it By sovereignty of nature," lies at the joint of a great cross of northern and west- ern travel. The Erie railroad will intersect here the canal whieh follows the Susquehannah to the Che- nango, and you may as well come to Glenmary if you wish to see your friend, the General, on his annual LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 237 trip to the Springs. Think what a superb route it will be for southern travellers. Instead of being fil- tered through all the seaboard cities, at great cost of money and temper, they will strike the Susquehan- nah at Columbia, and follow its delicious windings past Wyoming to Owega, where, turning west, they may steam up the small lakes to Niagara, or keeping on the Chenango, track that exquisite river by canal to the Mohawk, and so on to the Springs — all the way by the most lovely river-courses in the world. Pure air, new scenery, and a near and complete escape from the cities in the hot months, will be (the O-egoists think) inducements enough to bring the southern cities, rank and file in annual review before us. The canal-boat, of course will be " the genteel tiling" among the arri- vals in this metropolis. Pleasure north and south, business east and west. We shall take our fashions from New Orleans, and I do not despair of seeing a cafe on the Susquehannah, with a French dame de comptoir, marble tables, and the Picayune newspaper. If my project of travelling cottages should succeed, I shall offer the skirt of my Omega to such of my New Orleans friends as would like to pasture a cow during the summer, and when they and the orioles migrate in the autumn, why, we will up cottage and be off to the south too — freeze who likes in Tioga. I wish my young trees liked this air of Italy as well as I. This ten days' sunshine has pinched their thirsty tops, and it looks like mid-autumn from my seat under the bridge. No water, save a tricklet in the early morn- ing. But such weather for pick-nick-ing ! The buck- wheat is sun-dried, and will yield but half a crop. The deer come down to the spring-heads, and the snakes creep to the river. Jenny toils at the deep-down well- bucket, and the minister prays for rain. I love the sun, and pray for no advent but yours. You have never seen, I dare be certain, a vol me of poems called " Mundi et Cordis Carmina," by Thomas Wade. It is one of those volumes killed, like my trees, in the general drought of poesy, but there is stuff in it worth the fair type on which it is printed, though Mr. Wade takes small pains to shape his verse to the common comprehension. I mention him now, because, in looking over his volume, I find he has been before me in particularizing the place where a letter is written, and goes beyond me, by specifying also the place where it should be read. " The Pencilled Letter" and its "Answer" are among his most intelligible poems, and I will give you their concluding lines as containing a new idea in amatory correspondence : — " Dearest, love me still ; I know new objects must thy spirit fill ; But yet I pray thee, do not love me less ; This write I where I dress. Bless thee ! for ever bless !" The reply has a very pretty conclusion, aside from the final oddity : — " Others may inherit My heart's wild perfume ; but the flower is thine. This read where thou didst write. All blessings round thee throng." It is in your quality as bachelor that you get the loan of this idea, for in love, " a trick not worth an egg," so it be new, is worth the knowing. Here's a precious coil ! The red heifer has chewed up a lace cape, and the breachy ox has run over the " bleach and lavender" of a seven days' wear and washing. It must be laid to the drought, unless a taste for dry lace as well as wet can be proved on the peccant heifer. The ox would to the drink— small blame to him. But lace is expensive fodder, and the heifer must be " hobbled" — so swears the washerwo- man. " Her injury 's the jailer to her pity.'"' I have only the " turn overs" left, dear Doctor, and I will cover them with one of Mr. Wade's sonnets, which will serve you, should you have occasion for an epithalamium. It is called " the Bride," and should be read fasting by a bachelor : — " Let the trim tapers burn exceeding brightly ! And the white bed be deck'd as for a goddess, Who must be pillow'd, like high vesper, nightly On couch ethereal ! Be the curtains fleecy, Like vesper's fairest, when calm nights are breezy — Transparent, parting — showing what they hide, Or strive to veil — by mystery deified ! The floor, gold carpet, that her zone and boddice May lie in honor where they gently fall, Slow loosened from her form symmetrical — Like mist from sunlight. Burn, sweet odors, burn ! For incense at the altar of her pleasure ! Let music breathe with a voluptuous measure, And witchcrafts trance her wheresoe'er she turns." LETTER XIII. This is not a very prompt answer to your last, my dear Doctor, for I intended to have taken my brains to you bodily, and replied to all your "whether-or- noes" over a broiled oyster at ***** . Perhaps I may bring this in my pocket. A brace of ramblers, brothers of my own, detained me for a while, but are flitting to-day ; and Bartlett has been here a week, to whom, more particularly, I wish to do the honors of the scenery. We have climbed every hill-top that has the happiness of looking down on the Owaga and Sus- quehannah, and he agrees with me that a more lovely and habitable valley has never sat to him for its pic- ture. Fortunately, on the day of his arrival, the dust of a six weeks' drought was washed from its face, and, barring the wilt that precedes autumn, the hill-sides were in holyday green and looked their fairest. He has enriched his portfolio with four or five delicious sketches, and if there were gratitude or sense of re- nown in trees and hills, they would have nodded their tops to the two of us. It is not every valley or pine- tree that finds painter and historian, but these are as insensible as beauty and greatness were ever to the claims of their trumpeters. How long since was it that I wrote to you of Bartlett's visit to Constantinople ? Not more than four or five weeks, it seems to me, and yet, here he is, on his re- turn from a professional trip to Canada, with all its best scenery snug in his portmanteau ! He steamed to Turkey and back, and steamed again to America, and will be once more in England in some twenty days — having visited and sketched the two extremities of the civilized world. Why, I might farm it on the Susque- hannah and keep my town-house in Constantinople — (with money). It seemed odd to me to turn over a drawing-book, and find on one leaf a freshly-pencilled sketch of a mosque, and on the next a view of Glen- mary — my turnip-field in the foreground. And then the man himself — pulling a Turkish para and a Yan- kee shinplaster from his pocket with the same pinch — shuffling to breakfast in my ahri on the Susquehan- nah, in a pair of peaked slippers of Constantinople, that smell as freshly of the bazar as if they were bought yesterday — waking up with "pekke! pekke ! my good fellow!" when William brings him his boots — and never seeing a blood-red maple (just turned with the frost) without fancying it the sanguine flag of the Bosphorus or the bright jacket of a Greek ! All this unsettles me strangely. The phantasmagoria of my days of vagabondage flit before my eyes again. This, "by-the-by, do you remember, in Smyrna?" and "the view you recollect from the Seraglio!" and such like slip-slop of travellers, heard within reach of my corn and pumpkins, affects me like the mad poet's proposition, " To twitch the rainbow from the sky, And splice both ends together." 238 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. I have amused my artist friend since he has been here, with an entertainment not quite as expensive as the Holly Lodge fireworks, but quite as beautiful — the burning of log-heaps. Instead of gossipping over the tea-table these long and chilly evenings, the three or four young men who have been staying with us were very content to tramp into the woods with a bun- dle of straw and a match-box, and they have been in- itiated into the mysteries of "picking and piling," to the considerable improvement of the glebe of Glen- mary. Shelley says, " Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is ;" and 1 am inclined to think that there are varieties of glory in its phenomena which would make it worth even your metropolitan while to come to the west and "burn fallow." At this season of the year — after the autumn droughts, that is to say — the whole country here is covered with a thin smoke, stealing up from the fires on every hill, in the depths of the woods, and on the banks of the river ; and what with the graceful smoke-wreaths by day, and the blazing beacons all around the horizon by night, it adds much to the va- riety, and, I think, more to the beauty of our western October. It edifies the traveller who has bought wood by the pound in Paris, or stiffened for the want of it in the disforested Orient, to stand off a rifle-shot from a crackling wood, and toast himself by a thousand cords burnt for the riddance. What experience I have had of these holocausts on my own land has not diminished the sense of waste and wealth with which I first watched them. Paddy's dream of "rolling in a bin of gold guineas," could scarce have seemed more luxurious. Bartlett and I, and the rest of us, in our small way burnt enough, I dare say, to have made a comfortable drawing-room of Hyde Park in January, and the ef- fects of the white light upon the trees above and around were glorious. But our fires were piles of logs and brush — small beer, of course, to the confla- gration of a forest. I have seen one that was like the Thousand Columns of Constantinople ignited to a red heat, and covered with carbuncles and tongues of flame. It was a temple of fire — the floor, living coals — the roof, a heavy drapery of crimson — the aisles held up by blazing and innumerable pillars, sometimes swept by the wind till they stood in still and naked redness while the eye could see far into their depths, and again covered and wreathed and laved in ever- changing billows of flame. We want an American Tempesta or " Savage Rosa," to " wreak" such pic tures on canvass ; and perhaps the first step to it would be the painting of the foliage of an American autumn. These glorious wonders are peculiarities of our coun try ; why should they not breed a peculiar school of effect and color? " Gentle Doughty, tell me why !" Among the London news which has seasoned our breakfasts of late, 1 hear pretty authentically that Camp bell is coming to look up his muse on the Susquehan nah. He is at present writing the life of Petrarch, and superintending the new edition of his works (to be il- lustrated in the style of Rogers's), and, between whiles, projecting a new poem; and, my letters say, is likely to find the way, little known to poets, from the Tem- ple of Fame to the Temple of Mammon. One would think it were scarce decent for Campbell to die without seeing Wyoming. I trust he will not. What would I not give to get upon a raft with him, and float down the Susqrehannah a hundred miles to the scene of his Gertride, watching his fine face while the real dis- placed t'je ideal valley of his imagination. I think it would 'rouble him. Probably in the warmth of com- posite n and the familiarity of years, the imaginary Bcenf has become ennmelled and sunk into his mind, and it would remain the home of his poem after Wy- oming itself had made a distinct impression on his memory. They would be two places — not one. He wrote it with some valley of his own land in his mind's eye, and gray Scotland and sunny and verdant Penn- ylvania will scarce blend. But he will be welcome. Oh, how welcome ! America would rise up to Camp- bell. He has been the bard of freedom, generous and chivalric in all his strains; and, nation of merchants as we are, I am mistaken if the string he has most played is not the master-chord of our national char- acter. The enthusiasm of no people on earth is so easily awoke, and Campbell is the poet of enthusiasm. The schoolboys have him by heart, and what lives up- on their lips, will live and be beloved for ever. It would be a fine thing, I have often thought, dear Doctor, if every English author would be at the pains to reap his laurels in this country. If they could overcome their indignation at our disgraceful robbery of their copyrights, and come among the people who read them for the love they bear them — read them as they are not read in England, without prejudice or fa- vor, personal or political — it would be more like taking a peep at posterity than they think. In what is the judgment of posterity better than that of contempora- ries ? Simply in that the author is seen from a dis- tance — his personal qualities lost to the eye, and his literary stature seen in proper relief and proportion. We know nothing of the degrading rivalries and diffi- culties of his first efforts, or, if we do, we do not real- ize them, never having known him till success sent his name over the water. His reputation is a Minerva to us — sprung full-grown to our knowledge. We praise him, if we like him, with the spirit in which we criti- cise an author of another age — with no possible pri- vate bias. Witness the critiques upon Bulwer in this country, compared with those of his countrymen. What review has ever given him a tithe of his deserv- ings in England ! Their cold acknowledgment of his merits reminds one of Enobarbus's civility to Menas: " Sir ! I have praised you When you have well deserved ten times as much As I have said you did !" 1 need not to you, dear Doctor enlarge upon the ben- efits, political and social, to both countries, which would follow the mutual good-will of our authors. We shall never have theirs while we plunder them so barefacedly as now, and I trust in heaven we shall, some time or other, see men in Congress who will go deeper for their opinions than the circular of a pira- ting bookseller. I wish you to send me a copy of Dawes's poems when they appear. I have long thought he was one of the unappreciated ; but I see that his fine play of Atbanasia is making stir among the paragraphers. Ru- fus Dawes is a poet if God ever created one, and he lives his vocation as well as imagines it. I hope he will shuffle off the heavenward end of his mortal coil under the cool shades of my Omega. He is our Cole- ridge, and his talk should have reverent listeners. I have seldom been more pleased at a change in the lit- erary kaleidoscope, than at his awakening popularity ; and, I pray you blow what breath you have into bis new-spread sail. Cranch, the artist, who lived with me in Italy (a beautiful scholar in the art, whose hand is fast overtaking his head), has, I see by the papers, made a capital sketch of him. Do you know wheth- er it is to be engraved for the book ? Ossian represents the ghosts of his heroes lament- ing that they had not had their fame, and it is a pity, I think, that we had not some literary apostle to tell us, from the temple of our Athens, who are the un- known great. Certain it is, they often live among us, and achieve their greatness unrecognised. How pro- foundly dull was England to the merits of Charles LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 139 Lamb till he died ! Yet he was a fine illustration of my remark just now. America was posterity to him. The writings of all our young authors were tinctured with imitation of his style, when, in Eng- land (as I personally know), it was difficult to light up- on a person who had read his Elia. Truly " the root of a great name is in the dead body." There is Wal- ter Savage Landor, whose Imaginary Conversations contain more of the virgin ore of thought than any six modern English writers together, and how many persons in any literary circle know whether he is alive or dead — an author of Queen Elizabeth's time or Queen Victoria's ? He is a man of fortune, and has bought Boccacio's garden at Fiesole, and there upon the classic Africus, he is tranquilly achieving his re- nown, and it will beunburied, and acknowledged when he is dead. Travellers will make pilgrimages to the spot where Boccacio and Landor have lived, and won- der that they did not mark while it was done — this piling of Ossa on Pelion. By the way, Mr. Landor has tied me to the tail of his immortality, for an offence most innocently com- mitted ; and I trust his biographer will either let me slip off" at " Lethe's wharf," by expurgating the book of me, or do me justice in a note. When I was in Florence, I was indebted to him for much kind atten- tion and hospitality ; and I considered it one of the highest of my good fortunes abroad to go to Fiesole, and dine in the scene of the Decameron with an au- thor who would, I thought, live as long as Boccacio. Mr. Landor has a glorious collection of paintings, and at parting he presented me with a beautiful picture by Cuyp, which I had particularly admired, and gave me some of my most valuable letters to England, where I was then going. I mention it to show the terms on which we separated. While with him on my last vis- it, I had expressed a wish that the philosophical con- versations in his books were separated from the politi- cal, and republished in a cheap form in America ; and the following morning, before daylight, his servant knocked at the door of my lodgings, with a package of eight or ten octavo volumes, and as much manu- script, accompanied by a note from Mr. Landor, com- mitting the whole to my discretion. These volumes, I should tell you, were interleaved and interlined very elaborately, and having kept him company under his olive-trees, were in rather a dilapidated condition. How to add such a bulk of precious stuff to my bag- gage, I did not know. I was at the moment of start- ing, and it was very clear that even if the custom- house officers took no exception to them (they are outlawed through Italy for their political doctrines), they would never survive a rough journey over the Appenines and Alps. I did the best I could. I sent them with a note to Theodore Fay, who was then in Florence, requesting him to forward them to America by ship from Leghorn ; a commission which I knew that kindest and most honorable of men and poets, would execute with the fidelity of an angel. So he did. He handed them to an American straw-bonnet maker (who, he had no reason to suppose, was the ma- licious donkey he afterward proved), and through him they were shipped and received in New York. I ex- pected, at the time I left Florence, to make but a short stay in England, and sail in the same summer for America ; instead of which I remained in England two years at the close of which appeared a new book of Mr. Landor's Pericles and Aspasia. I took it up with delight, and read it through to the last chapter, where, of a sudden, the author jumps from the acad- emy of Plato, clean over three thousand years, upon the shoulders of a false American, who had robbed him of invaluable manuscripts ! So there I go to pos- terity astride the Finis of Pericles and Aspasia! I had corresponded occasionally with Mr. Landor, and in one of my letters had stated the fact, that the man- uscripts had been committed to Mr. Miles to forward to America. He called, in consequence, at the shop of this person who denied any knowledge of the books, leaving Mr. Landor to suppose that I had been either most careless or most culpable in my manage- ment of his trust. The books had, however, after a brief stay in New York, followed me to London ; and Fay and Mr. Landor both happening there together, the explanation was made and the books and manu- scripts restored unharmed to the author. I was not long enough in London afterward to know whether I was forgiven by Mr. Landor; but, as his book has not reached a second edition, I am still writhing in my purgatory of print. I have told you this long story, dear Doctor, because I am sometimes questioned on the subject by the lit- erary people with whom you live, and hereafter I shall transfer them to your button for the whole matter. But what a letter! Write me two for it, and revenge yourself in the postage. LETTER XIV. This is return month, dear Doctor, and if it were only to be in fashion, you should have a quid pro quo for your four pages. October restores and returns; your gay friends and invalids return to the city ; the birds and the planters return to the south ; the seed returns to the granary; the brook at my feet is noisy again with its returned waters ; the leaves are return- ing to the earth ; and the heart that has been out-of- doors while the summer lasted, comes home from its wanderings by field and stream, and returns to feed on its harvest of new thoughts, past pleasures, and strengthened and confirmed affections. At this time of the year, too, you expect a return (not of paste board) for your " visits ;" but, as you have made me no visit, either friendly or professional, I owe you nothing. And that is the first consolation I have found for your short-comings (or no-comings-at-all) to Glenmary. Now, consider my arms a-kimbo, if you please, while I ask you what you mean by calling Glenmary " backwoods !" Faith, I wish it were more back- woods than it is. Here be cards to be left, sir, morn- ing calls to be made, body-coat soirees, and ceremony enough to keep one's most holyday manners well aired. The two miles' distance between me and Owego serves me for no exemption, for the village of Canewana, which is a mile nearer on the road, is equally within the latitude of silver forks ; and dinners are given in both, which want no one of the belongings of Bel- grave-square, save port-wine and powdered footmen. I think it is in one of Miss Austin's novels that a lady claims it to be a smart neighborhood in which she " dines with four-and-twenty families." If there are not more than half as many in Owego who give din- ners, there are twice as many who ask to tea and give ice-cream and champaign. Then for the fashions, there is as liberal a sprinkling of French bonnets in the Owego church as in any village congregation in England. And for the shops — that subject is worthy of a sentence by itself. When I say there is no need to go to New- York for hat, boots, or coat, I mean that the Owego tradesmen (if you are capable of de- scribing what you want) are capable of supplying you with the best and most modish of these articles. Call you that " backwoods ?" All this, I am free to confess, clashes with the beau ideal of the " Beatus Me qui procul,' 1 etc. I had myself imagined (and continued to imagine for some weeks after coming here), that, so near the 240 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. primeval wilderness, I might lay up my best coat and my ceremony in lavender, and live in fustian and a plain way. I looked forward to the delights of a broad straw hat, large shoes, baggy habiliments, and leave to sigh or whistle without offence ; and it seemed to me that it was the conclusion of a species of apprentice- ship, and the beginning of my " freedom." To be above no clean and honest employment of one's time, to drive a pair of horses or a yoke of oxen with equal alacrity, and to be commented on for neither the one nor the other ; to have none but wholesome farming cares, and work with nature and honest yeomen, and be quite clear of mortifications, envies, advice, remon- strance, coldness, misapprehensions, and etiquettes ; this is what I, like most persons who " forswear the full tide of the world," looked upon as the blessed promise of retirement. But, alas ! wherever there is a butcher's shop and a post-office, an apothecary and a blacksmith, an " Arcade" and a milliner— wherever the conveniences of life are, in short — there has al- ready arrived the Procrustes of opinion. Men's eyes will look on you and bring you to judgment, and un- less you would live on wild meat and corn-bread in the wilderness, with neither friend nor helper, you must give in to a compromise — yield half at least of your independence, and take it back in common-place com- fort. This is very every-day wisdom to those who know it, but you are as likely as any man in the world to have sat with your feet over the fire, and fancied yourself on a wild horse in a prairie, with nothing to distinguish you from the warlike Camanche, except capital wine in the cellar of your wigwam, and the last new novel and play, which should reach this same wig- wam — you have not exactly determined how ! Such " pyramises are goodly things," but they are built of the smoke of your cigar. This part of the country is not destitute of the chances of adventure, however, and twice in the year, at least, you may, if you choose, open a valve for your spirits. One half the population of the neighbor- hood is engaged in what is called lumbering, and until the pine timber of the forest can be counted like the cedars of Lebanon, this vocation will serve the uses of the mobs of England, the revolutions of France, and the plots of Italy. I may add the music and theatres of Austria and Prussia, the sensual indulgence of the Turk, and the intrigue of the Spaniard ; for there is in every people under the sun a superflu of spirits un- consumed by common occupation, which, if not turn- ed adroitly or accidentally to some useful or harmless end, will expend its reckless energy in trouble and mischief. The preparations for the adventures of which I speak, though laborious, are often conducted like a frolic. The felling of the trees in mid-winter, the cut- ting of shingles, and the drawing out on the snow, are employments preferred by the young men to the tamer but less arduous work of the farm-yard ; and in the temporary and uncomfortable shanties, deep in the woods, subsisting often on nothing but pork and whis- key, they find metal more attractive than village or fireside. The small streams emptying into the Sus- quehannah are innumerable, and eight or ten miles back from the river the arks are built, and the mate- rials of the rafts collected, ready to launch with the first thaw. I live, myself, as you know, on one of these tributaries, a quarter of a mile from its junction. The Owago trips along at the foot of my lawn, as private and untroubled for the greater part of the year as Virginia Water at Windsor ; but, as it swells in March, the noise of voices and hammering coming out from the woods above, warn us of the approach of an ark, and at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour the rude structure shoots by, floating high on the water without its lading (which it takes in at the village below), and manned with a singing and saucy crew, who dodge the branches of the trees, and work their steering paddles with an adroitness and nonchalance which sufficiently shows the character of the class. The sudden bends which the river takes in describing my woody Omega, put their steersmanship to the test ; and when the leaves are off the trees, it is a curious sight to see the bulky monsters, shining with new boards, whirling around in the swift eddies, and, when caught by the current again, gliding off among the trees like a sing- | ing and swearing phantom of an unfinished barn. i At the village they take wheat and pork into the i arks, load their rafts with plank and shingles, and wait for the return of the freshet. It is a fact you may not i know, that when a river is rising, the middle is the ■ highest, and vice versa when falling, sufficiently proved ! by the experience of the raftsmen, who, if they start I before the flow is at its top, can not keep their crafts from the shore. A pent house, barely sufficient for | a man to stretch himself below, is raised on the deck, ! with a fire-place of earth and loose stone, and with I what provision they can afford, and plenty of whiskey, they shove out into the stream. Thenceforward it is vogue la galere ! They have nothing to do, all day, but abandon themselves to the current, sing and dance and take their turn at the steering oars ; and when the sun sets they look out for an eddy, and pull in to the shore. The stopping-places are not very numerous, and are well known to all who fellow the trade ; and, as the river swarms with rafts, the getting to land, and making sure of a fastening, is a scene always of great competition, and often of desperate fighting. When all is settled for the night, however, and the fires are lit on the long range of the flotilla, the raftsmen get together over their whiskey and provender, and tell the thousand stories of their escapes and accidents | and with the repetition of this, night after night, the whole rafting population along the five hundred miles of the Susquehannah becomes partially acquainted, and forms a sympathetic corps, whose excitement and esprit might be roused to very dangerous uses. By daylight they are cast off and once more on the current, and in five or seven days they arrive at tide water, where the crew is immediately discharged, and start, usually on foot, to follow the river home again. There are several places in the navigation which are dangerous, such as rapids and dam-sluices ; and what with these, and the scenes at the eddies, and their pil- grimage through a thinly settled and wild country home again, they see enough of adventure to make them fireside heroes, and incapacitate them (while their vigor lasts, at least), for all the more quiet habits of the farmer. The consequence is easy to be seen. Agriculture is but partially followed throughout the country, and while these cheap facilities for transport- ing produce to the seaboard exist, those who are con- tented to stay at home, and cultivate the rich river lands of the country, are sure of high prices and a ready reward for their labor. Moral. Come to the Susquehannah, and settle on a farm. You did not know what I was driving at all this while ! The raftsmen who " follow the Delaware" (to use their own poetical expression) are said to be a much wilder class than those on the Susquehannah. In re- turning to Owego, by different routes, I have often fallen in with parties of both : and certainly nothing could be more entertaining than to listen to their tales. In a couple of years the canal route on the Susque- hannah will lay open this rich vein of the picturesque and amusing, and as the tranquil boat glides peace- fully along the river bank, the traveller will be sur- prised with the strange effect of these immense flo- tillas, with their many fires and wild people, lying in the glassy bends of the solitary stream, the smoke stealing through the dark forest, and the confusion of a hundred excited voices breaking the silence. In my LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 241 trip down the river in the spring, I saw enough that was novel in this way to fill a now portfolio for Bart- lett, and I intend he shall raft it with me to salt water the next time he comes among us. How delicious are these October noons ! They will soon chill, I am afraid, and I shall be obliged to give up my out-of-door's habits ; but I shall do it un- willingly. I have changed sides under the bridge, to sit with my feet in the sun, and I trust this warm cor- ner will last me till November at least. The odor of the dying leaves, and the song of the strengthening brook, are still sufficient allurements, and even your rheumatism (of which the Latin should be podagra) might safely keep me company till dinner. Adieu, dear Doctor ! write me a long account of Vestris and Matthews (how you like them, I mean, for I know very well how I like them myself), and thank me for turning over to you a new leaf of American romance. You are welcome to write a novel, and call it " The Rafts- man of the Susquehannah." LETTER XV. " When did I descend the Susquehannah on a raft?" Never, dear Doctor ! But I have descended it in a steamboat, and that may surprise you more. It is an in-navigable river, it is true : and it is true, too, that there are some twenty dams across it between Owego and Wilkesbarre ; yet have I steamed it from Owego to Wyoming, one hundred and fifty miles, in twelve hours — on the top of a freshet. The dams were deep under water, and the river was as smooth as the Hudson. And now you will wonder how a steamer came, by fair means, at Owego. A year or two since, before there was a prospect of extending the Pennsylvania canal to this place, it be- came desirable to bring the coal of " the keystone state" to these southern counties by some cheaper conveyance than horse-teams. A friend of mine, liv- ing here, took it into his head that, as salmon and shad will ascend a fall of twenty feet in a river, the propulsive energy of their tails might possibly furnish a hint for a steamer that would shoot up dams and rapids. The suggestion was made to a Connecticut man, who, of course, undertook it. He would have been less than a Yankee if he had not tried. The product of his ingenuity was the steamboat "Susque- hannah," drawing but eighteen inches ; and, besides her side-paddles, having an immense wheel in the stern, which playing in the slack water of the boat, would drive her up Niagara, if she would but hold to- gether. The principal weight of her machinery hung upon two wooden arches running fore and aft, and al- together she was a neat piece of contrivance, and promised fairly to answer the purpose. I think the " Susquehannah" had made three trips when she broke a shaft, and was laid up ; and, what with one delay and another, the canal was half com- pleted between her two havens before the experiment had fairly succeeded. A month or two since, the pro- prietors determined to run her down the river for the purpose of selling her, and I was invited among others to join in the trip. The only offices professionally filled on board were those of the engineer and pilot. Captain, mate, fire- men, steward, cook, and chambermaid, were repre- sented en amateur by gentlemen passengers. We r*ag the bell at the starting hour with the zeal usually displayed in that department, and, by the assistance of the current, got off in the usual style of a steamboat departure, wanting only the newsboys and pickpockets. With a stream running at five knots, and paddles cal- culated to mount a cascade, we could not fail to take the river in gallant style, and before we had regulated 16 our wood-piles and pantry, we were backing water at Athens, twenty miles on our way. Navigating the Susquehannah is very much like dancing " the cheat." You are always making straight up to a mountain, with no apparent possibility of escaping contact with it, and it is an even chance up to the last moment which side of it you are to chassez with the current. Meantime the sun seems capering about to all points of the compass, the shadows falling in every possible direction, and north, south, east, and west, changing places with the familiarity of a mas querade. The blindness of the river's course is in- creased by the innumerable small islands in its bosom, ! whose tall elms and close-set willows meet half-way ! those from either shore; and, the current very often ■ dividing above them, it takes an old voyager to choose : between the shaded alleys, by either of which you would think Arethusa might have eluded her lover. My own mental occupation, as we glided on, was the distribution of white villas along the shore, on spots where nature seemed to have arranged the ground for their reception. I saw thousands of sites where the lawns were made, the terraces defined and levelled, the groves tastefully clumped, the ancient trees ready with their broad shadows, the approaches to the water laid out, the banks sloped, and in every- thing the labor of art seemingly all anticipated by na- ture. I grew tired of exclaiming, to the friend who was beside me, "What an exquisite site for a villa! What a sweet spot for a cottage!" If I had had the power to people the Susquehannah by the wave of a wand, from those I know capable of appreciating its beauty, what a paradise I could have spread out between my own home and Wyoming ! It was pleas- ant to know, that by changes scarcely less than ma- gical, these lovely banks will soon be amply seen and admired, and probably as rapidly seized upon and in- habited by persons of taste. The gangs of laborers at the foot of every steep cliff, doing the first rough work of the canal, gave promise of a speedy change in the aspect of this almost unknown river. It was sometimes ticklish steering among the rafts and arks with which the river was thronged, and we never passed one without getting the raftsman's rude hail. One of them furnished my vocabulary with a new measure of speed. He stood at the stern oar of a shingle raft, gaping at us, open-mouthed as we came down upon him. "Wal!" said he, as we shot past, "you're going a good hickory, mister !" It was amu- sing, again, to run suddenly round a point and come upon a raft with a minute's warning ; the voyagers as little expecting an intrusion upon their privacy, as a retired student to be unroofed in a London garret. The different modes of expressing surprise became at last quite a study to me, yet total indifference was not infrequent ; and there were some who, I think, would not have risen from their elbows if the steamer had flown bodily over them. We passed the Falls of Wyalusing (most musical of Indian names) and Buttermilk Falls, both cascades worthy of being known and sung, and twilight over- took us some two hours from Wyoming. We had no lights on board, and the engineer was unwilling to run in the dark ; so our pilot being an old raftsman, we put into the first "eddy," and moored for the night. These eddies, by the way, would not easily be found by a stranger, but to the practised navigators of the river they are all numbered and named like harbors on a coast. The strong current, in the direct force of which the clumsy raft would find it impossible to come to, and moor, is at these places turned back by some projection of the shore, or ledge at the bottom, and a pool of still water is formed in which the craft may lie secure for the night. The lumbermen give a cheer when they have steered successfully in, and springing joyfully ashore, drive their stakes, eat, dance, quarrel, 242 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. and sleep ; and many a good tale is told of rafts slily I unmoored, and set adrift at midnight by parties from the eddies above, and of the consequent adventures of | running in the dark. We had on board two gentle- men who had earned an independence in this rough vocation, and their stories, told laughingly against each other, developed well the expedient and hazard of the vocation. One of them had once been mis- chievously cut adrift by the owner of a rival cargo, when moored in an eddy with an ark-load of grain, j The article was scarce and high in the markets below, i and he had gone to sleep securely under his pent- 1 house, and was dreaming of his profits, when he sud- j denly awoke with a shock, and discovered that he was j high and dry upon a sedgy island some miles below j his moorings. The freshet was falling fast, and soon after daylight his competitor for the market drifted \ past with a laugh, and confidently shouted out a good- \ by till another voyage. The triumphant ark-master j floated on all day, moored again at night, and arrived safely at tide-water, where the first object that struck his sight was the ark he had left in the sedges, its freight sold, its owner preparing to return home, and the market of course forestalled ! The " Roland for his Oliver" had, with incredible exertion, dug a canal for his ark, launched her on the slime, and by risking the night-running, passed him unobserved and gained a day — a feat as illustrative of the American genius for emergency as any on record. It was a still, starlight night, and the river was laced with the long reflections of the raft-fires, while the softened songs of the men over their evening carouse, came to us along the smooth water with the effect of far better music. What with " wooding" at two or three places, however, and what with the excitement of the day, we were too fatigued to give more than a glance and a passing note of admiration to the beauty \ of the scene, and the next question was, how to come I by Sancho's "blessed invention of sleep." We had! been detained at the wooding-places, and had made no calculation to lie by a night. There were no beds on board, and not half room enough in the little cabin to distribute to each passenger six feet by two of floor. The shore was wild, and not a friendly lamp glimmering on the hills ; but the pilot at last recollect- ed having once been to a house a mile or two back from the river, and with the diminished remainder of our provender as a pis alter in case of finding no sup- per in our forage, we started in search. We stum- bled and scrambled, and delivered our benisons to rock and brier, till I would fain have lodged with Trinculo " under a moon-calf's gaberdine," but by-and-by our leader fell upon a track, and a light soon after glim- mered before us. We approached through cleared fields, and, without the consent of the farmer's dog, to whose wishes on the subject we were compelled to do violence, the blaze of a huge fire (it was a chilly night of spring) soon bettered our resignation. A stout, white-headed fellow of twenty-eight or thirty, bare- footed, sat in a cradle, see-sawing before the fire, and without rising when we entered, or expressing the slightest surprise at our visit, he replied to our ques- tions, that he was the father of some twelve sorrel and barefoot copies of himself huddled into the corner, that "the woman" was his wife, and that we were welcome "to stay." Upon this the "woman" for the first time looked at us, counted us with the nods of her head, and disappeared with the only candle. When his wife reappeared, the burly farmer ex- tracted himself with some difficulty from the cradle, and without a word passing between them, entered upon his office as chamberlain. We followed him up stairs, where we were agreeably surprised to find three very presentable beds ; and as I happened to be the last and fifth, I felicitated myself on the good chance of sleeping alone, " clapped into my prayers," was recommended to Master Barnardine, and was asleep before the candle-snuff. I should have said that mine was a "single bed," in a sort of a closet par- titioned off from the main chamber. How long I had travelled in dream-land I have no means of knowing, but I was awoke by a touch on the shoulder, and the information that 1 must make room for a bedfellow. It was a soft-voiced young gentle- man, as well as I could perceive, with his collar turned down, and a book under his arm. Without very clear- ly remembering where I was, I represented to my pro- posed friend that I occupied as nearly as possible the whole of the bed — to say nothing of a foot, over which he might see (the foot) by looking where it outreached the coverlet. It was a very short bed, indeed. ' It was large enough for me till you came," said the stranger, modestly. " Then I am the intruder ?" I asked. " No intrusion if you will share with me," he said; but as this is my bed, and I have no resource but the kitchen-fire, perhaps you will let me in." There was no resisting his tone of good humor, and my friend by this time having prepared himself to take upas little room as possible, I consented that he should blow out the candle and get under the blanket. The argument and the effort of making myself small as he crept in, had partially waked me, and before my ears were sealed up again, I learned that my companion, who proved rather talkative, was the village school- master. He taught for twelve dollars a month and his board — taking the latter a week at a time with the dif- ferent families to which his pupils belonged. For the present week he was quartered upon our host, and hav- ing been out visiting past the usual hour of bedtime, he was not aware of the arrival of strangers till he found me on his pillow. I went to sleep, admiring the amiable temper of my new friend under the circumstances, but awoke pres- ently with a sense of suffocation. The schoolmaster was fast asleep, but his arms were clasped tightly round my throat. I disengaged them without waking him, and composed myself again. Once more I a woke half suffocated. My friend's arms had found their way again round my neck, and, though evidently fast asleep, he was drawing me to him with a clasp I found it difficult to unloose. I shook him broad awake, and begged him to take notice that he was sleeping with a perfect stranger. He seemed very much annoyed at having disturbed me, made twenty apologies, and turning his back, soon fell asleep. I followed his example, wishing him a new turn to his dream. A third time I sprang up choking from the pillow, drawing my companion fairly on end with me. I could stand it no longer. Even when half aroused he could hardly be persuaded to let go his hold of my neck. I jumped out of bed, and flung open the window for a little air. The moon had risen, and the night was ex- quisitely fine. A brawling brook ran under the win- dow, and after a minute or two, being thoroughly awaked, I looked at my watch in the moonlight, and found it wanted but an hour or two of morning Airaid to risk my throat again, and remembering that 1 could not fairly quarrel with my friend, who had undoubtedly a right to embrace, after his own fashion, any intruder who ventured into his proper bed, I went down stairs, and raked open the embers of the kitchen fire, which served me for less affectionate company till dawn. How and where he could have acquired his caressing habits, were subjects upon which I speculated unsatis- factorily over the coals. My companions were called up at sunrise by the landlord, and as we were paying for our lodging, the schoolmaster came down to see us off I was less sur- prised when I came to look at him by daylight. It i was a fair, delicate boy of sixteen, whose slender health LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 243 had probably turned his attention to books, and who, I perhaps, had never slept away from his mother till he j went abroad to teach school. Quite satisfied with one ! experiment of filling the maternal relation, I wished • him a less refractory bedfellow, and we hastened on j board. The rafts were under weigh before us, and the tor- i toise had overtaken the hare, for we passed several that we had passed higher Up, and did not fail to get a jeer for our sluggishness. An hour or two brought us to Wilkesbarre, an excellent hotel, good breakfast, and new and kind friends ; and so ended my trip on the Susquehannah. Some other time I will tell you how beautiful is the valley of Wyoming, which I have i since seen in the holyday colors of October. Thereby hangs a tale too, worth telling and hearing ; and as a promise is good parting stuff, adieu ! LETTER XVI. The books and the music came safe to hand, dear Doctor, but I trust we are not to stand upon quid-pro- quosities. The barrel of buckwheat not only cost me nothing, but I have had my uses of it in the raising, and can no more look upon it as value, than upon a flower which I pluck to smell, and give away when it is faded. I have sold some of my crops for the oddity of the sensa- tion ; and I assure you it is very much like being paid for dancing when the ball is over. Why, consider the offices this very buckwheat has performed. There was the trust in Providence, in the purchase of the seed — a sermon. There were the exercise and health in ploughing, harrowing, and sowing — prescription, and pill. There was the performance of the grain, its sprouting, its flowering, it earing, and its ripening — a great deal more amusing than a play. Then there were the harvesting, thrashing, fanning, and grinding — a sort of pastoral collection, publication, and purgation by criticism. Now, suppose your clergyman, your physician, your favorite theatrical corps, your pub- lisher, printer, and critic, thrashed and sold in bags for six shillings a bushel ! I assure you the cases are similar, except that the buckwheat makes probably the more savory cake. The new magazine was welcome ; the more, that it brought back to my own days of rash adventure in such ticklish craft, with a pleasant sense of deliver- ance from its risk and toil. The imprint of " No. I., Vol. I.," reads to me like a bond for the unreserved abandonment of time and soul. Truly, youth is wise- ly provided with little forethought, and much hope. What child would learn the alphabet if he could see at a glance the toil that lies behind it ? I look upon the fresh type and read the sanguine prospectus of this new-born monthly, and remember, with astonish- ment, the thoughtlessness with which, years ago, I launched in the same gay colors such a venture on the wave. It is a voyage that requires plentiful stores, much experience of the deeps and shallows of the literary seas, and a hand at every halyard; yet, to abandon my simile, I proposed to be publisher and editor, critic and contributer ; and I soon found that I might as well have added reader to my manifold of- fices. No one who has not tried this vocation can have any idea of the difficulty of procuring the light, yet condensed — the fragmented, yet finished — the good-tempered and gentlemanly, yet high-seasoned and dashing papers necessary to a periodical. A man who can write them, can, in our country, put himself to a more profitable use— and does. The best maga- zine writer living, in my opinion, is Edward Everett; and he governs a state with the same time and atten- tion which in England, perhaps, would be cramped to contributing to a review. Calhoun might write wonderfully fine articles. LegarS, of Charleston, has the right talent, with the learning. Crittenden, of the senate, I should think might have written the most brilliant satirical papers. But these, and others like them, are men the country and their own ambition can not spare. There is a younger class of writers however ; and though the greater number of these, too] fill responsible stations in society, separate from general literature, they might be induced, probably, were the remuneration adequate, to lend their support to a periodical " till the flower of their fame shall be more blown," Among them are Felton and Longfellow, both professors at Cambridge; and Sumner and Hen- ry Cleaveland, lawyers of Boston — a knot of writers who sometimes don the cumbrous armor of the North American Review, but who would show to more ad- vantage in the lighter harness of the monthlies. I could name twenty more to any one interested to know them, all valuable allies to a periodical ; but no literary man questions that. We have in our country talent enough, if there were the skill and means to put it judiciously together. Coleridge and others have mourned over the age of reviews, as the downfall and desecration of authorship; but I am inclined to think authors gain more than they lose by the facility of criticism. What chance has a book on a shelf, waiting to be called for by the purcha ser uninformed of its merits, to one whose beauties and defects have been canvassed by these Mercury- winged messengers, volant and universal as the quick- est news of the hour? How slow and unsympathetic must have been the progress of a reputation, when the judicious admirer of a new book could but read and put it by, expressing his delight, at farthest, to his immediate friend or literary correspondent? The ap- prehensive and honest readers of a book are nevti many; but in our days, if it reach but one of these, what is the common outlet of his enthusiasm ? Why, a trumpet-tongued review, that makes an entire peo- ple partakers of his appreciation, in the wax and wane of a single moon. Greedily as all men and women devour books, ninety-nine in a hundred require them to be first cut up, liable else, like children at their meals, to swallow the wrong morsel. Yet, like chil- dren still, when the good is pointed out, they digest it as well as another, and so is diffused an understanding, as well as prompt admiration of the author. For my- self, I am free to confess I am one of those who like to take the first taste of an author in a good review. 1 look upon the reviewer as a sensible friend, who came before me to the feast, and recommends me the dish that has most pleased him. There is a fellowship in agreeing that it is good. I have often wished there were a Washington among the critics — some one up- on whose judgment, freedom from paltry motives, gen- erosity and fairness, I could pin my faith blindly and implicitly. Dilke, of the London Athenamm, is the nearest approach to this character, and a good proof of it is an order frequently given (a London publisher informed me), by country gentlemen : " Send me ev- erything the Athenaeum praises." Though a man of letters, Dilke is not an author, and, by the way, dear Doctor, I think in that lies the best qualification, if not the only chance for the impartiality of the critic. How few authors are capable of praising a book by which their own is thrown into shadow. " Why does Plato never mention Zenophon ? and why does Zen- ophon inveigh against Plato V But I think there is less to fear from jealousy, than from the want of sympathy between writers on differ- ent subjects, or in different styles. DTsraeli the el- der, from whom I have just quoted, sounds the depth of this matter with the very plummet of truth. " Ev- ery man of genius has a manner of his own; a mode of thinking and a habit of style; and usually decides on a work as it approximates or varies from his own. LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. When one great author depreciates another, it has oft- en no worse source than his own taste. The witty Cowley despised the natural Chaucer; the cold, clas- sical Boileau, the rough sublimity of Crebillon ; the refining Marivaux, the familiar Moliere. The deficient sympathy in these men of genius, for modes of feeling opposite to their own, was the real cause of their opin- ions ; and thus it happens that even superior genius is so often liable to be unjust and false in its decisions." Apropos of English periodicals, we get them now almost wet from the press, and they seem far off and foreign no longer. But there is one (to me) melan- choly note in the Paean with which the Great West- ern was welcomed. In literature we are no longer a distinct nation. The triumph of Atlantic steam navi- gation has driven the smaller drop into the larger, and London has become the centre. Farewell nationali- ty! The English language now marks the limits of a new literary empire, and America is a suburb. Our themes, our resources, the disappearing savage, and the retiring wilderness, the free thought, and the ac- tion as free, the spirit of daring innovation, and the ir- reverent question of usage, the picturesque mixture of many nations in an equal home, the feeling of ex- panse, of unsubserviency, of distance from time-hal- lowed authority and prejudice — all the elements which were working gradually but gloriously together to make us a nation by ourselves, have, in this approxi- mation of shores, either perished for our using, or slipped within the clutch of England. What effect the now near and jealous criticism of that country will have upon our politics is a deeper question, but our literature is subsidized at a blow. Hitherto we have been to them a strange country ; the few books that reached them they criticised with complimentary jeal- ousy, or with the courtesy due to a stranger ; while our themes and our political structures were looked on with the advantage of distance, undemeaned by ac- quaintance with sources or familiarity with details. "While all our material is thrown open to English au- thors, we gain nothing in exchange, for, with the in- stinct of descendants, we have continued to look back to our fathers, and our conversance with the wells of English literature was as complete as their own. The young American author is the principal suffer- er by the change. Imagine an actor compelled to make a debut without rehearsal and you get a faint shadow of what he has lost. It was some advantage, let me tell you, dear Doctor, to have run the gauntlet of criticism in America before being heard of in England. When Irving and Cooper first appeared as authors abroad, they sprung to sight like Minerva, full- grown. They had seen themselves in print, had re- flected and improved upon private and public criticism, and were made aware of their faults before they were irrecoverably committed on this higher theatre. Keats died of a rebuke to his puerilities, which, had it been administered here, would have been borne up against with the hope of higher appeal and new effort. He might have been the son of an American apothecary, and never be told by an English critic to " return to his gallipots." The Atlantic was, hitherto, a friendly Lethe, in which the sins of youth (so heavily and un- justly visitited on aspirants to fame), were washed out and forgotton. The American "licked into shape" by the efficient tongues of envy and jealousy at home, stepped ashore in England, wary and guarded against himself and others. The book by which he made himself known, might have been the successful effort after twenty failures, and it met with the indulgence of a first. The cloud of his failures, the remem- brance of his degradations by ridicule were left behind. His practised skill was measured by other's beginnings. We suffer, too, in our social position, in England. We have sunk from the stranger to the suburban or provincial. In a year or two every feature and detail of our country will be as well known to English soci- ety as those of Margate and Brighton. Our similar- ity to themselves in most things will not add to their respect for us. We shall have the second place ac- corded to the indigenous society of well-known pla- ces of resort or travel, and to be an American will be in England like being a Maltese or an East Indian — every way inferior, in short, to a metropolitan in Lon- don. You see, my dear Doctor, how 1 make my corre- spondence with you serve as a trap for my stray thoughts ; and you will say, that in this letter I have caught some that might as well have escaped. But as the immortal Jack "turned" even "diseases to commodity," and as " la superiorite est une infirmite sociale," perhaps you will tolerate my dulness, or con- sider it a polite avoidance of your envy. Write me better or worse, however, and I will shape a welcome to it. LETTER XVII. Do you remember, my dear Doctor, in one of the Elizabethan dramas (I forget which), the description of the contention between the nightingale and the page's lute ? Did you ever remark how a bird, sitting silent in a tree, will trill out, at the first note which breaks the stillness, as if it had waited for that signal to begin ? Have you noticed the emulation of pigs in a pasture — how the gallopping by of a horse in the road sets them off for a race to the limits of the cross- fence ? I have been sitting here with my feet upon the autumn leaves, portfolio on knee, for an hour. The shadow of the bridge cuts a line across my breast, leaving my thinking machinery in shadow, while the farmer portion of me mellows in the sun ; the air is as still as if we had suddenly ceased to hear the growing of the grain, and the brooks runs leaf-shod over the pebbles like a child frightened by the silence into a whisper. You would say this was the very mark and fashion of an hour for the silent sympathy of letter- writing. Yet here have I sat, with the temptation of an unblotted sheet before me, and my heart and thoughts full and ready, and by my steady gazing in the brook, you would fancy I had taken the sun's func- tion to myself, and was sitting idle to shine. All at once from the open window of the cottage poured a passionate outbreak of Beethoven's music (played by the beloved hand), and with a kind of fear that I should not overtake it, and a resistless desire (which, I dare say, you have felt in hearing music) to appropriate such angelic utterance to the expression of my own feelings, I forthwith started into a scribble, and have filled my first page as you see — without drawing nib. If turning over the leaf break not the charm, you are likely to have an answer writ to your last before the shadow on my breast creep two buttons downward. Your letter was short, and if this were not the com- mencement of a new score, I should complain of it more gravely. Writing so soon after we had parted, you might claim that you had little to say ; yet I thought (over that broiled oyster after the play) that your voluble discourse would " put a girdle round the earth" in less time than Ariel. I listened to you as a child looks at the river, wondering when it would all run by. Yet that might be partly disuse in listening — for I have grown rustic with a year's seclusion, I found it in other things. My feet swelled with walk- ing on the pavement. My eyes were giddy with the multitude of people. My mouth became parched with the excitement of greetings, and surprises, and the raising of my tones to the metropolitan pitch. I was nearly exhausted by mid-day with the "infinite LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 245 deal of nothing." Homoeopathy alone can explain why " patter versus clatter" did not finish me quite. Ah ! how admirably Charles Matthews played that night ! The papers have well named him the Mer- cury of comedians. His playing will probably create a new school of p\ay-writing — something like what he has aimed at (without sufficient study) in the pieces he has written for himself. The finest thing I could im- agine in the dramatic way, would be a partnership (a la Beaumont and Fletcher) between the stage knowl- edge and comic talent of Matthews, and the penetra- ting, natural, and observant humor of Boz. The true " humor of the time" has scarcely been reached, on the stage, since Moliere ; and it seems to me, that a union of the talents of these two men (both very young) might bring about a new era in high comedy. Matthews has the advantage of having been from boy- hood conversant with the most polished society. He was taken to Italy when a boy by one of the most munificent and gay noblemen of England, an intimate of his father, and, if I have been rightly informed, was his companion for several years of foreign residence and travel. I remember meeting him at a dinner-party in London three or four years since, when probably he had never thought seriously of the stage. Yet at j that time it was remarked by the person who sat next me, that a better actor than his father was spoiled in j the son. He was making no particular effort at humor on the occasion to which I refer ; but the servants, in- I eluding a fat butler of remarkable gravity, were forced j to ask permission to leave the room — their laughter j becoming uncontrollable. He would doubtless have doubled his profits in this country had he come as a sin- i gle star; but I trust his success will still be sufficient to establish him in an annual orbit — from east to west. One goes to the city with fresh eyes after a year's i absence, and I was struck with one or two things, which, in their gradual wax or wane, you do not seem to have remarked. What Te Dcum has been chanted, for example, over the almost complete disappearance of the dandies ? I saw but two while I was in New- York, and in them it was nature's caprice. They would have been dandies equally in fig-leaves or wam- pum. The era of (studiously) plain clothes arrived some years ago in England, where Count D'Orsay, and an occasional wanderer from Broadway, are the only freshly-remembered apparitions of excessively dressed men ; and slow as has been its advent to us, it is sooner come than was predicted. I feared, for one, that our European reputation of being the most expensive and showy of nations was based upon the natural extreme of our political character, and would last as long as the republic. I am afraid still, that the ostentation once shown in dress is but turned into another channel, and that the equipages of New- York more than supply the showiness abated in the costume. But even this is a step onward. Finery on the horse is better than finery on the own- er. The caparison of an equipage is a more manly study than the toilet of the fine gentleman ; and pos- sesses, besides, the advantage of being left properly to the saddler. On the whole, it struck me that the countenance of Broadway had lost a certain flimsy and tinsel character with which it used to impress me, and had, in a manner, grown hearty and unpretentious. I should be glad to know (and none can tell me better than yourself) whether this is the outer seeming of deeper changes in our character. Streets have ex- pressive faces, and I have long marked and trusted them. It would be difficult to feel fantastic in the sumptuous gravity of Bond street — as difficult to feel grave in the bright airiness of the Boulevard. In these two thoroughfares you are made to feel the dis- tinctive qualities of England and France. What say you of the changed expression of Broadway ? Miss Martineau, of all travellers, has doubtless written the most salutary book upon our manners (malgre the womanish pique which distorted her judgment of Everett and others), but there is one re- proach which she has recorded against us, in which I have felt some patriotic glory, but which I am begin- ning to fear we deserve no longer. The text of hei fault-finding is the Quixotic attentions of Americans to women in public conveyances, apropos of a gentle- man's politeness who took an outside seat upon a coach to give a lady room for her feet. From what I could observe in my late two or three days' travel, 1 think I could encourage Miss Martineau to return to America with but a trifling risk of being too particularly attended to, even were she incognita and young. We owe this decadence of chivalry to Miss Martineau, I think it may be safely said. In a country where every person of common education reads every book of travels in which his manners are discussed, the most casual mention of a blemish, even by a less authority than Miss Martineau, acts as an instant cautery. 1 venture to say that a young lady could scarcely be found in the United States, who would not give you on demand a complete list of our national faults and foibles, as recorded by Hall, Hamilton, Trollope, and Martineau. Why, they form the common staple of conversation and jest. Ay, and of speculation ! Ham- i ilton's book was scarcely dry from the press before or- | ders were made out to an immense extent for egg-cups j and silver forks. Mrs. Trollope quite extinguished j the'trade in spit-boxes, and made fortunes for the fin- ! ger-glass manufacturers ; and Captain Marryat, I un- | derstand, is besieged in every city by the importers, to know upon what deficiency of table furniture he in- tends to be severe. It has been more than once sug- gested (and his manners aided the idea) that Hamilton was probably a travelling agent for the plated-fork manufactories of Birmingham. And a fair caveat to both readers and reviewers of future books of travels, would be an inquiry touching their probable bearing on English manufactures. I would not be illiberal to Miss Martineau, but I would ask any candid person whether the influx of thick shoes and cotton stockings, simultaneously with her arrival in this country, could have been entirely an unpremeditated coincidence? We are indebted, I think, to the Astor House, for one of the pleasantest changes that I noticed while away — and I like it the better, that it is a departure from our general rule of imitating English habits too exclusively. You were with us there, and can bear wit- ness to the delightful society we met at the ladies' ordi- nary ; while the excellence of the table and service, and the prevalence of well-bred company, had drawn the most exclusive from their private parlors, and given to the daily society of the drawing-room the character of the gay and agreeable watering-places of Germany. The solitary confinement of English ho- tels always seemed to me particularly unsuited to the position and wants of the traveller. Loneliness is no evil at home, where books and regular means of em- ployment are at hand ; but to be abandoned to four walls and a pormanteau, in a strange city, of a rainy day, is what nothing but an Englishman would dream of calling comfortable. It was no small relief to us, on that drizzly and chilly autumn day, which you re- member, to descend to a magnificent drawing-room, filled with some fifty or a hundred well-bred people, and pass away the hours as they would be passed un- der similar circumstances in a hospitable country- house in England. The beautiful architecture of the Astor apartments, and the sumptuous elegance of the furniture and table service, make it in a measure a pe- culiarity of the house ; but the example is likely to be followed in other hotels and cities, and I hope it will become a national habit, as in Germany, for strangers to meet at their meals and in the public rooms. Life seems to me too short for English exclusiveness in travel. 1 determined to come home by Wyoming, after you left us, and took the boat to Philadelphia accordingly 246 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. We passed two or three days in that clean and pleasant city, and among other things made an excursion to Laurel Hill — certainly the most beautiful cemetery in the world after the Necropolis of Scutari. Indeed, the spot is selected with something like Turkish feel- ing , for it seems as if it were intended to associate the visits to the resting-places of the departed more with our pleasures than our duties. The cemetery occu- pies a lofty promontory above the Schuylkill, possess- ing the inequality of surface so favorable to the ob- ject, and shaded with pines and other ornamental trees of great age and beauty. The views down upon the river, and through the sombre glades and alleys of the burial-grounds, are unsurpassed for sweetness and re- pose. The elegance which marks everything Phila- delphian, is shown already in the few monuments erected. An imposing gateway leads you in from the high road, and a freestone group, large as life, repre- senting old Mortality at work on an inscription, and Scott leaning upon a tombstone to watch his toil, faces the entrance. I noticed the area of one tomb en- closed by a chain of hearts, cast beautifully in iron. The whole was laid out in gravel-walks, and there was no grave without its flowers. I confess the spirit of this sweet spot affected me deeply, and I look upon this, and Mount Auburn at Cambridge, as delightful indications of a purer growth in our national character than politics and money-getting. It is a real-life poetry, which reflects as much glory upon the age as the birth of a Homer. The sun has crept down to my paper, dear Doctor, and the shadow of the bridge falls cooler than is good for my rheumatism. I wish that the blessing of Ceres upon Ferdinand and Miranda, " Spring come to you at farthest, In the very end of harvest," might light on Glenmary. I enjoy winter when it comes, but its approach is altogether detestable. It is delightful to get home, however; for, like Prospero, in the play I have just quoted, there is a "delicate Ariel" (content), who only waits on me in solitude. You will carry out the allegory, and tell me I have Caliban too, but to the rudeness of country monsters, I take as kindly as Trinculo. And now I must to the woods, and by the aid of these same " ancient and fish-like" monsters, transplant me a tree or two before sunset. Adieu. LETTER XVIII. Our summer friends are flown, dear Doctor ; not a leaf on the dogwood worth watching, though its flu- ted leaves were the last. Still the cottage looks sum- mery when the sun shines, for the fir-trees, which were half lost among the flauntings of the deciduous foliage, look out green and unchanged from the naked branches of the grove, with neither reproach for our neglect, nor boast over the departed. They are like friends, who, in thinking of our need, forget all they have laid up against us ; and, between them and the lofty spirits of mankind, there is another point of re- semblance which I am woodsman enough to know. Hew down those gay trees, whose leaves scatter at the coming of winter, and they will sprout from the trod- den root more vigorously than before. The ever- green, once struck to the heart, dies. If you are of my mind, you would rather learn such a pretty mock of yourself in nature, than catch a fish with a gold ring in his maw. A day or two since, very much such another bit of country wisdom dropped into my ears, which I thought might be available in poetry, albeit the proof be un- poetical. Talking with my neighbor, the miller, about sawing lumber for a stable I am building, I discovered, incidentally, that the mill will do more work between sunset and dawn, than in the same number of hours by daylight. Without reasoning upon it, the miller knows practically that streams run faster at night. The increased heaviness of the air, and the withdrawal of the attraction of light, are probably the causes. But there is a neat tail for a sonnet coiled up in the fact, and you may blow it with a long breath to Tom Moore. Many thanks for your offer of shopping for us, but you do injustice to the "cash stores" of Owego when you presume that there is anything short of " a hair off the great Cham's beard," which is not found in their inventory. By the way, there is one article of which I feel the daily want, and as you live among au- thors who procure them ready made for ballads and romances, perhaps you can send me one before the canal freezes. I mean a venerable hermit, who hav- ing passed through all the vicissitudes of human life shall have nothing earthly to occupy him but to live in the woods and dispense wisdom, gratis, to all com- ers. I don't know whether, in your giddy town voca- tions, it has ever occurred to you to turn short upon yourself, in the midst of some grave but insignificant routine, and inquire (of the gentleman within) wheth- er this is the fulfilment of your destiny ; whether these little nothings are the links near your eye of the great chain, which you fancy, in your elevated hours, con- nects you with something kindred to the stars. It is oftenest in fine weather that I thus step out of myself, and retiring a little space, borrow the eyes of my bet- ter angel, and take a look at the individual I have evac- uated. You shall see him yourself, dear Doctor, with three strokes of the pen ; and in giving your judgment of the dignity of his pursuits, perform the office to which I destine the hermit above bespoken. It is not the stout fellow, with the black London hat, somewhat rusty, who stands raking away cobs from the barn-floor, though the hat has seen worship- ful society (having fallen on those blessed days when hats are as inseparable from the wearer as silk stock- ing or culotte), and sports that breadth of brim by which you know me as far off as your indigenous om- nibus. That's Jem, the groom, to whom, with all its reminiscences, the hat is but a tile. Nor is it the half sailor-looking, world-worn, never-smiling man, who is plying a flail upon that floor of corn, with a look as if he had learned the stroke with a cutlass, though in his ripped and shredded upper garment, you might recog- nise the frogged and velvet redingote, native of the Rue de la Paix, which has fluttered on the Symple- gades, and flapped the dust ot the Acropolis. That is my tenant in the wood, who, having passed his youth and middle age with little content in a more responsi- ble sphere of life, has limited his wishes to solitude and a supply of the wants of nature ; and though quite capable of telling story for story with my old fellow- traveller, probabiy thinks of it only to wish its ravelled frogs were horn buttons, and its bursted seams less penetrable by the rain. And a third person is one of my neighbors, who can see nothing done without showing you a "'cuter way," and who, sitting on the sill of the barn, is amu- sing himself, quite of his own accord, with beheading, cleaning, and picking an unfortunate duck, whose leg was accidentally broken by the flail. His voluntary occupation is stimulated by neither interest nor good nature, but is simply the itching to be doing some- thing, which in one shape or another, belongs to ev ery genuine Jonathan. Near him, in cowhide boots, frock of fustian, and broad-brimmed sombrero of coarse straw, stands, breathing from a bout with the flail, the individual from whom I have stepped apart, and upon whose morning's worth of existence you shall put a philosopher's estimate. I presume my three hours' labor might be done for about three shillings — my mind, meantime, being en- tirely occupied with what I was about, calculating the number of bushels to the acre, the price of corn far- ther down the river, and between whiles, discussing LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 247 the merits of a patent corn-sheller, which we had abandoned for the more laborious but quicker process of thrashing. "Purty'cute tool!" says my neighbor, giving the machine a look out of the corner of his yellow eye, "but tcoo slow ! Corn ought to come off ravin' dis- tracted. 'Taint no use to eat it up in labor. Where was that got out ?" "'Twas invented in Albany, I rather think." "Wal, I guess t'want. It's a Varmount notion. Rot them Green Mountingeers ! they're a spiling the country. People won't work when them things lay round. Have you heern of a machine for botton- ing your gallowses behind?" " No, I have not." " Wal, I've been expecting on't. There aint no other hard work they haint economized. Is them your hogs in the garding?" Three vast porkers had nosed open the gate, during the discussion, and were making the best of their op- portunities. After a vigorous chase, the latch was closed upon them securely, and my neighbor resumed his duck. " Is there no way of forcing people to keep those brutes at home," I asked of my silent tenant. " Yes, sir. The law provides that you may shut them up, and send word to the owners to come and take them away." "Wal! It's a chore, if you ever tried it, to catch a hog if he's middlin' spry, and when he's cotch, you've got to feed him, by law, tjll he's sent for ; and it don't pay, mister." " But you can charge for the feed," says the other. " Pesky little, I tell ye. Pig fodder 's cheap, and they don't pay you for carrying on't to 'em, nor for catching the critters. It's a losin' consarn." " Suppose I shoot them." " Sartin you can. The owner '11 put his vally on it, and you can have as much pork at that price as '11 fill your barn. The hull neighb'r'hood '11 drive their hogs into your garding." I saw that my neighbor had looked at the matter all round ; but I was sure, from his manner, that he could, if encouraged, suggest a remedy for the nuisance. " I would give a bushel of that handsome corn," said I, " to know how to be rid of them." " Be so perlite as to measure it out, mister, while I head in that hog. I'll show you how the deacon kept 'em out of the new buryin' ground while the fence was buildin'." He laid down the duck, which was, by this time, fairly picked, and stood a moment looking at the three hogs, now leisurely turning up the grass at the road- side. For a reason which I did not at the moment conceive, he presently made a dash at the thinnest of the three, a hungry-looking brute, built with an ap- proach to the greyhound, and missed catching him by an arm's length. Unluckily for the hog, however, the road was lined with crooked rail-fence, which deceived him with constant promise of escape by a short turn, and by a skilful heading off, and a most industrious chase of some fifteen minutes, he was cornered at last, and secured by the hind leg. " A hog," said he, dragging him along with the greatest gravity, " hates a straight line like pizen. If they'd run right in eend, you'd never catch 'em in natur. Like some folks, aint it ? Boy, fetch me a skrimmage of them whole corn." He drove the hog before him, wheelbarrow fashion, into an open cow-pen, and put up the bars. The boy (his son, who had been waiting for him outside the barn) brought him a few ears of ripe corn, and as soon as the hog had recovered his breath a little, he threw them into the pen, and drew out a knife from his pocket, which he whetted on the rail before him. "Now," said he, as the voracious animal, unaccus- tomed to such appetizing food, seized ravenously on the corn, "it's according to law to take up a stray hog and feed him, aint it?" " Certainly." By this time the greedy creature began to show symp- toms of choking, and my friend's design became clearer. " And it's Christian charity," he continued, letting down the bars, and stepping in as the hog rolled upon his side, " not to let your neighbor lose his critters by choking, if you can kill 'em in time to save their meat, ain't it ?" " Certainly." "Wal!" said he, cutting the animal's throat, " you can send word to the owner of that pork to come and take it away, and if he don't like to salt down at a min- ute's notice, he'll keep the rest at hum, and pay you for your corn. And that's the way the deacon sarved my hogs, darn his long face, and I eat pork till I was sick of the sight on't." A bushel of corn being worth about six shillings, 1 had paid twice the worth of my own morning's work for this very Yankee expedient. My neighbor borrowed a bag, shouldered his grist, and trudged off to the mill, and relinquishing my flail to Jem, I leaned over the fence in the warm autumn sunshine, and with my eyes on the swift yet still bosom of the river below, fell to wondering, as 1 said before, whether the hour of which I have given you a picture, was a fitting link in a wise man's destiny, The day was one to give birth to great resolves, bright, elastic, and genial ; and the leafless trees, so lorn and comfortless in cloudier times, seemed lifting into the sky with heroic endu- rance, while the swollen Owaga, flowing on with twice the summer's depth, seemed gathering soul to defy the fetters of winter. There was something inharmonious with little pursuits in everything I could see. Such air and sunshine, I thought, should overtake one in some labor of philanthropy, in some sacrifice for friend or country, in the glow of some noble composi- tion, or, if in the exercise of physical energy, at least to some large profit. Yet a few shillings expressed the whole result of my morning's employment, and the society by which my thoughts had been colored were such as I have described. Still this is "farming," and so lived Cincinnatus. Now, dear Doctor, you can be grand among your gallipots, and if your eye turns in upon yourself, you may reflect complacently on the almost sublime ends of the art of healing ; but resolve me, if you please, my little problem. What state of the weather should I live up to ? My present avocations, well enough in a gray day, or a rainy, or a raw, are quite put out of countenance by a blue sky and a genial sun. If it were always like to-day, I should be obliged to seek distinction in some way- There would be no looking such a sky in the face three days consecutively, busi- ed always with pigs and corn. You see the use of a hermit to settle such points. But adieu, while I have room to write it. LETTER TO THE UNKNOWN PURCHASER AND NEXT OCCUPANT OF GLENMARY. Sir : In selling you the dew and sunshine ordained to fall hereafter on this bright spot of earth—the waters on their way to this sparkling brook — the tints mixed for the flowers of that enamelled meadow, and the songs bidden to be sung in coming summers by the feathery builders in Glenmary, I know not whether to wonder more at the omnipotence of money, or at my own impertinent audacity toward Nature. How you can buy the right to exclude at will every other creature made in God's image from sitting by this brook, treading on that carpet of flowers, or lying lis- tening to the birds in the shade of these glorious trees 248 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. — how I can sell it you, is a mystery not understood by the Indian, and dark, I must say to me. "Lord of the soil," is a title which conveys your privileges but poorly. You are master of waters flow ing at this moment, perhaps, in a river of Judea, or floating in clouds over some spicy island of the tropics, bound hither after many changes. There are lilies and violets ordered for you in millions, acres of sun- shine in daily instalments, and dew nightly in propor- tion. There are throats to be tuned with song, and wings to be painted with red and gold, blue and yel- low; thousands of them, and all tributaries to you. Your corn is ordered to be sheathed in silk, and lifted high to the sun. Your grain is to be duly bearded and stemmed. There is perfume distilling for your clover, and juices for your grasses and fruits. Ice will be here for your wine, shade for your refreshment at noon, breezes and showers and snow-flakes ; all in their season, and all " deeded to you for forty dollars the acre ! Gods ! what a copyhold of property for a fallen world !" Mine has been but a short lease of this lovely and well-endowed domain (the duration of a smile of for- tune, five years, scarce longer than a five-act play) ; but as in a play we sometimes live through a life, it seems to me that I have lived a life at Glenmary. Allow me this, and then you must allow me the priv- ilege of those who, at the close of life, leave something behind them : that of writing out my will. Though I depart this life, I would fain, like others, extend my ghostly hand into the future ; and if wings are to be borrowed or stolen where I go, you may rely on my hovering around and haunting you, in visitations not restricted by cock-crowing. Trying to look at Glenmary through your eyes, sir, I see too plainly that I have not shaped my ways as if expecting a successor in my lifetime. I did not, lam free to own. I thought to have shuffled off my mor- tal coil tranquilly here; flitting at last in company with some troop of my autumn leaves, or some bevy of spring blossoms, or with snow in the thaw; my tenants at my back, as a landlord may say. I have counted on a life-interest in the trees, trimming them accordingly ; and in the squirrels and birds, encour- aging them to chatter and build and fear nothing ; no guns permitted on the premises. I have had my will of this beautiful stream. I have carved the woods into a shape of my liking. I have propagated the despised sumach and the persecuted hemlock and "pizen lau- rel." And " no end to the weeds dug up and set out again," as one of my neighbors delivers himself. I have built a bridge over Glenmary brook, which the town looks to have kept up by " the place," and we have plied free ferry over the river, I and my man Tom, till the neighbors, from the daily saving of the two miles round, have got the trick of it. And be- twixt the aforesaid Glenmary brook and a certain muddy and plebeian gutter formerly permitted to join company with, and pollute it, I have procured a di- vorce at much trouble and pains, a guardian duty en- tailed of course on my successor. First of all, sir, let me plead for the old trees of Glenmary ! Ah ! those friendly old trees ! The cot- tage stands belted in with them, a thousand visible from the door, and of stems and branches worthy of the great valley of the Susquehannah. For how much music played without thanks am I indebted to those leaf-organs of changing tone ? for how many whisper- ings of thought breathed like oracles into my ear ? for how many new shapes of beauty moulded in the leaves by the wind ? for how much companionship, solace, and welcome ? Steadfast and constant is the countenance of such friends, God be praised for their staid welcome and sweet fidelity ! If I love them bet- ter than some things human, it is no fault of am- bitiousness in the trees. They stand where they did. But in recoiling from mankind, one may find them the next kindliest things, and be glad of dumb friendship. Spare those old trees, gentle sir ! In the smooth walk which encircles the meadow be- twixt that solitary Olympian sugar-maple and the mar- gin of the river, dwells a portly and venerable toad ; who (if I may venture to bequeath you my friends) must be commended to your kindly consideration. Though a squatter, he was noticed in our first rambles along the stream, five years since, for his ready civility in yielding the way, not hurriedly, however, nor with an obsequiousness unbecoming a republican, but de- liberately and just enough ; sitting quietly on the grass till our passing by gave him room again on the warm and trodden ground. Punctually after the April cleansing of the walk, this jewelled habitue, from his indifferent lodgings hard by, emerges to take his pleas- ure in the sun; and there, at any hour when a gentle- man is likely to be abroad, you may find him, patient on his os coccygis, or vaulting to his asylum of high grass. This year, he shows, I am grieved to remark, an ominous obesity, likely to render him obnoxious to the female eye, and, with the trimness of his shape, has departed much of that measured alacrity which first won our regard. He presumes a little on your allowance for old age ; and with this pardonable weak- ness growing upon him, it seems but right that his position and standing should be tenderly made known to any new-comer on the premises. In the cutting of the next grass, slice me not up my fat friend, sir! nor set your cane down heedlessly in his modest domain. He is "mine ancient," and I would fain do him a good turn with you. For my spoilt family of squirrels, sir, I crave nothing but immunity from powder and shot. They require coaxing to come on the same side of the tree with you, and though saucy to me, I observe that they com- mence acquaintance invariably with a safe mistrust. One or two of them have suffered, it is true, from too hasty a confidence in my greyhound Maida, but the beauty of that gay fellow was a trap against which na- ture had furnished them with no warning instinct ! (A fact, sir, which would prettily point a moral !) The large hickory on the edge of the lawn, and the black walnut over the shoulder of the flower-garden, have been, through my dynasty, sanctuaries inviolate foi squirrels. I pray you, sir, let them not be "reformed out," under your administration. Of our feathered connexions and friends, we are most bound to a pair of Phebe-birds and a merry Bob- o'-Lincoln, the first occupying the top of the young maple near the door of the cottage, and the latter ex- ecuting his bravuras upon the clump of alder-bushes in the meadow, though, in common with many a gay- plumaged gallant like himself, his whereabout after dark is a dark mystery. He comes every year from his rice plantation in Florida to pass the summer at Glenmary. Pray keep him safe from percussion-caps, and let no urchin with a long pole poke down our trusting Phe- bes; annuals in that same tree for three summers. There are humming-birds, too, whom we have com- plimented and looked sweet upon, but they can not be identified from morning to morning. And there is a golden oriole who sings through May on a dog-wood tree by the brook-side, but he has fought shy of our crumbs and coaxing, and let him go ! We are mates for his betters, with all his gold livery ! With these reservations, sir, I commend the birds to your friend- ship and kind keeping. And now, sir, I have nothing else to ask, save only your watchfulness over the small nook reserved from this purchase of seclusion and loveliness. In the sha- dy depths of the small glen above you, among the wild- flowers and music, the music of the brook babbling over rocky steps, is a spot sacred to love and memo- ry. Keep it inviolate, and as much of the happiness of Glenmary as we can leave behind, stay with you fo recompense ! DASHES AT LIFE WITH A FREE PENCIL. PART I; HIGH LIFE IN EUROPE, AND AMERICAN LIFE. PREFACE It has been with difficult submission to marketableness that the author has broken up his statues at the joints, and furnished each fragment with head and legs to walk alone. Continually accumulating material, with the desire to produce a work of fiction, he was as continually tempted by extravagant prices to shape these separate forms of society and char- acter into tales for periodicals ; and between two persuaders — the law of copyright, on the one hand, providing that American books at fair prices should compete with books to be had for nothing, and necessity on the other hand, pleading much more potently than the ambition for an adult stature in literary fame — he has gone on acquiring a habit of dashing off for a magazine any chance view of life that turned up to him, and selling in fragmentary chapters what should have been kept together and moulded into a proportionate work of im- agination. So has gradually accumulated the large collection of tales which follow — literally dashes at life with a free pencil — each one, though a true copy of a part, conveying, of course, no portion of the meaning and moral of a whole. It is as a parcel of fragments — as a portfolio of sketches for a picture never paint- ed — that he offers them to the public. Their lack of what an English critic cleverly calls the "ponderous goodness of a didactic purpose," must be balanced, if at all, by their truth to life, for they have been drawn mostly from impres- sions freshly made, and with no record of what they were a part of. In proportion to his pow- er of imagination, the reader will supply the back-ground and adjuncts — some, no doubt (if the author may judge by himself), preferring the sketch to the finished picture. A word explanatory of the character of Part I. Most of the stories in it are illustrative of the distinctions of English society. As a re- publican visiting a monarchical country for the first time, and traversing the barriers of differ- ent ranks with a stranger's privilege, the au- thor's curiosity was most on the alert to know how nature's nobility held its own against no- bility by inheritance, and how heart and judg- ment were modified in their action by the thin air at the summit of refinement. Circumstances in the career of men of genius now living, and feelings in titled and exclusive circles which the author had opportunities to study, furnished hints for the storied illustrations of the dis- tinctions that interested him, and he has thought it worth while to present these together, as bearing upon those relations of aristocratic life which first interest republican curiosity abroad. With these explanations, the author commits his book to the reader's kind allowance. HIGH LIFE IN EUROPE. LEAVES FROM THE HEART-BOOK OF ERNEST CLAY CHAPTER I. In a small room, second floor, front. No. South Audley street, Grosvenor square, on one of the latter days of May, five or six years ago, there stood an inkstand, of which you may buy the like for three halfpence in most small shops in Soho. It was stuck in the centre of the table, like the largest of the Azores, on a schoolboy's amateur map — a large blot surrounded by innumerable smaller blotlings. On the top of a small leather portmanteau near by, stood two pair of varnished-leather boots of a sump- tuous expensiveness, slender, elegant, and without spot, except the leaf of a crushed orange blossom clinging to one of the heels. Between the inkstand and the boots sat the young and then fashionable au- thor of , and the boots and the ink- stand were tolerable exponents of his two opposite but closely woven existences. It was two o'clock, P. M., and the author was stir- ring his tea. He had been stirring it with the same velocity three quarters of an hour — for when that cup should be drank, inevitably the next thing wa9 to write the first sentence of an article for the New Month. Mag., and he was prolonging his breakfast, as a criminal his last prayer. The "fatigued" sugar and milk were still flying round the edge of the cup in a whity blue concave, when the "maid of all work" of his landlord the baker, knocked at the door with a note. »« 13 G M street. "Dear Sir: " Has there been any mistake in the two-penny post delivery, that I have not received your article for this month ? If so, please send me the rough draught by the bearer (who waits), and the compositors will try- to make it out. Yours, truly, " P. S. If the tale is not finished, please send me the title and motto, that we may print the ' contents' during the delay." The tea, which, for some minutes, had turned off" a decreasing ripple from the edge of the arrested spoon, came to a standstill at the same moment, with the author's wits. He had seized his pea and com- menced : — " Dear Sir : " The tale of this month will be called " As it was not yet conceived, he found a difficulty . in baptizing it. His eyebrows descended like the bars of a knight's visor ; his mouth, which had ex- pressed only lassitude and melancholy, shut close, and curved downward, and he sat for some minutes dipping his pen in the ink, and, at each dip, adding a new shoal to the banks of the inky Azores. A long sigh of relief, and an expansion of every II line of his face into a look of brightening thought gave token presently that the incubation had been success- II ful. The gilded note-paper was pushed aside, a broad and fair sheet of "foreign post" was hastily drawn from his blotting-book. and forgetful alike of the un- achieved cup of tea, and the waiting "devil" of Marl- borough street, the felicitous author dashed the first magic word on mid-page, and without title or motto, traced rapidly line after line, his face clearing of las- situde, and his eyes of their troubled languor, as the erasures became fewer, and his punctuations farther between. " Any answer to the note, sir?" said the maid-ser- vant, who had entered unnoticed, and stood close at his elbow, wondering at the flying velocity of his pen. He was at the bottom of the fourth page, and in the middle of a sentence. Handing the wet and blot- ted sheet to the servant, with an order for the messen- ger to call the following morning for the remainder, he threw down his pen and abandoned himself to the most delicious of an author's pleasures — revery in the mood of composition. He forgot work. Work is to put such reveries into words. His imagination flew on like a horse without his rider — gloriously and ex- ultingly, but to no goal. The very waste made his indolence sweeter — the very nearness of his task brightened his imaginative idleness. The ink dried upon his pen. Some capricious association soon drew back his thoughts to himself. His eye dulled. His lips resumed their mingled expression of pride and voluptuousness. He started to find himself idle, remembered that had sent oft' the sheet with a bro- ken sentence, without retaining even the concluding word, and with a sigh more of relief than vexation, he drew on his boots. Presto ! — the world of which his penny-half-penny inkstand was the immortal cen- tre — the world of heaven-born imagination — melted from about him ! He stood in patent leather — hu- man, handsome, and liable to debt! And thus fugitive and easy of decoy, thus compul- sory, irresolute, and brief, is the unchastised toil of genius — the earning of the "fancy-bread" of poets! It would be hard if a man who has " made himself a name" (beside being paternally christened), should want one in a story — so, if you please, I will name my hero in the next sentence. Ernest Clay was dressed to walk to Marlborough street to apply for his " guinea-a-page" in advance, and find out the con- cluding word of his MS., when there was heard a foot- man's rap at the street door. The baker on the ground floor ran to pick up his penny loaves jarred from the shelves by the tremendous rat-a-tat-laf, and the maid ran herself out of her shoes to inform Mr Clay that Lady Mildred wished to speak witL him. Neither maid nor baker were displeased at bein£ put to inconvenience, nor was the baker's hysterica 252 ERNEST CLAY. mother disposed to murmur at the outrageous clat- ter which shattered her nerves for a week. There is a spell to a Londoner in a coronetted carriage which changes the noise and impudence of the unwhipped varlets who ride behind it, into music and condescen- sion. "You were going out," said Lady Mildred ; " can I take you anywhere?" "You can take me," said Clay, spreading out his hands in an attitude of surrender, "when and where you please ; but I was going to my publisher's." The chariot-steps rattled down, and his foot was on the crimson carpet, when a plain family carriage sud- denly turned out of Grosvenor square, and pulled up as near his own door as the obstruction permitted. Ernest changed color slightly, and Lady Mildred, after a glance through the window behind her, stamp- ed her little foot and said "Come!" "One moment!" was his insufficient apology as he sprang to the window of the other carriage, and with a manner almost infantile in its cordial simplicity, ex- pressed his delight at meeting the two ladies who sat within. "Have you set up a chariot, Ernest?" said the younger, laying her hand upon the dark mass of curls on his temple, and pushing his head gently back that she might see what equipage stopped the way. He hesitated a moment, but there was no escape from the truth. " It is Lady Mildred, who has just " Is she alone ?" The question was asked by the elder lady with a look that expressed a painfully sad wish to hear him answer, "No." While he hesitated, the more forgiving voice next him hurriedly broke the silence. " We are forgetting our errand, Ernest. Can you come to Ashurst to-morrow?" " With all my heart." "Do not fail! My uncle wishes to see you. Stay — I have brought you a note from him. Good- by ! Are you going to the rout at Mrs. Rothschild's to-night?" " f was not — but if you are going, I will." "Till this evening, then?" The heavy vehicle rolled away, and Ernest crushed the note in his hand unread, and with a slower step than suited the impatience of Lady Mildred, returned to the chariot. The coachman, with that mysterious instinct that coachmen have, let fall his silk upon the backs of his spirited horses, and drove in time with his master's quickened pulses ; and at the corner of Chesterfield street, as the family carriage rolled slowly on its way to Howell and James's (on an errand con- nected with bridal pearls), the lofty-stepping bays of Lady Mildred dashed by as if all the anger and scorn of a whole descent of coronets were breathing from their arched nostrils. What a boon from nature to aristocracy was the pride of the horse ! ******* Lady Mildred was a widow of two years' weeds, thirty-two, and of a certain kind of talent, which will be explained in the course of this story. She had no per- sonal charms, except such as are indispensably neces- sary to lady-likeness — indispensably necessary, for that very reason, to any control over the fancy of a man of imagination. Her upper lip was short enough to express scorn, and her feet and hands were ex- quisitely small. Some men of fancy would exact these attractions and great many more. But without these, no woman ever secured even the most transient homage of a poet. She had one of those faces you never find yourself at leisure to criticise, or rather she had one of those siren voices, that, if you heard her speak before you had found leisure to look at her features, you had lost your opportunity for ever. Her voice expressed the presence of beauty, as much as a carol in a tree expresses the presence of a bird, and though you saw not the beauty, as you may not see the bird.it was impossible to doubt it was there. Yet with all this enchantment in her voice it was the most changeable music on earth — for hear it when you would, if she were in earnest, you might be sure it was the softened echo of the voice to which she was replying. She never spoke first. She never led the conversation. She had not (or never used) the talent which many very common-place women have, of giving a direction to the feelings and controlling even the course of thought of superior men who may ad- mire them. In everything she played a second. She was silent through all your greetings, through all your compliments; smiled and listened, if it was for hours, till your lighter spirits were exhausted and you came down to the true under tone of your heart ; and by the first-struck chord of feeling and earnest (and her skill in detecting it was an infallible instinct), she modulated her voice and took up the strain, and from the echo of your own soul and the flow of the most throbbing vein in your own heart, she drew your enchantment and intoxication. Her manners were a necessary part of such a character. Her limbs seemed always en- chanted into stillness. When you gazed at her more earnestly, her eyes gradually drooped, and, again her enlarged orbs brightened and grew eager as your gaze retreated. With her slight forefinger laid upon her cheek, and her gloved hand supporting her arm, she sat stirless and rapt, and by an indescribable magnetism you felt that there was not a nerve in your eye, nor a flutter toward change in the expression of your face, that was not linked to hers, nerve for nerve, pulsation for pulsation. Whether this charm would work on common men it is difficult to say — for Lady Mildred's passions were invariably men of genius. You may not have seen such a woman as Lady Mildred — but you have seen girls like Eve Gore. There are many lilies, though each one, new-found, seems to the finder the miracle of nature. She was a pure, serene-hearted, and very beautiful girl of seven- teen. Her life had been hitherto the growth of love and care, as the lily she resembled is the growth of sunshine and dew ; and, flower-like, all she had ever known or felt had turned to spotless loveliness. She had met the gifted author of her favorite romance at a country-house where they were guests together, and I could not, short of a chapter of metaphysics, tell you how natural it was for these two apparently uncon- genial persons to mingle, like drops of dew. I will merely say now, that strongly marked as seems the character of every man of genius, his very capability of tracking the mazes of human nature, makes him the very chameleon and Proteus of his species, and that after he has assimilated himself by turns to every variety of mankind, his masks never fall off* without disclosing the very soul and type of the most infantine simplicity. Other men's disguises, too, become a second nature. Those of genius are worn to their last day, as loosely as the mantles of the gods. The kind of man called " a penetrating observer," if he had been in the habit of meeting Mr. Clay in London circles, and had afterward seen him rambling through the woods of Park with Eve Gore, natural, playful sometimes, and sometimes sad, his manner the reflex of hers, even his voice almost as feminine as hers, in his fine sympathy with her charac- ter and attractions — one of these shrewd people I say would have shaken his head and whispered, " pool girl, how little she understands him!" But of all the wise and worldly, gentle and simple, who had ever crossed the path of Ernest Clay, the same child-like girl was the only creature to whom he appeared utterly himself— for whom he wore no disguise — to whose ERNEST CLAY. 253 plummet of simple truth he opened the seldom-sound- ed depths of his prodigal and passionate heart. Lady Mildred knew his weaknesses and his genius. Eve Gore knew his better and brighter nature. And both loved him. And now, dear reader, having drawn you the portraits of my two heroines, I shall go on with a disembarras- sed narrative to the end. CHAPTER II. Lady Mildred's bays panced proudly up Bond street, and kept on their way to the publisher's, at whose door they fretted and champed the bit — they and their high-born mistress in attendance upon the poor author who in this moment of despondency com- plained of the misappreciation of the world. Of the scores of people who knew him and his companion as London celebrities, and who followed the showy equipage with their eyes, how many, think you, look- ed on Mr. Ernest Clay as a misappreciated man ? How many, had they known that the whole errand of this expensive turn out was to call on the publisher for the price of a single magazine paper, would have reckoned those sixteen guineas and the chariot of a noble lady to come for the payment — five hundred pounds for your romance, and a welcome to all the best houses and costliest entertainments of England — a hundred pounds for your poem and the attention of a thousand eager admirers — these are some of the " lengthening shadows" to the author's profits which the author does not reckon, but which the world does. To the rest of mankind these are " chattels" priced and paid for. Twenty thousand a year would hardly buy for Mr. Clay, simple and uncelebrated, what Mr. Clay, author, etc., has freely with five hundred. To whose credit shall the remaining nineteen thousand five hundred be set down ? Common people who pay for these things are not believers in fairy gifts. They see the author in a station of society unattainable ex- cept by the wealthiest and best born, with all that profuse wealth could purchase as completely at his service as if the bills of cost were to be brought in to him at Christmas ; and besides all this (once more "into the bargain") caressed and flattered as no " golden dulness" ever was or could be. To rate the revenue of such a pampered idol of fortune, what man in his senses would inquire merely into the profits of his book ! And in this lies the whole secret of the envy and malice which is the peculiar inheritance of genius. Generous-minded men, all women, the great and rich who are too high themselves to feel envy, and the poor and humble who are too low to feel aught but wonder and grateful admiration — these are the fosterers and flatterers, the paymasters of the real wealth and the receivers of the choicest fruits of genius. The aspi- ring mediocrity, the slighted and eclipsed pretenders to genius, are a large class, to whose eyes all bright- ness is black, and the great mass of men toil their lives and utmost energies away for the hundredth part of what the child of genius wins by his unseen pen — by the toil which neither hardens his hands nor trenches on his hours of pleasure. They see a man no come- lier nor better born than they — idle apparently, as the most spoilt minion of wealth, vying with the best born in the favor of beautiful and proud women, using all the goodsof fortune with a profuse carelessness, which the possession of the lamp of Aladdin could not more than inspire, and by bitter criticism, by ingenious slander, by continual depreciation, ridicule, and ex- aggeration of every pretty foible, they attempt to level the inequalities of fortune, and repair the flagrant in- justice of the blind goddess to themselves. Upon the class generally, they are avenged. Their malice poisons the joy and cripples the fine-winged fancy of nineteen in the score. But the twentieth is born proud and elastic, and the shaft his scorn does not fling back, his light-heartedness eludes, and his is the destiny which, more than that of kings or saints, proves the wide inequality in human lot. I trust, dear reader, that you have been more amused than Lady Mildred at this half hour's delay at the publisher's. While I have been condensing into a theory by scattered observations of London authors, her ladyship has been musing upon the apparition of the family carriage of the Gores at Mr. Clay's lodgings. Lady Mildred's position in society, though she had the entree to all the best houses in London, precluded an intimate acquaintance with any unmarried girl — but she had seen Eve Gore and knew and dreaded her loveliness. A match of mere interest would have given her no uneasiness, but she could see far enough into the nature of this beautiful and fresh-hearted girl to know that hers would be no divided empire. All women are conscious that a single-minded, concentra- ted, pure affection, melting the whole character into the heart, is omnipotent in perpetuating fidelity. " Ernest," said Lady Mildred, as the chariot sped from the publisher's door, and took its way to the Park, "you are grown ceremonious. Am I so new a friend that you can not open a note in my presence ?" Clay placed the crushed letter in her hand. "1 will have no secrets from you, dear Lady Mildred. There is probably much in that note that will surprise you. Break the seal, however, and give me your ad- vice. I will not promise to follow it." The blood flushed to the temples of Lady Mildred as she read- but her lips, though pale and trembling, were compressed by a strong effort of self control. She turned back and read the note again in a murmur- ing undertone: — " Dear Mr. Clay : From causes which you will probably understand, I have been induced to recon- sider your proposal of marriage to my niece. — Impru- dent as I must still consider your union, I find myself in such a situation that, should you persevere, I must decide in its favor, as the least of two evils. You will forgive my anxious care, however, if I exact of you, before taking any decided step, a full and fair state- ment of your pecuniary embarrassments (which I understand are considerable) and your present income and prospects. I think it proper to inform you that Miss Gore's expectations, beyond an annuity of c£300 a year, are very distant, and that all your calculations should be confined to that amount. With this under- standing, I should be pleased to see you at Ashurst to-morrow morning. Yours, truly, " Thomas Gore." "Hear me before you condemn, dear Lady Mildred," passionately exclaimed Ernest, as she clasped her hands over the letter and her tears fell fast upon them : " I was wrong to leave the discovery of this to chance — I should have dealt more frankly with you — indeed, if I had had the opportunity — "' Lady Mildred looked up, as if to reproach him for the evasion half uttered. " I have seen you daily, it is true, but every hour is not an hour for confession like this, and besides, my new love was a surprise, and what I have to confess is a change in my feelings still more recent — a constant- ly brightening vision of a life (pardon me, Lady Mil- dred !) deeper a thousand fold, and a thousand times sweeter and more engrossing than ours." " You are frank," said his pale listener, who had re- covered her self-possession, and seemed bent now, as usual, only on listening and entering into his feelings. " I would be so, indeed," he resumed; "but I have •254 ERNEST CLAY. not yet come to my confession. Life is too short, Lady Mildred, and youth too vanishing, to waste feel- ing on delusion." " Such as your love, do you mean, Ernest ?" " Pardon me ! Were you my wife " Lady Mildred made a slight motion of impatience with her hand, and unconsciously raised the expressive arching of her lip. " I must name this forbidden subject to be under- stood. See what a false position is mine ! You are too proud to marry, but have not escaped loving me, and you wish me to be contented with a perfume on the breeze, to feel a property in a bird in the sky. It was very sweet to begin to love you, to win and join step by step, to have food for hope in what was refused me. But I am checked, and you are still free. I stand at an impassable barrier, and you demand that I should feel united to you." " You are ungrateful, Ernest !" " If I were your slave, I am, for you load me with favors — but as your lover, no ! It does not fill my heart to open your house to me, to devote to me your dining hours, your horses and servants, to let the world know that you love me, to make me your romance — yet have all the common interests of life apart, have a station in society apart, and ambition not mine, a name not mine, and hearth not mine. You share my wild passions, and my fashionable negations, not my homely feelings and everyday sorrows. I have a whole existence into which you never enter. I am something besides a fashionable author — but not to you. I have a common human heart — a pillow upon which lies down no fancy — a morning which is not spent in sleep or listlessness, but in the earning of my bread — I have dulness and taciturnity and caprice — and in all these you have no share. I am a butterfly and an earth-worm, by turns, and you know me only on the wins;. You do not answer me!" Lady Mildred, as I have said before, was an admirer of genius, and though Ernest was excusing an infideli- ty to herself, the novelty of his distinctions opened to | her a new chapter in the book of love, and she was interested far beyond resentment. He was talking from his heart, too, and every one who has listened to a murmur of affection, knows what sweetness the breath- ings of those deeper veins of feeling infuse into the voice. To a palled Sybarite like Lady Mildred, there was a wild-flower freshness in all this that was irresisti- bly captivating. A smile stole through her lips instead of the reproach and anger that he expected. " I do not answer you, my dear Ernest, for the same reason I would not tear a leaf out of one of your books unread. I quite enter into your feelings. I wish I could hear you talk of them hours longer. Their simplicity and truth enchant me — but I confess I can not see what you propose to yourself. Do you think to reconcile and blend all these contradictory moods by an imprudent marriage ? Or do you mean to vow your butterfly to celibacy, and marry your worm-fly alone, and grovel in sympathy rather than take love with you when you soar, and keep your grovelling to yourself." " I think Eve Gore would love me, soaring or creep- ing, Lady Mildred ! She would be happier sitting by my table while I wrote, than driving in this gay crowd with her chariot. She would lose the light of her life in absence from me, like a cloud receding from the moon, whatever stars sparkled around her. She would be with me at all hours of the day and the night, sharing every thought that could spring to my lips, and reflecting my own soul for ever. You will forgive me for finding out this want, this void, while you loved me. But I have felt it sickeningly in your bright rooms, with music and perfume, and the touch of your hand all conspiring to enchant me. In the very hours when most men on earth would have envied me, I have felt the humbler chambers of my heart ache with loneliness. I have longed for some still and dark re treat, where the beating of my pulse would be protes- tation enough, and where she who loved me was blest to overflowing with my presence only. Affection is a glow-worm light, dear Lady Mildred ! It pales amid splendor." " But you should have a glow-worm's habits to relish it, my dear poet. You can not live on a blade of grass, nor shine brightest out of doors in the rain. Let us look at it without these Claude Lorraine glasses, and see the truth. Mr. Thomas Gore offers you c£300 a year with his neice. Your own income, the moment you marry, is converted from pocket- money into subsistence — from the purchase of gloves and Hungary water into butcher's meat and groceries. You retire to a small house in one of the cheaper streets. You have been accustomed to drive out continually, and for several years you have not only been free from the trouble and expense of your own dinner, but you have pampered your taste with the varied chefs cVazuvre of all the best cooks of London. You dine at home now, feeding several mouths beside your own, on what is called a family dinner — say, as a good specimen, a beefsteak and potatoes, with a Yorkshire pudding. Instead of retiring after your coffee to a brilliantly lighted drawning-room, where collision with some portion of the most gifted society of London dis- ciplines your intellect and polishes your wit and fancy, you sit down by your wife's work-table, and grow sleepy over your plans of economy, sigh for the gay scenes you once moved in, and go to bed to be rid of your regrets." " But why should I be exiled from society, my dear Lady Mildred ? What circle in London would not take a new grace from the presence of such a woman as Eve Gore ?" "Oh, marvellous simplicity ! If men kept the gates of society, a la bonne heure ! — for then a party would consist of one man (the host), and a hundred pretty women. But the "free list" of society, you know, as well as I, my love-blind friend, is exclusively mas- culine. Woman keeps the door, and easy as turns the hinge to the other sex, it swings reluctant to her own. You may name a hundred men in your circle whose return for the hospitality of fashionable houses it would be impossible to guess at, but you can not point me out one married woman, whose price of admission is not as well known and as rigidly exacted, as the cost of an opera-box. — Those who do not give sumptuous parties in their turn (and even these must be well bred and born people), are in the first place very ornamental ; but, besides being pretty, they must either sing or flirt. There are but two classes of women in fashionable society — the leaders or party- givers, and the decoys to young men. There is the pretty Mrs. , for example, whose habitation nobody knows but as a card with an address; and why is she everywhere ? Simply, because she draws four or five fashionable young men, who would find no in- ducement to come if she were not there. Then there is Mrs. , who sings enchantingly, and Mrs. , who is pretty, and a linguist, and entertains stupid foreigners, and Mrs. , who is ciever at charades, and plays quadrilles, and what would Mrs. Clay do? Is she musical ?" " She is beautiful !" " Well — she must flirt. With three or four fash- ionable lovers " "Lady Mildred!" "Pardon me, I was thinking aloud. Well — I will suppose you an exception to this Mede-and-Persian law of the beau monde, and allow for a moment that Mrs. Clay, with an income of five or six hundred a year, with no eyes for anybody but her husband, poor, pretty, and innocent (what a marvel it would be ERNEST CLAY. 255 in May Fair, by-the-way !), becomes as indispensable to a partie fine as was Mr. Clay while in unmarried celebrity. Mind, I am not talking of routs and balls, where anybody can go, because there must be a crowd, but of petits soupers, select dinners, and entertain- ments where every guest is invited as an ingredient to a well-studied cup of pleasure. I will suppose for an instant, that a connubial and happy pair could be de- sirable in such circles. What part of your income of five or six hundred a year, do you suppose, would dress and jewel your wife, keep carriage and servants, and pay for your concert-tickets and opera-boxes — all absolutely indispensable to people who go out ? Why, my dear Ernest, your whole income would not suffice for the half. You must ' live shy,' go about in hack- ney-coaches, dress economically (which is execrable in a woman), and endure the neglects and mortifica- tions which our pampered servants inevitably inflict on shabby people. Your life would be one succes- sion of bitter mortifications, difficulties, and heart- burnings. Believe me, there is no creature on earth so exquisitely wretched as a man with a fashionable wife and small means." Lady Mildred had been too much accustomed to the management of men, not to leave Ernest, after this homily, to his own thoughts. A woman of less knowledge and tact would have followed up this argu- ment with an appeal to his feelings. But beside that, she wished the seed she had thus thrown into his mind to germinate with thought. She knew that it was a wise principle in the art of love to be cold by daylight. Ernest sat silent, with his eyes cast musing- ly down to the corner of the chariot, where the smal- lest foot and prettiest chaussure conceivable was play- ing with the tassel of the window-pull ; and reserving her more effective game of feeling for the evening, when they were to meet at Mrs. R 's, she set him down at his clubhouse with a calm and cold adieu, and drove home to bathe, dine alone, sleep, and re- fresh body and spirit for the struggle against love and Eve Gore. CHAPTER III. Genius is lord of the world. Men labor at the foundation of society, while the lowly lark, unseen and little prized, sits, hard by, in his nest on the earth, gathering strength to bear his song up to the sun. Slowly rise basement and monumental aisle, column and architrave, dome and lofty tower; and when the cloud-piercing spire is burnished with gold, and the fabric stands perfect and wondrous, up springs the for- gotten lark, with airy wheel to the pinnacle, and standing poised and unwondering on his giddy perch, he pours out his celestial music till his bright footing trembles with harmony. And when the song is done, and mounting thence, he soars away to fill his ex- hausted heart at the fountains of the sun, the dwel- lers in the towers below look up to the gilded spire and shout — not to the burnished shaft, but to the lark — lost from it in the sky. " Mr. Clay !" repeated the last footman on Mrs. K's flower-laden staircase. I have let you down as gently as possible, dear reader; but here we are in one of the most fashion- able houses in May Fair. Pardon me a moment! Did I say I had let you down ? What pyramid of the Nile is piled up like the gradations between complete insignificance and the effect of that footman's announcement? On the heels of Ernest, and named with the next breath of the menial's lips, came the bearer of a title laden with the emblazoned honors of descent. Had he en- | tered a hall of statuary, he could not have been less regarded. All eyes were on the pale forehead and calm lips that had entered before him ; and the blood of the warrior who made the name, and of the states- men and nobles who had borne it, and the accumu- lated honor and renown of centuries of unsullied dis- tinctions — all these concentrated glories in the midst of the most polished and discriminating circle on earth, paled before the lamp of yesterday, burning in the eye of genius. Where is distinction felt ? In secret, amid splendor ? No ! In the street and the vulgar gaze? No! In "the bosom of love? She only remembers it. Where, then, is the intoxicating cup of homage — the delirious draught for which brain, soul, and nerve, are tasked, tortured, and spent — where is it lifted to the lips ? The answer brings me back. Eyes shining from amid jewels, voices softened with gentle breeding, smiles awaken- ing beneath costly lamps — an atmosphere of perfume, splendor, and courtesy — these form the poet's Hebe, and the hero's Ganymede. These pour for ambition the draught that slakes his fever — these hold the cup to lips, drinking eagerly, that would turn away in sol- itude, from the ambrosia of the gods ! Clay's walk through the sumptuous rooms of Mrs. R was like a Roman triumph. He was borne on from lip to lip — those before him anticipating his greeting, and those he left, still sending their bright and kind words after him. He breathed incense. Suddenly, behind him, he heard the voice of Eve Gore. She was making the tour of the rooms on the arm of a friend, and following Ernest, had insensibly tried to get nearer to him, and had become flushed and troubled in the effort. They had never before met in a large party, and her pride, in the universal attention he attracted, still more flushed her eyelids and injured her beauty. She gave him her hand as he turned ; but the greeting that sprang to her lips was checked by a sudden consciousness that many eyes were on her, and she hesitated, murmured some broken words, and was silent. The immediate atten- tion that Clay had given to her, interrupted at the same moment the undertoned murmur around him, and there was a minute's silence, in which the inevit- able thought flashed across his mind that he had over- rated her loveliness. Still the trembling and clinging clasp of her hand, and the appealing earnestness of her look, told him what was in her heart — and when was ever genius ungrateful for love ! He made a strong effort to reason down his disappointment, and had the embarrassed girl resumed instantly her natu- ral ease and playfulness, his sensitive imagination would have been conquered, and its recoil forgotten. But love, that lends us words, smiles, tears, all we want, in solitude, robs us in the gay crowd of every- thing but what we can not use — tears ! As the man she worshipped led her on through those bright rooms, Eve Gore, though she knew not why, felt the large drops ache behind her eyes. She would have sobbed if she had tried to speak. Clay had given her his arm, and resumed his barter of compliment with the crowd, and with it a manner she had never before seen. He had been a boy, fresh, frank, ardent, and unsuspicious, at Annesley Park. She saw him now in the cold and polished armor of a man who has been wounded as well as flattered by the world, and who presents his shield even to a smile. Impossible as it was that he should play the lover now, she felt wronged and hurt by his addressing the same tone of elegant trifling and raillery which was the key of the conversation around them. She knew, too, that she herself was appearing to disadvantage ; and before a brief hour had elapsed, she had become a prey to an- other feeling — the bitter avarice which is the curse of all affection for the gifted or the beautiful— an ava- arice that makes every smile given back for admiration., 256 ERNEST CLAY. a germ torn from us — every word, even of thanks for courtesy, a life-drop of our hearts drank away. H The moon looks On many brooks, The brook can see no moon but this," contains the mordent secret of most hearts vowed to the love of remarkable genius or beauty. The supper-rooms had been some time open; from these and the dancing hall, the half-weary guests were coming back to the deep fauteuils, the fresher air, and the graver society of the library, which had served as an apartment of reception. "With a clouded brow, thoughtful and silent, Eve Gore sat with her mother in a recess near the entrance, and Clay, who had kept near them, though their conversation had long since languished, stood in the centre of a small group of fashionable men, much more brilliant and far louder in his gayety than he would have been with a heart at ease. It was one of those nights of declining May, when the new foliage of the season seems to have exhausted the air, and though it was near morning, there came through the open windows neither coolness nor vitality. Fans, faded wreaths, and flushed faces, were universal. A footman stood suddenly in the vacant door. " Lady Mildred !" The announcements had been over for hours, and ev- ery eye was turned on the apparition of so late a comer. Quietly, but with a step as elastic as the nod of a water-lily, Lady Mildred glided inio the room, and the high tones and unharmonized voices of the differ- ent groups suddenly ceased, and were succeeded by a low and sustained murmur of admiration. A white dress of faultless freshness of fold, a snowy turban, from which hung on either temple a cluster of crim- son camelias still wet with the night dew ; long raven curls of undisturbed grace falling on shoulders of that undescribable and dewy coolness which follows a morning bath, giving the skin the texture and the opaque whiteness of the lily ; lips and skin redolent of the repose and purity, and the downcast but wake- ful eye so expressive of recent solitude, and so pecu- liar to one who has not spoken since she slept. These were attractions which, in contrast with the paled glories around, elevated Lady Mildred at once into the predominant star of the night. " What news from the bottom of the sea, most adorable Venus ?" said a celebrated artist, standing out from the group and drawing a line through the air with his finger as if he were sketching the flowing outline of her form. Lady Mildred laid her small hand on Clay's, and with a smile, but no greeting else, passed on. The bantering question of the great painter told her that her spell worked to a miracle, and she was too shrewd an enchantress to dissolve it by the utterance of a word. She glided on like a spirit of coolness, calm, silent, and graceful, and, standing a moment on the threshold of the apartment beyond, disappeared, with every eye fixed on her vanishing form in won- dering admiration. Purity was the effect she had pro- duced — purity in contrast with the flowers in the room — purity (Ernest Clay felt and wondered at it), even in contrast with Eve Gore ! There was silence in the library for an instant, and then, one by one, the gay group around our hero followed in search of the new star of the hour, and he was left standing alone. He turned to speak to his silent friends, but the man- ner of Mrs. Gore was restrained, and Eve sat pale and tearful within the curtain of the recess, and looked as if her heart was breaking. " I should like — I should like to go home, mother!" she said presently, with a difficult articulation. " I think I am not well. Mr. Clay — Ernest — will see, perhaps, if our carriage is here." "You will find us in the shawl-room," said Mrs. Gore, following him to the staircase, and looking after him with troubled eyes. The carriage was at the end of the line, and could not come up for an hour. Day was dawning, and Ernest had need of solitude and thought. He crossed to the park, and strode off through the wet grass, bathing his forehead with handfuls of dew. Alas ! the fevered eyes and pallid lips he had last seen were less in harmony with the calm stillness of the dawn than the vision his conscience whispered him was charmed for his destruction. As the cool air brought back his reason, he remembered Eve's embarrassed address and his wearisome and vain efforts to amuse her. He remembered her mother's reproving eye, her own colder utterance of his name, and then in powerful relief came up the pictures he had brooded on since his conversation in the chariot with Lady Mildred, visions of self-denial and loss of caste op- posed to the enchantments of passion without re- straint or calculation, and his head and heart became wild with conflicting emotions. One thing was cer- tain. He must decide now. He must speak to Eve Gore before parting, and in the tone of his voice, if it were but a word, there must be that which her love would interpret as a bright promise or a farewell. He turned back. At the gate of the park stood one ot the guilty wanderers of the streets, who seized him by the sleeve and implored charity. " Who are you ?" exclaimed Clay, scarce knowing what he uttered. "As good as she is," screamed the woman, pointing to Lady Mildred's carriage, "only not so rich! Oh, we could change places, if all's true." Ernest stood still as if his better angel had spoken through those painted lips. He gasped with the weight that rose slowly from his heart ; and purcha- sing his release from the unfortunate wretch who had arrested his steps, he crossed slowly to the door crowded with the menials of the gay throng within. " Lady Mildred's carriage stops the way !" shouted a footman, as he entered. He crossed the hall, and at the door of the shawl-room he was met by Lady Mildred herself, descending from the hall, surrounded with a troop of admirers. Clay drew back to let her pass ; but while he looked into her face, it became radiant with the happiness of meeting him, and the temptation to join her seemed irresistible. She en- tered the room, followed by her gay suite, and last of all by Ernest, who saw with the first glance at the Gores that he was believed to have been with her du- ring the half-hour that had elapsed. He approached Eve ; but the sense of an injustice he could not im- mediately remove, checked the warm impulse with which he was coming to pour out his heart, and against every wish and feeling of his soul, he was constrained and cold. " No, indeed !" exclaimed Lady Mildred, her voice suddenly becoming audible, " I shall set down Mr. Clay, whose door I pass. Lord George, ask Mr. Clay if he is ready." Eve Gore suddenly laid her hand on his arm, as if a spirit had whispered that her last chance for happi- ness was poised on that moment's lapse. " Ernest," she said, in a voice so unnaturally low that it made his veins creep with the fear that her reason was unseated, " I am lost if you go with her. Stay, dear Ernest ! She can not love you as I do ! I implore you remember that my life — my life " " Beg pardon," said Lord George, laying his hand familiarly on Clay's shoulder, and drawing him away, " Lady Mildred waits for you !" " I will return in an instant, dearest Eve," he said, springing again to her side, " I will apologize and be with you. One instant — only one " ERNEST CLAY. 257 "Thank God!" said the poor girl, sinking into a chair and bursting into tears. Lady Mildred sat in her chariot, but her head drooped on her breast, and her arm hung lifeless at her side. "She is surely ill," said Lord George; "jump in, Clay, my fine fellow. Get her home. Shut the door, Thomas! Go on, coachman!" And away sped the fleet horses of Lady Mildred, but not homeward. Clay lifted her head and spoke to her, but receiving no answer, he busied himself chafing her hands, and the carriage-blinds being drawn, he thought mo- mently he should be rid of his charge by their arrival in Grosvenor square. But the minutes elapsed, and still the carriage sped on ; and surprised at last into suspicion, he raised his hand to the checkstring, but the small fingers he had been chafing so earnestly ar- rested his arm. "No, no!" said Lady Mildred, rising from his shoulder, and throwing her arms passionately around his neck, " you must go blindfold, and go with me ! Ernest! Ernest!" she continued, as he struggled an instant to reach the string; but he felt her tears on his breast, and his better angel ceased to contend with him. He sank back in the chariot with those fragile arms wound around him, and, with fever in his brain, and leaden sadness at his heart, suffered that swift chariot to speed on its guilty way. In a small maison de plaisance, which he well knew, in one of the most romantic dells of Devon, built with exquisite taste by Lady Mildred, and filled with all that art and wealth could minister to luxury, Er- nest Clay passed the remainder of the summer, for- getful of everything beyond his prison of pleasure, except a voice full of bitter remorse, which some- times, in the midst of his abandonment, whispered the name of Eve Gore. CHAPTER IV. The rain poured in torrents from the broad leads and Gothic battlements of Castle, and the dull and plashing echoes, sent up with steady reverberation ! from the stone pavement of the terrace and courts, I lulled to a late sleep one of most gay and fashionable I parties assembled out of London. It was verging j toward noon, and, startled from a dream of music, by | the entrance of a servant, Ernest Clay drew back the heavy bed-curtains and looked irresolutely around his luxurious chamber. The coals in the bright fire widened their smoking cracks and parted with an in- dolent effort, the well-trained menial glided stealthily about, arranging the preparations for the author's toilet, the gray daylight came in grayer and softer through the draped folds which fell over the windows, and if there was temptation to get up, it extended no farther than to the deeply cushioned and spacious chair, over which was flung a dressing-gown of the loose and flowing fashion, and gorgeous stuff of the Orient. " Thomas, what stars are visible to the naked eye this morning?" said the couchant poet with a heavy yawn. " Sir !" " I asked if Lady Grace was at breakfast?" " Her ladyship took breakfast in her own room, I believe, sir!" " ' Qualis rex, talis grex.' Bring mine !" " Beg pardon, sir ?" "I said 1 would have an egg and a spatchcock, Ihomas! And, Thomas, see if the duke has done with the Morning Post." "I could have been unusually agreeable to Lady Grace," soliloquized the author, as he completed his 17 toilet; "I feel both gregarious and brilliant this morning and should have breakfasted below. Strange that one feels so dexterous-minded sometimes after a hard drink! — Bacchus waking like Aurora! Thomas, you forgot the claret ! 1 could coin this efflux of soul, now, into ' burning words,' and I will. What is the cook's name, Thomas ? Gone ? So has the builder of this glorious spatchcock narrowly escaped immortality ! Fairest Lady Grace, the sonnet shall be yours at the rebound! A sonnet? N — n — no! But I could write such a love-letter this morning! | Morning Post. ' Died at Brighton Mr. William Brown.'' Brown — Brown — what was that pretty girl's name that married a Brown — a rich William Brown. Beverley was her name — Julia Beverley — a flower for the garden of Epicurus — a mate for Leontium! I loved her till I was stopped by Mr. Brown — loved her? by Jove, I loved her — as well as I loved anybody that year. Suppose she were now the widow Brown ? If I thought so, faith ! I would write her such a te- miniscent epistle — Why not as it is — on the supposi- tion ? Egad, if it is not her William Brown, it is no fault of mine. Here goes at a venture ! " To her who was Julia Beverley — " Your dark eye rests on this once familiar hand- 1 writing. If your pulse could articulate at this moment, it would murmur he loved me well! He who writes to you now, after years of silence, parted from you with your tears upon his lips — parted from you as the last shadow parts from the sun, with a darkness that must [ deepen till morn again. I begin boldly, but the usage j of the world is based upon forgetfulness in absence, i and I have not forgotten. Yet this is not to be a love- letter. " I am turning back a leaf in my heart. Turn to it in yours ! On a night in June, within the shadow of the cypress by the fountain of Ceres, in the ducal gardens of Florence, at the festa of the duke's birth- night, I first whispered to you of love. Is it so writ in your tablet ? Or were those broken words, and those dark tresses drooped on my breast, mockeries of a night — flung from remembrance with the flowers you wore ? Flowers, said I ? Oh, Heaven ! how beautiful you were with those lotus-stems braided in your hair, and the white chalices gleaming through your ringlets as if pouring their perfume over your shoulders! How rosy-pale, like light through alabaster, showed the cheek that shrank from me beneath the betraying brightness of the moon! How musical above the murmur of the fountain rose the trembling wonder at my avowal, and the few faint syllables of forgiveness and love. I strained you wildly to my heart ! Oh, can that be forgotten ! " With the news that your husband was dead, rush- ed back these memories in a whirlwind. For one brief, one delirious moment, I fancied you might yet be mine. I write because the delirium is over. Had it not been, I should be now weeping at your feet — my life upon your lips ! "I will try to explain to you, calmly, a feeling that I have. We met in the aisle of Santa Croce — strangers. There was a winged lightness in your step, and a lithe wave in the outline of your form, as you moved through the sombre light, which thrilled me like the awakening to life of some piece of aerial sculpture. I watched you to your carriage, and re- turned to trace that shadowy aisle for hours, breathing the same air, and trying to conjure up to ray imagina- tion the radiant vision lost to me, 1 feared, for ever. That night your necklace parted and fell at my feet, in the crowd at the Pitti, and as I returned the warm jewel to your hand, I recognised the haunting features which 1 seemed to live but to see again. By the first syllable of acknowledgment I knew you — for in your voice there was that profound sweetness that comes !58 ERNEST CLAY. only from a heart thought-saddened, and therefore careless of the cold fashion of the world. In the em- bayed window looking out on the moonlit terrace of the garden, I joined you with the confidence of a familiar friend, and in the low undertone of earnest and sincerity we talked of the thousand themes with which the walls of that palace of pilgrimage breathe and kindle. Chance-guided and ignorant even of each other's names, we met on the galleries of art, in the gardens of noble palaces, in the thronged re- sorts open to all in that land of the sun, and my heart expanded to you like a flower, and love entered it with the fulness of light. Again, I say, we dwelt but upon themes of intellect, and I had not breathed to you of the passion that grew hour by hour. "We met for the last time on the night of the duke's festa — in that same glorious palace where we had first blended thought and imagination, or the wondrous miracles of art. You were sad and lower-voiced than even your wont, and when I drew you from the crowd, and wandering with you through the flowering alleys of the garden, stood at last by that murmuring fountain, and ceased suddenly to speak — there was the threshold of love. Did you forbid me to enter? You fell on my bosom and wept ! " Had I brought you to this by love-making? Did I flatter or plead my way into your heart ? Were you wooed or importuned? It is true your presence drew my better angel closer to my side, but I was myself — such as your brother might be to you — such as you would have found me through life ; and for this — for being what I was — with no art or effort to win affec- tion, you drew the veil from between us — you tempted from my bosom the bird that comes never back — you suffered me to love you, helplessly and wildly, when you knew that love such as mine impoverishes life for ever. The only illimitable trust, the only bound- less belief on earth, is first love ! What had I done to be robbed of this irrecoverable gem — to be sent wander- ing through the world, a hopeless infidel in woman ? " I have become a celebrity since we parted, and perhaps you have looked into my books, thinking I might have woven into some one of my many-colored woofs the bright thread you broke so suddenly. You found no trace of it, and you thought, perhaps, that all memory of those simpler hours was drowned in the intoxicating cup of fame. I have accounted in this way for your never writing to cheer or congratulate me. But if this conjecture be true, how little you know the heart you threw away — how little you know of the thrice-locked, light-shining, care-hidden casket in which is treasured up the refused gold of a first love. What else is there on earth worth hiding and brooding over? Should I wing such treasures with words and lose them ? " And now you ask. why, after years of healing silence, I open this wound afresh, and write to you. Is it to prove to you that I love you ? — to prepare the way to see you again, to woo and win you ? No — though I was worthy of you once ! No — though I feel living in my soul a passion that with long silence and imprisonment has become well-nigh uncontrolla- ble. I am not worthy of you now! My nature is soiled and world-polluted. I am prosperous and famous, and could give you the station you never won, though you trod on my heart to reach it — but the lamp is out on my altar of truth — I love by my lips — I mock at faith — I marvel at belief in vows or fidelity — I would not trust you, no, if you were mine, I would not trust you though I held every vein of your bosom like a hound's leash. Till you can re- buke whim, till you can chain imagination, till you cau fetter blood, 1 will not believe in woman. Yet this is your work ! '■' Would you know why I write to you ? Why has Uod given us the instinct of outcry in agony, but to inflict on those who wound us a portion of our pain ? I would tell you that the fire you kindled so wantonly burns on — that after years of distracting ambition, fame, and pleasure, I still taste the bitterness you threw into my cup — that in secret when musing on my triumphs, in the crowd when sick with adulation, in this lordly castle when lapt in luxury and regard — in all hours and phazes of a life brilliant and exciting above that of most men, I mourn over that betrayed affection, I see that averted face, I worship in bitter despair that' surpassing loveliness which should have been mine in its glory and flower. " I have made my moan. I have given voice to my agony. Farewell !" When Mr. Clay had concluded this "airing of his vocabulary," he enclosed it in a hasty note to his friend, the secretary of legation at the court of Tuscany, requesting him to call on " two abominable old maids, by the name of Buggins or Bridgins," who represented the scan. mag. of Florence, and could doubtless tell him how to forward his letter to " the Browns ;" and the castle-bell sounding as he achieved the superscription, he descended to lunch, very much lightened of his ennui, but with no more memory of the " faithless Julia," than of the claret which had supplied some of the " intensity" of his style. The letter — began as a mystification, or, if it had an object beyond the amusement of an idle hour, intended as a whimsical revenge for Miss Beverley's preference of a rich husband to her then undistinguished admirer — had, in the heat of composition, and quite uncon- sciously to Clay, enlisted real feelings, totally discon- nected with the fair Julia, but not the less easily fused into shape and probability by the facile alchymy of genius. The reader will see at once that the feelings expressed in it could never be the work of imagination. Truth and bitter suffering show through every line, and all its falsehood or fancy lay in its capricious ad- dress to a woman who had really not the slightest share in contributing to its material. The irreparable mischief it occasioned, will be seen in the sequel. CHAPTER V. While the ambassador's bag is steadily posting over the hills of Burgundy with Mr. Clay's letter to Julia Beverley, the reader must be content to gain a little upon her majesty's courier and look in upon a family party assembled in the terraced front of a villa in the neighborhood of Fiesole. The evening was Italian and autumnal, of a ripe, golden glory, and the air was tempered to the blood, as daylight is to the eye — so fitly as to be a forgotten blessing. A well-made, well-dressed, robust gentleman, who might be forty-five, or a well-preserved sixty, sat at a stone table on the westward edge of the terrace. The London Times lay on his lap, and a bottle of sherry and a single glass stood at his right hand, and he was dozing quietly after his dinner. Near a fountain be- low, two fair English children played with clusters of ripe grapes. An Italian nurse, forgetting her charge, stood with folded arms leaning against a rough garden statue, and looked vacantly at the sunset sky, while up and down a level and flowering alley in the slope of the garden, paced slowly and gracefully Mrs. William Brown, the mother of these children, the wife of the gentleman sleeping over his newspaper, and the heroine of this story. Julia Beverley had been married five years, and fot three years at least she had relinquished the habit of dressing her fine person to advantage. Yet in that untransparent sleeve was hiclden an arm of statuary roundness and polish, and in those carelessly fitted ERNEST CLAY. 259 shoes were disguised feet of a plump diminutiveness and arched instep worthy to be the theme of a new Cenerentola. The voluptuous chisel of the Greek never moulded shoulders and bust of more exquisite beauty, yet if she had not become unconscious of the possession of these charms altogether, she had so far lost the vanity of her girlhood that the prudery of a quakeress would not have altered a fold of her cash- mere- Her bonnet, as she walked, had fallen back, and, holding it by one string over her shoulder, she put away behind her "pearl-round ear" the dark and heavy ringlet it had tangled in iis fall, and, with its fellow shading her cheek and shoulder in broken masses of auburn, she presented a picture of luxurious and yet neglected beauty such as the undress pencil of Grenze would have revelled in portraying. The care of such silken fringes as veiled her indolent eyes is not left to mortals, and the covert loves who curve these soft cradles and sleep in them, had kept Julia Beverley's with the fidelity of fairy culture. The Beverleys had married their daughter to Mr. Brown with the usual parental care as to his fortune, and the usual parental forgetfulness of everything else. There was a better chance for happiness, it is true, than in most matches of convenience, for the bride- groom, though past his meridian, was a sensible and very presentable sort of man, and the bride was natural- ly indolent, and therefore likely to travel the road shaped out for her by the very marked hedges of ex- pectation and duty. What she had felt for Mr. Clay during their casual and brief intimacy, will be seen by- and-by, but it had made no barrier to her union with Mr. Brown. With a luxurious house, fine horses, and her own way, the stream of life, for the first year of marriage, ran smoothly off. The second year was chequered with misgivings that she had thrown her- self away, and nights of bitter weeping over a destiny in which no one of her bright dreams of love seemed possible to be realized, and still habit riveted its thou- sand chains, her children grew attractive and attach- ing, and by the time at which our story commences, the warm images of a life of passionate devotion had cased to haunt her dreams, sleeping or waking, and she bade fair to live and die one of the happy many about whom " there is no story to tell." Mr. Brown at this period occupied a villa in the neighborhood of Florence, and on the arrival of Mr. ('lay's letter at English Embassy, it was at once for- warded to Fiesole, where it intruded like the serpent of old on the domestic paradise to which the reader has been introduced. Weak and ill-regulated as was the mind of Mrs. Brown, her first feeling after reading the ardent epistle of Mr. Clay, was unmingled resentment at its freedom. Her husband's back was turned to her as he sat on the terrace, and, ascending the garden steps, she threw the letter on the table. •' Here is a letter of condolence on your death," she said, the blood mantling in her cheek, and her lips arched into an expression of wounded pride and indignation. Alas for the slight pivot on which turns the balance of destiny — her husband slept ! " William!" she said again, but the tone was fainter and the hand she raised to touch him, stayed suspend- ed above the fated letter. Waiting one instant more for an answer, and bending over her husband to be sure that his sleep was real, she hastily placed the letter in her bosom, and, with pale brow and limbs trembling beneath her, fled to her chamber. Memory had required but an instant to call up the past, and in that instant, too, the honeyed ll iiieiies she had glanced over in such haste, had burnt into her imagination, effacing all else, even the object for which he had written, and the reproaches he had lavished on her unfaithfulness. With locked doors, and curtains dropped between her and the glowing twilight, she reperused the worshipping picture of herself, drawn so covertly under the sem- blance of complaint, and the feeling of conscious beauty so long forgotten, stole back into her veins like the reincarnation of a departed spirit. With a flashing glance at the tall mirror before her, she stood up, arching her white neck and threading her fingers through the loosened masses of her hair. She felt that she was beautiful — still superbly beautiful. She advanced to the mirror. Her bright lips, her pliant motion, the smooth trans- parence of her skin, the fulness of vein and limb, all mingled in one assurance of youth, in a wild desire for admiration, in a strange, restless^ feverish im- patience to be away where she could be seen and loved — away to fulfil that destiny of the heart which seemed now the one object of life, though for years so unaccountably forgotten ! " 1 was born to be loved !" she wildly exclaimed, pacing her chamber, and wondering at her own beauty as the mirror gave back her kindling features and animated grace of movement; "How could I have forgotten that I was beautiful ?" But at that instant her husband's voice, cold, harsh, and unimaginative, forced its way to her ear, and, convulsed with a tumultuous misery, she could neither struggle with nor define, she threw herself on her bed and abandoned herself to an uncontrolled agony of tears. Let those smile at this paroxysm of feeling whose " dream has come to pass!" Let those wonder who have never been startled from their common-place existence with the heart's bitter question — Is tliis alt! Reader ! are you loved ? — loved as you dreamed in youth you might and must be — loved by the matchless creature you painted in your imagination, lofty-hearted, confiding, and radiantly fair? Have you spent your treasure ? Have you lavished the boundless wealth of your affection ? Have you beggared heart and soul by the wild abandonment to love, of which you once felt capable ? Lady! of you I ask : Is the golden flow of your youth coined as it melts away ? Are your truth and fervor, your delicacy and devotedness, your unutter- able depths of tenderness and tears — are they named on another's lips? — are they made the incense to Heaven of another's nightly prayer? — Your beauty is in its pride and flower. Who lays back with idola- trous caress the soft parting of your hair? Who smiles when your cheek mantles, and shudders when it is pale? — Who sits with your slenderfingers clasped in his, dumb because there are bounds to lan- guage, and trembling because death will divide you? Oh, the ray of light wasted on the ocean, and the ray caught and made priceless in a king's diamond — the wild-flower perishing in the woods, and its sister culled for culture in the garden of a poet — are not wider apart in their destiny than the loved and the neglected ! — " Blessed are the beloved," should read a new beatitude — " for theirs is the foretaste of Paradise!" CHAPTER VI. The autumn following found Mr. Clay a pilgrim for health to the shores of the Mediterranean. Ex- hausted, body and soul, with the life of alternate gayety and passion into which his celebrity had drawn him, he had accepted, with a sense of exquisite relief, the offer of a cruise among the Greek Isles in a friend's yacht, and in the pure stillness of those bright seas, with a single companion and his books, he idled away the summer in a luxury of repose and enjoyment such as only the pleasure-weary can understand. Recruited in health, and with a mind beginning to yearn once 200 ERNEST CLAY. more for the long foregone stimulus of society, he landed at Naples in the beginning of October. " We are not very gay just now," said the English minister with whom he hastened to renew an ac- quaintance commenced in his former travels, "but the prettiest woman in the world is ' at home' to-night, and if you are as susceptible as most of the cavaliers of the Chiaja, you will find Naples attractive enough after you have seen her." "English?" •* Yes — but you can not have known her, for I think she was never heard of till she came to Naples." " Her name?" "Why, you should hear that after seeing her. Call her Queefl Giovanna and she will come nearer your prepossession. By-the-by, what have you to do this morning ?" " I am at your excellency's disposal," " Come with me to the atelier of a very clever artist then, and I will show you her picture. It should be the man's chef-d'teuvre, for he has lost his wits in painting it." "Literally, do you mean ?" " It would seem so — for though the picture was finished some months since, he has never taken it off his easel, and is generally found looking at it. Besides, he has neither cleaned pallet nor brush since the last day she sat to him." " If he were young and handsome " " So he is — and so are scores of the lady's devoted admirers ; but she is either prudent or cold to a degree that effectually repels hope, and the painter pines with the rest." A few minutes walk brought them to a large room near the Corso, tenanted by the Venetian artist, Ippolito Incontri. The minister presented his friend, and Clay forgot their errand in admiration of the magnificent brigand face and figure of the painter, who, after a cold salutation, retreated into the darkest corner of the point of view, and stood gazing past them at his easel, silent and unconscious of observation. "I have seen your wonder," said Clay, turning to the picture with a smile, and at the first glance only remarking its resemblance to a face that should be familiar to him. " I am surprised that I can not name her at once, for I am sure I know her well. But, stay ! — the light grows on my eye — no ! — with that expression, certainly not — I am sure, now, that I have not seen her. Wonderful beauty ! Yet there was a superficial likeness ! Have you ever remarked, Signor Incontri, that, through very intellectual faces, such as this, you can sometimes see what the counte- nance would have been in other circumstances — with- out the advantages of education, I mean ?" No answer. The painter was absorbed in his pic- ture, and Clay turned to the ambassador. " I have seen somewhere a face, and a very lovely one, too, that was strangely like these features ; yet, not only without the soul that is here, but incapable, I should think, of acquiring it by any discipline, ei- ther of thought or feeling." " Perhaps it was the original of this, and the painter has given the soul!" " He could as soon warm a statue into life as do it. Invent that look ! Oh, he would be a god, not a painter! Raphael copied, and this man copies; but nature did the original of this, as he did of Raphael's immortal beauties; and the departure of the most vanishing shadow from the truth would be a blot irre- mediable." Clay lost himself in the picture and was silent. Yeil after veil fell away from the expression as he gazed, and the woman seemed melting out from the canvass into life. The pose and drapery were nothing. It was the portrait of a female standing still — perhaps looking idly out on the sea — lost in revery perhaps — perhaps just feeling the breath of a coming thought, the stirring of some lost memory that would presently awake. The lips were slightly unclosed. The heavy eyelashes were wakeful yet couchant in their expres- sion. The large dark orbs lustrous and suffused, looked of the depth and intense stillness of the mid- night sky close to the silver rim of a moon high in heaven. The coloring was warm and Italian, but every vein of the transparent temple was steeped in calmness; and even through the bright pomegranate richness of a mouth full of the capability of passion, there seemed to breathe the slumberous fragrance of a flower motionless under its night-burthen of dew. It portrayed no rank in life. The drapery might have been a queen's or a contadina's. It was a woman sto- len to the canvass from her inmost cell of privacy, with her soul unstartled by a human look, and mere life and freedom from pain or care expressed in her form and countenance — yet, with all this, a radiance of beauty, and a sustained loftiness of feeling, as ap- parent as the altitude of the stars. It was a match- less woman incomparably painted ; and though not a man to fall in love with a semblance, Clay felt and struggled in vain against the feeling, that the creature drawn in that portrait controlled the next and perhaps the most eventful revolution of his many-sphered ex- istence. The next five hours have (for this tale) no history. "I have perplexed myself in vain since I left you," Clay said to the ambassador, as they rolled on their way to the palace of the fair Englishwoman; "but when I yield to the secret conviction that I have seen the adorable original of the picture, I am lost in a greater mystery — how I ever could have forgotten her. The coming five minutes will undo the Sphinx's riddle for me." "My life on it you have never seen her," said his friend, as the carriage turned through a reverberating archway, and rapidly making the circuit of a large court, stopped at the door of a palace blazing with light. An opening was made through the crowd, as the ambassador's name was announced, and Clay followed him through the brilliant rooms with an agitation to which he had long been a stranger. Taste, as well as sumptuous expensiveness, was stamped on every- thing around, and there was that indefinable expres- sion in the assembly, which no one could detect or appreciate better than Clay, and which is composed, among other things, of a perfect conviction on the part of the guests, that their time, presence, and ap- probation, are well bestowed where they are. At the curtained door of a small boudoir, draped like a tent, a Neapolitan noble of high rank turned smiling to the ambassador and placed his finger on his lip. The silken pavilion was crowded, and only uniforms and heads, fixed in attention, could be seen by those without ; but from the arching folds of the curtain came a female voice of the deepest and sweet- est melodiousness, reading in low and finely-measured cadence from an English poem. " Do you know the voice ?" asked the ambassador, as Clay stood like a man fixed to marble, eagerly listening. " Perfectly ! I implore you tell me who reads!" "No ! — though your twofold recognisance is singu- lar. You shall see her before you hear her name. What is she reading ?" " My own poetry, by Heaven ! and yet I can not name her! This passes belief. I have heard that voice sob — sob convulsively, and with accents of love — I have heard it whisper and entreat — you look incred- ulous, but it is true. If she do not know me — nay, if she has not " he would have said " loved me" — but the look of scrutiny and surprise on the counte- nance of the ambassador checked the imprudent ERNEST CLAY. 261 avowal, and he became aware that he was on danger- ous ground. He relapsed into silence, and crowding close to the tent, heard the numbers he had long ago linked and forgotten, breathing in music from those mysterious lips, and, possessed as he was by suspense and curiosity, he could have wished that sweet mo- ment to have lasted for ever. I call upon the poet, if there be one who reads this idle tale, to tell me if there is a flattery more exquisite on earth, if there is a deeper-sinking plummet of pride ever dropped into the profound bosom of the bard, than the listening to thoughts born in pain and silence, articulate in the honeyed accents of woman! Answer me, poet! Answer me, women beloved of poets, who have breathed their worshipping incense, and know by what its bright censor was kindled ! The voice ceased, and there was one moment of stillness, and then the rooms echoed with acclamation. "Crown her!" cried a tall old man, who stood near the entrance covered with military orders. "Crown her!" repeated every tongue; and from a vase that hung suspended in the centre of the pavilion, the fresh flowers were snatched by eager hands and wreathed into a chaplet. But those without became clamorous to see the imposition of the crown; and, clearing a way through the entrance, the old man took the chaplet from the busy hands that had entwined it, and crying out with Italian enthusiasm, "A triumph! a triumph!" led forth the majestic Corinna to the crowd. The ambassador looked at Clay. He had shrunk behind the statue of a winged cupid, and though his eyes were fixed with a gaze of stone on the magnifi- cent creature who was the centre of all regards, he seemed by his open lips and heaving chest, to be gasp- ing with some powerful emotion. "Give me the chaplet!" suddenly exclaimed the magnificent idol of the crowd. And with no apparent emotion, except a glowing spot in her temples, and a quicker throb in the snowy curve of her neck and bosom, she waved back the throng upon her right, and advanced with majestic steps to the statue of Love. "Welcome, Ernest!" she said in a low voice, taking him by the hand, and losing, for a scarce per- ceptible moment, the smile from her lips. " Here, my friends!" she exclaimed, turning again, and lead- ing him from his concealment, "honor to whom hon- or is due ! A crown for the poet of my country, Er- nest Clay !" " Clay, the poet!" "The English poet!" "The author of the poem!" were explanations that ran quickly through the room, and as the crowd pressed closer around, murmuring the enthusiasm native to that southern clime, Julia Beverley sprang upon an ot- toman, and standing in her magnificent beauty con- spicuous above all, she placed the crown upon Clay's head, and bending gracefully and smilingly over him, impressed a kiss on his forehead, and said, " This for the poet /" And of the many lovers of this superb woman who saw that kiss, not one showed a frown or turned away, so natural to the warm impulse of the hour did it seem — so pure an expression of admiration of genius — so mere a tribute of welcome from Italy to the bard, by an inspiration born of its sunny air. Surrounded with eager claimants for his acquaintance, intoxicated with flattery, giddy with indefinable emotions of love and pleasure, Ernest Clay lost sight for a moment of the face that had beamed on him, and in that moment she had made an apology of fatigue and retired, leav- ing her guests to their pleasures. CHAPTER VII. " Un amour rechauffe ne vaut jamais rien," is one oi those common-places in the book of love, which ! are true only of the common-place and unimaginative. The rich gifts of affection, which surfeit the cold ! bosom of the dull, fall upon the fiery heart of genius j like spice-wood and incense, and long after the giver's ! prodigality has ceased, the mouldering embers lie j warm beneath the ashes of silence, and a breath will I uncover and rekindle them. The love of common j men is a world without moon or stars. When the i meridian is passed, the shadows lengthen, and the light departs, and the night that follows is dark indeed. But as the twilight closes on the bright and warm pas- sion of the poet, memory lights her pale lamp, like the moon, and brightens as the darkness deepens ; and : the warm sacrifices made in love's noon and eve, go up to their places like stars, and with the light treasur- | ed from that fervid day, shine in the still heaven of ! the past, steadfast though silent. If there is a feature of the human soul in which more than in all others, the fiend is manifest, it is the masculine ingratitude for love. What wrongs, what agonies, what unutter- able sorrows are the reward of lavished affection, of ; generous self-abandonment, of unhesitating and idola- | trous trust ! Yet who are the ungrateful ? Men lack- ; ing the imagination which can reclose the faded form ! in its youthful beauty ! Men dead to the past — with I no perception but sight and touch — to whom woman ! is a flower and no more — fair to look on and sweet to I pluck in her pride and perfume but scarce possessed j ere trampled on and forgotten ! Genius alone treasures the perishing flower and remembers its dew and fra- i grance, and so, immemorially and well, poets have been beloved of women. I am recording the passions of genius. Let me say to you, lady ! (reading this tale understand ingly, for you have been beloved by a poet), trust neither absence, nor silence, nor untoward circumstances ! He has loved you once. Let not your eye rest on him when you meet — and if you speak, speak coldly ! For, with a passion strengthened and embellished tenfold by a memory all imagination, he will love you agaiu ! The hours you passed with him — the caresses you gave him, the tears you shed, and the beauty with which you bewildered him, have been hallowed in poetry, and glorified in revery and dream, and he will come back to you as he would spring into para- dise were it so lost and recovered ! But to my story ! Clay's memory had now become the home of an all- absorbing passion. By a succession of mischances, or by management so adroit as never to alarm his pride, a week passed over, and he had found no opportunity of speaking alone to the object of his adoration. She favored him in public, talked to him at the opera, leaned on his arm in the crowd, caressed his genius with exquisite flattery, and seemed at moments to escape narrowly from a phrase too tender or a subject that would lead to the past — yet without a violation of the most palpable tact, love was still an impossible topic. That he could have held her hand in his, un- forbidden — that he could have pressed her to his bosom while she wept — that she could have loved him ever, though but for an hour — seemed to him sometimes an incredible dream, sometimes a most passionate happiness only to believe. He left her at night to pace the sands of the bay till morning, re- membering — for ever remembering — the scene by the fountain at Florence ; and he passed his day between | her palace and the picture of poor Incontri, who loved her more hopelessly than himself, but found a sym- pathy in the growing melancholy of the poet. " She has no heart," said the painter; but Clay had felt it beat against his own, and he fed his love in silence on that remembrance. They sat upon the rocks by the gate of the Villa Real. The sun was just setting and as the waves formed near the shore and rode in upon the glassy 262 ERNEST CLAY. 6well of the bay, there seemed to writhe on each wavy hack a golden serpent, who broke on the sands at their feet in sparkles of fire. At a little distance lay the swallow-like yacht, in which Clay had threaded the Archipelago, and as the wish to feel the little craft bounding once more beneath him, was checked by the anchor-like heaviness of his heart, an equestrian party stopped suddenly on the chiaja. 41 There is Mr. Clay !" said the thrilling voice of Julia Beverley, " perhaps he will take us over in the yacht. Sorrento looks so blue and tempting in the distance." Without waiting for a repetition of the wish he had overheard, Clay sprang upon a rock, and made signal for the boat, and before the crimson of the de- parting day had faded from the sky, the fair Julia and her party of cavaliers, were standing on the deck of the swift vesse!, bound on a moonlight voyage to Sorrento, and watching on their lee the reddening ribs and lurid eruption of (he volcano. The night was Neapolitan, and the air was the food of love. Jr was a voyage of silence, for the sweetness of life in such an atmosphere and in the midstof that match- less bay, lay like a voluptuous burthen in the heart, and the ripple under the clearing prow was language enough for all. Incontri leaned against the mast, watching the moonlit features of the signora with his melancholy but idolizing gaze, and Clay lay on the deck at her feet, trying with pressed-down lids to recall the tearful eyes of the Julia Beverley he had loved at the fountain. It was midnight when the breath of the orange groves of Sorrento, stealing seaward, slackened the way of the little craft, and running in close under the rocky foundations of the house of Tasso, Clay dropped his anchor, and landed his silent party at their haven. Incontri was sent forward to the inn to prepare their apartments, and leaning on Clay's arm and her hus- band's, the superb Englishwoman ascended to the overhanging balcony of the dwelling of the Italian bard, and in a few words of eloquent sympathy in the homage paid by the world to these shrines of genius, added to the overflowing heart of her gifted lover one more intoxicating drop of flattery and fascination. They strolled onward to the inn, and he bade her good night at the gate, for he could no longer endure the fetter of another's presence, and the emotion stifled in his heart and lips. I have forgotten the name of that pleasant inn at Sorrento, built against the side of its mountain shore, with terraced orange-groves piled above its roof, and the golden fruit nodding in at its windows. From the principal floor, you will remember, projects a broad verandah, jutting upon one of these fruit-darkened alleys. If you have ever slept there after a scramble over Scaricatoja, you have risen, even from your fatigued slumber, to go out and pace awhile that over- hanging garden, oppressed with the heavy perfume of the orange flowers. Strange that I should forget the name of that inn ! I thought, when the busy part of mv life should be well over, I should go back and die there. The sea had long closed over the orbed forehead of the moon, and still Clay restlessly hovered around the garden of the inn. Mounting at last to the alley on a level with the principal chambers of the house, he saw outlined in shadow upon the curtain of a long window* a female figure holding a book, with her cheek resting on her hand. He threw himself on the grass and gazed steadily. The hand moved from the cheek, and raised a pencil from the table, and wrote upon the margin of the volume, and then the pencil was laid down, and the slender fingers raised the masses of fallen hair from the shoulder, and threaded the wavy ringlets indolently as she read : From the slightest, motion of that statuary hand, from the most fragmented outline of that bird-like neck, Clay would have known Julia Beverley ; and as he watched her graceful shadow, the repressed and pent-up feelings of that evening of restraint, fed as they had been by every voluptuous influence known beneath the moon, rose to a height that absorbed brain and soul in one wild tumult of emotion. He sprang to his feet to rush into her presence, but at that instant a footstep started from the darkness of a tree, at the extremity of the alley. He paused and the shadow arose, and laying aside the book, leaned back, and lifted the tapering arms, and wound up the long masses of fallen hair, and then kneeling, remained a few minutes motion- less, with the face buried in the hands. Clay trembled and felt rebuked. Once more the flowing drapery swept across the curtain, the light was extinguished, and the window thrown open to the night air; and then all was still. Clay walked to and fro in an agitation bordering on i delirium. " I must speak to her !" he said, murmur- ! ing audibly, and advancing toward the window. But ' hurried footsteps started again from the shadow of the ; pine, and he stopped to listen. All was silent, and , lie stood a moment pressing his hands on his brow, and trying to struggle with the wild impulse in his brain. His closed eyes brought back instantly the unfading picture of Julia Beverley, weeping on his breast at the fountain, and with one rapid movement ' he divided the curtains and stood breathless in her chamber. The heavy breathing of the unconscious husband ' fell like music on his ear. " Julia !" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "I am j here — Ernest Clay!" "You are frantic, Ernest!" said a voice so calm i that it fell on his ear like an assurance of despair. ' " I have no feeling for you that answers to this free- I dom. Leave my chamber !" " No !" said Clay, dropping the curtain behind him, and advancing into the room, " wake your husband if you will — this is the only spot on earth where I can breathe, and if you are relentless, here will I die ' Was it false when you said you loved me ? Speak, Julia!" "Ernest !" she said, in a less assured tone, "T have done wrong not to check this wild passiou earlier, and I have that to say to you which, perhaps, had better be said now. I will come to you in the garden." " My vessel waits, and in an hour " " Nay, nay, you mistake me. But go ! I will follow instantly !" Vesuvius was burning with an almost smokeless flame when Clay stood again in the night-air, and every object was illuminated with the clearness of a confla- gration. At the first glance around, he fancied he saw figures gliding behind the lurid body of a pine opposite the window, but in the next moment the cur- tain again parted, and Julia Beverley, wrapped in a I cloak, stood beside him on the verandah. "Stand back !" she said, as he endeavored to put | his arm around her, " I have more than one defender I within call, and I must speak to you where I am. [ Will you listen to me, Ernest ?" Clay's breast heaved ; but he folded his arms and j leaned against the slender column of the verandah in I silence. " Were it any other person who had so far forgot- ten himself," she continued, "it would be sufficient j to say, ' I can never love you,' and leave my privacy ! to be defended by my natural protector. But I wish to show to you, Ernest, not only that you can have I no hope in loving me, but that you have made me the j mischievous woman I have become. From an hum- i blc wife to a dangerous coquette, the change may I well seem startling — but it is of your working." " Mine, madam !" said Clay, whose pride was ERNEST CLAY. 263 aroused with the calm self-possession and repulse of her tone and manner. " 1 have never answered the letter you wrote me." " Pardon and spare me !" said Clay, who remem- bered at the instant only the whim under which it was written. " It awoke me to a new existence," she continued, without heeding his confusion, " for it first made me aware that I could ever be the theme of eloquent ad- miration. I had never been praised but in idle com- pliment, and by those whose intellect I despised; and though as a girl 1 had a vague feeling that I was slighted and unappreciated, I yielded gradually to the conviction that the world was right, and that women sung by poets and described in the glowing language of romance, were of another mould, I scarce rea- soned upon it. I remember, on first arriving in Italy, drawing a comparison favorable to myself between my own beauty and the Fornarina's, and the portraits of Laura and Leonora D'Este ; but as I was loved by neither painters nor poets, 1 accused myself of pre- sumption, and with a sigh, returned to my humility. My life seemed more vacant than it should be, and I sometimes wept from an unhappiness I could not de- fine; and I once or twice met persons who seemed to have begun to love me, and appreciate my beauty as I wished, and in this lies the history of my heart up to the time of your writing to me. That letter, Ernest " * " You believed that I loved you then !" passion- ately interrupted her listener, " you know now that I loved you ! Tell me so, I implore you !" " My dear poet," said the self-possessed beauty, with a smile expressive of as much mischief as frank- ness, "let us be honest. You never loved me! I never believed it but for one silly hour ! Stay! — stay ! — vou shall not answer me ! I have not left my bed at this unseasonable hour to listen to protesta- tions. At least, let me first conclude the history of my metempsychosis! I can tell it to nobody else, and like the Ancient Mariner's, it is a tale that must be told. Revcnons ! Your very brilliant letter awoke me from the most profound lethargy by which beauty such as mine was ever overtaken. A moment's in- ventory of my attractions satisfied me that your ex- quisite description (written, I have since suspected, to amuse an idle hour, but done, nevertheless, with the fine memory and graphic power of genius) was neither fanciful nor over-colored, and for the first time in my life I felt beautiful. You are an anatomist of the heart, and I may say to you that I looked at my own dark eyes and fine features and person with the admiration and wonder of a blind beauty restored to sight and beholding herself in a mirror. You will think, perhaps, that love for the writer of this magic letter should have been the inevitable sequel. But I am here to avert the consequences of my coquetry, and I will be frank with you. I forgot you in a day! In the almost insane desire to be seen and appreciated, painted, sung, and loved, which-took possession of me when the tumult of my first feeling had passed away, your self-controlled and manageable passion seemed to me frivolous and shallow." " Have you been better loved ?" coldly asked Clay. " I will answer that question before we part. I did not suffer myself to think of a love that could be returned — for I had husband and children — and though I felt that a mutual passion such as I could imagine, would have absorbed, under happier circum- stances, every energy of my soul, 1 had no disposition to make a wreck of another's happiness and honor, whatever the temptation. Still I must be loved — I must come out from my obscurity and shine — I must be the idol of some gifted circle — I must control the painter's pencil and the poet's pen and the statesman's pcbeme — I must sun my beauty in men's eyes, and be caressed and conspicuous — I must use my gift and fulfil my destiny ! I told my husband this. He se- cured my devotion lo his peace and honor for ever, by giving me unlimited control over his fortune and him- self. We came to Naples, and my star, hitherto clouded in its own humility, sprang at once to the as- cendant. The " attraction of unconscious beauty" is a poet's fiction, believe me! Set it down in your books, Ernest — we are our own nomenclators — the belle as well as the hero ! I claimed to be beautiful, and queened it to the top of my bent — and all Naples is at my feet! Oh, Ernest! it is a delicious power to hold human happiness in your control — to be the loadstar of eminent men and bright intellects! Per- haps a woman who is absorbed in one passion, finds in her lover's character and fame room enough for her pride and her thirst for influence; but to me, giving nothing in return but the light of my eyes, there seems scarce in the world celebrity, rank, .genius enough, to limit my ambition. I would be Helen ! I would be Mary of Scots ! I would have my beauty as undisputed and renowned as the Apollo's! Am I insane or heartless?" Clay smiled at the abrupt naivete of the question, but his eyes were full of visible admiration of the glowing pictures before him. "You are beautiful!" was his answer. "Am I not! Shall I be celebrated hereafter, Er- nest? I should be willing to grow old, if my beauty were ' in amber' — if by some burning line in your book, some wondrous touch of the pencil, some bold novejty in sculpture, my beauty would live on men's lips for ever! Incontri's picture is beautiful and like, but it is not, if you understand, a conception — it is not a memoir of the woman as the Cenei's is — it does not embody a complete fame in itself, like the ' Bella' of Titian, or the 'Wife of Giorgione.' If you loved me, Ernest " "If you loved me, Julia!" echoed Clay, with a tone rather of mockery than sincerity. "Ah, but you threw me away ; and even with my own consent, I could never be recovered ! Believe me, Ernest, there never was a coquette, who, in some one of her earlier preferences, had not made a des- perate and single venture of her whole heart's devo- tion. That wrecked, she was lost to love. I em- barked with you, soul and heart, and you left to the mercy of the chance wind a freight that no tide could bring to port again !" "You forget the obstacles." " A poet ! and talk of obstacles in love ! Did you even ask me to run away with you, Ernest! I would have gone ! Ay— coldly as I talk to you now, I would have followed you to a hovel — for it was first love to me. Had it been first love to both of us, I should now be your wife — sharer of your fame ! And oh, how jealous !" " With your beauty, jealous ?" " Not of fiesh-and-blood women, Ernest ! With a wife's opportunities, I could outcharm, with half my beauty, the whole troop of Circe. I was thinking of the favors of your pen ! Who would I let you de- scribe ! What eyes, what hair, what form but mine what character, what name, would I even suffer you to make immortal ! Paul Veronese had a wife with my avarice. In his hundred pictures there is the same blue-eyed, golden-haired woman, as much link ed to his fame as Laura to Petrarch's. If he had drawn her but once, she would have been known as the woman Paul Veronese painted ! She is known now as the woman he loved. Delicious immortality !" " Yet she could not have exacted it. That would have required an intellect which looked abroad— and poets love no women who are not like birds, content with the summer around them, and with every thought in their nest. Paul Veronese's Bionda, with her soft 264 ERNEST CLAY. mild eyes and fair hair, is the very type of such a woman, and she would not have foregone a caress for twenty immortalities." " May 1 ask what was my attraction, then?" said the proud beauty, with a tone of pique. " Julia Beverley, unconscious and unintellectual !" answered Clay, drawing on his gloves with the air of a man who has got through with an interview. " You have explained your ' metempsychosis,' but I was in love with the form you have cast off. The night grows chill. Sweet dreams to you !" " Stay, Mr. Clay ! You asked me if I had been ' better loved,' and I promised you an answer. What think you of a lover who has forgotten the occupation that gave him bread, abandoned his ambition, and at all hours of the night is an unrewarded and hopeless watcher beneath my window ?" " To-night excepted," said Clay, looking around. " Incontri !" called Mrs. Brown, without raising her voice. Clay started and frowned, as the painter sprang from the shadow of the pine-tree which had before attracted his attention. Falling on his knee, the un- happy lover kissed the jewelled fingers extended to him, and giving Clay his hand in rising, the poet sprang back, for he had elapsed the handle of a stiletto ! " Fear not — she does not love you !" said Incontri, remarking his surprise, and concealing the weapon in his sleeve. " I was destined to be cured of my love, either way," said Clay, bowing himself off the verandah with half a shudder and half a smile. The curtain closed at the same moment over the retreating form of Julia Beverley, and so turned another leaf of Clay's voluminous book of love. CHAPTER VIII. Clay threw the volume aside, in which he had been reading, and taking up " the red book," looked for the county address of Sir Harry Freer, the exponent (only) of Lady Fanny Freer, who, though the "nicest possible creature," is not the heroine of this story. Sir Harry's ancestral domain turned out to be a por- tion of the earth's surface in that county of England where the old gentry look down upon very famous lords as too new, and proportionately upon all other families that have not degenerated since William the conqueror. Sir Harry had married an earl's daughter ; but as the earldom was not only the fruit of two generations of public and political eminence, Sir Harry was not considered in Cheshire as having made more than a tolerable match; and if she passed for a " Cheshire cheese*' in London, he passed for but the rind in the county. In the county therefore there was a lord paramount of Freer Hall, and in town, a lady par- amount of Brook-street ; and it was under the town dynasty that Miss Blanch Beaufin was invited up from Cheshire to pass a first winter in London — Miss Beaufin being the daughter of a descendant of a Nor- man retainer of the first Sir Harry, and the relative position of the families having been rigidly kept up to the existing epoch. The address found in the red book was described upon the following letter: — " Dear Lady Fanny : If you have anything be- side the ghost-room vacant at Freer Hall, I will run down to you. Should you, by chance, be alone, ask up the curate for a week to keep Sir Harry off my hands ; and, as you don't flirt, provide me with some- body more pretty than yourself for our mutual security. As my autograph sells for eighteen pence, you will excuse the brevity of Yours truly, " Ernest Clay. " N. B. Tell me in your answer if Blanch Beaufit is within a morning's ride." Lady Fanny was a warm-hearted, extravagant beautiful creature of impulse, a passionate friend of Clay's (for such women there are), without a spice of flirtation. She was a perennial belle in London; and he had begun his acquaintance with her by throwing himself at her head in the approved fashion — in love to the degree of rose-asking and sonnet-writing. As she did not laugh when he sighed, however, but only told him very seriously that she was not a bit in love with him, and thought he was throwing away his time, he easily forgave her insensibility, and they be- came very warm allies. Spoiled favorite as he was of London society, Clay had qualities for a very sin- cere friendship ; and Lady Fanny, full of irregular talent, had also a strong vein of common sense, and perfectly understood him. This explanation to the reader. It would have saved some trouble and pain if it had been made by some good angel to Sir Harry Freer. As the London coach rattled under the bridged gate of the gloomy old town of Chester, Lady Fanny's dashing ponies were almost on their haunches with her impetuous pull-up at the hotel ; and returning I with a nod the coachman's respectful bow, she put | her long whip in at the coach window to shake hands I with Clay, and in a few minutes they were again off j the pavements, and taking the road at her ladyship's j usual speed. " Steady, Flash ! steady !" (she ran on, talking to I Clay, and her ponies in the same breath), " doleful ride down, isn't it? — (keep up, Tom, you villain .') — very good of you to come, I'm sure, dear Ernest, and you'll stay; how long will you stay ? (down, Flash !) — Oh, Miss Beaufin ! I've something to say to you about Blanch Beaufin ! I didn't answer your Nota Bene — (go along, Tom ! that pony wants blooding) — because to tell the truth, it's a delicate subject at Freer Hall, and 1 would rather talk than write about it. You see — (will you be done, Flash !) — the Beaufins, though very nice people, and Blanch quite a love — (go along, lazy Tom !) — the Beaufins, I say, are rated rather crockery in Cheshire. And I am ashamed to own, really quite ashamed, I have not been near them in a month. Shameful, isn't it ? There's good action, Ernest ! Look at that nigh pony ; not a blemish in him; and such a goer in sin- gle harness! Well, I'll go around by the Beaufins now." " Pray consider, Lady Fanny !" interrupted Clay deprecatingly, "eighteen hours in a coach." " Not to go in ! oh, not to go in ! Blanch is very ill, and sees nobody ; — and (come, Tom ! come !) — 1 only heard of it this morning — (there's for your laziness, you stupid horse !, — We'll, just call and ask how she is, though Sir Harry " " Is she very ill, then ?" asked Clay, with a concern which made Lady Fanny turn her eyes from her ponies' ears to look at him. " They say, very ! Of course, Sir Harry can't for- bid a visit to the sick." " Surely he does not forbid you to call on Blanch Beaufin !" " Not 'forbid' precisely; that wouldn't do — (gently, sweet Flash ! now, Tom ! now, lazy ! trot fair through the hollow !) — but I invited her to pass the winter with me without consulting him, and he liked it well enough, till he got back among his stupid neighbors — (well done, Flash ! plague take that bothering whipple-tree !) — and they and their awkward daughters, whom I might have invited — (whoa ! Flash !) — if J ERNEST CLAY. 2G5 had wanted a menagerie, set him to looking into her pedigree. There's the house; the old house with the vines over it yonder! So then, Sir Harry — such a sweet girl, too — set his face against the acquaintance. Here we are ! — (Whoa, bays ! whoa !) Hold the reins a moment while I run in!" More to quell a vague and apprehensive feeling of remorse than to wile away idle time, Clay passed the reins back to the stripling in gray livery behind, and walked round Lady Fanny's ponies, expressing his admiration of them and the turnout altogether. " Yes, sir," said the lad, who seemed to have caught some of the cleverness of his mistress, for he scarce looked fourteen, " they're a touch above anything in Cheshire ! Look at the forehand of that nigh 'an, sir! — arm and withers like a greyhound, and yet what a quarter for trotting, sir ! Quite the right thing all over! Carries his flag that way quite natural ; never was nicked, sir ! Did you take notice, begging your pardon, sir, how milady put through that hollow? Wasn't it fine, sir ? Tother's a goodish nag, too, but, nothing to Flash ; can't spread, somehow ; that's Sir Harry's picking up, and never was a match; no blood in Tom, sir ! Look at his fetlock : underbred, but a jimpy nag for a roadster, if a man wanted work out on him. See how he blows, sir, and Flash as etill as a stopped wheel !" Lady Fanny's reappearance at the door of the house interrupted her page's eulogy on the bays ; and with a very altered expression of countenance she re- sumed the reins, and drove slowly homeward. " She is very ill, very ill ! but she wishes to see you, and you must go there ; but not to-morrow. She is passing a crisis now, and her physician says, will be easier if not better, after to-morrow. Poor girl! dear Blanch ! Ah, Clay ! but no — no matter; I shall talk about it with more composure by-and-by — poor Blanch !" Lady Fanny's tears rained upon her two hands as she let out her impatient horses to be sooner at home, and, in half an hour, Clay was alone in his luxurious quarters, under Sir Harry's roof, with two hours to dinner, and more than thoughts enough, and very sad ones, to make him glad of time and solitude. Freer Hall was full of company — Sir Harry's com- pany — and Clay, with the quiet assurance of a London star, used to the dominant, took his station by Lady Fanny on entering the drawing-room, and when din- ner was announced, gave her his arm, without troubling himself to remember that there was a baronet who had claim to the honor, and of whom he must simply make a mortal enemy. At table, the conversation ran main- ly in Sir Harry's vein, hunting, and Clay did not even take the listener's part ; but, in a low tone, talked of London to Lady Fanny — her ladyship (unaccountably to her husband and his friends, who were used to furnish her more merriment than revery) pensive and out of spirits. With the announcement of coffee in the drawing room, Clay disappeared with her, and their evening was tete-a-tete, for Sir Harry and his friends were three-bottle men, and commonly bade good-night to ladies when the ladies left the table. If there had been a second thought in the convivial squirearchy, they would have troubled their heads less about a man who did not exhibit the first symptom of love for the wife — civility to the husband. But this is a hand-to-mouth world in the way of knowl- edge, and nothing is stored but experiences, lifetime by lifetime. Another day passed and another, and mystery seem- ed the ruling spirit of the hour, for there were enigmas for all. Regularly, morning and afternoon, the high stepping ponies were ordered round, and Lady Fanny (with Mr. Clay for company to the gate) visited the Beaufins, now against positive orders from the irate Sir Harry, and daily, Clay's reserve with his beautiful hostess increased, and his distress of mind with it, for both he and she were alarmed with the one piece of unexplained intelligence between them — MissBeaufin would see Mr. Clay when she should be dying! Not before — for worlds not before — and of the phy- sician constantly in attendance (Lady Fanny often present), Clay knew that the poor girl besought with an eagerness, to the last degree touching and ear- nest, to know when hope could be given over. She was indulged, unquestioned, as a dying daughter; and, whatever might be her secret, Lady Fanny promised that at the turning hour, come what would , of distressing and painful, she would herself come i, with Mr. Clay to her death-bed. Sir Harry and his friends were in the billiard-room, and Lady Fanny and Clay breakfasting together, when a note was brought in by one of the footmen, who waited for an answer. " Say that I will come," said Lady Fanny, " and stay, George! See that my ponies are harnessed im- mediately ; put the head of the phaeton up, and let it stand in the coach-house. And, Timson !" she added to the butler who stood at the side-table, " if Sir Harry inquires for me, say that I am gone to visit a sick friend." Lady Fanny walked to the window. It rained in torrents. There was no need of explanation to Clay; he understood the note and its meaning. " The offices connect with the stables by a covered way," she said, " and we will get in there. Shall you be ready in a few minutes ?" " Quite, dear Lady Fanny ! I am ready now." " The rain is rather fortunate than otherwise," she added, in going out, " for Sir Harry will not see ua go; and he might throw an obstacle in the way, and make it difficult to manage. Wrap well up, Ernest !" The butler looked inquisitively at Clay and his mis- tress, but both were preoccupied, and in ten minutes the rapid phaeton was on its way, the ponies pressing on the bit as if the eagerness of the two hearts beating behind them was communicated through the reins, and Lady Fanny, contrary to her wont, driving in un- encouraging silence. The three or four miles between Freer Hall and their destination were soon traversed, and under the small porte-cochere of the ancient man- sion the ponies stood panting and sheltered. "Kind Lady Fanny! God bless you !" said a tall, dark man, of a very striking exterior, coming out to the phaeton. " And you, sir, are welcome !" They followed him into the little parlor, where Clay was presented by Lady Fanny to the mother of Miss Beaufin, a singularly yet sadly sweet woman in voice, person, and address; to the old, white-haired vicar, and to the physician, who returned his bow with a cold and very formal salute. "There is no time to be lost." said he, " and at the request of MissBeaufin, Lady Fanny and this gentle- man will please go to her chamber without us. 1 can trust your ladyship to see that her remainder of life is not shortened nor harassed by needless agitation." Clay's heart beat violently. At the extremity of the long and dimly-lighted passage thrown open by the father to Lady Fanny, he saw a while curtained bed — the death-bed, he knew, of the gay and fair flower of a London season, the wonder and idol of difficult fashion, and unadmiring rank. Blanch Beaufin had appeared like a marvel in the brilliant circles of Lady Fanny's acquaintance, a distinguished, uncon- scious, dazzling girl, of whom her fair introductress (either in mischief or good nature) would say nothing but that she was her neighbor in Cheshire, though all that nature could lavish on one human creature seemed hers, with all that high birth could stamp on mien, countenance, and manners. Clay paid her his tribute with the rest — the hundred who flattered and followed her ; but she was a proud girl, and though 266 ERNEST CLAY. he seized every opportunity of being near her, nothing in her manner betrayed to him that he was not counted among the hundred. A London season fleets fast, and, taken by surprise with Lady Fanny's early de- parture for the country, her farewells were written on the corners of cards, and with a secret deep buried in the heart, she was brought back to the retirement of home. Brief history of the breaking of a heart ! Lady Fanny started slightly on entering the cham- ber. The sick girl sat propped in an arm chair, dressed in snowy white ; even her slight foot appear- ing beneath the edge of her dress in a slipper of white satin. Her brown hair fell in profuse ringlets over her shoulders ; but it was gathered behind into a knot, and from it depended a white veil, the diamonds which fastened it, pressing to the glossy curve of her head, a slender stem of orange-flowers. Her features were of that slight mould which shows sickness by little except higher transparency of the blue veins, and brighter redness in the lips, and as she smiled with suffused cheek, and held out her gloved hand to Clay, with a vain effort to articulate, lie passed his hands across his eyes and looked inquiringly at his friend. He had expected, though he had never realized, that she would be altered. She looked almost as he had left her. He remembered her only as he had oftenest seen her — dressed for ball or party, and but for the solemnity of the preparation he had gone through, he might have thought his feelings had been played upon only; that Blanch Beaufin was well — still beautiful and well ; that he should again see her in the brilliant circles of London; still love her as he secretly did, and receive what he now felt would be under any circumstances a gift of Heaven, the assurance of a return. This and a world of confused emotion, tumultuously and in an instant, rushed through his heart ; for there are moments in which we live lives of feeling and thought; moments, glances, which supply years of secret or bitter memory. This is but a sketch — but an outline of a tale over true. Were there space, were there time to follow out the traverse thread of its mere mournful incidents, we might write the reverse side of a leaf of life ever read partially and wrong — the life of the gay and un- lamenting. Sickness and death had here broken down a wall of adamant between two creatures, every way formed for each other. In health and ordinary regularity of circumstances, they would have loved as truly and deeply as those in humbler or in more for- tunate relative positions ; but they probably would never have been united. It is the system, the neces- sary system of the class to which Clay belonged, to turn adroitly and gayly off every shaft to the heart; to take advantage of no opening to affection; to smother all preference that would lead to an inter- change of hallowed vows ; to profess insensibility equally polished and hardened on the subject of pure love ; to forswear marriage, and make of it a mock and an impossibility. And whose handiwork is this unnatural order of society? Was it established by the fortunate and joyous — by the wealthy and un- trammelled, at liberty to range the world if they liked, and marry where they chose, but preferring gayety to happiness, and lawless liberty to virtuous love ? No, indeed ! not by these ! Show me one such man, and I will show you a rare perversion of common feeling a m an who under any circumstances would have been cold and eccentric. It is not to those able to marry where they will, that the class of London gay men owe their system of mocking opinions. But it is to the companions of fortunate men — gifted like them, in all but fortune, and holding their caste by the tenure of forsworn ties — abiding in the paradise of aristocracy, with pure love for the forbidden fruit ! Are such men insensible to love ? Has this forbidden joy — this one thing hallowed in a bad world ; has it no temptation for the gay man ? Is his better nature quite dead within him ? Is he never ill and sad where gayety can not reach him ? Does he envy the rich young lord (his friend), everything but his blushing and pure bride ? Is he poet or wit, or the mirror of taste and elegance, yet incapable of discerning the qualities of a true love ; the celestial refinement of a maiden passion, lawful and fearless, devoted because spotless, and enduring because made up half of prayer and gratitude to her Maker ? Does he not know dis- tinctions of feeling, as he knows character in a play ? Does he not discriminate between purity and guilt in love, as he does in his nice judgment of honor and taste ? Is he gayly dead to the deepest and most elevated cravings of nature — love, passionate, single- hearted, and holy ? Trust me, there is a bitterness whose depths we can only fathom by refinement ! To move among creatures embellished and elevated to the last point of human attainment, lovely and un- sullied, and know yourself (as to all but gazing on and appreciating them) a pariah and an outcast ! to breathe their air, and be the companion and apparent equal of those for whose bliss they are created, and to whom they are offered for choice, with the profusion of flowers in a garden — (the chooser and possessor of the brightest your inferior in all else)— to live thus ; to suffer thus, and still smile and call it choice and your own way to happiness — this is mockery indeed ! He who now stood in the death-room of Blanch Beaufin, had felt it in its bitterest intensity ! " Mr. Clay ! — Ernest !" said the now pale creature, breaking the silence with a strong effort, for he had dropped on his knee at her side in ungovernable emo- tion, and, as yet, had but articulated her name — "Er- nest! I have but little time for anything — least of all for disguise or ceremony. I am assured that I am dy- ing. I am convinced," she added firmly, taking up the watch that lay beside her, " that I have been told the truth, and that when this hourhand comes round again, I shall be dead. I will conceal nothing. They have given me cordials that will support me one hour, and for that hour — and for eternity — I wish — if I may be so blest — if God will permit — to be your wife !" Lady Fanny Freer rose and came to her with rapid steps, and Clay sprang to his feet, and in a passion of tears exclaimed, "Oh God! can this be true !" " Answer me quickly !" she continued, in a voice raised, but breaking through sobs, " an hour is short — oh hoxo short, when it is the last ! I can not stay with you long, were you a thousand times mine. Tell me, Ernest ! — shall it be ? — shall I be wedded ere I die ? — wedded now ?" A passionate gesture to Lady Fanny was all the answer Clay could make, and in another moment the aged vicar was in the chamber, with her parents and the physician, to all of whom a few words explained a mystery which her bridal attire had already half un- ravelled. Blanch spoke quickly — " Shall he proceed, Er- nest?" Her prayer-book was open on her knee, and Clay gave it to the vicar, who, with a quick sense of sym- pathy, and with but a glance at the weeping and si- lent parents, read without delay the hallowed cercn;o- nial. Clay's countenance elevated and cleared as he pro- ceeded, and Blanch, with her large suffused eyes fixed on his, listened with a smile, serene, but expressive of unspeakable rapture. Her beauty had never been so radiant, so angelic. In heaven, on her bridal night, beatified spirit as she was, she could not have been more beautiful ! One instant of embarrassment occurred, unobserved by the dying bride, but, with the thoughtfulness of womanly generosity, Lady Fanny had foreseen it, and, ERNEST CLAY. 267 drawing off her own wedding-ring, she passed it into Ernest's hand ere the interruption became apparent. Alas! the emaciated hand ungloved to receive it! That wasted finger pointed indeed to heaven! Till then, Clay had felt almost in a dream. But here was suffering— sickness — death ! This told what the hec- tic brightness and the faultless features would fain deny— what the fragrant and still unwithering flowers upon her temples would seem to mock ! But the hectic was already fading, and the flowers outlived the light in the dark eyes they shaded! The vicar joined their hands with the solemn ad- juration, "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder ;" and Clay rose from his knees, and pressing his first kiss upon her lips, strained her passionately to his heart. " .Mine in heaven!"' she cried, giving way at last to her tears, as she closed her slight arms over his neck ; "mine in heaven! Is it not so, mother! father! is he not mine now ? There is no giving in marriage in heaven, but the ties, hallowed here, are not forgotten there ! Tell me they are not ! Speak to me, my ! husband! Press me to your heart, Ernest ! Your j wife — oh, I thank God !" The physician sprang forward and laid his hand j upon her pulse. She fell back upon her pillows, and with a smile upon her lips, and the tears still wet upon her long and drooping lashes, lay dead. Lady Fanny took the mother by the arm, and with a gesture to the father and the physician to follow, they retired and left the bridegroom alone. * * * * * * * | Life is full of sudden transitions ; and the next i event in that of Ernest Clay, was a duel with Sir Har- j ry Freer — if the Morning Post was to be believed — \ "occasioned by the indiscretion of Lady Fanny, who, | 'n a giddy moment, it appears, had given to her ad- nirer, Sir Harry's opponent, her wedding-ring !" CHAPTER IX. Late one night in June two gentlemen arrived at the Villa Hotel of the Baths of Lucca. They stop- ped the low britzka in which they travelled, and, leav- ing a servant to make arrangements for their lodging, linked arms and strolled up the road toward the banks of the Lima. The moon was chequered at the mo- ment with the poised leaf of a treetop, and as it pas- sed from her face, she arose and stood alone in the ! steel-blue of the unclouded heavens — a luminous and ! tremulous plate of gold. And you know how beau- tiful must have been the night, a June night in Italy, with a moon at the full ! A lady, with a servant following her at a little dis- tance, passed the travellers on the bridge of the Lima. She dropped her veil and went by in silence. But the Freyherr felt the arm of his friend tremble within his own. "Do you know her, then?" asked Von Leisten. "By the thrill in my veins we have me*, before," said Clay; "but whether this involuntary sensation was pleasurable or painful, I have not' yet decided. There are none I care to meet — none who can be here." He added the last few words after a moment's pause, and sadly. They walked on in silence to the base of the moun- tain, busy each with such coloring as the moonlight threw on their thoughts, but neither of them was happy. Clay was humane, and a lover of nature — a poet, tha» is to say — and, in a world so beautiful, could nev- er be a prey to disgust; but he was satiated with the eoinmon emotions of life. His heart, for ever over- flowing, hnd filled many a cup with love, but with strange tenacity he turned back for ever to the first. He was weary of the beginnings of love — weary of its probations and changes. He had passed the pe- riod of life when inconstancy was tempting. He longed now for an affection that would continue into another world — holy and pure enough to pass a gate guarded by angels. And his first love — recklessly as he had thrown it away — was now the thirst of his ex- istence. ]t was two o'clock at night. The moon lay broad upon the southern balconies of the hotel, and every casement was open to its luminous and fragrant still- ness. Clay and the Freyherr Von Leisten, each in his apartment, were awake, unwilling to lose the lux- ury of the night. And there was one other under that roof waking, with her eyes fixed on the moon. As Clay leaned his head on his hand, and looked outward to the sky, his heart began to be troubled. There was a point in the path of the moon's rays where his spirit turned back. There was an influence abroad in the dissolving moonlight around him which resistlessly awakened the past— the sealed but unfor- gottenpast. He could not single out the emotion. He knew not whether it was fear or hope — pain or pleasure. He called, through the open window, to Von Leisten. The Freyherr, like himself, and like all who have outlived the effervescence of life, was enamored of the night. A moment of unfathomable moonlight was dearer to him than hours disenchanted with the sun. He, too, had been looking outward and upward — but with no trouble at his heart. " The night is inconceivably sweet," he said, as he entered, " and your voice called in my thought and sense from the intoxication of a revel. What would you, my friend ?" " I am restless, Von Leisten! There is some one near us whose glances cross mine on the moonlight, and agitate and perplex me. Yet there was but one on earth deep enough in the life-blood of my being to move me thus — even were she here ! And she is not here !" His voice trembled and softened, and the last word was scarce audible on his closing lips, for the Frey- herr had passed his hands over him while he spoke, and he had fallen into the trance of the spirit-world. Clay and Von Leisten had retired from the active passions of life together, and had met and mingled at that moment of void and thirst when each supplied the want of the other. The Freyherr was a German noble, of a character passionately poetic, and of sin- gular acquirement in the mystic fields of knowledge. Too wealthy to need labor, and too proud to submit his thoughts or his attainments to the criticism or judgment of the world, he lavished on his own life, and on those linked to him in friendship, the strange powers he had acquired, and the prodigal overthrow of his daily thought and feeling. Clay was his superior, perhaps, in genius, and necessity had driven him to develop the type of his inner soul, and leave its im- press on the time. But he was inferior to Von Leis- ten in the power of will, and he lay in his control like a child in its mother's. Four years they had passed together, much of it in the secluded castle of Von Leisten, busied with the occult studies to which the Freyherr was secretly devoted ; but travelling down to Italy to meet the luxurious summer, and dividing their lives between the enjoyment of nature and the ideal world they had unlocked. Von Leisten had lost, by death, the human altar on which his heart could alone burn the incense of love; and Clay had flung aside in an hour of intoxicating passion the ODe pure affection in which his happiness was sealed— and both were desolate. But in the world of the past. Von Leisten, though more irrevocably lonely, was more tranquilly blest. The Freyherr released he entranced spirit of hia 268 ERNEST CLAY. friend, and bade him follow back the rays of the moon to the source of his agitation. A smile crept slowly over the speaker's lips. In an apartment flooded with the silver lustre of the night, reclined, in an invalid's chair, propped with pil- lows, a woman of singular, though most fragile beauty. Books and music lay strewn around, and a lamp, sub- dued to the tone of the moonlight by an orb of ala- baster, burned beside her. She lay bathing her blue eyes in the round chalice of the moon. A profusion of brown ringlets fell over the white dress that envel- oped her, and her oval cheek lay supported on the palm of her hand, and her bright red lips were parted. The pure, yet passionate spell of that soft night pos- sessed her. Over her leaned the disembodied spirit of him who had once loved her — praying to God that his soul might be so purified as to mingle unstartingly, unre- pulsively, in hallowed harmony with hers. And pres- ently he felt the coming of angels toward him, breath- ing into the deepest abysses of his existence a tearful and purifying sadness. And with a trembling aspira- tion of grateful humility to his Maker, he stooped to her forehead, and with his impalpable lips impressed upon its snowy tablet a kiss. It seemed to Eve Gore a thought of the past that brought the blood suddenly to her cheek. She started from herrecliningposition, and, removing theobscuring shade from her lamp, arose and crossed her hands upon her wrists, and paced thoughtfully to and fro. Her lips murmured inarticulately. But the thought, painfully though it came, changed unaccountably to melancholy sweetness ; and, subduing her lamp again, she resumed her steadfast gaze upon the moon. Ernest knelt beside her, and with his invisible brow bowed upon her hand, poured forth, in the voiceless language of the soul, his memories of the past, his hope, his repentance, his pure and passionate adora- tion at the present hour. And thinking she had been in a sweet dream, yet wondering at its truthfulness and power, Eve wept, silently and long. As the morning touched the east, slumber weighed upon her moistened eyelids, and kneeling by her bedside she murmured her gratitude to God for a heart relieved of a burden long borne, and so went peacefully to her sleep. * * * It was in the following year, and in the beginning of May. The gay world of England was concentra- ted in London, and at the entertainments of noble houses there were many beautiful women and many marked men. The Freyherr Von Leisten, after years of absence, had appeared again, his mysterious and undeniable superiority of mien and influence again yielded to, as before, and again bringing to his feet the homage and deference of the crowd he moved among. To his inscrutable power the game of so- ciety was easy, and he walked where he would through *ts barriers of form. He stood one night looking on at a dance. A lady of a noble air was near him, and both were watching the movements of the loveliest woman present, a crea- ture in radiant health, apparently about twenty-three, and of matchless fascination of person and manner. Von Leisten turned to the lady near him to inquire her name, but his attention was arrested by the re- semblance between her and the object of his admiring curiosity, and he was silent. The lady had bowed before he withdrew his gaze, however. "I think we have met before!" she said; but at the next instant a slight flush of displeasure came to her cheek, and she seemed regretting that she had spoken. "Pardon me!" said Von Leisten, "but — if the | question be not rude — do you remember where ?" She hesitated a moment. " I have recalled it since I have spoken," she con- j tinued; " but as the remembrance of the person who i accompanied you always gives me pain, I would wil- ! lingly have unsaid it. One evening of last year, cros- sing the bridge of the Lima, you were walking with Mr. Clay. Pardon me — but, though I left Lucca | with my daughter on the following morning, and saw i you no more, the association, or your appearance, j had imprinted the circumstance on my mind." "And is that Eve Gore ?" said Von Leisten, mu- singly, gazing on the beautiful creature now gliding with light step to her mother's side. But the Freyherr's heart was gone to his friend. As the burst of the waltz broke in upon the closing of the quadrille, he offered his hand to the fair girl, and as they moved round to the entrancing music, he murmured in her ear, " He who came to you in the moonlight of Italy will be with you again, if you are alone, at the rising of to-night's late moon. Believe the voice that then speaks to you !" * * * It was with implacable determination that Mrs. Gore refused, to the entreaties of Von Leisten, a re- newal of Clay's acquaintance with her daughter. Resentment for the apparent recklessness with which he had once sacrificed her maiden love for an unlaw- ful passion — scornful unbelief of any change in his character — distrust of the future tendency of the powers of his genius — all mingled together in a hos- tility proof against persuasion. She had expressed this with all the positiveness of language, when her daughter suddenly entered the room. It was the morning after the ball, and she had risen late. But though subdued and pensive in her air, Von Leisten saw at a glance that she was happy. " Can you bring him to me ?" said Eve, letting her hand remain in Von Leisten's, and bending her deep blue eyes inquiringly on his. And with no argument but tears and caresses, and an unexplained assurance of her conviction of the re- pentant purity and love of him to whom her heart was once given, the confiding and strong -hearted girl bent, at last, the stern will that forbade her happi- ness. Her mother unclasped the slight arms from her neck, and gave her hand in silent consent to Von Leisten. The Freyherr stood a moment with his eyes fixed on the ground. The color fled from his cheeks, and his brow moistened. "I have called him," he said — " he will be here !" An hour elapsed, and Clay entered the house. He had risen from a bed of sickness, and came, pale and in terror — for the spirit-summons was powerful. But Von Leisten welcomed him at the door with a smile, and withdrew the mother from the room, and left Er- nest alone with his future bride — the first union, save in spirit, after years of separation. m THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS. 269 THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS (THE OUTLINE FROM A FRENCH MEMOIR.) I introduce you at once to the Marquis de la Che- tardie— a diplomatist who figured largely in the gay age of Louis XV. — and the story is but one of the illuminated pages of the dark book of diplomacy. Charles de la Chetardie appeared for the first time to the eyes of the king at a masquerade ball, given at Versailles, under the auspices of la belle Pompadour. He was dressed as a young lady of high rank, making her debut, ; and, so perfect was his acting, and the de- ception altogether, that Louis became enamored of the disguised marquis, and violently excited the jealousy of "Madame," by his amorous attentions. An eclaircissement, of course, took place, and the re- sult was a great partiality for the marquis's society, and his subsequent employment, in and out of petti- coats, in many a scheme of state diplomacy and royal amusement. La Chetardie was at this time just eighteen. He was very slight, and had remarkably small hands and feet, and the radiant fairness of his skin and the luxu- riant softness of his profuse chestnut curls, might justly have been the envy of the most delicate woman. He was, at first, subjected to some ridicule for his effeminacy, but the merry courtiers were soon made aware, that, under this velvet fragility lay concealed the strength and ferocity of the tiger. The grasp of his small hand was like an iron vice, and his singular activity, and the cool courage which afterward gave him a brilliant career on the battle-field, established him, in a very short time, as the most formidable swordsman of the court. His ferocity, however, lay deeply concealed in his character, and, unprovoked, he was the gayest and most brilliant of merry com- panions. This was the age of occult and treacherous diplo- macy, and the court of Russia, where Louis would fain have exercised an influence (private as well as po- litical in its results), was guarded by an implacable Argus, in the person of the prime minister, Bestucheff. Aided by Sir Hambury Williams, the English ambas- sador, one of the craftiest men of that crafty period, he had succeeded for some years in defeating every at- tempt at access to the imperial ear by the secret emis- saries of France. The sudden appearance of La Chetardie, his cool self-command, and his successful personation of a female, suggested a new hope to the king, however; and, called to Versailles by royal man- date, the young marquis was taken into cabinet confi- dence, and a secret mission to St. Petersburgh, in petticoats, proposed to him and accepted. With his instructions and secret despatches stitched into his corsets, and under the ostensible protection of a scientific man, who was to present him to the tzarine as a Mademoiselle de Beaumont, desirous of entering the service of Elizabeth, the marquis reached St. Pe- tersburg without accident or adventure. "The young lady's guardian requested an audience through Bestu- cheff, and having delivered the open letters recom- mending her for her accomplishments to the imperial protection, he begged leave to continue on his scien- tific tour to the central regions of Russia. Conge was immediately granted, and on the disap- pearance of the savant, and before the departure of Bestucheff, the tzarine threw off all ceremony, and pinching the cheeks and imprinting a kiss on the fore- head of the beautiful stranger, appointed her, by one of those sudden whims of preference against which her ministers had so much trouble to guard, lectrice intime et parliculiere — in short, confidential personal attendant. The blushes of the confused marquis, who was unprepared for so affectionate a reception, served rather to heighten the disguise, and old Bestucheff bowed himself out with a compliment to the beauty of Mademoiselle de Beaumont, veiled in a diplomatic congratulation to her imperial mistress. Elizabeth was forty and a little passee, but she still had pretensions, and was particularly fond of beauty in her attendants, female as well as male. Her favor- ite, of her personal suite, at the time of the arrival of the marquis, was an exquisite little creature who had been sent to her, as a compliment to this particular taste, by the Dutchess of Mecklenberg-Strelitz — a kind of German "Fenella," or " Mignon," by the name of Nadege Stein. Not much below the middle size, Nadege was a model of symmetrica] proportion, and of very extraordinary beauty. She had been carefully educated for her present situation, and was highly accomplished ; a fine reader, and a singularly sweet musician and dancer. The tzari tie's passion for this lovely attendant was excessive, and the arrival of a new favorite of the same sex was looked upon with some pleasure by the eclipsed remainder of the palace idlers. Elizabeth summoned Nadege, and committed Mad- emoiselle de Beaumont temporarily to her charge; but the same mysterious magnetism which had reached the heart of the tzarine, seemed to kindle, quite as promptly, the affections of her attendant. Nadege was no sooner alone with her new friend, than she jumped to her neck, smothered her with kisses, called her by every endearing epithet, and overwhelmed her with questions, mingled with the most childlike ex- clamations of wonder at her own inexplicable love for a stranger. In an hour, she had shown to the new demoiselle all the contents of the little boudoir in which she lived ; talked to her of her loves and hates at the Russian court; of her home in Mecklenberg, and her present situation — in short, poured out her heart with the naif abandon of a child. The young marquis had never seen so lovely a creature; and, responsibly as he felt his difficult and delicate situation, he returned the affection so innocently lavished upon him, and by the end of this first fatal hour, was irrecoverably in love. And, gay as his life had been at the French court, it was the first, and subsequently proved to be the deep- est, passion of his life. On the tzarine's return to her private apartment, she summoned her new favorite, and superintended, with condescending solicitude, the arrangements for hei palace lodging. Nadege inhabited a small tower ad- joining the bedroom of her mistress, and above this was an unoccupied room, which, at the present sug- gestion of the fairy little attendant, was allotted to the new-comer. The staircase opened by one door into the private gardens, and by the opposite, into the cor- ridor leading immediately to the imperial chamber. The marquis's delicacy would fain have made some objection to this very intimate location ; but he could hazard nothing against the interests of his sovereign, and he trusted to a speedy termination of his disguise 270 THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS. with the attainment of his object. Meantime, the close neighborhood of the fair Nadege was not the . most intolerable of necessities. The marquis's task was a very difficult one. He was instructed, before abandoning his disguise and de- , livering his secret despatches, to awaken the interest of the tzarine on the two subjects to which the docu- j ments had reference : viz., a former partiality of her majesty for Louis, and a formerly discussed project of ' seating the Prince de Conti on the throne of Poland. Bestucheff had so long succeeded in cutting off all | approach of these topics to the ear of the tzarine, that her majesty had probably forgotten them altogether. Weeks passed, and the opportunities to broach these delicate subjects had been inauspiciously rare. Mad- emoiselle de Beaumont, it is true, had completely eclipsed the favorite Nadege; and Elizabeth, in her hours of relaxation from state affairs, exacted the con- stant attendance of the new favorite in her private apartments. But the almost constant presence of some other of the maids of honor, opposed continual obstacles and interruptions, and the tzarine herself was not always disposed to talk of matters more seri- ous than the current trifles of the hour. She was extremely indolent in her personal habits; and often reclining at length upon cushions on the floor of her boudoir, she laid her imperial head in the lap of the embarrassed demoiselle, and was soothed to sleep by reading and the bathing of her temples. And during this period, she exacted frequently of the marquis, with a kind of instinctive mistrust, promises of continuance for life in her personal service. But there were sweeter hours for the enamored La Chetardie than those passed in the presence of his partial and imperial mistress. Encircled by sentinels, and guarded from all intrusion of other eyes, in the inviolable sanctuary of royalty, the beautiful Nadege, impassioned she knew not why, in her love for her new companion, was ever within call, and happy in devoting to him all her faculties of caressing endear- ment. He had not yet dared to risk the interests of his sovereign by a disclosure of his sex, even in the confidence of love. He could not trust Nadege to play so difficult a part as that of possessor of so em- barrassing a secret in the presence of the shrewd and observing tzarine. A betrayal, too, would at once put an end to his happiness. With the slight arm of the fair and relying creature about his waist, and her head pressed close against his breast, they passed the balmy nights of the Russian summer in pacing the flowery alleys of the imperial garden, discoursing, with but one reserve, on every subject that floated to their lips. It required, however, all the self-control of La Che- tardie, and all the favoring darkness of the night, to con- ceal his smiles at the naive confessions of the uncon- scious girl, and herwonderings at the peculiarity of her feelings. She had thought, hitherto, that there were affections in her nature which could only be called forth by a lover. Yet now, the thought of caressing another than her friend — of repeating to any human ear, least of all to a man, those new-born vows of love — filled her with alarm and horror. She felt that she had given her heart irrevocably away — and to a woman ! Ah, with what delirious, though silent passion, La Chetardie drew her to his bosom, and, with the pres- sure of his lips upon hers, interrupted those sweet confessions ! Yet the time at last drew near for the waking from this celestial dream. The disguised diplomatist had found his opportunity, and had successfully awakened in Elizabeth's mind both curiosity and interest as to the subjects of the despatches still sewed safely in his corsets. There remained nothing for him now but to seize a favorable opportunity, and, with the delivery of his missives, to declare his sex to the tzarine. There wa3 risk to life and libert}' in this, but the marquis knew not fear, and he thought but of its consequences to his love. In La Chetardie's last interview with the savant who conducted him to Russia, his male attire had been successfully transferred from one portmanteau to the other, and it was now in his possession, ready for the moment of need. With his plans brought to within a single night of the denouement, he parted from the tzarine, having asked the imperial permission for an hour's private interview on the morrow, and, with gen- tle force excluding Nadege from his apartment, he dressed himself in his proper costume, and cut open the warm envelope of' his despatches. This done, he threw his cloak over him, and, with a dark lantern in his hand, sought Nadege in the garden. He had de- termined to disclose himself to her, renew his vows of love in his proper guise, and arrange, while he had access and opportunity, some means for uniting their destinies hereafter. As he opened the door of the turret, Nadege flew up the stair to meet him, and observing the cloak in the faint glimmer of the stars, she playfully endeavored to envelope herself in it. But, seizing her hands, La Chetardie turned and glided backward, drawing her after him toward a small pavilion in the remoter part of the garden. Here they had never been inter- rupted, the empress alone having the power to intrude upon them, and La Chetardie felt safe in devoting this place and time to the double disclosure of his secret and his suppressed passion. Persuading her with difficulty to desist from putting her arms about him and sit down without a caress, he retreated a few steps, and in the darkness of the pa- vilion, shook down his imprisoned locks to their mas- culine abandon, threw off his cloak, and drew up the blind of his lantern. The scream of surprise, which instantly parted from the lips of Nadege, made him regret his imprudence in not having prepared her for the transformation, but her second thought was mirth, for she could believe it of course to be nothing but a playful masquerade; and with delighted laughter she sprang to his neck, and overwhelmed him with her kisses — another voice, however, joining very unexpect- edly in the laughter ! The empress stood before them ! For an instant, with all his self-possession, La Che- tardie was confounded and dismayed. Siberia, the knout, the scaffold, flitted before his eyes, and Nadege I was the sufferer ! But a glance at the face of the ! tzarine reassured him. She, too, took it for a girlish masquerade ! But the empress, unfortunately, was not disposed to have a partner in her enjoyment of the society of this new apparition of "hose and doublet." She ordered Nadege to her turret, with one of those petulant com- mands which her attendants understood to admit of no delay, and while the eclipsed favorite disappeared with the tears of unwilling submission in her soft eyes, La Chetardie looked after her with the anguish of eternal separation at his heart, for a presentiment crowded irresistibly upon him that he should never see her more ! The empress was in slippers and robe de mtit, and, as if fate had determined that this well-kept secret should not survive the hour, her majesty laid her arm within that of her supposed masquerader, and led the way to the palace. She was wakeful, and wished to be read to sleep. And, with many a compliment to the beauty of her favorite in male attire, and many a playful caress, she arrived at the door of her chamber. But the marquis could go no farther. He had hith- erto been spared the embarrassment of passing this sacred threshold, for the passee empress had secrets of toilet for the embellishment of her person, which she trusted only to the eyes of an antiquated attend- ant. La Chetardie had never passed beyond the bo"- THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS. 271 doir which was between the antechamber and the bed- room, and the time had come for the disclosure of his secret. He fell on his knees and announced himself a man .' Fortunately they were alone. Incredulous at first, the empress listened to his asseverations, however, with more amusement than displeasure, and the im- mediate delivery of the despatches, with the commen- dations of the disguised ambassador by his royal mas- ter to the forgiveness and kindness of the empress, amply secured his pardon. But it was on condition that he should resume his disguise and remain in her service. Alone in* his tower (for Nadege had disappeared, and he knew enough of the cruelty of Elizabeth to dread the consequences to the poor girl of venturing on di- rect inquiries as to her fate), La Chetardie after a few weeks fell ill; and fortunate, even at this price, to I escape from the silken fetters of the enamored tzarine, be departed under the care of the imperial physician, for the more genial climate of France — not without reiterated promises of return, however, and offers, in that event, of unlimited wealth and advancement. But, as the marquis made his way slowly toward Vienna, a gleam of light dawned on his sadness. The Princess Sophia Charlotte was newly affianced to George the Third of England, and this daughter of the house of Mecklenberg had been the playmate of Nadege Stein, from infancy till the time when Nadege jj was sent to the tzarine by the Dutchess of Mecklen- berg. Making a confidant of the kind physician who accompanied him, La Chetardie was confirmed, by the good man's better experience and knowledge, in the belief that Nadege had shared the same fate of every female of the court who had ever awakened the jeal- ousy of the empress. She was doubtless exiled to Siberia; but, as she had committed no voluntary fault, it was probably without other punishment ; and, with a playmate on the throne of England, she might be demanded and recovered ere long, in all her freshness I and beauty. Yet the recent fate of the fair Eudoxie Lapoukin, who, for an offence but little more distaste- ful to the tzarine, had been pierced through the tongue with hot iron, whipped with the knout, and exiled for life to Siberia, hung like a cloud of evil augury over his mind. The marquis suddenly determined that he would see the affianced princess, and plead with her for her friend, ! before the splendors of a throne should make her in- accessible. The excitement of this hope had given || him new life, and he easily persuaded his attendant, as j they entered the gates of Vienna, that he required his attendance no farther. Alone with his own servants, he resumed his female attire, and directed his course to Mecklenberg-Strelitz. The princess had maintained an intimate corre- spondence with her playmate up to the time of her betrothal, and the name of Mademoiselle de Beau- mont was passport enough. La Chetardie had sent forward his servant, on arriving at the town, in the neighborhood of the ducal residence, and the reply to his missive was brought back by one of the officers in attendance, with orders to conduct the demoiseile to apartments in the castle. He was received with all honor at the palace-gate by a chamberlain in waiting, who led the way to a suite of rooms adjoining those of the princess, where, after being left alone for a few minutes, he was familiarly visited by the betrothed girl, and overwhelmed, as formerly by her friend, with most embarrassing caresses. In the next moment, however, the door was hastily flung open, and Nadege, like a stream of light, fled through the room, hung upon the neck of the speechless and overjoyed mar- quis, and ended with convulsions of mingled tears and laughter. The moment that he could disengage him- self from her arms, La Chetardie requested to be left for a moment alone. He felt the danger and impro- priety of longer maintaining his disguise. He closed his door on the unwilling demoiselles, hastily changed his dress, and, with his sword at his side, entered the adjoining reception-room of the princess, where Made- moiselle de Beaumont was impatiently awaited. The scene which followed, the mingled confusion and joy of Nadege, the subsequent hilarity and mas- querading at the castle, and the particulars of the marriage of the Marquis de la Chetardie to his fair fellow maid-of-honor, must be left to the reader's im- agination. We have room only to explain the reap- pearance of Nadege at Mecklenberg. Nadege retired to her turret at the imperative com- mand of the empress, sad and troubled ; but waited wakefully and anxiously for the re-entrance of her dis- guised companion. In the course of an hour, how- ever, the sound of a sentinel's musket, set down at her door, informed her that she was a prisoner. She knew Elizabeth, and the Dutchess of Mecklenberg, with an equal knowledge of the tzarine's character, had provi- ded her with a resource against the imperial cruelty, should she have occasion to use it. She crept to the battlements of the tower, and fastened a handkerchief to the side looking over the public square. The following morning, at daylight, Nadege was summoned to prepare for a journey, and, in an hour, she was led between soldiers to a carriage at the pal- ace-gate, and departed by the northern egress of the city, with a guard of three mounted cossacks. In two hours from that time, the carriage was overtaken, the guard overpowered, and the horses' heads turned in the direction of Moscow. After many difficulties and dangers, during which she found herself under the charge of a Mecklenbergian officer in the service of the tzarine, she reached Vienna in safety, and was im- mediately concealed by her friends in the neighbor- hood of the palace at Mecklenberg, to remain hidden till inquiry should be over. The arrival of Mademoi- selle de Beaumont, for the loss of whose life or liberty she had incessantly wept with dread and apprehension, was joyfully communicated to her by her friends ; and so the reader knows some of the passages in the early life of the far-famed beauty in the French couit in the time of Louis XV. — the Marchioness de la Che- tardie. 272 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST." BEAUTY AND THE BEAST; ." OR, HANDSOME MRS. TITTON AND HER PLAIN HUSBAND. 1 That man i' the world who shall report he has A better wife, let him in naught be trusted For speaking false in that." — Henry VIII. I have always been very fond of the society of portrait-painters. Whether it is, that the pursuit of a beautiful and liberal art softens their natural quali- ties, or that, from the habit of conversing while en- grossed with the pencil, they like best that touch-and- go talk which takes care of itself; or, more probably still, whether the freedom with which they are ad- mitted behind the curtains of vanity and affection gives a certain freshness and truth to their views of things around them — certain it is, that, in all countries, their rooms are the most agreeable of haunts, and they themselves most enjoyable of cronies. I had chanced in Italy to make the acquaintance of S , an English artist of considerable cleverness in his profession, but more remarkable for his frank good breeding and his abundant good nature. Four years after, I had the pleasure of renewing my inter- course with him in London, where he was flourishing, quite up to his deserving, as a portrait-painter. His rooms were hard by one of the principal thorough- fares, and, from making an occasional visit, I grew to frequenting them daily, often joining him at his early breakfast, and often taking him out with me to drive whenever we changed to tire of our twilight stroll. While rambling in Hyde Park, one evening, I men- tioned for the twentieth time, a singularly ill-assorted couple I had once or twice met at his room — a woman of superb beauty attended by a very inferior-looking and ill-dressed man. S ■ had, previously, with a smile at my speculations, dismissed the subject rather crisply ; but, on this occasion, I went into some surmises as to the probable results of such " pairing without matching," and he either felt called upon to defend the lady, or made my misapprehension of her character an excuse for telling me what he knew about her. He began the story in the Park, and ended it over a bottle of wine in the Haymarket — of course with many interruptions and digressions. Let me see if I can tie his broken threads together. "That lady is Mrs. Fortescue Titton, and the gentleman you so much disparage is, if you please, the incumbrance to ten thousand a year — the money as much at her service as the husband by whom she gets it. Whether he could have won her had he been " Bereft and gelded of his patrimony," I will not assert, especially to one who looks on them as 'Beauty and the Beast;' but that she loves him, or at least prefers to him no handsomer man, I may say I have been brought to believe, in the way of my profession." "You have painted her, then?" I asked rather eagerly, thinking I might get a sketch of her face to take with me to another country. "No, but I have painted him — and for her — and it is not a case of Titania and Bottom, either. She is quite aware he is a monster, and wanted his picture for a reason you would never divine. But I must be- gin at the beginning. " After you left me in Italy, I was employed by the earl of , to copy one or two of his favorite pictures in the Vatican, and that brought me rather well acquainted with his son. Lord George was a gay youth, and a very 'look-and-die' style of fellow, and, as much from admiration of his beauty as anything else, I asked him to sit to me, on our return to Lon- don. I painted him very fantastically in an Albanian cap and oriental morning-gown and slippers, smoking a narghile — the room in which he sat, by the way, being a correct portrait of his own den, a perfect museum of costly luxury. It was a pretty gorgeous turn-out in the way of color, and was ssverely criticised, but still a good deal noticed — for I sent it to the ex- hibition. " I was one day going into Somerset-house, when Lord George hailed me from his cab. He wished to suggest some alteration in his picture, or to tell me of some criticism upon it, I forget exactly what ; but we went up together. Directly before the portrait, gazing at it with marked abstraction, stood a beautiful woman, quite alone ; and as she occupied the only point where the light was favorable, we waited a mo- ment till she should pass on — Lord George, of course, rather disposed to shrink from being recognised as the original. The woman's interest in the picture seemed rather to increase, however, and what with variations of the posture of her head, and pulling at her glove fingers, and other female indications of restlessness and enthusiasm, I thought I was doing her no injus- tice by turning to my companion with a congratulatory smile. " ' It seems a case, by Jove !' said Lord George, try- ing to look as if it was a matter of very simple occur- rence ; ' and she's as fine a creature as I've seen this season! Eh, old boy? we must run her down, and see where she burrows — and there's nobody with her, by good luck!' "A party entered just then, and passed between her and the picture. She looked annoyed, I thought, but started forward and borrowed a catalogue of a little girl, and we could see that she turned to the last page, on which the portrait was numbered, with, of course, the name and address of the painter. She made a memorandum on one of her cards, and left the house. Lord George followed, and I too, as far as the door, where I saw her get into a very stylishly appointed carriage and drive away, followed closely by the cab of my friend, whom I had declined to accompany. "You wouldn't have given very heavy odds against his chance, would you?" said S , after a mo- ment pause. " No, indeed !" I answered quite sincerely. " Well, I was at work, the next morning, glazing a picture I had just finished, when the servant brought up the card of Mrs. Fortescue Titton. I chanced to be alone, so the lady was shown at once into my paint- ing room, and lo ! the incognita of Somerset-House. The plot thickens, thought I ! She sat down in my ♦subject' chair, and, faith! her beauty quite dazzled me ! Her first smile — but you have seen her, so I'll not bore you with a description. " Mrs. Titton blushed on opening her errand to me, first inquiring if 1 was the painter of • No 403' in the exhibition, and saying some very civil things about the " BEAUTY AND THE BEAST." 273 picture. I mentioned that it was a portrait of Lord George (for his name was not in the catalogue), and I thought she M&sh«d still more confusedly — hut that. I think now. was fancy, or at any rate had nothing to do with feeling for his lordship. It was natural enough for me to be mistaken, for she was very particular in her inquiries as to the costume, furniture, and little belongings of the picture, and asked me among other things, whether it was a flattered like- ness : — this last question very pointedly, too ! " She arose to go. Was I at leisure, and could I sketch a head for her, and when ? " I appointed the next day, expecting of course that the subject was the lady herself, and scarcely slept with thinking of it, and starved myself at breakfast to have a clear eye, and a hand wide awake. And at ten she came, with her Mr. Fortescue Titton ! I was sorry to see that she had a husband, for I had indulged myself with a vague presentiment that she was a widow ; but I begged him to take a chair, and prepar- ed the platform for my beautiful subject. "'Will you take your seat ?' I asked, with all my suavity, when my palette was ready. " ' My dear,' said she, turning to her husband, and pointing to the chair, ■ Mr. S is ready for you.' " I begged pardon for a moment, crossed over to Verey's and bolted a beef-steak ! A cup of coffee, and a glass of Curacoa, and a little walk round Hanover- square, and I recovered from the shock a little. It went very hard, I give you my word. " I returned, and took a look, for the first time, at Mr. Titton. You have seen him, and have some idea of what his portrait might be, considered as a pleasure to the artist — what it might promise, I should rather say, for, after all, I ultimately enjoyed working at it, quite aside from the presence of Mrs. Titton. It was the ugliest face in the world, but full of good-nature ; and, as I looked closer into it, I saw, among its coarse features, lines of almost feminine delicacy, and capa- bilities of enthusiasm of which the man himself was probably unconscious. Then a certain helpless style of dress was a wet blanket to him. Rich from his cradle, I suppose his qualities had never been needed on the surface. His wife knew them. "From time to time, as I worked, Mrs. Titton came and looked over my shoulder. With a natural desire to please her, I, here and there, softened a harsh line, and was going on to flatter the likeness — not as suc- cessful as I could wish, however, for it is much easier to get a faithful likeness than to flatter without destroy- ing it. " 'Mr. S ,' said she, laying her hand on my arm as I thinned away the lumpy rim of his nostril, ' I want, first, a literal copy of my husband's features. Suppose, with this idea, you take a fresh canvass ?' " Thoroughly mystified by the whole business, I did as she requested ; and, in two sittings, made a likeness of Titton which would have given you a face- ache. He shrugged his shoulders at it, and seemed very glad when the bore of sitting was over; but they seemed to understand each other very well, or, if not, he reserved hisquestions till there could be no restraint upon the answer. He seemed a capital fellow, and I liked him exceedingly. "I asked if I should frame the picture and send it home ? No ! I was to do neither. If I would be kind enough not to show it. nor to mention it to any one, and come the next day and dine with them en famille, Mrs. Titton would feel very much obliged to me. And this dinner was followed up by breakfasts and lunches and suppers, and, for a fortnight, I really lived with the Tittons — and pleasanter people to live with, by Jove, you haven't seen in your travels, though you are 'a picked man of countries!' " I should mention, by the way, that f. was always placed opposite Titton at table, and that he was a good IS deal with me, one way and another, taking me out, as you do, for a stroll, calling and sitting with me when I was at work, etc. And as to Mrs. Ti-ton — if I did not mistrust your arriere pensei, I would enlarge a little on my intimacy with Mrs. Titton! — Hut, believe me when I tell you, that, without a ray of flirtation, we became as cozily intimate as brother and sister." " And what of Lord George, all this time ?" I asked. "Oh, Lord George! — Well, Lord George of course had no difficulty in making Mrs. Titton's acquaintance, though they were not quite in the same circle, and he had been presented to her, and had seen her at a party or two, where he managed to be invited on purpose — but of this, for a while, J heard nothing. She had not yet seen him at her own house, and 1 had not chanced to encounter him. But let me go on with my story. " Mrs. Titton sent for me to come to her, one morning rather early. I found her in her boudoir, in a neglige morning-dress, and looking adorably beauti- ful, and as pure as beautiful, you smiling villain ! She seemed to have something on her mind about which she was a little embarrassed, but I knew her too well to lay any unction to my soul. We chatted about the weather a few moments, and she came to the point. You will see that she was a woman of some talent, won ami ! " ' Have you looked at my husband's portrait since you finished it ?' she asked. "'No, indeed!' I replied rather hastily — but im mediately apologized. " ' Oh, if I had not been certain you would not,' she said with a smile, ' I should have requested it, for I wished you to forget it, as far as possible. And now let me tell you what I want of you! You have got, on canvass, a likeness of Fortescue as the world sees him. Since taking it, however, you have seen him more intimately, and — and — like his face better, do you not ?' "'Certainly! certainly!' I exclaimed, in all sincerity. " ' Thank you ! If I mistake not, then, you do not, when thinking of him, call up to your mind the features in your portrait, but a face formed rather of his good qualities, as you have learned to trace t^iem in his expression.' " ' True,' I said, ' very true !' " ' Now, then,' she continued, leaning over to me very earnestly, ' I want you to paint a new picture, and without departing from the real likeness, which you will have to guide you, breathe into it the expres- sion you have in your ideal likeness. Add, to what the world sees, what I see, what you see, what all who love him see, in his plain features. Idealize it, spiritualize it — and without lessening the resemblance. Can this be done?' " 1 thought it could. I promised to do my utmost. " ' I shall call and see you as you progress in it,' she said, ' and now, if you have nothing better to do, stay to lunch, and come out with me in the carriage. I want a little of your foreign taste in the selection of some pretty nothings for a gentleman's toilet.' " We passed the morning in making what I should consider very extravagent purchases for anybody but a prince royal, winding up with some delicious cabinet pictures and some gems of statuary — all suited only, I should say, to the apartments of a fastidious luxuriast. I was not yet at the bottom of her secret. "I went to work upon the new picture with the zeal always given to an artist by an appreciative and confiding employer. She called every day and made important suggestions, and at last 1 finished it to her satisfaction and mine ; and, without speaking of it as a work of art, I may give you my opinion that Titton will scarcely be more embellished in the other world —that is, if it be true, as the divines tell us, that our mortal likeness will be so far preseived, though im- proved upon, that we shall be recognisable by our friends. Still I was to paiut a third picture — a cabinet •274 " BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. full length — and for this the other two were but studies, and so intended by Mrs. Fortescue Titton. It was to be an improvement upon Lord George's portrait (which of course had given her the idea), and was to represent her husband in a very costly, and an exceed- ingly recherche morning costume — dressing-gown, slippers, waistcoat, and neckcloth, worn with perfect elegance, and representing a Titton with a faultless attitude (in a fauteuil, reading), a faultless exterior, and around him the most sumptuous appliances of dressing-room luxury. This picture cost me a great deal of vexation and labor, for it was emphatically a fancy picture — poor Titton never having appeared in that character, even ' by particular desire.' I finished it however, and again, to her satisfaction. I afterward added some finishing touches to the other two, and sent them home, appropriately framed according to very minute instructions." '•'■ How long ago was this ?" I asked. " Three years," replied S , musing over his wine. " Well — the sequel ?" said I, a little impatient. " I was thinking how I should let it break upon you, as it took effect upon her acquaintances — for, under- stand, Mrs. Titton is too much of a diplomatist to do anything obviously dramatic in this age of ridicule. She knows very well that any sudden 'flare-up' of her husband's consequence — any new light on his charac- ter obviously calling for attention — would awaken speculation and set to work the watchful anatomizers of the body fashionable. Let me see! J will tell you what I should have known about it, had I been only an ordinary acquaintance — not in the secret, and not the painter of the pictures. " Some six months after the finishing of the last portrait, I was at a large ball at their house. Mrs. Titton's beauty, I should have told you, and the style in which they lived, and very possibly a little of Lord George's good will, had elevated them from the wealthy and respectable level of society to the fashionable and exclusive. All the best people went there. As I was going in, I overtook, at the head of the stairs, a very clever little widow, an acquaintance of mine, and she honored me by taking my arm and keeping it for a promenade through the rooms. We made our bow to Mrs. Titton and strolled across the reception room, where the most conspicuous object, dead facing us, with a flood of light upon it, was my first veracious portrait of Titton ! As I was not known as the artist, I indulged myself in some commonplace exclamations of horror. " ' Do not look at that,' said the widow, 'you will distress poor Mrs. Titton. What a quiz that clever husband of hers must be to insist on exposing such a caricatuie!' " ' How insist upon it ?' I asked. m i Why, have you never seen the one in her boudoir? Come with me !' " We made our way through the apartments to the little retreat lined with silk, which the morning lounge of the fair mistress of the house. There was but one picture, with a curtain drawn carefully across it — my second portrait ! We sat down on the luxurious cushions, and the widow went off into a discussion of it and the original, pronouncing it a perfect likeness, not at all flattered, and very soon begging me to re- draw the curtain, lest we should be surprised by Mr. Titton himself. " ' And suppose we were?' said I. " ' Why, he is such an oddity !' replied the widow lowering her tone. ' They say that in this very house he has a suite of apartments entirely to himself, furnish- ed with a taste and luxury really wonderful ! There are two Mr. Tittons, my dear friend ! — one a perfect Sybarite, very elegant in his dress when he chooses to be, excessively accomplished and fastidious, and brilliant and fascinating to a degree ! — (and in this I character they say he won that superb creature for a wife), and the other Mr. Titton is just the slovenly monster that everybody sees ! Isn't it odd !' " ' Queer enough !' said I, affecting great astonish- ment ; * pray, have you ever been into these mysterious apartments V " ' No ! — they say only his wife and himself and one confidential servant ever pass the threshold. Mrs. Titton don't like to talk about it — though one would think she could scarcely object to her husband's being thought better of. It's pride on his part — sheer pride — and I can understand the feeling very well ! He's a very superior man, and he has made up his mind that the world thinks him very awkward and ugly, and he takes a pleasure in showing the world that he don't care a rush for its opinion, and has re- sources quite sufficient within himself. That's the reason that atrocious portrait is hung up in the best room, and this good-looking one covered up with a curtain ! I suppose this wouldn't be here if he could have his own way, and if his wife wasn't so much in love with him !' " This, 1 assure you," said S , " is the im- pression throughout their circle of acquaintances. The Tittons themselves maintain a complete silence on the subject. Mr. Fortescue Titton is considered a very accomplished man, with a very proud and very secret contempt for the opinions of the world — dressing badly on purpose, silent and simple by design, and only caring to show himself in his real character to his beautiful wife, who is thought to be completely in love with him, and quite excusable for it ! What do you think of the woman's diplomatic talents?" " I think I should like to know her," said I; " but what says Lord George to all this ?" " I had a call from Lord George not long ago," replied S , " and for the first time since our chat at Somerset-House, the conversation turned upon the Tittons. '"Devilish sly of you !' said his lordship, turning to me half angry, ' why did you pretend not to know the woman at Somerset-House ? You might have saved me lots of trouble and money, for I was a month or two finding out what sort of people they were — feeing the servants and getting them called on and invited here and there — all with the idea that it was a rich donkey with a fine toy that didn't belong to him !" " ' Well !' exclaimed I — " ' Well! — not at all well ! I made a great ninny of myself, with that satirical slyboots, old Titton, laughing at me all the time, when you, that had painted him in his proper character and knew what a deep devil he was, might have saved me with but half a hint !' " 'You have been in the lady's boudoir then !' " ' Yes, and in the gentleman's sanctum sanctorum ! Mrs. Titton sent for me about some trumpery thing or other, and when I called, the servant showed me in there by mistake. There was a great row in the house about it, but I was there long enough to see what a monstrous nice time the fellow has of it, all to him- self, and to see your picture of him in his private character. The picture you made of me was only a copy of that, you sly traitor ! And I suppose Mrs. Titton didn't like your stealing from hers, did she — for, I take it that was what ailed her at the exhibition, when you allowed me to be so humbugged !' " I had a good laugh, but it was as much at the quiet success of Mrs. Titton's tactics as at Lord George's discomfiture. Of course, I could not un- deceive him. And now," continued S , very good-naturedly, "just ring for a pen and ink, and I'll write a note to Mrs. Tittop, asking leave to bring you there this evening, for it's her 'night at home,' and she's worth seeing, if my pictures, which you will see there, are not." BROWN'S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. 275 BROWN'S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. Wk got down from an omnibus in Charing-Cross. " Sovereign or ha'penny ?" said the cad, rubbing the coin between his thumb and finger. •'Sovereign, of course !" said B confidently, pocketing the change which the man had ready for the emergency in a bit of brown paper. It was a muggy, misty, London twilight. I was coming up to town from Blackheath, and in the crowded vehicle had chanced to encounter my com- patriot B (call it Brown), who had been lion- izing the Thames tunnel. In the course of conver- sation, it came out that we were both on the town for our dinner, and as we were both guests at the Trav- eller's Club, we had pulled the omnibus-string at the nearest point, and, after the brief dialogue recorded above, strolled together down Pall Mall. As we sat waiting for our fish, one of us made a re- mark as to the difference of feel between gold and copper coin, and Brown, fishing in his pocket for money to try the experiment, discovered that the doubt of the cad was well founded, for he had uncon- sciously passed a halfpenny for a sovereign. " People are very apt to take your coin at your own valuation ."' said Brown, with a smile of some mean- ing, " and when they are in the dark as to your original coinage (as the English are with regard to Americans abroad), it is as easy to pass for gold as for copper. Indeed, you may pass for both in a day, as I have lately had experience. Remind me presently to tell yon how. Here comes the fried sole, and it's trouble- some talking when there are bones to fight shy of — the 'flow of sole' to the contrary notwithstanding." I will take advantage of the hiatus to give the reader a slight idea of my friend, as a preparation for his story. Brown was the " mirror of courtesy." He was also the mirror of vulgarity. And he was the mirror of everything else. He had that facility of adapta- tion to the society he was in, which made him seem born for that society, and that only ; and, without cal- culation or forethought — by an unconscious instinct, indeed — he cleverly reflected the man and manners before him. The result was a popularity of a most varied quality. Brown was a man of moderate for- tune and no profession. He had travelled for some years on the continent, and had encountered all classes of Englishmen, from peers to green-grocers, and as he had a visit to England in prospect, he seldom part- ed from the most chance acquaintance without a vol- unteer of letters of introduction, exchange of addres- ses, and similar tokens of having "pricked through his castle wall." When he did arrive in London, at last, it was with a budget like the postman's on Val- entine's day, and he had only to deliver one letter in a 9core to be put on velvet in any street or square within the bills of mortality. Sagacious enough to know that the gradations of English society have the facility of a cat's back (smooth enough from the head downward), he began with a most noble duke, and at the date of his introduction to the reader, was on the dinner-list of most of the patricians of May Fair. Presuming that you see your man, dear reader, let us come at once to the removal of the cloth. " As 1 was calling m y s elf to account, the other day, over my breakfast," said Brown, filling his glass and pushing the bottle, " it occurred to me that my round of engagements required some little variation. There's a ' toujours perdiix,' even among lords and ladies, par- ticularly when you belong as much to their sphere, and are as likely to become a part of it, as the fly re- volving in aristocratic dust on the wheel of my lord's carriage. I thought, perhaps, I had better see some other sort of people. " I had, under a presse papier on the table, about a hundred litters of introduction — the condemned re- mainder, after the selection, by advice, of four or five only. I determined to cut this heap like a pack of cards, and follow up the trump. " ' John Mimpson, Esq., House of Mimpson and Pkipps, Mark's Lane, London.' " The gods had devoted me to the acquaintance of Mr. (and probably Mrs.) John Mimpson. After turn- ing over a deal of rubbish in my mind, I remembered that the letter had been given me five years before by an American merchant — probably the correspondent of the firm in Mark's Lane. It was a sealed letter, and said in brackets on the back, ' Introducing Mr. Brown.'' I had a mind to give it up and cut again, for I could not guess on what footing I was intro- duced, nor did I know what had become of the wri- ter — nor had I a very clear idea how long a letter of recommendation will hold its virtue. It struck me again that these difficulties rather gave it a zest, and I would abide by the oracle. 1 dressed, and, as the day was fine, started to stroll leisurely through the Strand and Fleet street, and look into the shop-win- dows on my way — assuring myself, at least, thus much of diversion in my adventure. " Somewhere about two o'clock, I left daylight be- hind, and plunged into Mark's Lane. Up one side and down the other — ' Mimpson and Co.' at last, on a small brass plate, set in a green baize door. With my unbuttoned coat nearly wiped off my shoulder by the strength of the pulley, I shoved through, and emerged in a large room, with twenty or thirty clerks perched on high stools, like monkeys in a menagerie. " ' First door right!' said the nearest man, without raising his eyes from the desk, in reply to my inquiry for Mr. Mimpson. " I entered a closet, lighted by a slanting skylight, in which sat my man. " ' Mr. John Mimpson ?' " ' Mr. John Mimpson !' " After this brief dialogue of accost, I produced my letter, and had a second's leisure to examine my new friend while he ran his eye over the contents. He was a rosy, well-conditioned, tight-skinned little man, with black hair, and looked like a pear on a chair. (Hang the bothering rhymes !) His legs were com- pletely hid under the desk, so that the ascending eyf began with his equatory line, and whether he had no shoulders or no neck, 1 could not well decide — but it was a tolerably smooth plane from his seat to the top curl of his sinciput. He was scrupulously well dress- ed, and had that highly washed look which marks the city man in London— bent on not betraying his 'dig- gins' by his complexion. "I answered Mr. Mimpson's inquiries about our mutual friend with rather a hazardous particularity, and assured him he was quite well (1 have since dis- covered that he has been dead three years), and con- versation warmed between us for ten minutes, till we '?G BROWN'S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. were ready to part sworn friends. I rose to go, and the merchant seemed very much perplexed. " ' To-morrow,' said he, rubbing the two great busi- ness bumps over his eyebrows — 'no — yes — that is to say, Mrs. Mimpson — well, it shall be to-morrow! Can you come out to Rose Lodge, and spend the day to-morrow?' " ' With great pleasure,' said I, for I was determined to follow my trump letter to extremities. •• ' Mrs. Mimpson,' he next went on to say, as he wrote down the geography of Rose Lodge — 'Mrs. Mimpson expects some friends to-morrow — indeed, some of her very choice friends. If you come early, you will see more of her than if you just save your dinner. Bring your carpetbag, of course, and stay over night. Lunch at two — dine at seven. I can't be there to receive you myself, but I will prepare Mrs. Mimpson to save you all trouble of introduction. Hampstead road. Good morning, my dear sir.' " So, 1 am in for a suburban bucolic, thought I, as I regained daylight in the neighborhood of the Mansion House. "It turned out a beautiful day, sunny and warm; and had I been sure of my navigation, and sure of my disposition to stay all night, I should have gone out oy the Hampstead coach, and made the best of my way, carpetbag in hand. I went into Newman's for a postchaise, however, and on showing him the written address, was agreeably surprised to find he knew Rose Lodge. His boys had all been there. "Away I went through the Regent's park, behind the blood-posters, blue jacket and white hat, and, eomewhere about one o'clock, mounted Hampstead Hill, and in ten minutes thence was at my destination. The postboy was about driving in at the open gate, but I dismounted and sent him back to the inn to leave his horses, and then depositing my bag at the porter's lodge, walked up the avenue. It was a much finer place, altogether, than I expected to see. "Mrs. Mimpson was in the garden. The dashing footman who gave me the information, led me through a superb drawing-room and out at a glass door upon the lawn, and left me to make my own way to the la- dy's presence. "It was a delicious spot, and I should have been very glad to ramble about by myself till dinner, but, at a turn in the grand-walk, I came suddenly upon two ladies. "I made my bow, and begged leave to introduce myself as 'Mr. Brown.' "With a very slight inclination of the head, and no smile whatever, one of the ladies asked me if I had walked from town, and begged her companion (with- out introducing me to her) to show me in to lunch. The spokester was a stout and tall woman, who had rather an aristocratic nose, and was not handsome, but, to give her her due, she had made a narrow escape of it. She was dressed very showily, and evi- dently had great pretensions ; but, that she was not at all glad to see Mr. Brown, was as apparent as was at all necessary. As the other, and younger lady, who was to accompany me, however, was very pretty, though dressed very plainly, and had, withal, a look in her eye which assured me she was amused with my unwelcome apparition, I determined, as I should not otherwise have done, to stay it out, and accepted her convoy with submissive civility — very much in- clined, however, to be impudent to somebody, some- how. "The lunch was on a tray in a side-room, and I rang the bell and ordered a bottle of champagne. The servant looked surprised, but brought it, and mean- time I was getting through the weather and the other commonplaces, and the lady saying little, was watch- ing me very calmly. I liked her looks, however, and was sure she was not a Mimpson. " ' Hand this to Miss Armstrong !' said I to the foot- man, pouring out a glass of champagne. "'Miss Bellamy, you mean, sir.' "I rose and bowed, and, with as grave a courtesy as I could command, expressed my pleasure at my first introduction to Miss Bellamy — through Thomas, the footman ! Miss Bellamy burst into a laugh, and was pleased to compliment my American manners, and in ten minutes we were a very merry pair of friends, and she accepted my arm for a stroll through the grounds, carefully avoiding the frigid neighbor- hood of Mrs. Mimpson. "Of course I set about picking Miss Bellamy's brains for what information I wanted. She turned out quite the nicest creature I had seen in England — fresh, joyous, natural, and clever ; and as I was deliv- ered over to her bodily, by her keeper and feeder, she made no scruple of promenading me through the grounds till the dressing-bell — four of the most agree- able hours I have to record in my travels. "By Miss Bellamy's account, my advent that day was looked upon by Mrs. Mimpson as an enraging calamity. Mrs. Mimpson was, herself, fourth cousin to a Scotch lord, and the plague of her life was the drawback to the gentility of her parties in Mimpson's mercantile acquaintance. She had married the little man for his money, and had thought, by living out of town, to choose her own society, with her hus- band for her only incumbrance; but Mimpson vowed that he should be ruined in Mark's Lane, if he did not house and dine his mercantile fraternity and their envoys at Rose Lodge, and they had at last compro- mised the matter. No Yankee clerk, or German agent, or person of any description, defiled by trade, was to be invited to the Lodge without a three days' premonition to Mrs. Mimpson, and no additions were to be made, whatever, by Mr. M., to Mrs. M's din- ners, soirees, matinees, archery parties, suppers, de- jeuners, tableaux, or private theatricals. This holy treaty, Mrs. Mimpson presumed, was written 'with a gad of steel on a leaf of brass' — inviolable as her cous- in's coat-of-arms. "But there was still ' Ossa on Pelion.' The din- ner of that day had a diplomatic aim. Miss Mimp- son (whom I had not yet seen) was ready to ' come out,' and her mother had embarked her whole soul in the enterprise of bringing about that debut at Al- mack's. Her best card was a certain Lady S , who chanced to be passing a few days in the neigh- borhood, and this dinner was in her honor — the com- pany chosen to impress her with the exclusiveness of the Mimpsons, and the prayer for her ladyship's in- fluence (to procure vouchers from one of the patron- esses) was to be made, when she was ' dieted to their request.' And all had hitherto worked to a charm. Lady S had accepted — Ude had sent his best cook from Crockford's — the Belgian charge, and a Swedish attache were, coming — the day was beautiful, and the Lodge was sitting for its picture ; and on the very morning, when every chair at the table was ticketed and devoted, what should Mr. Mimpson do, but send back a special messenger from the city, to say that he had forgotten to mention to Mrs. M. at breakfast, that he had invited Mr. Brown! Of course he had for got- ten it, though it would have been as much as his eyes were worth to mention it in person to Mrs. Mimpson. "To this information, which 1 give you in a lump, but which came to light in the course of rather a de- sultory conversation, Miss Bellamy thought I had some title, from the rudeness of my reception. It was given in the shape of a very clever banter, it is true, but she was evidently interested to set me right with regard to Mr. Mimpson's good intentions in my behalf, and, as far as that and her own civilities would do it, to apologise for the inhospitality of Rose Lodge. BROWN'S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. 277 Very kind of the girl— for I was passing, recollect, at a most ha'penny valuation. "I had made some casual remark touching the ab- surdity of Almack's aspirations in general, and Mrs. Mimpson's in particular, and my fair friend, who of course fancied an Almack's ticket as much out of Mr. Brown's reach as the horn of the new moon, took up the defence of Mrs. Mimpson on that point, and un- dertook to dazzle my untutored imagination by a pic- j ture of this seventh heaven — as she had heard it de- scribed — for to herself, she freely confessed, it was not even within the limits of dream-land. I knew this was true of herself, and thousands of highly-educated and charming girls in England; but still, looking at her while she spoke, and seeing what an ornament she would be to any ballroom in the world, I realized, with more repugnance than I had ever felt before, the arbitrary barriers of fashion and aristocracy. As ac- j cident had placed me in a position to 'look on the re- verse of the shield,' I determined, if possible, to let j Miss Bellamy judge of its color with the same ad- I vantage. It is not often that a plebeian like myself has the authority to "' Bid the pebbles Fillip the stars.' the hungry beach " We were near the open window of the library, and I stepped in and wrote a note to Lady (one of the lady patronesses, and the kindest friend I \ have in England), asking for three vouchers for the next ball. I had had occasion once or twice before to apply for similar favors, for the countrywomen of my own, passing through London on their travels, and I knew that her ladyship thought no more of granting them than of returning bows in Hyde Park. I did not name the ladies for whom the three tickets were j intended, wishing to reserve the privilege of handing one to Miss Mimpson, should she turn out civil and presentable. The third, of course, was to Miss Bel- lamy's chaperon, whoever that might be, and the party might be extended to a quartette by the 'Mon- sieur De Trop' of the hour — cela selon. Quite a dra- matic plot — wasn't it? " I knew that Lady was not very well, and would be found at home by the messenger (my post- boy), and there was time enough between soup and coffee to go to London and back, even without the spur in his pocket. "The bell rang, and Miss Bellamy took herself off to dress. I went to my carpetbag in the bachelor quarters of the house, and through a discreet entretien with the maid who brought me hot water, became somewhat informed as to my fair friend's position in the family. She was the daughter of a gentleman who had seen better days. They lived in a retired cottage in the neighborhood; and, as Miss Bellamy and a younger sister were both very highly accomplished, they were usually asked to the Lodge, whenever there was company to be entertained with their music. " I was early in the drawing-room, and found there Mrs. Mimpson and a tall dragoon of a young lady I presumed to be her daughter. She did not introduce me. I had hardly achieved my salutary salaam when Miss Bellamy came in opportunely, and took me off their hands, and as they addressed no conversation to us, we turned over music, and chatted in the corner while the people came in. It was twilight in the re- ception-room, and 1 hoped, by getting on the same side of the table with Lady S (whom I had the honor of knowing), to escape recognizance till we joined the ladies in the drawing-room after dinner. As the guests arrived, they were formally introduced to Miss Mimpson by the mother, and everybody but myself was formally presented to Lady S , the exception not noticeable, of course, among thirty people. Mr. Mimpson came late from the city, pos- sibly anxious to avoid a skirmish on the subject of his friend Brown, and he entered the room barely in time to hand Lady S in to dinner. " My tactics were ably seconded by my unconscious ally. I placed myself in such a position at table, that, by a little management, I kept Miss Bellamy's head between me and Lady S , and my name was not so remarkable as to draw attention to me when called on to take wine with the peccant spouse of the Scotch lord's cousin. Meantime I was very charmingly entertained — Miss Bellamy not having, at all, the fear of Mrs. Mimpson before her eyes, and apparently finding the Yankee supercargo, or cotton clerk, or whatever he might be, quite worth trying her hand upon. The provender was good, and the wine was enough to verify the apocrypha — at least for the night — ' a man remembering neither sorrow nor debt' with such glorious claret. " As I was vis-a-vis to Miss Mimpson, and only two plates removed from her mother, I was within reach of some syllable or some civility, and one would have thought that good-breeding might exact some slight notice for the devil himself, under one's own roof by invitation ; but the large eyes of Miss Aurelia and her mamma passed over me as if I had on the invisible ring of Gyges. I wonder, by-the-way, whether the ambitious youths who go to London and Paris with samples, and come back and sport 'the complete var- nish of a man' acquired in foreign society — I wonder whether they take these rubs to be part of their pol- ishing ! " The ladies rose and left us, and as I had no more occasion to dodge heads, or trouble myself with hu- mility, I took Lady S 's place at old Mimpson's right hand, and was immediately recognised with great empressement by the Belgian charge, who had met me 'very often, in very agreeable society.' Mimpson stared, and evidently took it for a bit of flummery or a mistake ; but he presently stared again, for the but- ler came in with a coronetted note on his silver tray, and the seal side up, and presented it to me with a most deferential bend of his white coat. I felt the vouchers within, and pocketed it without opening, and we soon after rose and went to the drawing-room for our coffee. " Lady S sat with her back to the door, be- sieged by Mrs. Mimpson ; and at the piano, beside Miss Bellamy, who was preparing to play, stood one of the loveliest young creatures possibly to fancy. A pale and high-bred looking lady in widow's weeds sat near them, and I had no difficulty in making out who were the after-dinner additions to the party. I joined them, and was immediately introduced by Miss Bel- lamy to her mother and sister, with whom (after a brilliant duet by the sisters) I strolled out upon the lawn for an hour — for it was a clear night, and the moon and soft air almost took me back to Italy. And (perhaps by a hint from Miss Bellamy) I was allowed to get on very expeditiously in my acquaintance with her mother and sister. " My new friends returned to the drawing-room, and as the adjoining library was lighted, I went in and filled up the blank vouchers with the names of Mrs. Bellamy and her daughters. I listened a moment to the conversation in the next room. The subject was Almack's, and was discussed with great animation. Lady S , who seemed to me trying to escape the trap they had baited for her, was quietly setting forth the difficulties of procuring vouchers, and rec- ommending to Mrs. Mimpson not to subject herself to the mortification of a refusal. Old Mimpson backed up this advice with a stout approval, and this brought Mrs. Mimpson out ' horse and foot,' and she declared that she would submit to anything, do any- thing, give anything, rather than fail in this darling object of her ambition. She would feel under eternal, 27S MR. AND MRS. FOLLETT. inexpressible obligations to any friend who would pro- cure, for herself and daughter, admission for but one night to Almack'a. " And then came in the sweet voice of Miss Bel- lamy, who ' knew it was both wrong and silly, but she would give ten years of her life to go to one of Al- mack's balls, and in a long conversation she had had with Mr. Brown on the subject that morning ' " ' Ah !' interrupted Lady S , ' if it had been the Mr. Brown, you would have had very little trouble about it.' " ' And who is the Mr. Brown?' asked Mis. Mimpson. '"The pet and protege of the only lady patroness I do not visit,' said Lady S , ' and unluckily. too, the only one who thinks the vouchers great rub- bish, and gives them away without thought or scruple.' " At that moment I entered the room. "'Good heavens." screamed Lady S , 'is that his ghost? Why, Mr. Brown !' she gasped, giv- ing me her hand very cautiously, ' do you appear when you are talked of like — like — like ' "'Like the devil? No! But I am here in the body, and very much at your ladyship's service,' said I, ' for of course you are going to the duke's to-night, and so am I. Will you take me with you, or shall my po-chay follow where I belong — in your train ?" " • I'll take you, of course,' said her ladyship, rising, • but first about these vouchers. You have just come, and didn't hear our discussion. Mrs. Mimpson is ex- tremely anxious that her daughter should come out at Almack's, and as I happened to say, the moment before you entered, that you were the very person to procure the tickets from Lady . How very odd that you should come in just then ! But tell us — can you?' " A dead silence followed the question. Mrs. Mimpson sat with her eyes on the floor, the picture of dismay and mortification. Miss Mimpson blushed and twisted her handkerchief, and Miss Bellamy looked at her hostess, half amused and half dis- tressed. "I handed the three vouchers to Miss Bellamy, and begged her acceptance of them, and then turning to Lady S , without waiting for a reply, regret- ted that, not having had the pleasure of being pre- sented to Mrs. Mimpson, I had not felt authorized to include her in my effort to oblige Miss Bellamy. "And what with old Mimpson's astonishment, and Lady S 's immediate tact in covering, by the bustle of departure, what she did not quite under- stand, though she knew it was some awkward contre temps or other, I found time to receive Miss Bella- my's thanks, and get permission from the mother to call and arrange this unexpected party, and in ten minutes I was on my way to London with Lady S , amusing her almost into fits with my expla- nations of the Mimpson mystery. " Lady S was to be still at Hampstead for a few days, and, at my request, she called with me on the Bellamys, and invited the girls up to town. Rose Bellamy, the younger, is at this moment one of the new stars of the season accordingly, and Miss Bel- lamy and I carry on the war, weekly, at Almack's, and nightly at some waxlight paradise or other, and Lady S has fallen in love with them both, and treats them like daughters. "So you sec, though I passed for a ha'penny with the Mimpsons, I turned out a sovereign to the Bel- lamys. " Pass the bottle !" MR, AND MRS. FOLLETT; OR, THE DANGERS OF MEDDLING WITH MARRIED PEOPLE. There are two commodities, much used by gentle- men, neither of which will bear tinkering or tampering with — matrimony and patent leather. Their necessi- ties are fair weather and untroubled wear and tear. Ponder on the following melancholy example ! My friend Follett married a lady contrary to my advice. I gave the advice contrary to my wont and against my will. He would have it. The lady was a tolerably pretty woman, on whose original destiny it was never written that she should be a belle. How she became one is not much matter; but nature being thoroughly taken by surprise with her success, had neglected to provide the counterpoise. I say it is no great matter how she became a belle — nor is it — for if such things were to be accounted for to the satisfaction of the sex, the world have little time for other specu- lations ; but I will devote a single paragraph to the elucidation of this one of many mysteries, for a reason I have. Fcenam habet in cornu. Poets are the least fastidious, and the least discrim- -inating of men, in their admiration of women (vide Byron), partly because their imagination, like sun- shine, glorifies all that turns to it, and partly because the voluptuous heart, without which they were not poets, is both indolent and imperial, from both causes waiting always to be sought. In some circles, bards are rather comets than stars, and the one whose orbit for a few days intersected that of Miss Adele Burnham, vis the exclusive marvel of the hour. Like other po- ets, the one of which I speak was concentrative in his attentions, and he chose (why, the gods knew better than the belles of the season) to have neither eyes nor ears, flowers, flatteries, nor verses, for any other than Miss Burnham. He went on his way, but the incense, in which he had enveloped the blest Adele, lingered like a magic atmosphere about her, and Tom Follett and all his tribe breathed it in blind adoration. I trust the fair reader has here nodded her head, in evidence that this history of the belleship of Miss Burnham is no less brief than natural and satisfactory. When Follett came to me with the astounding in- formation that he intended to propose to Miss Burn- ham (he had already proposed and been accepted, the traitor) ! my fancy at once took the prophetic stride so natural on the first breaking of such news, and in the five minutes which I took for reflection, I had travelled far into that land of few delusions — holy matrimony. Before me, in all the changeful variety of a magic mirror, came and went the many phases of which that multiform creature, woman, is susceptible. I saw her in diamonds and satin, and in kitchen-apron and curl- papers; in delight, and in the dumps; in supplication, and in resistance ; shod like a fairy in French shoes, and slip-shod (as perhaps fairies are, too, in their bed- rooms and dairies). I saw her approaching the cli- macteric of age, and receding from it — a mother, a nurse, an invalid — mum over her breakfast, chatty over her tea—doing the honors at Tom's table, and mend- MR. AND MRS. FOLLETT. 279 ing with sober diligence Tom's straps and suspenders. The kaleidoscope of fancy exhausted its combinations. "Tom!" said I (looking up affectionately, for he was one of my weaknesses, was Tom, and I indulged myself in loving him without a reason), "Miss Burn- ham is in the best light where she is. If she cease to be a belle, as of course she will, should she mar- ry " "Of course !" interrupted Tom very gravely. "Well, in that case, she lays off the goddess, trust me ! You will like her to dress plainly — — " "Quite plain !" "And stripped of her plumage, your bird of paradise II would be nothing but a very indifferent hen — with the disadvantage of remembering that she had been a bird of paradise." "But it was not her dress that attracted the brilliant author of " Possibly not. But as the false gods of mythology are only known by their insignia, Jupiter by his thun- derbolt, and Mercury by his talaria and caduceus, so a woman, worshipped by accident, will find a change of exterior nothing less than a laying aside of her di- vinity. That's a didactic sentence, but you will know what I mean, when I tell you that I myself can not see a pair of coral ear-rings without a sickness of the j heart, though the woman who once wore them, and who slighted me twenty years ago, sits before me in ; church, without diverting a thought from the sermon. Don't marry her, Tom !" Six weeks after this conversation, I was at the wed- ding, and the reader will please pass to the rear the six succeeding months — short time as it seems — to record a change in the bland sky of matrimony. It was an ellipse in our friendship as well ; for advice (con- trary to our wishes and intentions) is apt to be resent- ed, and I fancied, from the northerly bows I received from Mrs. Follett, that my friend had made a merit to her of having married contrary to my counsel. At the j end of this period Tom called on me. Follett, I should have said, was a man of that unde- | cided exterior which is perfectly at the mercy of a cra- vat or waistcoat. He looked "snob" or "nob," ac- | cording to the care with which he had made his toilet, j While a bachelor, of course, he could never afford in public a negligence or a mistake, and was invariably an elegant man, harmonious and " pin-point" from straps to whiskers. But alas! the security of wedded life ! When Tom entered my room, I perused him as a walking homily. His coat, still made on the old measure, was buttoned only at the top, the waist being rather snug, and his waistcoat pockets loaded with the copper which in his gayer days he always left on the counter. His satin cravat was frayed and brownish, with the tie slipped almost under his ear. The heel of his right boot (he trod straight on the other foot) almost looked him in the face. His pantaloons (the one article of dress in which there are no gradations — nothing, if not perfect) were bulged and strained. He wore a frightfully new hat, no gloves, and carried a baggy brown umbrella, which was, in itself, a most ex- pressive portrait of "gone to seed." Tom entered with his usual uppish carriage, and. through the how- d'ye-dos, and the getting into his chair, carried off the old manner to a charm. In talking of the weather, a moment after, his eye fell on his stumpy umbrella, which, with an unconscious memory of an old affecta- tion with his cane, he was balancing on the toe of his boot, and the married look slid over him like a mist. Down went his head between his shoulders, and down went the corners of his mouth — down the inflation of his chest like a collapsed balloon ; and down, in its youth and expression it seemed to me, every muscle of his face. He had assumed in a minute the style and countenance of a man ten years older. I smiled. How could I but smile ! " Then you have heard of it !" exclaimed Tom, suddenly starting to his feet, and flushing purple to the roots of his hair. "Heard of what ?" My look of surprise evidently took him aback ; and, seating himself again with confused apologies, Tom proceeded to " make a clean breast," on a subject which I had not anticipated. It seemed that, far from moulting her feathers after marriage, according to my prediction, Mrs. Follett clearly thought that she had not yet "strutted her hour," and, though everything Tom could wish behind the curtain, in society she had flaunted and flirted, not merely with no diminution of zest from the wedding- day, but, her husband was of opinion, with a ratio alarmingly increasing. Her present alliance was with a certaiu Count Hautenbas, the lion of the moment, and though doubtless one in which vanity alone was active, Tom's sense of connubial propriety was at its last gasp. He could stand it no longer. He wished my advice in the choice between two courses. Should he call out the Frenchman, or should he take advan- tage of the law's construction of " moral insanity," and shut her up in a mad-house. My advice had been of so little avail in the first in- stance, that I shrank from troubling Tom with any more of it, and certainly should have evaded it alto- gether, but for an experiment I wished to make, as much for my own satisfaction as for the benefit of that large class, the unhappy married. "Your wife is out every night, I suppose, Tom ?" "Every night when she has no party at home." "Do you go with her always ?" " I go for her usually — but the truth is, that since I married, parties bore me, and after seeing my wife off, I commonly smoke and snooze, or read, or run into Bob Thomas's and 'talk horse,' till I have just time to be in at the death." "And when you get there, you don't dance ?" "Not I, faith ! I haven't danced since I was mar- ried !" "But you used to be the best waltzer of the day." "Well, the music sometimes gets into my heels now, but, when I remember I am married, the fit cools off. The deuce take it ! a married man shouldn't be seen whirling round the room with a girl in his arms !" "I presume that were you still single, you would fancy your chance to be as good for ladies' favors as any French count's that ever came over ?" "Ehem ! why — yes !" Tom pulled up his collar. "And if you had access to her society all day and all night, and the Frenchman only an hour or two in the evening, any given lady being the object, you would bet freely on your own head ?" " I see your drift," said Tom, with a melancholy smile, " but it won't do !" "No, indeed — it is what would have done. You had at the start a much better chance with your wife than Count Hautenbas ; but husbands and lovers are the 'hare and the tortoise' of the fable. We must resort now to other means. Will you follow my advice, as well as lake it, should I be willing again to burn my fingers in your affairs ?" The eagerness of Tom's protestations quite made the amende to my mortified self-complacency, and I entered zealousy into my little plot for his happiness. At this moment I heartily wish I had sent him and his affairs to the devil, and (lest I should forget it at the close of this tale) I here caution all men, single and double, against "meddling or making" marring or mending, in matrimonial matters. The alliteration may, perhaps, impress this salutary counsel on the mind of the reader. I passed the remainder of the day in repairing the damage of Tom's person. I had his whiskers curled 280 MR. AND MRS. FOLLETT. and trimmed even (his left whisker was an inch nearer his nose than the right), and his teeth looked to by the dentist. I stood by, to be sure that there was no care- lessness in his selection of patent leathers, and on his assuring me that he was otherwise well provided, I suffered him to go home to dress, engaging him to dine with me at seven. He was punctual to the hour. By Jove, I could scarce believe it was the same man. The conscious- ness of being well dressed seemed to have brightened his eyes and lips, as it certainly changed altogether his address and movements. He had a narrow escape of being handsome. After all, it is only a " man of mark," or an Apollo, who can well afford to neglect the outer man ; and a judicious negligence, or a judicious plain- ness, is probably worth the attention of both the man of m;irk and the Apollo. Tom was quite another or- der of creature — a butterfly that was just now a worm — and would have been treated with more consideration in consequence, even by those least tolerant of "the pomps and vanities." We dined temperately, and I superseded the bottle by a cup of strong green tea, at an early moment after the removal of the cloth, deter- mined to have Tom's wits in as full dress as his per- son. Without being at all a brilliant man, he was — the next best thing — a steady absorbent; and as most women are more fond of giving than receiving in all things, but particularly in conversation, I was not un- easy as to his power of making himself agreeable. Nor was he, faith ! The ball of the night was at the house of an old friend of my own, and Mr. and Mrs. Follett were but newly introduced to the circle. I had the company very clearly in my eye, therefore, while casting about for dramatis persona, and fixing upon Mrs. Beverly Fairhe, for the prominent character, I assured suc- cess, though being very much in love with that co- quettish widow myself, I had occasion for some self- denial in the matter. Of Mrs. Fairlie's weak points (on which it seemed necessary that I should enlighten Tom), I had information not to be acquired short of summering and wintering her, and with my eye solely directed to its effect upon Mrs. Follett, I put the clues into my friend's hands in a long after-dinner conversa- tion. As he seemed impatient to open the campaign after getting these definite and valuable instructions, I augured well for his success, and we entered the ball- room in high spirits. It was quite enough to say to the mischievous widow that another woman was to be piqued by any attentions she might choose to pay Mr. Follett. Having said thus much, and presented Tom, I sought out Mrs. Follett myself, with the double purpose of breaking up the monopoly of Mons. Hautenbas, and of direct- ing her attention, should it be necessary, to the suavi- ties between Tom and the widow. It was a superb ball, and the music, as Tom said, went to the heels. The thing he did well was waltz- ing, and after taking a turn or two with Mrs. Fairlie, the rustic dame ran up to Mrs. Follett with the most innocent air imaginable, and begged the loan of her husband for the rest of the evening ! I did not half like the look of earnest with which she entered into the affair, indeed, and there was little need of my taking much trouble to enlighten Mrs. Follett; for a woman so surprised with a six months' husband I never saw. They were so capitally matched, Tom and the widow, in size, motion, style of waltzing, and all, that not we only, but the whole party, were occupied with observing and admiring them. Mrs. Follett and I (for a secret sympathy, somehow, drew us together, as the thing went on) kept up a broken conversation, in which the count was even less interested than we ; and after a few ineffectual attempts to draw her into the tea- room, the Frenchman left us in pique, and we gave ourselves up to the observation of the couple who (we presumed) severally belonged to us. They carried on the war famously, to be sure ! Mrs. Fairlie was a woman who could do as she liked, because she would; and she cared not a straw for the very pronounce dem- onstration of engrossing one man for all the quadrilles, waltzes, and galopades, beside being with him to sup- per. Once or twice I tried to find an excuse for leav- ing Mrs. Follett, to put in an oar for myself; but the little woman clung to me as if she had not the courage to undertake another person's amusement, and, new and sudden as the feeling must have been, she was pale and wretched, with a jealousy more bitter proba- bly than mine. Tom never gave me a look after the first waltz ; and as to the widow, she played her part with rather more zeal than we set down for her. I passed altogether an uncomfortable night, for a gay one, and it was a great relief to me when Mrs. Follett asked me to send Tom for the car- riage. "Be so kind as to send a servant for it," said Fol- lett, very coolly, "and say to Mrs. Follett, that I will join her at home. I am going to sup, or rather break- fast, with Mrs. Beverly Fairlie !" Here was a mess ! " Shall 1 send the count for your shawl ?" I asked, after giving this message, and wishing to know whether she was this side of pride in her unhappiness. The little woman burst into tears. "I will sit in the cloak-room till my husband is ready," she said; "go to him, if you please, and im- plore him to come and speak to me." As I said before, I wished the whole plot to the devil. We had achieved our object, it is true — and so did the man who knocked the breath out of his friend's body, in killing a fly on his back. Tom is now (this was years ago) a married flirt of some celeb- rity, for after coming out of the widow's hands with a three months' education, he had quite forgot to be troubled about Mrs. Follett ; and instead of neglect- ing his dress, which was his only sin when I took him in hand, he now neglects his wife, who sees him, as women are apt to see their husbands, through other women's eyes. I presume they are doomed to quite as much unhappiness as would have fallen to their lot, had I let them alone — had Mrs. Follett ran away with the Frenchman, and had Tom died a divorced sloven. But when I think that, beside achieving little for them, I was the direct means of spoiling Mrs. Beverly Fair- lie for myself, I think I may write myself down as a warning to meddlers in matrimony. THE COUNTESS NYSCHRIEM. 281 THE COUNTESS NYSCHRIEM, AND THE HANDSOME ARTIST. That favored portion of the light of one summer's morning that was destined to be the transparent bath of the master-pieces on the walls of the Pitti, was pouring in a languishing Hood through the massive windows of the palace. The ghosts of the painters (who, ministering to the eye only, walk the world from cock-crowing to sunset) were haunting invisibly the sumptuous rooms made famous by their pictures ; and the pictures themselves, conscious of the presence of the fountain of soul from which gushed the soul that is in them, glowed with intoxicated mellowness and splendor, and amazed the living students of the gallery with effects of light and color till that moment undiscovered. [And now, dear reader, having paid you the com- pliment of commencing my story in your vein (poetical), let me come down to a little every-day brick-and-mor- tar, and build up a fair aud square common-sense foundation.] Graeme McDonald was a young highlander from Rob Roy's country, come to Florence to study the old masters. He was an athletic, wholesome, hand- some fellow, who had probably made a narrow escape of being simply a fine animal ; and, as it was, you never would have picked him from a crowd as any- thing but a hussar out of uniform, or a brigand per- verted to honest life. His peculiarity was (and this I foresee is to be an ugly sentence), that he had pecu- liarities which did not seem peculiar. He was full of genius for his art, but the canvass which served him I him as a vent, gave him no more anxiety than his pocket-handkerchief. He painted in the palace, or wiped his forehead on a warm day with equally small ; care, to all appearance, and he had brought his mother and two sisters to Italy, and supported them by a most I heroic economy and industry — all the while looking as if the " silver moon" and all the small change of the stars would scarce serve liim for a day's pocket-money. Indeed, the more 1 kuew of McDonald, the more I i became convinced that there was another man built ! over him. The painter was inside. And if he had | free thoroughfare and use of the outer man's windows and ivory door, he was at any rate barred from hang- ing out the smallest sign or indication of being at any time " within." Think as hard as he would — devise, combine, study, or glow with enthusiasm — the pro- prietor of the front door exhibited the same careless and smiling bravery of mien, behaving invariably as if he had the whole tenement to himself, and was neither proud of, nor interested in the doings of his more spiritual inmate — leading you to suppose, almost, that the latter, though billeted upon him, had not I been properly introduced. The thatch of this com- ! mon tenement was of jetty black hair, curling in most opulent prodigality, and, altogether, it was a house j that Hadad, the fallen spirit, might have chosen, when | becoming incarnate to tempt the sister of Absalom. Perhaps you have been in Florence, dear reader, ' aud know by what royal liberality artists are permitted to bring their easels into the splendid apartments of j the palace, and copy from the priceless pictures on the walls. At the time I have my eye upon (some few years ago), McDonald was making a beginning 1 ot n copy of Titian's Bella, and near him stood the! easel of a female artist who was copying from the glorious picture of " Judith and Holofernes," in the same apartment. Mademoiselle Folie (so she was called by the elderly lady who always accompanied her) was a small and very gracefully-formed creature, with the plainest face in which attraction could possi- bly reside. She was a passionate student of her art, J pouring upon it apparently the entire fulness of her life, and as unconsciously forgetful of her personal : impressions on those around her, as if she wore the invisible ring of Gyges. The deference with which she was treated by her staid companion drew some notice upon her, however, and her progress, in the copy she was making, occasionally gathered the artists about her easel ; and, altogether, her position among the silent and patient company at work in the different halls of the palace, was one of affectionate and tacit respect. McDonald was her nearest neighbor, and they frequently looked over each other's pictures, but, as they were both foreigners in Florence (she of Polish birth, as he understood), their conversation was in French or Italian, neither of which languages were fluently familiar to Graeme, and it was limited gene- rally to expressions of courtesy or brief criticism oi each other's labors. As I said before, it was a " proof-impression" of a celestial summer's morning, and the thermometer stood at heavenly idleness. McDonald sat with his maul-stick across his knees, drinking from Titian's picture. An artist, who had lounged in from the next room, had hung himself by the crook of his arm over a high peg, in his comrade's easel, and every now and then he volunteered an observation to which he expected no particular answer. " When I remember how little beauty ] have seen in the world," said Ingarde (this artist), "I am inclined to believe with Saturninus, that there is no resurrec- tion of bodies, and that only the spirits of the good return into the body of the Godhead — for what is ugliness to do in heaven !" McDonald only said, " hm — hm !" " Or rather," said Ingarde again, " I should like to fashion a creed for myself, and believe that nothing was immortal but what was heavenly, and that the good among men and the beautiful among women would be the only reproductions hereafter. How will this little plain woman look in the streets of the New Jerusalem, for example ? Yet she expects, as we all do, to be recognisable by her friends in Heaven, and, of course, to have the same irredeemably plain face ! (Does she understand English, by the way — for she might not be altogether pleased with my theory !") "I have spoken to her very often," said McDonald, " and I think English is Hebrew to her — but my theo- ry of beauty crosses at least one corner of your argu- ment, my friend ! I believe that the original type of every human face is beautiful, and that every human being could be made beautiful, without, in any essential particular, destroying the visible identity. The like- ness preserved in the faces of a family through several generations is modified by the bad mental qualities, and the bad health of those who hand is down. Re- move these modifications, and, without destroying the family likeness, you would take away all that mars the 282 THE COUNTESS NYSCHRIEM. beauty of its particular type. An individual coun- tenance is an integral work of God's making, and God 'saw that it was good' when he made it. Ugliness, as you phrase it, is the damage that type of countenance has received from the sin and suffering of life. But the type can be restored, and will be, doubtless, in Heaven !" " And you think that little woman's face could be made beautiful ?" "I know it." "Try it, then! Here is your copy of Titian's •Bella,' all finished but the face. Make an apotheosis portrait of your neighbor, and while it harmonizes with the body of Titian's beauty, still leave it recogni- sable as her portrait, and I'll give in to your theory — believing in all other miracles, if you like, at the same time!" Ingarde laughed, as he went back to his own picture, and McDonald, after sitting a few minutes lost in revery, turned his easel so as to get a painter's view of his female neighbor. He thought she colored slightly as he fixed his eyes upon her ; but, if so, she apparently became very soon unconscious of his gaze, and he was soon absorbed himself in the task to which his friend had so mockingly challenged him. II. [Excuse me, dear reader, while with two epistles I build a bridge over which you can cross a chasm of a month in my story.] 41 To Graeme McDonald. "Sir: I am intrusted with a delicate commission, which I know not how to broach to you, except by simple proposal. Will you forgive my abrupt brevity, if I inform you, without further preface, that the Countess Nyschriem, a Polish lady of high birth and ample fortune, does you the honor to propose for your hand. If you are disengaged, and your affections are not irrevocably given to another, I can conceive no sufficient obstacle to your acceptance of this brilliant connexion. The countess is twenty-two, and not beautiful, it must in fairness be said ; but she has high qualities of head and heart, and is worthy of any man's respect and affection. She has seen you, of course, and conceived a passion for you, of which this is the result. lam directed to add, that should you consent, the following conditions are imposed — that you marry her within four days, making no inquiry except as to her age, rank, and property, and that, without previous interview, she come veiled to the altar. "An answer is requested in the course of to-morrow, addressed to ' The Count Hanswald, minister of his majesty the king of Prussia.' "I have the honor, &c, &c. "Hanswald." McDonald's answer was as follows : — " To his Excellency, Hanswald, &c, &c. " You will pardon me that I have taken two days to consider the extraordinary proposition made me in your letter. The subject, since it is to be entertained a moment, requires, perhaps, still further reflection — but my reply shall be definite, and as prompt as I can bring myself to be, in a matter so important. " My first impulsewns to return your letter, declining the honor you would do me, and thanking the lady for the compliment of her choice. My first reflection was the relief and happiness which an independence would bring to a mother and two sisters dependant, now, on the precarious profits of my pencil. And I first consented to ponder the matter with this view, and I now consent to marry (frankly) for this advan- tage. But still I have a condition to propose. •' lu the studies I have had the opportunity to make of the happiness of imaginative men in matrimony, I have observed that their two worlds of fact and fancy were seldom under the control of one mistress. It must be a very extraordinary woman of course, who, with the sweet domestic qualities needful for common life, possesses at the same time the elevation and spirituality requisite for the ideal of the poet and painter. And I am not certain, in any case, whethej the romance of some secret passion, fed and pursued in the imagination only, be not the inseparable neces- sity of a poetical nature. For the imagination is in- capable of being chained, and it is at once disenchant- ed and set roaming by the very possession and cer tainty, which are the charms of matrimony. Whethei exclusive devotion of all the faculties of mind and bod} be the fidelity exacted in marriage, is a question every woman should consider before making a husband of an imaginative man. As I have not seen the countess, I can generalize on the subject without offence, and she is the best judge whether she can chain my fancy as well as my affections, or yield to an imaginative mistress the devotion of so predominant a quality of my nature. I can only promise her the constancy of a husband. " Still — if this were taken for only vague specula tion — she might be deceived. I must declare, frankly, that I am, at present, completely possessed with an imaginative passion. The object of it is probably as poor as I, and I could never marry her were I to con- tinue free. Probably, too, the high-born countess would be but little jealous of her rival, for she has no pretensions to beauty, and is an humble artist. But, in painting this lady's portrait — (a chance experiment, to try whether so plain a face could be made lovely) — I have penetrated to so beautiful an inner counten- ance (so to speak) — I have found charms of impres- sion so subtly masked to the common eye — I have traced such exquisite lineament of soul and feeling, visible, for the present, I believe, to my eye only — that, while I live. I shall do irresistible homage to her as the embodiment of my fancy's want, the very spirit and essence suitable to rule over my unseen world of imagination. Marry whom I will, and be true to hei as I shall, this lady will (perhaps unknown to herself J be my mistress in dream-land and revery. " This inevitable license allowed — my ideal world and its devotions, that is to say, left entirely to myself — I am ready to accept the honor of the countess's hand. If, at the altar, she should hear me murmur another name ivith her own — (for the bride of my fancy must be present when I wed, and I shall link the vows to both in one ceremony) — let her not fear for my constancy to herself, but let her remember that it is not to offend her hereafter, if* the name of the other come to my lip in dreams. " Your excellency may command my time and presence. With high consideration, &c. "Graeme McDonald." Rather agitated than surprised seemed Mademoiselle Folie, when, the next day, as she arranged her brushes upon the shelf of her easel, her handsome neighbor commenced, in the most fluent Italian he could com- mand, to invite her to his wedding. Very much surprised was McDonald when she interrupted him in English, and begged him to use his native tongue, as madame, her attendant, would not then understand him. He went on delightedly in his own honest language, and explained to her his imaginative ad- miration, though he felt compunctious, somewhat, that so unreal a sentiment should bring the blood into her cheek. She thanked him — drew the cloth from the upper part of her own picture, and showed him an admirable portrait of his handsome features, substituted for the masculine head of Judith in the original from which she copied — and promised to be at his weddiag. MY ONE ADVENTURE AS A BRIGAND. 283 and to listen sharply for her murmured name in his vow at the altar. He chanced to wear at the moment a ring of red cornelian, and he agreed with her that she should stand whereuhe could see her, and, at the moment of his putting the marriage ring upon the bride's fingers, that she should put on this, and for ever after wear it, as a token of having received his spiritual vows of devotion. The day came, and the splendid equipage of the countess dashed into the square of Santa Maria, with a veiled bride and a cold bridegroom, and deposited them at the steps of the church. And they were fol- lowed by other coroneted equipages, and gayly dress- ed from each — the mother and sisters of the bride- groom gayly dressed, among them, but looking pale with incertitude and dread. The veiled bride was small, but she moved grace- fully up the aisle, and met her future husband ;it the altar with a low courtesy, and made a sign to the priest to proceed with the ceremony. McDonald was color- less, but firm, and indeed showed little interest, except by an anxious look now and then among the crowd of spectators at the sides of the altar. He pronounced with a steady voice, but when the ring was to be put on, he looked around for an instant, and then sudden- ly, and to the great scandal of the church, clasped his bride with a passionate ejaculation to his bosom. The cornelian ring was on her finger — and the Countess* Nyschriem and Mademoiselle Folie — his bride and his fancy queen — were one. This curious event happened in Florence some eight years since — as all people then there will re- member — and it was prophesied of the countess that she would have but a short lease of her handsome and gay husband. But time does not say so. A more constant husband than McDonald to his plain and titled wife, and one more continuously in love, does not travel and buy pictures, and patronize artists — though few except yourself and I, dear reader, know the philosophy of it ! MY ONE ADVENTURE AS A BRIGAND, I was standing in a hostelry, at Geneva, making a bargain with an Italian for a place in a return carriage to Florence, when an Englishman, who had been in the same steamer with me on Lake Leman, the day before, came in and stood listening to the conversa- tion. We had been the only two passengers on board, but had passed six hours in each other's company without speaking. The road to an Englishman's friendship is to have shown yourself perfectly indiffer- ent to his acquaintance, and, as I liked him from the first, we were now ready to be conscious of each oth- er's existence. "I beg pardon," said he, advancing in a pause of the vetturino's oration, "will you allow me to engage a place with you ? 1 am going to Florence, and, if agreeable to you, we will take the carriage to our- selves." I agreed very willingly, and in two hours we were free of the gates of Geneva, and keeping along the edge of the lake in the cool twilight of one of the love- liest of heaven's summer evenings. The carriage was spaciously contrived for four; and, with the curtains up all around, our feet on the forward seat, my com- panion smoking, and conversation bubbling up to please itself, we rolled over the smooth road, gliding into the first chapter of our acquaintance as tranquilly as Geoffrey Crayon and his reader into the first chap- ter of anything he has written. My companion (Mr. St. John Elmslie, as put down in his passport) seemed to have something to think of beside propitiating my good will, but he was consid- erate and winning, from evident high breeding, and quite open, himself, to my most scrutinizing study. He was about thirty, and, without any definite beauty, was a fine specimen of a man. Probably most per- sons would have called him handsome. I liked him better, probably, from the subdued melancholy with which he brooded on his secret thought, whatever it might be — sad men, in this world of boisterous gayety or selfish ill-humor, interesting me always. From that something, on which his memory fed in j quiet but constant revery, nothing aroused my com- j panion except the passing of a travelling carriage, go- \ log in the other direction, on our own arrival at an inn. j I began to suspect, indeed, after a little while, that j ElmsUe had some understanding with our vetturino, I for, on the approach of any vehicle of pleasure, our horses became restiff, and, with a sudden pull-up, stood directly across the way. Out jumped my friend to assist in controlling the restiff animals, and, in the five minutes during which the strangers were obliged to wait, we generally saw their heads once or twice thrust inquiringly from the carriage window. This done, our own vehicle was again wheeled about, and the travellers allowed to proceed. We had arrived at Bologna with but one interruption to the quiet friendliness of our intercourse. Apropos of some vein of speculation, 1 had asked my companion if he were married. He was silent for a moment, and then, in a jocose tone of voice, which was new to me, replied, " I believe I have a wife — somewhere in Scot- land." But though Elmslie had determined to show me that he was neither annoyed nor offended at my inquisitiveness, his manner changed. He grew cere- monious. For the remainder of that day, I felt un- comfortable, I scarce knew why; and I silently deter- mined that if my friend continued so exceedingly well- bred in his manner for another day, I should find an excuse for leaving him at Bologna. But we had left Bologna, and, at sunset of a warm day, were slowly toiling up the Apennines. The inn to which we were bound was in sight, a mile or two above us, and, as the vetturino stopped to breathe his horses, Elmslie jumped from the carriage and started to walk on. I took advantage of his absence to stretch myself over the vacated cushions, and, on our arrival at the inn, was soundly asleep. My friend's voice, in an unusual tone, awoke me, and, by his face, as he looked in at the carriage win- dow, I saw that he was under some extraordinary ex- citement. This I observed by the light of the stable- lantern— for the hostelry, Italian fashion, occupied the lower story of the inn, and our carriage was driven under the archway, where the faint light from without made but little impression on the darkness. I followed Elmslie's beckoning finger, and climbing after him up the stairway of stone, stood in a large refectory occu- pying the whole of the second story of the building. At the first glance I saw that there was an English party in the house. An Italian inn of the lower order has no provision for private parties, and few, except English travellers, object to joining the common even- 284 MY ONE ADVENTURE AS A BRIGAND. ing meal. The hall was dark with the twilight, but a large curtain was suspended across the farther ex- tremity, and, by the glimmer of lights, and an occa- sional sound of a knife, a party was within supping in silence. "If you speak, speak in Italian," whispered Elms- lie, taking me by the arm, and leading me on tiptoe to bne of the corners of the curtain. I looked in and saw two persons seated at a table — a bold and soldierly-looking man of fifty, and a young lady, evidently his daughter. The beauty of the last- mentioned person was so extraordinary that I nearly committed the indiscretion of an exclamation in Eng- lish. She was slight, but of full and well-rounded proportions, and she sat and moved with an emi- nent grace and ladylikeness altogether captivating. Though her face expressed a settled sadness, it was of unworn and faultless youth and loveliness, and while her heavily-fringed eyes would have done, in their expression, for a Niobe, Hebe's lips were not more ripe, nor Juno's arched more proudly. She was a blonde, with eyes and eyelashes darker than her hair — a kind of beauty almost peculiar to England. The passing in of a tall footman, in a plain livery of gray, interrupted my gaze, and Elmslie drew me away by the arm, and led me into the road in front of the locanda. The night had now fallen, and we strolled up and down in the glimmer of the starlight. My companion was evidently much disturbed, and we made several turns after I had seen very plainly that he was making up his mind to communicate to me the secret. "1 have a request to make of you," he said, at last; " a service to exact, rather, to which there were no hope that you would listen for a moment if I did not first tell you a very singular story. Have a little pa- tience with me, and I will make it as brief as I can — the briefer, that I have no little pain in recalling it with the distinctness of description." I expressed my interest in all that concerned my new friend, and begged him to go on. " Hardly six years ago," said Elmslie, pressing my arm gently in acknowledgment of my sympathy, " I left college and joined my regiment, for the first time, in Scotland. By the way, I should re-introduce my- self to you as Viscount S , of the title of which, then, I was in prospect. My story hinges somewhat upon the fact that, as an honorable captain, a noble- man in expectancy, I was an object of some extrane- ous interest to the ladies who did the flirting for the garrison. God forgive me for speaking lightly on the subject ! " A few evenings after my arrival, we had been dining rather freely at mess, and the major announced to us that we were invited to take tea with a linen-draper, whose house was a popular resort of the officers of the regiment. The man had three or four daughters, who, as the phrase goes, ' gave you a great deal for your money,' and, for romping and frolicking, they had good looks and spirit enough. The youngest was really very pretty, but the eldest, to whom I was ex- clusively presented by the major, as a sort of quiz on a new-comer, was a sharp and sneering old maid, red- headed, freckled, and somewhat lame. Not to be out- done in frolic by my persecutor, I commenced making love to Miss Jacky in mock heroics, and we were soon marching up and down the room, to the infinite enter- tainment of my brother officers, lavishing on each other every possible term of endearment. " In the midst of this, the major came up to me with rather a serious face. " ' Whatever you do,' said he, ' for God's sake don't call the old girl your wife. The joke might be seri- ous.' " It was quite enough that I was desired not to do anything in the reign of misrule then prevailing. I immediately assumed a connubial air, to the best of my dramatic ability, begged Miss Jacky to join me in the frolic, and made the rounds of the room, introdu- cing the old girl as Mrs. Elmslie, and receiving from her quite as many tendernesses as were bearable by myself or the company present. I observed that the lynx-eyed linen-draper watched this piece of fun very closely, and my friend, the major, seemed distressed and grave about it. But we carried it out till the party broke up, and the next day the regiment was ordered over to Ireland, and I thought no more, for awhile, either of Miss Jacky or my own absurdity. " Two years afterward, I was, at a drawing-room at St. James's, presented, for the first time, by the name which I bear. It was not a very agreeable event to me, as our family fortunes were inadequate to the proper support of the title, and on the generosity of a maternal uncle, who had been at mortal variance with my father, depended our hopes of restoration to prosperity. From the mood of bitter melancholy in which I had gone through the ceremony of an introduction, I was aroused by the murmur in the crowd at the approach of a young girl just presented to the king. She was following a lady whom I slightly knew, and had evidently been presented by her; and, before I had begun to recover from my astonishment at her beauty, I was requested by this lady to give her protege an arm and follow to a less crowded apartment of the palace. "Ah, my friend! the exquisite beauty of Lady Meiicent — but you have seen her. She is here, and I must fold her in my arms to-night, or perish in the attempt. "Pardon me!" he added, as I was about to inter- rupt him with an explanation. " She has been — she is — my wife ! She loved me and married me, making life a heaven of constant ecstacy — for I worshipped her with every fibre of my existence." He paused and gave me his story brokenly, and I waited for him to go on without questioning. "We had lived together in absolute and unclouded happiness for eight months, in lover-like seclusion at her father's house, and I was looking forward to the birth of my child with anxiety and transport, when the death of my uncle left me heir to his immense fortune, and I parted from my greater treasure to go and pay the fitting respect at his burial. " I returned, after a week's absence, with an impa- tience and ardor almost intolerable, and found the door closed against me. " There were two letters for me at the porter's lodge — one from Lord A , my wife's father, informing me that the Lady Meiicent had miscarried and was dangerously ill, and enjoining upon me as a man of honor and delicacy, never to attempt to see her again ; and another from Scotland, claiming a fitting support for my lawful wife, the daughter of the linen-draper. The proofs of the marriage, duly sworn to and certi- fied by the witnesses of my fatal frolic, were enclosed, and on my recovery, six weeks after, from the delirium into which these multiplied horrors precipitated me, I found that, by the Scotch law, the first marriage was valid, and my ruin was irrevocable." "And how long since was this ?" I inquired, break- ing in upon his narration for the first time. "A year and a month — and till to-night I have not seen her. But I must break through this dreadful separation now — and I must speak to her, and press her to my breast — and you will aid me ?" "To the last drop of my blood, assuredly. But how ?" " Come to the inn ! You have not supped, and we will devise as you eat. And you must lend me your invention, for my heart and brain seem to me going wild." Two hours after, with a pair of loaded pistols in my breast, we went to the chamber of the host, and bound WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S. 285 him and his wife to the posts of their beds. There was but one man about the house, the hostler, and we had made him intoxicated with our travelling flask of brandy. Lord A and his daughter were still sit- ting up, and she, at her chamber window, was watch- ing the just risen moon, over which the clouds were drifting very rapidly. Our business was, now, only with them, as, in their footman, my companion had found an attached creature, who remembered him, and willingly agreed to offer no interruption. After taking a pull at the brandy-flask myself (for, in spite of my blackened face and the slouched hat of the hostler, I required some fortification of the mus- cles of my face before doing violence to an English nobleman), I opened the door of the chamber which must be passed to gain access to that of Lady Meli- cent. It was Lord A 's sleeping-room, and, though the light was extinguished, I could see that he was still up, and sitting at the window. Turning my lan- tern inward, I entered the room and set it down, and, to my relief, Lord A soliloquized in English, that it was the host with a hint that it was time to go to bed. My friend was at the door, according to my ar- rangement, ready to assist me should I find any diffi- culty; but, from the dread of premature discovery of the person, he was to let me manage it alone if pos- sible. Lord A sat unsuspectingly in his chair, with his head turned half way over his shoulders to see why the officious host did not depart. I sprung suddenly upon him, drew him backward and threw him on his face, and, with my hand over his mouth, threatened him with death, in my choicest Italian, if he did not remain passive till his portmanteau had been looked into. I thought he might submit, with the idea that it was only a robbery, and so it proved. He allowed me, after a short struggle, to tie his hands behind him, and march him down to his carriage, before the muz- zle of my pistol. The hostelry was still as death, and, shutting his carriage door upon his lordship, I mount- ed guard. The night seemed to me very long, but morning dawned, and, with the earliest gray, the postillions came knocking at the outer door of the locanda. My friend went out to them, while I marched back Lord A to his chamber, and, by immense bribing, the horses were all put to our carriage a half hour after, and the outraged nobleman was left without the means of pursuit till their return. We reached Florence in safety, and pushed on immediately to Leghorn, where we took the steamer for Marseilles and eluded arrest, very much to my most agreeable surprise. By a Providence that does not always indulge mor- tals with removing those they wish in another world, Lord S has lately been freed from his harrowing chain by the death of his so-called lady; and, having re-married Lady Melicent, their happiness is renewed and perfect. In his letter to me, announcing it, he gives me liberty to tell the story, as the secret was di- vulged to Lord A on the day of his second nup- tials. He said nothing, however, of his lordship's forgiveness for my rude handling of his person, and, in ceasing to be considered a brigand, possibly I am responsible as a gentleman. WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S. CHAPTER I. In one of the years not long since passed to your account and mine by the recording angel, gentle read- er, I was taking my fill of a delicious American June, as Ducrow takes his bottle of wine, on the back of a beloved horse. In the expressive language of the raftsmen on the streams of the West, I was " follow- ing" the Chemung — a river whose wild and peculiar loveliness is destined to be told in undying song, when- ever America can find leisure to look up her poets. Such bathing of the feet of precipices, such kissing of flowery slopes, such winding in and out of the bo- soms of round meadows, such frowning amid broken rocks, and smiling through smooth valleys, you would never believe could go in this out-of-doors world, unvisitod and uncelebrated. Not far from the ruins of a fortification, said to have been built by the Spaniards before the settlement of New-England by the English, the road along the Che- mung dwindles into a mere ledge at the foot of a precipice, the river wearing into the rock at this spot by a black and deep eddy. At the height of your lip above the carriage track, there gushes from the rock a stream of the size and steady clearness of a glass rod, and all around it in the small rocky lap which it has worn away, there grows a bed of fragrant mint, kept by the shade and moisture of a perpetual green, bright as emerald. Here stops every traveller who is not upon an errand of life or death, and while his horse stands up to his fetlocks in the river, he parts the dewy stems of the mint, and drinks, for once in his life, like a fay or a poet. It is one of those ex- quisite spots which paint their own picture insensibly I in the memory, even while you look on them, natural ; " Daguerrotypes," as it were ; and you are surprised, ! years afterward, to find yourself remembering every leaf and stone, and the song of every bird that sung in the pine-trees overhead while you were watching' the curve of the spring-leap. As I said before, it will be sung and celebrated, when America sits down weary with her first century of toil, and calls for her min- strels, now toiling with her in the fields. Within a mile of this spot, to which I had been looking forward with delight for some hours, I over- took a horseman. Before coming up with him I had ; at once decided he was an Indian. His relaxed limbs swaying to every motion of his horse with the grace and ease of a wreath of smoke, his neck and shoulders so cleanly shaped, and a certain watchful look about j his ears which I cannot define, but which you see in a spirited horse — were infallible marks of the race whom we have driven from the fair land of our inde- pendence. He was mounted upon a small black horse — of the breed commonly called Indian ponies, now ; not very common so near the Atlantic — and rode with a slack rein and air, I thought, rather more dispirited than indolent. The kind of morning T have described, is, as every one must remember, of a sweetness so communicative that one would think two birds could scarce meet on the wing without exchanging a carol; and I involun- tarily raised my bridle after a minute's study of the traveller before me, and in a brief gallop was at his side. With the sound of my horse's feet, however, he changed in all his characteristics to another man — sat erect in his saddle, and assumed the earnest air of an American who never rides but upon some erraud ; 286 WIGvVAM versus ALMACK'S. and, on his giving me back my " good morning" in the unexceptionable accent of the country, 1 presum- ed I had mistaken my man. He was dark, but not darker than a Spaniard, of features singularly hand- some and regular, dressed with no peculiarity except an otter-skin cap of a silky and golden-colored fur, too expensive and rare for any but a fanciful, as well as a luxurious purchaser. A slight wave in the black hair which escaped from it, and fell back from his temples, confirmed me in the conviction that his blood was of European origin. We rode on together with some indifferent conver- sation, till we arrived at the spring-leap I have de- scribed, and here my companion, throwing his right leg over the neck of his poney, jumped to the ground very actively, and applying his lips to the spring, drank a free draught. His horse seemed to know the spot, and, with the reins on his neck, trotted on to a shal- lower ledge in the river and stood with the water to his knees, and his quick eye turned on his master with an expressive look of satisfaction. "You have been here before," I said, tying my less disciplined horse to the branch of an overhanging shrub. " Yes — often !" was his reply, with a tone so quick and rude, however, that, but for the softening quality of the day, I should have abandoned there all thought of further acquaintance. I took a small valise from the pommel of my sad- dle, and while my fellow-traveller sat on the rock-side looking moodily into the river, I drew forth a flask of wins and a leathern cup, a cold pigeon wrapped in a cool cabbage leaf, the bigger end of a large loaf, and as much salt as could be tied up in the cup of a large water-lily — a set-out of provender which owed its daintiness to the fair hands of my hostess of the night before. The stranger's first resemblance to an Indian had probably given a color to my thoughts, for, as I hand- ed him a cup of wine, I said, "I wish the Shawanee chief to whose tribe this valley belongs, were here to get a cup of my wine." The young man sprang to his feet with a sudden flash through his eyes, and while he looked at me, he seemed to stand taller than, from my previous impres- sion of his height, I should have thought possible. " Surprised as I was at the effect of my remark, I did not withdraw the cup, and with a moment's searching look into my face, he changed his attitude, begged pardon rather confusedly, and, draining the cup, said with a faint smile, " The Shawanee chief thanks you !" " Do you know the price of land in the valley?" I asked, handing him a slice of bread with the half pigeon upon it, and beginning to think it was best to stick to commonplace subjects with a stranger. " Yes !" he said, his brow clouding over again. "It was bought from the Shawanee chief you speak of for a string of beads the acre. The tribe had their burial- place on the Susquehannah, some twenty miles from this, and they cared little about a strip of a valley which, now, I would rather have for my inheritance than the fortune of any white man in the land." " Throw in the landlord's daughter at the village below," said I, " and I would take it before any half- dozen of the German principalities. Have you heard the news of her inheritance?" Another moody look and a very crisp " Yes," put a stop to all desire on my part to make further advan- ces in my companion's acquaintance. Gathering my pigeon bones together, therefore, and putting them on the top of a stone where they would be seen by the first "lucky dog" that passed, flinging my emptied water-lily on the river, and strapping up cup and flask once more in my valise, I mounted, and with a crusty good morning, set off at a hand-gallop down the river. My last unsuccessful topic was, at the time I write of, the subject of conversation all through the neigh- borhood of the village toward which I was travelling. The most old-fashioned and comfortable inn on the Susquehannah, or Chemung, was kept at the junction of these two noble rivers, by a certain Robert Plymton, who had " one fair daughter and no more." He was a plain farmer of Connecticut, who had married the grand-daughter of an English emigrant, and got, with his wife, a chest of old papers, which he thought had better be used to mend a broken pane or wrap up gro- ceries, but which his wife, on her death-bed, told him " might turn out worth something." With this slen- der thread of expectation, he had kept the little chest under his bed, thinking of it perhaps once a year, and satisfying his daughter's inquisitive queries with a shake of his head, and something about " her poor mother's tantrums," concluding usually with some reminder to keep the parlor in order, or mind her housekeeping. Ruth Plymton had had some sixteen " winters' schooling," and was known to be much "smarter" (Anslice, cleverer), than was quite neces- sary for the fulfilment of her manifold duties. Since twelve years of age (the period of her mother's death) she had officiated with more and more success as bar- maid and host's daughter to the most frequented inn of the village, till now, at eighteen, she was the only ostensible keeper of the inn, the old man usually be- ing absent in the fields with his men, or embarking his grain in an " ark," to take advantage of the first freshet. She was civil to all comers, but her manner was such as to make it perfectly plain even to the rudest raftsman and hunter, that the highest respect they knew how to render to a woman was her due. She was rather unpopular with the girls of the village from what they called her pride and "keeping to her- self," but the truth was, that the cheap editions ol romances which Ruth took instead of money for the lodging of the itinerant book-pedlars, were more agreeable companions to her than the girls of the vil- lage ; and the long summer forenoons, and half the long winter nights, were little enough for the busy young hostess, who, seated on her bed, devoured tales of high-life which harmonized with some secret long- ing in her breast — she knew not and scarce thought of asking herself why. I had been twice at Athens (by this classical name is known the village I speak of), and each time had prolonged my stay at Plymton's inn for a day longer than my horse or my repose strictly exacted. The scenery at the junction is magnificent, but it was scarce that. And I cannot say that it was altogther admiration of the host's daughter; for though I break- fasted late for the sake of having a clean parlor while I ate my broiled chicken, and, having been once to Italy, Miss Plymton liked to pour out my tea and hear me talk of St. Peter's and the Carnival, yet there was that marked retenu and decision in her manner that made me feel quite too much like a culprit at school, and large and black as her eyes were, and light and airy as were all her motions, 1 mixed up with my pro- pensity for her society, a sort of dislike. In short, I never felt a tenderness for a woman who could "queen it" so easily, and I went heart-whole on my journey, though always with a high respect for Ruth Plymton, and a pleasant remembrance of her conversation. The story which I had heard farther up the river was, briefly, that there had arrived at Athens an Eng- lishman, who had found in Miss Ruth Plymton, the last surviving descendant of the family of her mother; that she was the heiress to a large fortune, if the proof of her descent were complete, and that the con- tents of the little chest had been the subject of a week's hard study by the stranger, who had departed after a vain attempt to persuade old Plymton to ac- company him to England with his daughter. This WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S. 28t was the rumor, the allusion to which had been re- ceived with such repulsive coldness by my dark com- panion at the spring-leap. America is so much of an asylum for despairing younger sons and the proud and starving branches of great families, that a discovery of heirs to property among people of very inferior condition, is by no means uncommon. It is a species of romance in real life, however, which we never believe upon hearsay, and I rode on to the village, expecting my usual re- ception by the fair damsel of the inn. The old sign still hung askew as I approached, and the pillars of the old wooden "stoop" or portico, were as much off their perpendicular as before, and true to my augury, out stepped my fair acquaintance at the sound of my horse's feet, and called to Reuben the ostler, and gave me an unchanged welcome. The old man was down at the river side, and the key of the grated bar hung at the hostess's girdle, and with these signs of times as they were, my belief in the marvellous tale vanish- ed into thin air. " So you are not gone to England to take posses- sion ?" 1 said. Her serious " No !" unsoftened by any other re- mark, put a stop to the subject again, and taking my- self to task for having been all day stumbling on mal-apropos subjects, I asked to be shown to my room, and spent the hour or two before dinner in watching the chickens from the window, and wondering a great deal as to the " whereabouts" of my friend in the otter-skin cap. The evening of that day was unusually warm, and I strolled down to the bank of the Susquehannah, to bathe. The moon was nearly full and halfway to the zenith, and between the lingering sunset and the clear splendor of the moonlight, the dusk of the " folding hour" was forgotten, and the night went on almost as radiant as day. I swam across the river, delighting myself with the gold rims of the ripples before my breast, and was within a yard or two of the shore on my return, when I heard a woman's voice approaching in earnest conversation. I shot forward and drew my- self in beneath a large clump of alders, and with only my head out of water, lay in perfect concealment. "You are not just, Shahatan!" were the first words I distinguished, in a voice I immediately recognised as that of my fair hostess. "You are not just. As far as I know myself I love you better than any one I ever saw — but" — As she hesitated, the deep low voice of my com- panion at the spring-leap, uttered in a suppressed and impatient guttural, "But what?" He stood still with his back to the moon, and while the light fell full on her face, she withdrew her arm from his and went on. " I was going to say that I do not yet know myself or the world sufficiently to decide that I shall always love you. I would not be too hasty in so important a thing, Shahatan ! We have talked of it before, and therefore I may say to you, now, that the prejudices of my father and all my friends are against it." • " My blood" — interrupted the young man, with a movement of impatience. She laid her hand on his arm. " Stay ! the objec- tion is not mine. Your Spanish mother, besides, shows more in your look and features than the blood of your father. But it would still be said I married an Indian, and though I care little for what the village would say, yet I must be certain that I shall love you with all my heart and till death, before I set my face with yours against the prejudices of every white man and woman in my native land ! You have urged me for my secret, and there it is. I feel relieved to have unburthened my heart of it." " That secret is but a summer old !" said he, half turning on his heel, and looking from her upon the moon's path across the river. " Shame !" she replied ; "you know that Ions be- fore this news came, I talked with you constantly of other lands, and of my irresistible desire to see the people of great cities, and satisfy myself whether I was like them. That curiosity, Shahatan, is, 1 fear, even stronger than my love, or at least, it is more im- patient ; and now that I have the opportunity fallen to me like a star out of the sky, shall I not go ? I must. Indeed I must." The lover felt that all had been said, or was too proud to answer, for they fell into the path again, side by side, in silence, and at a slow step were soon out of my sight and hearing. I emerged from my compul- sory hiding-place wiser than I went in, dressed and strolled back to the village, and finding the old land- lord smoking his pipe alone under the portico, I light- ed a cigar, and sat down to pick his brains of the little information I wanted to fill out the story. I took my leave of Athens on the following morn- ing, paying my bill duly to Miss Plymton, from whom I requested a receipt in writing, for I foresaw without any very sagacious augury beside what the old man told me, that it might be an amusing document by- and-by. You shall judge by the sequel of the story, dear reader, whether you would like it in your book of autographs. Not long after the adventure described in the pre- ceding chapter, I embarked for a ramble in Europe. Among the newspapers which were lying about in the [ cabin of the packet, was one which contained this paragraph, extracted from a New-Orleans Gazette. : The American reader will at once remember it: — ; " Extraordinary attachment to savage life. — The of- ficers at Fort (one of the most distant outposts of human habitation in the west), extended their hos- pitality lately to one of the young proteges of govern- ment, a young Shawanee chief, who has been educated at public expense for the purpose of aiding in the civilization of his tribe. This youth, the son of a | Shawanee chief by a Spanish mother, was put to a ! preparatory school in a small village on the Susque- hannah, and subsequently was graduated at i College with the first honors of his class. He had ; become a most accomplished gentleman, was appa- rently fond of society, and, except in a scarce distin- : guishable tinge of copper color in his skin, retained j no trace of his savage origin. Singular to relate, however, he disappeared suddenly from the fort, leav- | ing behind him the clothes in which he had arrived, and several articles of a gentleman's toilet ; and as the sentry on duty was passed at dawn of the same day by \ a mounted Indian in the usual savage dress, who gave the pass- word in issuing from the gate, it is presumed it was no other than the young Shahatan, and that he j has joined his tribe, who were removed some years I since beyond the Mississippi." The reader will agree with me that I possessed the key to the mystery. As no one thinks of the thread that disappears in an ; intricate embroidery till it comes out again on the | surface, I was too busy in weaving my own less inter- esting woof of adventure for the two years following, j to give Shahatan and his love even a passing thought. I On a summer's night in 18 — , however, I found my- self on a banquette at an Almack's ball, seated beside j a friend who, since we had met last at Almack's, had given up the white rose of girlhood for the diamonds of the dame, timidity and blushes for self-possession and serene sweetness, dancing for conversation, and j the promise of beautiful and admired seventeen for the | perfection of more lovely and adorable twenty-two. She was there as chaperon to a younger sister, and it was delightful in that whirl of giddy motion, and more giddy thought, to sit beside a tranquil and unfevered 288 WI'JWAM versus ALMACK'S. mind and talk with her of what was passing, without either bewilderment or effort. " What is it," she said, " that constitutes aristocratic beauty ? — for it is often remarked that it is seen no- where in such perfection as at Almack's; yet, I have for a half-hour looked in vain among these handsome faces for a regular profile, or even a perfect figure. It is not symmetry, surely, that gives a look of high breeding — nor regularity of feature." " If you will take a leaf out of a traveller's book," I replied, "we may at least have the advantage of a comparison. I remember recording, when travel- ling in the East, that for months I had not seen an irregular nose or forehead in a female face ; and, al- most universally, the mouth and chin of the Orientals are, as well as the upper features, of the most classic correctness. Yet where, in civilized countries, do women look lower-born or more degraded?" "Then it is not in the features," said my friend. " No, nor in the figure, strictly," I went on to say, " for the French and Italian women (vide the same book of mems), are generally remarkable for shape and fine contour of limb, and the French are, we all know (begging your pardon), much better dancers, and more graceful in their movements, than all other nations. Yet what is more rare than a 'thorough-bred' looking Frenchwoman ?" "We are coming to a conclusion very fast," she said, smiling. " Perhaps we shall find the great secret in delicacy of skin, after all." " Not unless you will agree that Broadway in New- York is the ' prato fiarito,' of aristocratic beauty — for nowhere on the face of the earth do you see such complexions. Yet, my fair countrywomen stoop too much, and are rather too dressy in their tastes to con- vey very generally the impression of high birth." "Stay!" interrupted my companion, laying her hand on my arm with a look of more meaning than I quite understood ; "before you commit yourself far- ther on that point, look at this tall girl coming up the floor, and tell me what you think of her, apropos to the subject." "Why, that she is the very forth-shadowing of noble parentage," I replied, " in step, air, form — every- thing. But surely the face is familiar to me." " It is the Miss Trevanion whom you said you had never met. Yet she is an American, and with such a fortune as hers, I wonder you should not have heard of her at least." " Miss Trevanion ! I never knew anybody of the name, I am perfectly sure — yet that face I have seen before, and I would stake my life I have known the lady, and not casually either." My eyes were riveted to the beautiful woman who now sailed past with a grace and stateliness that were the subject of universal admiration, and I eagerly at- tempted to catch her eye ; but on the other side of her walked one of the most agreeable flatterers of the hour, and the crowd prevented my approaching her, even if I had solved the mystery so far as to know in what terms to address her. Yet it was marvellous that I could ever have seen such beauty and forgotten the when and where, or that such fine and unusually lustrous eyes could ever have shone on me without inscribing well in my memory their " whereabout" and history. "Well!" said my friend, "are you making out your theory, or are you ' struck home' with the first impression, like many another dancer here to-night?" " Pardon me ! I shall find out presently, who Miss Trevanion is — but, meantime, revenous. I will tell you where I think lies the secret of the aristocratic beauty of England. It is in the lofty maintien of the head and bust — the proud carriage; if you remark, in all these women— the head set back, the chest eleva- ted and expanded, and the whole port and expression, that of pride and conscious superiority. This, mind you, though the result of qualities in the character, is not the work of a day, nor perhaps of a single gener- ation. The effect of expanding the breast and pre- serving the back straight, and the posture generally erect, is the high health and consequent beauty of" those portions of the frame ; and the physical advan tage, handed down with the pride which produced it, from mother to child, the race gradually has become perfect in those points, and the look of pride and high- bearing is now easy, natural, and unconscious. Glance your eye around and you will see that there is not a defective bust, and hardly a head ill set on, in the room. In an assembly in any other part of the world, to find a perfect bust with a gracefully carried head, is as difficult as here to find the exception." " What a proud race you make us out, to be sure," said my companion, rather dissentingly. " And so you are, eminently and emphatically proud," I replied. "What English family does not revolt from any proposition of marriage from a for- eigner ? For an English girl to marry a Frenchman or an Italian, a German or a Russiau, Greek, Turk, or Spaniard, is to forfeit a certain degree of respectabili- ty, let the match be as brilliant as it may. The first feeling on hearing of it is against the girl's sense of delicacy. It extends to everything else. Your sol- diers, your sailors, your tradesmen, your gentlemen, your common people, and your nobles, are all (who ever doubted it, you are mentally asking) out of all comparison better than the same ranks and professions in any other country. John Bull is literally surprised if any one doubts this — nay, he does not believe that any one does doubt it. Yet you call the Americans ridiculously vain because they believe their institutions better than yours, that their ships fight as well, their women are as fair, and their men as gentlemanly as any in the world. The ' vanity' of the French, who believe in themselves, just as the English do, only in a less blind entireness of self-glorification, is a common theme of ridicule in English newspapers ; and the French and the Americans, for a twentieth part of English intolerance and self-exaggeration, are written down daily by the English, as the two vainest nations on earth." "Stop!" said my fair listener, who was beginning to smile at my digression from female beauty to na- tional pride, "let me make a distinction there. As the English and French are quite indifferent to the opin- ion of other nations on these points, and not at all shaken in their self-admiration by foreign incredulity, theirs may fairly be dignified by the name of pride. But what shall 1 say of the Americans, who are in a perpetual fever at the ridicule of English newspapers, and who receive, I understand, with a general convul- sion throughout the states, the least slur in a review, or the smallest expression of disparagement in a tory newspaper. This is not pride, but vanity." " I am hit, I grant you. A home thrust that I wish I could foil. But here comes Miss Trevanion, again, and I must make her out, or smother of curiosity. I leave you a victor." The drawing of the cord which encloses the dan- cers, narrowed the path of the promenaders so effect- ually, that I could easily take my stand in such a position that Miss Trevanion could not pass without seeing me. With my back to one of the slight pil- lars of the orchestra, I stood facing her as she came down the room ; and within a foot or two of my po- sition, yet with several persons between us, her eye for the first time rested on me. There was a sudden flush, a look of embarrassed but momentary curiosity, and the beautiful features cleared up, and I saw, with vexatious mortification, that she had the advantage of me, and was even pleased to remember where we had met. She held out her hand the next moment, WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S. a ay but evidently understood my reserve, for, with a mis- chievous compression of the lips, she leaned over, and said in a voice intended only for my ear, "Reuben! take the gentleman's horse I" My sensations were very much those of the Irish- man who fell into a pit in a dirk night, and catching a straggling root in his descent, hung suspended by incredible exertion and strength of arm till morning, when daylight disclosed the bottom, at just one inch below the points of his toes. So easy seemed the solution — after it was discovered. Miss Trevanion (ci-devant Plymton) took my arm. Her companion was engaged to dance. Our meeting at Al mack's was certainly one of the last events either could have expected when we parted— but Almack's is not the place to express strong emotions. We walked leisurely down the sides of the quadrilles to the tea-room, and between her bows and greetings to her acquaintances, she put me au courant of her movements for the last two years — Miss Trevanion being the name she had inherited with the fortune from her mother's family, and her mother's high but distant connexions having recognised and taken her by the hand in England. She had come abroad with the representative of her country, who had been at the trouble to see her installed in her rights, and had but lately left heron his return to America. A house in May Fair, and a chaperon in the shape of a card- playiog and aristocratic aunt, were the other principal points in her parenthetical narration. Her communi- cativeness, of course, was very gracious, and indeed her whole manner was softened and mellowed down, from the sharpness and hauteur of Miss Plymton. Prosperity had improved even her voice. As she bent over her tea, in the ante-room, I could not but remark how beautiful she was by the change usually wrought by the soft moisture of the English air, on persons from dry climates — Americans particu- larly. That filling out and rounding of the features, and renewing and freshening of the skin, becoming and improving to all, had to her been like Juno's bath. Then who does not know the miracles of dress ? A circlet of diamonds whose " water" was hsjht itself, followed the fine bend on either side back- ward from her brows, supporting, at the parting of her hair, one large emerald. And on what neck (ay — even of age) is not a diamond necklace beautiful ? Miss Trevanion was superb. The house in Grosvenor Place, at which I knocked the next morning, I well remembered as one of the most elegant and sumptuous in London. Lady L had ruined herself in completing and furnishing it, and her parties "in my time" were called, by the most apathetic blase, truly delightful. " I bought this house of Lady L ," said Miss Trevanion, as we sat down to breakfast, " with all its furniture, pictures, books, incumbrances, and trifles, even to the horses in the stables, and the coachman In his wig; fori had too many things to learn, to study furniture and appointments, and in this very short life, time is sadly wasted in beginnings. People are for ever getting read;/ to live. What think you ? Is it not true in everything?" 44 Not in love, certainly." "Ah! very true!" And she became suddenly thoughtful, and for some minutes sipped her coffee in silence. I did not interrupt it, for 1 was thinking of Shahatan, and our thoughts very possibly were on the same long journey. " You are quite right," said I, looking round at the exquisitely-furnished room in which we were break- tasting, "you have bought these things at their intrin- sic value, and you have all Lady L 's taste, trouble. and vexation for twenty years, thrown into the bar- 19 gain. It is a matter of a lifetime to complete a house like this, and just as it is all done, Lady L re- tires, an old woman, and you come all the way from a country-inn on the Susquehanuuh to enjoy it. Wh t a whimsical world we live in !" "Yes!" she said, in a sort of soliloquizing tone, " I do enjoy it. It is a delightful sensation to take a long stride at once in the art of life — to have lived for years believing that the wants you felt could only be supplied in fairy-land, and suddenly to change your sphere, and discover that not ordy these wants, but a thousand others, more unreasonable, and more im- aginary, had been the subject of human ingenuity and talent, till those who live in luxury have no wants — j that science and chymistry and mechanics have left I no nerve in the human system, no recess in human sense, unquestioned of its desire, and that every de- sire is supplied ! What mistaken ideas most people have of luxury ! They fancy the senses of the rich ; are over-pampered, that their zest of pleasure is al- i ways dull with too much gratification, that their , health is ruined with excess, and their tempers spoiled | with ease and subserviency. It is a picture drawn by j the poets in times when money could buy nothing but j excess, and when those who were prodigal could only be gaudy and intemperate. It was necessary to prac- j tise upon the reverse, too ; and hence all the world is convinced of the superior happiness of the plough- man, the absolute necessity of early rising and coarse food to health, and the pride that must come with the flaunting of silk and satin." I could not but smile at this cool upset of all the j received philosophy of the poets. "You laugh," she continued, "but is it not true that in England, at this moment, luxury is the sci- ence of keeping up the zest of the senses rather than of pampering them — that the children of the wealthy are the healthiest and fairest, and the sons of the aris- tocracy are the most athletic and rational, as well as the most carefully nurtured and expensive of all clas- ses — that the most costly dinners are the most digesti- ble, the most expensive wines the least injurious, the most sumptuous houses the best ventilated and whole- some, and the most aristocratic habits of life the most \ conducive to the preservation of the constitution and consequent long life. There will be excesses, of course, in all spheres, but is not this true ?" " I am wondering how so gay a life as yours could furnish such very grave reflections." " Pshaw ! I am The very person to make them. My aunt (who, by-the-way, never rises till four in the af- ternoon) has always lived in this sublimated sphere, and takes all these luxuries to be matters of course, as much as I take them to be miracles. She thinks ] a good cook as natural a circumstance as a fine tree, \ and would be as much surprised and shocked at the absence of wax candles, as she would at the going out ! of the stars. She talks as if good dentists, good mil- liners, opera-singers, perfumers, etc., were the com- mon supply of nature, like dew and sunshine to the flowers. My surprise and delight amuse her, as the child's wonder at the moon amuses the nurse." "Yet you call this dull unconsciousness the per- fection of civilized life." "I think my aunt altogether is not a bad specimen of it, certainly. You have seen her, I think." "Frequently." " Well, you will allow that she is still a very hand- some woman. She is past fifty, and has every fac- ulty in perfect preservation; an erect figure, undimin- ished delicacy and quickness in all her senses and j tastes, and is still an ornament to society, and an at- tractive person in appearance and conversation. Con- trast her (and she is but one of a class) with the | women past fifty in the middle and lower walks of life | in America. At that age, with us, they are old 290 WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S. women in the commonest acceptation of the term. Their teeth are gone or defective from neglect, their faces are wrinkled, their backs bent, ther feet enlarged, their voices cracked, their senses impaired, their rel- ish in the joys of the young entirely gone by. What makes the difference ? Costly care. The physician has watched over her health at a guinea a visit. The dentist has examined her teeth at twenty guineas a year. Expensive annual visits to the seaside have re- newed her skin. The friction of the weary hands of her maid has kept down the swelling of her feet and preserved their delicacy of shape. Close and open carriages at will, have given her daily exercise, either protected from the damp, or refreshed with the fine lir of the country. A good cook has kept her diges- tion untaxed, and good wines have invigorated with- out poisoning her constitution." " This is taking very unusual care of oneself, how- ever." " Not at all. My aunt gives it no more thought than the drawing on of her glove. It is another ad- vantage of wealth, too, that your physician and den- tist are distinguished persons who meet you in society, and call on you unprofessionally, see when they are needed, and detect the approach of disease before you are aware of it yourself. My aunt, though ' nat- urally delicate,' has never been ill. She was watched in childhood with great cost and pains, and, with the habit of common caution herself, she is taken such care of by her physician and servants, that nothing but some extraordinary fatality could bring disease near her." " Blessed are the rich, by your showing." " Why, the beatitudes were not written in our times. If long life, prolonged youth and beauty, and almost perennial health, are blessings, certainly, now-a-days, blessed are the rich." "But is there no drawback to all this? Where people have surrounded themselves with such costly and indispensable luxuries, are they not made selfish by the necessity of preserving them? Would any exigence of hospitality, for instance, induce your aunt to give up her bed, and the comforts of her own room, to a stranger?" ** Oh dear, no !" "Would she eat her dinner cold for the sake of listening to an appeal to her charity?" " How can you fancy such a thing ?" "Would she take a wet and dirty, but perishing beggar-woman into her chariot on her way to a din- ner-party, to save her from dying by the roadside ?" "Urn — why, I fear she would be very nearsighted till she got fairly by." " Yet these are charities that require no great ef- fort in those whose chambers are less costly, whose stomachs are less carefully watched, and whose car- riages and dresses are of a plainer fashion." "Very true !" " So far, then, 'blessed are the poor!' But is not the heart slower in all its sympathies among the rich? Are not friends chosen and discarded, because their friendship is convenient or the contrary ? Are not many worthy people 'ineligible' acquaintances, many near relations unwelcome visiters, because they are out of keeping with these costly circumstances, or involve some sacrifice of personal luxury ? Are not people, who would not preserve their circle choice and aristocratic, obliged to inflict cruel insults on eensitive minds, to slight, to repulse, to neglect, to equivocate and play the unfeeling and ungrateful, at the same time that to their superiors they must often sacrifice dignity, and contrive, and flatter, and de- ceive — all to preserve the magic charm of the life you have painted so attractive and enviable?" "Heigho! it's a bad world, I believe !" said Miss Trevanion, betraying by that ready sigh, that even while drawing the attractions of high life, she had not been blind to this more unfavorable side of the pic- ture. " And, rather more important query still, for an heiress," I said, "does not an intimate acquaintance with these luxurious necessities, and the habit of thinking them indispensable, make all lovers in this class mercenary, and their admiration, where there is wealth, subject, at least, to scrutiny and suspicion ?" A quick flush almost crimsoned Miss Trevanion's face, and she fixed her eyes upon me so inquisitively as to leave me in no doubt that I had inadvertently touched upon a delicate subject. Embarrassed by a searching look, and not seeing how I could explain that I meant no allusion, I said hastily, " I was think- ing of swimming across the Susquehannah by moon- light." "Puck is at the door, if you please, miss!" said the butler, entering at the moment. " Perhaps while I am putting on my riding-hat," said Miss Trevanion, with a laugh, "I may discover the connexion between your last two observations. It certainly is not very clear at present." I took up my hat. "Stay — you must ride with me. You shall have the groom's horse, and we will go without him. I hate to be chased through the park by a flying ser- vant — one English fashion, at least, that I think un- comfortable. They manage it better where 1 learned to ride," she added with a laugh. " Yes, indeed ! I do not know which they would first starve to death in the backwoods — the master for his insolence in requiring the servant to follow him, or the servant for being such a slave as to obey." I never remember to have seen a more beautiful animal than the highbred blood-mare on which my ci-devant hostess of the Plymton inn rode through the park gates, and took the serpentine path at a free gallop. I was as well mounted myself as I had ever been in my life, and delighted, for once, not to fret a hundred yards behind ; the ambitious animal seemed to have wings to his feet. " Who ever rode such a horse as this," said my companion, " without confessing the happiness of riches! It is the one luxury of this new life that 1 should find it misery to forego. Look at the eager- ness of his ears ! See his fine limbs as he strikes for- ward ! What nostrils! What glossy shoulders! What bounding lightness of action ! Beautiful Puck ! I could never live without you! What a shame to nature that there are no such horses in the wilder- ness !" " I remember seeing an Indian pony," said I, watch- ing her face for the effect of my observation, " which had as many fine qualities, though of a different kind — at least when his master was on him." She looked at me inquiringly. "By-the-way, too, it was at your house on the Sus- quehannah," I added, " you must remember the horse — a black, double-jointed " "Yes, yes! I know. I remember. Shall we quicken our pace ? I hear some one overtaking us, and to be passed with such horses as ours were a shame indeed." -We loosed our bridles and flew away like the wind; but a bright tear was presently tossed from her dark eyelash, and fell glittering on the dappled shoul- der of her horse. " Her heart is Shahatan's," thought I, "whatever chance there may be that the gay hon- orable who is at our heels may dazzle her into throw- ing away her hand." Mounted on a magnificent hunter, whose powerful and straightforward leaps soon told against the lavish and high action of our more showy horses, the Hon. Charles (the gentleman who had engrossed the attention of Miss Trevanion the night before at WIGWAM versus ALM AUK'S. 291 Almack's) was soon beside ray companion, and leaning from his saddle, was taking pains to address conversa- tion to her in a tone not meant for my ear. As the lady picked out her path with a marked preference for his side of the road, I of course rode with a free rein on the other, rather discontented, however, I must own, to be playing Monsieur de Trop. The Hon. Charles, I very well knew, was enjoying a tem- porary relief from the most pressing of his acquaint- ances by the prospect of his marrying an heiress, and in a two years' gay life in London I had traversed his threads too often to believe that he had a heart to be redeemed from dissipation, or a soul to appreciate the virtues of a high-minded woman. I found myself, besides, without wishing it, attorney for Shahatan in the case. Observing that I " sulked," Miss Trevanion, in the next round, turned her horse's head toward the Ser- pentine Bridge, and we entered into Kensington Gar- dens. The band was playing on the other side of the ha-ha, and fashionable London was divided between the equestrians on the road, and the promenaders on the greensward. We drew up in the thickest of the crowd, and presuming that, by Miss Trevanion's tac- tics, I was to find some other acquaintance to chat with while our horses drew breath, I spurred to a lit- tle distance, and sat mum in my saddle with forty or fifty horsemen between me and herself. Her other companion had put his horse as close by the side of i Puck as possible; but there were other dancers at i Almack's \s ho had an eye upon the heiress, and their ttte-a-tele was interrupted presently by the how-d'ye- do's and attentions of half a dozen of the gayest men about town. After looking black at them for a mo- ment, Charles drew bridle, and backing out of the press rather unceremoniously, rode to the side of I a lady who sat in her saddle with a mounted servant behind her, separated from me by only the trunk of a j superb lime-tree. I was fated to see all the workings of Miss Trevanion's destiny. •'You see what I endure for you!" he said, as a flush came and went in his pale face. "You are false!" was the answer. "I saw you ride in — your eyes fastened to hers — your lips open with watching for her words — your horse in a foam with your agitated and nervous riding. Never call her a giraffe, or laugh at her again, Charles ! She is handsome enougli to be loved for herself, and you love her ."' " No. by Heaven !" The lady made a gesture of impatience and whipped her stirrup through the folds of her riding-dress till it was beard even above the tinkling triangle of the band. " No !" he continued, "and you are less clever than you think, if you interpret my excitement into love. I am excited — most eager in my chase after this wo- man. You shall knoio why. But for herself— good heavens ! — why, you have never heard her speak ! She is never done wondering at silver forks, never done with ecstatics about finger-glasses and pastilles. She is a boor — and you are silly enough to put her beside yourself!" The lady's frown softened, and she gave him her whip to hold while she reimprisoned a stray ringlet. "Keep an eye on her, while I am talking to you," he continued, " for I must stick to her like her shad- ow. She is full of mistrust, and if I lose her by the want of attention for a single hour, that hour will cost me yourself, dearest, first and most important of all, and it will cost me England or my liberty — for failing this, I have not a chance." 44 Go ! go !" said the lady, in a new and now anx- ious tone, touching his horse at the same time with the whip he had just restored to her, "she is off! Adieu !" And with half a dozen attendants, Miss Trevanion took the road at a gallop, while her contented rival followed at a pensive amble, apparently quite content to waste the time as she best might till dinner. The handsome fortune-hunter watched his opportunity and regained his place at Miss Trevanion's side, and with an acquaintance, who was one of her self-select- ed troop, I kept in the rear, chatting of the opera, and enjoying the movement of a horse of as free and admirable action as I had ever felt communicated, like inspiration, through my blood. I was resumed as sole cavalier and attendant at Hyde Park gate. 44 Do you know the Baroness ?" I asked, as we walked our horses slowly down Grosvenor Place. 44 Not personally," she replied, " but I have heard my aunt speak of her, and I know she is a woman of most seductive manners, though said to be one of very bad morals. But from what Mr. Charles tells me, I fancy high play is her only vice. And meantime she is received everywhere." 41 1 fjancy," said I, "that the Hon. Charles is good authority for the number of her vices, and beg- ging you, as a parting request, to make this remark the key to your next month's observation, I have the honor to return this fine horse to you, and make my adieux." 44 But you will come to dinner! And, by-the-by, you have not explained to me what you meant by 'swimming across the Susquehannah,' in the middle of your breakfast, this morning." While Miss Trevanion gathered up her dress to mount the steps, I told her the story which I have already told the reader, of my involuntary discovery, while lying in that moonlit river, of Shahatan's unfor- tunate passion. Violently agitated by the few words in which I conveyed it, she insisted on my entering the house, and waiting while she recovered herself sufficiently to talk to me on the subject. But 1 had no fancy for match-making or breaking. I reiterated my caution touching the intimacy of her fashionable admirer with the baroness, and said a word of praise of the noble savage who loved her. CHAPTER II. Ln the autumn of the year after the events outlined in the previous chapter, I received a visit at my resi- dence on the Susquehannah, from a friend I had never before seen a mile from St. James's street— a May-fair man of fashion who took me in his way back from Santa Fe. He stayed a few days to brush the cob- webs from a fishing-rod and gun which he found in inglorious retirement in the lumber-room of my cot- tage, and, over our dinners, embellished with his trout and woodcock, the relations of his adventures (com- pared, as everything was, with London experience ex- clusively) were as "delightful to me as the tales of Scheherezade to the calif. 41 1 have saved to the last," he said, pushing me the bottle, the evening before his departure, " a bit of ro- mance which I stumbled over in the prairie, and I dare swear it will surprise you as much as it did me, for I think you will remember having seen the heroine at Almack's." 44 At Almack's ?" "You may well stare. I have been afraid to tell you the story, lest you should think I drew too long a bow. I certainly should never be believed in Lon- don." 44 Well — the story ?" " I told you of my leaving St. Louis with a trading party for Santa Fe. Our leader was a rough chap, big-boned, and ill put together, but honestly fond of fight, and never content with a stranger till he had 292 WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S. settled the question of which was the better man. He refused at first to take rne into his party, assuring me that his exclusive services and those of his company had been engaged at a high price, by another gentle- man. By dint of drinking 'juleps' with him, how- ever, and giving him a thorough • mill' (for though strong as a rhinoceros, he knew nothing of 'the sci- ence'), he at last elected me to the honor of his friend- ship, and took me into the party as one of his own men. " I bought a strong horse, and on a bright May morning the party set forward, bag and baggage, the leader having stolen a march upon us, however, and gone ahead with the person who hired his guidance. It was fine fun at first, as I have told you, to gallop away over the prairie without fence or ditch, but I soon tired of the slow pace and the monotony of the scenery, and began to wonder why the deuce our leader kept himself so carefully out of sight — for in three days' travel I had seen him but once, and then at our bivouac fire on the second evening. The men knew or would tell nothing, except that he had one man and a packhorse with him, and that the ' gentle- man' and he encamped farther on. I was under prom- ise to perform only the part of one of the hired carriers of the party, or I should soon have made a push to penetrate 'the gentleman's' mystery. " I think it was on the tenth day of our travels that the men began to talk of falling in with a tribe of In- dians, whose hunting-grounds we were close upon, and at whose village, upon the bank of a river, they usually got fish and buffalo-hump, and other luxuries not picked up on the wing. We encamped about sunset that night as usual, and after picketing my horse, I strolled off to a round mound not far from the fire, and sat down upon the top to see the moon rise. The east was brightening, and the evening was de- licious. "Up came the moon, looking like one of the duke of Devonshire's gold plates (excuse the poetry of the comparison), and still the rosy color hung on in the west, and turning my eyes from one to the other, I at last perceived, over the southwestern horizon, a mist slowly coming up, which indicated the course of a river. It was just in our track, and the whim struck me to saddle my horse and ride on in search of the Indian village, which, by their description, must be on its banks. " The men were singing songs over their supper, and with a flask of brandy in my pocket, I got off un- observed, and was soon in a flourishing gallop over the wild prairie, without guide or compass. It was a silly freak, and might have ended in an unpleasant adven- ture. Pass the bottle and have no apprehensions, however. " For an hour or so, I was very much elated with my independence, and my horse too seemed delighted to get out of the slow pace of the caravan. It was as light as day with the wonderful clearness of the atmo- sphere, and the full moon and the coolness of the evening air made exercise very exhilarating. I rode on, looking up occasionally to the mist, which retreat- ed long after I thought I should have reached the river, till I began to feel uneasy at last, and wondered whether I had not embarked in a very mad adventure. As I had lost sight of our own fires, and might miss my way in trying to retrace my steps, I determined to push on. " My horse was in a walk, and I was beginning to feel very grave, when suddenly the beast pricked up his ears and gave a loud neigh. I rose in my stirrups, and looked round in vain for the secret of his improved spirits, till with a second glance forward, I discovered what seemed the faint light reflected upon the smoke of a concealed fire. The horse took his own counsel, and set up a sharp gallop for the spot, and a few min- utes brought me in sight of a fire half concealed by a clump of shrubs, and a white object near it, which to my surprise developed to a tent. Two horses picketed near, and a man sitting by the fire with his hands crossed before his shins, and his chin on his knees, completed the very agreeable picture. " 'Who goes there?' shouted this chap, springing to his rifle as he heard my horse's feet sliding through the grass. " I gave the name of the leader, comprehending at once that this was the advanced guard of our party ; but though the fellow lowered his rifle, he gave me a very scant welcome, and motioned me away from the tent-side of the fire. There was no turning a man out of doors in the midst of a prairie ; so, without cere- mony, I tethered my horse to his stake, and getting out my dried beef and brandy, made a second supper with quite as good an appetite as had done honor to the first. " My brandy-flask opened the lips of my sulky friend after a while, though he kept his carcass very obsti- nately between me and the tent, and I learned that the leader (his name was Rolfe, by-the-by), had gone on to the Indian village, and that 'the gentleman' had dropped the curtain of his tent at my approach, and was probably asleep. My word of honor to Rolfe that I would 'cut no capers' (his own phrase in adminis- tering the obligation), kept down my excited curiosity, and prevented me, of course, from even pumping the man beside me, though I might have done so with a little more of the contents of my flask. " The moon was pretty well overhead when Rolfe returned, and found me fast asleep by the fire. I awoke with the trampling and neighing of horses, and, spring- ing to my feet, I saw an Indian dismounting, and Rolfe and the fire-tender conversing together while picketing their horses. The Indian had a tall feather in his cap, and trinkets on his breast, which glittered in the moon- light ; but he was dressed otherwise like a white man, with a huuting-frock and very loose large trowsers. By the way, he had moccasins, too, and a wampum belt ; but he was a clean-limbed, lithe, agile-looking devil, with an oye like a coal of fire. " 'You've broke your contract, mister!' said Rolfe, coming up to me; 'but stand by and say nolhing.' "He then went to the tent, gave an 'ehem!' by way of a knock, and entered " 'It's a fine night !' said the Indian, coming up to the fire and touching a brand with the toe of his moc- casin. " I was so surprised at the honest English in which he delivered himself, that I stared at him without an- swer. " ' Do you speak English ?' he said. " ' Tolerably well,' said I, ' but I beg your pardon for being so surprised at your own accent that I forgot to reply to you. And now I look at you more closely, I see that you are rather Spanish than Indian.' " ' My mother's blood,' he answered rather coldly, 'but my father was an Indian, and I am a chief.' " ' Well, Rolfe,' he continued, turning the next in- stant to the trader, who came toward us, ' who is this that would see Shahatan ?' " The trader pointed to the tent. The curtain was put aside, and a smart-looking youth, in a blue cap and cloak, stepped out and took his way off into the prairie, motioning to the chief to follow. " ' Go along ! he won't eat ye !' said Rolfe, as the Indian hesitated, from pride or distrust, and laid his hand on his tomahawk. " I wish I could tell you what was said at that in- terview, for my curiosity was never so strongly excited. Rolfe seemed bent on preventing both interference and observation, however, and in his loud and coarse voice commenced singing and making preparations for his supper; and, persuading me into the drinking part of WIGWAM versus ALMACK'S. 293 it, I listened to his stories and toasted my shins till I j was too sleepy to feel either romance or curiosity;; and leaving the moon to waste its silver on the wilder- new, and the mysterious colloquists to ramble and ! finish their conference as they liked, I rolled over on my buffalo-skin and dropped off to sleep. " The next morning I rubbed my eyes to discover whether all 1 have been telling you was not a dream, for tent and demoiselle had evaporated, and I lay with toy feet to the smouldering fire, and all the trading party preparing: for breakfast around me. Alarmed at my absence, they had made a start before sunrise to overtake Rolfe, and had come up while I slept. The leader after a while gave me a slip of paper from the chief, saying that he should be happy to give me a specimen of Indian hospitality at the Shawanee vil- ] lage, on my return from Santa Fe — a neat hint that I was not to intrude upon him at present." '• Which you took ?" " Rolfe seemed to have had a hint which was prob- ably in some more decided shape, since he took it for i us all. The men grumbled at passing the village with- out stopping for fish, but the leader was inexorable, \ and we left it to the right and 'made tracks,' as the hunters say, for our destination. Two days from there we saw a buffalo " " Which you demolished. You told me that story last night. Come, get back to the Shawanees ! You called on the village at your return ?" " Yes, and an odd place it was. We came upon it from the west, Rolfe having made a bend to the west- ward, on his return back. We had been travelling all day over a long plain, wooded in clumps, looking very much like an immense park, and I began to think that the trader intended to cheat me out of my visit — for he said we should sup with the Shawanees that night, and I did not in the least recognise the outline of the | country. We struck the bed of a small and very beau- tiful river, presently, however, and after following it j through a wood for a mile, came to a sharp brow where the river suddenly descended to a plain at least two hundred feet lower than the table-land on which we had been travelling. The country below looked as if it might have been the bed of an immense lake, and we stood on the shore of it. " I sat on my horse geologizing in fancy about this singular formation of land, till, hearing a shout, I found the party had gone on, and Rolfe was hallooing to me to follow. As I was trying to get a glimpse of him through the trees, up rode my old acquaintance Shahatan, with his rifle across his thigh, and gave me a very cordial welcome. He then rode on to show me the way. We left the river, which was foaming among some fine rapids, and by a zig-zag side-path through the woods, descended about half way to the plain, where we rounded a huge rock, and stood suddenly in the village of the Shawanees. You can not fancy any thing so picturesque. On the left, for a quarter of a mile, extended a natural steppe, or terrace, a hundred yards wide, and rounding in a crescent to the south. The river came in toward it on the right in a superb cascade, visible from the whole of the platform, and against the rocky wall at the back, and around on the edge overlooking the plain, were built the wigwams and log-huts of the tribe, in front of which lounged men, women, and children, enjoying the cool of the summer evening. Not far from the base of the hill the river reappeared from the woods, and I distin- guished some fields planted with corn along its banks, and horses and cattle grazing. What, with the pleas- ant sound of the falls, and the beauty of the scene al- together, it was to me more like the primitive Arcadia we dream about, than anything I ever saw. "Well, Rolfe and his party reached the village pres- ently, for the chief had brought me by a shorter cut, and in a moment the whole tribe was about us, and 4 the trader found himself apparently among old ac- quaintances. The chief sent a lad with my horse down into the plain to be picketed where the grass was better, and took me into a small hut, where I treated myself to a little more of a toilet than I had been ac- customed to of late, in compliment to the unusual prospect of supping with a lady. The hut was lined with bark, and seemed used by the chief for the same purpose, as there were sundry articles of dress and other civilized refinements hanging to the bracing- poles, and covering a rude table in the corner. " Fancy my surprise, on coming out, to meet the chief strolling up and down his prairie shelf with, not one lady, but half a dozen — a respectable looking gen- tleman in black (I speak of his coat), and a bevy of nice-looking girls, with our Almack's acquaintance in the centre — the whole party, except the chief, dressed in a way that would pass muster in any village in Eng- land. Shahatan wore the Indian's blanket, modified with a large mantle of fine blue cloth, and crossed over his handsome bare chest something after the style of a Hieland tartan. I really never saw a better made or more magnificent looking fellow, though I am not sure that his easy and picturesque dress would not have im- proved a plainer man. " I remembered directly that Rolfe had said some- thing to me about missipnaries living among the Shaw- anees, and I was not surprised to hear that the gentle- man in a black coat was a reverend, and the ladies the j sisterhood of the mission. Miss Trevanion seemed j rather in haste to inform me of the presence of 'the cloth,' and in the next breath claimed my congratula- j tions on her marriage ! She had been a chieftainess S for two months. "We strolled up and down the grassy terrace, divi- ding our attention between the effects of the sunset on the prairie below and the preparations for our supper, which was going on by the light of pine-knots stuck in the clefts of the rock in the rear. A dozen Indian girls were crossing and recrossing before the fires, and with the bright glare upon the precipice, and the moving figures, wigwams, &c, it was like a picture of Salvator Rosa's. The fair chieftainess, as she glided across occasionally to look after the people, with a step as light as her stately figure would allow, was not the least beautiful feature of the scene. We lost a fine creature when we let her slip through our fingers, my dear fellow !" " Thereby hangs a tale, I have little doubt, and I can give you some data for a good guess at it — but as the ' nigger song' has it — " Tell us what dey had for supper— Black-eyed pease, or bread and butter ?" "We had everything the wilderness could produce — appetites included. Lying in the track of the tra- ding-parties, Shahatan, of course, made what additions he liked to the Indian mode of living, and except that our table was a huge buffalo-skin stretched upon stakes, the supper might have been a traveller's meal among Turks or Arabs, for all that was peculiar about it. I should except, perhaps, that no Turk or Arab ever saw so pretty a creature as the chiefs sister, who was my neighbor at the feast." " So — another romance !" " No, indeed ! For though her eyes were eloquent enough to persuade one to forswear the world and turn Shawanee, she had no tongue for a stranger. What little English she had learned of the missionaries she was too sly to use, and our flirtation was a very unsat- isfactory pantomime. I parted from her at night in the big wigwam, without having been out of ear-shot of the chief for a single moment; and as Rolfe was in- exorable about getting off with the daybreak the next morning, it was the last I saw of the little fawn. But to tell you the truth, I had forty minds between that 294 MISS JONES'S SON. and St. Louis to turn about and have another look at her. " The big wigwam, I should tell you, was as large as a common breakfast-room in London. It was built of bark very ingeniously sewed together, and lined throughout with the most costly furs, even the floor covered with highly-dressed bear-skins. After finish- ing our supper in the open air, the large curtain at the door, which was made of the most superb gold-colored otters, was thrown up to let in the blaze of the pine torches stuck in the rock opposite, and, as the evening was getting cool, we followed the chiefiainess to her savage drawing-room, and took coffee and chatted till a late hour, lounging on the rude, fur-covered couch- es. I had not much chance to talk with our old friend, but I gathered from what little she said that she had been disgusted with the heartlessness of Lon- don, and preferred the wilderness with one of nature's nobility to all the splendors of matrimony in high-life. She said, however, that she should try to induce Sha-. hatan to travel abroad for a year or two, and after that, she thought their time would be agreeably spent in such a mixture of savage and civilized life as her for- tune and his control over the tribe would enable them to manage." When my friend had concluded his story, I threw what little light I possessed upon the undeveloped springs of Miss Trevanion's extraordinary movements, and we ended our philosophizings on the subject by promising ourselves a trip to the Shawanees some day together. Now that we are together in London, how- ever, and have had the benefit of Mrs. Melicent's ad- ditional chapter, with the still later news that Shahatan and his wife were travelling by the last accounts in the east, we have limited our programme to meeting them in England, and have no little curiosity to see whether the young savage will decide like his wife in the ques- tion of "Wigwam versus Almack's." MISS JONES'S SON, One night, toward the close of the London season — the last week in August, or thereabouts — the Dept- ford omnibus set down a gentleman at one of the small brick-block cottages on the Kent road. He was a very quietly disposed person, with a face rather in- scrutable to a common eye, and might, or might not, pass for what he was — a man of mark. His age was perhaps thirty, and his manners and movements had that cool security which can come only from con- versance with a class of society that is beyond being laughed at. He was handsome — but when the style of a man is well pronounced, that is an unobserved trifle. Perhaps the reader will step in to No. 10, Verandah Row, without further ceremony. The room — scarce more than a squirrel-box from back to front — was divided by folding doors, and the furniture was fanciful and neatly kept. The canary- bird, in a very small cage, in the corner, seemed rather an intruder on such small quarters. You could scarce give a guess what style of lady was the tenant of such miniature gentility. The omnibus passenger sat down in one of the little cane-bottomed and straight backed chairs, and present- ly the door opened and a stout elderly woman, whose skirts really filled up the remaining void of the little parlor, entered with a cordial exclamation, and an affectionate embrace was exchanged between them. " Well, my dear mother !" said the visiter, " I am off to-morrow to Warwickshire to pass the shooting season, and I came to wind up your household clock- work, to go for a month — (ticking, I am sorry to say!) What do you want ? How is the tea-caddy ?" "Out of green, James, but the black will do till you come back. La! don*t talk of such matters when you are just going to leave me. I'll step up stairs and make you out a list of my wants presently. Tell me — where are you going in Warwickshire ? I went to school in Warwickshire. Dear me ! the lovers I had there ! Well, well ! Where did you say you were going?" " To the marquis of Headfort — Headfort court, I think his place is called — a post and a half from Strat- ford. Were you ever there, mother ?" "/ there, indeed ! no, my son ! But I had a lover near Stratford — young Sir Humphrey Fencher, he was then — old Sir Humphrey now ! I'm sure he re- members me, lone; as it is since I saw him — and, James, I'll give you a letter to him. Yes — I should like to know how he looks, and what he will say to my grown- up boy. I'll go and write it now, and I'll look over the groceries at the same time. If you move your chair, James, don't crush the canary-bird !" The mention of the letter of introduction lingered i in the ear of the gentleman left in the parlor, and smiling to himself with a look of covert humor, he drew from his pocket a letter of which it reminded him — the letter of introduction, on the strength of which he was going to Warwickshire. As this and the one which was being written up stairs, were the two pieces of ordnance destined to propel the incidents of our story, the reader will excuse us for presenting them as a " make ready." " Crockford's, Monday. " Dear Fred : Nothing going on in town, except a little affair of my own, which I can't leave to go down to you. Dull even at Crocky's — nobody plays this hot weather. And now, as to your commissions. You will receive Dupree, the cook, by to-night's mail. Grisi won't come to you without her man — ' 'twasn't thus when we were boys." — so I send you a figurante, and you must do tableaux. I was luckier in finding you a wit. S will be withyou to-morrow, though, by the way, it is only on condition of meeting Lady Midge Bellasys, for whom, if she is not with you, you must exert your inveiglements. This, by way only of shuttlecock and battledore, however, for they play at wit together — nothing more, on her part at least. Look out for this devilish fellow, my lord Fred ! — and live thin till you see the last of him — for he'll laugh you into your second apoplexy with the danger- ous ease of a hair-trigger. I could amuse you with a turn or two in my late adventures, but black and white are bad confidants, though very well as a busi- ness firm. And, mentioning them, I have drawn on you for a temporary d£500, which please lump with my other loan, and oblige " Yours, faithfully, " Vaurien." And here follows the letter of Mrs. S to her ancient lover, the baronet of Warwickshire : — M No. 10, Verandah Row, Kent Road. " Dear Sir Humphrey : Perhaps you will scarce remember Jane Jones, to whom you presented the MISS JONES'S SON. 295 brush of your first fox. This was thirty years ago. I was then at school in the little village near Tally-ho hall. Dear ine ! how well 1 remember it ! On hear- ing of your marriage, I accepted an offer from my late husband, Mr. S , and our union was blessed with one boy, who, I must say, is an angel of good- ness. Out of his small income, my dear James fur- nished and rented this very genteel house, and he tells me f shall have it for life, and provides me one servant, and everything I could possibly want. Thrice a week he comes out to spend the day and dine with me, and, in short, he is the pattern of good sons. As this dear boy is going down to Warwickshire, I can not resist the desire I have that you should know him, and that he should bring me back an account of my lover in days gone by. Any attention to him, dear Sir Humphrey, will very much oblige one whom you once was happy to oblige, and still " Your sincere friend, Jane S , "Formerly Jones." It was a morning astray from paradise when S— awoke at Stratford. Ringing for his breakfast, he re- quested that the famous hostess of the red horse would grace him so far as to join him over a muffin and a cup of coffee, and between the pauses of his toilet, he indited a note, enclosing his mother's letter of introduction to Sir Humphrey. Enter dame hostess, prim and respectful, and as breakfast proceeded, S easily informed himself of the geography of Tally-ho hall, and the existing branch and foliage of the family tree. Sir Humphrey's domestic circle consisted of a daughter and a neice (his only son having gone with his regiment to the Canada wars), and the hall lay half way to Headfort court — the Fenchers his lordship's nearest neighbors, Mrs. Boniface was inclined to think. S divided his morning very delightfully be- tween the banks of the Avon, and the be-scribbled localities of Shakspere's birth and residence, and by two o'clock the messenger had returned with this note "rom Sir Humphrey : — "Dear Sir: I remember Miss Jones very well, God bless me, I thought she had been dead many years. I am sure I shall be very happy to see her 6on. Will you come out and dine with us ? — dinner at seven. Your ob't servant, "Humphrey Fencher. "James S -, Esq." As the crack wit and diner-out of his time, S- was as well known to the brilliant society of London as the face of the "gold stick in waiting" at St. James's, and, with his very common name, he was a little likely to be recognised out of his peculiar sphere as the noble lord, when walking in Cheapside, to be recognised as the " stick," so often mentioned in the Court Journal. He had delayed his visit to Headfort court for a day, and undertaken to deliver his mother's letter, and look up her lang-syne lover, very much as he would stop in the Strand to purchase her a parcel of snuff— purely from the filial habit of always doing her bidding, even in whims. He had very little curiosi- ty to see a Warwickshire Nimrod, and, till his post- chaise stopped at the lodge-gate of Tally-ho hall, it had never entered his head to speculate upon the ground of his introduction to Sir Humphrey, nor to anticipate the nature of his reception. His name had been so long to him an "open sesame," that he had no doubt of its potency, and least of all when he pro- nounced it at an inferior gate in the barriers of society. Thedressing-bell had rang, and S was shown into the vacant drawing-room, where he buried him- self in the deepest chair he could find, and sat looking at the wall with the composure of a barber's customer waiting to be shaved. There presently entered two young ladies, very showily dressed, who called him Mr. "Jones," in replying to hia salutation, and im- mediately fell to promenading between the two old mirrors at the extremities of the room, discoursing upon topics evidently chosen to exclude the new- comer from the conversation. With rather a feeling that it was their loss, not his, S recomposed himself in the leathern chair and resumed the perusal of the oaken ceiling. The neglect sat upon him a little uncomfortable withal. " How d'ye do, young man ! What ! you are Miss Jones's son, eh ?" was the salutation of a burly old gentleman, who now entered and shook hands with the great incognito. " Here, 'Bel ! Fan ! Mr. Jones, My daughter and my niece, Mr. Jones !" S was too indignant for a moment to explain that Miss Jones had changed her name before his birth, and on second thought, finding that this real character was not suspected, and that he represented to Sir Humphrey simply the obscure son of an obscure girl, pretty, thirty years ago, he fell quietly into the role expected of him, and walked patiently in to dinner with Miss Fencher, who accepted his arm for that purpose, but forgot to take it ! It was hard to be witty as a Mr. Jones, but the habil was strong and the opportunities were good, and S , warming with his first glass of sherry, struck out some sparks that would have passed for gems of the first water, with choicer listeners ; but wit is slowly recognised when not expected, and though now and then the young ladies stared, and now and then the old baronet chuckled and said "egad! very well!' there was evidently no material rise in the value of Mr. Jones, and he at last confined his social talents exclusively to his wine-glass and nut-picker, feeling, spite of himself, as stupid as he seemed. Relieved of the burden of replying to their guess, the young ladies now took up a subject which evident- ly lay nearest their hearts — a series of dejeuners, the first of which was to come off the following morning at Headfort court. As if by way of caveat, in case Mr. Jones should fancy that he could be invited to accompany Sir Humphrey, Miss Fencher took the trouble to explain that these were, by no means, com- mon country entertainments, but exclusive and select parties, under the patronage of the beautiful and witty Lady Imogen Bellasys, now a guest at Headfort. Her ladyship had not only stipulated for societe choisic, but had invited down a celebrated London wit, a great friend of her own, to do the mottoes and keep up the spirit of the masques and tableaux. Indeed, Miss Fencher considered herself as more particularly the guest and ally of Lady Imogen, never having been permitted during her mother's life to visit Headfort (though she did not see what the marquis's private character had to do with his visiting list), and she ex- pected to be called upon to serve as a sort of maid of honor, or in some way to assist Lady Imogen, who had invited her very affectionately, after church, on Sunday. She thought, perhaps, she had better wake up Sir Humphrey while she thought of it (and while papa was good natured, as he always was after dinner), and exact of him a promise that the great London Mr., what d'ye call 'im, should be invited to pass a week at Tally-ho hall — for, of course, as mutual allies of Lady Imogen, Miss Fencher and he would become rather well acquainted. To this enlightenment, f which we have given only a brief resumir, Mr. Jones listened attentively, as he was expected to do, and was very graciously answered, when by way of feeling one of the remote pulses of his celebrity, he ventured to ask for some further par- ticulars about the London wit aforementioned. He learned, somewhat to his disgust, that his name was either Brown or Simpson, some very common name, however, but that he had a wonderful talent for writing impromptu epigrams on people and singing them after- ward to impromptu music on the piano, and that he 296 MISS JONES'S SON. was supposed to be a natural son of Talleyrand or Lord Byron, Miss Fencher had forgotten which. He had written something, but Miss Fencher had for- gotten what. He was very handsome — no, very plain — indeed, Miss Fencher had forgotten which — but it was one or the other. At this crisis of the conversation Sir Humphrey roused from his post-prandial snooze, and begged Mr. Jones to pass the port and open the door for the ladies. By the time the gloves were rescued from under the table, the worthy baronet had drained a bumper, and, with his descending glass, dropped his eyes to the level of his daughter's face, where they rested with paternal admiration. Miss Fencher was far from ill-looking, and she well knew that her father waxed affectionate over his wine. "Papa!" said she, coming behind him, and looking down his throat, as he strained his head backward, leaving his reluctant double chin resting on his cravat. " I have a favor to ask, my dear papa !" " He shall go, my dear! he shall go ! I have been thinking of it — I'll arrange it, Bel, I'll arrange it ! Go your ways, chick, and send me my slippers !" gurgled the baronet, with his usual rapid brevity, when slight- ly elevated. Miss Fencher turned quite pale. " Pa — pa !" she exclaimed, with horror in her voice, coming round front, " pa — pa ! — good gtacious ! Do ! you know it is the most exclusive — however, papa ! let us talk that over in the other room. What 1 wish to ask is quite another matter. You know that Mr — Mr.—" " The gentleman you mean is probably James S ," interrupted Mr. Jones. " Thank you, sir, so it is !" continued Miss Fencher, putting her hand upon the Baronet's mouth, who was about to speak — " It is Mr. James S ; and what I wish, papa, is, to have Mr. James S in- vited to pass a week with us. You know, papa, we shall be very intimate — James S and I — both of us assisting Lady Imogen, you know, papa ! and — and — stay till I get some note-paper — will you, dear papa ?" " You will have your way, chick, you will have your way," sighed Sir Humphrey, getting his specta- cles out of a very tight pocket on his hip. "But, bless me, I can't write in the evening. Mr. Jones — perhaps Mr. Jones will write the note for me — just present my compliments to Mr. S , and request the honor, and all that — can you do it, Mr. Jones?" S rapidly indited a polite note to himself, which he handed to Miss Fencher for her approba- tion, and meantime entered the butler with the coffee. " Stuggins !" cried Sir Humphrey — " I wish Mr. Jones — " " Good Heavens! papa !" exclaimed Miss Fencher, ending the remainder of her objurgation in a whisper in her father's ear. But the baronet was not in a mood to be controlled. " My love!— Bel, 1 say !— he shall go. You d-d-d- diddedent see Miss Jones's letter. He's a p-p-p-pattern of filial duty ! — he gives his mother a house, and all she wants!— he's a good son, I tell you! St-Stuggins, come here ! Pass the port, Jones, my good fellow !" Stuggins stepped forward a pace, and presented his white waistcoat, and Miss Fencher flounced out of the room in a passion. " Stuggins!" said the old man, a little more tran- quilly, since he had no fear now of being interrupted, " I wish my friend, Mr. Jones, here, to see this cock- a-hoop business to-morrow. It'll be a fine sight, they tell me. I want him to see it, Stuggins ! You under- stand me. His mother, Miss Jones, was a pretty girl, Stuggins ! And she'll be very glad to hear that her boy has seen such a fine show — eh, Jones ? eh, Stug- gins ? Well, you know what I want. The Headlort tenants will have a place provided for them, of course — some shrubbery, eh? — some gallery — some place behind the musicians, where they are out of the way, but can see — isn't it so? eh ? eh ?" "Yes, Sir Humphrey — no doubt, Sir Humphrey. 1 " acceded Stuggins, with his ears still open to know how the details were to be managed. " Well — very well — and you'll take Jones with you in the dickey — eh ? — Thomas will go on the box — eh ? Will that do ? — and Mr. Jones will stay with us to-nighl, and perhaps you'll show him his room, now, and talk it over, eh, Stuggins ? — good night, Mr. Jones ! — good night, Jones, my good fellow !" And Sir Humphrey, having done this act of grate- ful reminiscence for his old sweetheart, managed to find his way into the next room unaided. S — had begun, by this time, to see " straw for his bricks," in the course matters were taking ; and instead of throwing a decanter after Sir Humphrey, and knocking down the butler for calling him Mr. Jones, he accepted Stuggins's convoy to the house- keeper's room, and with his droll stories and funny ways, kept the maids and footmen in convulsions of laughter till break of day. Such a merry time had not come off in servants' hall for many a day, and of many a precious morsel of the high life below stairs of Tally-ho hall did he pick the brains of the delight- ed Abigails. The ladies, busied with their toilets, had their breakfasts in their own rooms, and Mr. Jones did not make his appearance till after the baronet had achieved his red herring and seltzer. The carriage came round at twelve, and the ladies stepped in, dressed for triumph, tumbled after by burly Sir Humphrey, who required one side of the vehicle to himself — Mr. Jones outside, on the dickey with Stuggins, as previously arranged. Half way up the long avenue of Headfort court, Stuggins relinquished the dickey to its rightful oc- cupant, Thomas, and, with Mr. Jones, turned off by a side path that led to the dairy and offices — the latter barely saving his legs, however, for the manoeuvre was performed servant fashion, while the carriage kept its way. Lord Headfort was a widower, and his niece, Lady Imogen Bellasys, the wittiest and loveliest girl in England, stood upon the lawn for the mistress of the festivities. She had occasion for a petticoat aid-de- camp, and she knew that Lord Headfort wished to propitiate his Warwickshire neighbors; and as Miss Fencher was a fine grenadier looking girl, she pro- moted her to that office immediately on her arrival, decking her for the nonce with a broad blue riband of authority. Miss Fencher made the best use of her powers of self congratulation, and thanked God private- ly besides, that Sir Humphrey had provided an eclipse for Mr. Jones ; for with the drawback of presenting such a superfluous acquaintance of their own to the fastidious eyes of Lady Imogen, she felt assured that her new honors would never have arrived to her. She had had a hint, moreover, from her dressing- maid, of Mr. Jones' comicalities below stairs ; and the fact that he was a person who could be funny in a kitchen, was quite enough to confirm the aristocratic instinct by which she had at once pronounced upon his condition. If her papahad been gay in his youth, there was no reason why every Miss Jones should send her child to him to be made a gentleman of! " Filial pattern," indeed ! The gayeties began. The French figurante, de- spatched by Lord Vaurien from the opera, made up her tableaux from the beauties, and those who had ugly faces, but good figures, tried their attitudes on the archery-lawn, and those whose complexions would stand the aggravation, tripped to the dancing tents, and the falcon was flown, and the greyhounds were coursed, and a few couple of Warwickshire lads tried MISS JONES'S SON. 297 their backs at a wrestling fall, and the time wore on. But to Lady Imogen's shrewd apprehension, it wore on very heavily. "There was no wit afloat. Nobody seemed gayer than he meant to be. The bubble was wanting to their champagne of enjoyment. Miss Fencher's blue riband went to and fro like a pendulum, perpetually crossing the lawn between Lady Imogen and the footman in waiting, to inquire if a post-chaise had arrived from London. " I will never forgive that James S , never !" pettishly vowed her ladyship, as Miss Fencher came back for the fiftieth time with no news of his arrival. "Better feed your menagerie at once !" whispered Lord Headfort to his niece, as he caught a glance at her vexed face in passing. The decision with which the order was given to serve breakfast, seemed to hurry the very heat of the kitchen fires, for in an incredibly short time, the hot soups and delicate entremets of Monsieur Dupres were on the tables, and breakfast was announced. The band played a march, the games were abandoned, Miss Fencher followed close upon the heels of her chef, to secure a seat in her neighborhood, and in ten minutes a hundred questions of precedence were settled, and Sir Humphrey, somewhat to his surprise, and as much to his delight, was called to the left hand of the mar- quis. Tally-ho hall was in the ascendant. During the first assault upon the soups, the band played a delicious set of waltzes, terminating with the clatter of changing plates. But at the same moment, above all the ring of impinging china, arose a shout of laughter from a party somewhere without the pavilion, and so sustained and hearty was the peal, that the servants stood petrified with their dishes, and the guests sat in wondering silence. The steward was instantly despatched to enforce order, and Lord Headfort explained, that the tenants were feasted on beef and ale, in the thicket beyond, though he could scarce imagine what should amuse them so uncom- monly. " They have promised to maintain order, my lord!" said the steward, returning, and stooping to his master's ear, " but there is a droll gentleman among them, my lord !" "Then I dare swear it's better fun than this!" mumbled his lordship for the steward's hearing, as he looked round upon the unamused faces in his neighborhood. " Headfort," cried Lady Imogen, presently, from the other end of the table, "did you send to Stratford for S , or did you not ? Let us know whether there is a chance of his coming !" " Upon my honor, Lady Imogen, my own chariot has been at the Stratford inn, waiting for him since morning," was the marquis's answer. " Vaurien wrote that he had booked him by the mail of the night be- fore ! I'd give a thousand pounds if he were here !" Bursts of laughter, breaking through all efforts to suppress them, again rose from the offending quarter. " It's a Mr. Jones, my lord," said the steward, speaking between the marquis and Sir Humphrey ; " he's a friend of Sir Humphrey's butler — and — if you will excuse me, my lord — Stuggins says he is the son of a Miss Jones, formerly an acquaintance of Sir Humphrey's !" Red as a turkey-cock grew the old baronet in a moment. " I beg ten thousand pardons for having intruded him here, my lord !" said Sir Humphrey ; •' it's a poor lad that brought me a letter from his mother, and I told Stuggins—" But here Stuggins approached with a couple of notes for his master, and, begging permission of the marquis, Sir Humphrey put on his spectacles to read. The guests at the table, meantime, were passing the wine very slowly, and conversation more slowly still, and, with the tranquillity that reigned in the pavilion, the continued though half-smothered merriment of the other party was provokingly audible. " Can't we borrow a little fun from those merry people ?" cried Lady Imogen, throwing up her eyes despairingly as the marquis exchanged looks with her. " [f we could persuade Sir Humphrey to introduce his friend, Jones, to us — " "J introduce him!" exclaimed the fuming baronet, tearing off his spectacles in a rage, " read that before you condescend to talk of noticing such a varlet ! j Faith ! I think he's the clown from a theatre, or the I waiter from a pot-house!" The marquis read : — " Dear Nu> t cle : It's hard on to six o'clock, and I'm engaged at seven to a junketing at the ' Hen and chickens,' with Stuggins and the maids. If you in- tend to make me acquainted with your great lord, now is the time. If you don't, I shall walk in presently, and introduce myself; for I know how to make my own way, nuncle — ask Miss Bel's maid, and the other girls you introduced me to at Tally-ho hall ! Be in a hurry, I'm just outside. Yours, " Jo^es. " Sir Humphrey Fencher." The excitement of Sir Humphrey, and the amused face of the marquis as he read, had drawn Lady Imogen from her seat, and as he read aloud, at her request, the urgent epistle of Mr. Jones, she clapped her hands with delight, and insisted on having him in. Sir Humphrey declared he should take it as an affront if the thing was insisted on, and Miss Fencher, who had followed to her father's chair, and heard the reading of the note, looked the picture of surprised indignation. "Insolent! vulgar! abominable!" was all the com- pliment she ventured upon, however. " Will you let me look at Mr. Jones's note?" said Lady Imogen. " Good Heavens!" she exclaimed, after glancing at it an instant, " I was sure it must be he !" And out ran the beautiful queen of the festivities, and the next moment, to Sir Humphrey's amazement, and Miss Fencher's utter dismay, she returned, drag- ging in, with her own scarf around his body, and her own wreath of roses around his head, the friend of Stuggins — the abominable Jones ! Up jumped the marquis, and called him by name (not Jones), and seized him by both hands, and up jumped with de- lighted acclamation half a dozen other of the more distinguished guests at table, and the merriment was now on the other side of the thicket. It was five or ten minutes before they were again seated at table, S on Lady Imogen's right hand, but there were two vacant chairs, for Sir Humphrey and his daughter had taken advantage of the confusion to disappear, and the field was open, therefore, for a full account of Mr. Jones's adventures above and below stairs at Tally-ho hall. A better subject never fell into the hand of that inimitable humorist, and glorious- ly he made use of it. As he concluded, amid convulsions of laughter, the butler brought in a note addressed to James S , Esq., which had been given him by Stuggins early in the day — his own autograph invitation to the hospi- talities of Tally-ho hall ! 298 LADY RACHEL. LADY RACHEL, " Beauty, alone, is lost, too warily kept." I once had a long conversation with a fellow-trav- eller in the coupe of a French diligence. It was a bright moonlight night, early in June — not at all the scene or season for talking long on very dry topics — and with a mutual abandon which must be explained by some theory of the silent sympathies, we fell to chatting rather confidentially on the subject of love. He gave me some hints as to a passage in his life which seemed to me, when he told it, a definite and interesting story ; but in recalling it to mind after- ward, I was surprised to find how little he really said, and how much, from seeing the man and hearing his voice, I was enabled without, effort to supply. To save roundabout, I'll tell the story in the first person, as it was told to me, begging the reader to take my place in the coupe and listen to a very gentlemanly man, of very loveable voice and manners; supplying, also, as I did, by the imagination, much more than is told in the narration. " I am inclined to think that we are sometimes best loved by those whom we least suspect of being inter- ested in us; and while a sudden laying open of hearts would give the lie to many a love professed, it would, here and there, disclose a passion which, in the or- dinary course of things, would never have been be- trayed. I was once a little surprised with a circum- stance of the kind I allude to. " I had become completely domesticated in a fam- ily living in the neighborhood of London — I can scarce tell you how, even if it were worth while. A chance introduction, as a stranger in the country, first made me acquainted with them, and we had gone on, from one degree of friendship to another, till I was as much at home at Lilybank as any one of the children. It was one of those little English paradises, rural and luxurious, where love, confidence, simplicity, and refinement, seem natural to the atmosphere, and I thought, when I was there, that I was probably as near to perfect happiness as I was likely to be in the course of my life. But I had my annoyance even there. "Mr. Fleming (the name is fictitious, of course) was a man of sufficient fortune, living, without a pro- fession, on his means. He was avowedly of the mid- dle class, but his wife, a very beautiful specimen of the young English mother, was very highly connect- ed, and might have moved in what society she pleased. She chose to find her happiness at home, and leave society to come to her by its own natural impulse and affinity — a sensible choice, which shows you at once the simple and rational character of the woman. Fleming and his wife were very fond of each other, but, at the same time, very fond of the companion- ship of those who were under their roof; and between them and their three or four lovely children, I could have been almost contented to have been a prisoner at Lilybank, and to have seen nobody but its charm- ing inmates for years together. "I had become acquainted with the Flemings, how- ever, during the absence of one of the members of the family. Without being at all aware of any new arrival in the course of the morning, I went late to dinner after a long and solitary ride on horseback, and was presented to Lady Rachel , a tall and re- served-looking person, sitting on Fleming's right hand. Seeing no reason to abate any of my outward show of happiness, or to put any restraint on the nat- ural impulse of my attentions, I took my accustomed seat by the sweet mistress of the house, wrapped up my entire heart, as usual, in every word and look that I sent toward her, and played the schoolboy that I felt myself, uncloudedly frank and happy. Fleming laughed and mingled in our chat occasionally, as he was wont to do, but a glance now and then at his stately right-hand neighbor, made me aware that I was looked upon with some coolness, if not with a marked disapproval. I tried the usual peace-offer- ings of deference and marked courtesy, and lessened somewhat the outward show of my happiness, but Lady Rachel was apparently not propitiated. You know what it is to have one link cold in the chain of sympathy around a table. " The next morning I announced my intention of returning to town. I had hitherto come and gone at my pleasure. This time the Flemings showed a de- termined opposition to my departure. They seemed aware that my enjoyment under their roof had been, for the first time, clouded over, and they were not willing I should leave till the accustomed sunshine was restored. I felt that I owed them too much to resist any persuasion of theirs against my own feelings merely, and I remained. "But I determined to overcome Lady Rachel's aversion — a little from pique, I may as well confess, but mostly for the gratification I knew it would give to my sweet friends and entertainers. The saddle is my favorite thinking-place. I mounted a beautiful hunter which Fleming always put at my disposal while I stayed with them, and went off for a long gal- lop. I dismounted at an inn, some miles off, called for black wax, and writing myself a letter, despatched it to Lilybank. To play my part well, you will easily conceive, it was necessary that my kind friends should not be in the secret. " The short road to the heart of a proud woman, I well knew, was pity. I came to dinner that day a changed man. It was known through the family, of course, that a letter sealed with black had arrived for me, during my ride, and it gave me the apology I needed for a sudden alteration of manner. Delicacy would prevent any one, except Mrs. Fleming, from alluding to it, and she would reserve the inquiry till we were alone. I had the evening before me, of course. " Lady Rachel, I had remarked, showed her supe- riority by habitually pitching her voice a note or two below that of the persons around her — as if the re- pose of her calm mind was beyond the plummet of their superficial gayety. I had also observed, how- ever, that if she succeeded in rebuking now and then the high spirits of her friends, and lowered the gen- eral diapason till it harmonized with her own voice, she was more gratified than by any direct compliment or attention. I ate my soup in silence, and while the children, and a chance guest or two, were carrying on some agreeable banter in a merry key, I waited fot the first opening of Lady Rachel's lips, and, when she spoke, took her tone like an echo. Without look- ing at her, I commenced a subdued and pensive de- scription of my morning's ride, like a man uncon- sciously awakened from his revery by a sympathetic voice, and betraying, by the tone in which he spoke, LADY RACHEL. 299 the chord to which he responded. A newer guest had taken my place, next to Mrs. Fleming, and I was opposite Lady Rachel. I could feel her eyes sud- denly fixed on me as 1 spoke. For the first time, she addressed a remark to me, in a pause of my descrip- tion. I raised my eyes to her with as much earnest- ness and deference as I could summon into them, and, when I had listened to her and answered her ob- servation, kept them fastened on her lips, as if I hoped she would speak to me again — yet without a smile, and with an expression that I meant should be that of sadness, forgetful of usages, and intent only on an eager longing for sympathy. Lady Rachel showed her woman's heart, by an almost immediate change of countenance and manner. She leaned slightly over the table toward me, with her brows lifted from " her large dark eyes, and the conversation between us became continuous and exclusive. After a little while, my kind host, finding that he was cut off from his other guests by the fear of interrupting us, proposed to give me the head of the table, and I took his place at the left hand of Lady Rachel. Her dinner was forgotten. She introduced topics of conversation such as she thought harmonized with my feelings, and while I listened, with my eyes alternately cast down or raised timidly to hers, she opened her heart to me on the subject of death, the loss of friends, the vanity of the world, and the charm, to herself, of sad- ness and melancholy. She seemed unconscious of the presence of others as she talked. The tears suffused her fine eyes, and her lips quivered, and I found, to my surprise, that she was a woman, under that mask of haughtiness, of the keenest sensibility and feeling. When Mrs. Fleming left the table, Lady Rachel pressed my hand, and, instead of following into the drawing-room, went out by the low window upon the lawn. I had laid up some little food for reflection as you may conceive, and I sat the next hour looking into my wineglass, wondering at the success of my manoeuvre, but a little out of humor with my own hy- pocrisy, notwithstanding. "Mrs. Fleming's tender kindness to me when I joined her at the tea-table, made me again regret the sacred feelings upon which I had drawn for my experiment. But there was no retreat. I ex- cused myself hastily, and went out in search of Lady Rachel, meeting her ladyship, as I expected, slowly pacing the dark avenues of the garden. The dimness of the starlight relieved me from the effort of keeping sadness in my countenance, and I easily played out my part till midnight, listening to an outpouring of mingled kindness and melancholy, for the waste of which I felt some need to be forgiven. "Another day of this, however, was all that I could bring my mind to support. Fleming and his wife had entirely lost sight — in sympathy with my presumed affliction — of the object of detaining me at Lilybank, and I took my leave, hating myself for the tender pressure of the hand, and the sad and sympathizing farewells which I was obliged to receive from them. I did not dare to tell them of my unworthy ruse. Lady Rachel parted from me as kindly as the rest, and I had gained my point with the loss of my self- esteem. With a prayer that, notwithstanding this de- ceit and misuse, I might find pity when I should in- deed stand in need of it, I drove from the door. "A month passed away, and I wrote, once more, to my friends at Lilybank, that I would pass a week with them. An occurrence, in the course of that month, however, had thrown another mask over my face, and t went there again with a part to play — and, as if by a retributive Providence, it was now my need of sympathy that 1 was most forced to conceal. An affair which I saw no possibility of compromising, had compelled me to call out a man who was well known as a practical duelist. The particulars would not in- terest you. In accepting the challenge, my antago- nist asked a week's delay, to complete some import- ant business from which he could not withdraw his at- tention. And that week I passed with the Flemings. "The gayety of Lilybank was resumed with the smile I brought back, and chat and occupation took their natural course. Lady Rachel, though kind and courteous, seemed to have relapsed into her reserve, and, finding society an effort, I rode out daily alone, seeing my friends only at dinner and in the evening. They took it to be an indulgence of some remainder of my former grief, and left me consequently to the disposition of my own time. " The last evening before the duel arrived, and I bade my friends good-night as usual, though with some suppressed emotion. My second, who was to come from town and take me up at Lilybank on his way to the ground, had written to me that, from what he could gather, my best way was to be prepared for the worst, and, looking upon it as very probably the last night of my life, I determined to pass it waking, and writing to my friends at a distance. I sat dcwn to it, accordingly, without undressing. " Jt was toward three in the morning that I sealed up my last letter. My bedroom was on the ground- floor, with a long window opening into the garden; and, as I lifted my head up from leaning over the seal, I saw a white object standing just before the casement, but at some little distance, and half buried in the dark- ness. My mind was in a fit mood for a superstitious feeling, and my blood crept cold for a moment; I passed my hand across my eyes — looked again. The figure moved slowly away. " To direct my thoughts, 1 took up a book and read. But, on looking up, the figure was there again, and, with an irresistible impulse, I rushed out to the garden. The figure came toward me, but, with its first movement, I recognised the stately step of Lady Rachel. " Confused at having intruded on her privacy, for I presumed that she was abroad for solitude, and with no thought of being disturbed, I turned to retire. She called to me, however, and, sinking upon a gar- den-seat, covered her face with her hands. I stood before her, for a moment, in embarrassed silence. " 'You keep late hours,' she said, at last, with a tremulous voice, but rising at the same time and, with her arm put through mine, leading me to the thickly- shaded walk. "'To-night I do,' I replied; 'letters I could not well defer ' "'Listen to me!' interrupted Lady Rachel. »I know your business for the morning ' " I involuntarily released my arm and started back. The chance of an interruption that would seem dis honorable flashed across my mind. " ' Stay !' she continued ; ' I am the only one in the family who knows of it, and my errand with you is not to hinder this dreadful meeting. The circum- stances are such, that, with society as it is, you could not avoid it with honor.' " I pressed her arm with a feeling of gratified jus- tification which quite overcame, for the moment, my curiosity as to the source of her knowledge of the affair. " 'You must forgive me,' she said, ' that I come to you like a bird of ill omen. I can not spare the pre- cious moments to tell you how I came by my infor- mation as to your design. I have walked the night away, before your window, not daring to interrupt you in what was probably the performance of sacred du- ties. But T know your antagonist — I know his de- moniac nature, and — pardon me! — I dread the worst!* " I still walked by her side in silence. She re- sumed, though strongly agitated. " ' I have said that I justify you in an intention 300 THE PHANTOxM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. which will probably cost you your life. Yet, but for a feeling which I am about to disclose to you, I should lose no time and spare no pains in preventing this meeting. Under such circumstances, your honor would be less dear to me than now, and I should be acting as one of my sex who had but a share of in- terest in resisting and striving to correct this murder- ous exaction of public opinion. I would condemn duelling in argument — avoid the duellist in society — make any sacrifice with others to suppress it in the abstract — but, till the feeling changes in reference to it, I could not bring myself to sacrifice, in the honor of the man I loved, my world of happiness for my share only.' "'And mean you to say ' I began, but, as the light broke upon my mind, amazement stopped my utterance. " ' Yes — that I love you ! — that I love you !' mur- mured Lady Rachel, throwing herself into my arms, and fastening her lips to mine in a long and passion- ate kiss — 'that I love you, and, in this last hour of your life, must breathe to you what I never before breathed to mortal !' " She sank to the ground, and, with handfuls of dew, swept up from the grass of the lawn, I bathed her temples, as she leaned senseless against my knee. The moon had risen above the trees, and poured its full radiance on her pale face and closed eyes. Her hair loosened and fell in heavy masses over her shoul- ders and bosom, and, for the first time, I realized Lady Rachel's extraordinary beauty. Her features were without a fault, her skin was of marble fairness and paleness, and her abandonment to passionate feel- ing had removed, for the instant, a hateful cloud of pride and superciliousness that, at all other times, had obscured her loveliness. With a newborn emotion in my heart, I seized the first instant of returning consciousness, and pressed her, with a convulsive ea- gerness, to my bosom. " The sound of wheels aroused me from this de- lirious dream, and, looking up, I saw the gray of the dawn struggling with the moonlight. I tore my- self from her arms, and the moment after was whirl- ing away to the appointed place of meeting. " I was in my room, at Lilybank, dressing, at eleven of that same day. My honor was safe, and the affair was over, and now my whole soul was bent on this new and unexpected vision of love. True — I was but twenty-five, and Lady Rachel probably twenty years older — but she loved me — she was highborn and beautiful — and love is not so often brought to the lip in this world, that we can cavil at the cup which holds it. With these thoughts and feelings wrangling tu- multuously in my heated blood, I took the following note from a servant at my door. " ' Lady Rachel buries in eutire oblivion the last night past. Feelings over which she has full con- trol in ordinary circumstances, have found utterance under the conviction that they were words to the dy- ing. They would never have been betrayed without impending death, and they will never, till death be near to one of us, find voice, or give token of exist- ence again. Delicacy and honor will prompt you to visit Lilybank no more.' "Lady Rachel kept her room till I left, and I have never visited Lilybank, nor seen her since." THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE, CHAPTER I. SHOWING THE HUMILIATIONS OF THE BARRIERS OF HIGH-LIFE. There is no aristocracy in the time o' night. It was punctually ten o'clock, in Berkeley square. It rained on the nobleman's roof. It rained on the beg- gar's head. The lamps, for all that was visible except themselves, might as well have been half way to the moon, but even that was not particular to Berkeley square. A hack cabriolet groped in from Bruton street. " Shall I ring any bell for you, sir?" said the cab- man, pulling aside the wet leather curtain. " No ! I'll get out anywhere ! Pull up to the side- walk !" But the passenger's mind changed while paying his shilling. "On second thoughts, my good fellow, you may knock at the large door on the right." The driver scrambled up the high steps and gave a single knock — such a knock as the drivers of only the poor and unfashionable are expected to give, in well- regulated England. The door was opened only to a crack, and a glitter- ing livery peered through. But the passenger was close behind, and setting his foot against the door, he drove back the suspicious menial and walked in. Three men, powdered and emblazoned in blue and Sold, started to their feet, and came toward the appa- rent intruder. He took the wet cap from his head, deliberately flung his well-worn cloak into the arms of the nearest man, and beckoning to another, pointed to his overshoes. With a suppressed titter, two of the footmen disappeared through a side-door, and the third, mumbling something about sending up one of the stable-boys, turned to follow them. The new-comer's hand passed suddenly into the footman's white cravat, and, by a powerful and sud- den throw, the man was brought to his knee. " Oblige me by unbuckling that shoe !" said the stranger in a tone of imperturbable coolness, setting his foot upon the upright knee of the astonished me- nial. The shoe was taken off, and the other set in its place upon the plush-covered leg, and unbuckled, as obediently. " Keep them until I call you to put them on again !" said the wearer, taking his gloves from his pockets, as the man arose, and slowly walking up and down the hall while he drew them leisurely on. From the wet and muddy overshoes had been de- livered two slight and well-appointed feet, however, shining in pliable and unexceptionable jet. With a second look, and the foul-weather toggery laid aside, the humbled footman saw that he had been in error, and that, hack-cab and dirty overshoes to the contrary notwithstanding, the economising guest of "my lord" would appear, on the other side of the drawing-room door, only at home on " velvet of three pile" — an ele- gant of undepreciable water! " Shall I announce you, sir ?" respectfully inquired the servant. " If Lord Aymar has come up from the dinner ta- ble — yes! If the ladies are alone — no !" THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 301 »« Coffee has just gone in to the ladies, sir !" " Then I'll find my own way !" Lady Aymar was jamming the projecting diamond of a bracelet through and through the thick white leaf of an Egyptian kala, lost apparently in an eclipse of revery — possibly in a swoon of slumberous diges- tion. By the drawing-room light, in her negligent posture, she looked of a ripeness of beauty not yet sapped by one autumnal minute — plump, drowsy, and voluptuous. She looked up as the door opened. " Spiridion !" "Sappho !" "Don't be silly ! — how are you, Count Pallardos? And how like a ghost you come in, unannounced! Suppose I had been tying my shoe, or anything?" " Is your ladyship quite well ?" " I will take coffee and wake up to tell you ! Was I asleep when you opened the door? They were all so dull at dinner. Ah me ! stupid or agreeable, we grow old all the same! How am I looking, Spiri- dion?" " Ravishingly ! Where is Lady Angelica?" " Give me another lump of sugar ! La ! don't you take coffee ?" " There are but two cups, and this was meant for a lip of more celestial earth — has she been gone long ?" The door opened, and the rustling dress of Lady Angelica Aymar made music in the room. Oh, how gloriously beautiful she was, and how changed was Count Spiridion Pallardos by her coming in ! A minute before so inconsequent, so careless and com- plimentary — now so timid, so deferential, so almost awkward in every motion ! The name of " Greek count" has been for a long time, in Europe, the synonym for " adventurer" — a worse pendant to a man's name, in high life at least, than " pirate" or " robber." Not that a man is pecu- liar who is trying to make the most out of society and would prefer an heiress to a governess, but that it is a disgrace to be so labelled ! An adventurer is the same as any other gentleman who is not rich, only without a mask. Count Pallardos was lately arrived from Constanti- nople, and was recognised and received by Lord Aymar as the son of a reduced Greek noble who had been the dragoman to the English embassy when his lord- ship was ambassador to the Porte. With a prompt- ness a little singular in one whose patronage was so difficult to secure, Lord Aymar had immediately pro- cured, for the son of his old dependant, a small em- ployment as translator in the Foreign office, and with its most limited stipend for his means, the young count had commenced his experience of English life. His acquaintance with the ladies of Lord Aymar's family was two stages in advance of this, however. Lady Aymar remembered him well as the beautiful child of the lovely Countess Pallardos, the playfellow of her daughter Angelica on the shore of the Bos- phorus; and on his first arrival in England, hearing that the family of his patron was on the coast for sea- bathing, Spiridion had prepared to report himself first to the female portion of it. Away from society in a retired collage ornee upon the seashore, they had re- ceived him with no hinderance to their appreciation or hospitality ; and he had thus been subjected, by acci- dent, to a month's unshared intoxication with the beauty of the Lady Angelica. The arrival of the young Greek had been made known to Lord Aymar by his lady's letters, and the situation had been pro- cured for him ; but Pallardos had seen his lordship but once, and this was his first visit to the town estab- lishment of the family. The butler came in with a petil verre of Curagoa for Miladi, and was not surprised, as the footmen would have been, to see Lady Angelica on her knee, and Count Pallardos imprisoning a japonica in the knot a la Grecque of that head of Heaven's most heavenly moulding. Brother and sister, Cupid and Psyche, could not have been grouped with a more playful familiarity. " Spiridion !"— said Lady Aymar — " I shall call you Spiridion till the men come up — how are you lodged, my dear ! Have you a bath in your dressing-room ?" " Pitcher and bowl of the purest crockery, my dear lady ! May I venture to draw this braid a little closer, Angelica — to correct the line of this raven mass on your cheek ? It robs us now of a rose-leaf's breadth at least — flat burglary, my sweet friend !" But the Lady Angelica sprang to her feet, for a I voice was heard of some one ascending from the dining-room. She flung herself into a dormeuse, Spiridion twirled his two fingers at the fire, as if bodi- ly warmth was the uppermost necessity of the moment, and enter Lord Aymar, followed by a great statesman, j a famous poet, one sprig of unsurpassed nobility, and one wealthy dandy commoner. Lord Aymar nodded to his protege, but the gentle- men grouped themselves, for a moment, around a silver easel, upon which stood a Correggio, a late purchase of which his lordship had been discoursing, and in that minute or two the name and quality of the stran- ger were communicated to the party — probably, for they took their coffee without further consciousness I of his presence. The statesman paired off to a corner with his host ! to talk politics, the poet took the punctured flower ! from the lap of Lady Aymar, and commenced mend- ' ing, with patent wax wafers, from the ormolu desk ! near by, the holes in the white leaves ; and the two in- I effables lingered a moment longer over their Curar-oa. Pallardos drew a chair within conversation-reach of j Lady Angelica, and commenced an unskilful discus- sion of the opera of the night before. He felt angry, insulted, unseated from his self-possession, yet he could not have told why. The two young men lounged leisurely across the room, and the careless Lord Fred- erick drew his chair partly between Pallardos and Lady Angelica, while Mr. Townley Manners reclined upon an ottoman behind her and brought his lips within whisper-shot of her ear, and, with ease and un- forced nonsense, not audible nor intended to be audible to the " Greek adventurer," they inevitably engrossed the noble beauty. The blood of Count Spiridion ran round his heart like a snake coiled to strike. He turned to a portfolio of drawings for a cover to self-control and self-com- muning, for he felt that he had need of summoning his keenest and coldest judgment, his boldest and I wariest courage of conduct and endurance, to submit ! to, and outnerve and overmaster, his humiliating po- j sition. He was under a roof of which he well knew that the pride and joy of it, the fair Lady Angelica, ' the daughter of the proud earl, had given him her ! heart. He well knew that he had needed reserve and management to avoid becoming too much the favorite of the lady mistress of that mansion; yet, in it, he had been twice insulted grossly, cuttingly, but in both cases unresentably — once by unpunishable menials, of whom he could not even complain without expo- sing and degrading himself, and once by the supercil- ious competitors for the heart he knew was his own— and they too, unpunishable! At this moment, at a sign from Lady Aymar, her lord swung open the door of a conservatory to give the room air, and the long mirror, set in the panel, showed to Spiridion his own pale and lowering fea- tures. He thanked Heaven for the chance . To see himself once more was what he bitterly needed !— to see whether his head had shrunk between his shoul- ders—whether his back was crouched— whether Ins ey«s and lips had lost their fearlessness and pride! He 302 THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. had feared so — felt so ! He almost wondered that he did not look like a dependant and a slave ! But oh, no ! The large mirror showed the grouped figures of the drawing-room, his own the noblest among them by nature's undeniable confession ! His clear, statua- ry outline of features — the finely-cut arches of his lips — the bold, calm darkness of his passionate eyes — his graceful and high-born mien,— all apparent enough to his own eye when seen in the contrast of that mir- rored picture — he was not changed ! — not a slave — not metamorphosed by that hour's humiliation ! He clenched his right hand, once, till the nails were dri- ven through his glove into the clammy palm, and then rose with a soft smile on his features, like the remain- der of a look of pleasure. " I have found," said he, in a composed and musical tone, " I have found what we were looking for, Lady Angelica !" He raised the large portfolio from the print-stand, and setting it open on his knee, directly between Lord Frederick and Lady Angelica, cut off that nobleman's communication with her ladyship very effectually, while he pointed out a view of the Acropolis at Athens. Her ladyship was still expressing her admiration of the drawing, when Spiridion turned to the astonished gen- tleman at her ear. "Perhaps, sir," said he, " in a lady's service, I may venture to dispossess you of that ottoman! Will you be kind enough to rise?" With a stare of astonishment, the elegant Mr. Townley Manners reluctantly complied ; and Spiri- dion, drawing the ottoman in front of Lady Angelica, set the broad portfolio upon it, and seating himself at her feet upon the outer edge, commenced a detailed account of the antiquities of the grand capitol. The lady listened with an amused look of mischief in her eye, Lord Frederick walked once around her chair humming an air very rudely, Mr. Manners attempted in vain to call Lady Angelica to look at something wonderful in the conservatory, and Spiridion's triumph was complete. He laid aside the portfolio after a mo- ment or two, drew the ottoman back to its advantageous position, and, self-assured and at his ease, engrossed fully and agreeably the attention of his heart's mistress. Half an hour elapsed. Lord Aymar took a kind of dismission attitude before the fire, and the guests one and all took their leave. They were all cloaking together in the entry, when his lordship leaned over the bannister. "Have you your chariot, Lord Frederick?" he asked. " Yes — it's at the door now !" " Lady Aymar suggests that perhaps you'll set down Count Pallardos, on your way !" " Why — ah, certainly, certainly !" replied Lord Frederick, with some hesitation. "My thanks to Lady Aymar," said Spiridion very quietly, " but say to her ladyship that I am provided with overshoes and umbrella ! Shall I offer your lord- ship half of the latter?" added he in another key, leaning with cool mock-earnestness toward Lord Frederick, who only stared a reply as he passed out to his chariot. And marvelling who would undergo such humilia- tions and such antagonism as had been his lot that evening, for anything else than the love of a Lady Angelica, Count Spiridion stepped forth into the rain to grope his way to his obscure lodgings in Parlia- ment street. CHAPTER II. SHOWING A GENTLEMAN'S NEED OF A HORSE. It was the hour when the sun in heaven is sup- posed to be least promiscuous — the hour when the five hundred fashionables of London West-End re- ceive his visit in the open air, to the entire exclusion (it is presumed) of the remaining population of the globe. The cabs and jarveys, the vehicles of the de- spised public, rolled past the forbidden gate of Hyde park, and the echo stationed in the arched portal an- nounced the coroneted carriages as they nicely nibbled the pleased gravel in passing under. A plebeian or two stood outside to get a look at the superior beings whose daily list of company to dine is the news most carefully furnished to the instructed public. The birds (having " fine feathers") flew over the iron rail- ing unchallenged by the gate-keeper. Four o'clock went up to Heaven's gate with the souls of those who had died since three, and with the hour's report of the world's sins and good deeds; and at the same moment a chariot rolled into the park, holding between its claret panels the embellished flesh and blood of Lady Aymar and her incomparable daughter. A group of gay men on horseback stood at the bend of " Rotten Row," watching the comers-in ; and within the inner railing of the park, among the promenaders on foot, was distinguishable the slight figure of Count Pallardos, pacing to and fro with step somewhat irreg- ular. As Lady Aymar's chariot went by, he bowed with a frank and ready smile, but the smile was quickly banished by a flushed cheek and lowering brow, for, from the group of mounted dandies, dashed out Lord Frederick Beauchief, upon a horse of unparalleled beauty, and with a short gallop took and kept his place close at the chariot window. Pallardos watched them till the turn of the ring took them from his sight. The fitness of the group — tho evident suitableness of Lord Frederick's position at that chariot window, filled him with a jealousy he could no longer stifle. The contest was all unequal, it was too palpable to deny. He, himself, whatever his per- son or qualities, was, when on foot, in the place allot- ted to him by his fortunes — not only unnoticed by the contagious admiration of the croud, but unable even to obey his mistress, though beckoned by her smile to follow her ! That superb animal, the very type of pride and beauty, arching his glossy neck and tossing his spirited head before the eyes of Lady Angelica, was one of those unanalyzed, undisputed vouchers for the owner's superiority, which make wealth the devil's gift — irresistible but by the penetrating and cold judg- ment of superior beings. How should a woman, born with the susceptible weaknesses of her sex, most im- pressible by that which is most showy and beautiful — how should she be expected to reason coldly and with philosophic discrimination on this subject ? — how sep- arate from Lord Frederick, the mere man, his subser- vient accompaniments of wealth, attendance, homage from others, and infatuated presumption in himself? Nay — what presumption in Spiridion Pallardos (so he felt, with his teeth set together in despair, as he walked rapidly along) — to suppose that he could con- tend successfully against this and a thousand such ad- vantages and opportunities, with only his unpriced, unproved love to offer her, with a hand of poverty ! His heart ran drowningly over with the bitterness of conviction ! After a few steps, Pallardos turned back with an in stinctive though inexplicable desire to hasten the pang of once more meeting them as they came round the ring of the park. Coming toward him, was one of the honorable officials of Downing street, with whom he had been thrown in contact, a conceited and well- born diner-out, mounted on a handsome cob, but with his servant behind him on a blood hunter. Mr. Dallinger was walking his horse slowly along the fence, and, as he came opposite Pallardos, he drew rein. " Count !" said he, in that patronising tone which is tossed over the head of the patronised like a swan's THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 303 neck over the worm about to be gobbled, " a — a — a — do you know Spanish ?" » Yes. Why ?" » A — a — I've a job for you ! You know Moreno, the Spanish secretary — well, his wife — she ivill persist in disguising her billet-doux in that stilted language, and — you know what I want — suppose you come and breakfast with me to-morrow morning ?" Pallardos was mentally crowding his contemptuous refusal into the smallest phrase that could convey re- pulse to insolence, when the high-stepping and foam- spattered forelegs of Lady Aymar's bays appeared un- der the drooping branch of the tree beyond him. The next instant, Lord Frederick's easily-carried head danced into sight — a smile of perfect self-satisfaction on his face, and his magnificent horse, excited by the constant check, prancing at his proudest. At the mo- ment they passed, Dallinger's groom, attempting to restrain the impatience of the spirited hunter he was upon, drew the curb a little too violently, and the man was thrown. The sight of the empty saddle sent a thought through the brain of Pallardos like a shaft. " May I take a little of the nonsense out of that horse for you?" said he quickly, springing over the railing, and seizing the rein, to which the man still held, while the frighted horse backed and reared toward his master. " A — a — ye9, if you like !" Pallardos sprang into the saddle, loosened the rein and leaned forward, and with three or four powerful bounds, the horse was at the other window of the chariot. Away, with the bursted trammels of heart and brain, went all thoughts of the horse's owner, and all design, if any had flashed on his mind, of time or place for restoring him. Bred in a half-civilized coun- try, where the bold hand was often paramount to law, the Greek had no habit of mind likely to recognise in a moment of passion even stronger barriers of propri- ety than he was now violating ; and, to control his countenance and his tongue, and summon his resour- ces for an apparently careless and 9miling contest of attraction with his untroubled rival, was work enough for the whole mind and memory, as well as for all the nerve aurl spirit of the excited Greek. He laid his hand on the chariot window, and thinking no more of the horse he was subduing than the air he breathed, broke up his powerful gallop to a pace that suited him, and played the lover to the best of his coolness and ability. " We saw you walking just now, and were lament- ing that you were not on horseback," said Lady Ay- mar, "for it is a sweet evening, and we thought of driving out for a stroll in old Sir John Chasteney's grounds at Bayswater. Will you come, Spiridion ? Tell White to drive there !" Lord Frederick kept his place, and with its double escort, the equipage of the Aymars sped on its way to Bayswater. Spiridion was the handsomer man, and the more graceful rider, and, without forcing the diffi- cult part of keeping up a conversation with those within the chariot, he soon found his uneasiness dis- placed by a glow of hope and happiness ; for Lady Angelica, leaning far back in her seat, and completely hidden from Lord Frederick, kept her eyes watchfully and steadily upon the opposite side where rode her less confident lover. The evening was of summer's softest and richest glory, breezy and fragrant ; and as the sun grew golden, the party alighted at the gates of Chas- teney park — in tune for love, it must needs be, if ever conspiring smiles in nature could compel accord in human affections. Ah, happy Spiridion Pallardos ! The Lady Ange- lica called him to disengage her dress from the step of the carriage, and her arm was in his when he arose, placed there as confidingly as a bride's, and with a gentle pressure that was half love and half mischief— - for she quite comprehended that Lord Frederick's ride to Bayswater was not for the pleasure of a twilight stroll through Chasteney park with her mother ! That mother, fortunately, was no duenna. She had pre- tensions of her own to admiration, and she was only particular as to the quantity. Her daughter's division with her of the homage of their male acquaintances, was an evil she indolently submitted to, but she was pleased in proportion as it was not obtruded upon her notice. As Pallardos and the Lady Angelica turned into one of the winding alleys of the grounds, Lady Aymar bent her large eyes very fixedly upon another, and where such beautiful eyes went before, her small feet were very sure to follow. The twilight threw its first blur over the embowering foliage as the parties lost sight of each other, and, of the pair who are the hero and heroine of this story, it can oidy be disclosed that they found a heaven (embalmed, for their partic- ular use, in the golden dusk of that evening's twi- light), and returned to the park gate in the latest min- ute before dark, sworn lovers, let come what would ! i But meantime, the happy man's horse had disap- ' peared, as well he might have been expected to do, his bridle having been thrown over a bush by the en- grossed Pallardos, when called upon to assist Lady Angelica from her carriage, and milord's groom and j miladi's footman having no sovereign reasons for se- curing him. Lord Frederick laughed till the count I accepted the offer of Lady Aymar to take him home, bodkin-wise, between herself and hcrdaughter; and for the happiness of being close pressed to the loving side of the Lady Angelica for one hour more, Pallardos would willingly have lost a thousand horses — his own ! or the honorable Mr. Dallinger's. And, by the way, of Mr. Dallinger and his wrath, and his horseless groom, Spiridion began now to have a thought or two of an uncomfortable pertinacity of intrusion. CHAPTER III. SHOWING WHAT MAKES A HORSE-STEALER A GENTLE- MAN. It was the first day of September, and most of the I gold threads were drawn from the tangled and vari- 1 colored woof of London society. " The season" was over. Two gentlemen stood in the window of Crock- ford's, one a Jew barrister (kersey enough for more russet company by birth and character, but admitted to the society of "costly stuff" for the equivalent he gave as a purveyor of scandal), and the other a com- moner, whose wealth and fashion gave him the privi- lege of out-staying the season in town, without pub- lishing in the Morning Post a better reason than incli- nation for so unnatural a procedure. Count Spiridion Pallardos was seen to stroll slowly , up St. James street, on the opposite side. "Look there, Abrams!" said Mr. Townley Man- ners, " there's the Greek who was taken up at one i time by the Aymars. I thought he was transported." "No ! he still goes to the Aymars, though he is j 'in Coventry' everywhere else. Dallinger had him i arrested — for horse-stealing, wasn't it ? The officer \ nabbed him as he was handing Lady Angelica out of her carriage in Berkeley square. 1 remember hearing of it two months ago. What a chop-fallen blackguard it looks !" " Blackguard ! Come, come, man .'—give the devil his due !" deprecated the more liberal commoner ; "may be it's from not having seen a gentleman for the last week, but, hang me if I don't think that same horse-stealer turning the corner is as crack-looking a man as I ever saw from this window. What's o'clock ?" " Half-past four," replied the gcandal-monger, swal- 304 THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. lowing, with a bland smile, what there tvas to swallow in Manners's Iwo-edged remark, and turning suddenly on his heel. Pallardos slowly took his way along Picadilly, and was presently in Berkeley square, at the door of the Aymars. The porter admitted him without question, and he mounted, unannounced, to the drawing-room. The ladies sat by the window, looking out upon the garden. "Is it you, Spiridion?" said Lady Aymar, "I had hoped you would not come to-day!" " Oh, mamma!" appealed Lady Angelica. "Welcome all other days of the year, my dear Pallardos — warmly welcome, of course" — continued Lady Aymar, " but — to-day — oh God ! you have no idea what the first of September is — to us — to my husband !" Lady Aymar covered her face with her hands, and the tears streamed through her fingers. " Pardon me," said Pallardos — " pardon me, my dear lady, but I am here by the earl's invitation, to dine at six." Lady Aymar sprang from her seat in astonishment. " By the earl's invitation, did you say ? Angelica, what can that mean ? Was it bv note, Count Pal- lardos ?" " By note," he replied. " I am amazed !" she said, " truly amazed! Does he mean to have a confidant for his family secret ? Is his insanity on one point affecting his reason on all ? What shall we do, Angelica ?" "We may surely confide in Spiridion, whatever the meaning of it, or the result" — gently murmured Lady Angelica. " We may — we may !" said Lady Aymar. " Prepare him for it as you will. I pray Heaven to help me through with this day without upsetting my own reason. I shall meet you at dinner, Spiridion." With her hands twisted together in a convulsive knot, Lady Aymar slowly and musingly passed into the conservatory on her way to her own room, leaving to themselves two lovers who had much to talk of beside dwelling upon a mystery which, even to Lady Angelica, who knew most of it, was wholly inexpli- cable. Yet it was partially explained by the trembling girl — explained as a case of monomania, and with the brevity of a disagreeable subject, but listened to by her lover with a different feeling — a conviction as of a verified dream, and a vague, inexplicable terror which he could neither reason down nor account for. But the lovers must be left to themselves, by the reader as well as by Lady Aymar; and meantime, till the dinner hour, when our story begins again, we may glance at a note which was received, and replied to, by Lord Aymar in the library below. " My dear Lord : In the belief that a frank com- munication would be best under the circumstances, I wish to make an inquiry, prefacing it with the assu- rance that my only hope of happiness has been for some time staked upon the successful issue of my suit for your daughter's hand. It is commonly under- stood, I believe, that the bulk of your lordship's for- tune is separate from the entail, and may be disposed of at your pleasure. May 1 inquire its amount, or rather, may I ask what fortune goes with the hand of Lady Angelica. The Beauchief estates are unfortu- nately much embarrassed, and my own debts (I may frankly confess) are very considerable. 5Tou will at once see, my lord, that, in justice to your daughter, as well as to myself, I could not do otherwise than make this frank inquiry before pushing my suit to extremity. Begging your indulgence and an immediate answer, I remain, my dear lord, Yours very faithfully, " Frederick Beauchief. " Ths Earl of Aymar." (reply.) " Dear Lord Frederick : I trust you will not accuse me of a want of candor in declining a direct answer to your question. Though I freely own to a friendly wish for your success in your efforts to engage the affections of Lady Angelica, with a view to mar- riage, it can only be in the irrevocable process of a marriage settlement that her situation, as to the prob- able disposal of my fortune, can be disclosed. I may admit to you, however, that, upon the events of this day on which you have written (it so chances), may depend the question whether I should encourage you to pursue further your addresses to Lady Angelica. "Yours very faithfully, "Aymar. " Lord Frederick Beauchief." It seemed like the first day after a death, in the house of Lord Aymar. An unaccountable hush pre- vailed through the servants' offices ; the gray-headed old butler crept noiselessly about, making his prepa- rations for dinner, and the doors, that were opened and shut, betrayed the careful touch of apprehension. With penetrating and glassy clearness, the kitchen clock, seldom heard above stairs, resounded through the house, striking six. In the same neglected attire which she had worn in the morning, Lady Aymar re-entered the drawing- room. The lids were drawn up around her large eyes with a look of unresisting distress, and she walked with relaxed steps, and had, altogether, an air absent and full of dread. The interrupted lovers ceased talking as she approached, but she did not remark the silence, and walked, errandless, from corner to corner. The butler announced dinner. " May I give your ladyship an arm ?" asked Pal- lardos. " Oh God ! is it dinner-time already !" she exclaimed with a voice of terror. " Williams ! is Lord Aymar below ?" "In the dining-room, miladi." She took Spiridion's arm, and they descended the stairs. As they approached the dining-room, her arm trembled so violently in his that he turned to her with the fear that she was about to fall. He did not speak. A vague dread, which was more than he had caught from her looks — a something unaccountably heavy at his own heart — made his voice cling to his throat. He bowed to Lord Aymar. His noble host stood leaning upon the mantel-piece, pale, but seeming less stern and cold than suffering and nerved to bear pain. " I am glad to see you, my dear count !" he said, giving him his hand with an alfectionateness that he had never before manifested. " Are you quite well ?" he added, scrutinizing his features closely with the question — " for, like myself, you seem to have grown pale upon this September dulness." " I am commonly less well in this month than in any other," said Pallardos, "and — now I think of it — I had forgotten that I arose this morning with a depression of spirits as singular as it was unendurable. I forgot it, when I received your lordship's note, in the happiness the day was to bring me." The lovers exchanged looks, unremarked, appa- rently, by either Lord or Lady Aymar, and the con- versation relapsed into the commonplaces of dinner- table civility. Spiridion observed that the footmen were excluded, the old butler alone serving them at table ; and that the shutters, of which he got a chance glimpse between the curtains, were carefully closed. Once or twice Pallardos roused himself with the thought that he was ill playing the part of an agree- able guest, and proposed some question that might lead to discussion ; but the spirits of Lady Angelica seemed frighted to silence, and Lord and Lady Aymar THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 305 were wholly absorbed, or were at least unconscious of their singular incommuriicativeness. Dinner dragged on slowly — Lady Aymar retarding every remove with terrified and flurried eagerness. Pallardos remarked that she did not eat, but she asked to be helped again from every dish before its removal, j Hei fork rattled on the plate with the trembling of her hand, and, once or twice, an outbreak of hysterical tears was evidently prevented by a stern word and look from Lord Aymar. The butler leaned over to his mistress's ear. •♦ No — no — no ! Not yet — not yet !" she exclaimed, in a hurried voice, " one minute more !" But the clock at that instant struck seven, counted by that table company in breathless silence. Pallardos felt his heart sink, he knew not why. Lord Aymar spoke quickly and hoarsely. " Turn the key, Williams."' Lady Aymar screamed and covered her face with her hands. "Remove the cloth!'' he again ordered precipi- tately. The butler's hand trembled. He fumbled with the corner of the cloth a moment, and seemed to want strength or courage to fulfil his office. With a sudden effort Lord Aymar seized and threw the cloth to the other end of the apartment. "There !" cried he, starting to his feet, and point- ing to the bare table, "there! there!" he repeated, seizing the hand of Lady Angelica, as she arose terrifi- ed upon her feet. " See you nothing? Do you see nothing?'' With a look, at her father, of blank inquiry — a look of pity at her mother, sunk helpless upon the arm of her chair — a look at Pallardos, who with open mouth, and eyes starling from their sockets, stood gazing upon the table, heedless of all present — she answered — "Nothing — my dear lather ! — nothing !" He flung her arm suddenly from his hand. " I knew it," said he, with angry emphasis. " Take her, shameless woman ! Take your child, and be- gone !" But Pallardos laid his hand upon the earl's arm. " My lord ! my lord !" he said, in a tone of fearful suppression of outcry, " can we not remove this hideous object! How it glares at you! — at me! Why does it look at me ! What is it, Lord Aymar ? What brings that ghastly head here ? Oh God ! oh God! 1 have seen it so often !"' " You 1 — you have seen it ?" suddenly asked Lady Aymar in a whisper. " Is there anything to see ? Do you see the same dreadful si«ht, Spiridion ?" Her voice rose with the last question to a scream. Pallardos did not answer. He had forgotten the presence ol them all. He struggled a moment, gasp- ing and choking for self-control, and then, with a sud- den movement, clutched at the bare table. His empty hand slowly opened, and his strength sufficed to pass his linger across the palm. He staggered backward with an idiotic laugh, and was received in his fall by the trembling arms of Lady Angelica. A motion ! from Lord Aymar conveyed to his faithful servant i that the phantom was vanishing ! The door was flung •pen and the household summoned. *• Count Pallardos has fainted from the heat of the room," said Lord Aymar. " Place him upon my bed! And — Lady Aymar! — will you step into the library — I would speak with you a moment !" There was humility and beseechingness in the last few words of Lord Aymar, which (ell strangely on the ear of the affrighted and guilty woman. Her mind had been too fearfully tasked to comprehend the j meaning of that changed tone, but, with a vague ■ feeling of relief, she staggered through the hall, and j the door of the library closed behind her. 20 CHAPTER IV. A letter from Lord Aymar to Lady Angelica will put the story forward a little : — " My dkar Angklica : I am happy to know thr.t there are circumstances which will turn aside much of the poignancy of the communication I am about to make to you. If I am not mistaken at least, in be- lieving a mutual attachment to exist between your- self and Count Pallardos, you will at once compre- hend the ground of my mental relief, and perhaps, in a measure, anticipate what I am about to say. " I have never spoken to you of the fearful in- heritance in the blood of the Aymars. This would appear a singular omission between two members of one family, but I had strong reasons for my silence, one of which was your possible sympathy with your mother's obstinate incredulity. Now — since yester- day's appalling proof — you can no longer doubt the inheritance of the phantom head — the fearful record of some nameless deed of guilt, which is doomed to haunt out festal table as often as the murderous day shall come around to a descendant of our blood. Fortunately — mercifully, I shall perhaps say, we are not visited by this dread avenger till the maturity of manhood gives us the courage to combat with its horror. The Septembers, since my twentieth year, have brought it with fatal certainty to me. God alone knows how long I shall be able to withstand the taint it gives to my thoughts when waking, and to the dreams upon my haunted pillow. " You will readily see, in what I have said, another reason for my silence toward you on this subject. In the strong sympathy and sensitive imagination of a woman, might easily be bred, by too vivid picturing, a fancy which would be as palpable almost as the reality ; and 1 wished you to arrive at woman's years with a belief that it was but a monomaniac affection of my own brain — a disease to pity but not to share ! You are now twenty. The females of my family have invariably seen the phantom at seventeen ! Do you anticipate the painful inference 1 draw from the fact that this spectre is invisible to you ! " No, Angelica! you are not my daughter! The Aymar blood does not run in your veins, and I know not how much it will soften the knowledge of your mother's frailty to know, that you are spared the dread inheritance that would have been yours with a legiti- macy of honor. I had grounds for this belief at your birth, but I thought it due to the hallowed character of woman and wife to summon courage to wait for confirmation. Had I acted out the impulse, then almost uncontrollable within me, I should have piofit- ed by the lawless land in which 1 resided to add more weight to the errand of this phantom avenger. But time and reason have done their work upon me. Your mother is safe from open retribution. May God pardon her ! "You will have said, here, that since Count Pallar- dos has been revealed by the same pursuing Provi- dence to be my son, I may well refrain from appear- ing as my wife's accuser. I have no wish to profit by the difference the world makes between infidelity in man, and infidelity in woman; nor to look, for an apology, into the law of nature upon which so general and undisputed a distinction must needs be founded. I confess the justice of Heaven's vengeance upon the crime — visited upon me, I fearfully believe, in the unconscious retaliation which gave you birth. Yet I can not, for this, treat you as the daughter of my blood. " And this brings me to the object of my letter. With the care of years, I have separated, from the 306 GETTING TO WINDWARD. entail of Aymar, the bulk of my fortune. God has denied me a legitimate male heir, and I have long ago determined, to leave, to its natural conflict with cir- cumstances, the character of a child I knew to be mine, and to adopt its destiny, if it proved worthy, should my fears as to your own parentage be confirm- ed by the undeniable testimony of our spectral curse. Count Pallardos is that child. Fate drew him here, without my interference, as the crisis of your destiny turned against you. The innocent was not to be punished for the guilty, and the inheritance he takes from you goes back to you — with his love in wedlock ! So, at least, appearances have led me to believe, and so would seem to be made apparent the kind provisions of Heaven against our resentful injustices. I must confess that I shall weep tears of joy if it be so, for, dear Angelica, you have wound yourself around my heart, nearer to its core than the coil of this serpent of revenge. 1 shall find it to be so, I am sadly sure, if I prove incorrect in my suppositions as to your at- tachment. "I have now to submit to you, I trust only as a matter of form, two offers for your hand — one from Mr. Townley Manners, and the other (conditional, however, with your fortune) from Lord Frederick Beauchief. An annuity of five hundred a year would be all you would receive for a fortune, and your choice, of course, is free. As the countess Pallardos, you would share a very large fortune (my gifts to my son, by a transfer to be executed this day), and to that destiny, if need be, I tearfully urge you. " Affectionately yours, my dear Angelica, " Aymar." With one more letter, perhaps, the story will be sufficiently told. "Dear Count: You will wonder at receiving a friendly note from me after my refusal, two months since, to meet you over ' pistols and coffee ;' but rep- aration may not be too late, and this is to say, that you have your choice between two modes of settle- ment, viz : — to accept for your stable the hunter you stole from me (vide police report) and allow me to take a glass of wine with you at my own table and bury the hatchet, or, to shoot at me if you like, according to your original design. Manners and Beauchief hope you will select the latter, as they owe you a grudge for the possession of your incomparable bride and her fortune ; but I trust you will prefer the horse, which (if I am rightly informed) bore you to the declaration of love at Chasteney. Reply to Crockford's. " Yours ever (if you like), " POMFRET DALLINGER. "Count Pallardos." Is the story told ? I think so ! GETTING TO WINDWARD. CHAPTER I. London is an abominable place to dine. I mean, of course, unless you are free of a club, invited out, or pay a ridiculous price for a French dinner. The un- known stranger, adrift on the streets, with a traveller's notions of the worth of things to eat, is much worse off, as to his venture for a meal, than he would be in the worst town of the worst province of France — much worse off than he would be in New York or New Or- leans. There is a " Very's," it is true, and there are one or two restaurants, so called, in the Haymarket; but it is true, notwithstanding, that short of a two- guinea dinner at the Clarendon, or some hotel of this class, the next best thing is a simple pointed steak with potatoes, at a chop-house. The admirable club-sys- tem (admirable for club-members) has absorbed all the intermediate degrees of eating-houses, and the travel- ler's chance and solitary meal must be either absurdly expensive, or dismally furnished and attended. The only real liberty one ever enjoys in a metropo- lis is the interval (longer or shorter, as one is more or less a philosopher) between his arrival and the deliv- ery of his letters of introduction. While perfectly unknown, dreading no rencontre of acquaintances, sub- ject to" no care of dress, equipage, or demeanor, the stranger feels, what he never feels afterward, a com- plete abandon to what immediately surrounds him, a complete willingness to be amused in any shape which chance pleases to offer, and, his desponding loneliness serving him like the dark depths of a well, he sees lights invisible from the higher level of amusement. Tired of my solitary meals in the parlor of a hotel during my first week in London, I made the round of such dining-places as I could inquire out at the West End — of course, from the reserved habits of the coun- try toward strangers, making no acquaintnnces, and scarce once exchanging a glance with the scores who sat at the tables around me. Observation was my only amusement, and I felt afterward indebted to those si- lent studies of character for more acquaintance with the under-crust of John Bull, than can be gathered from books or closer intercourse. It is foreign to my present purpose, however, to tell why his pride should seem want of curiosity, and why his caution and deli- cacy should show like insensibility and coldness. I am straying from my story. The covered promenade of the Burlington Arcade is, on rainy days, a great allure for a small chop-house hard by, called "The Blue Posts." This is a snug little tavern, with the rear of its two stories cut into a single dining-room, where chops, steaks, ale, and punch, may be had in unusual perfection. It is frequented ordinarily by a class of men peculiar, I should think, to England — taciturn, methodical in their habits, and highly respectable in their appearance — men who seem to have no amusements and no circle of friends, but who come in at six and sit over their punch and the newspapers till bed time, without speaking a syllable, except to the waiter, and apparently turning a cold shoulder of discouragement to any one in the room who may be disposed to offer a passing remark. They hang their hats daily on the same peg, daily sit at the same table (where the chair is turned down for them by Villiam, the short waiter), daily drink a small pitcher of punch after their half-pint of sherry, and daily read, from beginning to end, the Herald, Post, and Times, with the variation of the Athenaeum and Spectator, on Saturdays and Sundays. I at first hazarded various conjectures as to their condition in life. They were evidently unmarried, and men of easy though limited means — men of no great care, and no high hopes, and in a fixed station; yet of that degree of intelligence and firm self-respect which, in other countries (the GETTING TO WINDWARD. 307 United States, certainly, at least), would have made them sought for in some more social and higher sphere than that with which they seemed content. I after- ward obtained something of a clue to the mystery of the "Blue Posts" society, by discovering two of the most respeetable looking of its customers in the exer- cise of their daily vocations. One. a man of fine phre- nological development, rather bald, and altogether very intellectual in his l -os sublime," I met at the rooms of a fashionable friend, taking his measure for pantaloons-. He was the foreman of a celebrated Bond-street tailor. The other was the head-shopman of a famous haber- dasher in Regent street ; and either might have passed for Godwin the novelist, or Babbidge the calculator — with those who had seen those great intellects only in their imaginations. It is only in England, that men who, like these, have read or educated themselves far above their situations in life, would quietly submit to the arbitrary disqualifications of their pursuits, and agree unresistingly to the sentence of exile from the society 9uited to their mental grade. But here again I am getting away from my story. It was the close of a London rainy day. Weary of pacing my solitary room, I sallied out as usual, to the Burlington Arcade (I say as usual, for in a metropolis where it rains nine days out of ten, rainy-weather re- sorts become habitual). The little shops on either side were brightly lit, the rain pattered on the glass roof overhead, and to one who had not a single ac- | quaintance in so vast a city, even the passing of the | crowd and the glittering of lights seemed a kind of I society. I began to speculate on the characters of those who passed and repassed me in the turns of the i short »,illery ; and the dinner-hours coming round, and i the men gradually thinning off from the crowd, I ad- journed to the Blue Posts with very much the feeling of a reader interrupted in the progress of a novel. One of the faces that had most interested me was that of a foreigner, who, with a very dejected air, leaned on the arm of an older man, and seemed promenading to kill time, without any hope of killing his ennui. On seat- ing myself at one of the small tables, I was agreeably surprised to find the two foreigners my close neigh- bors, and in the national silence of the company pres- ent, broken only by the clatter of knives and forks, it was impossible to avoid overhearing every word spoken by either. After a look at me, as if to satisfy them- selves that I, too, was a John Bull, they went on with their conversation in French, which, so long as it was confined to topics of drink and platter, weather and news, I did not care to interrupt. But with their progress through a second pint of sherry, personal top- ics came up, and as they seemed to be conversing with an impression that their language was not understood, I felt obliged to remind them that I was overhearing unwillingly what they probably meant for a private conversation. With a frankness which I scarcely ex- pected, they at once requested me to transfer my glass to their table, and calling for a pitcher of punch, they extended their confidence by explaining to me the grounds of the remarks I had heard, and continuing to converse freely on the subject. Through this means, and a subsequent most agreeable acquaintance, I pos- sessed myself of the circumstances of the following story; and having thus shown the reader (rather di- gressively, I must own) how I came by it, I proceed in the third person, trusting that my narration will not now seem like the "coinage of the brain." The two gentlemen dining at the Blue Posts on the rainy day just mentioned, were Frenchmen, and polit- ical exiles. With the fortunes of the younger, this story has chiefly to do. He was a man past the senti- mental age. perhaps nearer thirty-seven than thirty- five, less handsome than distinguished in his appear- ance, yet with one of those variable faces which are handsome for single instants once in a half hour, more or less. His companion called him Be- laccueil. " I could come down to my circumstances," he said to Monsieur St. Leger, his friend, " if I knew now. It is not courage that is wanting. I would do anything for a livelihood. But what is the first step ? What is the next step from this ? This last dinner — this last night's lodging — I am at the end of my means ; and unless I accept of charity from you, which I will not, to-morrow must begin my descent. Where to put my foot ?" He stopped and looked down into his glass, with the air of a man who only expects an answer to refute its reasoning. " My dear Belaccueil," said the other, after a mo- ment's hesitation, "you were famous in your better days for almost universal accomplishment. xMimic, dancer, musician, cook — what was there in our merry carnival-time, to which you did not descend with suc- cess, for mere amusement ? Why not now for that independence of livelihood to which you adhere so I pertinaciously ?" "You will be amused to find," he answered, "how ! well I have sounded the depths of every one of these \ resources. The French theatre of London has re- fused me, point-blank, all engagement, spite of the most humiliating exhibitions of my powers of mimicry before the stage-manager and a fifth-rate actress. I j am not musician enough for a professor, though very I well for an amateur, and have advertised in vain for employment as a teacher of music, and — what was I your other vocation! — cook! Oh no ! I have just science enough to mend a bad dinner and spoil a good one, though I declare to you, I would willingly don i the white cap and apron and dive for life to the base- | ment. No, my friend, I have even offered myself as j assistant dancing-master, and failed ! Is not that ! enough ? If it is not, let me tell you, that I would j sweep the crossings, if my appearance would not ex- I cite curiosity, or turn dustman, if I were strong enough ! for the labor. Come down ! Show me how to come ! down, and see whether I am not prepared to do it. But you do not know the difficulty of earning a penny ! in London. Do you suppose, with all the influence I and accomplishments I possess, I could get the place ! of this scrubby waiter who brings us our cigars ? No, j indeed ! His situation is a perfect castle — impregna- I ble to those below him. There are hundreds of poor | wretches within a mile of us who would think them- i selves in paradise to get his situation. How easy it is for the rich to say, 'go and work!' and how difficult to know how and where !" Belaccueil looked at his friend as if he felt that he had justified his own despair, and expected no com- fort. "Why not try matrimony?" said St. Leger. "I can provide you the means for a six months' siege, and you have better qualification for success than nine tenths of the adventurers who have succeeded." " Why — 1 could do even that — for with all hope of prosperity, I have of course given up all idea of a ro- mantic love. But I could not practise deceit, and without pretending to some little fortune of my own, the chances are small. Besides, you remember my ill luck at Naples." "Ah, that was a love affair, and you were too hon- est." " Not for the girl, God bless her ! She would have married me, penniless as I was, but through the inter- ference of that officious and purse-proud Englishman, I her friends put me hors de combat:' "What was his name ? Was he a relative J " \ mere chance acquaintance ol their own, but he entered at once upon the office of family adviser. He was rich, and he had it in his power to call me an ad- venturer. 1 did not discover his interference till some 308 GETTING TO WINDWARD. time after, or he would perhaps have paid dearly for his nomenclature." " Who did you say it was ?" " Hitchings ! Mr. Plantagenet Hitchings, of Hitch- ing Park, Devonshire — and the one point, to which 1 cling, of a gentleman's privileges, is that of calling him to account, should I ever meet him." St. Leger smiled and sat thoughtfully silent for a while. Belaccueil pulled apart the stems of a bunch of grapes on his plate, and was silent with a very dif- ferent expression. " You are willing," said the former, at last, " to teach music and dancing, for a proper compensation." " Parbleu ! Yes !" "And if you could unite this mode of support with a very pretty revenge upon Mr. Plantagenet Hitch- ings (with whom, by the way, I am very well acquaint- ed), you would not object to the two-fold thread in your destiny ?" "They would be threads of gold, mon ami/" said the surprised Belaccueil. St. Leger called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote d letter at the Blue Posts, which the reader will follow to its destination, as the next step in thi3 story. CHAPTER II. A grekx angel (I mean an angel ignorant of the world) would probably suppose that the feeding of these animal bodies of ours, if not done in secret, must at least be the one act of human life separated entirely from the more heavenly emotions. Yet the dinner is a meal dear to lovers ; and novelists and tale-tellers choose the moments stolen from fork and plate for the birth and interchange of the most delicious and tender sentiments of our existence. Miss Hitchings, while unconsciously shocking Monsieur Sansou by tilting Tier soup-plate for the last spoonful of vermicelli, was controlling the beating of a heart full of feminine and delicate tenderness; and as the tutor was careful never to direct his regards to the other end of the table (for reasons of his own), Miss Henrietta laid the unction to her soul that such indifference to the prettiest girl who hud ever honored them as a guest, proved the strength of her own magnet, and put her more at ease on the subject of Monsieur Sansou's admiration". He, indeed, was committing the common fault of men whose manners are naturally agreeable — playing that passive and grateful game of courtesy and attention so easy to the object of regard, and so delightful to wo- man, who is never so blest as in bestowing. Besides, he had an object in suppressing his voice to the lowest audible pitch, and the rich and deep tone, sunk only to escape the ear of another, sounded, to the watchful and desiring sense of her to whom it was addressed, like the very key-note and harmony of affection. At a table so surrounded with secrets, conversation flagged, of course. Mr. Hitchings thought it very uphill work to entertain Miss Hervey, whose heart and senses were completely absorbed in the riddle of Belaccueil's disguise and presence; Mr. Hervey, the uncle, found old Mrs. Plantagenet rather absent, for the smitten dame had eyes for every movement of Monsieur Sansou ; and the tutor himself, with his re- sentment toward his host, and his suspicions of the ove of his daugViter, his reviving passion for Miss Hervey, and his designs on Mrs. Plantagenet, had enough to render him as silent as the latter could wish, and as apparently insensible to the attraction of the fair stranger. How little we know what is in the bosoms of those around us ! How natural it is, however, to feel and act as if we knew — to account for all that appears on the surface by the limited acquaintance we have with circumstances and feelings — to resent an indifference of which we know not the cause — to approve or con- demn, without allowance for chagrin, or despair, or love, or hope, or distress — any of the deep undercur- rents for ever at work in the depths of human bosoms. The young man at your side at a dinner-party may have a duel on his hands for the morning, or a disgrace imminent in credit or honor, or a refused heart or an accepted one, newly crushed or newly made happy* or (more common still, and less allowed for) he may feel the first impression of disease, or the consequen- ces of an indigestion ; and, for his agreeableness or disagreeableness, you try to account by something in yourself, some feeling toward yourself — as if you and you only could affect his spirits or give a color to his mood of manners. The old man's thought of death. the mother's overwhelming interest in her child, the woman's up-spring of emotion or love, are visiters to the soul that come unbidden and out of time, and you can neither feast nor mourn, secure against their in- terruption. It would explain many a coldness, could we look into the heart concealed from us. We should often pity when we hate, love when we think we can not even forgive, admire where we curl the lip with scorn and indignation. To judge without reserve of any human action is a culpable temerity, of all our sins the most ttnfeeling and frequent. I will deal frankly with you, dear reader. I have arrived at a stage of my story which, of all the stages of story-writing, I detest the most cordially. Poets I have written about the difficulty of beginning a story ! (vide Byron) — Ca ne me coule pas ; others of the end- j ing. That I do with facility, joy, and rejoicing. But the love pathos of a story — the place where the reader is expected to sigh, weep, or otherwise express his emotion — that is the point, I confess, the most diffi- cult to write, and the most unsatisfactory when written. " Pourquoy, Sir Knight ?" Not because it is difficult to write love-scenes — according to the received mode — not that it is difficult to please those (a large majority) who never truly loved, and whose ideas, therefore, of love and its making, are transcendentalized out of all ! truth and nature — not that it would be more labor to j do this than to copy a circular, or write a love-letter I for a modest swain (this last my besetting occupation) — but because, just over the inkstand there peers a ! face, sometimes of a man of forty, past the nonsense of life, but oftener of some friend, a woman who has loved, and this last more particularly knows that true love is never readable or sensible — that if its lan- I guage be truly written, it is never in polished phrase [ or musical cadence — that it is silly, but for its con- i cealed meaning, embarrassed and blind, but for the j interpreting and wakeful heart of one listener — that ! love, in short, is the god of unintelligibility, mystery, and adorable nonsense, and, of course, that which 1 i have written (if readable and sensible) is out of taste i and out of sympathy, and none but fancy-lovers and enamored brains (not hearts) will approve or believe it. D'Israeli the younger is one of the few men of ge- nius who, having seen truth without a veil, dare to re- veal the vision ; and he has written Henrietta Temple ! — the silliest yet truest love-book of modern time. | The critics (not an amative race) have given him a benefit of the "besom" of ridicule, but D'Israeli, far from being the effeminate intellect they would make him, is one of the most original and intrepid men of genius living, and whether the theme be "wine, wo- man, or war," he writes with fearless truth, piquancy, and grace. Books on love, however, should be read i by lovers only, and pity it is, that there is not au ink j in chemistry, invisible save to the eye kindled with ain- I atory fire. But "to our muttons." It was not leap-year, but Monsieur Belaccueil, on j i the day of the dinner-party at Hitchings park, was I] made aware (I will not say by proposals, for ladies make GETTING TO WINDWARD. 309 known their inclinations in ways much less formidable) —lie was made aware, I say, that the hearts of three of the parly were within the flight of his arrow. Prob- ably his humble situation reversed the usual relative position of the sexes in the minds of the dame and damsels — and certainly there is no power woman exer- cises so willingly as a usurpation of the masculine privilege. I have stated my objection to detail the dialogue between Miss Hitchings and her tutor at the dinner-table. To be recorded faithfully, the clatter of silver forks on China, the gurgle of wine, the inter- ruptions of the footmen with champagne and vegeta- bles, should all be literally interspersed — for to all the broken sentences (so pathetic when properly punctu- ated — vide Neal's novels) these were the sequels and the accompaniments: " No, thank you !" and "If you please," and " May I fill your glass ?" — have filled out, to the perfect satisfaction of the lady, many an unfin- ished sentence upon which depended the "whole des- tiny of her affections; and, as I said before, the truth is not faithfully rendered when these interstices are unsupplied. It was dark when the ladies left the dinner-table. followed by Monsieur Sanson, and, at the distance of a few feet from the windows opening on the lawn, the air was black and impenetrable. There were no stars visible and no moon, but the clouds which were gath- ering alter a drought, seemed to hush the air With their long expected approach, and it was one of those soft, stiJ!, yet murky and fragrant nights when the earth seems to breathe only — without light, sound, or motion. What lover does not remember such a night ? Oppressed with the glaring lights and the company of people she cared nothing about, Miss Hervey stepped out upon the lawn, and with her face lifted as if to draw deeper inhalations of the dew and freshness, she strolled leisurely over the smooth carpet of grass. At a slight turn to avoid a clump of shrubbery, she encountered Belaccueil, who was apologizing and about to pass her, when she called him by his name, and passing her arm through his, led him on to the extremity of the lawn. A wire fence arrested their progress, and leaning against it, Miss Hervey inquired into the cause of the disguise she had penetrated, and softened and emboldened by the fragrant darkness, said all that a woman might say of tenderness and en- couragement. Belaccueil's heart beat with pride and gratified amour propre, but he confined himself to the expression of this feeling, and leaving the subject open, took advantage of Mrs. Plantagenet's cali to Miss Hervey from the window, to leave her and resume his ramble through the grounds. The supper tray had been brought in, and the party were just taking their candles to separate, when the tutor entered at the glass door and arrested the steps of Mrs. Plantagenet. She set down her candle and courtesied a good-night to the ladies (Mr. Hitchings had gone to bed, for wine made him sleepy, and Mr. Her- vey always retired early— where he was bored), and closing the windows, mixed a glass of negus for Mon- sieur Sansou ; and, herself pulling a sandwich to pieces, deliberately, and it must be confessed, some- what patronisingly, invited the Frenchman to become her lord. And after a conversation, which (la verite avant (out) turned mainly on will and investments, the window dame sailed blissfully to bed, and Belaccueil wrote the following letter to his friend and adviser : — "Mv dear St. Leger: Enclosed you have the on y surviving lock of my grizzled wig— sign and sym- bol that my disguises are over and my object attained, lhe « wig .burns at this instant in the grate, item my hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats a la vielle cour, Hem (this last not without some trouble at my heart) a solitary love-token from Coustantia Her- vey. One faded rose— given me at Paestum, the day before 1 was driven disgraced from her presence by ' the interference of this insolent fool— one faded rose has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And : so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till now — never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, re- fined, cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its drapery — determined to feel nothing but what is real — yet this moment, turn it and stiip it, and deny its illu- sions as I will, is anguish. ' Self-inflicted,' you smile and say ! "You will marvel what stars will not come into conjunction, when I tell you that Miss Hervey is at this moment under the same roof with me and my affianced bride, and you will marvel what good turn I have done the devil, that he should, in one day, offer j me my enemy's daughter, »my enemy's fortune (with the drawback of an incumbrance), and the woman who j I thought had spurned me. After all. it is a devil's ; gift — for in choosing that to which I am most impelled, I crush hope, and inflict pain, and darken my own | heart for ever. I could not have done this once. ; Manhood and poverty have embittered me. " Miss Hitchings has chosen to fall in love with her tutor. She is seventeen, a sweet blonde, with large, suffused eyes, tender, innocent, and (without talent) singularly earnest and confiding. I could be very happy with such a woman, and it would have been a very tolerable revenge (failing the other) to have stolen her from her father. But he would have disinherited and forgotten us, and I have had enough of poverty, and can not afford to be forgotten — by my enemy. "You never saw Miss Hervey. It is not much to i tell you she is the most beautiful woman I have met. j If she were not beautiful, her manners would win all i hearts. If her manners were less fascinating, her sin- gular talents would make her remarkable. She is not : appreciated, because her beauty blinds people to her i talents, and her manners make them forget her beauty. ; She is something in the style of the Giorgione we adored at Venice — a transparently dark beauty, with unfathomable eyes and lashes that sweep her cheek; her person tall and full, and her neck set on like Ze- nobia's. Yet she is not a proud woman — I think she is not. She is too natural and true to do anything which looks like pride, save walk like an empress. She says everything rightly — penetrates instantly to the core of meaning — sings, dances, talks, with the ease, confidence, grace, faithlessness, with which a swallow flies. Perfection in all things is her nature. I am jotting down her qualities now as they are al- lowed by the world. I will not write of them like a lover. Oh, my friend, with what plummet can you fathom the depth of my resentments, when, for them, I forego possession of this woman ! She offered me, two hours since, the unqualified control of her desti- ny ! She asked me with tremulous voice to forgive her for the wrong done me in Italy. She dropped that faultless and superb head on my bosom, and told me that she loved me — and I never answered ! The serpent in my heart tied up my tongue, and with cold thanks and fiend-like resistance to the bliss of even once pressing her to my bosom, I left her. I do not know myself when I remember that I have done this. I am possessed — driven out — by some hard and bitter spirit who neither acts nor speaks like me. Yet could I not undo what I have done. " To-morrow morning will disappear Monsieur San- sou from Hitchings park, and. on the brief condition of a brief ceremony, the law, the omnipotent law, will deliver into my hands the lauds, tenements, goods, chattels, and liberty of my enemy — for even so deeply has he sunk into the open pocket of Mrs. Plantage- net ! She holds mortgages on all he has, for money advanced, and all that is hers will be mine, without reserve. The roof I have been living in degradation 310 THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED. under, will be to-morrow my own. The man who called me an adventurer, who stood between me and my love, who thrust me from my heaven without cause or provocation — the meddling fool who boasts that he saved a countrywoman from a French swindler (he has recurred to it often in my presence), will be to- morrow my dependant, beggar for shelter, suppli- ant for his liberty and subsistence ! Do you ask if that outweighs the love of the woman I have lost ? Alas ! yes. 44 You are older, and have less taste for sentiment even than I. I will not bore you with my crowd of new feelings in this situation. My future wife is amia- ble and good. She is also vain, unattractive, and old. I shall be kind to her and endeavor that she shall not be disenchanted, and if I can make her happy, it may mollify my penance for the devil with which I am pos- sessed. Miss Hitchings will lose nothing by having loved me, for she shall be the heiress of my wealth, and her father but I will not soil my heart by thinking of an alleviation to his downfall. "Farewell, mon ami. Congratulate and pily me. "Adolphk Belaccueil." In one of the most fashionable squares of London lives, "in the season," Monsieur Belaccueil, one of the most hospitable foreigners in that great metropo- lis. He is a pensive and rather melancholy-looking man by day; but society, which he seems to seek like an opiate to restless feeling, changes him to a gay ! man, the most mirth-loving of Amphytrions. His i establishment is presided over by his wife, who, as his i society is mostly French, preserves a respectable si- i lence, but seems contented with her lot and proud of j her husband ; while in Miss Plantagenet (ci-devant | Hitchings) his guests find his table's chief attraction — | one of the prettiest heiresses and most loveable girls in I London. How deeply Monsieur Belaccueil still rejoices I at his success in "getting to windward," is matter of I problem. Certainly there is one chariot which passes ! him in his solitary ride in the park, to which he bows with a pang of unabating and miserable anguish. And if the occupant of that plain chariot share at all in bis suffering, she has not the consolation to which he flies in society — for a more secluded and lonely woman lives not in the great solitude of London, than Con- stantia Hervey. THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED. The following story was told to the writer by a lady in France — told during supper at a ball, and of course only partially. The interstices have been supplied in writing it, and the main thread of the narrative may be relied on as fact. The names are fictitious : — A beautiful girl of seventeen, in the convent-parlor of Saint Agatha. She is dressed as a novice, and the light breaks off from the curve of the raven hair put away under the close-fitting cap — breaks off almost in sparkles. For so it may — as an artist knows. Her eyes are like hounds in the leash — fiery and eager. And if, in those ever-parted and forward-pressing lips there is a possibility of languid repose, the proof of it lies in the future. They are sleepless and dreamless, as yet, with a thirst unnamed and irrepressible, for the passions of life. Her name is Zelie. But we can not make the past into the present. Change the tense — for Zelie is dead now, or we could not record her strange story. There was a ring at the convent door, and presently entered Colonel Count Montalembert, true to his ap- pointment. He had written to the lady-abbess to request an interview with the daughter of his com- rade, dead on the frozen track of the retreat from Moscow. Flahault was to him, as his right hand to his left, and as he covered up the stiffened body with snow, he had sworn to devote his life to that child whose name was last on the lips closed for ever. The Count Montalembert was past fifty, and a constant sufferer from his wounds; and his physicians had warned him that death was not far off. His bearing was still noble and soldierly, however, and his frank and clear eye had lost little of its lustre. " I wrote to you the particulars of your father's death, my child," said the colonel, after the abbess had left them alone, at his request. "I could not dwell on it again without more emotion than is well for me. I must be brief even with what I have to say to his daughter — for that, too, will move me overmuch. You are very lovely, Zelie." " You are very kind !" answered the novice, blush- ing, and dropping her long lashes upon her cheek. "Very lovely, I say, and must love and be beloved. It is a woman's destiny, and your destiny more than most women's." The count gazed into the deep eyes of his eager listener, and seemed embarrassed to know how to pro- ceed. " Hear me through," he said, " before you form an ! opinion of my motives. And first answer me a bold question. Have you any attachment — have you ever seen a man you could love and marry ?" " No !" murmured the blushing novice, after a mo- ment's hesitation. " But you are likely to love, soon and rashly, once free in the world — and that is one evil against which I will make myself your shield. And there is another — which I am only sorry that I need your permission and aid in averting." Zelie looked up inquiringly. " Poverty — the grave of love — the palsy of the heart — the oblivion of beauty and grace ! To avert this from you, I have a sacrifice to demand at your hands." Again the count stopped in embarrassment almost painful, and Mademoiselle Montalembert with diffi- culty suppressed her impatience. " My physicians tell me," he resumed, in a tone lower and calmer, " that my lease of life is wearing rapidly to a close. A year hence lies its utmost and inevitable limit. Could you live in the world, without love, for one year, Zelie?" "Monsieur !" was her surprised exclamation. " Then listen to my proposal. I have a fortune while I live, large enough for your most ambitious desires. But it is left to me with conditions which forbid my conveying it through any link save mar- riage, and to my widow only for life. To give it you, I regret deeply for your sake to say, I must wed you. You start — do not answer me now. I leave you to revolve this in your mind till to-morrow. Remem- ber that I shall not trouble you long, and that the name of Montalembert is as noble as your own, and that you require a year, perhaps more than a year, to recover from your first dizzy gaze upon the world. 1 THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED. 311 shall put no restraint upon you. I have no wish but to fulfil mv duty to my dead comrade in arms, and to die, knowing that you will well bestow your heart when I am gone. Adieu !" The count disappeared, and, with her clasped hands pressed to her forehead, the novice paced the convent- parlor until the refectory bell rang for dinner. * * * It was an evening of June, in the gardens of Ver- sailles. It was an evening of June, also, in the pest- house of St. Lazarus, and in the cell of the condemned felon in St. Pelagic Time, even in his holyday dress, visits indiscriminately — the levelling caitiff! Have the unhappy any business with June ? But the gardens of Versailles were beginning to illuminate, and the sky faded, with a glory more fes- tal than sunlight, with the radiance of a myriad of glittering lamps, embellishing even the trees and (low- ers beyond the meaning of nature. The work of the architect and the statuary at once stood idealized, and draped in an atmosphere of fairy-land, and the most beautiful woman of the imperial court became more beautiful as she stepped into the glare of the alley of fountains. And who should that be — the fairest flower of French nobility — but the young Countess Monta- lembert, just blooming through the close of her first year of wedlock ! The Count Montalembert stepped with her from the shade of the orange-grove, and, without her arm, fell behind scarce perceptibly, that he might keep his eye filled with the grace of her motion, without seeming to worship her before the world. With every salient flow of that cloud-like drapery onward — with every twinkling step of those feet of airy lightness — the dark eyelashes beneath the soldier's brow lifted and drooped again, as if his pulse of life and vision were alone governed by her swan-like motion. The count had forgotten that he was to die. The year allotted to him by his physicians had passed, and, far from falling gradually to his doom, his figure had straightened, and his step grown firm, and his cheek and lip and eye had brightened with returning health. He had drank life from love. The superb Zelie had proved grateful and devoted, and at the chateau of Montalembert, in southern France, she had seemed content to live with him, and him only, the most assiduous of nurses in all her glorious beauty. But though this was Para- dise to the count, his reason, not his heart, told him it was imprisonment to her, and he had now been a month at the sumptuous court of Napoleon, an at- tendant upon a wife who was the star of the time — the beloved of all the court's gay beholders. As the Montalemberts strolled toward the chateau, which was now emitting floods of light from its many windows, a young soldier, with a slight mustache just shading his Grecian lip, joined them from a side-path, and claimed the hand of the countess for a waltz. The mercurial music at the same instant fled through the air, and under an exclamation at its thrilling sweetness, the countess concealed from her husband an emotion which the trembling of her slight hand' betrayed instantly to her partner. With a bow of af- fected gayety to the count, she quickened her pace, and in another moment stood blushing in the dazzling ring of waltzers, the focus herself of all eyes open to novelty and beauty. De Mornay, the countess's partner, was but an en- sign in the imperial guard. He had but his sword. Not likely to be called handsome, or to be looked upon as attractive or dangerous by any but the most penetrating of his own sex, he had that philtre, that inexplicable something, which at once commended him to woman. His air was all earnest. The sup- pressed devotion of life and honor breathed in his voice. He seemed ever hiding his heart with pain — shamed with betrayed adoration— calm by the force of a respect that rebuked passion. He professed no gal- I lantries. He professed nothing. His eyes alone, large, [ steadfast, imploring, conveyed language of love. An hour of that absorbing regard — an apparently calm, ! unimpassioned hour of the intercourse common to i those newly met — sufficed to awaken in the bosom of the countess an interest alarming to himself, and dan- gerous to her content as the wife of another. Strange she thought it, that, as the low and deferential tones of De Mornay fell on her ear, they seemed to expel ! from her heart all she bad hitherto treasured — ambi- tion for the splendors of the court, passion for admi- ! ration, and even her gratitude for her husband. A hut in the forest, with De Mornay only, was the Para- dise now most present to the dreams and fancy of the proud wife of Montalembert. As his wife left him, the count thrust his hand into his breast with a gesture of controlled emotion, and turned aside, as if to seek once more the retired covert he had left. But his steps were faltering. At the entrance of the alley he turned again, and walking , rapidly to the chateau, entered the saloon trembling to the measured motion of the dancers. Waiting for an opportunity to float into the giddy ring, De Mornay stood with his arm around the waist ! of the countess. Montalembert's face flushed, but he stepped to a column which supported the orchestra, and looked on unobserved. Her transparent cheek I was so near to the lips of her partner, that his breath must warm it. Her hand was pressed — ay, by the I bend of her gloved wrist, pressed hard — upon the ' shoulder of De Mornay. Her bosom throbbed per- ceptibly in its jewelled vest. She leaned toward him ! with a slight sway of her symmetrical waist, and ! away, like two smoke wreaths uniting, away in volup- tuous harmony of movement, gazing into each other's eyes, murmuring inaudibly to the crowd — lips, cheeks, and eyes, in passionate neighborhood — away floated the wife and friend of Montalembert in the authorized I commerce of the gay world. Their feet chased each other, advancing, retreating, amid the velvet folds of i her dress. Her waist was drawn close to his side in the more exciting passages of the music. Her luxu- riant tresses floated from her temples to his. She curved her swan-like neck backward, and, with a look of pleasure, which was not a smile, gave herself up to the thrilling wedlock of music and motion, her eyes half-drooped and bathed in the eager gaze of De Mornay's. Montalembert's face was pallid and his eye on fire. The cold sweat stood on his forehead. He felt wronged, though the world saw all. With his concealed hand he clenched his breast till he drew blood. There was a pause in the music, and with a sudden agony at the thought of receiving his wife again from the hands of De Mornay, Montalembert fled on to the open air. An hour elapsed. "I ask a Heaven for myself, it is true, but not much for you to give !" said a voice approaching through the shadowy alley of the garden. The count lay on the ground with his forehead pressed to the marble pedestal of a statue, and he heard, with the voice, the rustling of a female dress, and the rattling of a sabre-chain and spurs. " But one ringlet, sacred to me," continued the voice, in a tone almost feminine with its pleading ear- nestness; "not given to me, no, no! — that were a child's desire ! — but mine, though still playing on this ivory shoulder, and still lying neatly beneath that vein- ed temple — mine with your knowledge only, and caressed and cared for, morn and night, with the thought that it is mine ! Oh, Zelie ! there is no wrong to Montalembert in this ! Keep it from his touch! Let him not breathe upon it! Let not the wind blow that one ringlet toward him! And when it kisses your cheek, and plays with the envied breeze upon your bosom — think — think of the soul of Do 312 THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED. Mornay, bound in it ! Oh, God ! why am I made capable of love like this !" There was no reply, and long ere Montalembert had recovered from Lis amazement at these daring words, the sound of their footsteps had died away. Pass two years. It is enough to wait on Time in the Present. In the Past and Future, the graybeard, like other ministers out of place, must do without usher and secretary. It was a summer's noon on the Quai D'Orsay, of Paris. The liveried lacqueys of the princely hotels j were lounging by the heavy gateways of stone, or leaning over the massy parapet of the river. And, j true to his wont, the old soldier came with the noon, j creeping from the " Invalides," to take his seat under the carved lion of the Montalemberts. He had served \ under the late count, and the memory of his house j was dear to the old veteran. The sabre-cut which had disfigured his face, was received, he said, while fight- < ing between Montalembert and Flahault, and to see | the daughter of the one, and the gay heir of the j other's wife and fortune, he made a daily pilgrimage I to the Quai, and sat in the sun till the countess drove \ out in her chariot. By the will of the first husband of Zelie de Fla- hault, the young De Mornay, to become her husband j and share her fortune, was compelled to take the , name and title of Count Montalembert, subject to the ; imperial accord. Napoleon had given the rank un- j willingly, and as a mark of respect to the last will of i a brave man who had embellished the title — for the eagle-eye of the Corsican read the soul of De Mor- | nay like an illuminated book, and knew the use he j would make of fortune and power. In the quadrangle of the hotel Montalembert, there ; were two cnrriage-Iandings, or two persons, and the j apartments were separated into two entirely distinct establishments. In one suite the young count chose to live at his pleasure, en garcon, and in the other the I mixed hospitalities of the house were given, and the j coLintess was there, and there only, at home. At this | moment the court was ringing with the merry laugh- ter of the count's convives, for he had a bachelor party J to breakfast, and the wine seemed, even at that early hour of the day, to have taken the ascendant. The i carriages of the bacchanalians lined one side of the court, and the modest chariot of the countess stood along) at the door on the other; for it was near the j hour for promenade in th^ Champs Elysees. It was an hour after noon when the countess de- scended. She came slowly, drawing on her glove, and the old soldier at the gate rose quickly to his feet, and leaned forward to gaze on her. She had changed since the death of her father's friend — the brave Mon- talembert, to whom she owed her fortune. But she was still eminently beautiful. Thought, perhaps sad- ness, had dimmed to a sweet melancholy the bright j sparkle of her glance, and her mouth, no longer [ fiercely spirited, was firm but gentle. Her curtains I of sable lashes moved languidly over her drooping j eye. She looked like one who was subdued in her | hopes, not in her courage, and like one who had shut the door of her heart upon its unextinguishable fires to let them burn on, but in secret. She was dressed more proudly than gayly, and she wore upon her breast one memorial of her first husband — his own black cross that he had worn in battle, and in the few happy days of his wedlock, and which he had sent her from his death-bed. At the moment the countess stepped from her threshold, the door on the opposite side of the quad- rangle was thrown open, and, with a boisterous laugh. the count sprang into his phaeton, calling to one of his party to follow him. His companion shrank back on seeing the countess, and in that moment's delay the door of the carriage was closed and the coachman ordered to drive on. The count's whip had waved over his spirited horses, however, and as they stood rearing and threatening to escape from their excited master, his friend sprang to his side, the reins were suddenly loosed, and with a plunge which threatened to tear the harness from their backs, they leaped for- ward. In the next moment, the horses of both vehicles were drawn upon their haunches, half locked together in the narrow gateway, and with a blow from the crutch of the old veteran who rushed from the porter's lodge, the phaeton was driven back against the wall, the pole broken, and the count and his friend precipitated upon the pavement. The liberated horses flew wildly through the gate, and then followed a stillness like that of midnight in the court — for on the pavement, betrayed by her profusion of fair locks, loosened by the fall, lay a woman in man's attire, the dissolute companion of the count, in his daylight revel. Un- injured himself, the count stood a moment, abashed and motionless, but the old soldier, with folded arms and the remnant of his broken crutch in his hand, looked sternly on the scene, and as the servants start- ed from their stupor to raise the insensible woman, the countess, reading her husband's impulse in his looks, sprang from the open door of the chariot, and interposed between him and his intended victim. With the high-born grace of noble, the soldierly in- valid accepted her protection, and followed her to her chariot ; and, ordered to drive to the Hospital of the Invalides, the coachman once more turned slowly to the gateway. The night following, at the opera. Paris was on the qui vive of expectation, for a new prima donna was to make her debut before the emperor. Paris was also on the qui vive for the upshot of a certain matter of scandal. The eclair cissement at the hotel Montalembert had been followed, it is said, by open war between the count and countess ; and, de- termined to carry out his defiance, the dissolute hus- band had declared to his associates that he would produce at the opera, in a box opposite to his wife, the same person whose appearance she had resented, and in the same attire. It was presumed, by the graver courtiers who had heard this, that the actors iu this brutal scene, if it should be carried out, would be immediately arrested by the imperial guard. The overture commenced to a crowded house, and before it was half played, the presence of the count and his companion, in a conspicuous box on the left of the circle, drew the attention of every eye. The Montalemberts were the one subject of conversation. The sudden disappearance of the old count, his death in a distant province, his will relative to his widow and De Mornay — all the particulars of that curious inher- itance of wife and fortune, by written testament — were passed from lip to lip. There was a pause at the close of the overture. The house was silent, occupied partly in looking at the audacious count and his companion, partly in watching for the entrance of the injured countess. A sudden light illuminated the empty box, shed from the lobby lamps upon the curtains at the open- ing of the door, and the Countess Montalembert en- tered, with every eye in that vast assembly bent anxiously upon her. But how radiantly beautiful, and how strangely dressed ! Her toilet was that of a bride. Orange-flowers were woven into her long raven tresses, and her robe of spotless white was fold- ed across her bust with the simplicity of girlhood. A white rose-bud breathed on her bosom, and bracelets of pearls encircled her wrists of alabaster. And her smile, as she took her seat and looked around upon her friends — oh! that was bridal too! — unlike any look known lately upon her face — joyous, radiant, blissful, as the first hour of acknowledged love. Nev- er had Zelie de Flahault looked so triumphantly A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE. 313 beautiful. The opera-glnsses from every corner of the hoiise remained fixed upon her. A murmur arose gradually, a murmur of admiration succeeding the silent wonder of her first entrance; and but for the sudden burst of music from the orchestra, heralding the approach of the emperor, it would have risen into a shout of spontaneous homage. The emperor came in. But who is there ! — at the right hand of Napoleon — smiled upon by the emperor, as the emperor seldom smiled, decorated with the noblest orders of France — a star on his breast? — Motalkmbert! "Montalembert! Montalembert !" resounded from a thousand voices. Was he risen from the dead? Was this an appa- rition — t he indignant apparition of the first husband — risen to rebuke the unmanly brutality of the second ? Would the countess start at the si^ht of him ? Look ! she turns to the illuminated box of the em- peror I She smiles — with a radiant blush of joy and happiness she smiles — she -lifts that ungloved and nnjewelled hand, decorated only with a plain gold ring, and waves it to the waved" hand of Montalem- bert ! — the brave, true, romantic Montalembert. For, with the quickness of French divination, the whole story is understood by the audience. And there is not a brain so dull as not to know, that the audacious invalid veteran was the disguised count, watching over the happiness of her whose destiny of love he had too rashly undertaken to make cloudless — make cloudless at the expense of a crushed heart, and a usurped hearth, and asecretdeath and burial, if so much were necessary. But he is a happy bridegroom now. And Adolphe de Mornay is once more an untitled ensign — plucked j for ever from the chaste heart and bosom of the de- voted wife of Montalembert. And Montalembert himself — whose springs of life I were fed only by love — died when that fountain of love was broken; for his wife died in childbed one year after his return to her, and he followed her in one day. j Never man was more loved than he. Surely never , "man more deserved it. A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE, 1 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The sou! that rises in us, our life's star, Has had elsewhere its settine. And cometh from afar."— Wordsworth. The death of a lady, in a foreign land, leaves me at liberty to narrate the circumstances which follow. A few words of previous explanation, however. I am inclined to believe, from conversations on the subject with many sensible persons, that there are few men who have not had, at different intervals in their lives, sudden emotions, currents of thought, affections of mind and body, which, not only were wholly dis- connected with the course of life thus interrupted, but seemed to belong to a wholly different being. Perhaps I shall somewhere touch the reader's expe- rience by describing rather minutely, and in the first person, some sensations of this kind not unusual to myself. Walking in a crowded street, for example, in perfect health, with every faculty gayly alive, I suddenly lose the sense of neighborhood. I see — I hear — but I feel as if I had become invisible where I stand, and was, at the same time, present and visible elsewhere. I know everything that passes around me, but I seem disconnected and (magnetically speaking) unlinked from the human beings near. Jf spoken to at such a j moment, I answer with difficulty. The person who speaks seems addressing me from a world to which I I no longer belong. At the same time, I have an irre-H sistible inner consciousness of being present in another ' scene of every-day life — where there are streets, and bouses, and people — where I am looked on without surprise as a familiar object — where I have cares, i; fears, objects to attain — a different scene altogether, and a different life, from the scene and life of which I was a moment before conscious. I have a dull ache at the back of my eyes for the minute or two that this trance lasts, and then, slowly and reluctantly, my, absent soul seems creeping back, the magnetic links of conscious neighborhood, one by one, re-attach, and I resume my ordinary life, but with an irrepressible feeling of sadness. It is in vain that I try to fix these shadows as they \ recede. I have struggled a thousand times in vain to j particularize and note down what I saw in the strange | I city to which I was translated. The memory glides from my grasp with preternatural evasiveness. In a book called " The Man of Two Lives," similar sensations to these are made the basis of the story. j Indeed, till I saw that book, the fear of having my ; sanity suspected sealed my lips on the subject. 1 have still a reserve in my confession. I have I been conscious, since boyhood, of a mental peculiarity j which I fear to name while I doubt that it is possessed by others than myself — which I should not allude to now, but that it forms a strange link of identity betweeu me and another being to be mentioned in this story. ] may say, also, without attaching any importance to it, except as it bears upon this same identity, that, of those things which I have no occasion to be taught, or which I did, as the common phrase is, by intuition, drawing was the easiest and most passionately followed of my boyish pursuits. With these preliminaries, and probably some simi- lar experience of his own, the reader may happily form a woof ou which to embroider the following circum- stances. Travelling through Styria, some years since, I chanced to have, for a fellow-occupant of the coupe of a diligence, a very courteous and well-bred person, a gentleman of Gratz. As we rolled slowly along on the banks of the Muer, approaching his native town, he very kindly invited me to remain with him a day or two, offering me, as an inducement, a presentation at the soiree of a certain lady of consequence, who was to receive, on the night of our arrival, and at whose house I should see some fair specimens of the beauty of Styria. Accepted. It was a lovely summer's night, when we strolled through the principal street toward our gay destina- tion, and as 1 drew upon my friend's arm to stop him while the military band of the fortress finished a deli- cious waltz (they were playing in the public square), he pointed out to me the spacious balconies of the 314 A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE. countess's palace, whither we were going, crowded with the well-dressed company, listening silently to the same enchanting music. We entered, and after an interchange of compliments with the hostess, I availed myself of my friend's second introduction to take a stand in one of the balconies beside the person I was presented to, and under cover of her favor, to hear out the unfinished music of the band. As the evening darkened, the lights gleamed out from the illuminated rooms more brightly, and most of the guests deserted the balconies and joined the gayer circles within. The music ceased at the beat of the drum. My companion in the balcony was a very quiet young lady, and, like myself, she seemed subdued by the sweet harmonies we had listened to, and willing to remain without the shadow of the cur- tain. We were not alone there, however. A tall lady, of very stately presence, and with the remains of remarkable beauty, stood on the opposite side of the balcony, and she, too, seemed to shrink from the glare within, and cling to the dewy darkness of the summer night. After the cessation of the music, there was no longer an excuse for intermittent conversation, and, starting a subject which afforded rather freer scope, I did my best to credit my friend's flattering introduc- tion. I had discoursed away for half an hour very unreservedly, before I discovered that, with her hand upon her side, in an attitude of repressed emotion, the tall lady was earnestly listening to me. A third person embarrasses even the most indifferent dialogue. The conversation languished, and my companion rose and took my arm for a promenade through the rooms. Later in the evening, my friend came in search of me to the supper-room. " Mon ami .'" he said, " a great honor has fallen out of the sky for you. I am sent to bring you to the beau reste of the handsomest woman of Styria — Margaret, Baroness R , whose chateau I pointed out to you in the gold light of yesterday's sunset. She wishes to know you — why I can not wholly divine — for it is the first sign of ordinary feeling that she has given in twenty years. But she seems agitated, and sits alone in the countess's boudoir. Allons-y .'" As we made our way through the crowd, he hastily sketched me an outline of the lady's history : "At seventeen taken from a convent for a forced marriage with the baron whose name she bears ; at eighteen a widow, and, for the first time, in love — the subject of her passion a young artist of Vienna on his way to Italy. The artist died at her chateau — they were to have been married — she has ever since worn weeds for him. And the remainder you must imagine — for here we are!" The baroness leaned with her elbow upon a small table of or molu, and her position was so taken that I seated myself necessarily in a strong light, while her features were in shadow. Still, the light was suffi- cient to show me the expression of her countenance. She was a woman apparently about forty-five, of noble physiognomy, and a peculiar fulness of the eyelid — something like to which I thought I remembered to have seen in a portrait of a young girl, many years before. The resemblance troubled me somewhat. " You will pardon me this freedom," said the bar- oness with forced composure, " when I tell you that — a friend — whom I have mourned twenty-five years — seems present to me when you speak." I was silent, for I knew not what to say. The bar- oness shaded her eyes with her hand, and sat silent for a few moments, gazing at me. " You are not like him in a single feature," she resumed, " yet the expression of your face, strangely, very strangely, is the same. . He was darker — slighter" — " Of my age V 1 inquired, to break my own silence. For there was something in her voice which gave me the sensation of a voice heard in a dream. " Oh God ! that voice ! that voice !" she exclaimed wildly, burying her face in her hands, and giving way to a passionate burst of tears. " Rodolph," she resumed, recovering herself with a strong effort, " Rodolph died with the promise on his lips that death should not divide us. And I have seen him ! Not in dreams — not in revery — not at times when my fancy could delude me. I have seen him suddenly before me in the street — in Vienna— here — at home at noonday — for minutes together, gazing on me. It is more in latter years that I have been visited by him ; and a hope has latterly sprung into being in my heart — I know not how — that in person, palpable and breathing, I should again hold converse with him — fold him living to my bosom. Pardon me ! You will think me mad !" I might well pardon her ; for, as she talked, a vague sense of familiarity with her voice, a memory, pow- erful, though indistinct,* of having before dwelt on those majestic features, an impulse of tearful passion- ateness to rush to her embrace, well nigh overpowered me. She turned to me again. " You are an artist ?" she said, inquiringly. " No ; though intended for one, I believe, by na- ture." "And you were born in the year ." " I was !" With a scream she added the day of my birth, and waiting an instant for my assent, dropped to the floor and clung convulsively and weeping to my knees. " Rodolph ! Rodolph !" she murmured faintly, as her long gray tresses fell over her shoulders, and her head dropped insensible upon her breast. Her cry had been heard, and several persons entered the room. I rushed out of doors. I had need to be in darkness and alone. It was an hour after midnight when I re-entered my hotel. A chasseur stood sentry at the door of my apartment with a letter in his hand. He called me by name, gave me his missive, and disappeared. It was from the baroness, and ran thus : — " You did not retire from me to sleep. This letter will find you waking. And I must write, for my heart and brain are overflowing. " Shall I write to you as a stranger ? — you whom I have strained so often to my bosom — you whom I have loved and still love with the utmost idolatry of mortal passion — you who have once given me the soul that, like a gem long lost, is found again, but in a newer casket ! Mine still — for did we not swear to love for ever ! " But I am taking counsel of my own heart only. You may still be unconvinced. You may think that a few singular coincidences have driven me mad. You may think that, though born in the same hour that my Rodolph died, possessing the same voice, the same countenance, the same gifts — though by irresist- ible consciousness I knmv you to be him — my lost lover returned in another body to life — you may still think the evidence incomplete — you may, perhaps, even now, be smiling in pity at my delusion. Indulge me one moment. " The Rodolph Isenberg whom I lost, possessed a faculty of mind, which, if you are he, answers with the voice of an angel to my appeal. In that soul resided, and wherever it be, must noxo reside, the singular power" ****** ******* (The reader must be content with my omission of this fragment of the letter. It contained a secret never before clothed in language — a secret that will die with me, unless betrayed by what indeed it may lead to — madness ! As I saw it in writing — defined accu- rately and inevitably in the words of another — 1 felt as A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE. 315 if the innermosl chamber of my soul was suddenly laid open to the day— I abandoned doubt— I answered to the name by which she called me— I believed in the previous existence of which my whole life, no less than these extraordinary circumstances, had furnished me with repeated evidence. But, to resume the letter.) "And now that we know each other again — now that I can call you by name, as in the past, and be sure that your inmost consciousness must reply— a new terror seizes me! Your soul comes back, youthfully and newly clad, while mine,, though of unfading freshness and youthfulness within, shows to your eye the same outer garment, grown dull with mourning and faded with the wear of time. Am I grown distasteful ? Is it with the sight only of this new body that you look upon me ? Rodolph ! — spirit th;<t was my devoted and passionate admirer! soul that was sworn to me for ever ! — am I — the same Mar- garet, refound and recognised, grown repulsive? Oh God ! What a bitter answer would this be to my prayers for your return to me ! " I will trust in Him whose benign goodness smiles upon fidelity in love. I will prepare a fitter meeting for two who parted as lovers. You shall not see me again in the house of a stranger and in a mourning attire. When this letter is written, I will depart at once for the scene of our love. I hear my horses already in the court-yard, and while you read this I am speeding swiftly home. The bridal dress you were secretly shown the day before death came between us, is still freshly kept. The room where we sat — the bowers by the stream — the walks where we projected our sweet promise of a future — they shall all be made ready. They shall be as they were! And I — oh Rodolph, I shall be the same ! My heart is not grown old, Rodolph ! Believe me, I am unchanged in soul ! And I will strive to be — I will strive to look — God help me to look and be — as of yore! " Farewell now ! f leave horses and servants to wait on you till I send to bring you to me. Alas, for any delay ! but we will pass this life and all other time together. We have seen that a vow of eternal union may be kept — that death can not divide those who will to love for ever ! Farewell now ! 44 Margaret." Circumstances compelled me to read this letter with but one feeling, exquisite pain ! Love lasts till death, but it is mortal ! The affections, however intense and faithful (I now know), are part of the perishable coil, forgotten in the grave. With the memory of this love of another life, haunting me through my youth, and keeping its vow of visitation, | I had given the whole heart of my second youth to I another. Affianced to her, waited for by her, bound to her by vows which death had not divided, I had but one course to pursue. I left Gratz in an hour, never to return. A (ew days since I was walking alone in the crowded thoroughfare of the city where I live. Sud- denly my sense of presence there fell oft* me. I walked on, but my inward sight absorbed all my con- sciousness. A room which was familiar to me shut me in, and a bed hung in mourning became apparent. In another instant a figure laid out in a winding-sheet, and partially covered with a velvet pall, grew distinct through the dimness, and in the low-laid head I rec- ognised, what a presentiment had already betrayed to me, the features of Margaret, Baroness R . It will be still months before I can see the announce- ment of her death. But she is dead. AMERICAN LIFE. COUNT POTT'S STRATEGY. " L'Esprit est un faux monnayeur, qui change continuellement les gros sous en louis d'or, et qui souvent fait de ses louis d'or des Therk were five hundred guardian angels (and of course as many evil spirits), in and about the merry premises of Congress Hall. Each gay guest had his pair; but though each pair had their special ministry (and there was here and there a guest who would not have objected to transform his, for the time being, into a pair of trotting ponies), the attention of the cherubic troop, it may fairly be piesumed, was directed mainly to tiie momentous flirtations of Miss C. Sophy On- thank, the dread disposer of the destinies of eighty thousand innocent little dollars. Miss Chittaline Sophy (though this is blabbing, for that mysterious " C." was generally condemned to travel in domino) — Miss Chittaline Sophy, besides her good and evil spirit already referred to, was under the additional watch and ward of a pair of bombazine aunts, Miss Charity Onthank and Miss Sophy the same, of whom she was the united namesake. — "Chittaline" being the embellished diminutive of " Charity." These Hesperian dragons of old maids were cut after the common pattern of such utensils, and of course would not dignify a description; though this disparaging remark (we must stop long enough to say) is not at all to the prejudice of that occasional love-of-an-old-maid that one does sometimes see — that four-leaved clover of virginity — that star aparl in the spilled milk of the Via Lactea : — " For now and then you find one who could rally At forty, and go back to twenty-three — A handsome, plump, affectionate • Aunt Sally,' With no rage for cats, flannel, and Bohea/' But the two elderly Misses Onthank were not of this category. By the absence of that Junonic assurance, common to those ladies who are born and bred heiresses, Miss C. Sophy's autograph had not long been an object of interest at the bank. She had all the air of having been "brought up at the trough," as the French phrase it, " Round as a cipher, simple as good day," and her belle-ship was still a surprise to her. Like the red-haired and freckled who find, when they get to Italy, that their flaming peculiarities are considered as captivating signs of a skin too delicate for exposure, she received with a slight incredulity the homage to her unseen charms — homage not the less welcome for exacting from the giver an exercise of faith and im- agination. The same faith and imagination, she was free to suppose, might find a Venus within her girdle, as the sculptor sees one in the goodly block of marble, lacking only the removal of its clumsy covering by chisel and sandpaper. With no visible waist, she was as tall as a pump, and riotously rosy like a flowering rhododendron. Hair brown and plenty of it. Teeth white and all at home. And her voice, with but one semitone higher, would have been an approved con- tralto. Having thus compressed into a couple of paragraphs what would have served a novelist for his first ten chapters, permit us, without the bother of intermediate mortar or moralizing (though this is rather a mixed I figure), to lay on the next brick in the shape of a bint at the character of Miss Onthank's two prominent admirers. Mr. Greville Seville was a New York beau. He had all the refinement that could possibly be imported. He had seen those who had seen all that is visible m the fashionable man of London and Paris, ar.d he wa* well versed in the conduits through which theit several peculiarities found their way across the Atlantic. Faultlessly booted, pantalooned, waistcoated, and shirl- ed, he could afford to trust his coat and scarf to Provi- dence, and his hat to Warnock or Leary. He wore a slightly restrained whisker, and a faint smut of an imperial, and his gloves fitted him inexorably. His figure was a matter of course. He was brought up in New York, and was one of the four hundred thousand results (more or less) of its drastic waters — washy and short. And he had as good a heart as is compatible with the above personal advantages. It would very much have surprised the "company" at Congress Hall, to have seen Mr. Chesterfield Potts put down as No. 2, in the emulous contest for the two hands of Miss Onthank. The count (he was com- monly called " Count Potts," a compliment to good manners not unusual in America), was, by his own label, a man of " thirty and upward" — by the parish register possibly sixty-two. He was an upright, well- preserved, stylish looking man, with an expensive wig, fine teeth (commonly supposed not to be indigenous), and a lavish outlay of cotton batting, covering the re- treat of such of his muscular forces as were inclined to retire from the field. What his native qualities might be was a branch of knowledge long since lost to the world. His politeness had superseded the neces- sity of any particular inquiry into the matter; indeed, we are inclined to believe his politeness had superseded his character altogether. He was as incapable of the [ impolite virtues (of which there are several) as of the j impolite vices. Like cricketing, punning, political speech making, and other mechanical arts, compli- j menting may be brought to a high degree of dexteri- | ty, and Count Potts, after a practice of many years, j could, over most kinds of female platitude, spread a | flattering unction huinbugative to the most suspicious J incredulity. As he told no stories, made no puns, I volunteered but little conversation, and had the air of a modest man wishing to avoid notice, the blockheads I and the very young girls stoutly denied his fascination. COUNT POTT'S STRATEGY. 317 But in the memory of the riper belles, as they went to sleep night after night, lay snugly lodged and care- fully treasured, some timely compliment, some sooth- ing word, and, though credited to "old Potts," the smile with which it was gracefully re-acknowledged the next morning at breakfast, would have been warm enough for young Ascanins. " Nice old Potts !" was the faint murmur of many a bright lip turning down- ward to the pillow in the "last position." And now. dear reader, you have an idea of the forces in the field, and you probably know how "the war is carried on" at Saratoga. Two aunts and a guardian angel versus an evil spirit and two lovers — Miss On- thank's hand, the (well-covered) bone of contention. Whether the citadel would speedily yield, and which of these two rival knights would bear away the palm of victory, were questions upon which the majority of lookers-on were doomed to make erroneous predic- tions. The reader of course is in the sagacious minority. Mr. Potts' income was a net answer to his morning prayer. It provided his "daily bread" but no proven- der for a horse. He probably coveted Miss Onthank as much for her accompanying oats as for her personal avoirdupois, since the only complaint with which he ever troubled his acquaintances, was one touching his inability to keep an equipage. Man is instinctively a centaur, he used to say, and when you cut him off from his horse and reduce him to his simple trunk (and a trunk was all the count's worldly furniture), he is but a mutilated remainder, robbed of his natural locomotive. It was not authenticated in Wall street that Mr. Greville Seville was reasonably entitled to horse-flesh and caparison ; but he had a trotting wagon and two delicious cropped sorrels; and those who drove in his company were obliged to " down with the dust" (a bon mot of Count Potts'). Science explains many of the eniamas of common life, however, and the secret of Mr. Seville's equipment and other means of going on swimmingly, lay in his unusually large organ of hope. He was simply anticipating the arrival of 1840, a year in which he had reason to believe there would be paid in to the credit of the present Miss Onthank a sufficient sum to cover his loosest expenditure. The intermediate transfer to himself of her rights to the same, was a mere filling up of an outline, his mind being entirely made up as to the conditional incum- brance of the lady's person. He was now paying her some attentions in advance, and he felt justified in charging his expenses on the estate. She herself would wish it, doubtless, if she could look into the future with his eyes. By all the common data of matrimonial skirmish- ing, a lover with horses easily outstrips a lover with none. Miss C. Sophy, besides, was particularly fond of driving, and Seville was an accomplished whip. There was no lack of the " golden opportunity" of tetc-d-tete, for, with a deaf aunt and somebody else on the back seat, he had Miss Onthank to himself on the driving box, and could talk to his horses in the embarrassing pauses. It looked a clear case to most observers; and as to Seville, he had studied out a livery for his future footman and tiger, and would not have taken an insurance at a quarter per cent. But Potts — ah ! Potts had traced back the wires of woman's weaknesses. The heiress had no conversa- tion (why should she have it and money too?), and the part of her daily drive which she remembered with must pleasure, was the flourish of starting and return- ing — managed by Potts with a pomp and circumstance that won!, | have done honor to the goings and comings hi Queen Victoria. Once away from the portico, it was a monotonous drag through the dust for two or three hours, and as most ladies know, it takes a great deal of chit-chat to butter so large a slice of time ; for there was no making love, parbleu ! Miss Chitta- line Onthank was of a stratum of human nature sus- ceptible of no sentiment less substantial than a kiss, and when the news, and the weather, and the virtues of the sorrel ponies, were exhausted, the talk came to a stand-still. The heiress began to remember with alarm that her education had been neglected, and that it was a relief to get back to old Potts and the portico. Fresh from his nap and warm bath, the perfumed count stepped out from the group he had purposely j collected, gave her his hand with a deferential inquiry, spread the loungers to the right and left like an " usher of the black rod," and with some well-studied im- promptu compliment, waited on her to her chamber door. He received her again after her toilet, and for | the remainder of the day devoted his utmost powers ! to her aggrandizement. If talking alone with her, it ' was to provoke her to some passage of school-girl autobiocraphv, and listen like a charmed stone to the : harp of Orpheus. If others were near, it was to catch her stupidities half uttered and twist them into sense before they came to the ground. His own clever- i nesses were prefaced with " As you remarked yester- ; day, Miss Onthank," or, "As you were about to say when I interrupted you." If he touched her foot, it i was "so small he didn't see it." If she uttered an irredeemable and immitigable absurdity, he covered j its retreat with some sudden exclamation. He called her pensive, when she was sleepy and vacant. He j called her romantic, when he couldn't understand her. ! In short, her vanity was embodied — turned into a I magician and slave — and in the shape of Count Ches- terfield, Potts ministeied to her indefatigably. But the summer solstice began to wane. A week ' more was all that was allotted to Saratoga by that great American commander, General Consent. Count Potts came to breakfast in a shawl cravat! "Off, Potts?" " Are you flitting, my dear count ?" "What — going away, dear Mr. Potts ?" " Gracious me ! don't go, Mr. Potts !" The last exclamation was sent across the table in a i tone of alarm by Miss C. Sophy, and responded to only by a bow of obsequious melancholy. Breakfast was over, and Potts arose. His baggage i was at the door. He sought no interview with Miss Onthank. He did not even honor the two bombazini- ties with a farewell. He stepped up to the group of i belles, airing their demi-toilettes on the portico, said j " Ladies ! au revoir!" took the heiress's hand and put ' it gallantly toward his lips, and walked off with his umbrella, requesting the driver to pick him up at the : spring. " He has been refused !" said one. " He has given Seville a clear field in despair!" said another. And this was the general opinion. The day crept on. But there was an emptiness without Potts. Seville had the field to himself, and as there was no fear of a new squatter, he thought he might dispense with tillage. They had a very dull drive and a very dull dinner, and in the evening, as there was no ball, Seville went off to play billiards. Miss Onthank was surrounded, as usual, by the belles and beaux, but she was down flat — unmagnetized, un- galvanized. The magician was gone. Her stupid things "stayed put." She was like a glass bead lost from a kaleidoscope. That weary week was spent in lamentations over Potts. Everybody praised him. Everybody com- plimented Miss Onthank on her exclusive power of monopoly over such porcelain ware. The two aunts were his main glorifiers ; for, as Potts knew, they were of that leathery toughness that only shines on you with rouiih usage. We have said little, as yet, of MissOnthank's capa- bilities in the love line. We doubt, indeed, whethei 318 THE FEMALE WARD. she rightly understood the difference between loving and being born again. As to giving away her heart, she believed she could do what her mother did before her, but she would rather it would be one of her back teeth, if that would do as well. She liked Mr. Potts because he never made any difficulty about such things. Seville considered himself accepted, though he had made no direct proposition. He had asked whether she preferred to live in country or town — she said " town." He had asked if she would leave the choice and management of horses and equipages to him — she said " be sure !" He had asked if she had any objection to his giving bachelor dinners occasionally — she said " la ! no !" As he understood it, the whole thing was most comfortably arranged, and he lent money to several of his friends on the strength of it — giving his note, this is to say. On a certain morning, some ten days after the de- parture of the count from Saratoga, Miss Onthank and her two aunts sat up in state in their parlor at the City hotel. They always went to the City hotel because Willard remembered their names, and asked after their uncle the major. Mr. Seville's ponies and wagon were at the door, and Mr. Seville's father, mother, seven sisters, and two small brothers, were in the progress of a betrothal visit — calling on the future Mrs. Greville Seville. All of a sudden the door was thrown open, and enter Count Potts ! Up jumped the enchanted Chittaline Sophy. " How do you do, Mr. Potts?" "Good morning, Mr. Potts!" said the aunts in a breath. "D'ye-do, Potts !"said Seville, giving him his fore- finger, with the air of a man rising from winning at cards. Potts made his compliments all round. He was about sailing for Carolina, he said, and had come to ask permission of Miss Onthank to leave her sweet society for a few years of exile. But as this was the last of his days of pleasure, at least till he saw Miss Onthank again, he wished to be graced with the honor of her arm for a promenade in Broadway. The ladies and Mr. Seville doubtless would excuse her if she put on her bonnet without further ceremony. Now Potts's politenesses had such an air of irresisti- ble authority that people fell into heir track like cars after a locomotive. While Miss Onthank was bonnet- ing and shawling, the count entertained the entire party most gayly, though the Sevilles thought it rather unceremonious in the affianced miss to leave them in the midst of a first visit, and Mr. Greville Seville had arranged to send his mother home on foot, and drive Miss Onthank out to Harlem. " Pll keep my horses here till you come back !" he shouted after them, as she tripped gayly down stairs on the count's arm. And so he did. Though it was two hours befote she appeared again, the impatient youth kept the old aunts company, and would have stayed till night, sorrels and all — for in that drive he meant to " name the day," and put his creditors at ease. "I wouldn't even go up stairs, my dear!" said the count, handing her to the wagon, and sending up the groom for his master, " it's but an hour to dine, and you'll like the air after your fatigue. Ah. Seville, I've brought her back ! Take good care of her for my sake, my good fellow!" " What the devil has his sake to do with it, I won- der?" said Seville, letting his horses offlike two rockets in harness. And away they went toward Harlem ; and in about an hour, very much to the surprise of the old aunts, who were looking out of the parlor window, the young lady dismounted from an omnibus ! Count Potts had come to dine with them, and he tripped down to meet I her with uncommon agility. " Why, do you know, aunties," she exclaimed, as she came up stairs, out of breath, "do you know that Mr. Seville, when I told him I was married already to Mr. Potts, stopped his wagon, and p-p-put me into an omnibus !" " Married to Mr. Potts !" screamed Aunt Charity. " Married to Mr. Potts !" screamed Aunt Sophy. "Why — yes, aunties; he said he must go south, if I didn't !" drawled out the bride, with only a very little blush indeed. " Tell aunties all about it, Mr. Potts!" And Mr. Potts, with the same smile of infallible propriety, which seemed a warrant for everything he said or did, gave a very sketchy account of his morning's work, which, like all he undertook, had been exceed- ingly well done — properly witnessed, certified, dec, dec, dec. All of which shows the very sound policy of first making yourself indispensable to people you wish to manage. Or, put it receipt-wise : — To marry a fiat : — First, raise her up till she is giddy. Second, go away, and let her down. Third, come back, and offer to support her, if she will give you her hand. " Simple comme bonjour " as Balsac says. THE FEMALE WARD. Most men have two or more souls, and Jem Thal- imer was a doublet, with sets of manners correspond- ing. Indeed one identity could never have served the pair of him ! When sad — that is to say, when in dis- grace or out of money — he had the air of a good man with a broken heart. When gay — flush in pocket and happy in his little ambitions — you would have thought him a dangerous companion for his grand- mother. The last impression did him more injustice than the first, for he was really very amiably disposed when depressed, and not always wicked when gay — but he made friends in both characters. People sel- dom forgive us for compelling them to correct then first impressions of us, and as this was uniformly the case with Jem, whether he had begun as saint or sin- ner, he was commonly reckoned a deep-water fish ; and, where there were young ladies in the case, early warned oft' the premises. The remarkable exception to this rule, in the incident I am about to relate, arose, as may naturally be supposed, from his appearing, du- ring a certain period, in one character only. To begin my story fairly, I must go back for a mo- ment to our junior Jem in college, showing, by a lit- tle passage in our adventures, how Thalimer and 1 THE FEMALE WARD. 319 became acquainted with the confiding gentleman to be referred to. A college suspension, very agreeably timed, in June, left my friend Jem and myself masters of our travels for an uncertain period ; and as our purse was always in common, like our shirts, love-letters, and disgraces, our several borrowings were thrust into a wallet which was sometimes in his pocket, sometimes in mine, as each took the turn to be paymaster. With the (in- tercepted) letters in our pockets, informing the gov- ernors of our degraded position, we travelled very prosperously on — bound to Niagara,but very ready to fall into any obliquity by the way. We arrived at Albany, Thalimer chancing to be purser, and as this function tacitly conferred, on the holder, all other responsibil- ities, I made myself comfortable at the hotel for the second day and the third— up to the seventh — rather wondering at Jem's depressed spirits and the sudden falling off of his enthusiasm for Niagara, but con- tent to stay if he liked, and amusing myself in the side-hill city passably well. It was during my ram- bles without him in this week that he made the ac- quaintance of a bilious-looking person lodging at the game hotel — a Louisianian on a tour of health. This gentleman, whom he introduced to me by the name of Dauchy, seemed to have formed a sudden attach- ment to my friend, and as Jem had a " secret sorrow" unusual to him, and the other an unusual secretion of bile, there was of course between them that "se- cret sympathy" which is the basis of many tender friendships. I rather liked Mr. Dauchy. He seemed one of those chivalric, polysyllabic southerners, inca- pable of a short word or a mean action, and, interested that Jem should retain his friendship, I was not sorry to find our departure follow close on the recovery of his spirits. We went on toward Niagara, and in the irresistible confidence of canal travelling I made out the secret of my fidus achates. He had attempted to alleviate the hardship of a deck-passage for a bright-eyed girl on board the steamer, and, on going below to his berth, left her his greatcoat for a pillow. The stuffed wallet, which somewhat distended the breast-pocket, was probably in the way of her downy cheek, and Jem supposed that she simply forgot to return the " removed deposite" — but he did not miss his money till twelve hours after, and then, between lack of means to pursue her, and shame at the sentiment he had wasted, he kept the disaster to himself, and passed a melancholy week in devising means for replenishing. Through this penseroso vein, however, lay his way out of the difficulty, for he thus touched the soul and funds of Mr. Dauchy. The correspondence (commenced by the repayment of the loan) was kept up stragglingly for several years, bolstered somewhat by barrels of marmalade, boxes of sugar, hommony, &c, till finally it ended in the unlooked-for consign- ment which forms the subject of my story. Jem and myself had been a year out of college, and were passing through that "tight place" in life, com- monly understood in New England as " the going in at the little end of the horn." Expected by our pa- rents to take to money-making like ducks to swim- ming, deprived at once of college allowance, called on to be men because our education was paid for, and frowned upon at every manifestation of a lingering taste for pleasure — it was not surprising that we some- times gave tokens of feeling "crowded," and obtained somewhat the reputation of " bad subjects" — (using this expressive phrase quite literally). Jem's share of this odor of wickedness was much the greater, his unlucky deviltry of countenance doing him its usual disservice ; but like the gentleman to whom he was attributed as a favorite protege", he was "not so black as he was painted." We had been so fortunate as to find one believer in the future culmination of our clouded stars — Galla- gher, "mine host" — and for value to be received when our brains should fructify, his white soup and " red- string Madeira," his game, turtle, and all the forth- comings of the best restaurant of our epoch, were served lovingly and charged moderately. Peace be with the ashes of William Gallagher ! " The brains" have fructified, and "the value" Acs been received — but his name and memory are not " filed away" with the receipt ; and though years have gone over his grave, his modest welcome, and generous dispensation of entertainment and service, are, by one at least of those who enjoyed them, gratefully and freshly re- membered ! We were to dine as usual at Gallagher's at six — one May day which I well remember. I was just addres- sing myself to my day's work, when Jem broke into my room with a letter in his hand, and an expression on his face of mingled embarrassment and fear. " What the deuce to do with her!" said he, hand- ing me the letter. " A new scrape, Jem?" I asked, as I looked for an instant at the Dauchy coat-of-arms on a seal as big as a dollar. "Scrape? — yes, it is a scrape! — for I shall never get out of it reputably. What a dunce old Dauchy : must be to send me a girl to educate ! I a young lady's guardian ! Why, I shall be the laugh of the ; town ! What say ? Isn't it a good one ?" I had been carefully perusing the letter while Thal- ! imer walked soliloquizing about the room. It was from his old friend of marmalades and sugars, and in j the most confiding and grave terms, as if Jem and he had been a couple of contemporaneous old bachelors, j it consigned to his guardianship and friendly counsel, Miss Adelmine Lasacque, the only daughter of a neighboring planter ! Mr. Lasacque having no friends at the north, had applied to Mr. Dauchy for his gui- I dance in the selection of a proper person to superin- tend her education, and as Thalimer was the only cor- respondent with whom Mr. Dauchy had relations of ; friendship, and was, moreover, " fitted admirably for ! the trust by his impressive and dignified address," (?) j he had "taken the liberty," &c, &c. " Have you seen her?" I asked, after a long laugh, in which Jem joined but partially. " No, indeed ! She arrived last night in the New Orleans packet, and the captain brought me this let- i ter at daylight, with the young lady's compliments. j The old seadog looked a little astounded when I an- I nounced myself. Well he might, faith ! 1 don't look I like a young lady's guardian, do I?" t. Well — you are to go on board and fetch her — is that it ?" " Fetch her! Where shall I fetch her? Who is to take a young lady of my fetching? I can't find a female academy that I can approve " I burst into a roar of laughter, for Jem was in ear- j nest with his scruples, and looked the picture of un- happiness. " I say I can't find one in a minute — don't laugh, i; you blackguard ! — and where to lodge her meantime ? ! What should I say to the hotel-keepers ? They all j; know me ? It looks devilish odd, let me tell you, to jl bring a young girl, without matron or other acquaint- I ances than myself, and lodge her at a public house." "Your mother must take your charge oil your | hands." "Of course that was the first thing I thought of. You know my mother ! She don't half believe the I story, in the first place. If there u such a man as | Mr. Dauchv, she says, and if this is a ' Miss La- sacque,' all "the way from Louisiana, there is but one thing to do— send'her back in the packet she came in! She'll have nothing to do with it! There's more in ii than I am willing to explain. T never 320 THE FEMALE WARD. mentioned this Mr. Dauchy before. Mischief will come of it! Abduction's a dreadful thing! If I will make myself notoiious, I need not think to involve my mother and sistprs ! That's the way she talks about it." "But couldn't we mollify your mother? — for, after all, her countenance in the matter will be expected." " Not a chance of it !" ** The money part of it is all right ?" " Turn the letter over. Credit for a large amount on the Robinsons, payable to my order only !" "Faith! it's a very hard case if a nice girl with plenty of money can't be permitted to land in Boston! You didn't ask the captain if she was pretty?" "No, indeed! But pretty or plain, I must get her ashore and be civil to her. I must ask her to dine ! I must do something besides hand her over to a boarding-school ! Will you come down to the ship with me ?" My curiosity was quite aroused, and I dressed im- mediately. On our way down we stopped at Gallagher's, to request a little embellishment to our ordinary dinner. It was quite clear, for a variety of reasons, that she must dine with her guardian there, or nowhere. Gallagher looked surprised, to say the least, at our proposition to bring a young lady to dine with us, but he made no comment beyond a respectful remark that " No. 2 was very private !" We had gone but a few steps from Devonshire street when Jem stopped in the middle of the side- walk. " We have not decided yet what we are to do with Miss Lasacque all day, nor where we shall send her baggage, nor where she is to lodge to-night. For Heaven's sake, suggest something!" added Jem, quite out of temper. "Why, as you say, it would be heavy work to walk her about the streets from now till dinner-time — eight hours or more ! Gallagher's is only an eating-house, unluckily, and you are so well known at all the ho- tels, that, to take her to one of them without a chap- eron, would, to say the least, give occasion for remark. But here, around the corner, is one of the best board- ing-houses in town, kept by the two old Misses Smith, j You might offer to put her under their protection. | Let's try." The Misses Smith were a couple of reduced gen- tlewomen, who charged a very good price for board and lodging, and piqued themselves on entertaining ] only very good company. Begging Jem to assume ' the confident tone which the virtuous character of his j errand required, I rang at the door, and in answer to our inquiry for the ladies of the house, we were shown | into the basement parlor, where the eldest Miss Smith sat with her spectacles on, adding new vine2ar to some pots of pickles. Our business was very briefly stated. Miss Smith had plenty of spare room. Would we wait a moment till she tied on the covers to her pickle- jars ? The cordiality of the venerable demoiselle evidently put Thalimer in spirits. He gave me a glance which said very plainly, " You see we needn't have troubled our heads about this !" — but the sequel was to come. Miss Smith led the way to the second story, where were two very comfortable unoccupied bedrooms. "A single lady?" she asked. "Yes," said Jem, "a Miss Lasacque of Louisiana." "Young, did you say ?" " Seventeen, or thereabout, I fancy." (This was a guess, but Jem chose to appear to know all about her.) "And — ehem ! — and — quite alone ?" "Quite alone — she is come here to go to school." " Oh, to go to school ! Pray — will she pass her vacations with your mother?" "No!" said Jem, coughing, and looking rather em- barrassed. " Indeed ! She is with Mrs. Thalimer at present, I presume." " No — she is still on shipboard ! Why, my dear madam, she only arrived from New Orleans this morning." "And your mother has not had time to see her? I understand. Mrs. Thalimer will accompany her here, of course." Jem began to see the end of the old maid's cate- chism, and thought it best to volunteer the remainder of the information. "My mother is not acquainted with this young la- dy's friends," he said ; " and, in fact, she comes intro- duced only to myself." " She has a guardian, surely ?" said Miss Smith, drawing back into her Elizabethan ruff with more dignity than she had hitherto worn. " I am her guardian!" replied Jem, looking as red and guilty as if he had really abducted the young la- dy, and was ashamed of his errand. The spinster bit her lips and looked out of the window. " Will you walk down stairs for a moment, gentle- men," she resumed, "and let me speak to my sister. I should have told you that the rooms might possibly be engaged. I am not quite sure — indeed — ehem — pray walk down and be seated a moment !" Very much to the vexation of my discomfited friend, I burst into a laugh as we closed the door of the basement parlor behind us. " You don't realize my confoundedly awkward po- sition," said he. " I am responsible for every step I take, to the girl's father in the first place, and then to my friend Dauchy, one of the most chivalric old cocks in the world, who, at the same time, could nev- er understand why there was any difficulty in the matter ! And it does seem strange, that in a city witl eighty thousand inhabitants, it should be n°xt to impos- sible to find lodging for a virtuous lady, 5 stranger!" I was contriving how to tell Thalimer that " there was no objection to the camel but for the dead cat hung upon its neck," when a maidservant opened the door with a message — " Miss Smith's compliments, and she was very sorry she had no room to spare !" " Pleasant!" said Jem, "very pleasant ! I suppose every other keeper of a respectable house will be equally sorry. Meantime, it's getting on toward noon, and that poor girl is moping on shipboard, wondering whether she is ever to be taken ashore! Do you think she might sleep at Gallagher's ?" "Certainly not! He has, probably, no accommo- dations for a lady, and, to lodge in a restaurant, after dining with yon there, would be an indiscreet first step, in a strange city, to say the least. But let us make our visit to your fair ward, my dear Jem ! Per- haps she has a face innocent enough to tell its own story — like the lady who walked through Eriu ' with the snow-white wand.'" The vessel had lain in the stream all night, and was just hauling up to the wharf with the moving tide. A crowd of spectators stood at the end of her moor- ing cable, and, as she warped in, universal attention seemed to be given to a single object. Upon a heap of cotton-bales, the highest point of the confused lumber of the deck, sat a lady under a sky-blue par- asol. Her gown was of pink silk ; and by the volume of this showy material which was presented to the eye, the wearer, when standing, promised to turn out of rather conspicuous stature. White gloves, a pair of superb amethyst bracelets, a string of gold beads on her neck, and shoulders quite naked enough for a ball, were all the disclosures made for a while by the envious parasol, if we except a little object in blue, which seemed the extremity of something she was sitting on, held in her left hand — and which turned out to be her right foot in a blue satin slipper ' THE FEMALE WARD. 321 I turned to Thalimer. He was literally pale with consternation. " Hadn't you better send for a carriage to take your ward away ?" I suggested. " You don't believe that to be Miss Lasacque, sure- ly !" exclaimed Jem, turning upon me with an implo- ring look. "Such is my foreboding," I replied; "but wait a moment. Her face may be pretty, and you, of course, in your guardian capacity, may suggest a simplifica- tion of her toilet. Consider ! — the poor girl was never before off the plantation — at least, so says old Dauchy's letter." The sailors now began to pull upon the sternline, and, as the ship came round, the face of the unconscious object of curiosity stole into view. Most of the spec- tators, after a single glance, turned their attention elsewhere with a smile, and Jem, putting his hands into his two coat-pockets behind him, walked off tow- I ard the end of the pier, whistling to himself very en- j ergetically. She was an exaggeration of the peculiar physiognomy of the south — lean rather than slight, sallow rather than pale. Yet I thought her eyes fine. Thalimer joined me as the ship touched the dock, and we stepped on board together. The cabinboy confirmed our expectations as to the lady's identity, and putting on the very insinuating manner which was part of his objectionable exterior, Jem advanced and begged to know if he had the honor of addressing Miss Lasacque. Without loosing her hold upon her right foot, the lady nodded. "Then, madam!" said Jem, "permit me to intro- duce to you your guardian, Mr. Thalimer !" "What, that old gentleman coming this way?" asked Miss Lasacque, fixing her eyes on a custom- house officer who was walking the deck. Jem handed the lady his card. "That is my name," said he, "and I should be happy to know how I can begin the duties of my of- fice !" "Dear me!" said the astonished damsel, dropping her foot to take his hand, "isn't there an older Mr. James Thalimer? Mr. Dauchy said it was a gentle- man near his own age!" "I grow older, as you know me longer!" Jem re- plied apologetically ; but his ward was too well satis- fied with his appearance, to need even this remarka- ble fact to console her. She came down with a slide from her cotton-bag elevation, called to the cook to bring the bandbox with the bonnet in it, and mean- time gave us a brief history of the inconveniences she had suffered in consequence, of the loss of her slave, Dinah, who had died of sea-sickness three days out. This, to me, was bad news, for I had trusted to a "la- dy's maid" for the preservation of appearances, and the scandal threatening Jem's guardianship looked, in consequence, very imminent. " I am dying to get my feet on land again !" said Miss Lasacque, putting her arm in her guardian's, and turning toward the gangway — her bonnet not tied, nor her neck covered, and thin blue satin slip- pers, though her feet were small, showing forth in contrast with her pink silk gown, with frightful con- spicuousness ! Jem resisted the shoreward pull, and stood motionless and aghast. " Your baggage," he stammered at last. " Here, cook !" cried the lady, " tell the captain, when he comes aboard, to send my trunks to Mr. Thalimer's ! They are down in the hold, and he told me he couldn't get at 'em till to-morrow," she added, by way of explanation to Thalimer. I felt constrained to come to the rescue. " Pardon me, madam !" said I, " there is a little peculiarity in our climate, of which you probably are not advised. An east wind commonly sets in about 21 noon, which makes a shawl very necessary. In con- sequence, too, of the bronchitis which this sudden change is apt to give people of tender constitutions, the ladies of Boslon are obliged to sacrifice what is becoming, and wear their dresses very high in the throat." " La !" said the astonished damsel, putting her hand upon her bare neck, " is it sore throat that you mean? I'm very subject to it, indeed ! Cook! bring me that fur-tippet out of the cabin ! I'm so sorry my dresses are all made so low, and I haven't a shawl un- packed either ! — dear! dear!" Jem and I exchanged a look of hopeless resigna- tion, as the cook appeared with the chinchilli tippet. A bold man might have hesitated to share the con- spicuousness of such a figure in a noon promenade, but we each gave her an arm when she had tied the soiled riband around her throat, and silently set for- ward. It was a bright and very warm day, and there seem- ed a conspiracy among our acquaintances, to cross our path. Once in the street, it was not remarkable that they looked at us, for the towering height at which the lady carried her very showy bonnet, the flashy material of her dress, the jewels and the chin- chilli tippet, formed an ensemble which caught the eye like a rainbow; and truly people did gaze, and the boys, spite of the unconscious look which we attempt- ed, did give rather disagreeable evidence of being amused. I had various misgivings, myself, as to the necessity for my own share in the performance, and, at every corner, felt sorely tempted to bid guardian and ward good morning; but friendship and pity pre- vailed. By streets and lanes not calculated to give Miss Lasacque a very favorable first impression of Boston, we reached Washington street, and made an intrepid dash across it, to the Marlborough hotel. Of this public house, Thalimer had asked my opin- ion during our walk, by way of introducing an apolo- gy to Miss Lasacque for not taking her to his own home. She had made it quite clear that she expected this, and Jem had nothing for it but to draw such a picture of the decrepitude of Mr. Thalimer, senior, and the bedridden condition of his mother (as stout a couple as ever plodded to church !) as would satisfy the lady for his short-comings in hospitality. This had passed off" very smoothly, and Miss Lasacque en- tered the Marlboro', quite prepared to lodge there, but very little aware (poor girl !) of the objections to receiving her as a lodger. Mr. , the proprietor, had stood in the arch- way as we entered. Seeing no baggage in the lady's train, however, he had not followed us in, supposing, probably, that we were callers on some of his guests. Jem left us in the drawing-room, and went upon his errand to the proprietor, but after half an hour's ab- sence, came back, looking very angry, and informed us that no rooms were to be had ! Instead of taking the rooms without explanation, he had been unwise enough to " make a clean breast" to Mr. , and the story of the lady's being bis "ward," and come from Louisiana to go to school, rather staggered that discreet person's credulity. Jem beckoned me out, and we held a little council of war in the entry. Alas! I had nothing to suggest. I knew the puritan metropolis very well — I knew its phobia was " the appearance of evil." In Jem's care- for-nothing face lay the leprosy which closed all doors against us. Even if we had succeeded, by a coup-de- main, in lodging Miss Lasacque at the Marlboro', her guardian's daily visits would have procured for her, in the first week, some intimation that she could no longer be accommodated. " We had best go and dine upon it," said I ; " worst come to the worst, we can fiud some sort of dormitory for her at Gallagher's, and to-morrow sh« must b% put 322 THE FEMALE WARD. to school, out of the reach of your 'pleasant, but wrong society.' " "I hope to Heaven she'll 'stay put,'" said Jem, with a long sigh. We got Miss Lasacque again underway, and avoid- ing the now crowded pave of Washington street, made a short cut by Theatre Alley to Devonshire street and Gallagher's. Safely landed in "No. 2," we drew a long breath of relief. Jem rang the bell. "Dinner, waiter, as soon as possible." "The same that was ordered at six, sir?" "Yes, only more champagne, and bring it imme- diately. Excuse me, Miss Lasacque," added Jem, with a grave bow, " but the non-appearance of that east wind my friend spoke of, has given me an unnat- ural thirst. Will you join me in some champagne after your hot walk ?" " No, thank you," said the lady, untying her tip- pet, " but, if you please, I will go to my room before dinner!" Here was trouble, again .' It nad never occurred (o either of us, that ladies must go to their rooms before bedtime. " Stop !" cried Jem, as she laid her hand on the bell to ring for the chamber-maid, "excuse me — I must first speak to the landlord — the room — the room is not ready, probably !" He seized his hat, and made his exit, probably wish- ing all confiding friends, with their neighbor's daugh- ters, in a better world ! He had to do with a man of sense, however. Gallagher had but one bedroom in the house, which was not n servant's room, and that was his own. In ten minutes it was ready, and at the | lady's service. A black scullion was promoted for the . nonce, to the post of chamber-maid, and, fortunately, i the plantation-bred girl had not been long enough from home to be particular. She came to dinner as radiant as a summer-squash. With the door shut, and the soup before us, Tha- iimer's spirits and mine flung off their burthens to- gether. Jem was the pleasantest table-companion in the world, and he chatted and made the amiable to his ward, as if he owed her some amends for the awkward position of which she was so blessedly unconscious. Your "dangerous man" (such as he was voted), in- spires, of course, no distrust in those to whom he chooses to be agreeable. Miss Lasacque grew, every minute, more delighted with him. She, too, improved on acquaintance. Come to look at her closely, Nature meant her for a fine showy creature, and she was " out of condition," as the jockeys say — that was all ! Her features were good, though gamboged by a southern climate, and the fever-and-ague had flatten- ed what should be round and ripe lips, and reduced to the mere frame, what should be the bust and neck of a Die Vernon. I am not sure I saw all this at the time. Her subsequent chrysalis and emergence into a beautiful woman, naturally color my description now. But I did see, then, that her eyes were large and lustrous, and that naturally she had high spirit, good abilities, and was a thorough woman in senti- ment, though deplorably neglected— for, at the age of twenty, she could hardly read and write ! It was not surprising that she was pleased with us ! She was the only lady present, and we were the first coxcombs she had ever seen, and the day was summery, and the dinner in Gallagher's best style. We treated her like a princess ; and the more agreeable man of the two being her guardian, and responsible for the propriety of the whole affair, there was no chance for a failure. We lingered over our coffee ; and we lingered over our chassecafe; and we lingered over our tea; and, when the old South struck twelve, we were still at the table in " No. 2," quite too much delighted with each other to have thought of separating. It was the ven- erated guardian who made the first move, and. after ringing up the waiter to discover that the scullion had, six hours before, made her nightly disappearance, the lady was respectfully dismissed with only a candle for her chamber-maid, and Mr. Gallagher's room for her destination — wherever that might be ! We dined together every successive day for a week, and during this time the plot rapidly thickened. Tha- limer, of course, vexed soul and body, to obtain for Miss Lasacque a less objectionable lodging — urged scarcely more by his sense of propriety than by a feeling for her good-natured host, who, meantime, slept on a sofa. But the unlucky first step of dining and lodging a young lady at a restaurant, inevitable as it was, gave a fatal assurance to the predisposed scandal of the affair, and every day's events heighten- ed its glaring complexion. Miss Lasacque had ideas of her own, and very independent ones, as to the amusement of her leisure hours. She had never been before where there were shops, and she spent her first two or three mornings in perambulating Washington street, dressed in a style perfectly amazing to behold- ers, and purchasing every description of gay trumpe- ry — the parcels, of course, sent to Gallagher's, and the bills to James Thalimer, Esq. ! To keep her out of the street, Jem took her, on the third day, to the riding-school, leaving her (safely enough, he thought), in charge of the authoritative Mr. Roulstone, while he besieged some school-mistress or other to under- take her ciphering and geography. She was all but born on horseback, however, and soon tired of riding round the ring. The street-door was set open for a moment, leaving exposed a tempting tangent to the circle, and out flew Miss Lasacque, saving her " Leg- horn flat" by a bend to the saddle-bow, that would have done credit to a dragoon, and no more was seen, for hours, of the " bonnie black mare" and her rider. The deepening of Miss Lasacque's passion for Jem, would not interest the reader. She loved like other women, timidly and pensively. Young as the passion was, however, it came too late to affect her manners before public opinion had pronounced on them. There was neither boarding-house nor " private female acad- emy" within ten miles, into which "Mr. Thalimer's young lady" would have been permitted to set her foot — small as was the foot, and innocent as was the pulse to which it stepped. Uncomfortable as was this state of suspense, and anxious as we were to fall into the track marked "virtuous," if virtue would only permit; public opin- ion seemed to think we were enjoying ourselves quite too prosperously. On the morning of the seventh day of our guardianship. I had two calls after breakfast, one from poor Gallagher, who reported that he had been threatened with a prosecution of his establish- ment as a nuisance, and another from poorer Jem, whose father had threatened to take the lady out of his hands, and lodge her in the insane asylum ! "* Not that I don't wish she was there," added Jem, " for it is a very fine place, with a nice garden, and luxurious enough for those who can pay for them, and faith, I believe it's the only lodging-house I've not ap- plied to !" I must shorten my story. Jem anticipated his father, by riding over, and showing his papers con- stituting him the guardian of Miss Lasacque, in which capacity, he was, of course, authorized to put his ward under the charge of keepers. Everybody who knows Massachusetts, knows that its insane asylums are sometimes brought to bear on irregular morals, as well as on diseased intellect*, and as the presiding of- ficer of the institution was quite well assured that Miss Lasacque was well qualified to become a patient, Jem had no course left but to profit by the error. The poor girl was invited, that afternoon, to take a drive in the country, and we came back and dined without her. in abominable spirits, I must say TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. 323 Provided with the best instruction, the best of care || and at the end of that time he came on, accompanied taken of her health, and the most exemplary of ma- i| by his friend, Mr. Danchy. He found his daughter trotis interesting herself in her patient's improvements, ,j sufficiently improved in health, manners, and beauty, Miss Lasacque rapidly improved — more rapidly, no I to be quite satisfied with Jems discharge of his trust, doubt, than she ever could have done by control less :i and we all dined very pleasantly in " No. 2 ;" Miss rigid and inevitable. Her father, by the advice of the <\ Lasacque declining, with a blush, my invitation to her matron, was not informed of her location for a year, || to make one of the party. TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL "Five hundred dollars a year!" echoed Fanny Bellairs, as the first silver gray of the twilight spread over her picture. "And my art," modestly added the painter, prying into his bright copy of the lips pronouncing upon his destiny. " And how much may that be at the present rate of patronage — one picture a year painted for love!" " Fanny, how can you be so calculating !" "By the bumps over my eyebrows, I suppose. Why, my dear coz, we have another state of existence to look forward to — old man-age and old woman-age ! What am I to do with five hundred dollars a year, when my old frame wants gilding — (to use one of your own similes) — I shan't always be pretty Fanny Bellairs !" " But, good Heavens ! we shall grow old together!" exclaimed the painter, sitting down at her feet, " and what will you care for other admiration, if your husband see you still beautiful, with the eyes of memory and habit." " Even if I were sure he would so look upon me !" answered Miss Bellairs more seriously, " I can not but dread an old age without great means of embellish- ment. Old people, except in poetry and in very primitive society, are dishonored by wants and cares. And, indeed, before we are old — when neither young nor old — we want horses and ottomans, kalydor and conservatories, books, pictures, and silk curtains — all quite out of the range of your little allowance, don't you see !" " You do not love me, Fanny !" " I do — and will marry you, Philip — as I, long ago, with my whole heart promised. But I wish to be happy with you — as happy, quite as happy, as is at all possible, with our best efforts and coolest, discreetest management. I laugh the matter over sometimes, but I may tell you, since you are determined to be in earnest, that I have treated it, in my solitary thought, as the one important event of my life — (so indeed it is !) — and, as such, worthy of all fore-thought, patience, self-denial, and calculation. To inevitable ills 1 can make up my mind like other people. If your art were your only hope of subsistence — why — I don't know — (should I look well as a page?) — 1 don't know that I couldn't run your errands and grind your paints in hose and doublet. But there is another door open for you — a counting-house door, to be sure — leading to opulence and all the appliances of dignity and happi- ness, and through this door, my dear Philip, the an you would live by comes to pay tribute and beg for patronage. Now, out of your hundred and twenty reasons, give me the two stoutest and best, why you should refuse your brother's golden offer of partner- ship — my share, in your alternative of poverty, left for the moment out of the question." Rather overborne by the confident decision of his beautiful cousin, and having probably made up his mind that he must ultimately yield to her, Philip re- plied in a lower and more dejected tone : — " If you were not to be a sharer in my renown, should I be so fortunate as to acquire it, I should feel as if it were selfish to dwell so much on my passion for distinction and my devotion to my pencil as the means of winning it. My heart is full of you — but it is full of ambition too, paradox though it be. 1 can not live ignoble. I should not have felt worthy to press my love upon you — worthy to possess you — except with the prospect of celebrity in my art. You make the world dark to me, Fanny ! You closedown the sky, when you shut out this hope ! Yet it shall be so." Philip paused a moment and the silence was unin- terrupted. " There was another feeling I had, upon which I have not insisted," he continued. "By my brother's project, I am to reside almost wholly abroad. Even the little stipend I have to offer you now, is absorbed of course by the investment of my property in his trading capital, and marriage, till I have partly enrich- ed myself, would be even more hopeless than at present. Say the interval were five years — and five years of separation !" " With happiness in prospect, it would soon pass, my dear Philip!" "But is there nothing wasted in this time? My life is yours — the gift of love. Are not these com- ing five years the very flower of it ? — a mutual loss, too. for are they not, even more emphatically, the very flower of yours? Eighteenand twenty-five are ages at which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness — passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to beauty and sweetness— —all I have that can be diminish- ed or tarnished or made dull by advancing age and contact with the world, is thrown away for its spring and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for this? Will it — even if we are rich and blest with health, and as capable of an unblemished union as now ? Think of this a moment, dear Fanny !" " I do — it is full of force and meaning, and could we marry now, with a tolerable prospect of competen- cy, it would be irresistible. But poverty in wedlock, Philip—" " What do you call poverty ! If we can suffice for each other, and have the necessaries of life, we are not poor ! My art will bring us consideration enough — which is the main end of wealth, after all — and of society, speaking for myself only, I want nothing. Luxuries for yourself, Fanny, means for your dear comfort and pleasure, you should not want if the world held them, and surely the unbounded devotion of one man to the support of the one woman he loves, ought to suffice for the task ! I am strong — I am 324 TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. capable of labor — I have limbs to toil, if my genius and my present means fail me, and, oh, Heaven, you could not want !" " No, no, no ! I thought not of want !" murmured Miss Bellairs, "I thought only — " But she was not permitted to finish the sentence. " Then my bright picture for the future may be realized !" exclaimed Philip, knitting his hands to- gether in a transport of hope. " I may build up a I reputation, with you for the constant partner of its triumphs and excitements! I may go through the world and have some care in life besides subsistence, how I shall sleep, and eat, and accumulate gold ; some companion, who, from the threshold of manhood, shared every thought — and knew every feeling — some pure and present angel who walked with me and puri- fied my motives and ennobled my ambitions, and re- ceived from my lips and eyes, and from the beating of my heart, against her own, all the love I had to give in a lifetime. Tell me, Fanny! tell me, my sweet cousin ! is not this a picture of bliss, which, combined with success in my noble art, might make a Paradise on earth for you and me ?" The hand of Fanny Bellairs rested on the upturned forehead of her lover as he sat at her feet in the deepening twilight, and she answered him with such sweet words as are linked together by spells known only to woman — but his palette and pencils were, nevertheless, burned in solemn holocaust that very night, and the lady carried her point, as ladies must. And to the importation of silks from Lyons was de- voted, thenceforth, the genius of a Raphael — perhaps • Who knows ? The reader will naturally have gathered from this dialogue that Miss Fanny Bellairs had black eyes, and was rather below the middle stature. She was a belle, and it is only belle-metal of this particular description which is not fusible by " burning words." She had mind enough to appreciate fully the romance and enthusiasm of her cousin, Philip Ballister, and knew precisely the phenomena which a tall blonde (this complexion of woman being soluble in love and tears), would have exhibited under a similar experi- ment. While the fire of her love glowed, therefore, she opposed little resistance and seemed softened and yielding, but her purpose remained unaltered, and she rang out "no!" the next morning, with a tone as little changed as a convent-bell from matins to vespers, though it has passed meantime through the furnace ' of an Italian noon. Fanny was not a designing girl, either. She might have found a wealthier customer for her heart than her cousin Philip. And she loved this cousin as truly and well as her nature would admit, or as need be, indeed. But two things had conspired to give her the unmalleable quality just described — a natural dis- position to confide, first and foremost, on all occasions, in her own sagacity, and a vivid impression made upon her mind by a childhood of poverty. At the age of twelve she had been transferred from the distressed fireside of her mother, Mrs. Bellairs, to the luxurious roof of her aunt, Mrs. Ballister, and her mother dying soon after, the orphan girl was adopted and treated as a child; but the memory of the troubled health at which she had first learned to observe and reason, colored all the purposes and affections, thoughts, impulses and wishes of the ripening girl, and to think of happiness in any proximity to privation seemed to her impossible, even though it were in the bosom of love. Seeing no reason to give her cousin credit for any knowledge of the world beyond his own experience, she decided to think for him as well as love him, and not being so much pressed as the enthusiastic painter by the " besoin d'aimer et de se faire aimer" she very composedly prefixed, to the possession of her hand, the trifling achievement of getting rich — quite sure that if he knew as much as she, he would willingly run that race without the incumbrance of matrimony. The death of Mr. Ballister, senior, had left the widow and her two boys more slenderly provided for than was anticipated — Phil's portion, after leaving college, producing the moderate income before men- tioned. The elder brother had embarked in his father's business, and it was thought best on all hands for the younger Ballister to follow his example. But Philip, whose college leisure had been devoted to poetry and painting, and whose genius for the latter, certainly, was very decided, brought down his habits by a res- olute economy to the limits of his income, and took up the pencil for a profession. With passionate en- thusiasm, great purity of character, distaste for all society not in harmony with his favorite pursuit, and an industry very much concentrated and rendered effective by abstemious habits, Philip Ballister was very likely to develop what genius might lie between his head and hand, and his progress in the first year had been allowed by eminent artists to give very unusual promise. The Ballisters were still together under the maternal roof, and the painter's studies were the portraits of the family, and Fanny's picture of course much the most difficult to finish. It would be very hard if a painter's portrait of his liege mistress, the lady of his heart, were not a good picture, and Fanny Bellairs on canvass was divine accordingly. If the copy had more softness of expression than the original (as it was thought to have), it only proves that wise men have for some lime suspected, that love is more dumb than blind, and the faults of our faultless idols are noted, however unconsciously. Neither thumb-screws nor hot coals — nothing piobably but re- pentance after matrimony — would have drawn from Philip Ballister, in words, the same confession of his mistress's foible that had oozed out through his treacherous pencil ! Cupid is often drawn as a stranger pleading to be "taken in," but it is a miracle that he is not invariably drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird tied to the muzzle of a gun — an enemy who has written a book — an Indian prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tus- can for John Bull), — is not more close upon demoli- tion, one would think, than the heart of a lady deliver- ed over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped and lighted with the one object of studying her beauty. If there be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in stead- fast gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither — if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feather- ed, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of business" — then is a loveable sitter to a love like painter in " parlous" vicinity (as the new school would phrase it), to sweet-heart-land ! Pleasure in a voca- tion has no offset in political economy as honor has ("the more honor the less profit,") or portrait-painters would be poorer than poets. And malgre his consciousness of the quality which required softening in his cousin's beauty, and malgre his rare advantages for obtaining over her a lover's proper ascendency, Mr. Philip Ballister bowed to the stronger will of Miss Fanny Bellairs, and sailed for France on his apprenticeship to Mammon. The reader will please to advance five years- Be- fore proceeding thence with our story, however, let us take a Parthian glance at the overstepped interval. Philip Ballister had left New York with the triple vow that he would enslave every faculty of his mind and body to business, that he would not return till he had made a fortune, and that such interstices as might occur in the building up of this chateau for felicity should be filled with sweet reveries about Fanny Bel- lairs. The forsworn painter had genius, as we have TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL 325 before hinted, and genius is (as much as it is any one thing), the power of concentration. He entered upon his duties accordingly with a force, and patience of application, which soon made him master of what are called business habits, and, once in possession of the details, his natural cleverness gave him a speedy insight to all the scope and tactics of his particular field of •rade. Under his guidance, the affairs of the house .vere soon in a much more prosperous train, and after a year's residence at Lyons, Philip saw his way very clear to manage them with a long arm and take up his quarters in Paris. '• Les fats sont les seuls homines qui aient soin-d'eux mimes,' 1 ' 1 says a French novelist, but there is a period, early or late, in the lives of the cleverest men, when they become suddenly curious as to their capacity for the graces. Paris, to a stranger who does not visit in the Faubourg St. Germain, is a republic of personal exterior, where the degree of privilege depends with Utopian impartiality on the style of the outer man; and Paris, therefore, if he is not already a Bachelor of Arts (qu? — beau's Arts), usually serves the traveller as an Alma Mater of the pomps and vanities. Phil. Ballister, up to the time of his matriculation in Chaussee D'Antin, was a romantic-looking sloven. From this to a very dashing coxcomb is but half a step, and to be rid of the coxcombry and retain a look of fashion, is still within the easy limits of imitation. But — to obtain superiority of presence with no apparent aid from dress and no describable manner, and to dis- play at the same time every natural advantage in ef- fective relief, and, withal, to adapt this subtle philtre, not only to the approbation of the critical and censori- ous, but to the taste of fair women gifted with judg- ment as God pleases — this is a finish not born with any man (though unsuccessful if it do not seem to be), and never reached in the apprenticeship of life, and never reached at all by men not much above their fellows. He who has it, has " bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germa- ny, and his behavior everywhere," for he must know, as a chart of quicksands, the pronounced models of other nations ; but to be a " picked man of countries," and to have been a coxcomb and a man of fashion, are, as a painter would say, but the setting of the palette toward the making of the chef-d'ceuvre. Business prospered and the facilities of leisure in- creased, while Ballister passed through these transi- tions of taste, and he found intervals to travel, and time to read, and opportunity to indulge ; as far as he could with the eye only, his passion for knowledge in the arts. To all that appertained to the refinement of himself, he applied the fine feelers of a delicate and passionate construction, physical and mental, and, as the reader will already have included, wasted on culture comparatively unprofitable, faculties that would have eeen better employed but for the meddling of Miss fanny Bellairs. Ballister's return from France was heralded by the jrrival of statuary and pictures, books, furniture, and uumberless articles of tasteful and costly luxury. The reception of these by the family at home threw rather n new light on the probable changes in the long-absent brother, for, from the signal success of the business he had managed, they had very naturally supposed that it was the result only of unremitted and plodding care. Vague rumors of changes in his personal ap- pearance had reached them, such as might be expected from conformity to foreign fashions, but those who had seen Philip Ballister in France, and called subse- quently on the family in New York, were not people qualified to judge of the man, either from their own powers of observation or from any confidence he was likely to put forward while in their society. His letters had been delightful, but they were confined to third-person topics, descriptions of things likely to in- terest them, &c, and Fanny had few addressed per- sonally to herself, having thought it worth while, for the experiment's sake or for some other reason, to see whether love would subsist without its usual pabulum of tender correspondence, and a veto on love-letters having served her for a parting injunction at Phil's embarkation for Havre. However varied by their different fancies, the transformation looked for by the whole family was substantially the same — the romantic artist sobered down to a practical, plain man of busi- ness. And Fanny herself had an occasional misgiving as to her relish for his counting-house virtues and manners; though, on the detection of the feeling, she immediately closed her eyes upon it, and drummed up her delinquent constancy for " parade and inspec- tion." All bustles are very much alike (we use the word as defined in Johnson), and the reader will appreciate our delicacy, besides, in not intruding on the first re- union of relatives and lovers long separated. The morning after Philip Ballister's arrival, the family sat long at breakfast. The mother's gaze fastened untiringly on the features of her son — still her I boy — prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile the face of the man with the cherished picture of the child with sunny locks, and noting little else than the work of inward change upon the countenance and ex- I pression. The brother, with the predominant feeling I of respect for the intelligence and industry of one who had made the fortunes of the house, read only subdued sagacity in the perfect simplicity of his whole exterior. And Fanny — Fanny was puzzled. The bourgeoisie and leger-bred hardness of manner which she had looked for were not there, nor any variety of the "foreign slip-slop" common to travelled youth, nor any superciliousness, nor (faith !) any wear and tear of youth or good looks — nothing that she expected — nothing ! Not even a French guard-chain ! What there was in her cousin's manners and ex- terior, however, was much more difficult to define by Miss Bellairs than what there was not. She began the j renewal of their intercourse with very high spirits, I herself — the simple nature and unpretendingness of his address awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure at seeing him again — but she soon began to suspect there was an exquisite refinement in this very sim- plicity, and to wonder at "the trick of it;" and after the first day passed in his society, her heart beat when he spoke to her, as it did not use to beat when she was sitting to him for her picture, and listening to his passionate love-making. And with all her faculties she studied him. What was the charm of his presence! He was himself, and himself only. He seemed perfect, but he seemed to have arrived at perfection like a statue, not like a picture — by what had been taken away, not by what had been laid on. He was as natural as a bird, and as graceful and unembarrassed. He neither forced conversation, nor pressed the little attentions of the draw- ing-room, and his attitudes were full of repose ; yet she was completely absorbed in what he said, and she had been impressed imperceptibly with his high-bred polite- ness, and the singular elegance of his person. Fanny felt there was a change in her relative position to her cousin. In what it consisted, or which had the ad- vantage, she was perplexed to discover — but she bit her lips as she caught herself thinking that if she were not engaged to marry Philip Ballister, she should suspect that she had just fallen irrecoverably in love with him. It would have been a novelty in the history of Miss Bellairs that any event to which she had once con- sented, should admit of reconsideration ; and the Ballister family, used to her strong will, were confirm- ed fatalists as to the coming about of her ends and aims. Her marriage with Philip, therefore, was 326 TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. discussed, cceur ouvert, from his first arrival, and, in- deed, in her usual fashion of saving others the trouble of making up their minds. " herself had named the day." This, it is true, was before his landing, and was then, an effort of considerable magnanimity, as the expectant Penelope was not yet advised of her lover's state of preservation or damages by cares and keeping. If Philip had not found his wedding-day fixed on his arrival, however, he probably would have had a voice in the naming of it, for with Fanny's new inspirations as to his character, there had grown up a new flower in her garden of beauties — timidity ! Whit bird of the air had sown the seed in such a soil was a problem to herself — but true it was! — the con- fident belle had grown a blushing trembler! She would as soon have thought of bespeaking her wings for the sky, as to have ventured on naming the day in a short week after. The day was named, however, and the preparations went on — nem. con. — the person most interested (after herself) accepting every congratulation and allusion, touching the event, with the most impenetrable suavity. The marbles and pictures, upholstery and services, were delivered over to the order of Miss Bellairs, and Philip, disposed, apparently, to be very much a recluse in his rooms, or at other times, engrossed by troops of welcoming friends, saw much less of his bride elect than suited her wishes, and saw her seldom alone. By particular request, also, he took no part in the 'plenish- ing and embellishing of the new abode — not permitted I even to inquire where it was situated, and under this ! cover, besides the pleasure of having her own way, Fanny concealed a little secret, which, when disclosed, •he now felt, would figure forth to Philip's comprehen- j sion, her whole scheme of future happiness. She had [ taken the elder brother into her counsels a fortnight j after Philip's return, and, with his aid and consent, bad abandoned the original idea of a house in town, purchased a beautifully-secluded estate and cottage j ornee, on the East river, and transferred thither all the objects of art, furniture, &c. One room only of the ! maternal mansion was permitted to contribute its j quota to the completion of the bridal dwelling — the j wing, never since inhabited, in which Philip had made his essay as a painter — and without variation of a cob- web, and with whimsical care and effort on the part of Miss Fanny, this apartment was reproduced at j Revedere — her own picture on the easel, as it stood j on the night of his abandonment of his art, and palette, j pencils and colors in tempting readiness on the table. Even the fire-grate of the old studio had been re-set in the new, and the cottage throughout had been re- fitted with a view to occupation in the winter. And to sundry hints on the part of the elder brother, that I Borne thought should be given to a city residence — I for the Christmas holydays, at least — Fanny replied, through a blush, that she should never wish to see the town — with Philip at Revedere! Five years had ripened and mellowed the beauty of Fanny Bellairs, and the same summer-time of youth had turned into fruit the feeling left by Philip in bud and flower. She was ready now for love. She had felt the variable temper of society, and there was a presentiment in the heart of receding flatteries, and the winter of life. It was with mournful self-reproach that she thought of the years wasted in separation, of her own choosing, from the man she loved, and with the power to recall time, she would have thanked God with tears of joy for the privilege of retracing the chain of life to that link of parting. Not worth a day of those lost years, she bitterly confessed to her- self, was the wealth they had purchased. It lacked as little as one week of '-the happy day,"' when the workmen were withdrawn from Revedere, and the preparations for a family breakfast, to be suc- ceeded by the agreeable surprise to Philip of inform- ing him he was at home, were finally completed. One or two very intimate friends were added to the party, and the invitations (from the elder Ballister) proposed simply a dejeuner sur Vherbe in the grounds of an un- occupied villa, the property of an acquaintance. With the subsiding of the excitement of return, the early associations which had temporarily confused and colored the feelings of Philip Ballister, settled gradu- ally away,* leaving uppermost once more the fastidious refinement of the Parisian. Through this medium, thin and cold, the bubbles from the breathing of the heart of youth, rose rarely and reluctantly. The Bal- listers held a good station in society, without caring for much beyond the easy conveniences of life, and Fanny, though capable of any degree of elegance, had not seen the expediency of raising the tone of her manners above that of her immediate friends. With- out being positively distasteful to Philip, the family circle, Fanny included, left him much to desire in the way of society, and unwilling to abate the warmth of his attentions while with them, he had latterly pleaded occupation more frequently, and passed his time in the more congenial company of his library of art. This was the less noticed that it gave Miss Bellairs the opportunity to make frequent visits to the work- men at Revedere, and in the polished devotion of her betrothed, when with her, Fanny saw nothing reflected but her own daily increasing tenderness and admira- tion. The morning of the fete came in like the air in an overture — a harmony of all the instruments of sum- mer. The party were at the gate of Revedere by ten, and the drive through the avenue to the lawn drew a burst of delighted admiration from all. The place was exquisite, and seen in its glory, and Fanny's heart was brimming with gratified pride and exultation. She assumed at once the dispensation of the honors, and beautiful she looked with her snowy dress and raven ringlets flitting across the lawn, and queening it like Perdita among the flowers. Having narrowly escaped bursting into tears of joy when Philip pronounced the place prettier than anything he had seen in his travels, she was, for the rest of the day, calmly happy, and with the grateful shade, the delicious breakfast in the grove, the rambling and boating on the river, the hours passed off like dreams, and no one even hinted a re- gret that the house itself was under lock and bar. And so the sun set, and the twilight came on, and the guests were permitted to order round their carriages and depart, the Ballisters accompanying them to the gate. And, on the return of the family through the avenue, excuses were made for idling hither and thith- er, till lights began to show through the trees, and by the time of their arrival at the lawn, the low windows of the cottage poured forth streams of light, and the open doors^ and servants busy within, completed a scene more like magic than reality. Philip was led in by the excited girl who was the fairy of the spell, and his astonishment at the discovery of his statuary and pictures, books and furniture, arranged in complete order within, was fed upon with the passionate delight of love in authority. When an hour had been spent in examining and admiring the different apartments, an inner room was thrown open, in which supper was prepared, and this fourth act in the day's drama was lingered over in un- tiring happiness by the family. Mrs. Ballister, the mother, rose and retired, and Philip pleaded indisposition, and begged to be shown to the room allotted to him. This was ringing-up the curtain for the last act sooner than had been planned by Fanny, but she announced herself as his chamberlain, and with her hands affectionately crossed on his arm, led him to a suite of rooms in a wing still unvisited, and with a good-night kiss left him at the open door of the revived studio, furnished for the night with a TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. 327 bachelor's bed. Turning upon the threshold, he closed the door with a parting wish of sweet dreams, and Fanny, after listening a moment with a vain hope of overhearing some expression of pleasure, and lin- gering again on her way back, to be overtaken by her surprised lover, sought her own bed without rejoining the circle, and passed a sleepless and happy night of tean and joy. Breakfast was served the next morning on a terrace overlooking the river, and it was voted by acclamation, that Fanny never before looked so lovely. As none but the family were to be present, she had stolen a march on her marriage wardrobe, and added to her demi-toilet a morning cap of exquisite becomingness. Altogether, she looked deliciously wife-like, and did the honors of the breakfast-table with a grace and sweetness that warmed out love and compliments even from the sober soil of household intimacy. Philip had not yet made his appearance, and they lingered long at table, till at last a suggestion that he might be ill started Fanny to her feet, and she ran to his door before a servant could be summoned. The rooms were open, and the bed had not been j occupied. The candle was burned to the socket, and | on the easel, resting against the picture, was a letter addressed — " Miss Fanny Bellairs." THE LETTER. •• I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in the path you have marked out for me. It has brought me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I started under your guidance, and if it had brought me back unchanged — if it restored me my energy, my hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray Heaven that it would also give me back my love, and be con- tent — more than content, if it gave me back also my poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surround- ings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all these absent years — years of degrading pursuits and wasted powers — and it now impels me from you, kind , and lovely as you are, with an aversion I can not con- i trol. I can not forgive you. You have thwarted my : destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a | lamp within me that might, by this time, have shone ; through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished ? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect. " With a heart sick, and a brain aching for distinc- ! tion, I have come to an unhonored stand-still at thirty ! | I am a successful tradesman, and in this character I j shall probably die. Could I begin to be a painter now, j say you ? Alas ! my knowledge of the art is too great ! for patience with the slow hand ! I could not draw a line without despair. The pliant fingers and the plas- I tic mind must keep pace to make progress, in art. My I taste is fixed, and my imagination uncreative, because j chained down by certainties; and the shortsighted ar- ] dor and daring experiment which are indispensable to ] sustain and advance the follower in Raphael's foot- j steps, are too far behind for my resuming. The tide ebbed from me at the accursed burning of my pencils j by your pitiless hand, and from that hour I have felt hope receding. Could I be happy with you, stranded here in ignoble idleness, and owing to you the loss of my whole venture of opportunity ? No, Fanny ! — surely no ! " 1 would not be unnecessarily harsh, ^im sensi- ble of your affection and constancy. I have deferred this explanation unwisely, till the time and place make it seem more cruel. You are at this very moment, I well know, awake in your chamber, devoting to me the vigils of a heart overflowing with tenderness. And 1 would — if it were possible — if it were not utterly be- yond my powers of self-sacrifice and concealment — I would affect a devotion I can not feel, and carry out this error through a life of artifice and monotony. But here, again, the work is your own, and my feelings re- vert bitterly to your interference. If there were no other obstacle to my marrying you — if you were not associated repulsively with the dark cloud on my life, you are not the woman I could now enthrone in my bosom. We have diverged since the separation which I pleaded against, and which you commanded. I need for my idolatry, now, a creature to whom the sordid cares you have sacrificed me to, are utterly unknown — a woman born and educated in circumstances where want is never feared, and where calculation never en- ters. I must lavish my wealth, if I fulfil my desire, on one who accepts it like the air she breathes, and who knows the value of nothing but love — a bird with a huuaan soul and form, believing herself free of all the world is rich in, and careful only for pleasure and the happiness of those who belong to her. Such women, beautiful and highly educated, are found only in ranks of society between which and my own I have been increasing in distance — nay, building an impassa- ble barrier, in obedience to your control. Where I stop, interdicted by the stain of trade, the successful artist is free to enter. You have stamped me plebeian — you would not share my slow progress toward a higher sphere, and you have disqualified me for attain- ing it alone. In your mercenary and immoveable will, and in that only, lies the secret of our twofold unhap- piness. " I leave you, to return to Europe. My brother and my friends will tell you I am mad and inexcusable, and look upon you as a victim. They will say that, to have been a painter, were nothing to the career that 1 might mark out for my ambition, if ambition 1 must have, in politics. Politics in a country where distinc- tion is a pillory ! But I could not live here. It is my misfortune that my tastes are so modified by that long and compulsory exile, that life, here, would be a per- petual penance. This unmixed air of merchandise suffocates me. Our own home is tinctured black with it. You yourself, in this rural paradise you have con- jured up, move in it like a cloud. The counting- house rings in your voice, calculation draws together your brows, you look on everything as a means, and know its cost; and the calm and means-forgetting// u- ition, which forms the charm and dignity of superior life, is utterly unknown to you. What would be my happiness with such a wife ? What would be yours with such a husband ? Yet I consider the incompat- ibility between us as no advantage on my part — on the contrary, a punishment, and of your inflicting. What shall I be anywhere but a Tantalus — a fastidious en- nuye, with a thirst for the inaccessible burning in my bosom continually ! " I pray you let us avoid another meeting before my departure. Though I can not forgive you as a lover. I can think of you with pleasure as a cousin, and I give you, as your due ("damages," the law would phrase it), the portion of myself which you thought most important when I offered you my all. You would not take me without the fortune, but perhaps you will be content with the fortune without me. I shall immediately take steps to convey to you this property of Revedere, with an income sufficient to maintain it, and I trust soon to hear that you have found a husband better worthy of you than your couam "Philip Baluster," 328 LIGHT VERVAIN. LIGHT VERVAIN. And thou light vervain, too — thou next come after, Provoking souls to mirth and easy laughter."— Old Somebody. Rome, May 30, 1832. Dined with F — , the artist, at a trattoria. F — is a man of genius, very adventurous and imaginative in his art, but never caring to show the least touch of these qualities in his conversation. His pictures have given him great vogue and consideration at Rome, so that his daily experience furnishes staple enough for his evening's chit-chat, and he seems, of course, to be always talking of himself. He is very generally set down as an egotist. His impulse to talk, however, springs from no wish for self-glorification, but rather from an indolent aptness to lay hands on the readiest and most familiar topic, and that is a kind of egotism to which I have very little objection — particularly i with the mind fatigued, as it commonly is m Rome, by a long day's study of works of art. I had passed the morning at the Barberini palace with a party of picture-hunters, and I made some remark as to the variety of impressions made upon the minds of different people by the same picture. Apropos of this remark, F — told me a little anecdote, which I must try to put down by way of a new shoal in the chart of human nature. " It is very much the same with everything else," said F — ; "no two people see with the same eyes, physically or morally ; and faith, we might save our- selves a great deal of care and bother if we did but keep it in mind." " As how ?" I asked, for I saw that this vague remark was premonitory of an illustration. " I think I introduced young Skyring to you at a party somewhere?" "A youth with a gay waistcoat and nothing to say ? Yes." " Well — your observation just now reminded me of the different estimate put by that gentleman and myself upon something, and if I could give you any idea of my month's work in his behalf, you would agree with me that I might have spared myself some trouble — keeping in mind, as I said before, the differ- ence in optics. "I was copying a bi't of foreshortening from a pic- ture in the Vatican, one day, when this youth passed without observing me. I did not immediately recol- lect him. He was dressed like a figure in a tailor's widow, and with Mrs. Stark in his hand was hunting up the pictures marked with four notes of admiration, and I, with a smile at the waxy dandyism of the man, turned to my work and forgot him. Presently his face recurred to me, or rather his sister's face, which some family likeness had insensibly recalled, and getting another look, I recognised in him an old, though not very intimate playmate of my boyish days. It immediately occurred to me that I could serve him a very good turn by giving him the entree to society here, and quite as immediately, it occurred to me to doubt whether it was worth my while." " And what changed your mind," I asked, " for of course you came to the conclusion that it was not ?" " Oh, for his sake alone I should have left him as he was, a hermit in his varnished boots — for he had not an acquaintance in the city — but Kate Skyring had given me roses when roses were to me, each a world; and for her sake, though I was a rejected lover, I thought better of my demurrer. Then I had a little pique to gratify — for the Skyrings had rather given me the de haut en has in declining the honor of my alliance (lucky for me, since it brought me here and made me what I am), and I was not indisposed to show that the power to serve, to say the least, was now on my side." "Two sufficient, as well as dramatic reasons for being civil to a man." " Only arrived at, however, by a night's deliberation, for it cost me some trouble of thought and memory to get back into my chrysalis and imagine myself at all subject to people so much below my present vogue — whatever that is worth ! Of course 1 don't think of Kate in this comparison, for a woman one has once loved is below nothing. We'll drink her health, God bless her !" (A bottle of Lagrima.) " I left my card on Mr. Skyring the next morning, with a note enclosing three or four invitations which I had been at some trouble to procure, and a hope from myself of the honor of his company to a quiet dinner. He took it as a statue would take a shower-bath, wrote me a note in the third person in reply to mine in the first, and came in ball-dress and sulphur gloves at pre- cisely the canonical fifteen minutes past the hour. Good old Thorwalsden dined with me, and an English viscount for whom I was painting a picture, and between my talking Italian to the venerable sculptor, and Skyring's belording and belordshipping the good- natured nobleman, the dinner went trippingly off — the Little Pedlington of our mutual nativity furnishing less than its share to the conversation. " We drove, all together, to the Palazzo Rossi, for its was the night of the Marchesa's soiree. As spon- sor, I looked with some satisfaction at Skyring in the ante-room, his toggery being quite unexceptionable, and his maintien very uppish and assured. I presented him to our fair hostess, who surveyed him as he approached with a satisfactory look of approval, and no one else chancing to be near, I left him to improve what was rather a rare opportunity — a tete-a-tete with the prettiest woman in Rome. Five minutes after I returned to reconnoitre, and there he stood, stroking down his velvet waistcoat and looking from the carpet to the ceiling, while the marchioness was quite red with embarrassment and vexation. He had not opened his lips ! She had tried him in French and Italian (the dunce had told me that he spoke French too), and finally she had ventured upon English, which she knew very little of, and still he neither spoke nor ran away ! " 'Perhaps Monsieur would like to dance,' said the marchioness, gliding away from him with a look of inexpressible relief, and trusting to me to find him a partner. " I had no difficulty in finding him a partner, for (that far) his waistcoat 'put him on velvet' — but I could not trust him alone again ; so, having presented him to a «ery pretty woman and got them vis-a-vis in the quadrille, I stood by to supply the shortcomings. And little of a sinecure it was ! The man had nothing to say ; nor, confound him, had he any embarrassment on the subject. He looked at his varnished pumps, and coaxed his coat to his waist, and set back his neck like a goose bolting a grasshopper, and took as much LIGHT VERVAIN. 329 interest in the conversation as a footman behind your chair— deaf and dumb apparently, but perfectly at his ease. He evidently had no idea that there was any distinction between men except in dress, and was per- suaded that he was entirely successful as far as he had gone : and as to my efforts in his behalf, he clearly took them as gratuitous on my part — probably thinking, from the difference in our exteriors, that I paid myself in the glory of introducing him. m Well — I had begun so liberally that I could scarce refuse to find my friend another partner, and after that another and another — 1, to avoid the odium of inflict- ing a bore on my fair acquaintances, feeling compelled to continue my service as chorus in the pantomime — and, you will scarce believe me when 1 tell you that I submitted to this bore nightly for a month ! 1 could not get rid of him. He would not be let go. With- out offending him mortally, and so undoing all my sentimental outlay for Kate Skyring and her short- sighted papa, I had nothing for it but to go on till he should »o off— ridden to death with him in every con- ceivable variety of bore." " And is he gone ?" " Gone. And now, what thanks do you suppose I got for all this ?" " A present of a pencil-case ?" " No, indeed ! but a lesson in human nature that will stick by me much longer. He called at my studio yesterday morning to say good-by. Through all my sense of his boredom and relief at the prospect of being rid of him, I felt embarrassed when he came in, thinking how difficult it would be for him to express properly his sense of the obligation he was under to me. After half an hour's monologue (by myself) on pictures, &c, he started up and said he must go. ' And by-the-by,' said he, coloring a little, ' there is one thing I want to say to you, Mr. F — ! Hang it, it has stuck in my throat ever since I met you ! You've been very polite and I'm obliged to you, of course — but I don't like your devilish, patronizing manner! Good-by, Mr. F — !'" ****** The foregoing is a leaf from a private diary which I kept at Rome. In making a daily entry of such passing stuff as interests us, we sometimes, amid much that should be ticketed for oblivion, record that which has a bearing, important or amusing, on the future; and a late renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. F — , followed by a knowledge of some fortunate changes in his worldly condition, has given that interest to this otherwise unimportant scrap of diary which will be made apparent presently to the reader. A vague recollection that I had something in an old book which referred to him, induced me to look it up, and I was surprised to find that I had noted down, in this trifling anecdote, what turned out to be the mainspring of his destiny. F — returned to his native country after five years study of the great masters of Italy. His first pictures painted at Rome procured for him, as is stated in the diary I have quoted, a high reputation. He carried with him a style of his own which was merely stimu- lated and heightened by his first year's walk through the galleries of Florence, and the originality and bold- ness of his manner of coloring seemed to promise a sustained novelty in the art. Gradually, however, the awe of the great masters seemed to overshadow his confidence in himself, and as he travelled and deep- ened his knowledge of painting, he threw aside feature after feature of his own peculiar style, till at last he fell into the track of the great army of imitators, Avho follow the immortals of the Vatican as doomed ships follow the Flying Dutchman. Arrived at home, and depending solely on his art for a subsistence, F — commenced the profession to which he had served so long an apprenticeship. But [ his pictures sadly disappointed his friends. After the I first specimens of his acquired style in the annual ex- i hibitions, the calls at his rooms became fewer and j farther between, and his best works were returned j from the galleries unsold. Too proud to humor the , popular taste by returning to what he considered an ! inferior stage of his art. he stood still with his reputa- I tion ebbing from him, and as his means, of course, ': depended on the tide of public favor, he was soon in- | volved in troubles before which his once-brilliant hopes rapidly faded. " You will be surprised on glancing at the signature ! to this letter. You will be still more surprised when j you are reminded that it is a reply to an unanswered I one of your own — written years ago. That letter lies j by me, expressed with all the diffidence of boyish 1 feeling. And it seems as if its diffidence would en- courage me in what I wish to say. Yet I write far j more tremblingly than you could have done. " Let me try to prepare the way by some explana- ■ tion of the past. "You were my first lover. I was not forbidden, at fourteen, to express the pleasure I felt at your admi- ration, and you can not have forgotten the ardor and simplicity with which I returned it. I remember ! giving you roses better than I remember anything so long ago. Now — writing to you with the same feel- j ing warm at my heart — it seems to me as if it needed j but a rose, could I give it you in the same garden, to i make us lovers again. Yet I know you must be changed. I scarce know whether I should go on with j this letter. "But I owe you reparation. I owe you an answer i to this which lies before me : and if I err in answer- ! ing it as my heart burns to do, you will at least be I made happier by knowing that when treated with ! neglect and repulsion, you were still beloved. " I think it was not long before the receipt of this letter that my father first spoke to me of our attach- I ment. Till then I had only thought of loving you. I That you were graceful and manly, that your voice I was sweet, and that your smile made me happy, was all I could have told of you without reflection. I had |j never reasoned upon your qualities of mind, though I had taken an unconscious pride in your superiority to your companions, and least of all had I asked myself whether those abilities for making your way in the world which my father denied you, were among your boyish energies. With a silent conviction that you had no equal among your companions, in anything, I listened to my father's disparagement of you, bewil- dered and overawed, the very novelty and unexpected- ness of the light in which he spoke of you, sealing my lips completely. Perhaps resistance to his will would have been of no avail, but had I been better prepared to reason upon what he urged, I might have expressed to you the unwillingness of my acquies- cence. I was prevented from seeing you till your [I letter came, and then all intercourse with you was |: formally forbidden. My father said he would himself j reply to your proposal. But it was addressed to me, !; and I have only recovered possession of it by his death. " Though it may seem like reproaching you for yielding me without an effort, I must say, to complete | the history of my own feelings, that I nursed a vague j hope of hearing from you until your departure for ; Italy, and that this hope was extinguished not without i bitter tears. The partial resentment that mingled with i this unhappiness aided me doubtless in making up my i miud to forget you, and for a while, for years I may ! say, I was possessed by other excitements and feel- ings. It is strange, however, that, though scarce j remembering you "when waking, I still saw you per- petually in my dreams. 330 NORA MEHIDY. "And, so far, this is a cold and easy recital. How shall I describe to you the next change, the re-awaken- mg of this smothered and slumbering affection ! How shall I evade your contempt when I tell you that it awoke wiih your renown! But my first feeling was not one of love. When your name began to come to us in the letters of travellers and in the rumor of lit- erary circles, I felt as if something that belonged to me was praised and honored ; a pride, an exulting and gratified pride, that feeling seemed to be, as if the heart of my childhood had been staked on your aspi- rations, and was borne up with you, a part and a par- taker of your fame. With all my soul I drank in the news of your successes in the art ; I wrote to those who came home from Italy; I questioned those likely to have heard of you, as critics and connoisseurs ; I devoted all my reading to the literature of the arts, and the history of painters, for my life was poured into yours irresistibly, by a power I could not, and cannot now, control. My own imagination turned painter, indeed, for I lived on revery, calling up, with endless variations, pictures of yourself amid the works of your pencil, visited and honored as I knew you were, yet unchanged in the graceful and boyish beauty I remembered. I was proud of having loved you, of having been the object of the earliest and purest pref- erence of a creature of genius ; and through this pride, supplanting and overflowing it, crept and strengthened a warmer feeling, the love I have the hardihood to avow. Oh ! what will you think of this boldness ! Yet to conceal my love were now a se- verer task than to wait the hazard of your contempt. "One explanation — a palliative, perhaps you will allow it to be, if you are generous — remains to be given. The immediate impulse of this letter was in- formation from my brother, long withheld, of your kindness to him in Rome. From some perverseness which I hardly understand, he has never before hinted in my presence that he had seen you in Italy, and it was only by needing it as an illustration of some feel- ing which seemed to have piqued him, and which he was expressing to a friend, that he gave the particulars of your month of devotion to him. Knowing the dif- ference between your characters, and the entire want of sympathy between your pursuits and my brother's, to what motive could I attribute your unusual and self-sacrificing kindness ? " Did I err — was I presumptuous, in believing that it was from a forgiving and tender memory of myself? " You are prepared now, if you can be, for what I would say. We are left alone, my brother and I, or- phan heirs to the large fortune of my father. I have no one to control my wishes, no one's permission to ask for any disposition of my hand and fortune. Will you have them ? In this question is answered the sweet, and long-treasured, though long-neglected let- ter lying beside me. " Katherine Skyring." Mrs. F — , as will be seen from the style of her let- ter, is a woman of decision and cleverness, and of such a helpmeet, in the way of his profession as well as in the tenderer relations of life, F — was sorely in need. By her common-sense counsels and persuasion, he has gone back with his knowledge of the art to the first lights of his own powerful genius, and with means to command leisure and experiment, he is, without submitting the process to the world, perfect- ing a manner which will more than redeem his early promise. As his career, though not very uncommon or dra- matic, hinged for its more fortunate events on an act of high-spirited politeness, I have thought, that in this age of departed chivalry, the story was worth preserving for its lesson. NORA MEHIDY; OR, THE STRANGE ROAD TO THE HEART OF MR. HYPOLET LEATHERS. Now, Heaven rest the Phoenicians for their pleasant invention of the art of travel. This is to be a story of love and pride, and the he- ro's name is Hypolet Leathers. You have smiled prematurely, my friend and reader, j if you "think you see" Mr. Leathers foreshadowed, j as it were, in his name. (Three mortal times have I mended this son of a goose of a pen, and it will not — as you see bv the || three unavailing attempts recorded above — it will not I commence, for me, this tale, with a practicable begin- ning.) The sun was rising (I think this promises well) — leisurely rising was the sun on the opposite side of the Susquehannah. The tall corn endeavored to lift its silk tassel out of the sloppy fog that had taken upon itself to rise from the water and prognosticate a hot fair day, and the driver of the Binghamton stage drew over his legs a two-bushel bag as he cleared the street of the village, and thought that, for a summer's morn- ing, it was " very cold" — wholly unaware, however, that, in murmuring thus, he was expressing himself as Hamlet did while waiting for his father's ghost upon the platform. • Inside the coach were three passengers. A gentle- man sat by the window on the middle seat, with his cloak over his lap, watching the going to heaven of the fog that had fulfilled its destiuy. His mind was melancholy — partly for the contrast he could not but draw between this exemplary vapor and himself, who was " but a vapor,"* and partly that his pancreas be- gan to apprehend some interruption of the thorough- fare above — or, in other words, that he was hungry for his breakfast, having gone supperless to bed. He mused as he rode. He was a young man, about twenty-five, and had inherited from his father, John Leathers, a gentleman's fortune, with the two draw- backs of a name troublesome to Phoebus ("Phoebus! what a name !"), and premature gray hair. He was, in all other respects, a finished and well-conditioned hero — tall, comely, courtly, and accomplished — and had seen the sight-worthy portions of the world, and knew their differences. Travel, indeed, had become a kind of diseased necessity with him — for he fled from the knowledge of his name, and from the obser- vation of his gray hair, like a man fleeing from twe fell phantoms. He was now returning from Niagara, * " Man's but a vapor, Full of woes, Cuts a caper, And down he goes." — Familiar Ballad*. NORA MEHIDY. 331 and left the Mohawk route to see where the Susque- bannah makes its Great Bend in taking final leave of | Mr. Cooper, who lives above; and at the village of j the Great Bend he was to eat (hat day's breakfast. On the back seat, upon the leather cushion, behind | Mr. Leathers, sat two other chilly persons, a middle- | aged man and a girl of sixteen— the latter wiih her j shawl drawn close to her arms, and her dark eyes bent j upon her knees, as if to warm them (as unquestion- ably they did). Her black curls swung out from her bonnet, like ripe grapes from the top of an arbor — heavy, slumberous, bulky, prodigal black curls — oh, how beautiful! And I do not know that it would be a " trick worth an egg" to make any mysiery of these two persons. The gentleman was John Mehidy. the widowed tailor of Binghamton, and the lady was Nora j Mehidy, his daughter"; and they were on their way to j New York to change the scene, Mrs. Mehidy having j left the painful legacy of love — her presence — behind j her. For, ill as he could afford the journey, Mr. Me- j hidy thought the fire of Nora's dark eyes might be put out with water, and he must go where every j patch and shred would not set her a weeping. She j " took it hard," as they describe grief for the dead in j the country. The Great Bend is a scene you may look at with pleasure, even while waiting for procrastinated prog, and Hypolet Leathers had been standing for ten min- utes on the high bank around which the Susquehan- nah sweeps, like a train of silver tissue after a queen turning a corner, when past him suddenly tripped No- j ra Mehidy honnetless, and stood gazing on the river [ from the outer edge of the precipice. Leathers's vis- j ual consciousness dropped into that mass of cluster- ing hair like a ring into the sea, and disappeared, j His soul dived after it, and left him with no sense or remembrance of how his outer orbs were amusing themselves. Of what unpatented texture of velvet, : aod of what sifting of diamond dust were those lights and shadows manufactured ! What immeasurable thickness in those black flakes — compared, with all locks that he had ever seen, as an edge of cocoa- j meat, fragrantly and newly broken, to a torn leaf, limp with wilting. Nora stood motionless, absorbed in the incomparable splendor of that silver hook bent into i the forest — Leathers as motionless, absorbed in her [ wilderness of jetty locks — till the barkeeper rang the bell for them to come to breakfast. Ah, Hypolet! Hypolet! what dark thought came to share, with that j innocent beefsteak, your morning's digestion ! That tailors have, and why they have, the hand- j somest daughters, in all countries, have been points of observation and speculation for physiology, written and unwritten. Most men know the fact. Some writers have ventured to guess at the occult secret. But I think " it needs no ghost, come from the grave," to unravel the matter. Their vocation is the embel- lishment — partly indeed the creation — of material beauty. If philosophy sit on their shears (as it should ever), there are questions to decide which discipline the sense of beauty — the degree in which fashion should be sacrificed to becomingness, and the resist- ance to the invasion of the poetical by whim and usage, for example — and as a man thinketh — to a cer- tain degree — so is his daughter. Beauty is the busi- ness thought of every day, and the desire to know how best to remedy its defects is the ache and agony of the tailor's soul, if he be ambitious. Why should not this have its exponent on the features of the race, as other strong emotions have — plastic and malleable as the human body is, by habit and practice. Shak- spere, by-the-way, says — 'Tis use that breeds a habit in a man, and I own to the dulness of never till now apprehend- ing that this remarkable passage typifies the steeping of superfine broadcloth (made into superfine habits) info the woof and warp of the tailor's idiosvncracy. Q. E. D. Nora Mehidy had ways with her that, if ihe world had not been thrown into a muss by Eve and Adam, would doubtless have been kept for queens. Leath- ers was particularly struck with her never lifting up her eyelids till she was ready. If she chanced to be looking thoughtfully down when he spoke to her, which was her habit of sadness just now, she heard what he had to say and commenced replying — and then, slowly, up went the lids, combing the loving air with their long lashes, and no more hurried than the twilight taking its fringes off the stars. It was ado- rable — altogether adorable! And her hands and lips, and feet and shoulders, had the same contemptuous and delicious deliberateness. On the second evening, at half-past five — just half an hour too late for the "Highlander" steamer — the " Binghamton stage" slid down the mountain into Newburgh. The next boat was to touch at the pier at midnight, and Leathers had six capacious hours to work on the mind of John Mehidy. What was the process of that fiendish temptation, what the lure and the resistance, is a secret locked up with Moloch — but it was successful ! The glorious chevelure of the victim — (sweet descriptive word — chevelure ! ) — the matchless locks that the matchlocks of armies should have defended — went down in the same boat with No- ra Mehidy, but tied up in Mr. leathers' linen pocket- handkerchief! And, in one week from that day, the head of Hypolet Leathers was shaven nude, and the black curls of Nora Mehidy were placed upon its irritated organs in an incomparable wig ! ! A year had elapsed. It was a warm day, in No. 77 of the Astor, and Hypolet Leathers, Esq., arrived a week before by the Great Western, sat aiding the evaporation from his brain by lotions of iced lavender. His wig stood before him, on the blockhead that was now his inseparable companion, the back toward him; and, as the wind chased of the volatile lavender from the pores of his skull, he toyed thoughtfully with the lustrous curls of Nora Mehidy. His heart was on that wooden block ! He dressed his own wig habit- ually, and by dint of perfuming, combing, and cares- sing those finger-like ringlets — he had tangled up his ! heart in their meshes. A phantom, with the superb I face of the owner, stayed with the separated locks, and : it grew hourly more palpable and controlling. The sample had made him sick at heart for the remainder. He wanted the rest of Nora Mehidy. He had come | over for her. He had found John Mehidy, following j his trade obscurely in a narrow lane, and he had asked for Nora's hand. But though this was not the whole of his daughter, and he had already sold part of her to Leathers, he shook his head over his shiny shears. Even if Nora could be propitiated after the sacrifice she had made (which he did not believe she could be), he would as lief put her in the world of spirits as in a world above him. She was his life, and he would not give his life willingly to a stranger who would take it from him, or make it too fine for his using. Oh, no ' Nora must marry a tailor, if she marry at all— and this was the adamantine resolution, stern and without appeal, of John Mehidy. Some six weeks after this, a new tailoring estab- lishment of great outlay and magnificence was opened in Broadway. The show-window was like a new rev- elation of stuff for trowsers, and resplendent, but not gaudy, were the neckcloths and waistcoatings— for absolute taste reigned over all. There was not an ar- ticle on show possible to William street— not a waist- coat that, seen in Maiden lane, would not have been as unsphered as the Lost Pleiad in Botany Bay. It was quite clear that there was some one of the firm 332 THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER. of " Mehidy & Co." (the new sign) who exercised his taste " from within, out," as the Germans say of the process of true poetry. He began inside a gen- tleman, that is to say, to guess at what was wanted for a gentleman's outside. He was a tailor-gentleman, and was therefore, and by that quality only, fitted to be a gentleman's tailor. The dandies flocked to Mehidy & Co. They could not be measured immediately — oh no ! The gentleman to be built was requested to walk about the shop for a half hour, till the foreman got him well in his eye, and then to call again in a week. Meantime he would mark his customer in the street, to see how he performed. Mehidy & Co. never ventured to take measure for terra incognita. The man's gait, shrug, speed, style, and quality, were all to be allowed for, and these were not seen in a minute. And a very sharp and stylish looking fellow seemed that foreman to be. There was evidently spoiled some very capa- ble stuff for a lord when he was made a tailor. " His leaf, By some o'er hasty angel, was misplaced In Fate's eternal volume." And, faith ! it was a study to see him take a custom- j er's measure! The quiet contempt with which he j overruled the man's indigenous idea of a coat! — the \ rather satirical comments on his peculiarities of wear- | ing his kerseymere ! — the cool survey of the adult to i be embellished, as if he were inspecting him for ad- : mission to the grenadiers ! On the whole, it was a nervous business to be measured for a coat by that I fellow with the devilish fine head of black hair! And, with the hair upon his head, from which Nora J had once no secrets — with the curls upon his cheek and temples which had once slumbered peacefully over hers, Hypolet Leathers, the foreman of " Mehi- dy & Co.," made persevering love to the tailor's mag- nificent daughter. For she was magnificent! She had just taken that long stride from girl to woman, and her person had filled out to the imperial and vo- luptuous model indicated by her deliberate eyes. With a dusky glow in her cheek, that looked like a peach teinted by a rosy twilight, her mouth, up to the crimson edge of its bow of Cupid, was moulded with the slumberous fairness of newly wrought sculpture, and gloriously beautiful in expression. She was a creature for whom a butterfly might do worm over again — to whose condition in life, if need be, a prince might proudly come down. Ah, queenly Nora Me- hidy ! But the wooing — alas! the wooing throve slowly • That lovely head was covered again with prodigal locks, in short and massive clusters, but Leathers was pertinacious as to his property in the wig, and its he- comingness and indispensableness — and to be made love to by a man in her own hair! — to be obliged to keep her own dark curls at a respectful distance! — to forbid all intercourse between them and their chil- dren-ringlets, as it were — it roughened the course of Leathers's true love that Nora must needs be obliged to reason on such singular dilemmas. For, though a tailor's daughter, she had been furnished by nature with an imagination ! But virtue, if nothing more and no sooner, is its own reward, and in time " to save its bacon." John Mehidy's fortune was pretty well assured in the course of two years, and made, in his own line, by his pro- posed son-in-law, and he could no longer refuse to throw into the scale the paternal authority. Nora's hair was, by this time, too, restored to its pristine length and luxuriousness, and, on condition that Hyp- olet would not exact a new wig from his new posses- sions, Nora, one summer's night, made over to him the remainder. The long-exiled locks revisited theii natal soil, during the caresses which sealed the com- pact, and a very good tailor was spoiled the week after, for the married Leathers became once more a gentleman at large, having bought, in two instalments, at an expense of a hundred dollars, a heart, and two years of service, one of the finest properties of which Heaven and a gold ring ever gave mortal the copy- hold ! THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER. Isheafe lane, in Boston, is an almost unmention- able and plebeian thoroughfare, between two very mentionable and patrician streets. It is mainly used by bakers, butchers, urchins going to school, and i clerks carrying home parcels — in short, by those who ! j care less for the beauty of the road than for economy jj of time and shoe-leather. If you please, it is a shabby ; hole. Children are born there, however, and people 1 die and marry there, and are happy and sad there, and | the great events of life, more important than our : liking or disliking of Sheafe lane, take place in K[] continually. It used not to be a very savory place. Yet it has an indirect share of such glory as attaches | to the birth-places of men above the common. The (present) great light of the Unitarian church was born at one end of Sheafe lane, and one of the most accom- plished merchant-gentlemen in the gay world of New York was born at the other. And in the old Hay- market (a kind of cul-de-sac, buried in the side of Sheaf lane), stood the dusty lists of chivalric old Roulstone, a gallant horseman, who in other days would have been a knight of noble devoir, though in the degeneracy of a Yankee lustrum, he devoted his soldierly abilities to the teaching of young ladies how to ride. Are you in Sheafe lane ? (as the magnetisers in- quire). Please to step back twenty-odd years, and take the hand of a lad with a rosy face (ourself — for we lived in Sheafe lane twenty-odd years ago), and come to a small house, dingy yellow, with a white gate. The yard is below the level of the street. Mind the step. The family are at breakfast in the small parlor fronting on the street. But come up this dark stair- case, to the bedroom over the parlor — a very neat room, plainly furnished ; and the windows are cur- tained, and there is one large easy chair, and a stand with a bible open upon it. In the bed lies an old man of seventy, deaf, nearly blind, and bed-ridden. We have now shown you what comes out of tha shadows to us, when we remember the circumstances we are about to body forth in a sketch, for it can scarcely be called a story. It wanted an hour to noon. The Boylston clock struck eleven, and close on the heel of the last stroke followed the ty-» of the barber's knuckle on the door THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER. 333 of the yellow hofcse in Sheafe lane. Before answering to the rap, the maid-of-all-work filled a tin can from the simmering kettle, and surveying herself in a three- cornered bit of looking-glass, fastened on a pane of the kitchen window : then, with a very soft and sweet " good morning," to Rosier, the barber, she led the wav to the old man's room. "He looks worse to-day," said the barber, as the skinny hand of the old man crept up tremblingly to his face, conscious of the daily office about to be per- formed for him. "They think so below stairs," said Harriet, "and one of the church is coming to pray with him to-night. Shall I raise him up now?" The barber nodded, and the girl seated herself near 11 the pillow, and lifting the old man, drew him upon her jj breast, and as the operation went rather lingeringly on, | the two chatted together very earnestly. Rosier was a youth of about twenty-one, talkative and caressing, as all barbers are; and what with his COrly hair and ready smile, and the smell of soap that seemed to be one of his natural properties, he was a man to be thought of over a kitchen fire. Besides, he was thriving in his trade, and not a bad match. All of; which was duly considered by the family with which Harriet lived, for they loved the poor girl. Poor girl, I say. But she was not poor, at least if it be true that as a woman thinketh so is she. Most people would have described her as a romantic girl. And so she was, but without deserving a breath of the -idicule commonly attached to the word. She was uneducated, too, if any child of New England can be called uneducated. Beyond school-books and the Bible, she had read nothing but the Scottish Chiefs, and this novel was to her what the works of God are ; to others. Il could never become familiar. It must j be the gate of dream-land ; what the moon is to a poet, what a grove is to a man of revery, what sun- shine is to all the world. And she mentioned it as \ seldom as people praise sunshine, and lived in it as j unconsciously. Harriet had never before been out to service. She | was a farmer's daughter, new from the country. If she was not ignorant of the degradation of her condi- tion in life, she forgot it habitually. A cheerful and thoughtful smile was perpetually on her lips, and the hardships of her daily routine were encountered as thinos of course, as clouds in the sky, as pebbles in the inevitable path. Her attention seemed to belong to her body, but her consciousness only to her j imagination. In her voice and eyes there was no touch or taint of her laborious servitude, and if she had suddenly been " made a lady," there would have been nothing but her hard hands to redeem from her low condition. Then, hard-working creature as she was, she was touchinaly beautiful. A coarse eye would have passed her without notice, perhaps, but a painter would not. She was of a fragile shape, and had a slight stoop, but her head was small and exquisitely moulded, and her slender neck, round, graceful, and polished, was set upon her shoulders with the fluent grace of a bird's. Her hair was profuse, and of a tinge almost yellow in the sun, but her eyes were of a blue, deep almost to blackness, and her heavy eye- lashes darkened them still more deeply. She had the least possible color in her cheeks. Her features were soft and unmarked, and expressed delicacy and repose, though her nostrils were capable of dilating with an energy of expression that seemed wholly foreign to her character. Rosier had first seen Harriet when called in to the old man, six months before, and they were now sup- posed by the family to be engaged lovers, waiting only for a little more sunshine on the barber's fortune. Meantime, they saw each other at least half an hour every morning, and commonly passed their evenings together, and the girl seemed very tranquilly happy in her prospect of marriage. At four o'clock on the afternoon of the day before mentioned, Mr. Flint was to make a spiritual visit to the old man. Let us first introduce him to the reader. Mr. Asa Flint was a bachelor of about forty-five, and an "active member" of a church famed for its zeal. He was a tall man, with a little bend in his back, and commonly walked with his eyes upon the ground, like one intent on meditation. His complex- ion was sallow, and his eyes dark and deeply set ; but by dint of good teeth, and a little " wintry redness in his cheek," he was good-looking enough for all his ends. He dressed in black, as all religious men must (in Boston), and wore shoes with black stockings the year round. In his worldly condition, Mr. Flint had always been prospered. He spent five hundred dollars a year in his personal expenses, and made five thou- sand in his business, and subscribed, say two hundred dollars a year to such societies as printed the name of the donors. Mr. Flint had no worldly acquaintances. He lived in a pious boarding-house, and sold all his goods to the members of the country churches in communion with his own. He " loved the brethren," for he wished to converse with no one who did not see heaven and the church at his back— himself in the foreground, and the other two accessories in the per- spective. Piety apart, he had found out at twenty-five, that, as a sinner he would pass through the world simply Asa Flint — as a saint, he would be Asa Flint plus eternity and the respect of a large congregation. He was a shrewd man, and chose the better part. Also, he remembered, sin is more expensive than sanctity. At four o'clock Mr. Flint knocked at the door. At the same hour there was a maternal prayer-meeting at the vestry, and of course it was to be numbered among his petty trials that he must find the mistress of the house absent from home. He walked up stairs, and after a look into the room of the sick man, despatched the lad who had opened the door for him, to request the "help" of the family to be present at the devotions. Harriet had a rather pleasing recollection of Mr. Flint. He had offered her his arm, a week before, in coming out from a conference meeting, and had " pre- sumed that she was a young lady on a visit" to the mistress ! She arranged her 'kerchief and took the kettle off the fire. Mr. Flint was standing by the bedside with folded hands. The old man lay looking at him with a kind of uneasy terror in his face, which changed, as Harriet entered, to a smile of relief. She retired modestly to the foot of the bed, and, hidden by the curtain, open only at the side, she waited the commencement of the prayer. "Kneel there, little boy !" said Mr. Flint, pointing to a chair on the other side of the light-stand, " and you, my dear, kneel here by me ! Let us pray !" Harriet had dropped upon her knees near the cor- ner of the bed, and Mr. Flint dropped upon his, on i the other side of the post, so that after raising his I hands in the first adjuration, they descended gradually, j and quite naturally, upon the folded hands of th\i I neighbor — and there they remained. She dared not withdraw them, but as his body rocked to and fro in j his devout exercise, she drew back her head to avoid coming into farther contact, and escaped with only his breath upon her temples. It was a very eloquent prayer. Mr. Flint s voice, in a worldly man. would have been called insinuating, but its kind of covert sweetness, low and soft, seemed, in a prayer, onlv the subdued monotony of reverence and devotion. "But it won upon the ear all the same. He began, with a repetition of all the most sublime ascriptions of the psalmist, filling the room, it appeared 334 THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER. to Harriet, with a superhuman presence. She trem- bled to be so near him with his words of awe. Grad- ually he took up the more affecting and lender pas- sages of scripture, and drew the tears into her eyes with the pathos of his tone and the touching images he wove together. His hand grew moist upon hers, and he leaned closer to her. He began, after a short pause, to pray for her especially — that her remarkable beauty might not be a snare to her — that her dove- like eyes might beam only on the saddened faces of the saints — that she might be enabled to shun the company of the worldly, and consort only with God's people — and that the tones of prayer now in her ears might sink deep into her heart as the voice of one who would never cease to feel an interest in her tem- poral and eternal welfare. His hand tightened its grasp upon hers, and his face turned more toward her; and as Harriet, blushing, spite of the awe weighing on her heart, stole a look at the devout man, she met the full gaze of his coal-black eyes fixed unwinkingly upon her. She was entranced. She dared not stir, and she dared not take her eyes from his. And when he came to his amen, she sank back upon (he ground, and covered her face with her hands. And presently she remembered, with some wonder, that the old man, for whom Mr. Flint had come to pray, had not been even mentioned in the prayer. The lad left the room after the amen, and Mr. FlirK raised Harriet from the floor and seated her upon a chair out of the old man's sight, and pulled a hymn- book from his pocket, and sat down beside her. She was a very enthusiastic singer, to say the least, and he commonly led the singing at the conferences, and so, holding her hand that she might beat the time with him, he passed an hour in what he would call very- sweet communion. And by this time the mistress of the family came home, and Mr. Flint took his leave. From that evening, Mr. Flint fairly undertook the " eternal welfare'' of the beautiful girl. From her kind mistress he easily procured for her the indul- gence due to an awakened sinner, and she had permis- sion to frequent the nightly conference, Mr. Flint always charging himself with the duty of seeing her safely home. He called sometimes in the afternoon, and had a private interview to ascertain the "state of her mind," and under a strong " conviction'' of some- thing or other, the excited girl lived now in a constant revery, and required as much looking after as a child. She was spoiled as a servant, but Mr. Flint had only done his duty by her. This seemed all wrong to Rosier, the barber, how- ever. The bright, sweet face of the girl he thought to marry, had grown sad, and her work went all amiss — he could see that. She had no smile, and almost no word, for him. He liked little her going out at dusk when he could not accompany her, and coming home late with the same man always, though a very good man, no doubt. Then, once lately, when he had spoken of the future, she had murmured some- thing which Mr. Flint had said about " marrying with unbelievers," and it stuck in Rosier's mind and trou- bled him. Harriet grew thin and haggard besides, though she paid more attention to her dress, and dressed more ambitiously than she used to do. ] We are reaching back over a scire or more of I years for the scenes we are describing, and memory i drops here and there a circumstance by the way. The reader can perhaps restore the lost fragments, if we give what we remember of the outline. The old man died, and Rosier performed the last of his offices to fit him for the grave, and that, if we remember rightly, was the last of his visits, but one, to the white house in Sheafe lane. The bed was scarce vacated by the dead, ere it was required again ! for another object of pity. Harriet was put into it with a brain fever. She was ill for many weeks, and called constantly on Mr. Flint's name in her delirium; ! and when the fever left her, she seemed to have but i one desire on earth — that he should come and see her. Message after message was secretly carried to him by the lad, whom she had attached to her with her uniform kindness and sweet temper, but he never came. She relapsed after a while into a state of stu- por, like idiocy, and when day after day passed with- out amendment, it was thought necessary to send for her father to take her home. A venerable looking old farmer, with white hairs, drove his rough wagon into Sheafe lane one evening, we well remember. Slowly, with the aid of his long ' staff, he crept up the narrow staircase to his daugh- ter's room, and stood a long time, looking at her in | silence. She did not speak to him. He slept upon a bed made up at the side of hers, ! upon the floor, and the next morning he went out early for his horse, and she was taken up and dressed for the journey. She spoke to no one, and when the old man had breakfasted, she quietly submitted to be carried toward the door. The sight of the street first seemed to awaken some recollection, and suddenly in a whisper she called to Mr. Flint. " Who is Mr. Flint ?" asked the old man. Rosier was at the gate, standing there with his hat off to bid her farewell. She stopped upon the side- walk, and looked around hurriedly. "He is not here — I'll wait for him."' cried Harriet, in a troubled voice, and she let go her father's arm ; and stepped back. They took hold of her and drew her toward the ! wagon, but she struggled to get free, and moaned like a child in grief. Rosier took her by the hand and tried to* speak to her, but he choked, and the tears | came to his eyes. Apparently she did not know him. A few passers-by gathered around now, and it was necessary to lift her into the wagon by force, for the distressed father was confused and embarrassed with | her struggles, and the novel scene around him. At the suggestion of the mistress of the family, Rosier : lifted her in his arms and seated hsr in the chair in- ! tended for her, but her screams began to draw a crowd around, and her struggles to free herself were so vio- lent, that it was evident the old man could never take her home alone. Rosier kindly offered to accompany him, and as he held her in her seat and tried to sooth her, : the unhappy father got in beside her and drove away. She reached home. Rosier informed us, in a state of dreadful exhaustion, still calling on the name that : haunted her; and we heard soon after, that she re- I lapsed into a brain fever, and death soon came to her ! with a timely deliverance from her trouble. ' MRS. PASSABLE TROTT. 335 MRS. PASSABLE TROTT. Je n'aimc pas que Us autres soient htureux.' The temerity with which I hovered on the brink of matrimony when a very young man could only be appreciated by a fatuitous credulity. The number of very fat mothers of very plain families who can point me out to their respectable offspring as their once imminent papa, is ludicrously improbable. The truth was that I had a powerful imagination in my early youth, and no "realizing sense." A coral neck- lace, warm from the wearer — a shoe with a little round stain in the sole — anything flannel — a bitten rosebud with the mark of a tooth upon it — a rose, a glove, a thimble— either of these was agony, ecstasy ! To any- thing with curls and skirts, and especially if encircled by a sky-blue sash, my heart was as prodigal as a Croton hydrant. Ah me ! But, of all my short eternal attachments, Fidelia Balch (since Mrs. P. Trott) was the kindest and fair- est. Faithless of course she was, since my name does not begin with a T. — but if she did not continue to love me — P. Trott or no P. Trott — she was shock- ingly forsworn, as can be proved by several stars, usually considered very attentive listeners. J rather pitied poor Trott — for 1 knew " Her heart — it was another's," and he was rich and forty-odd. But they seemed to live very harmoniously, and if I availed myself of such little consolations as fell in my way, it was the result of philosophy. I never forgot the faithless Fidelia. This is to be a disembowelled narrative, dear reader — skipping from the maidenhood of my heroine to her widowhood, fifteen years — yet I would have you supply here and there a betweenity. My own suffer- ings at seeing my adored Fidelia go daily into another man's house and shut the door after her, you can easily conceive. Though not in the habit of rebelling against human institutions, it did seem to me that the marriage ceremony had no business to give old Trott quite so much for his money. But the aggravating part of it was to come! Mrs. P. Trott grew prettier every day, and of course three hundred and sixty- five noticeable degrees prettier every year! She seemed incapable of, or not liable to, wear and tear; and probably old Trott was a man, in-doors, of very even behavior. And, it should be said too, in expla- nation, that, as Miss Balch, Fidelia was a shade too fat for her model. She embellished as her dimples grew shallower. Trifle by trifle, like the progress of a statue, the superfluity fell away from nature's ori- ginal Miss Balch (as designed in Heaven), and when old Passable died (and no one knew what that P. stood for, till it was betrayed by the indiscreet plate on his coffin) Mrs. Trott, thirty-three years old, was at her maximum of beauty. Plump, taper, transpa- rently fair, with an arm like a high-conditioned Venus, and a neck set on like the swell of a French horn, she was consumedly good-looking. When I saw in the paper, " Died. Mr. P. Trott," I went out and walked passed the house, with overpowering emotions. Thanks to a great many refusals, /had been faithful ! I could bring her the same heart, unused and undam- aged, which I had offered her before ! I could generously overlook Mr. Trott's temporary occupa- tion (sine* he had left us his money !) — and when her j mourning should be over— the very day— the very ! h our — her first love should be ready for her, good as new! I have said nothing of any evidences of continued ! attachment on the part of Mrs. Trott. She was a | discreet person, and not likely to compromise Mr. P. ! Trott till she knew the strength of his constitution. | But there was one evidence of lingering prefetence ; which I built upon like a rock. I had not visited her 1 during these fifteen years. Trott liked me not — you i can guess why ! But I had a nephew, five years old j when Miss Balch was my " privately engaged," and I as like me, that boy, as could be copied by nature. He was our unsuspecting messenger of love, going to play in old Balch's garden when I was forbidden the house, unconscious of the billet-doux in the pocket of his pinafore ; and to this boy, after our separation, ! seemed Fidelia to cling. He grew up to a youth of ! mind and manners, and still she cherished him. He i all but lived at old Trott's, petted and made much of | — her constant companion — reading, walking, riding — indeed, when home from college, her sole society. Are you surprised that, in all this, there was a tender- ness of reminiscence that touched and assured me ? Ah— " On revient toujours A ses premiers amours !" I thought it delicate, and best, to let silence do its work during that year of mourning. I did not whis- per even to my nephew Bob the secret of my happi- ness. I left one card of condolence after old Trott's funeral, and lived private, counting the hours. The slowest kind of eternity it appeared ! The morning never seemed to me to break with so much difficulty and reluctance as on the anniversary of the demise of Mr. Passable Trott— June 2, 1840. Time is a comparative thing, I well know, but the minutes seemed to stick, on that interminable morn- ing. I began to dress for breakfast at four — but de- tails are tiresome. Let me assure you that twelve o'clock, A. M.. did arrive ! The clocks struck it, and the shadows verified it. I could not have borne an accidental " not at home," and I resolved not to run the risk of it. Lovers, be- sides, are not tied to knockers and ceremony. 1 bribed the gardener. Fidelia's boudoir, I knew, opened upon the lawn, and it seemed more like love to walk in. She knew — I knew — Fate and circumstance knew and had ordained — that that morning was to be shoved up, joined on, and dovetailed to our last separation. The time between was to be a blank. Of course she ex- | pected me. The garden door was ajar— as paid for. I entered, traversed the vegetable beds, tripped through the flow- er-walk, and — oh bliss! — the window was open! I j could just see the Egyptian urn on its pedestal of ' sphinxes, into which I knew (per Bob) she threw all I her fading roses. I glided near. I looked in at the '.'■ window. Ah, that picture ! She sat with her back to me— !! her arm— that arm of rosy alabaster— thrown careless- ! ly over her chair— her egg-shell chin resting on her \\ other thumb and forefinger— her eyelids sweeping her ! cheek— and a white— ye» ! a whit* bow in h«r hair . 336 THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF " IONE S- And her dress was of snowy lawn — white, bridal white ! Adieu, old Passable Trott ! 1 wiped my eyes and looked again. Old Trott's portrait hung on the wall, but that was nothing. Her guitar lay on the table, and — did I see aright ? — a miniature just beside it ! Perhaps of old Trott — ta- ken out for the last time. Well — well ! He was a very respectable man, and had been very kind to her, most likely. " Ehem !" said I, stepping over the sill, " Fidelia !" She started and turned, and certainly looked sur- prised. »M r . G !" said she. " It is long since we parted !" I said, helping my- self to a chair. " Quite long !" said Fidelia. " So long that you have forgotten the name of G ?" I asked tremulously. " Oh no !" she replied, covering up the miniature on the table by a careless movement of her scarf. " And may I hope that that name has not grown distasteful to you ?" I summoned courage to say. "N , no! I do not know that it has, Mr. G !" The blood returned to my fainting heart ! I felt as in days of yore. "Fidelia !" said I, " let me not waste the precious moments. You loved me at twenty — may I hope that I may stand to you in a nearer relation ! May I ven- ture to think that our family is not unworthy of a union with the Balches ? — that, as Mrs. G , you could be happy ?" Fidelia looked — hesitated — took up the miniature, and clasped it to her breast. "Do 1 understand you rightly, Mr. G !" she tremulously exclaimed. " But I think I do ! Ire- member well what you were at twenty ! This picture is like what you were then — with differences, it is true, but still like! Dear picture!" she exclaimed again, kissing it with rapture. (How could she have got my miniature? — but no matter — taken by stealth, I presume. Sweet and ea- ger anticipation!) "And Robert has returned from college, then ?" she said, inquiringly. "Not that I know of," said I. " Indeed ! — then he has written to you !" " Not recently !" " Ah, poor boy ! he anticipated ! Well, Mr. G ! 1 will not affect to be coy where my heart has been so long interested." (I stood ready to clasp her to my bosom.) " Tell Robert my mourning is over — tell him his name" (the name of G , of course) " is the mu- sic of my life, and that I will marry whenever he pleases !" A horrid suspicion crossed my mind. "Pardon me!" said I; "whenever he pleases, did ' you say ? Why, particularly, when he pleases?'" M La .' his not being of age is no impediment, I hope!" said Mrs. Trott, with some surprise. "Look at his miniature, Mr. G ! It has a boyish look, it's true — but so had you — at twenty !" Hope sank within me ! I would have given worlds to be away. The truth was apparent to me — perfect- ly apparent. She loved that boy Bob — that child — that mere child — and meant to marry him ! Yet how could it be possible ! I might be — yes — I must be, mistaken. Fidelia Balch — who was a woman when he was an urchin in petticoats! — she to think of mar- rying that boy ! I wronged her — oh 1 wronged her ! But, worst come to the worst, there was no harm in having it perfectly understood. "Pardon me!" said I, putting on a look as if I expected a shout of laughter for the mere supposi- tion, " I should gather — (categorically, mind you !— only categorically) — 1 should gather from what you said just now — (had I been a third person listening, that is to say — with no knowledge of the parties) — I should really have gathered that Bob — little Bob — was the happy man, and not I ! Now don't laugh at me!" " You the happy man ! — Oh Mr. G ! you are joking ! Oh no! pardon me if I have unintentionally ! misled you — but if I marry again, Mr. G , it will be a young man! ! ! In short, not to mince the mat- ter, Mr. G ! your nephew is to become my hus- band (nothing unforeseen turning up), in the course of the next week ! We shall have the pleasure of seeing you at the wedding, of course ' Oh no ! You! I should fancy that no woman would make hvo une- qual marriages, Mr. G ! Good morning, Mr. I was left alone, and to return as I pleased, by the vegetable garden or the front door. I chose the lat- ter, being somewhat piqued as well as inexpressibly grieved and disappointed. But philosophy came to my aid, and I soon fell into a mood of speculation. " Fidelia is constant!" said I to myself — " constant, after all ! She made up her mouth for me at twenty. But I did not stay twenty! Oh no! I, unadvisedly, and without preparatively cultivating her taste for thirty-five, became thirty-five. And now what was she to do ? Her taste was not at all embarked in Passa- ble Trott, and it stayed just as it was — waiting to be called up and used. She locks it up decently till old Trott dies, and then reproduces — what? Why, just what she locked up — a taste for a young man at twenty — and just such a young man as she loved when she was twenty ! Bob — of course ! Bob is like me — Bob is twenty ! Be Bob her husband ! But I cannot say I quite like such constancy! THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF "IONE S- (SINCE DISCOVERED TO BE MISS JONES.) Not long ago, but before poetry and pin-money were discovered to be cause and effect, Miss Phebe Jane Jones was one of the most charming contributors to a certain periodical now gone over "Lethe's wharf." Her signature was " lone S !" a neat anagram, out of which few would have picked the monosyllable engraved upon her father's brass knocker. She wrote mostly in verse ; but her prose, of which you will presently see a specimen or two, was her better vein — as being more easily embroidered, and not crampea with the inexorable fetters of rhyme. Miss Jones abandoned authorship before the New Mirror was es- tablished, or she would, doubtless, have been one of its paid contributors — as much (" we" flatter ourselves) as could well be said of her abilities. The beauty of hectics and hollow chests has been written out of fashion ; so I may venture upon the simple imagery of truth and nature. Miss Jones was THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF " IONE S- 337 as handsome as a prize heifer. She was a compact, | plump, wholesome, clean-limbed, beautifully-marked animal, with eyes like inkstands running over; and a mouth that looked, when she smiled, as if it had never J been opened before, the teeth seemed so fresh and un- j handled. Her voice had a tone clear as the ring of a ; silver dollar; and her lungs must have been as sound as a pippin, for when she laughed (which she never did unless she was surprised into it, for she loved mel- ancholy), it was like the gurgling of a brook over the pebbles. The bran-new people made by Deucalion and Pyrrha, when it cleared up after the flood, were probably in Miss Jones's style. But do you suppose that "lone S " cared any thing for her looks ! What — value the poor perishing tenement in which nature had chosen to lodge her intellectual and spiritual part ! What — care for her covering of clay ! What — waste thought on the chain that kept her from the Pleiades, of which, perhaps, she was the lost sister (who knows) ? And, more than all — oh gracious ! — to be loved for this trumpery-dra- pery of her immortal essence ! Yes — infra dig. as it may seem to record such an unworthy trifle — the celestial Phebe had the superflu- ity of an every-day lover. Gideon Flimmins was wil- ling to take her on her outer inventory alone. He loved her cheeks — he did not hesitate to admit ! He loved her lips — he could not help specifying ! He had been known to name her shoulders ! And, in taking out a thorn for her with a pair of tweezers one day, he had literally exclaimed with rapture that she had a heavenly little pink thumb! But of " lone S " he had never spoken a word. No, though she read him faithfully every effusion that appeared — asked his opinion of every separate stanza — talked of "lone S " as the person on earth she most wished to see (for she kept her literary incog.) — Gideon had never alluded to her a second time, and perseveringly, hate- fully, atrociously, and with mundane motive only, he made industrious love to the outside and visible Phe- be ! Well! well! Contiguity is something, in love ; and the Flim- minses were neighbors of the Joneses. Gideon had another advantage — for Ophelia Flimmins, his eldest sister, was Miss Jones's eternally attached friend. To explain this, I must trouble the reader to take notice that there were two streaks in the Flimmins family. Fat Mrs. Flimmins, the mother (who had been dead a year), was a thorough "man of business," and it was to her downright and upright management of her hus- band's wholesale and retail hat-lining establishment, that the family owed its prosperity; for Herodotus Flimmins, whose name was on the sign, was a flimsy- ish kind of sighing-dying man, and nobody could ever find out what on earth he wanted. Gideon and the two fleshy Miss Flimminses took after their mother; but Ophelia, whose semi-translucent frame was the envy of her faithful Phebe, was, with very trifling ex- ceptions, the perfect model of her sire. She devotedly loved the moon. She had her preferences among the stars of heaven. She abominated the garish sun. And she and Phebe met by night — on the sidewalk around their mutual nearest corner — deeply veiled to conceal their emotion from the intruding gaze of such stars as they were not acquainted with — and there they com- muned ! I never knew, nor have I any, the remotest suspicion of the reasoning by which these commingled spirits arrived at the conclusion that there was a want in their delicious union. They might have known, indeed, that the chain of bliss, ever so far extended, breaks off at last with an imperfect link — that though mustard and ham may turn two slices of innocent bread into a sandwich, there will still be an unbuttered outside. But they were young— they were sanguine. Phebe, at least, believed that in the regions of space there ex- 22 isted — "wandering but not lost" — the aching worser half of which she was the "better" — some lofty intel- lect, capable of sounding the unfathomable abysses of hers — some male essence, all soul and romance, with whom she could soar finally, arm-in-arm, to their na- tive star, with no changes of any consequence between their earthly and their astral communion. It occurred to her at last that a letter addressed to him, through her favorite periodical, might possibly reach his eye. The following (which the reader may very likely re- member to have seen) appeared in the paper of the following Saturday : — " To my spirit-husband, greeting : — "Where art thou, bridegroom of my soul ? Thy lone S calls to thee from the aching void of her lonely spirit ! What name bearest thou ? What path walkest thou ? How can I, glow-worm like, lift my wings and show thee my lamp of guiding love ? Thus wing I these words to thy dwelling-place (for thou art, perhaps, & subscriber to the M r). Go — truants ! Best not till ye meet his eye. "But I must speak to thee after the manner of this world. " I am a poetess of eighteen summers. Eighteen weary years have I worn this prison-house of flesh, in which, when torn from thee, I was condemned to wan- der. But my soul is untamed by its cage of dark- ness ! I remember, and remember only, the lost hus- band of my spirit-world. I perform, coldly and scorn- fully, the unheavenly necessities of this temporary existence; and from the windows of my prison (black — like the glimpses of the midnight heaven they let in) I look out for the coming of my spirit-lord. Lonely ! lonely ! "Thou wouldst know, perhaps, what semblance 1 bear since my mortal separation from thee. Alas! the rose, not the lily, reigns upon my cheek ! I would not disappoint thee, though of that there is little fear, for thou lovest for the spirit only. But believe not, because health holds me rudely down, and I seem not fragile and ready to depart — believe not, oh bridegroom of my soul ! that I bear willingly my fleshly fetter, or endure with patience the degrading homage to its beauty. For there are soulless worms who think mc fair. Ay — in the strength and freshness of my corpo- real covering, there are those who rejoice! Oh! mockery ! mockery ! " List to me, Ithuriel (for I must have a name to call thee by, and, till thou breathest thy own seraphic name into my ear, be thou Ithuriel) ! List ! I would meet thee in the darkness only ! Thou shalt not see me with thy mortal eyes ! Penetrate the past, and remember the smoke-curl of wavy lightness in which I floated to thy embrace! Remember the sunset- cloud to which we retired; the starry lamps that hung over our slumbers! And on the softest whisper of our voices let thy thoughts pass to mine! Speak not aloud! Murmur! murmur! murmur! "Dost thou know, Ithuriel, I would fain prove to thee my freedom from the trammels of this world ? In what chance shape thy accident of clay may be cast, I know not. Ay, and 1 care not ! I would thou wert a hunchback, Ithuriel ! I would thou wert disguised as a monster, my spirit-husband ! So would I prove to thee my elevation above mortality ! So would I show thee, that in the range of eternity for which we are wedded, a moment's covering darkens thee not — that, like a star sailing through a cloud, thy brightness is remembered while it is eclipsed— that thy lone would recognise thy voice, be aware of thy presence, adore thee, as she was celestially wont — ay, though thou wert imprisoned in the likeness of a reptile! lone care for mortal beauty! Ha! ha! ha!— Ha' ha! ha! " Come to me, Ithuriel ! My heart writhes in its 338 THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF " IONE S- cell for converse with thee ! I am sick-thoughted ! My spirit wrings its thin fingers to play with thy ethe- real hair ! My earthly cheek, though it obstinately refuses to pale, tingles with fever for thy coming. Glide to me in the shadow of eve — softly ! softly ! "Address 'P.' at the M r office. "Thine, "IoneS ." ****** There came a letter to "P." It was an inky night. The moon was in her private chamber. The stars had drawn over their heads the coverlet of clouds and pretended to sleep. The street lamps heartlessly burned on. Twelve struck with "damnable iteration." On tiptoe and with beating heart Phebe Jane left her father's area. Ophelia Flimmins followed her at a little distance, for lone was going to meet her spirit- bridegroom, and receive a renewal of his ante-vital vows ; and she wished her friend, the echo of her soul, to overhear and witness them. For oh — if words were anything — if the soul could be melted and poured, Java-like, upon " satin post" — if there was truth in feel- ings magnetic and prophetic — then was he who had responded to, and corresponded with, lone S (she writing to "I," and he to "P"), the ideal for whom she had so long sighed — the lost half of the whole so mournfully incomplete — her soul's missing and once spiritually Siamesed twin ! His sweet letters had echoed every sentiment of her heart. He had agreed with her that outside was nothing — that earthly beauty was poor, perishing, pitiful — that nothing that could be seen, touched, or described, had anything to do with the spiritually-passionate intercourse to which their respective essences achingly yearned — that, un- seen, unheard, save in whispers faint as a rose's sigh when languishing at noon, they might meet in com- munion blissful, superhuman, and satisfactory. Yet where fittingly to meet — oh agony ! agony ! The street-lamps two squares oft' had been taken up to lay down gas. Ophelia Flimmins had inwardly marked it. Between No. 126 and No. 132, more par- ticularly, the echoing sidewalk was bathed in unfath- omable night — for there were vacant lots occupied as a repository for used-up omnibuses. At the most lonely point there stood a tree, and, fortunately, this night, in the gutter beneath the tree, stood a newly- disabled 'bus of the Knickerbocker line — and (sweet omen !) it was blue ! In this covert could the witness- ing Ophelia lie perdu, observing unseen through the open door; and beneath this tree was to take place the meeting of souls — the re-interchange of sky-born vows — the immaterial union of Ithuriel and lone ! Bliss ! bliss ! — exquisite to anguish. But — oh incontinent vessel — Ophelia had blabbed ! The two fat Miss Flimminses were in the secret — nay, more — they were in the omnibus ! Ay — deeply in, and portentously silent, they sat, warm and won- dering, on either side of the lamp probably extin- guished for ever ! They knew not well what was to be. But whatever sort, of thing was a "marriage of soul," and whether " Ithuriel" was body or nobody — mortal man or angel in a blue scarf — the Miss Flim- minses wished to see him. Half an hour before the trysting-time they had fanned their way thither, for a thunder-storm was in the air and the night was intol- erably close; and, climbing into the omnibus, they re- ciprocally loosened each other's upper hook, and with their moistened collars laid starchless in their laps, awaited the opening of the mystery. Enter Ophelia, as expected. She laid her thin hand upon the leather string, and, drawing the door after her, leaned out of its open window in breathless sus- pense and agitation. Ione's step was now audible, returning from 132. Slowly she came, but invisibly, for it had grown sud- denly pitch-dark ; and only the far-off lamps, up and down the street, served to guide her footsteps. But hark ! the sound of a heel ! He came ! They met ! He passed his arm around her and drew her beneath the tree — and with whispers, soft and low, leaned breathing to her ear. He was tall. He was in a cloak. And, oh ecstasy, he was thin ! But thinkest thou to know, oh reader of dust, what passed on those ethereal whispers ? Futile — futile curiosity ! Even to Ophelia's straining ear, those whispers were inaudible. But hark ! a rumble ! Something wrong in the bowels of the sky ! And pash ! pash ! — on the re- sounding roof of the omnibus — fell drops of rain — fit- fully ! fitfully! " My dear!" whispered Ophelia (for lone had bor- rowed her chip hat, the better to elude recognition), "ask Ithuriel to step in." Ithuriel started to find a witness near, but a whisper from lone reassured him, and gathering his cloak around his face, he followed his spirit-bride into the 'bus. The fat Miss Flimminses contracted their orbed shapes, and made themselves small against the padded extremity of the vehicle ; Ophelia retreated to the mid- dle, and, next the door, on either side, sat the starry j bride and bridegroom — all breathlessly silent. Yet there was a murmur — for five hearts beat within that ! 'bus's duodecimal womb ; and the rain pelted on the j roof, pailsful-like and unpityingly. But slap! dash! whew! heavens! — In rushed a youth, dripping, dripping ! " Get out !" cried lone, over whose knees he drew himself like an eel pulled through a basket of con- torted other eels. " Come, come, young man !" said a deep bass voice, of which everybody had some faint remembrance. " Oh !" cried one fat Miss Flimmins. "Ah !" screamed the other. " What ? — dad !" exclaimed Gideon Flimmins, who had dashed into the sheltering 'bus to save his new hat — "dad here with a girl !" But the fat Flimminses were both in convulsions. Scream ! scream ! scream ! A moment of confusion ! The next moment a sud- den light ! A watchman with his lantern stood at the door. "Papa !" ejaculated three of the ladies. "Old Flimmins! — my heart will burst !" murmured IoDe. The two fat girls hurried on their collars; and Gid- eon, all amazement at finding himself in such a family party at midnight in a lonely 'bus, stepped out and en- tered into converse wjth the guardian of the night. The rain stopped suddenly, and the omnibus gave up its homogeneous contents. Old Flimmins, who was in a violent perspiration, gave Gideon his cloak to carry, and his two arms to his two pinguid adult pledges. Gideon took Ophelia and Phebe, and they mizzled. Mockery ! mockery ! lone is not yet gone to the spirit-sphere — kept here partly by the strength of the fleshy fetter over which she mourned, and partly by the dove-tailed duties con- sequent upon annual Flimminses. Gideon loves her after the manner of this world — but she sighs " when she hears sweet music," that her better part is still unappreciated — unfathomed — "cabined, cribbed, con- fined !" MABEL WYNNE. 339 MABEL WYNNE. Mabel Wynne was the topmost sparkle on the crest of the first wave of luxury that swept over New York. Up to her time, the aristocratic houses were furnished with high buffets, high-backed and hair- bottomed mahogany chairs, one or two family portraits, and a silver tray on the side-board, containing cordials and brandy for morning-callers. In the centre of the room hung a chandelier of colored lamps, and the lighting of this and the hiring of three negroes (to "fatigue," as the French say, a clarinet, a baseviol, and a violin) were the only preparations necessary for the most distinguished ball. About the time that Mabel left school, however, some adventurous poineer of the Dutch haul ton ventured upon lamp-stands for the corners of the rooms, stuffed red benches along the walls, and chalked floors; and upon this a French family of great beauty, residing in the lower part of Broadway, ventured upon a fancy ball with wax-candles instead of lamps, French dishes and sweetmeats in- stead of pickled oysters and pink champagne ; and, the door thus opened, luxury came in like a flood. Houses were built on a new plan of sumptuous ar- rangement, the ceiling stained in fresco, and the columns of the doors within painted iu imitation of bronze and marble; and at last the climax was topped by Mr. Wynne, who sent the dimensions of every room in his new house to an upholsterer in Paris, with carte blanche as to costliness and style, and the fournisseur to comeout himself and see to the arrange- ment and decoration. It was Manhattan tea-time, old style, and while Mr. Wynne, who had the luxury of a little plain furniture in the basement, was comfortably taking his toast and hyson below stairs, Miss Wynne was just announced as "at home," by the black footman, and two of her admirers made their highly-scented entree. They were led through a suite of superb rooms, light- ed with lamps hid in alabaster vases, and ushered in at a mirror-door beyond, where, in a tent of fluted silk, with ottomans and draperies of the same stuff, ex- quisitely arranged, the imperious M a °el held her court of 'teens. Mabel Wynne was one of those accidents of sover- eign beauty which nature seems to take delight in mis- placing in the world — like the superb lobelia flashing among the sedges, or the golden oriole pluming his dazzling wings in the depth of a wilderness. She was no less than royal in all her belongings. Her features expressed consciousness of sway — a sway whose dictates had been from infancy anticipated. Never a surprise had startled those languishing eyelids from their deliberateness — never a suffusion other than the humid cloud of a tender and pensive hour had dimmed those adorable dark eyes. Or, so at least it seemed ! She was a fine creature, nevertheless — Mabel Wynne! But she looked to others like a specimen of such fragile and costly workmanship that nothing beneath a palace would be a becoming home for her. " For the present," said Mr. Bellallure, one of the gentlemen who entered, " the bird has a fitting cage." Miss Wynne only smiled in reply, and the other gentlemau took upon himself to be the interpreter of her unexpressed thought. " The cage is the accessory — not the bird." said Mr. Blythe, " and, for my part, I think Miss Wynne would show better the humbler her surroundings. As Perdita upon the greensward, and open to a shep- herd's wooing, I should inevitably sling my heart upon a crook — " "And forswear that formidable, impregnable vow of celibacy ?" interrupted Miss Wynne. " I am only supposing a case, and you are not likely to be a shepherdess on the green." But Mr. Blythe's smile ended in a look of clouded revery, and, after a few minutes' conversation, ill sustained by the gen- tlemen, who seemed each in the other's way, they rose and took their leave — Mr. Bellallure lingering last, for he was a lover avowed. As the door closed upon her admirer, Miss Wynne ji drew a letter from her portfolio, and turning it over ! and over with a smile of abstracted curiosity, opened ; and read it for the second time. She had received it i that morning from an unknown source, and as it was ] rather a striking communication, perhaps the reader j had better know something of it before we go on. It commenced without preface, thus: — " On a summer morning, twelve years ago, a chimney-sweep, after doing his work and singing his song, commenced his descent. It was the chimney of a large house, and becoming embarrassed among the flues, he lost his way and found himself on the hearth of a sleeping-chamber occupied by a child. The sun was just breaking through the curtains of the room, a vacated bed showed that some one had risen lately, probably the nurse, and the sweep, with , an irresistible impulse, approached the unconscious I little sleeper. She lay with her head upon a round arm buried in flaxen curls, and the smile of a dream on her rosy and parted lips. It was a picture of singular loveliness, and something in the heart of that boy-sweep, as he stood and looked upon the child, knelt to it with an agony of worship. The tears gush- ed to his eyes. He stripped the sooty blanket from his breast, and looked at the skin white upon his side. The contrast between his condition and that of the fair child sleeping before him brought the blood to his blackened brow with the hot rush of lava. He knelt beside the bed on which she slept, took her hand in his sooty grasp, and with a kiss upon the white and dewy fingers poured his whole soul with passionate earnestness into a resolve. " Hereafter you may learn, if you wish, the first struggles of that boy in the attempt to diminish the distance between yourself and him — for you will have understood that you were the beautiful child he saw asleep. I repeat that it is twelve years since he stood in your chamber. He has seen you almost daily since then — watched your going out and coming in — fed his eyes and heart on your expanding beauty, and inform- ed himself of every change and development iu your mind and character. With this intimate knowledge of you, and with the expansion of his own intellect, his passion has deepened and strengthened. It pos- sesses him now as life does his heart, and will endure as long. But his views with regard to you have changed, nevertheless. "You will pardon the presumption of my first feeling— that to attain my wishes I had only to be- come your equal. It was a natural error— for my agony at realizing the difference of our conditions iu 340 MABEL WYNNE. life was enough to absorb me at the time — but it is surprising to me how long that delusion lasted. I am rich now. I have lately added to my fortune the last acquisition I thought desirable. But with the thought of the next thing to be done, came like a thunderbolt upon me the fear that after all my efforts you might be destined for another! The thought is simple enough. You would think that it would have haunted me from the beginning. But I have either uncon- sciously shut my eyes to it, or I have been so absorbed in educating and enriching myself that that goal only was visible to me. It was perhaps fortunate for my perseverance that I was so blinded. Of my midnight studies, of my labors, of all my plans, self-denials, and anxieties, you have seemed the reward ! I have never gained a thought, never learned a refinement, never turned over gold and silver, that it was not a step nearer to Mabel Wynne. And now, that in worldly advantages, after twelve years of effort and trial, I stand by your side at last, a thousand men who never thought of you till yesterday are equal competitors with me for your hand ! "But, as I said, my views with regard to you have changed. I have, with bitter effort, conquered the selfishness of this one lifetime ambition. I am devo- ted to you, as I have been from the moment I first saw you — life and fortune. These are still yours — but without the price at which you might spurn them. My person is plain and unattractive. You have seen me, and shown me no preference. There are others whom you receive with favor. And with your glorious beauty, and sweet, admirably sweet qualities of char- acter, it would be an outrage to nature that you should not choose freely, and be mated with something of your kind. Of those who now surround you I see no one worthy of you — but he may come ! Jealousy shall not blind me to his merits. The first mark of your favor (and I shall be aware of it) will turn upon him my closest, yet most candid scrutiny. He must love you well — for I shall measure his love by my own. He must have manly beauty, and delicacy, and honor — he must be worthy of you, in short — but he need not be rich. He who steps between me and you takes the fortune I had amassed for you. 1 tell you this that you may have no limit in your choice — for the worthiest of a woman's lovers is often barred from her by poverty. "Of course I have made no vow against seeking your favor. On the contrary, I shall lose no oppor- tunity of making myself agreeable to you. It is against my nature to abandon hope, though I am painfully conscious of my inferiority to other men in the quali- ties which please a woman. All I have done is to deprive my pursuit of its selfishness — to make it sub- servient to your happiness purely — as it still would be were I the object of your preference. You will hear from me at any crisis of your feelings. Pardon my being a spy upon you. I know you well enough to be sure that this letter will be a secret — since 1 wish it. Adieu." Mabel laid her cheek in the hollow of her hand and mused long on this singular communication. It stirred her romance, but it wakened still more her curiosity. Who was he? She had "seen him and shown him no preference !" Which could it be of the hundred of her chance-made acquaintances ? She conjectured at some disadvantage, for " she had come out" within the past year only, and her mother having long been dead, the visiters to the house were all but recently made known to her. She could set aside two thirds of them, as sons of families well known, but there were at least a score of others, any one of whom might, twelve years before, have been as obscure as her anonymous lover. Whoever he might be, Mabel thought he could hardly come into her presence again without betraying himself, and, with a pleased smile at the thought of the discovery, she again locked up the letter. Those were days (to be regretted or not, as you please, dear reader !) when the notable society of New York revolved in one self-complacent and clear- ly-defined circle. Call it a wheel, and say that the centre was a belle and the radii were beaux— (the periphery of course composed of those who could " down with the dust"). And on the fifteenth of July, regularly and imperatively, this fashionable wheel rolled off to Saratoga. "Mabel! my daughter!" said old Wynne, as he bade her good night the evening before starting for the springs, " it is useless to be blind to the fact that among your many admirers you have several very pressing lovers — suiters for your hand I may safely say. Now, I do not wish to put any unnecessary re- straint upon your choice, but as you are going to a gay place, where you are likely to decide the matter in your own mind, I wish to express an opinion. You may give it what weight you think a father's judg- ment should have in such matters. I do not like Mr. Bellallure — for, beside my prejudice against the man, we know nothing of his previous life, and he may be a swindler or anything else. I do like Mr. Blythe — for I have known him many years, he comes of a most respectable family, and he is wealthy and worthy. These two seem to me the most in earnest, and you apparently give them the most of your time. If thede- cision is to be between them, you have my choice. Good night, my love !" Some people think it is owing to the Saratoga water. I differ from them. The wateris an "altera- tive, " if is true — but I think people do not so much alter as develop at Saratoga. The fact is clear enough — that at the springs we change our opinionsof almost everybody — but (though it seems a bold supposition at first glance) I am inclined to believe it is because we see so much more of them ! Knowing people in the city and knowing them at the springs is very much in the same line of proof as tasting wine and drinking a bottle. Why, what is a week's history of a city ac- quaintance ? A morning call thrice a week, a diurnal bow in Broadway, and perhaps a quadrille or two in the party season. What chance in that to ruffle a temper or try a weakness? At the springs, now, dear lady, you wear a man all day like a shoe. Down at the platform with him to drink the waters before break- fast — strolls on the portico with him till ten — drives with him to Barheight's till dinner — lounges in the draw- ing-room with him till tea — dancing and promenading with him till midnight — very little short altogether of absolute matrimony ; and, like matrimony, it is a very severe trial. Your " best fellow" is sure, to be found out, and so is your plausible fellow, your egotist, and your "spoon." Mr. Beverly Bellallure had cultivated the male attractions with marked success. At times he proba- bly thought himself a plain man, and an artist who should only paint what could be measured with a rule, would have made a plain portrait of Mr. Bellallure. But — the atmosphere of the man ! There is a phys- iognomy in movement — there is aspect in the har- monious link between mood and posture — there is ex- pression in the face of which the features are as much a portrait as a bagpipe is a copy of a Scotch song. Beauty, my dear artist, can not always be translated by canvass and oils. You must paint " the magnetic fluid" to get a portrait of some men. Sir Thomas Lawrence seldom painted anything else — as you may see by his picture of Lady Blessington, which is like her without having copied a single feature of her face. Yet an artist would be very much surprised if you should offer to sit to him for your magnetic atmo- sphere — though it expresses (does it not ?) exactly MABEL WYNNE. 341 what you want when you order a picture ! You wish to be painted as your appear to those who love you — a picture altogether unrecognisable by those who love you not. Mr. Bellallure, then, was magnetically handsome —positively plain. He dressed with an art beyond detection. He spent his money as if he could dip it at will out of Pactolus. He was intimate with nobody, and so nobody knew his history ; but he wrote him- self on the register of Congress hall as " from New York," and he threw all his forces into one unmista- kable demonstration — the pursuit of Miss Mabel Wynne. But Mr. Bellallure had a formidable rival. Mr. Blytlie was as much in earnest as he, though he play- ed his game with a touch-and-go freedom, as if he was prepared to lose it. And Mr. Blythe had very much surprised those people at Saratoga who did not know that between a very plain man and a very elegant man there is often but the adding of the rose-leaf to the brimming jar. He was perhaps a little gayer than in New York, certainly a little more dressed, certainly a little more prominent in general conversa- tion — but without any difference that you could swear to, Mr. Blythe, the plain and reliable business man, whom everybody esteemed without particularly ad- miring, had become Mr. Blythe the model of* ele- gance and ease, the gentleman and conversationist par excellence. And nobody could tell how the statue could have lain so long unsuspected in the marble. The race for Miss Wynne's hand and fortune was a general sweepstakes, and there were a hundred men at the springs ready to take advantage of any falling back on the part of the two on the lead ; but with Blythe and Bellallure Miss Wynne herself seemed fully occupied. The latter had a " friend at court" — the belief, kept secret in the fair Mabel's heart, that he was the romantic lover of whose life and fortune she had been the inspiration. She was an eminently romantic girl with all her strong sense ; and the devo- tion which had proved itself so deep and controlling was in reality the dominant spell upon her heart. She felt that she must love that man, whatever his outside might be, and she construed the impenetrable silence with which Bellallure received her occasional hints as to his identity, into a magnanimous deter- mination to win her without any advantage from the romance of his position. Yet she sometimes wished it had been Mr. Blythe! The opinion of her father had great weight with her; but, more than that, she felt instinctively that he was the safer man to be intrusted with a woman's happi- ness. If there had been a doubt — if her father had not assured her that " Mr. Blythe came of a most respectable family" — if the secret had wavered be- tween them — she would have given up to Bellallure without a sigh. Blythe was everything she admired and wished for in a husband — but the man who had made himself for her, by a devotion unparalleled even in her reading of fiction, held captive her dazzled im- agination, if not her grateful heart. She made con- stant efforts to think only of Bellallure, but the efforts were preceded ominously with a sigh. And now Bellallure'sstar seemed in theascendant — for urgent business called Mr. Wynne to the city, and on the succeeding day Mr. Blythe followed him, though with an assurance of speedy return. Mabel was left under the care of an indulgent chaperon, who took a pleasure in promoting the happiness of the supposed lovers ; and driving, lounging, waltzing, and promenading, Bellallure pushed his suit with ardor unremitted. He was a skilful master of the art of wooing, and it would have been a difficult woman in- deed who wouldwiot have been pleased with his soci- ety — but the secret in Mabel's breast was the spell by which he held her. A week elapsed, and Bellallure pleaded the receipt of unexpected news, and left suddenly for New York — to Mabel's surprise exacting no promise at parting, though she felt that she should have given it with re- luctance. The mail of the second day following brought her a brief letter from her father, requesting her immediate return; and more important still, a note i 1 from her incognito lover. It ran thus: — " You will recognise my handwriting again. I have ! little to say — for I abandon the intention I had formed | to comment on your apparent preference. Your hap- piness is in your own hands. Circumstances which I will be explained to you, and which will excuse this abrupt forwardness, compel me to urge you to an im- ! mediate choice. On your arrival at home, you will { meet me in your father's house, where I shall call to await you. I confess tremblingly, that I still cherish I a hope. If I am not deceived — if you can consent to | love me — if my long devotion is to be rewarded — take I my hand when you meet me. That moment will de- cide the value of my life. But be prepared also to j name another if you love him — for there is a neces- | sity, which I can not explain to you till you have chosen your husband, that this choice should be made on your arrival. Trust and forgive one who has so long loved you!" Mabel pondered long on this strange letter. Her spirit at moments revolted against its apparent dicta- tion, but there was the assurance, which she could not resist trusting, that it could be explained and for- given. At all events, she was at liberty to fulfil its requisitions or not — and she would decide when the time came. Happy was Mabel — unconsciously hap- py — in the generosity and delicacy of her unnamed lover! Her father, by one of the sudden reverses of mercantile fortune, had been stripped of his wealth in a day ! Stunned and heart-broken, he knew not how to break it to his daughter, but he had written for her to return. His sumptuous house had been sold over his head, yet the purchaser, whom he did not know, had liberally offered the use of it till his affairs were settled. And, meantime, his ruin was made public. The news of it, indeed, had reached Saratoga before the departure of Mabel — but there were none willing to wound her by speaking of it. The day was one of the sweetest of summer, and as the boat ploughed her way down the Hudson, Ma- bel sat on the deck lost in thought. Her father's opinion of Bellallure, and his probable displeasure at her choice, weighed uncomfortably on her mind. She turned her thoughts upon Mr. Blythe, and felt sur- prised at the pleasure with which she remembered his kind manners and his trust-inspiring look. She be- gan to reason with herself more calmly than she had power to do with her lovers around her. She con- fessed to herself that Bellallure might have the ro- mantic perseverance shown in the career of the chim- ney-sweep, and still be deficient in qualities necessary to domestic happiness. There seemed to her some- thing false about Bellallure. She could not say in what — but he had so impressed her. A long day's silent reflection deepened this impression, and Mabel arrived at the city with changed feelings. She pre- pared herself to meet him at her father's house, and show him by her manner that she could accept nei- ther his hand nor his fortune. Mr. Wynne was at the door to receive his daughter, and Mabel felt relieved, for she thought that his pres- sence would bar all explanation between herself and Bellallure. The old man embraced her with an effu- sion of tears which she did not quite understand, but he led her to the drawing-room and closed the door. Mr. Blythe stood before her ! Forgetting the letter — dissociated wholly as it was, in her mind, with Mr. Blythe— Mabel ran to him with frank cordiality and gave him her hand ! Blythe 342 THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. stood a moment — his hand trembling in hers — and as a suspicion of the truth flashed suddenly on Mabel's mind, the generous lover drew her to his bosom and folded her passionately in his embrace. Mabel's struggles were slight, and her happiness unexpectedly complete. The marriage was like other marriages. Mr. Wynne had drawn a little on his imagination in recommending Mr. Blythe to his daughter as "a young man of most respectable family." Mr. Blythe was the purchaser of Mr. Wynne's su- perb house, and the old man ended his days under its roof — happy to the last in the society of the Blythes, large and little. Mr. Bellallure turned out to be a clever adventurer, and had Mabel married him, she would have been Mrs. Bellallure No. 2 — possibly No. 4. He thought himself too nice a young man for monopoly. I think my story is told — if your imagination has filled up the interstices, that is to say. THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. It was the last week of September, and the keeper of " Congress hail" stood on his deserted colonnade. Ths dusty street of Saratoga was asleep in the still- ness of village afternoon. The whittlings of the stage- runners at the corners, and around the leaning posts, were fading into dingy undistinguishableness. Stiff and dry hung the slop-cloths at the door of the livery stable, and drearily clean was doorway and stall. * The season" was over. " Well, Mr. B !" said the Boniface of the great caravansary, to a gentlemanly-looking invalid, crossing over from the village tavern on his way to Congress spring, " this looks like the end of it ! A slimmish season, though, Mr. B ! 'Gad, things isn't as they used to be in your time ! Three months we used to have of it, in them days, and the same people coming and going all summer, and folks' own horses, and all the ladies drinking champagne ! And every ' hop' was as good as a ball, and a ball — when do you ever see such balls now-a-days? Why, here's all my best wines in the cellar; and as to beauty — pooh! — they're done coming here, any how, are the belles, such as belles ivas .'" " You may say that, mine host, you may say that !" replied the damaged Corydon, leaning heavily on his cane, — " what — they're all gone, now, eh — nobody at the ' United States ?' " " Not a soul — and here's weather like August ! — capital weather for young ladies to walk out evenings, and, for a drive to Barheight's — nothing like it ! It's a sin, /say, to pass such weather in the city ! Why shouldn't they come to the springs in the Indian summer, Mr. B ?" Coming events seemed to have cast their shadows before. As Boniface turned his eyes instinctively toward the sand hill, whose cloud of dust was the precursor of new pilgrims to the waters, and the sign for the black boy to ring the bell of arrival, behold, on its summit, gleaming through the nebulous pyramid, like a lobster through the steam of the fisherman's pot, one of the red coaches of " the People's Line." And another! And another! And another! Down the sandy descent came the first, while the driver's horn, intermittent with the crack of his whip, set to bobbing every pine cone of the adjacent wil- derness. »« p rrr — ru — te — too — toot — pash! — crack ! — snap ! — prrrr — r — rut — rut — xxui ! ! G'lang ! — Hip !" Boniface laid his hand on the pull of the porter's bell, but the thought flashed through his mind that he might have been dreaming — was he awake ? And, marvel upon wonder ! — a horn of arrival from the other end of the village ! And as he turned his eyes in that direction, he saw the dingier turnouts from Lake Sacrament — extras, wagons — every variety of rattletrap conveyance — pouring in like an Irish funeral on the return, and making (oh, climax more satisfactory !) straight, all, for Conijress Hall ! Events now grew precipitate — Ladies were helped out with green veils — parasols and baskets were handed after them — baggage was chalked and distributed — (and parasols, baskets, and baggage, be it noted, were all of the complexion that innkeepers love, the indefinable look which betrays the owner's addictedness to extras) — and now there was ringing of bells ; and there were orders for the woodcocks to be dressed with pork chemises, and for the champagne to be iced, the sherry not — and through the arid corridors of Congress hall floated a delicious toilet air of cold cream and lavender — and ladies' maids came down to press out white dresses, while the cook heated the curling irons — and up and down the stairs flitted, with the blest confusion of other days, boots and iced sangarees, hot water, towels, and mint-juleps — all delightful, but all incomprehen- sible ! Was the summer encored, or had the Jews gone back to Jerusalem? To the keeper of Con- gress hall the restoration of the millenium would have been a rush-light to this second advent of fun-and- fashion-dom ! Thus far we have looked through the eyes of the person (pocket-ually speaking) most interested in the singular event we wished to describe. Let us now j (tea being over, and your astonishment having had l time to breathe) take the devil's place at the elbow ot the invalided dandy beforementioned, and follow him over to Congress Hall. It was a mild night and, as I said before (or meant to, if I did not), August, having been prematurely cut off by his raining successor, seemed up again, like Hamlet's governor, and bent on 1 walking out his time. Rice (you remember Rice — famous for his lemon- ades with a corrective) — Rice, having nearly ignited his forefinger with charging wines at dinner, was out to cool on the colonnade, and B , not strong enough to stand about, drew a chair near the drawing- room window, and begged the rosy barkeeper to throw what light he could upon this multitudinous appari- tion. Rice could only feed the fire of his wonder with the fuel of additional circumstances. Coaches had been arriving from every direction till the house was full. The departed black band had been stopped at Albany, and sent back. There seemed no married people in the party — at least, judging by dress and flirtation. Here and there a belle, a little on the wane, but all most juvenescent in gayety, and (Rice THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 343 thought) handsomer girls than had been at Congress hall since the days of the Albany regency (the regency of beauty), ten years ago ! Indeed, it struck Rice that he had seen the faces of these lovely girls before, though they whom he thought they resembled had long since gone off the stage— grandmothers, some of them, now! Rice had been told, also, that there was an extraor- dinary and overwhelming arrival of children and nurses at the Pavilion Hotel, but he thought the eport smelt rather like a jealous figment of the Pavilioners. Odd, if true — that's all ! Mr. ft had taken his seat on the colonnade, as Shakspere expresses it, "about cock-shut time" — twilight — and in the darkness made visible of the rooms within, he could only distinguish the outline of some very exquisite, and exquisitely plump figures gliding to and fro, winged, each one, with a pair of rather stoutish, but most attentive admirers. As the curfew hour stole away, however, the ladies stole away with it, to dress; and at ten o'clock the sudden out- break of the full band in a mazurka, drew Mr. B 's attention to the dining-room frontage of the i colonnade, and, moving his chair to one of the win- ! dows, the cockles of his heart warmed to see the ! orchestra in its glory of old — thirteen black Orpheuses j perched on a throne of dining-tables, and the black veins on their shining temples strained to the crack of mortality with their zealous execution. The waiters, meantime, were lighting the tinBriareus (that spermaciti monster so destructive to broadcloth), and the side-sconces and stand-lamps, and presently a blaze of light flooded the dusty evergreens of the facade, and nothing was wanting but some fashionable Curtius to plunge first into the void — some adventu- rous Benton, " to set the ball in motion." Wrapped carefully from the night-air in his cloak and belcher, B sat, looking earnestly into the room, and to his excited senses there seemed, about all this supplement to the summer's gayety, a weird mysteriousness, an atmosphere of magic, which was observable, he thought, even in the burning of the candles! And as to Johnson, the sable leader of the band — " God's-my-Iife," as Bottom says, how like a tormented fiend writhed the cremona betwixt his chin and white waistcoat! Such music, from instruments so vexed, had never split the ears of the Saratoga groundlings since the rule of Saint Dominick (in whose hands even wine sparkled to song) — no, not since the golden age of the Springs, when that lord of harmony and the nabobs of lower Broadway made, of Congress hall, a paradise for the unmarried ? Was Johnson bewitched ? Was Congress hall repossessed by the spirits of the past ? If ever Mr. B , sitting in other years on that resounding colonnade, had felt the magnetic atmosphere of people he knew to be up staus, he felt it now ! If ever he had been contented, knowing that certain bright creatures would presently glide into the visual radius of black Johnson, he felt contented, inexplicably, from the same cause now — expecting, as if such music could only be Oieir herald, the entrance of the same bright creatures, no older, and as bright after years of matrimony. And now and then B pressed his hand to his head — for he was not quite sure that he might not be a little wandering in his mind. But suddenly the band struck up a march! The first bar was played through, and B looked at the door, sighing that this sweet hallucination — this waking dream of other days — was now to be scattered by reality He could have filliped that mercenary Ethiopian < n the nose for playing such music to such falling off from the past as he now looked to see enter. A lady crossed the threshold on a gentleman's arm. " Ha ! ha !" said B , trying with a wild effort to laugh, and pinching his arm into a blood-blister, " come — this is too good ! Helen K ! oh, no ! Not quite crazy yet, I hope — not so far gone yet ! Yet it is ! I swear it is! And not changed either ! Beautiful as ever, by all that is wonderful! Psha ! I'll not be mad ! Rice ! — are you there ? Why, who are these coming after her? Julia L ! Anna K , and my friend Fanny ! The D s ! The M s! Nay, I'm dreaming, silly fool that I am ! I'll call for a light ! Waiter ! ! Where the devil's the bell ?" And as poor B insisted on finding himself in bed, reached out his hand to find the bell-pull, one of the waiters of Congress hall came to his summons. The gentleman wanted nothing, and the waiter thought he had cried out in his nap ; and rather embarrassed to explain his wants, but still unconvinced of his freedom from dream-land, B drew his hat over his eyes, and his cloak around him, and screwed up his courage to look again into the enchanted ball- room. The quadrilles were formed, and the lady at the head of the first set was spreading her skirts for the avant-deux. She was a tall woman, superbly hand- some, and moved with the grace of a frigate at sea with a nine-knot breeze. Eyes capable of taking in lodgers (hearts, that is to say) of any and every calibre and quality, a bust for a Cornelia, a shape all love and lightness, and a smile like a temptation of Eblis— there she was — and there were fifty like her — not like her, exactly, either, but of her constellation — belles, every one of them, who will be remembered by old men, and used for the disparagement of degenerated younglings — splendid women of Mr. B 's time, and of the palmy time of Congress hall — " The past— the past — the past !" Out on your staring and unsheltered lantern of brick — your " United States hotel," stiff, modern, and promiscuous ! Who ever passed a comfortable hour in its glaring cross-lights, or breathed a gentle senti- ment in its unsubdued air and townish open-to-dusti- ness ! What is it to the leafy dimness, the cool shad- ows, the perpetual and pensive dcmi-jour — what to the ten thousand associations — of Congress hall ! Who has not lost a heart (or two) on the boards of that primitive wilderness of a colonnade ! Whose first adorations, whose sighs, hopes, strategies, and flirta- tions, are not ground into that warped and slipper- polished floor, like heartache and avarice into the bricks of Wall street! Lord bless you, madam! don't desert old Congress hall ! We have done going to the Springs — {we) — and wouldn't go there again for anything, but a good price for a pang — (that is, except to see such a sight as we are describing) — but we can not bear, in our midsummer flit through the Astor, to see charming girls bound for Saratoga, and hear no talk of Congress hall ! What ! no lounge on those proposal sofas — no pluck at the bright green leaves of those luxuriant creepers while listening to " the voice of the charmer" — no dawdle on the steps to the spring (mamma gone on before) — no hunting for that glow-worm in the shrubbery by the music- room — no swing — no billiards — no morning gossips with the few privileged beaux admitted to the up- stairs entry, ladies' wing ? « I'd sooner be set quick i' the earth. And bowled to death with turnips,' than assist or mingle in such ungrateful forgetfulnesa of pleasure-land ! But what do we with a digression in a ghost-story ? The ball went on. Champagne of the " exploded color (pink) was freely circulated between the dances— (rosy wine suited to the bright days when all things were tinted rose)— and wit, exploded, too, in these 344 THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. leaden times, went round with the wine; and as a glass of the bright vintage was handed up to old Johnson, B stretched his neck over the window- sill in an agony of expectation, confident that the black ghost, if ghost he were, would fail to recognise the leaders of fashion, as he was wont of old, and to bow respectfully to them before drinking in their pres- ence. Oh, murder ! not he ! Down went his black poll to the music-stand, and up, and down again, and at every dip, the white roller of that unctuous eye was brought to bear upon some well-remembered star of the ascendant ! He saw them as B did ! He was not playing to an unrecognised company of late- comers to Saratoga — anybodies from any place! He, the unimaginative African, believed evidently that they were there in flesh — Helen, the glorious, and all her fair troop of contemporaries ! — and that with them had come back their old lovers, the gay and gallant j Lotharios of the time of Johnson's first blushing | honors of renown ! The big drops of agonized horror | and incredulity rolled off the forehead of Mr. B ! But suddenly the waiters radiated to the side-doors, and with the celestial felicity of star-rising and mor- ning-breaking, a waltz was found playing in the ears of the revellers ! Perfect, yet when it did begin ! Waltzed every brain and vein, waltzed every swim- ming eye within the reach of its magic vibrations ! Gently away floated couple after couple, and as they circled round to his point of observation, B could have called every waltzer by name — but his heart was in his throat, but his eyeballs were hot with the stony immovableness of his long gazing. Another change in the music ! Spirits of bedevil- ment ! could not that waltz have been spared ! Boni- face stood waltzing his head from shoulder to shoulder — Rice twirled the head-chambermaid in the entry — the black and white boys spun round on the colonnade — the wall-flowers in the ball-room crowded their chairs to the wall — the candles flared embracingly — ghosts or no ghosts, dream or hallucination, B could endure no more ! He flung off his cloak and hat, and jumped in at the window. The divine Emily C had that moment risen from tying her shoe. With a nod to her partner, and a smile to herself, B encircled her round waist, and away he flew like Ariel, light on the toe, but his face pallid and wild, and his emaciated legs playing like sticks in his unfilled trousers. Twice he made the circuit of the room, exciting apparently less surprise than pleasure by his sudden appearance ; then, with a wavering halt, and his hand laid tremulously to his forehead, he flew at the hall-door at a tangent, and rushing through servants and spectators, dashed across the portico, and disappeared in the darkness ! A fortnight's brain-fever deprived him of the opportunity of repeating this re- markable flourish, and his subsequent sanity was es- tablished through some critical hazard. There was some inquiry at supper about " old B ," but the lady who waltzed with him knew as little of his coming and going as the managers; and, by one belle, who had been at some trouble in other days to quench his ardor, it was solemnly be- lieved to be his persevering apparition. The next day there was a drive and dinner at Bar- height's, and back in time for ball and supper; and the day after there was a most hilarious and memora- ble fishing-party to Saratoga lake, and all back again in high force for the ball and supper; and so like a long gala-day, like a short summer carnival, all frolic, sped the week away. Boniface, by the third day, had rallied his recollections, and with many a scrape and compliment, he renewed his acquaintance with the belles and beaux of a brighter period of beauty and gallantry. And if there was any mystery remaining in the old functionary's mind as to the identity and miracle of their presence and reunion, it was on the one point of the ladies' unfaded loveliness — for, saving a half inch aggregation in the waist, which was rather an improvement than otherwise, and a little more ful- ness in the bust, which was a most embellishing dif- ference, the ten years that had gone over them had made no mark on the lady portion of his guests ; and as to the gentlemen — but that is neither here nor there. They were "men of mark," young or old, and their wear and tear is, as Flute says, " a thing of naught." It was revealed by the keeper of the Pavilion, after the departure of the late-come revellers of Congress hall, that there had been constant and secret visita- tions by the belles of the latter sojourn, to the numer- ous infantine lodgers of the former. Such a troop of babies and boys, and all so lovely, had seldom gladdened even the eyes of angels, out of the cheru- bic choir (let alone the Saratoga Pavilion), and though, in their white dresses and rose-buds, the belles afore spoken of looked like beautiful elder sisters to those motherless younglings, yet when they came in, moth- ers confessed, on the morning of departure, openly to superintend the preparations for travel, they had so put off the untroubled maiden look from their coun- tenances, and so put on the indescribable growing- old-iness of married life in their dress, that, to the eye of an observer, they might well have passed for the mothers of the girls they had themselves seemed to be, the day before, only. Who devised, planned, and brought about, this prac- tical comment on the needlessness of the American haste to be old, we are not at liberty to mention. The reader will have surmised, however, that it was some one who had observed the more enduring quality of beauty in other lands, and on returning to his own, looked in vain for those who, by every law of nature, should be still embellishing the society of which he had left them the budding flower and ornament. To get them together again, only with their contempora- ries, in one of their familiar haunts of pleasure — to suggest the exclusion of everything but youthfulness in dress, amusement, and occupation — to bring to meet them their old admirers, married like themselves, but entering the field once more for their smiles against their rejuvenescent husbands — to array them as belles again, and see whether it was any falling off in beauty or the power of pleasing which had driven them from their prominent places in social life — this was the ob- vious best way of doing his immediate circles of friends the service his feelings exacted of him; the only way, indeed, of convincing these bright creatures that they had far anticipated the fading hour of bloom and youthfulness. Pensez-y ! BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS. 345 BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS, The guests at the Astor House were looking mourn- fully out of the drawing-room windows, on a certain rainy day of an October passed over to history. No shopping — no visiting! The morning must be passed in-doors. And it was some consolation to those who were in town for a few days to see the world, that their time was not quite lost, for the assemblage in the large drawing-room was numerous and gay. A very dressy affair is the drawing-room of the Astor, and as full of eyes as a peacock's tail — (which, by the way, is also a very dressy affair). Strangers who wish to see and be seen (and especially "be seen") on rainy days, as well as on sunny days, in their visits to New York, should, as the phrase goes, " patronize" the Astor. As if there was any patronage in getting the worth of your money ! Well — the people in the drawing-room looked a little out of the windows, and a great deal at each other. Unfortunately, it is only among angels and underbred persons that introductions can be dispensed with, and as the guests of that day at the Astor House were mostly strangers to each other, conversation was very fitful and guarded, and any movement whatever extremely conspicuous. There were four very silent ladies on the sofa, two very silent ladies in each of the windows, silent ladies on the ottomans, silent ladies in the chairs at the corners, and one silent lady, very highly dressed, sitting on the music-stool, with her back to the piano. There was here and there a gen- tleman in the room, weather-bound and silent; but we have only to do with one of these, and with the last-mentioned much-embellished young lady. " Well, I can't sit on this soft chair all day, cousin Meg !" said the gentleman. " 'Sh ! — call me Margaret, if you must speak so loud," said the lady. "And what would you do out of doors this rainy day ? I'm sure it's very pleasant here." «• Not for me. I'd rather be thrashing in the barn. But there must be some 'rainy-weather work' in the city as well as the country. There's some fun, / know, that's kept for a wet day, as we keep corn-shelling and grinding the tools." " Dear me!" "Well — what now?" " Oh, nothing ! — but I do wish you wouldn't bring the stable with you to the Astor House." The gentleman slightly elevated his eyebrows, and took a leaf of music from the piano, and commenced diligently reading the mystic dots and lines. We have ten minutes to spare before the entrance of another person upon the scene, and we will make use of the silence to conjure up for you, in our mag;ic mirror, the semblance of the two whose familiar dialogue we have just jotted down. Miss Margaret Pifflit was a young lady who had a large share of what the French call la beaute du dia- ble— youth and freshness. (Though, why the devil should have the credit of what never belonged to him, it takes a Frenchman, perhaps, to explain.) To look at, she was certainly a human being in very high per- fection. Her cheeks were like two sound apples; her waist was as round as a stove-pipe ; her shoulders had two dimples just at the back, that looked as if they defied punching to make them any deeper; her eyes looked as if they were just made, they were so bright and new ; her voice sounded like " C sharp" in a new piano ; and her teeth were like a fresh break in a cocoa-nut. She was inexorably, unabatedly, despe rately healthy. This fact, and the difficulty of uniting all the fashions of all the magazines in one dress, were her two principal afflictions in this world of care. She had an ideal model, to which she aspired with constant longings — a model resembling in figure the high-born creatures whose never-varied face is seen in all the plates of fashion, yet, if possible, paler and more disdainful. If Miss Pifflit could have bent her short wrist with the curve invariably given to the well- gloved extremities of that mysterious and nameless beauty ; if she could but have sat with her back to her friends, and thrown her head languhhingly over her shoulder without dislocating her neck; if she could but have protruded from the flounce of her dress a foot more like a mincing little muscle-shell, and less like a jolly fat clam ; in brief, if she could have drawn out her figure like the enviable joints of a spy-glass, whittled off more taperly her four extremi- ties, sold all her uproarious and indomitable roses for a pot of carmine, and compelled the publishers of the magazines to refrain from the distracting multiplicity of their monthly fashions — with these little changes in her allotment, Miss Pifflit would have realized all her maiden aspirations up to the present hour. A glimpse will give you an idea of the gentleman in question. He was not much more than he looked to be — a compact, athletic young man of twenty- one, with clear, honest blue eyes, brown face, where it was not shaded by the rim of his hat, curling brown hair, and an expression of fearless qualities, dashed just now by a tinge of rustic bashfulness. His dress was a little more expensive and gayer than was necessary, and he wore his clothes in a way which betrayed that he would be more at home in shirt-sleeves. His hands were rough, and his attitude that of a man who was accustomed to fling himself down on the nearest bench, or swing his legs from the top rail of a fence, or the box of a wagon. We speak with caution of his rusticity, however, for he had a printed card, " Mr. Ephraim Bracely," and he was a subscriber to the " Spirit of the Times." We shall find time to say a thing or two about him as we get on. "Eph." Bracely and "Meg" Pifflit were "enga- ged." With the young lady it was, as the French say, faute de mieux, for her beau-ideal (or, in plain English, her ideal beau) was a tall, pale young gentle- man, with white gloves, in a rapid consumption. She and Eph. were second cousins, however, and as she was an orphan, and had lived since childhood with his father, and, moreover, had inherited the Pifflit farm, which adjoined that of the Bracelys, and, moreover, | had been told to " kiss her little husband, and love him always" by the dying breath of her mother, and (moreover third) had been " let be" his sweetheart by the unanimous consent of the neighborhood, why, it seemed one of those matches made in Heaven, and not intended to be travestied on earth. It was under- stood that they were to be married as soon as the young man's savings should enable him to pull down the old Pifflit house and build a cottage, and, with a fair season, that might be done in another year. Meantime, Eph. wa9 a loyal keeper of his troth, though never having the trouble to win the young 346 BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS. lady, he was not fully aware of the necessity of court- ship, whether or no ; and was, besides, somewhat un- susceptible of the charms of moonlight, after a hard day's work at haying or harvesting. The neighbors thought it proof enough of his love that he never " went sparking" elsewhere, and as he would rather talk of his gun or his fishing-rod, his horse or his crop, pigs, politics, or anything else, than of love or matrimony, his companions took his engagement with his cousin to be a subject upon which he felt too deeply to banter, and they neither invaded his domain by attentions to his sweetheart, nor suggested thought by allusions to her. It was in the progress of this even tenor of engagement, that some law business had called old Farmer Bracely to New York, and the young couple had managed to accompany him. And of course nothing would do for Miss Pifflit but " the Astor." And now, perhaps, the reader is ready to be told whose carriage is at the Vesey street door, and who sends up a dripping servant to inquire for Miss Pifflit. It is allotted to the destiny of every country-girl to have one fashionable female friend in the city — some- body to correspond with, somebody to quote, some- body to write her the particulars of the last elopement, somebody to send her patterns of collars, and the rise and fall of tournures, and such other things as are not entered into by the monthly magazines. How these apparently unlikely acquaintances are formed, is as much a mystery as the eternal youth of post-boys, and the eternal duration of donkeys. Far be it from me to pry irreverently into those pokerish corners of the machinery of the world. I go no farther than the fact, that Miss Julia Hampson was an acquaintance of Miss Pifflit's. Everybody knows "Hampson and Co." Miss Hampson was a good deal what the Fates had tried to make her. If she had not been admirably well dressed, it would have been by violent opposition to the united zeal and talent of dressmakers and mil- liners. These important vicegerents of the Hand that reserves to itself the dressing of the butterfly and lily, make distinctions in the exercise of their voca- tion. Wo be to an unloveable woman, if she be not endowed with taste supreme. She may buy all the stuffs of France, and all the colors of the rainbow, but she will never get from those keen judges of fit- ness the loving hint, the admiring and selective per- suasion, with which they delight to influence the embellishment of sweetness and loveliness. They who talk of " anything's looking well on a pretty woman," have not reflected on the lesser providence of dressmakers and milliners. Woman is never mer- cenary but in monstrous exceptions, and no trades- woman of the fashion will sell taste or counsel; and, in the superior style of all charming women, you see, not the influence of manners upon" dress, but the af- fectionate tribute of these dispensers of elegance to the qualities they admire. Let him who doubts, go shopping with his dressy old aunt to-day, and to-mor- row with his dear little cousin. Miss Hampson, to whom the supplies of elegance came as naturally as bread and butter, and occasioned as little speculation as to the whence or how, was as unconsciously elegant, of course, as a well-dressed lily. She was abstractly a very beautiful girl, though in a very delicate and unconspicuous style ; and by dint of absolute fitness in dressing, the merit of her beauty, by common observers at least, would be half given to her fashionable air and unexceptionable toilet. The damsel and her choice array, indeed, seemed the harmonious work of the same maker. How much was nature's gift, and how much was bought in Broad- way, was probably never duly understood by even her most discriminate admirer. But we have kept Miss Hampson too long upon the stairs. The two young ladies met with a kiss, in which (to the surprise of those who had previously observed Miss Mifflit) there was no smack of the latest fashion. "My dear Julia!" " My dear Margerine!" (This was a romantic va- riation of Meg's, which she had forced upon her intimate friends at the point of the bayonet.) Eph. twitched, remindingly, the jupon of his cousin, and she introduced him with the formula which she had found in one of Miss Austin's novels. " Oh, but there was a mock respectfulness in that deep courtesy," thought Eph. (and so there was — for Miss Hampson took an irresistible cue from the in- flated ceremoniousness of the introduction). Eph. made a bow as cold and stiff as a frozen horse- blanket. And if he could have commanded the blood in his face, it would have been as dignified and resentful as the eloquence of Red Jacket — but that rustic blush, up to his hair, was like a mask dropped over his features. "A bashful country-boy," thought Miss Hampson, as she looked compassionately upon his red hot fore- head, and forthwith dismissed him entirely from her thoughts. With a consciousness that he had better leave the room, and walk off his mortification under an um- brella, Eph. took his seat, and silently listened to the conversation of the young ladies. Miss Hampson had come to pass the morning with her friend, and she took off her bonnet, and showered down upon her dazzling neck a profusion of the most adorable brown ringlets. Spite of his angry humiliation, the young farmer felt a thrill run through his veins as the heavy curls fell indolently about her shoulders. He had j never before looked upon a woman with emotion. He hated her — oh, yes ! for she had given him a look I that could never be forgiven — but for somebody, she must be the angel of the world. Eph. would have given all his sheep and horses, cows, crops, and hay- stacks, to have seen the man she would fancy to be { her equal. He could not give even a guess at the height of that conscious superiority from which she individually looked down upon him; but it would have satisfied a thirst which almost made him scream, to measure himself by a man with whom she could be familiar. Where was his inferiority ? What was it? Why had he been blind to it now ? Was there no surgeon's knife, no caustic, that could carve out, or cut away, burn or scarify, the vulgarities she looked upon so contemptuously ? But the devil take her superciliousness, nevertheless! It was a bitter morning to Eph. Bracely, but still it went like a dream. The hotel parlor was no longer a stupid place. His cousin Meg had gained a con- sequence in his eyes, for she was the object of caress from this superior creature — she was the link which kept her within his observation. He was too full of other feelings just now to do more than acknowledge the superiority of this girl to his cousin. He felt it in his after thoughts, and his destiny then, for the firs' time, seemed crossed and inadequate to his wishes. ******* (We hereby draw upon your imagination for six months, courteous reader. Please allow the teller ta show you into the middle of the following July.) Bracely farm, ten o'clock of a glorious summer morning — Miss Pifflit extended upon a sofa in despair. But let us go back a little. A week before, a letter had been received from Miss Hampson, who, to the delight and surprise of her friend Margerine, had taken the whim to pass a month with her. She was at Rockaway, and was sick and tired of waltzing and the sea. Had Farmer Bracely a spare corner for a poor girl ? BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS. 347 But Miss Pifflit's "sober second thought" was utter consternalion. How to lodge fitly the elegant Julia Hampson? No French bed in the house.no bou- doir, no ottomans, no pastilles, no baths, no Psyche to dress by. What vulgar wretches they would seem to her. What insupportable horror she would feel at the dreadful inelegance of the farm. Meg was pale with terror and dismay as she went into the details of anticipation. Something must be done, however. A sleepless night of reflection and contrivance sufficed to give some shape to the capabilities of the case, and by daylight the next morning the whole house was in commotion. Meg had fortunately a large bump of constructiveness, very much enlarged by her habitual dilemmas-toilet. A boudoir must be constructed. Farmer Bracely slept in the dried apple-room, on the lower floor, and he was no sooner out of his bed than his bag and baggage were tumbled upstairs, his gun and Sunday whip were taken down from their nails, and the floor scoured, and the ceiling white- washed. Eph. was by this time returned from the village with all the chintz that could be bought, and a paper of tacks, and some new straw carpeting; and by ten o'clock that night the four walls of the apartment were covered with the gayly-flowered material, the carpet was nailed down, and old Farmer Bracely thought it a mighty nice, cool-looking place. Eph. was a bit of a carpenter, and he soon knocked togeth- er some boxes, which, when covered with chintz, and stuffed with wool, looked very like ottomans; and, with a handsome cloth on the round-table, geraniums in the windows, and a chintz curtain to subdue the light, it was not far from a very charming boudoir, and Meg began to breathe more freely. But Eph. had heard this news with the blood hot in his temples. Was that proud woman coming to look I again upon him with contempt, and here, too, where | the rusticity, which he presumed to be the object of her scorn, would be a thousand times more flagrant j and visible? And yet, with the entreaty on his lip i that his cousin would refuse to receive her, his heart had checked the utterance — for an irresistible desire \ sprung suddenly within him to see her, even at the I bitter cost of tenfold his former mortification. Yet, as the preparations for receiving Miss Hamp- | son went on, other thoughts took possession of his j mind. Eph. was not a man, indeed, to come off sec- ; ond best in the long pull of wrestling with a weak- ; ness. His pride began to show its colors. He re- j membered his independence as a farmer, dependant on no man, and a little comparison between his pur- suits, and life, such as he knew it to be, in a city, soon put him, in his own consciousness at least, on a par j with Miss Hampson's connexions. This point once attained, Eph. cleared his brow, and went whistling ' about the farm as usual — receiving without reply, ! however, a suggestion of his cousin Meg's, that he had better burn his old straw hat, for, in a fit of ab- sence, he might possibly put it on while Miss Hamp- son was there. Well, it was ten o'clock on the morning after j Miss Hampson's arrival at Bracely farm, and, as we said before, Miss Pifflit was in despair. Presuming that her friend would be fatigued with her journey, i she had determined not to wake her, but to order breakfast in the boudoir at eleven. Farmer Bracely and Eph. must have their breakfast at seven, however, and what was the dismay of Meg, who was pouring out their coffee as usual, to see the elegant Julia rush into the first kitchen, courtesy very sweetly to the old man, pull up a chair to the table, apologise for being late, and end this extraordinary scene by producing two newly-hatched chickens from her bosom ! She had been up since sunrise, and out at the barn, down by the river, and up in the haymow, and was perfectly enchanted with everything, especially the dear little pigs and chickens ! "A very sweet young lady!" thought old Farmer Bracely. " Very well — but hang your condescension !" thought Eph.. distrustfully. "Mercy on me ! — to like pigs and chickens!" men- tally ejaculated the disturbed and bewildered Miss Pif- flit. But with her two chicks pressed to her breast with one hand, Miss Hampson managed her coffee and bread and butter with the other, and chattered away like a child let out of school. The air was so delicious, and the hay smelt so sweet, and the trees in the meadow were so beautiful, and there were no stiff sidewalks, and no brick houses, and no iron railings, and so many dear speckled hens, and funny little chickens, and kind-looking old cows, and colts, and calves, and ducks, and turkeys — it was delicious — it was enchanting — it was worth a thousand Saratogas and Rockaways. How anybody could prefer the city to the country, was to Miss Hampson matter of in- credulous wonder. "Will you come into the boudoir?" asked Miss Pifflit, with a languishing air, as her friend Julia rose from breakfast. "Boudoir!" exclaimed the city damsel, to the in- finite delight of old Bracely, "no, dear! I'd rather go out to the barn! Are you going anywhere with the oxen to-day, sir?" she added, going up to the gray- headed farmer caressingly, " I should so like to ride in that great cart!" Eph. was a little suspicious of all this unexpected agreeableness, but he was naturally too courteous not to give way to a lady's whims. He put on his old straw hat, and tied his handkerchief over his shoulder (not to imitate the broad riband of a royal order, but to wipe the sweat off handily while mowing), and of- fering Miss Hampson a rake which stood outside the door, he begged her to be ready when he came by with the team. He and his father were bound to the far meadow, where they were cutting hay, and would like her assistance in raking. It was a "specimen" morning, as the magazines say, for the air was temperate, and the whole country was laden with the smell of the new hay, which some- how or other, as everybody knows, never hinders or overpowers the perfume of the flowers. Oh, that winding green lane between the bushes was like an avenue to paradise. The old cart jolted along through the ruts, and Miss Hampson, standing up and holding on to old Farmer Bracely, watched the great oxen crowding their sides together, and looked off over the fields, and exclaimed, as she saw glimpses of the river between the trees, and seemed veritably and unaffectedly enchanted. The old farmer, at least, had no doubt of her sincerity, and he watched her, and listened to her, with a broad honest smile of ad- miration on his weather-browned countenance. The oxen were turned up to the fence, while the dew dried off the hay, and Eph. and his father turned to mowing, leaving Miss Hampson to ramble about over the meadow, and gather flowers by the river-side. In the course of an hour, they began to rake up, and she came to offer her promised assistance, and stoutly followed Eph. up and down several of the long swaths, t: ill 1 her face glowed under her sunbonnet as it never had glowed with waltzing. Heated and tired at last, she made herself a seat with the new hay under a large elm, and, with her back to the tree, watched the labors of her companions. Eph. was a well-built and manly figure, and all he did in the way of his vocation, he did with a fine dis- play of muscular power, and (a sculptor would have thought) no little grace. Julia watched him a* he stepped along after his rake on the elastic sward, and 348 THE WIDOW BY BREVET. she thought, for the first time, what a very handsome man was young Bracely, and how much more finely a man looked when raking hay, than a dandy when waltzing. And for an hour she sat watching his mo- tion, admiring the strength with which he pitched up the hay, and the grace and ease of all his movements and postures; and, after a while, she began to feel drowsy with fatigue, and pulling up the hay into a fra- grant pillow, she lay down and fell fast asleep. It was now the middle of the forenoon, and the old farmer, who, of late years, had fallen into the habit of taking a short nap before dinner, came to the big j elm to pick up his waistcoat and go home. As he ap- j preached the tree, he stopped, and beckoned to his son. Eph. came up and stood at a little distance, looking at the lovely picture before him. With one delicate hand under her cheek, and a smile of angelic content and enjoyment on her finely cut lips, Julia Hampson slept soundly in the shade. One small foot escaped from her dress, and one shoulder of faultless polish and whiteness showed between her kerchief and her sleeve. Her slight waist bent to the swell of the hay, throwing her delicate and well-moulded bust into high relief; and all over her neck, and in large clus- ters on the tumbled hay, lay those glossy brown ring- lets, admirably beautiful and luxuriant. And as Eph. looked on that dangerous picture of loveliness, the passion, already lying perdu in his bosom, sprung to the throne of heart and reason. (We have not room to do more than hint at the consequences of this visit of Miss Hampson to the country. It would require the third volume of a novel to describe all the emotions of that month at Bracely farm, and bring the reader, point by point, gingerly and softly, to the close. We must touch here and there a point only, giving the reader's im- agination some gleaning to do after we have been over the ground.) Eph. Bracely's awakened pride served him the good turn of making him appear simply in his natural char- acter during the whole of Miss Hampson's visit. By the old man's advice, however, he devoted himself to the amusement of the ladies after the haying was over ; and what with fishing, and riding, and scenery- hunting in the neighborhood, the young people were together from morning till night. Miss Pifflit came down unwillingly to plain Meg, in her attendance on her friend in her rustic occupations, and Miss Hamp- son saw as little as possible of the inside of the bou- doir. The barn, and the troops of chickens, and all the out-door belongings of the farm, interested her daily, and with no diminution of her zeal. She seemed, indeed, to have found her natural sphere in the simple and affectionate life which her friend Mar- gerine held in such superfine contempt; and Eph., who was the natural mate to such a spirit, and him- self, in his own home, most unconsciously worthy of love and admiration, gave himself up irresistibly to his new passion. And this new passion became apparent, at last, to the incredulous eyes of his cousin. And that it was timidly, but fondly returned by her elegant and high- bred friend, was also very apparent to Miss Pifflit. And after a few jealous struggles, and a night or two of weeping, she gave up to it tranquilly — for, a city life and a city husband, truth to say, had long been her secret longing and secret hope, and she never had fairly looked in the face a burial in the country with the "pigs and chickens." She is not married yet, Meg Pifflit — but the rich merchant, Mr. Hampson, wrecked completely with the disastrous times, has found a kindly and pleasant asylum for his old age with his daughter, Mrs. Brace ly. And a better or lovelier farmer's wife than Julia, or a happier farmer than Eph., can scarce be found in the valley of the Susquehannah. THE WIDOW BY BREVET Let me introduce the courteous reader to two la- dies. Miss Picklin, a tall young lady of twenty-one, near enough to good-looking to permit of a delusion on the subject (of which, however, she had an entire monop- oly), with cheeks always red in a small spot, lips not so red as "the cheeks, and rather thin, sharpish nose, and waist very slender; and last (not least important), a very long neck, scalded on either side into a resem- blance to a scroll of shrivelled parchment, which might or might not be considered as a wu's-fortune — serving her as a title-deed to twenty thousand dollars. The scald was inflicted, and the fortune left in consequence, by a maiden aunt who, in the babyhood of Miss Pick- lin, attempted to cure the child's sore throat by an ap- plication of cabbage-leaves steeped in hot vinegar. Miss Euphemia Picklin, commonly called Phemie — a good-humored girl, rather inclined to be fat, but gifted with several points of beauty of which she was not at all aware, very much a pet among her female friends, and admitting, with perfect sincerity and sub- mission, her sister's exclusive right to the admiration of the gentlemen of their acquaintance. Captain Isaiah Picklin, the father of these ladies, was a merchant of Salem, an importer of figs and opi- um, and once master of the brig "Simple Susan," which still plied between his warehouse and Constan- tinople — nails and codfish the cargo outward. I have not Miss Picklin's permission to mention the precise date of the events I am about to record, and leaving that point alone to the imagination of the reader, I shall set down the other particulars and impediments in her "course of true love" with historital fidelity. Ever since she had been of sufficient age to turn her attention exclusively to matrimony, Miss Picklin had nourished a presentiment that her destiny was exotic ; that the soil of Salem was too poor, and the indigenous lovers too mean; and that, potted in her twenty thou- sand dollars, she was a choice production, set aside for I flowering in a foreign clime, and destined to be trans- I planted by a foreign lover. With this secret in her | bosom, she had refused one or two gentlemen of mid- dle age, recommended by her father, beside sundry score of young gentlemen of slender revenues in her own set of acquaintances, till, if there had been any- thing beside poetry in Shakspere's assertion that it is — u Broom groves Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves," the neighboring "brush barrens" of Saugus would have sold in lots at a premium. It was possibly from the want of nightingales, to whose complaining notes the gentleman of Verona "turned his distresses," that the discarded of Salem preferred the consolations of Phemie Picklin. News to the Picklins ! Hassan Keui, the son of old THE WIDOW BY BREVET. 349 Abdoul Keui, was coming out in the " Simple Susan !" A Turk — a live Turk — a young Turk, and the son of her father's rich correspondent in Turkey ! " Ah me !" thought Miss Picklin. The captain himself was rather taken aback. He had known old Abdoul for many years, had traded and smoked with him in the cafes of Galata, had gone out with him on Sundays to lounge on the tombstones at Scutari, and had never thought twice about his yellow gown and red trowsers ; but what the deuce would be thought of them in Salem? True, it was his son; but a Turk's clothes descend from father to son through three generations ; he knew that, from re- membering this very boy all but smothered in a sort of saffron blanket, with sleeves like pillowcases — his first assumption of the toga virilis (not that old Picklin knew Latin, but such was "his sentiment better ex- pressed"). Then he had never been asked to the house of the Stamboul merchant, not introduced to his wives nor his daughters (indeed, he had forgotten that old Keui was near cutting his throat for asking after them) — but of course it was very different in Sa- lem. Young Keui must be the Picklin guest, fed and lodged, and the girls would want to give him a tea- party. Would he sit on a chair, or want cushions on the floor ? Would he come to dinner with his breast bare, and leave his boots outside ? Would he eat rice pudding with his fingers ? Would he think it inde- cent if the girls didn't wear linen cloths, Turkey fash- ion, over their mouths and noses ? Would he bring his pipes ? Would he fall on his face and say his prayers four times a day, wherever he should be (with a clean place handy)? What would the neighbors say ? The captain worked himself into a violent per- spiration with merely thinking of all this. The Salemites have a famous museum, and know "what manner of thing is your crocodile;" but a live Turk consigned to Captain Picklin ! It set the town in a fever ! It would leave an indelicate opening for a conjec- ture as to Miss Picklin's present age, were I to state whether or not the arrival of the "Simple Susan" was reported by telegraph. She ran in with a fair wind one Sunday morning, and was immediately boarded by the harbor-master and Captain Picklin ; and there, true to the prophetic boding of old Isaiah, the young Turk sat cross-legged on the quarter-deck, in a white tur- ban and scarlet et ceteras, smoking his father's identical pipe — no other, the captain would have taken his oath ! Up rose Hassan, when informed who was his visiter, and taking old Picklin's hand, put it to his forehead. The weather-stained sea-captain had bleached in the counting-house, and he had not, at first sight remem- bered the old friend of his father. He passed the pipe into Isaiah's hand and begged him to keep it as a me- mento of Abdoul, for his father had died at the last Ramazan. Hassan had come out to see the world, and secure a continuance of codfish and good-will from the house of Picklin, and the merchant got astride the tiller of his old craft, and smoked this news through his amber-mouthed legacy, while the youth went be- low to get ready to go ashore. The reader of course would prefer to share the first impressions of the ladies as to the young Mussulman's personal appearance, and I pass at once, therefore, to their disappointment, surprise, mortification, and vex- ation; when, as the bells were ringing for church, the front door opened, their father entered, and in followed a young gentleman in frockcoat and trowsers ! Yes, and in his hand a hat — a black hat — and on his feet no yellow boots, but calfskin, mundane and common calf- skin, and with no shaved head, and no twisted shawl around his waist ; nothing to be seen but a very hand- some young man indeed, with teeth like a fresh slice of cocoa-nut meat, and a very deliberate pronunciation to his bad English. Miss Picklin's disappointment had to be slept upon, for she had made great outlay of imagination upon the pomp and circumstance of wedding a white Othello in the eyes of wondering Salem; but Phemie's surprise took but five minutes to grow into a positive pleasure; and never suspecting, at any time, that she was visible to the naked eye during the eclipsing presence of her sister, she sat with a very admiring smile upon her lips, and her soft eyes fixed earnestly on the stranger, till she had made out a full inventory of his features, proportions, manners, and other stuff available in dream-land. What might be Hassan's impression of the young ladies, could not be gathered from his man- ner; for, in the first place, there was the reserve which belonged to him as a Turk, and, in the second place, there was a violation of all oriental notions of modesty in their exposing their chins to the masculine obser- vation; and though he could endure the exposure, it was of course with that diffidence of gaze which ac- companies the consciousness of improper objects — adding to his demeanor another shade of timidity. Miss Picklin's shoulders were not invaded quite to the limits of terra cognita by the cabbage-leaves which had exercised such an influence on her destiny; and as the scalds somewhat resembled two maps of South America (with Patagonia under each ear), she usu- ally, in full dress, gave a clear view of the surrounding ocean — wisely thinking it better to have the geogra- phy of her disfigurement well understood, than, by covering a small extremity (as it were the isthmus of Darien), to leave an undiscovered North America to the imagination. She appeared accordingly at dinner in a costume not likely to diminish the modest embar- rassment of Mr. Keui (as she chose to call him) — ex- tremely decollete, in a pink silk dress with short sleeves, and in a turban with a gold fringe — the latter, of course, out of compliment to his country. "Money is power," even in family circles, and it was only Miss Picklin who exercised the privilege of full dress at a mid-day dinner. Phemie came to table dressed as at breakfast, and if she felt at all envious of her sister's pink gown and elbows to match, it did*not appear in her pleasant face or sisterly attention. The captain would allow anything, and do almost anything, for his rich daughter; but as to dining with his coat on, in hot weather, company or no company, he would rather — '•' be set quick i' the earth, And bowled to death with turnips" — though that is not the way he expressed it. The parti carre, therefore (for there was no Mrs. Picklin), was, in the matter of costume, rather incongruous, but, as the Turk took it for granted that it was all according to the custom of the country, the carving was achieved by the shirt-sleeved captain, and the pudding "helped" by his bare-armed daughter, with no particular com- motion in the elements. Earthquakes do not invaria- bly follow violations of etiquette — particularly where nobody is offended. After the first day, things took their natural course — as near as they were able. Hassan was not very quick at conversation, always taking at least five min- utes to put together for delivery a sentence of Eng- lish, but his laugh did not hang fire, nor did his nods and smiles; and where ladies are voluble (as ladies sometimes are), this paucity of ammunition on the gentleman's part is no prelude to discomfiture. Then Phemie had a very fair smattering of Italian, and that being the business language of the Levant, Hassan took refuge in it whenever brought to a stand-still in English— a refuge, by the way, of which he seemed inclined to avail himself oftener than was consistent with Miss Picklin's exclusive property in his atten- tion. Rebellious though Hassan might secretly have been to this authority over himself, Phemie was no ac- complice, natural modesty combining with the long 350 THE WIDOW BY BREVET habit of subserviency to make her even anticipate the exactions of the heiress; and so Miss Picklin had 41 Mr. Keui" principally to herself, promenading him through the streets of Salem, and bestowing her sweetness upon him from his morning entrance to his evening exit; Phemie relieving guard very cheerfully, while her sister dressed for dinner. It was possibly from being permitted to converse in Italian during this half hour, that Hassan made it the only part of the day in which he talked of himself and his house on the Bosphorus, but that will not account also for Phe- mie's sighing while she listened — never having sighed before in her life, not even while the same voice was talking English to her sister. Without going into a description of the Picklin tea- party, at which Hassan was induced to figure in his oriental costume, while Miss Picklin sat by him on a cushion, turbaned and (probably) cross-legged, a la Sultana, and without recording other signs satisfac- tory to the Salemites, that the young Turk had fallen to the scalded heiress — " As does the ospray to the fish, that takes it, By sovereignty of nature" - I must come plump to the fact that, on the Monday following (one week after his arrival), Hassan left Sa- lem, wnaccompanied by Miss Picklin. As he had asked for no private interview in the best parlor, and had made his final business arrangements with the captain, so that he could take passage from New York without returning, some people were inclined to fancy that Miss Picklin's demonstrations with regard to him had been a little premature. And "some people" chose to smile. But it was reserved for Miss Picklin to look round in church, in about one year from this event, and have her triumph over "some people;" for she was about to sail for Constantinople — "sent for," as the captain rudely expressed it. But I must explain. The "Simple Susan" came in, heavily freighted with a consignment from the house of Keui to Picklin & Co., and a letter from the American consul at Con- stantinople wrapped in the invoice. With the careful and ornate wording of an official epistle, it stated that Effendi Hassan Keui had called on the consul, and partly from the mistrust of his ability to express him- self in English on so delicate a subject, but more par- ticularly for the sake of approaching the object of his affections with proper deference and ceremony, he had requested that officer to prepare a document convey- ing a proposal of marriage to the daughter of Captain Picklin. The incomplete state of his mercantile ar- rangements, while at Salem the previous year, would account for his silence on the subject at that time, but he trusted that his preference had been sufficiently manifest to the lady of his heart ; and as his prosper- ity in business depended on his remaining at Constan- tinople, enriching himself only for her sake, he was sure that the singular request appended to his offer would be taken as a mark of his prudence rather than as a presumption. The cabin of the " Simple Susan," as Captain Picklin knew, was engaged on her next pas- sage to Constantinople by a party of missionaries, male and female, and the request was to the intent that, in case of an acceptance of his offer, the fair daughter of the owner would come out, under their sufficient pro- tection, to be wedded, if she should so please, on the day of her arrival in the "Golden Horn." As Miss Picklin had preserved a mysterious silence on the subject of " Mr. Keui's" attentions since his departure, and as a lady with twenty thousand dollars in her own right is, of course, quite independent of parental control, the captain, after running his eye hastily through the document, called to the boy who was weighing out a quintal of codfish, and bid him wrap the letter in a brown paper and run with it to Miss Picklin — taking it for granted that she knew more about the matter than he did, and would explain it all, when he came home to dinner. In thinking the matter over, on his way home, it occurred to old Picklin that it was worded as if he had but one daughter. At any rate, he was quite sure that neither of his daughters was particularly specified, either by name or age. No doubt it was all right, however. The girls understood it. "So, it's you, miss!" he said, as Miss Picklin look- ed round from the turban she was trying on before the glass. " Certainly, pa ! who else should it be ?" And there ended the captain's doubts, for he never again got sight of the letter, and the turmoil of prep- aration for Miss Picklin's voyage, made the house anything but a place for getting answers to impertinent questions. Phemie, whom the news had made silent and thoughtful, let drop a hint or two that she would like to see the letter ; but a mysterious air, and "La ' child, you wouldn't understand it," was check enough for her timid curiosity, and she plied her needle upon her sister's wedding dress with patient submission. The preparations for the voyage went on swimming- ly. The missionaries were written to, and willingly consented to chaperon Miss Picklin over the seas, provided her union with a pagan was to be sanctified with a Christian ceremonial. Miss Picklin replied with virtuous promptitude that the cake for the wed- ding was already soldered up in a tin case, and that she was to be married immediately on her arrival, under an awning on the brig's deck, and she hoped that four of the missionaries' wives would oblige her by standing up as her bridesmaids. Many square feet of codfish were unladen from the "Simple Susan" to make room for boxes and bags, and one large case was finally shipped, the contents of which had been shopped for by ladies with families — no book of orien- tal travels making any allusion to the sale of such articles in Constantinople, though, in the natural course of things, they must be wanted as much in Turkey as in Salem. The brig was finally cleared and lay off in the stream, and on the evening before the embarkation the mis- sionaries arrived and were invited to a tea-party at the Picklins. Miss Picklin had got up a little surprise for her friends with which to close the party — a " walking tableau" as she termed it, in which she should suddenly make her apparition at one door, pass through the room, and go out at the other, dressed as a sultana, with a muslin kirtle and satin trowsers. She disappeared accordingly half an hour before the breaking up ; and, conversation rather languishing in her absence, the eldest of the mission- aries rose to conclude the evening with a prayer, in the midst of which Miss Picklin passed through the room unperceived — the faces of the company being turned to the wall. The next morning at daylight the " Simple Susan" put to sea with a fair wind, and at the usual hour for opening the store of Picklin and Co., she had drop- ped below the horizon. Phemie sat upon the end of the wharf and watched her till she was out of sight, and the captain walked up and down between two puncheons of rum which stood at the distance of a quarter-deck's length from each other, and both father and daughter were silent. The captain had a confused thought or two besides the grief of parting, and Phemie had feelings quite as confused, which were not all made up of sorrow for the loss of her sister. Perhaps the reader will be at the trouble of spelling out their riddles while I try to let him dowD softly to the catas- trophe of my story. Without confessing to any ailment whatever, the plump Phemie paled and thinned from the day of hei sister's departure. Her spirits, too, seemed to keep THE WIDOW BY BREVET. 351 ner flesh and color company, and at the end of a month the captain was told by one of the good dames of Salem that he had better ask a physician what ailed her. The doctor could make nothing out of it except that she might be fretting for the loss of her sister, and he recommended a change of scene and climate. That day Captain Brown, an old mate of Isaiah's, dropped in to eat a family dinner and say good-by, as lie was about sailing iu the new schooner Nancy for the Black sea — his wife for his only passen- ger. Of course he would be obliged to drop anchor at Constantinople to wait for a fair wind up the Bosphorus, and part of his errand was to offer to take letters and nicknackeries to Mrs. Keui. Old Pickhn put the two things together, and over their glass of wine he proposed to Brown to take Phemie with Mrs. Brown to Constantinople, leave them both there on a visit to Mrs. Keui, till the return of the Nancy from the Black sea, and then re-embark them for Salem. Phemie came into the room just as they were touch- ing glasses on the agreement, and when the trip was proposed to her she first colored violently, then grew pale and burst into tears ; but consented to go. And, with such preparations as she could make that even- ing, she was quite ready at the appointed hour, and was off with the land-breeze the next morning, taking leave of nobody but her father. And this time the old man wiped his eyes very often before the depart- ing vessel was "hull down," and was heartily sorry he had let Phemie go without a great many presents and a great many more kisses. ******* A fine, breezy morning at Constantinople ! Rapidly down the Bosphorus shot the caique of Hassan Keui, bearing its master from his country- house at Dolma-batchi to his warehouses at Galata. Just before the sharp prow rounded away toward the Golden Horn, the merchant motioned to the caikjis to rest upon their oars, and, standing erect in the Blender craft, he strained his gaze long and with anxi- ous earnestness toward the sea of Marmora. Not a sail was to be seen coming from the west, except a man-of-war with a crescent flag at the peak, lying off toward Scutari from Seraglio point, and with a sigh that carried the cloud off his brow, Hassan gayly squatted once more to his cushions, and the caique sped merrily on. In and out, among the vessels at anchor, the airy bark threaded her way with the dex- terous swiftness of a bird, when suddenly a cable rose beneath her and lifted her half out of the water. A vessel newly-arrived was hauling in to a close anchor- age, and they had crossed her hawser as it rose to the surface. Pitched headlong into the lap of the nearest caikji, the Turk's snowy turban fell into the water and was carried by the eddy under the stern of the vessel rounding to, and as the caique was driven backward to regain it, the bareheaded owner sank back aghast— Simple Susan of Salem staring him in the face in golden capitals. " Oh! Mr. Keui ! how do you do !" cried a well- remembered voice, as he raised himself to fend off by the rudder of the brig. And there she stood within two feet of his lips— Miss Picklin in her bridal veil, waiting below in expectant modesty, and though surprised by his peep into the cabin windows, excusing it as a natural impatience in a bridegroom coming to his bride. The captain- of the Susan, meantime, had looked over the tafferel and recognised his old passenger, and Hassan, who would have given a cargo of opium for an hour to compose himself, mounted the ladder which was thrown out to him, and stepped from the gangway into Miss Picklin's arms ! She had rushed up to receive him, dressed in her muslin kirtle and satin trousers, though, with her dramatic sense of propriety, she had intended to remain below till sum- moned to the bridal. The captain, of course, kept back from delicacy, but the missionaries stood in a cluster gazing on the happy meeting, and the sailors looked over their shoulders as they heaved at the windlass. As Miss Picklin afterward remarked, "it would have been a tableau vivant if the deck had not been so very dirty ."' Hassan wiped his eyes, for he had replaced his wet turban on his head, but what with his escape from drowning, and what with his surprise and embarrass- ment (for he had a difficult part to play, as the reader will presently understand), he had lost all memory of his little stock of English. Miss Picklin drew him gently by the hand to the quarter-deck, where, under an awning fringed with curtains partly drawn, stood a table with a loaf of wedding-cake upon it, and a bottle of wine and a bible. She nodded to the Rev. Mr. Griffin, who took hold of a chair and turned it round, and placing it against his legs with the back toward him, looked steadfastly at the happy couple. "Good morning — good night — your sister — aspetta! per amor' 1 di Dio .'" cried the bewildered Hassan, giving utterance to all the English he could re- member, and seizing the bride by the arm. " These ladies are my bridesmaids," said Miss Picklin, pointing to the missionaries' wives who stood by in their bonnets and shawls. " I dare say he ex- pected my sister would come as my bridesmaid !" she added, turning to Mr. Griffin to explain the out- break as she understood it. Hassan beat his hand upon his forehead, walked twice up and down the quarterdeck, looked around over the Golden Horn as if in search of an interpreter to his feelings, and finally walked up to Miss Picklin with a look of calm resignation, and addressed to her and to the Rev. Mr. Griffin a speech of three minutes, in Italian. At the close of it he made a very cere- monious salaam, and offered his hand to the bride ; and, as no one present understood a syllable of what he had intended to convey in his address, it was re- ceived as probably a welcome to Turkey, or perhaps a formal repetition of his offer of heart and hand. At any rate, Miss Picklin took it to be high time to blush and take off her glove, and the Rev. Mr. Griffin then bent across the back of the chair, joined their hands and went through the ceremony, ring and all. The ladies came up, one after another, and kissed the bride, and the gentlemen shook hands with Hassan, who received their good wishes with a curious look of unhappy resignation, and after cutting the cake and permitting the bride to retire for a moment to calm her feelings and put on her bonnet, the bridegroom made rather a peremptory movement of departure, and the happy couple went off in the caique toward Dolma-batchi amid much waving of handkerchiefs from the missionaries, and hurrahs from the Salem hands of the Simple Susan. And now, before giving the reader a translation of the speech of Hassan before the wedding, we must go back to some little events which had taken place one month previously at Constantinople. The Nancy arrived off Seraglio Point after a very remarkable passage, having still on her quarter the northwest breeze which had stuck to her like a blood- hound ever since leaving the harbor of Salem. She had brought it with her to Constantinople indeed, for twenty or thirty vessels which had been long waiting a favorable wind to encounter the adverse current of the Bosphorus, were loosing sail and getting under way, and the pilot, knowing that the destination of the Nancy was also to the Black sea, strongly dissuaded Captain Brown from dropping anchor in the horn, with a chance of losing the good luck, and lying, per- haps a month, wind-bound in harbor. Understanding that the captain's only object in stopping was to leave the two ladies with Keui the opium-merchant, the pilot, who knew his residence at Dolma-batchi, made 352 THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. signal for a caique, and kept up the Bosphorus. Arriving opposite the little village of which Has- san's house was one of the chief ornaments, the la- dies were lowered into the caique and sent ashore — expecting of course to be received with open arms by Mrs. Keui — and then, spreading all her canvass, the swift little schooner sped on her way to Trebi- sond. Hassan sat in the little pavilion of his house which looked out on the Bosphorus, eating his piilau, for it was the noon of a holyday, and he had not been that morning to Galata. Recognising at once the sweet face of Phemie as the caique came near the shore, he flew to meet her, supposing that the " Simple Susan" had arrived, and that the lady of his love had chosen to come and seek him. The reader will understand of course that there was no " Mrs. Keui." And now to shorten my story. Mrs. Brown and Phemie were in Hassan's own house, with no other acquaintance or protector on that side of the world, and there was no possibility of escaping a true explanation. The mistake was explained, and explained to Brown's satisfaction. Phemie was the "daughter" of Captain Picklin,to whom the offer was transmitted, and as, by blessed luck, the Nancy had outsailed the Simple Susan, Providence seemed to have chosen to set right for once, the traverse of true love. The English embassy was at Burgurlu, only six miles above, on the Bosphorus, and Hassan and his mother and sisters, and Mrs. Brown and Phemie were soon on their way thither in swift caiques, and the happy couple were wedded by the English chaplain. The arrival of the Simple Susan was of course looked for, by both Hassan and his bride, with no little dis- may. She had met with contrary winds on the Atlantic, and had been caught in the Archipelago by a Levanter, and from the damage of the last she had been obliged to come to anchor off" the little island of Paros and repair. This had been a job of six weeks, and meantime the Nancy had given them the go-by, and reached Constantinople. Hassan was daily on the look-out for the brig in his trips to town, and on the morning of her arrival, his mind being put at ease for the day by his glance toward the sea of Marmora, the stumbling so suddenly and so unprepared on the object of his dread, com- pletely bewildered and unnerved him. Through all his confusion, however, and all the awkwardness of his situation, there ran a feeling of self-condemnation, as well as pity for Miss Picklin ; and this had driven him to the catastrophe described above. He felt that he owed her some reparation, and as the religion which he was educated did not forbid a plurality of wives, and there was no knowing but possibly she might be inclined to " do in Turkey as Turkeys do," he felt it incumbent on himself to state the fact of his previous marriage, and then offer her the privilege of becoming Mrs. Keui No. 2, if she chose to accept. As he had no English at his command, he stated his dilemma and made his offer in the best language he had — Italian— -and with the results the reader has been made acquainted. Of the return passage of Miss Picklin, formerly Mrs. Keui, under the charge of Captain and Mrs. Brown, in the schooner Nancy, I have never learned the particulars. She arrived at Salem in very good health, however, and has since been distinguished principally by her sympathy for widows — based on what, I can not very positively say. She resides at present in Salem with her father, Captain Picklin, who is still the consignee of the house of Keui, having made one voyage out to see the children of his daughter Phemie and strengthen the mercantile con- nexion. His old age is creeping on him, undistinguish- ed by anything except the little monomania of read- ing the letters from his son-in-law at least a hundred times, and then wafering them up over the fireplace of his counting-room — in doubt, apparently, whethei he rightly understands the contents. THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. "For, look you, he hath as many friends as enemies; which friends, sir (as it were), durst not (look you, sir) show themselves (as we term it) his friends, while he's in directitude." — Coriolanus. " Hermione. — Our praises are our wages."— Winter's Tale. F , the portrait-painter, was a considerable ally of mine at one time. His success in his art brought him into contact with many people, and he made friends as a fastidious lady buys shoes — trying on a great many that were destined to be thrown aside. It was the prompting, no doubt, of a generous quality — that of believing all people perfect till he discovered their faults — but as he cut loose without ceremony from those whose faults were not to his mind, and as ill-fitting people are not as patient of rejection as ill- fitting shoes, the quality did not pass for its full value, and his abusers were " thick as leaves in Vallambro- sa." The friends who "wore his bleeding roses," however (and of these he had his share), fought his battles quite at their own charge. What with plenty of pride, and as plentiful a lack of approbativeness, F took abuse as a duck's back takes rain — buoy- ant in the shower as in the sunshine. " Well, F !" I said, as I occupied his big chair one morning while he was at work, " there was great skirmishing about you last night at the tea-party !" " No ! — really ? Who was the enemy ?" "Two ladies, who said they travelled with you through Italy, and knew all about you — the Blid- gimses." "Oh, the dear old Blidgimses — Crinny and Nin- ny — the ungrateful monsters ! Did I ever tell you of my nursing those two old girls through the chol- era?" " No. But before you go off with a long story, tell me how you can stand such abominable back- biting? It isn't once in a way, merely! — you are their whole stock in trade, and they vilify you in ev- ery house they set foot in. The mildest part of it is criminal slander, my good fellow ! Why not do the world a service, and show that slander is actionable, though it is committed in good society ?" "Pshaw! What does it amount to? ' The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby,' and in this particular instance, the jury would prob- ably give the damages the other way — for if they THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. 353 hammer at me till doomsday, I have had my fun out of them — my quid pro quo!" " Well, preface your story by telling me where you met them. I never knew by what perverse thread you were drawn together." "A thread that might have drawn me into much more desperate extremity — a letter from the most lov- able of women, charging me to become the trusty squire of these errant damsels wherever I should en- counter them. 1 was then studying in Italy. They came to Florence, where I chanced to be, and were handed over to me without dog, cat, or waiting-maid, by a man who seemed ominously glad to be rid of them. As it was the ruralizing season, and all the world was flocking to the baths of Lucca, close by, they went there till I could get ready to undertake them — which I did, with the devotion of a courier in a new place, one fig-desiring evening of June." "Was there a delivery of the great seal?" I asked, rather amused at F 's circumstantial mention of his introitus to office. " Something very like it, indeed. I had not fairly got the blood out of my face, after making my sa- laam, when Miss Crinny Blidgims fished up from some deep place she had about her, a memorandum- book, with a well-thumbed brown paper cover, and gliding across the room, placed it in my hands as peo- ple on the stage present pocket books — with a sort of dust-flapping parabola. Now if I have any partic- ular antipathy, it is to the smell of old flannel, and as this equivocal-looking object descended before my nose — faith! But I took it. It was the account- book of the eatables and drinkables furnished to the ladies in their travels, the prices of eggs, bread, figs, et cetera, and I was to begin my duties by having up the head waiter of the lodging-house, and holding in- quisition on his charges. The Blidgimses spoke no Italian, and no servant in the house spoke English, and they were bursting for a translator to tell him that the eggs were over-charged, and that he must deduct threepence a day for wine, for they never touched it!" " ' What do the ladies wish ?' inquired the dumb- founded waiter, in civil Tuscan. '"What does he say? what does he say?' cried Miss Corinna, in resounding nasal. M ' Tell the impudent fellow what eggs are in Dutch- ess county !' peppered out Miss Katrina, very sharply. "Of course I translated with a discretion. There was rather an incongruity between the looks of the damsels and what they were to be represented as say- ing — Katrina Blidgims living altogether in a blue op- era-hat with a white feather." I interrupted F to say that the blue hat was immortal, for it was worn at the tea-party of the night before. *' I had enough of the blue hat and its bandbox be- fore we parted. It was the one lifetime extravagance of the old maid, perpetrated in Paris, and as it cov- ered the back seam of a wig (a subsequent discovery of mine), she was never without it, except when bon- neted to go out. She came to breakfast in it, mended j her stockings in it, went to parties in it. I fancy it j took some trouble to adjust it to the wig, and she de- j voted to it the usual dressing-hours of morning and i dinner; for in private she wore a handkerchief over' it, pinned under her chin, which had only to be whip- ped off when company was announced, and this, per- haps, is one of the secrets of its immaculate, yet threadbare preservation. She called it her abbo /" " Her what?" " You have heard of the famous Herbault, the man-milliner, of Paris? The bonnet was his pro- duction, and called after him with great propriety. In Italy, where people dress according to their con- dition in life, this perpetual abbo was something a la princess?, and henr* my embarrassment in explaining 23 to Jacomo, the waiter, that Signorina Katrina's high summons concerned only an overcharge of a penny in the eggs !" " And what said Jacomo ?" "Jacomo was incapable of an incivility, and begged pardon before stating that the usual practice of the house was to charge half a dollar a day for board and lodging, including a private parlor and bedroom, three meals and a bottle of wine. The ladies, however, had applied through an English gentleman (who chanced to call on them, and who spoke Italian), to have reductions made on their dispensing with two dishes of meat out of three, drinking no wine, and wanting no nuts and raisins. Their main extrava- gance was in eggs, which they ate several times a day between meals, and wished to have cooked and served up at the price per dozen in the market. On this they had held conclave below stairs, and the re- sult had not been communicated, because there was no common language ; but Jacomo wished, through me, respectfully to represent, that the reductions from j the half dollar a day should be made as requested, but that the eggs could not be bought, cooked, and served up (with salt and bread, and a clean napkin), j for just their price in the market. And on this point the ladies were obstinate. And to settle this difficulty between the high contracting parties, cost an argu- ment of a couple of hours, my first performance as translator in the service of the Blidgimses. Thence- forward, I was as necessary to Crinny and Ninny — (these were their familiar diminutives for Corinna and Katrina) — as necessary to Crinny as the gift of speech, and to Ninny as the wig and abbo put together. Obe- dient to the mandate of the fair hand which had con- signed me to them, I gave myself up to their service, even keeping in my pocket their frowsy grocery- book — though not without some private outlay in burnt vinegar. What penance a man will undergo for a pretty woman who cares nothing about him!" " But what could have started such a helpless pair of old quizzes upon their travels ?" " I wondered myself till I knew them better. Crinny Blidgims had a tongue of the liveliness of an eel's tail. It would have wagged after she was skinned and roasted. She had, beside, a kind of pinchbeck smartness, and these two gifts, and perhaps the name of Corinna, had inspired her with the idea that she was an improrisatrice. So, how could she die without going to Italy ?" " And Ninny went for company ?" " Oh, Miss Ninny Blidgims had a passion too ! She had come out to see Paris. She had heard that, in Paris, people could renew their youth, and she thought she had done it, with her abbo. She thought, too, that she must have manners to correspond. So, while travelling in her old bonnet, she blurted out her bad grammer as she had done for fifty years, but in her blue hat she simpered and frisked to the best ot her recollection. Silly as that old girl was, however she had the most pellucid set of ideas on the prices of things to eat. There was no humbugging her on that subject, even in a foreign language. She filled her pockets with apples, usually, in our walks ; and the translating between her and a street-huckster, she in her abbo and the apple-woman in Italian rags, was vexatious to endure, but very funny to remember. I have thought of painting it, but, to understand the picture, the spectator must make the acquaintance of Miss Fanny Blidgims — rather a pill for a connoisseur! But by this time you are ready to approfond, as the French aptly say, the depths of my subsequent dis- tresses. THE STORY. " I had been about a month at Lucca, when it was suddenly proposed by Crinny that we should take a 354 THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. vetturino together, and go to Venice. Ninny and she had come down to dinner with a sudden disgust for the baths — owing, perhaps, to the distinction they had received as the only strangers in the place who were not invited to the ball of a certain prince, our next-door neighbor. The Blidgimses and their economies, in fact, had become the joke of the season, and, as the interpreter in the egg-trades, I was mixed up in the omelette, and as glad to escape from my notoriety as they. So I set about looking up the conveyance with some alacrity. " By the mass, it was evidently a great saving of distance to cross the mountains to Modena. and of course a great saving of expense, as vetturinos are paid by the mile ; but the guide-books stated that the road was rough, and the inns abominable, and recom- mended to all who cared for comfort to make a circum- bendibus by the way of Florence and Bologna. Ninny declared she could live on bread and apples, however, and Crinny delighted in mountain air — in short, economy carried it, and after three days' chaf- fering with the owner of a rattletrap vettura, we set off up the banks of the Lima without the blessing of Jacomo, the head waiter. " We soon left the bright little river, and struck into the mountains, and as the carriage crept on very slowly, I relieved the horses of my weight and walked on. The ladies did the same thing whenever they came in sight of an orchard, and for the first day Ninny munched the unripe apples and seemed getting along very comfortably. The first night's lodging was execrable, but as the driver assured us it was the best on the route, we saved our tempers for the worst, and the next day began to penetrate a country that looked deserted of man, and curst with uninhabitable sterility. Its effect upon my spirits, as I walked on alone, was as depressing as the news of some trying misfortune, and I was giving it credit for one redeem- ing quality — that of an opiate to a tongue like Crinny Blidgims's — when both the ladies began to show symp- toms of illness. It was not long after noon, and we were in the midst of a waste upland, the road bending over the horizon before and behind us, and neither shed nor shelter, bush, wall, or tree, within reach of the eye. The only habitation we had seen since morn- ing was a wretched hovel where the horses were fed at noon, and the albergo, where we should pass the night, was distant several hours — a long up-hill stretch, on which the pace of the horses could not possibly be mended. The ladies were bent double in the carriage, and said they could not possibly go on. Going back was out of the question. The readiest service I could proffer was to leave them and hurry on to the inn, to prepare for their reception. " Fortunately our team was unicorn-rigged — one horse in advance of a pair. I took off the leader, and galloped away. " Well, the cholera was still lingering in Italy, and stomachs must be cholera-proof to stand a perpetual diet of green apples, even with no epidemic in the air. So I had a very clear idea of the remedies that would be required on their arrival. " At a hand-gallop I reached the albergo in a couple of hours. It was a large stone barrack, intended, no doubt, as was the road we had travelled, for military uses. A thick stone wall surrounded it, and it stood in the midst, in a pool of mud. From the last emi- nence before arriving, not another object could be descried within a horizon of twenty miles diameter, and a whitish soil of baked clay, browned here and there by a bit of scanty herbage, was foreground and middle and background to the pleasant picture. The site of the barrack had probably been determined by the only spring within many miles, and by the dryness without and the mud within the walls, it was contrived for a monopoly by the besieged. " I cantered in at the unhinged gate, and roared out ' casa !' ' cameriere !' ' botega !' till I was fright- ened at my own voice. " No answer. I threw my bridle over a projection of the stone steps, and mounted, from an empty stable which occupied the ground floor (Italian fashion), to the second story, which seemed equally uninhabited. Here were tables, however, and wooden settees, and dirty platters — the first signs of life. On the hearth was an iron pot and a pair of tongs, and with these two musical instruments I played a tune which I was sure would find ears, if ears there were on the premises. And presently a heavy foot was heard on the stair above, and with a sonorous yawn descended mine host — dirty and stolid — a goodly pat- tern of the ' fat weed on Lethe's wharf,' as you would meet in a century. He had been taking his siesta, and his wife had had a colpo di sole, and was confined helplessly to her bed. The man John was out tend- i ing sheep, and he, the host, was vicariously, cook, j waiter, and chambermaid. What might be the pleas- ! ure of il signore ? " My pleasure was, first, to see the fire kindled and the pot put over, and then to fall into a brown : study. " Two fine ladies with the cholera — two days' jour- I ney from a physician — a fat old Italian landlord for j nurse and sole counsellor — nobody who could under- i stand a word they uttered, except myself, and not a ' drug nor a ministering petticoat within available ■ limits ! Then the doors of the chambers were with- : out latches or hinges, and the little bed in each great [ room was the one article of furniture, and the house j was so still in the midst of that great waste, that all ! sounds and movements whatever, must be of common cognisance ! Should I be discharging my duty to ladies under my care to leave them to this dirty old j man ? Should I offer my own attendance as constant ! nurse, and would the service be accepted ? How, in j the name of Robinson Crusoe, were these delicate damsels to be ' done for' ? " As a matter of economy in dominos, as well as to have something Italian to bring home, I had bought at Naples the costume of a sister of charity, and in it I had done all my masquerading for three carnivals. It , was among my baggage, and it occurred to me whether I had not better take the landlord into my confidence, and bribe him to wait upon the ladies, dis- guised in coif and petticoat. No — for he had a mus- tache, and spoke nothing but Italian. Should 1 do it myself? "I paced up and down the stone floor in an agony of dilemma. " In the course of half an hour I had made up my mind. I called to Boniface, who was watching the j boiling pot, and made a clean breast to him of my impending distresses, aiding his comprehension by such eye-water as landlords require. He readily un- dertook the necessary lies, brought out his store of brandy, added a second bed to one of the apartments, and promised faithfully to bear my sex in mind, and treat me with the reverence due my cross and rosary. I then tore out a leaf of the grocery book, and wrote with my pencil a note to this effect, to be delivered to the ladies on their arrival : — "'Dear Miss Blidgims : Feeling quite indispo- sed myself, apd being firmly persuaded that we are three cases of cholera, I have taken advantage of a return calesino to hurry on to Modena for medical advice. The vehicle I take, brought hither a sister of charity, who assures me she will wait on you, even in the most malignant stage of your disease. She is collecting funds for an hospital, and will receive com- pensation for her services in the form of a donation to this object. I shnll send you a physician by express THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. 355 from Modena, where it is still possible we may meet. With prayers, <fcc, &c. " ' Yours very devotedly, " ' F. " ' P. S. Sister Benedetta understands French when spoken, though she speaks only Italian.' " The delivery of this was subject, of course, to the condition of the ladies when they should arrive, though I had a presentiment they were in for a serious business. "And, true to my boding, they did arrive, exceed- ingly ill. An hour earlier than I had looked for him, the vetturino came up with foaming horses at a tug- ging trot, frightened half out of his senses. The ladies were dying, he swore by all the saints, before he dismounted. He tore open the carriage door, shouted for il sig nore and the landlord, and had carried both the groaning girls up stairs in his arms, before fat Boniface, who had been killing a sheep in the stable, could wash his hands and come out to him. To his violent indignation, the landlord's first care was to unstrap the baggage and take off my portmanteau, condescending to give him neither why nor wherefore, and as it mounted the stairs on the broad shoulders of my faithful ally, it was followed by a string of oaths such as can rattle off from nothing but the voluble tongue of an Italian. " I immediately despatched the note by the host, requesting him to come back and 'do my dress,' and in half an hour sister Benedetta's troublesome toilet was achieved, and my old Abigail walked around me, rubbing his hands, and swore I was a 'meraviglia di belleza.' The lower part of my face was covered by the linen coif, and the forehead was almost completely concealed in the plain put-away of a ' false front ;' and, unless the Blidgimses had reconnoitred my nose and eyes very carefully, I was sure of my disguise. The improvements in my figure were, unluckily, fixtures in the dress, for it was very hot ; but by the landlord's account they were very becoming. Do you believe the old dog tried to kiss me? " The groans of Ninny, meantime, resounded through the house, for, as I expected, she had the worst of it. Her exclamations of pain were broken up, I could also hear, by sentences in a sort of spiteful monotone, answered in regular ' humphs !' by Crin- ny — Crinny never talking except to astonish, and being as habitually crisp to her half-witted sister as she was fluent to those who were capable of surprise. Fear- ing that some disapprobation of myself might find its way to Ninny's lips, and for several other reasons which occurred to me, 1 thought it best to give the ladies another half hour to themselves, and by way of testing my incognito, bustled about in the presence of the vetturino, warming oil and mixing brandies-and- water, and getting used to the suffocation of my petti- coats — for you have no idea how intolerably hot they are, with trowsers under. " Quite assured, at last, I knocked at the door. "'That's his nun!' said Ninny, after listening an instant. "'Come in! — that is to say, cntrezV feebly mur- mured Crinny. " They were both in bed, rolled up like pocket- handkerchiefs ; but Ninny had found strength to band- box her wig and abbo, and array herself in a nightcap with an exceedingly broad frill. But 1 must not trench upon the 'secrets of the prison-house.' You are a baehelor, and the Blidgimses are still in a ' world of hope.' " 1 walked in and leaned over each of them, and whispered a benedicite, felt their pulses, and made signs that I understood their complaints and they need not trouble themselves to explain ; and forthwith I com- menced operations by giving them their grog (which I bey swallowed without making farrs, by-the-by), and, as they relaxed their postures a little, I got one foot at a time hung over to me from the side of the bed into the pail of hot water, and set them to rubbing them- selves with the warm oil, while I vigorously bathed their extremities. Crinny, as I very well knew, had but five-and-twenty words of French, just sufficient to hint at her wants, and Ninny spoke only such English as Heaven pleased, so I played the ministering angel in safe silence — listening to my praises, however, for I handled Ninny's irregular doigts du pied with a ten- derness that pleased her. "Well — you know what the cholera is. I knew that at the Hotel Dieu at Paris, women who had not been intemperate were oftenest cured by whiskey punches, and as brandy toddies were the nearest ap- proach of which the resources of the place admitted, I plied my patients with brandy toddy. In the weak I state of their stomachs, it produced, of course, a de- lirious intoxication, and as I began very early in the i morning, there were no lucid intervals in which my incognito might be endangered. My ministrations ; were, consequently, very much facilitatsd, and after : the second day (when I really thought the poor girls would die), we fell into a very regular course of hos- pital life, and for one, I found it very entertaining. Quite impressed with the idea that sister Bellidettor i (as Ninny called me) understood not a word of Eng- lish, they discoursed to please themselves, and I was ' obliged to get a book, to excuse, even to their tipsy j comprehension, my outbreaks of laughter. Crinny spouted poetry and sobbed about Washington Irving, | who, she thought, should have been her lover, and j Ninny sat up in bed, and, with a small glass she had | in the back of a hair-brush, tried on her abbo at every | possible angle, always ending by making signs to sister ! Bellidettor to come and comb her hair ! There was a long, slender, mustache remaining on the back of the bald crown, and after putting this into my hand, with the hair-brush, she sat with a smile of delight till she found my brushing did not come round to the front ! '"Why don't you brush this lock?' she cried, 'this — and this — and this!' making passes from her shining skull down to her waist, as if, in every one, she had a handful of hair ! And so, for an hour together, I threaded these imaginary locks, beginning where they were rooted ' long time ago,' and passing the brush off to the length of my arm — the cranium, when I had done, looking like a balloon of shot silk, its smooth surface was so purpled with the friction of the bristles. Poor Ninny ! She has great temptation to tipple, I think — that is, ' if Macassar won't bring back the lost chevelure ." " About the fifth day, the ladies began to show signs of convalescence, and it became necessary to reduce their potations. Of course they grew less entertaining, and 1 was obliged to be much more on my guard. Crinny fell from her inspiration, and Ninny from her complacency, and they came down to their previous condition of damaged spinsters, prim and peevish. 'Needs must' that 1 should ' play out the play,' however, and I abated none of my petits soins for their comfort, laying out very large anticipa- tions of their grateful acknowledgments lor my dra- matic chivalry, devotion, and delicacy !" " Well— they are ungrateful !" said I, interrupting F for the first time in his story. " Now, are not they ? They should at least, since they denv me my honors, pay me for my services as maid-of-all-work, nurse, hair-dresser, and apothecary ! Well, if I hear of their abusing me again, I'll send in my bills. Wouldn't you ? But, to wind up this long story. " [ thought that perhaps there might be some little circumstances connected with my attentions which would look best at a distance, and that it would be more delicate to go on and take leave at Modena as 356 THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. sister Benedetfa, and rejoin them the next morning in hose and doublet as before — reserving to some future period the clearing up of my apparently recreant de- sertion. On the seventh morning, therefore, I in- structed old Giuseppe, the landlord, to send in his bill to the ladies while I was dressing, and give notice to the vetturino that he was to take the holy sister to Modena in the place of il signore, who had gone on before. * Crinny and Ninny were their own reciprocal dressing-maids, but Crinny's fingers had weakened by sickness much more than hor sister's waist had dimin- ished, and, in the midst of shaving, in my own room, I was called to ' finish doing' Ninny, who backed up to me with her mouth full of pins, and the breath, for the time being, quite expelled from her body. As I was straining, very red in the face, at the critical hook, Giuseppe knocked at the door, with the bill, and the lack of an interpreter to dispute the charges, brought up the memory of the supposed ' absquatulator' with no very grateful odor. Before I could finish Miss Ninny and get out of the room, I heard myself charged with more abominations, mental and personal, than the monster that would have made the fortune of Trinculo. Crinny counted down half the money, and attempted, by very expressive signs, to impress upon Giuseppe that it was enough ; but the oiiy palm of the old publican was patiently held out for more, and she at last paid the full demand, fairly crying with vex- ation. "Quite sick of the new and divers functions to which I had been serving an apprenticeship in my black petticoat, I took my place in the vettura, and dropped veil, to be sulky in one lump as far as Mode- na. I would willingly have stopped my ears, but after wearing out their indignation at the unabated charges of old Giuseppe, the ladies took up the subject of the expected donation to the charity-fund of sister Bene- detta, and their expedients to get rid of it occupied (very amusingly to me) the greater part of a day's travel. They made up their minds at last, that half a dollar would be as much as I could expect for my week's attendance, and Crinny requested that she should not be interrupted while she thought out the French for saying as much when we should come to the parting. " I was sitting quietly in the corner of the vellura, the next day, felicitating myself on the success of my masquerade, when we suddenly came to a halt at the gate of Modena, and the doganiere put his mustache in at the window, with '■passaporti, signore !' "Murder! thought I — here's a difficulty I never provided for! " The ladies handed out their papers, and I thrust my hand through the slit in the side of my dress and pulled mine from my pocket. As of course you know, it is the business of this gatekeeper to compare every traveller with the description given of him in his passport. He read those of the Blidgimses and looked at them — all right. I sat still while he opened mine, thinking it possible he might not care to read the description of a sister of charity. But to my dis- may he did — and opened his eyes, and looked again into the carriage. "'Aspetta, caroV said I, for I saw it was of no use. I gathered up my bombazine and stepped out into the road. There were a dozen soldiers and two or three loungers sitting una long bench in the shade of the gate- way. The officer read through the description once more, and then turned to me with the look of a func- tionary who has detected a culprit. I began to pull up my petticoat. The soldiers took their pipes out of their mouths and uttered the Italian 'keck' of surprise. When I had got as far as the knee, however, I came to the rolled-up trowsers, and the officer joined in the sudden uproar of laughter. I pulled my black petti- coat over my head, and stood in my waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, and bowed to the merry official. The Blidgimses, to my surprise, uttered no exclamation, but I had forgotten my coif. When that was unpin- ned, and my whiskers came to light, their screams became alarming. The vetturino ran for water, the soldiers started to their feet, and in the midst of the excitement, I ordered down my baggage and resumed my coat and cap, and repacked under lock and key the sister Benedetta. And not quite ready to en- counter the Blidgimses, I walked on to the hotel and left the vetturino to bring on the ladies at his leisure. "Of course I had no control over accidents, and this exposure was unlucky ; but if I had had time to let myself down softly on the subject, don't you see it would have been quite a different sort of an affair? I parted company from the old girls at Modena, how- ever, and they were obliged to hire a man-servant who spoke English and Italian, and probably the expense of that was added to my iniquities. Anyhow, abusing me this way is very ungrateful of these Blidgimses. Now, isn't it ?" DASHES AT LIFE WITH A FREE PENCIL PART II; INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. PREFACE The following passages are extracts from the prefaces to the English editions of the two works included in this book — " Inklings of Adventure" and " Loiterings of Travel :" — It will be seen, by many marks in the narratives which follow, that they are not the work of ima- gination. The dramas of real life are seldom well wound up, and the imperfectness of plot which might be objected to them as tales, will prove to the observant reader that they are drawn more from memory than fancy. It is because they are thus imperfect in dramatic accomplishment, that I have called them by the name under which they have been introduced. They are rather intima- tions of what seemed to lead to a romantic termi- nation than complete romances — in short, they are Inklings of Adventure. The adventures were jotted down — the events recorded — the poems indited, and the letters despatched, while the thought was freshly born, or the incident freshly heard or re- membered — at the first place which afforded the leisure — in short, during Loiterings of Travel. For the living portraitures of the book I have a word to say. That sketches of the whim of the hour, its manners, fashions, and those ephemeral trifles, which, slight as they are, constitute in a great measure its " form and pressure" — that these, and familiar traits of persons distinguished in our time, are popular and amusing, I have the most weighty reasons certainly to know. They sell. " Are they innocent ?" is the next question. And to this I know no more discreet answer than that mine have offended nobody but the critics. It has been said that sketches of contemporary society require little talent, and belong to an inferior or- der of literature. Perhaps. Yet they must be well done to attract notice at all ; and if true and graphic, they are not only excellent material for future biographers, but to all who live out of the magic circles of fashion and genius, they are more than amusing — they are instructive. To such persons, living authors, orators, and statesmen, are as much characters of history, and society in cities is as much a subject of philosophic curiosity, as if a century had intervened. The critic who finds these matters " stale and unprofitable," lives in the circles described, and the pictures drawn at his elbow lack to his eye the effect of distance ; but the same critic woidd delight in a familiar sketch of a supper with " my lord of Leicester" in Eliz- abeth's time, of an evening with Raleigh and Spenser, or perhaps he would be amused with a description by an eye-witness of Mary Queen of Scots, riding home to Holyrood with her train of admiring nobles. I have not named in the same sentence the ever-deplored blank in our knowledge of Shakspere's person and manners. What would not a trait by the most unskilful hand be worth now — if it were nothing but how he gave the good-morrow to Ben Jonson in Eastcheap ? How far sketches of the living are a breach of courtesy committed by the author toward the per- sons described, depends, of course, on the temper in which they are done. To select a subject for complimentary description is to pay the most un- doubted tribute to celebrity, and, as far as I have observed, most distinguished persons sympathize with the public interest in them and their belong- ings, and are willing to have their portraits drawn, either with pen or pencil, by as many as offer them the compliment. It would be ungracious to the admiring world if they were not. The outer man is a debtor for the homage paid to the soul which inhabits him, and he is bound, like a porter at the gate, to satisfy all reasonable 360 PREFACE. curiosity as to the habits of the nobler and invis- ible tenant. He owes his peculiarities to the world. For myself, I am free to confess that no age interests me like the present ; that no pictures of society since the world began, are half so enter- taining to me as those of English society in our day; and that, whatever comparison the living great men of England may sustain with those of other days, there is no doubt in my mind that Eng- lish social life, at the present moment, is at a high- er pitch of refinement and cultivation than it was ever here or elsewhere since the world began — consequently it, and all who form and figure in it, are dignified and legitimate subjects of curiosity and speculation. The Count Mirabel and Lady Bellair of D'Israeli's last romance, are, to my mind, the cleverest portraits, as well as the most entertaining characters, of modern novel-writing ; and D'Israeli, by the way, is the only English au- thor who seems to have the power of enlarging his horizon, and getting a perspective view of the times he lives in. His novels are far more popu- lar in America than in England, because the At- lantic is to us a century. We picture to ourselves England and Victoria as we picture to ourselves England and Elizabeth. We relish an anecdote of Sheridan Knowles as we should one of Ford or Marlowe. This immense ocean between us is like the distance of time ; and while all that is minute and bewildering is lost to us, the greater lights of the age and the prominent features of so- ciety stand out apart, and we judge of them like posterity. Much as I have myself lived in Eng- land, I have never been able to remove this long perspective from between my eye and the great men of whom I read and thought on the other side of the Atlantic. When I find myself in the same room with the hero of Waterloo, my blood creeps as if I had seen Cromwell or Marlborough ; and I sit down afterward to describe how he looked, with the eagerness with which I should commu- nicate to my friends some disinterred description of these renowned heroes by a contemporary writer. If Cornelius Agrippa were redivivus, in short, and would show rne his magic mirror, I should as soon call up Moore as Dryden — Words- worth or Wilson as soon as Pope or Crichton. INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. PEDLAR KARL. " Which manner of digression, however some dislike as frivo- lous and impertinent, yet ( am of Beroaldus his opinion, such di- gressions do mightily delight and refresh a weary reader : they are like *awce to a bad stomach, and I therefore do most willingly use them."— Burton. " Bienheureuses les imparfaites ; a elles appartient le royaume de l'amour." — L' Evangilc des Femmes. I am not sure whether Lebanon Springs, the scene of a romantic story I am about to tell, belong to New York or Massachusetts. It is not very important, to be sure, in a country where people take Vermont and Patagonia to be neighboring states, but I have a natu- ral looseness in geography which I take pains to mor- tify by exposure. Very odd that I should not remem- ber more of the spot where I took my first lessons in philandering ! — where I first saw you, brightest and most beautiful A. D. (not Anno Domini)., in your white morning-frocks and black French aprons ! Lebanon Springs are the rage about once in three years. I must let you into the secret of these things, gentle reader, for perhaps I am the only individual existing who has penetrated the mysteries of the four dynasties of American fashion. In the fourteen mil- lions of inhabitants in the United States, there are precisely four authenticated and undisputed aristo- cratic families. There is one in Boston, one in New York, one in Philadelphia, and one in Baltimore. By a blessed Providence they are not all in one state, or we should have a civil war and a monarchy in no time. With two hundred miles' interval between them, they agree passably, and generally meet at one or another of the three watering-places of Saratoga, Ballston, or Lebanon. Their meeting is as mysterious as the pro- cess of crystallization, for it is not by agreement. You must explain it by some theory of homoeopathy or magnetism. As it is not known till the moment they arrive, there is of course great excitement among the hotel-keepers in these different parts of the country, and a village that has ten thousand transient inhabit- ants one summer, has, for the next, scarcely as many score. The vast and solitary temples of Paestum are gay in comparison with these halls of disappointment. As I make a point of dawdling away July and Au- gust in this locomotive metropolis of pleasure, and rather prefer Lebanon, it is always agreeable to me to hear that the nucleus is formed in that valley of hem- locks. Not for its scenery, for really, my dear east- ern-hemispherian ! you that are accustomed to what is called nature in England (to wit, a soft park, with a gray ruin in the midst), have little idea how wearily upon heart and mind presses a waste wilderness of mere forest and water, without stone or story. Trees in England have characters and tongues ; if you see a fine one, you know whose father planted it, and for whose pleasure it was designed, and about what sum the man must possess to afford to let it stand. They are statistics, as it were — so many trees, ergo so many owners so rich. In America, on the contrary, trees grow and waters run, as the stars shine, quite unmean- ingly ; there may be ten thousand princely elms, and not a man within a hundred miles worth five pounds five. You ask, in England, who has the privilege of this water ? or you say of an oak, that it stood in such a man's time : but with us, water is an element un- claimed and unrented, and a tree dabbles in the clouds as they go over, and is like a great idiot, without soul or responsibility. If Lebanon had a history, however, it would have been a spot for a pilgrimage, for its natural beauty. It is shaped like a lotus, with one leaf laid back by the wind. It is a great green cup, with a scoop for a drinking-place. As you walk in the long porticoes of the hotel, the dark forest mounts up before you like a leafy wall, and the clouds seem just to clear the pine- tops, and the eagles sail across from horizon to hori- zon, without lifting their wings, as if you saw them from the bottom of a well. People born there think the world about two miles square, and hilly. The principal charm of Lebanon to me is the vil- lage of " shakers," lyiug in a valley about three miles of?. As Glaucus wondered at the inert tortoise of Pompeii, and loved it for its antipodal contrast to him- self, so do I affection (a French verb that I beg leave to introduce to the English language) the shaking quakers. That two thousand men could be found in the New World, who would embrace a religion en- joining a frozen and unsympathetic intercourse with the diviner sex. and that an equal number of females could be induced to live in the same community, with- out locks or walls, in the cold and rigid observance of a creed of celibacy, is to me an inexplicable and grave wonder. My delight is to get into my stanhope after breakfast, and drive over and spend the forenooc in contemplating them at their work in the fields They have a peculiar and most expressive phvsiogno 362 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, my ; the women are pale, or of a wintry redness in the cheek, and are all attenuated and spare. Gravity, deep and habitual, broods in every line of their thin faces. They go out to their labor in company with those serious men, and are never seen to smile ; their eyes are all hard and stony, their gait is precise and stiff, their voices are of a croaking hoarseness, and na- ture seems dead in them. I would bake you such men and women in a brick-kiln. Do they think the world is coming to an end ? Are there to be no more children ? Is Cupid to be thrown out of business, like a coach proprietor on a railroad ? What can the shakers mean, I should be pleased to know ? The oddity is that most of them are young. Men of from twenty to thirty, and women from sixteen to twenty-five, and often, spite of their unbecoming dress, good-looking and shapely, meet you at every step. In- dustrious, frugal, and self-denying, they certainly are, and there is every appearance that their tenets of difficult abstinence are kept to the letter. There is little temptation beyond principle to remain, and they are free to go and come as they list, yet there they live on in peace and unrepining industry, and a more thriving community does not exist in the republic. Many a time have I driven over on a Sunday, and watched those solemn virgins dropping in one after another to the church ; and when the fine-limbed and russet-faced brotherhood were swimming round the floor in their fanatical dance, I have watched their countenances for some look of preference, some be- trayal of an ill-suppressed impulse, till my eyes ached again. I have selected the youngest and fairest, and have not lost sight of her for two hours, and she might have been made of cheese-parings for any trace of emotion. There is food for speculation in it. Can we do without matrimony ? Can we "strike," and be independent of these dear delightful tyrants, for whom we " live and move and have our being ?" Will it ever be no blot on our escutcheon to have attained thirty-five as an unfructifying unit ? Is that fearful campaign, with all its embarrassments and awkward- nesses, and inquisitions into your money and morals, its bullyings and backings-out — is it inevitable ? Lebanon has one other charm. Within a morning drive of the springs lies the fairest village it has ever been my lot to see. It is English in its character, except that there is really nothing in this country so perfect of its kind. There are many towns in the United States more picturesquely situated, but this, before I had been abroad, always seemed to me the very ideal of English rural scenery, and the kind of place to set apart for either love or death — for one's honeymoon or burial — the two periods of life which I have always hoped would find me in the loveliest spot of nature. Stockbridge lies in a broad sunny valley, with mountains at exactly the right distance, and a river in its bosom that is as delicate in its wind- ings, and as suited to the charms it wanders among, as a vein in the transparent neck of beauty. I am not going into a regular description, but I have car- ried myself back to Lebanon ; and the remembrance of the leafy mornings of summer in which I have driven to that fair earthly paradise, and loitered under its elms, imagining myself amid the scenes of song and story in distant England, has a charm for me now. I have seen the mother-land ; I have rambled through park, woodland, and village, wherever the name was old and the scene lovely, and it pleases me to go back to my dreaming days and compare the reality with the anticipation. Most small towns in America have traces of newness about them. The stumps of a clearing, or freshly-boarded barns — something that is the antipodes of romance — meets your eye from every aspect. Stock- bridge, on the contrary, is an old town, and the houses are of a rural structure; the fields look soft and genial the grass is swardlike, the bridges picturesque, the hedges old, and the elms, nowhere so many and so luxuriant, are full-grown and majestic. The village is embowered in foliage. Greatest attraction of all, the authoress of " Redwood" and " Hope Leslie," a novelist of whom America has the good sense to be proud, is the Miss Mitford of Stock- bridge. A man, though a distinguished one, may have little influence on the town he lives in, but a remarka- ble woman is the invariable cynosure of a community, and irradiates it all. I think I could divine the presence of one almost by the growing of the trees and flowers. " Our Village" does not look like other villages. II. You will have forgotten that I had a story to tell. dear reader. I was at Lebanon in the summer of (perhaps you don't care about knowing exactly when it was, and in that case I would rather keep shy of dates. I please myself with the idea that time gets on faster than I). The Springs were thronged. The president's lady was there (this was under our admin- istration, the Adams'), and all the four cliques spoken of above were amicably united — each other's beaux dancing with each other's belles, and so on. If I were writing merely for American eyes, I should digress once more to describe the distinctive characters of the south, north, and central representations of beauty; but it would scarcely interest the general reader. I may say, in passing, that the Boston belles were a V Anglaise, rosy and riantes ; the New-Yorkers, like Parisians, cool, dangerous, and dressy ; and the Balti- moreans (and so south), like Ionians or Romans, in- dolent, passionate, lovely, and languishing. Men, women, and pine-apples, I am inclined to think, flour- ish with a more kindly growth in the fervid latitudes. The campaign went on, and a pleasant campaign it was — for the parties concerned had the management of their own affairs ; that is, they who had hearts to sell made the bargain for themselves (this was the greater number), and they who disposed of this com- modity gratis, though necessarily young and ignorant of the world, made the transfer in the same manner, in person. This is your true republic. The trading in affections by reference — the applying to an old and selfish heart for the purchase of a young and ingenu- ous one — the swearing to your rents, and not to your faithful passion — to your settlements, and not your constancy — the cold distance between yourself and the young creature who is to lie in your bosom, till the purchase-money is secured — and the hasty mar- riage and sudden abandonment of a nature thus chilled and put on its guard, to a freedom with one almost a stranger, that can not but seem licentious, and can not but break down that sense of propriety in which modesty is most strongly intrenched — this seems to me the one evil of your old worm-eaten mon- archies this side the water, which touches the essen- tial happiness of the well-bred individual. Taxation and oppression are but things he reads of in the morn- ing paper. This freedom of intercourse between unmarried people has a single disadvantage — one gets so desper- ately soon to the end of the chapter ! There shall be two hundred young ladies at the Springs in a given season, and, by the difference in taste so wisely ar- ranged by Providence, there will scarcely be, of course, more than four in that number whom any one gentle- man at all difficult will find within the range "of his beau ideal. With these four he may converse freely twelve hours in the day — more, if he particularly de- sires it. They may ride together, drive together, ram- ble together, sing together, be together from morning INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 363 till night, and at the end of a month passed in this way, if he escape a committal, as is possible, he will know all that are agreeable, in one-large circle, at least, as well as he knows his sisters — a state of things that is very likely to end in his going abroad soon, from a mere dearth of amusement. I have imagined, however, the case of an unmarrying idle man, a character too rare as yet in America to affect the general question. People marry as they die in that country — when their time come. We must all marry is as much an axiom is we must all die, and eke as melancholy. Shall we go on with the story ? I had escaped for wo blessed weeks, and was congratulating the sus- ceptible gentleman under my waistcoat-pocket that we should never be in love with less than the whole sex again, when a German Baron Von arrived at the Springs with a lame daughter. She was eighteen, transparently fair, and, at first sight, so shrinkingly dependant, so delicate, so childlike, that attention to her assumed the form almost of pity, and sprang as naturally and unsuspectingly from the heart. The only womanly trait about her was her voice, which was so deeply soft and full, so earnest and yet so gen- tle, so touched with subdued pathos and yet so melan- choly calm, that if she spoke after a long silence, I turned to her involuntarily with the feeling that she was not the same — as if some impassioned and elo- quent woman had taken unaware the place of the simple and petted child. I am inclined to think there is a particular tender- ness in the human breast for lame women. Any other deformity in the gentler sex is monstrous ; but lameness (the devil's defect) is "the devil." I picture to myself, to my own eye, now — pacing those rickety colonnades at Lebanon with the gentle Meeta hanging heavily, and with the dependance inseparable from her infirmity, on my arm, while the moon (which was the moon of the Rhine to her, full of thrilling and un- j earthly influences) rode solemnly up above the moun- ! tain-tops. And that strange voice filling like a flute | with sweetness as the night advanced, and that irregu- lar pressure of the small wrist in ber forgotten lame- ness, and my own (I thought) almost paternal feeling as she leaned more and more heavily, and turned her delicate and fair face confidingly up to mine, and that ! dangerous mixture altogether of childlikeness and womanly passion, of dependance and superiority, of reserve on the one subject of love, and absolute confi- dence on every other — if I had not a story to tell, I could prate of those June nights and their witcheries till you would think " Tutti gli alberi del mondo Fossero penne," and myself " bitten by the dipsas." We were walking one night late in the gallery run- ning around the second story of the hotel. There was a ball on the floor below, and the music, deadened somewhat by the crowded room, came up softened and mellowed to the dark and solitary colonnade, and added to other influences in putting a certain lodger in my bosom beyond my temporary control. I told Meeta that I loved her. The building stands against the side of a steep moun- tain high up above the valley, and the pines and hem- locks at that time hung in their primeval blackness almost over the roof. As the most difficult and em- barrassed sentence of which I had ever been delivered died on my lips, and Meeta, lightening her weight on my arm, walked in apparently offended silence by my 9ide, a deep-toned guitar was suddenly struck in the woods, and a clear, manly voice broke forth in a song. It produced an instant and startling effect on my com- panion. With the first word she quickly withdrew her arm ; and, after a moment's pause, listening with her hands raised in an attitude of the most intense ea- gerness, she sprang to the extremity of the balustrade, and gazed breathlessly into the dark depths of the for- est. The voice ceased, and she started back, and laid her hand hastily upon my arm. " I must go," she said, in a voice of hurried feeling ; " if you are generous, stay here and await me !" and in another moment she sprang along the bridge connect- ing the gallery with the rising ground in the rear, and was lost in the shadows of the hemlocks. " I have made a declaration," thought I, "just five minutes too soon." I paced up and down the now too lonely colonnade, and picked up the fragments of my dream with what philosophy I might. By the time Meeta returned — perhaps a half hour, perhaps an age, as you measure by her feelings or mine — I had hatched up a very pret- ty and heroical magnanimity. She would have spoken, but was breathless. " Explain nothing," I said, taking her arm within mine, " and let us mutually forget. If I can serve you better than by silence, command me entirely. I live but for your happiness — even," I added after a pause, " though it spring from another." We were at her chamber-door. She pressed my hand with a strength of which I did not think those small, slight fingers capable, and vanished, leaving me, I am free to confess, less resigned than you would sup- pose from my last speech. I had done the dramatic thing, thanks to much reading of you, dear Barry Cornwall ! but it was not in a play. I remained killed after the audience was gone. III. The next day a new character appeared on the stage. " Such a handsome pedlar !" said magnificent Hel- en to me, as I gave my horse to the groom after a ride in search of hellebore, and joined the prome- nade at the well : " and what do you think 1 he sells only by raffle ! It's so nice ! All sorts of Berlin iron ornaments, and everything German and sweet ; and the pedlar's smile's worth more than the prizes ; and such a mustache ! See ! there he is ! — and now, if he has sold all his tickets — will you come, Master Gravity ?" " I hear a voice you can not hear," thought I, as I gave the beauty my arm, and joined a crowd of people gathered about a pedlar's box in the centre of the parterre. The itinerant vender spread his wares in the midst of the gay assemblage, and the raffle went on. He was excessively handsome. A head of the sweet gen- tleness of Raphael's, with locks flowing to his shoul- ders in the fashion of German students, a soft brown mustache curving on a short Phidian upper lip, a large blue eye expressive of enthusiasm rather than passion, and features altogether purely intellectual — formed a portrait of which even jealousy might con- sole itself. Through all the disadvantages of a dress suited to his apparent vocation, an eye the least on the alert for a disguise would have penetrated his in a moment. The gay and thoughtless crowd about him, not accustomed to impostors who were more than they pretended to be, trusted him for a pedlar, but treated him with a respect far above his station msen- Whatever his object was, so it were honorable, I inly determined to give him all the assistance in my power. A single glance at the face of Meeta, who joined the circle as the prizes were drawn-a face so changed since yesterday, so flushed with hope and pleasure, and yet so saddened by doubt and fear, the small lips compressed, the soft black eye kindled and 364 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, restless, and the red leaf on her cheek deepened to a feverish beauty — left me no shadow of hesitation. I exchanged a look with her that I intended should say as much. IV. I know nothing that gives one such an elevated idea of human nature (in one's own person) as helping another man to a woman one loves. Oh last days of minority or thereabout ! oh primal manhood ! oh golden time, when we have let go all but the enthu- siasm of the boy, and seized hold of all but the sel- fishness of the man ! oh blessed interregnum of the evil and stronger genius ! why can we not bottle up thy hours like"the~wine of a better vintage, and enjoy them in the parched world-weariness of age ? In the tardy honeymoon of a bachelor (as mine will be, if it come ever, alas !) with what joy of paradise should we bring up from the cellars of the past a hamper of that sunny Hippocrene ! Pedlar Karl and "the gentleman in No. 10" would have been suspected in any other country of conspira- cy. (How odd, that the highest crime of a monarchy — the attempt to supplant the existing ruler — becomes in a republic a creditable profession ! You are a trai- tor here, a politician there !) We sat together from midnight onward, discoursing in low voices over sherry and sandwiches; and in that crowded Babylon, his entrances and exits required a very conspirator-like management. Known as my friend, his trade and his disguise were up. As a pedlar, wandering about where he listed when not employed over his wares, his interviews with Meeta were easily contrived, and his lover's watch, gazing on her through the long hours of the ball from the crowd of villagers at the windows, hovering about her walks, and feeding his heart on the many, many chance looks of fondness given him every hour in that out-of-doors society, kept him com- paratively happy. ■ The baron looked hard at you to-day," said I, as he closed the door in my little room, and sat down on the bed. 44 Yes ; he takes an interest in me as a countryman, but he does not know me. He is a dull observer, and has seen me but once in Germany." 44 How, then, have you known Meeta so long ?" 44 I accompanied her brother home from the uni- versity, when the baron was away, and for a long month we were seldom parted. Riding, boating on the Rhine, watching the sunset from the bartizan of the old castle- towers, reading in the old library, rambling in the park and forest — it was a heaven, my friend, than which I can conceive none brighter." 44 And her brother?" " Alas ! changed ! We were both boys then, and a brother is slow to believe his sister's beauty dangerous. He was the first to shut the doors against me, when he heard that the poor student had dared to love his highborn Meeta." Karl covered his eyes with his hand, and brooded for a while in silence on the remembrances he had awakened. " Do you think the baron came to America pur- posely to avoid you ?" " Partly, I have no doubt, for I entered the castle one night in my despair, when I had been forbidden entrance, and he found me at her feet in the old cor- ridor. It was the only time he ever saw me, if, in- deed, he saw me at all in the darkness : and he imme- diately hastened his preparations for a long-contem- plated journey, 1 knew not whither." 44 Did you follow him soon ?" 44 No, for my heart was crushed at first, and I de- spaired. The possibility of following them in my wretched poverty did not even occur to me for months." * 4 How did you track them hither, of all places in the world ?" 44 1 sought them first in Italy. It is easy on the continent to find out where persons are not, and after two years' wanderings, I heard of them in Paris. They had just sailed for America. I followed ; but in a country where there are no passports, and no espionage, it is difficult to trace the traveller. It was probable only that they would be at a place of general resort, and I came here with no assurance but hope. Thanks to God, the first sight that greeted my eyes was my dear Meeta, whose irregular step, as she walked back and forth with you in the gallery, enabled me to recognise her in the darkness." Who shall say the days of romance are over ? The plot is not brought to the catastrophe, but we hope it is near. V. My aunt, Isabella Slingsby (now in heaven, with the 44 eleven thousand virgins," God rest her soul!), was at this time, as at all others, under my respecta- ble charge. She would have said I was under hers — but it amounts to the same thing — we lived together in peace and harmony. She said what she pleased, for I loved her — and I did what I pleased, for she loved me. When Karl told me that Meeta's principal objection to an elopement was the want of a matron, I shut the teeth of my resolution, as they say in Per- sia, and inwardly vowed my unconscious aunt to this exigency. You should have seen Miss Isabella Slings- by to know what a desperate man may be brought ;,» resolve on. On a certain day, Count Von Raffle-off (as my witty friend and ally, Tom Fane, was pleased to call the handsome pedlar) departed with his pack and the hearts of all the dressing-maids and some of their mis- tresses, on his way to New York. 1 drove down the road to take my leave of him out of sight, and give him my last instructions.* How to attack my aunt was a subject about which I had many unsatisfactory thoughts. . If there was one thing she disapproved of more than another, it was an elopement ; and with what face to propose to her to run away with a baron's only daughter, and leave her in the hands of a pedlar, taking upon herself, as she must, the whole sin and odium, was an enigma I ate, drank, and slept upon, in vain. One thing at last be- came very clear — she would do it for nobody but me. Sequitur, I must play the lover myself. I commenced with a fit of illness. What was the matter ? For two days I was invisible. Dear Isabella ! it was the first time I had ever drawn seriously on thy fallow sympathies, and, how freely they flowed at my affected sorrows, I shame to remember! Did ever woman so weep ? Did ever woman so take antipathy to man as she to that innocent old baron for his sup- posed refusal of his daughter to Philip Slingsby ? This revival of the remembrance shall not be in vain. The mignonette and roses planted above thy grave, dearest aunt, shall be weeded anew ! Oh that long week of management and hypocrisy ! The day came at last. "Aunt Bel!" 44 What, Philip, dear ?" 44 1 think I feel better to-day." 44 Yes ?" 44 Yes. What say you to a drive ? There is the stanhope." 44 My dear Phil, don't mention that horrid stanhope. I am sure, if you valued my life — " 44 Precisely, aunt — (I had taken care to give her j INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 365 good fright the day before) — but Tom Fane has offered me his ponies and Jersey wagon, and that, you know, is the most quiet thing in the world, and holds four. So, perhaps ehem ! you'll ask Meeta?" »• Urn ! Why, you see, Philip—*' I saw at once, that, if it got to an argument, I was perdu. Miss Slingsby, though a sincere Christian, never could keep her temper when she tried to reason. I knelt down on her footstool, smoothed away the false hair on her forehead, and kissed her. It was a fasci- nating endearment of mine, that I only resorted to on great emergencies. The hermit tooth in my aunt's mouth became gradually visible, heralding what in youth had been a smile ; and, as I assisted her in roll- ing up her embroidery, she looked on me with an un- suspecting affection that touched my heart. I made a silent vow that if she survived the scrape into which 6he was being inveigled, I would be to her and her dog Wbimsiculo (the latter my foe and my aversion) the soul of exemplary kindness for the remainder of their natural lives. 1 lay the unction to my soul that this vow was kept. My aunt blessed me shortly before Bhe was called to " walk in white" (she had hitherto walked in yellow), and as it would have been unnatu- ral in Whimsiculo to survive her, I considered his 44 natural life" as ended with hers, and had him peace- fully strangled on the same day. He lies at her feet, as usual, a delicate attention of which (I trust in Swe- denborg) her spirit is aware. With the exception of " Tom Thumb" and " Rat- tler," who were of the same double-jointed family of interminable wind and bottom, there was never per- haps such a pair of goers as Tom Fane's ponies. My aunt had a lurking hope, I believe, that the baron would refuse Meeta permission to join us, but either he did not think me a dangerous person (I have said before he was a dull man), or he had no objection to me as a son-in-law, which my aunt and myself (against the world) would have thought the natural construc- tion upon his indifference. He came to the end of the colonnade to see us start, and as I eased the ribands and let the ponies off like a shot from a crossbow, I stole a look at Meeta. The color had fled from cheek and lip, and the tears streamed over them like rain. Aunt Bel was on the back seat, grace a Dieu ! We met Tom at the foot of the hill, and I pulled up. He was the best fellow, that Tom Fane! 44 Ease both the bearing reins," said I, " I am going up the mountain." 44 The devil you are !" said Tom, doing my bidding, however ; " you'll find the road to the shakers much pleasanter. What an odd whim ! It's a perpendicu- lar three miles, Miss Slingsby. I would as lief be noisted up a well and let down again. Don't go that way, Phil, unless you are going to run away with Miss Von " " Many a shaft at random sent," thought I, and waving the tandem lash over the ears of the ponies, I brought up the silk on the cheek of their malaprop master, and spanked away up the hill, leaving him in a range likely to get a fresh supply of fuel by dinner-time. Tom was of a plethoric habit, and if I had not thought he could afford to burst a blood-vessel better than two lovers to break their hearts, I should not have ventured on the bold measure of borrowing his horses for an hour, and keeping them a week. We have shaken hands upon it since, but it is my private opinion that he has never forgiven me in his heart. As we wound slowly up the mountain, I gave Meeta the reins, and jumped out to gather some wild flowers for my aunt. Dear old soul ! the attention reconciled her to what she considered a very unwarrantable ca- price of mine. What I could wish to toil up that steep mountain for ? Well ! the flowers are charming in these high regions ! " Don't you see my reason for coming, then, aunt Bella?" 44 Was it for that, dear Philip ?" said she, putting the wild flowers affectionately into her bosom, where they bloomed like broidery on saffron tapestry ; " how considerate of you !" And she drew her shawl around her, and was at peace with all the world. So easily are the old made happy by the young ! Reader, I scent a moral in the air ! We were at the top of the hill. If I was sane, my aunt was probably thinking, I should turn here, and go back. To descend the other side, and reascend and descend again to the Springs, was hardly a sort of thing one would do for pleasure. " Here's a good place to turn, Philip," said she, as we entered a smooth broad hollow on the top of the i mountain. I dashed through it as if the ponies were shod with I talaria. My aunt said nothing, and luckily the road < was very narrow for a mile, and she had a horror of a ' short turn. A new thought struck me. " Did you ever know, aunt, that there was a way back around the foot of the mountain ?" " Dear, no ; how delightful ! Is it far ?" 44 A couple of hours or so ; but I can do it in less. We'll try ;" and 1 gave the sure-footed Canadians the whip, and scampered down the hills as if the rock of Sisyphus had been rolling after us. We were soon over the mountain-range, and the road grew better and more level. Oh, how fast pat- tered those little hoofs, and how full of spirit, and excitement looked those small ears, catching the lightest chirrup I could whisper, like the very spell of swiftness ! Pines, hemlocks and cedars, farmhouses and milestones, flew back like shadows. My nunt sat speechless in the middle of the back seat, holding on with both hands, in apprehensive resignation ! She expected soon to come in sight of the Springs, and had doubtless taken a mental resolution that if, please God, she once more found herself at home, she would never " tempt Providence" (it was a favorite expression of hers) by trusting herself again behind such a pair of fly-away demons. As I read this thought in her countenance by a stolen glance over my shoulder, we rattled into a village distant from Lebanon twenty miles. 44 There, aunt," said I, as I pulled up at the door of the inn, 44 we have very nearly described a circle. Now, don't speak ! if you do, you'll stait the horses. There's nothing they are so much afraid of as a wo- man's voice. Very odd, isn't it ? We'll just sponge their mouths now, and be at home in the crack of a whip. Five miles more, only. Come !" Off we sped again like the wind, aunt Bel just ven- turing to wonder whether the horses wouldn't rather go slower. Meeta had hardly spoken ; she had thoughts of her own to be busy with, and I pretended to be fully occupied with my driving. The nonsense I talked to those horses, to do away the embarrassment of her si- lence, would convict me of insanity before any jury in the world. The sun began to throw long shadows, and the short- legged ponies figured like flying giraffes along the re- tiring hedges. Luckily, my aunt had very little idea of conjecturing a course by the points of the compass. We sped on gloriously. "Philip, dear ! hav'n't you lost your way ? It seems to me we've come more than five miles since you stopped" (ten at least), " and I don't see the moun- tains about Lebanon at all !" 44 Don't be alarmed, aunty, dear ! We're very high, just here, and shall drop down on Lebanon, as it were. Are you afraid, Meeta ?" 366 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, " Nein ."' she answered. She was thinking in Ger- man, poor girl, and heart and memory were wrapped up in the thought. I drove on almost cruelly. Tom's incomparable horses justified all his eulogiums ; they were indefati- gable. The sun blazed a moment through the firs, and disappeared ; the gorgeous changes of eve came over the clouds ; the twilight stole through the damp air with its melancholy gray ; and the whippoorwills, birds of evening, came abroad, like gentlemen in debt, to flit about in the darkness. Everything was sad- dening. My own volubility ceased ; the whiz of the lash, as I waved it over the heads of my foaming po- nies, and an occasional " Steady !" as one or the other broke into a gallop, were the only interruptions to the silence. Meeta buried her face in the folds of her shawl, and sat closer to my side, and my aunt, soothed and flattered by turns, believed and doubted, and was finally persuaded, by my ingenious and well-inserted fibs, that it was only somewhat farther than I antici- pated, and we should arrive " presently." Somewhere about eight o'clock the lights of a town appeared in the distance, and, straining every nerve, the gallant beasts whirled us in through the streets, and I pulled up suddenly at the door of an hotel. " Why, Philip !" said my aunt in a tone of unut- terable astonishment, looking about her as if she had awoke from a dream, " this is Hudson !" It was too clear to be disputed. We were upon the North river, forty miles from Lebanon, and the steam- er would touch at the pier in half an hour. My aunt was to be one of the passengers to New York, but she was yet to be persuaded of it; the only thing now was to get her into the house, and enact the scene as soon as possible. I helped her out as tenderly as I knew how, and, as we went up stairs, I requested Meeta to sit down in a corner of the room, and cover her face with her hand- kerchief. When the servant was locked out, I took my aunt into the recess of the window, and informed her, to her very great surprise, that she had run away with the baron's daughter. " Philip Slingsby !" My aunt was overcome. I had nothing for it but to be overcome too. She sunk into one chair, and I into the other, and burying my face in my hands, I looked through my fingers to watch the effect. Five mortal minutes lasted my aunt's wrath ; gradually, however, she began to steal a look at me, and the expression of resentment about her thin lips softened into something like pity. " Philip !" said she, taking my hand. " My dear aunt !" " What is to be done ?" I pointed to Meeta, who sat with her head on her bosom, pressed my hand to my heart, as if to suppress a pang, and proceeded to explain. It seemed impos- sible for my aunt to forgive the deception of the thing. Unsophisticated Isabella ! If thou hadst known that thou wert, even yet, one fold removed from the truth, — if thou couldst have divined that it was not for the darling of thy heart that thou wert yielding a point only less dear to thee than thy maiden reputation — if it could have entered thy region of possibilities that thine own house in town had been three days aired for the reception of a bride, run away with by thy os- tensible connivance, and all for a German pedlar, in whose fortunes and loves thou hadst no shadow of interest — I think the brain in thee would have turned, and the dry heart in thy bosom have broken with sur- prise and grief! I wrote a note to Tom, left his horses at the inn, and at nine o'clock we were steaming down the Hud- son, my aunt in bed, and Meeta pacing the deck with me, and pouring forth her fears and hor gratitude in a voice of music that made me almost repent my self sacrificing enterprise. I have told the story gayly, gentle reader ! but there was a nerve ajar in my heart while its little events went on. How we sped thereafter, dear reader ! — how the consul of his majesty of Prussia was persuaded by my aunt's respectability to legalize the wedding by his presence — how my aunt fainted dead away when the parson arrived, and she discovered who was not to be the bridegroom and who was — how I persuaded her she had gone too far to recede, and worked on her ten- derness once more — how the weeping Karl, and his lame and lovely bride, lived with us till the old baron thought it fit to give Meeta his blessing and some money — how Tom Fane wished no good to the ped- lar's eyes — and lastly, how Miss Isabella Slingsby lived and died wondering what earthly motive I could have for my absurd share in these events, are matters of which I spare you the particulars. NIAGAM- -LAKE ONTARIO-THE ST. LAW- RENCE. " He was born when the crab was ascending, and all his affairs go backward."— Love for Love. It was in my senior vacation, and I was bound to Niagara for the first time. My companion was a spe- cimen of the human race found rarely in Vermont, and never elsewhere. He was nearly seven feet high, walked as if every joint in his body was in a hopeless state of dislocation, and was hideously, ludicrously, and painfully ugly. This whimsical exterior contained the conscious spirit of Apollo, and the poetical suscep- tibility of Keats. He had left his plough in the Green mountains at the age of twenty-five, and entered as a poor student at the university, where, with the usual policy of the college government, he was allotted to me as a compulsory chum, on the principle of break- ing in a colt with a cart-horse. I began with laughing at him, and ended with loving him. He rejoiced in the common appellation of Job Smith — a synonymous soubriquet, as I have elsewhere remarked, which was substituted by his classmates for his baptismal name of Forbearance. Getting Job away with infinite difficulty from a young Indian girl who was selling moccasins in the streets of Buffalo (a straight, slender creature of eigh- teen, stepping about like a young leopard, cold, stern, and beautiful), we crossed the outlet of Lake Erie at the ferry, and took horses on the northern bank of Niagara river to ride to the falls. It was a noble stream, as broad as the Hellespont and as blue as the sky, and I could not look at it, hurrying on headlong to its (earful leap, without a feeling almost of dread. There was only one thing to which Job was more susceptible than to the beauties of nature, and that was the beauty of woman. His romance had been stirred by the lynx-eyed Sioux, who took her money for the moccasins with such haughty and thankless supcrbia, and full five miles of the river, with all the gorgeous flowers and rich shrubs upon its rim, might as well have been Lethe for his admiration. He rode along, like the man of rags you see paraded on an ass in the carnival, his legs and arms dangling about in ludicrous obedience to the sidelong hitch of his pacer. The roar of the falls was soon audible, and Job's enthusiasm and my own, if the increased pace of our Narraganset ponies meant anything, were fully aroused. Thn river broke into rapids, foaming furiously on its INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 367 course, and the subterranean thunder increased like a succession of earthquakes, each louder than the last. I had never heard a sound so broad and universal. It was impossible not to suspend the breath, and feel ab- sorbed, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, in the great phenomenon with which the world seemed trem- bling to its centre. A tall, misty cloud, changing its shape continually, as it felt the shocks of the air, rose up before us, and with our eyes fixed upon it, and our horses at a hard gallop, we found ourselves unexpect- edly in front of a vast white hotel ! which sud- denly interposed between the cloud and our vision. Job slapped his legs against the sides of his panting beast, and urged him on, but a long fence on either side the immense building cut him off from all ap- proach ; and having assured ourselves that there was no access to Niagara except through the back-door of the gentleman's house, who stood with hat off to re- ceive us, we wished no good to his majesty's province of Upper Canada, and dismounted. " Will you visit the falls before dinner, gentlemen ?" asked mine host. " No, sir !" thundered Job, in a voice that, for a mo- ment, stopped the roar of the cataract. He was like an improvisatore who had been checked by some rude birbone in the very crisis of his elo- quence. He would not have gone to the falls that night to have saved the world. We dined. As it was the first meal we had ever eaten under a monarchy, I proposed the health of the king ; but Job refused it. There was an impertinent profanity, he said, in fencing up the entrance to Niagara that was a greater encroachment on natural liberty than the stamp act. He would drink to no king or parliament under which such a thing could be conceived possible. I left the table and walked to the window. " Job, come here ! Miss , by all that is love- ly !" He flounced up, like a snake touched with a torpe- do, and sprang to the window. Job had never seen the lady whose name produced such a sensation, but he had heard more of her than of Niagara. So had every soul of the fifteen millions of inhabitants between us and the gulf of Mexico. She was one of those mir- acles of nature that occur, perhaps, once in the rise and fall of an empire — a woman of the perfect beauty of an angel, with the most winning human sweetness of character and manner. She was kind, playful, un- affected, and radiantly, gloriously beautiful. I am sor- ry I may not mention her name, for in more chival- rous times she would have been a character of history. Everybody who has been in America, however, will Know who I am describing, and I am sorry for those who have not. The country of Washington will be in its decadence before it sees such another. She had been to the fall and was returning with her mother and a troop of lovers, who, I will venture to presume, brought away a very imperfect impression of the scene. I would describe her as she came laugh- ing up that green bank, unconscious of everything but the pleasure of life in a summer sunset ; but I leave it for a more skilful hand. The authoress of " Hope Leslie" will, perhaps, mould her image into one of her inimitable heroines. I presented my friend, and we passed the evening in her dangerous company. After making an engage- ment to accompany her in the morning behind the sheet of the fall, we said " Good-night" at twelve — one of us at least as many " fathom deep in love" as a thou- sand Rosalinds. My poor chum ! The roar of the cataract that shook the very roof over thy head was less loud to thee that night than the beating of thine own heart, I warrant me ! I rose at sunrise to go alone to the fall, hut Job was before me, and the angular oulline of his gaunt ('mure, .ctrf tohing up from Table Rock in strong relief against the white body of the spray, was the first object that caught my eye as I descended. As I came nearer the fall, a feeling of disappoint- ment came over me. I had imagined Niagara a vast body of water descending as if from the clouds. The approach to most falls is from below, and we get an idea of them as of rivers pitching down to the plain from the brow of a hill or mountain. Niagara river, on the contrary, comes out from Lake Erie through a flat plain. The top of the cascade is ten feet perhaps below the level of the country around — consequently invisible from any considerable distance. You walk to the bank of a broad and rapid river, and look over the edge of a rock, where the outlet flood of an inland sea seems to have broken through the crust of the earth, and, by its mere weight, plunged with an awful leap into an immeasurabb and resounding abyss. It seems to strike and thunder upon the very centre of the world, and the ground beneath your feet quivers with the shock till you feel unsafe upon it. Othef disappointment than this I can not conceive at Niagara. It is a spectacle so awful, so beyond the I scope and power of every other phenomenon in the ! world, that I think people who are disappointed there I mistake the incapacity of their own conception for the i want of grandeur in the scene. The "hell of waters" below need but a little red ' ochre to out-Phlegethon Phlegethon. I can imagine the surprise of the gentle element, after sleeping away a se'nnight of moonlight in the peaceful bosom of i Lake Erie, at finding itself of a sudden in such a coil ! A Mediterranean sea-gull, which had tossed out the ! whole of a January in the infernal " yeast" of the Archipelago (was 1 not all but wrecked every day be- tween Troy and Malta in a score of successive hurri- canes?) — I say, the most weather-beaten of sea-birds would look twice before he ventured upon the roaring caldron below Niagara. It is astonishing to see how far the descending mass is driven under the surface of the stream. As far down toward Lake Ontario as the eye can reach, the immense volumes of water rise like huge monsters to the light, boiling and flashing out in rings of foam, with an appearance of rage and anger that I have seen in no other cataract in the world. "A nice fall, as an Englishman would say, my dear Job." "Awful !" Halleck, the American poet (a better one never "strung pearls"), has written some admirable verses on Niagara, describing its effect on the different indi- | viduals of a mixed party, among whom was a tailor. The sea of incident that has broken over me in years of travel, has washed out of my memory all but the | two lines descriptive of its impression upon Snip : — " The tailor made one single note — ' Gods ! what a place to sponge a coat !' " " Shall we go to breakfast, Job ?" " How slowly and solemnly they drop into the abysm !" It was not an original remark of Mr. Smith's. Noth- ing is so surprising to the observer as the extraordi- nary deliberateness with which the waters of Niagara take their tremendous plunge. All hurry and foam and fret, till they reach the smooth limit of the curve —and then the laws of gravitation seem suspended, and, like Cesar, they pause, and determine, since it is inevitable, to take the death-leap with becoming dig- nit " Shall we go to breakfast, Job ?" I was obliged to raise my voice, to be heard, to a pitch rather exhaust- ing to an empty stomach. His eyes remained fixed upon the shifting rainbows bendin" and vanishing in the spray. There was no moving him. and T gave in for another five minutes 368 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 41 Do you think it probable, Job, that the waters of Niagara strike on the axis of the world V No answer. "Job!" 44 What ?" " Do you think his majesty's half of the cataract is finer than ours ?" " Much." <* For water, merely, perhaps. But look at the de- licious verdure on the American shore, the glorious trees, the massed foliage, the luxuriant growth even to the very ritn of the ravine ! By Jove ! it seems to me things grow better in a republic. Did you ever see a more barren and scraggy shore than the one you stand upon ?" 41 How exquisitely," said Job, soliloquizing, " that small green island divides the fall ! What a rock it must be founded on, not to have been washed away in the ages that these waters have split against it !" 41 I'll lay you a bet it is washed away before the year two thousand — payable in any currency with which we may then be conversant." " Don't trifle !" " With time, or geology, do you mean ? Isn't it perfectly clear from the looks of that ravine, that Ni- agara has backed up all the way from Lake Ontario ? These rocks are not adamant, and the very precipice you stand on has cracked, and looks ready for the plunge.* It must gradually wear back to Lake Erie, and then there will be a sweep, I should like to live long enough to see. The instantaneous junction of two seas, with a difference of two hundred feet in their levels, will be a spectacle — eh, Job?" " Tremendous !" 44 Do you intend to wait and see it, or will you come to breakfast '.'" He was immoveable. I left him on the rock, went up to the hotel and ordered mutton-chops and coffee, and when they were on the table, gave two of the waiters a .dollar each to bring him up nolens-volens. He arrived in a great rage, but with a good appetite, and we finished our breakfast just in time to meet Miss , as she stepped like Aurora from her chamber. It is necessary to a reputation for prowess in the United States to have been behind the sheet of the fall (supposing you to have been to Niagara). This achievement is equivalent to a hundred shower-baths, one severe cold, and being drowned twice — but most people do it. We descended to the bottom of the precipice, at the side of the fall, where we found a small house, fur- nished with coarse linen dresses for the purpose, and having arranged ourselves in habiliments not particu- larly improving to our natural beauty, we reappeared — only three out of a party of ten having had the courage to trust their attractions to such a trial. Miss looked like a fairy in disguise, and Job like the most ghostly and diabolical monster that ever stalked un- sepultured abroad. He would frighten a child in his best black suit — but with a pair of wet linen trowsers scarcely reaching to his knees, a jacket with sleeves shrunk to the elbows, and a white cap, he was some- thing supernaturally awful. The guide hesitated about going under the fall with him. It looked rather appalling. Our way lay through a dense descending sheet of water, along a slender pathway of rocks, broken into small fragments, with an overhanging wall on one side, and the boiling caldron of the cataract on the other. A false step, and you were a subject for the " shocking accident" maker. • It has since fallen into the abyss— fortunately in the night, as visiters were always upon it during the day. The noise was heard at an incredible distance. The guide went f rst, taking Miss -'s right hand. She gave me her left, and Job brought up the rear, as they say in Connecticut, " on his own hook." We picked our way boldly up to the water. The wall leaned over so much, and the fragmented declivity was so narrow and steep, that if it had not been done before, 1 should have turned back at once. Two steps more, and the small hand in mine began to strug- gle violently, and, in the same instant, the torrent beat into my eyes, mouth, and nostrils, and I felt as if 1 was drowning. I staggered a blind step onward, but still the water poured into my nostrils, and the con- viction rushed for a moment on my mind that we were lost. I struggled for breath, stumbled forward, and with a gasp that I thought was my last, sunk upon the rocks within the descending waters. Job tumbled over me the next instant, and as soon as I could clear my eyes sufficiently to look about me, I saw the guide sustaining Miss , who had been as nearly drowned as most of the subjects of the Humane So- ciety, but was apparently in a state of resuscitation. None but the half-drowned know the pleasure of breathing. - Here we were within a chamber that Undine might have coveted, a wall of rock at our back, and a trans- parent curtain of shifting water between us and the world, having entitled ourselves a. pcu pres to the same reputation with Hylas and Leander, for seduction by the Naiad9. Whatever sister of Arethusa inhabits there, we could but congratulate her on the beauty of her abode. A lofty and well-lighted hall, shaped like a long pavil- ion, extended as far as we could see through the spray, and with the two objections, that you could not have heard a pistol at your ear for the noise, and that the floor was somewhat precipitous, one could scarce im- agine a more agreeable retreat for a gentleman who was disgusted with the world, and subject to dryness of the skin. In one respect it resembled the enchanted dwelling of the Witch of Atlas, where, Shelley tells " The invisible rain did ever sing A silver music on the mossy lawn. It is lucky for Witches and Naiads that they are not subject to rheumatism. The air was scarcely breathable — (if air it may be called, which streams down the face with the density of a shower from a watering-pot), and our footing upon the slippery rocks was so insecure, that the exertion of continually wiping our eyes was attended with im- minent danger. Our sight was valuable, for surely, never was such a brilliant curtain hung up to the sight of mortals, as spread apparently from the zenith to our feet, changing in thickness and lustre, but with a con- stant and resplendent curve. It was what a child might imagine the arch of the sky to be where it bends over the edge of the horizon. The sublime is certainly very much diluted when one contemplates it with his back to a dripping and slimy rock, and his person saturated with a continual supply of water. From a dry window, I think the in- fernal writhe and agony of the abyss into which we were continually liable to slip, would have been as fine a thing as I have seen in my travels; but I am free to admit, that, at the moment, I would have exchanged my experience and all the honor attached to it, for a dry escape. The idea of drowning back through that thick column of water, was at least a damper to en- thusiasm. We seemed cut off from the living. There was a death between us and the vital air and sunshine- 1 was screwing up my courage for the return, when the guide seized me by the shoulder. I looked around, and what was my horror to see Miss standing far in behind the sheet upon the last visible point ol INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 369 rock, with the water pouring over her in torrents, and a gulf of foam between us, which I could in no way understand how she had passed over. She seemed frightened and pale, and the guide ex- plained to me by signs (for I could not distinguish a syllable through the roar of the cataract), that she had walked over a narrow ledge, which had broken with her weight. A long fresh mark upon the rock at the foot of the precipitous wall, made it sufficiently evi- dent : her position was most alarming. I made a sign to her to look well to her feet; for the little island on which she stood was green with slime and scarce larger than a hat, and an abyss of full six feet wide, foaming and unfathomable, raged be- tween it and the nearest foothold. What was to be done? Had we a plank, even, there was no possible hold for the further extremity, and the shape of the rock was so conical, that its slippery surface evidently would not hold a rope for a moment. To jump to her, even if it were possible, would endanger her life, and I while I was smiling and encouraging the beautiful creature, as she stood trembling and pale on her dan- gerous foothold, I felt my very heart sink within me. The despairing guide said something which I could not hear, and disappeared through the watery wall, and I fixed my eyes upon the lovely form, standing, like a spirit in the misty shroud of the spray, as if the intensity of my gaze could sustain her upon her dan- gerous foothold. I would have given ten years of my life at that moment to have clasped her hand in mine. I bad scarce thought of Job until I felt him trying to pass behind me. His hand was trembling as he laid it on my shoulder to steady his steps ; but there was something in his ill-hewn features that shot an indefinable ray of hope through my mind. His sandy hair was plastered over his forehead, and his scant dress clung to him like a skin ; but though I recall his image ncnv with a smile, I looked upon him with a feeling far enough from amusement then. God bless thee, my dear Job! wherever in this unfit world thy fine spirit may be fulfilling its destiny! He crept down carefully to the edge of the foaming abyss, till he stood with the breaking bubbles at his knees. I was at a loss to know what he intended. She surely would not dare to attempt a jump to his arms from that slippery rock, and to reach her in any way seemed impossible. The next instant he threw himself forward, and while I covered my eyes in horror, with the flashing conviction that he had gone mad and flung himself into the hopeless whirlpool to reach her, she had crossed the awful gulf, and lay trembling and ex- hausted at my feet ! He had thrown himself over the chasm, caught the rock barely with the extremities of his fingers, and with certain death if he missed his hold or slipped from his uncertain tenure, had sus- tained her with supernatural strength as she walked over his body ! The guide providentially returned with a rope in the same instant, and fastening it around one of his feet, we dragged him back through the whirlpool, and after a moment or two to recover from the suffocating immersion, he fell on his knees, and we joined him, I doubt not devoutly, in his inaudible thanks to God. II. — LAKE ONTARIO. The next bravest achievement to venturing behind the sheet of Niagara, is to cross the river in a small boat, at some distance below the Phlegethon of the abyss. I should imagine it was something like riding in a howdah on a swimming elephant. The im- mense masses of water driven under by the Fall, rise splashing and fuming far down the river; and they are as unlike a common wave, to ride, as a horse and a camel. You are, perhaps, ten or fifteen minutes 24 pulling across, and you may get two or three of these lifts, which shove you straight into the air about ten feet, and then drop you into the cup of an eddy, as if some long-armed Titan had his hand under the water, and were tossing you up and down for his amuse- ment. It imports lovers to take heed how their mis- tresses are seated, as all ladies, on these occasions, throw themselves into the arms of the nearest " hose and doublet." Job and I went over to dine on the American side and refresh our patriotism. We dined under a hickory- tree on Goat island, just over the glassy curve of the cataract; and as we grew joyous with our champagne, we strolled up to the point where the waters divide for the American and British Falls; and Job ha- rangued the "mistaken gentleman on his right," in I eloquence that would have turned a division in the house of commons. The deluded multitude, how- ! ever, rolled away in crowds for the monarchy, and at j the close of his speech the British Fall was still, by a ' melancholy majority, the largest. We walked back to our bottle like foiled patriots, and soon after, hope- i less of our principles, went over to the other side too ! I advise all people going to Niagara to suspend ma- I king a note in their journal till the last day of their visit. You might as well teach a child the magni- \ tude of the heavens by pointing to the sky with your j finger, as comprehend Niagara in a day. It has to I create its own mighty place in your mind. You have j no comparison through which it can enter. It is too | vast. The imagination shrinks from it. It rolls in i gradually, thunder upon thunder, and plunge upon ; plunge ; and the mind labors with it to an exhaustion ■ such as is created only by the extremest intellectual ■ effort. I have seen men sit and gaze upon it in a cool ! day of autumn, with the perspiration standing on \ their foreheads in large beads, from the unconscious but toilsome agony of its conception. After haunting its precipices, and looking on its solemn waters for seven days, sleeping with its wind-played monotony in your ears, dreaming, and returning to it till it has grown the one object, as it will, of your perpetual thought, you feel, all at once, like one who has com- passed the span of some almighty problem. It has stretched itself within you. Your capacity has at- tained the gigantic standard, and you feel an elevation and breadth of nature that could measure girth and stature with a seraph. We had fairly " done" Niaga- ra. We had seen it by sunrise, sunset, moonlight; from top and bottom ; fasting and full ; alone and to- gether. We had learned by heart every green path on the island of perpetual dew, which is set like an imperial emerald on its front (a poetical idea of my own, much admired by Job) — we had been grave, gay, I tender, and sublime, in its mighty neighborhood, we had become so accustomed to the base of its broad thunder, that it seemed to us like a natural property in the air, and we were unconscious of it for hours; our voices had become so tuned to its key, and our thoughts so tinged by its grand and perpetual anthem, that I almost doubted if the air beyond the reach of its vibrations would not agonize us with its unnatural silence, and the common features of the world seem of an unutterable and frivolous littleness. We were eating our last breakfast there, in tender melancholy: mine for the Falls, and Job's for the Falls and Miss , to whom I had a half sus- picion that he had made a declaration. " Job!" said I. He looked up from his egg. " My dear Job !" " Don't allude to it, my dear chum," said he, drop- ping his spoon, and rushing to the window to hide his agitation. It was quite clear. I could scarce restrain a smile. Psyche in the em- brace of a respectable giraffe would be the first thought 370 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. in anybody's mind who should see them together. And yet why should he not woo her — and win her too ? He had saved her life in the extremest peril, at the most extreme hazard of his own ; he had a heart as high and worthy, and as capable of an undying worship of her as she would find in a wilderness of lovers; he felt like a graceful man, and acted like a brave one, and was sans peur et sans reproche, and why should he not love like other men ? My dear Job ! I fear thou wilt go down to thy grave, and but one woman in this wide world will have loved thee — thy mother ! Thou art the soul of a preux chevalier in the body of some worthy grave-digger, who is strut- ting about the world, perhaps, in thy more proper car- cass. These angels are so o'er hasty in packing ! We got upon our horses, and had a pleasant amble before us of fifteen miles, on the British side of the river. We cantered off stoutly for a mile to settle our regrets, and then I pulled up, and requested Job to ride near me, as I had something to say to him. " You are entering," said I, " my dear Job, upon your first journey in a foreign land. You will see other manners than your own, which are not therefore laughable, and hear a different pronunciation from your own, which is not therefore vulgar. You are to mix with British subjects, whom you have attacked vigorously in your school declamations as ' the enemy.' but who are not therefore to be bullied in their own country, and who have certain tastes of their own, upon which you had better reserve your judgment. We have no doubt that we are the greatest country that ever was, is, or ever shall be ; but, as this is an unpalatable piece of information to other nations, we will not stuff it into their teeth, unless by particular request. John Bull likes his coat too small. Let him wear it. John Bull prefers his beefsteak to a frican- deau. Let him eat it. John Bull will leave no stone unturned to serve you in his own country, if you will let him. Let him. John Bull will suffer you to find fault for ever with king, lords, and commons, if you do not compare them invidiously with other govern- ments. Let the comparison alone. In short, my dear chum, as we insist that foreigners should adopt our manners while they are travelling in the United States, we had better adopt theirs when we return the visit. They are doubtless quite wOng throughout, but it is not worth while to bristlp one's back against the opinions of some score mi'hons." The foam disappeared frr.n the stream, as we fol- lowed it on, and the roar A' the falls — * * * " Now loud, now calm again, Like a ring of bell;!, whose sound the wind still alters, ' was soon faint in our ears, and like the regret of part- ing, lessened with the increasing distance till it was lost. Job began to look around him, and see some- thing else besides a lovely face in the turnings of the road, and the historian of this memorable journey, who never had but one sorrow that " would not budge with a fillip," rose in his stirrups as he descried the broad blue bosom of Lake Ontario, and gave vent to his feelings in (he begs the reader to believe) the most suitable quotation. Seeing any celebrated water for the first time was always, to me, an event. River, waterfall, or lake, if I have heard of it and thought of it for years, has a sensible presence, that I feel like the approach of a human being in whom I am interested. My heart flut- ters to it. It is thereafter an acquaintance, and I de- fend its beauty or its grandeur as I would the fair fame and worth of a woman that had shown me a prefer- ence. My dear reader, do you love water? Not to drink, for I own it is detestable in small quantities — but water, running or falling, sleeping or gliding, tin- ged by the sunset glow, or silvered by the gentle al- chymist of the midnight heaven ? Do you love a lake? Do you love a river? Do you "affect" any one laughing and sparkling brook that has flashed on your eye like a fay overtaken by the cock-crowing, and tripping away slily to dream-land? As you see four sisters, and but one to love ; so, in the family of the elements, I have a tenderness for water. Lake Ontario spread away to the horizon, glittering in the summer sun, boundless to the eye as the Atlan- tic ; and directly beneath us lay the small town of Fort Niagara, with the steamer at the pier, in which we "promised ourselves a passage down the St. Law- rence. We rode on to the hotel, which we found to our surprise crowded with English officers, and having disposed of our Narragansets, we inquired the hour of departure, and what we could eat meantime, in as nearly the same breath as possible. " Cold leg of mutton and the steamboat's engaged, sir !" The mercury in Job's Britishometer fell plump to zero. The idea of a monopoly of the whole steamer by a colonel and his staff, and no boat again for a week ! There was a government to live under ! We sat down to our mutton, and presently enter the waiter. "Colonel 's compliments; hearing that two gentlemen have arrived who expected to go by the steamer, he is happy to offer them a passage if they can put up with rather crowded accommodations." "Well, Job! what do you think now of England, politically, morally, and religiously ? Has not the gentlemanlike courtesy of one individual materially changed your opinions upon every subject connected with the United Kingdom of Great Britain ?" " It has." " Then, my dear Job, I recommend you never again to read a book of travels without writing down on the margin of every bilious chapter, 'probably lost his passage in the steamer,' or ' had no mustard to his mutton,' or 'could find no ginger-nuts for the interest- ing little traveller,' or some similar annotation. De* pend upon it, that dear delightful Mrs. Trollope would never have written so agreeable a book, if she ha.d thriven with her bazar in Cincinnati." We paid our respects to the colonel, and at six o'clock in the evening got on board. Part of an Irish regiment was bivouacked on the deck, and happier fellows I never saw. They had completed their nine years' service on the three Canadian stations, and were returning to the ould country, wives, children, and all. A line was drawn across the deck, reserving the after quarter for the officers ; the sick were dis- posed of among the women in the bows of the boat, and the band stood ready to play the farewell air to the cold shores of Upper Canada. The line was cast off, when a boy of thirteen rushed down to the pier, and springing on board with a desperate leap, flew from one end of the deck to the other, and flung himself at last upon the neck of a pretty girl sitting on the knee of one of the privates. " Mary, dear Mary !" was all he could utter. His sobs choked him. " Avast with the line, there !" shouted the captain, who had no wish to carry off this unexpected passen- ger. The boat was again swung to the wharf, and the boy very roughly ordered ashore. His only answer was to cling closer to the girl, and redouble his tears, and by this time the colonel had stepped aft, and the case seemed sure of a fair trial. The pretty Canadian dropped her head on her bosom, and seemed divided between contending emotions, and the soldier stood up and raised his cap to his commanding officer, but held firmly by her hand. The boy threw himself on his knees to the colonel, but tried in vain to speak. " Who's this, O'Shane ?" asked the officer. " Sure, my swateheart, your honor." INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 371 " And how dare you bring her on board, sir ?" " Och, she'll go to ould Ireland wid us, your hon- or." " No, no, no !" cried the convulsed boy, clasping the colonel's knees, and sobbing as if his heart would break; "she is my sister ! She isn't his wife! Fa- ther'Il die if she does ! She can't go with him ! She shu'n't go with him !" Job began to snivel, and I felt warm about the eyes myself. " Have you got a wife, O'Shane ?" asked the colonel. " Plase your honor, never a bit," said Paddy. He was a tight, good-looking fellow, by the way, as you would wish to see. .i Well — we'll settle this thing at once. Get up, my little fellow ! Come here, my good girl ! Do you love O'Shane well enough to be his wife ?" " Indeed I do, sir !" said Mary, wiping her eyes with | the back of her hand, and stealing a look at the " six feet one" that stood as straight as a pike beside her. " O'Shane ! I allow this girl to go with us only on condition that you marry her at the first place where we can find a priest. We will make her up a bit of a dowry, and I will look after her comfort as long as she follows the regiment. What do you say, sir? Will you marry her?" O'Shane began to waver in his military position, from a full front face getting to very nearly a right- about. It was plain he was taken by surprise. The eyes of the company were on him, however, and pub- lic opinion, which, in most human breasts, is consider- ably stronger than conscience, had its effect. " I'll do it, your honor !" said he, bolting it out as a man volunteers upon a "forlorn hope." Tears might as well have been bespoken for the whole company. The boy was torn from his sister's neck, and set ashore in the arms of two sailors, and poor Mary, very much in doubt whether she was hap- py or miserable, sank upon a heap of knapsacks, and buried her eyes in a cotton handkerchief with a map of London upon it, probably a gage d'amour from the desaving O'Shane. I did the same myself with a silk one, and Job item. Hem the colonel and several officers. The boat was shoved off, and the wheels spattered away, but as far as we could hear his voice, the cry came following on, " Mary, Mary !" It rung in my ears all night : " Mary, Mary !" I was up in the morning at sunrise, and was glad to escape from the confined cabin and get upon deck The steamer was booming on through a sea as calm as a mirror, and no land visible. The fresh dewiness of the morning air ashore played in my nostrils, and the smell of grass was perceptible in the mind, but in all else it was like a calm in mid ocean. The soldiers were asleep along the decks, with their wives and children, and the pretty runaway lay with her head on O'Shane's bosom, her red eyes and soiled finery showing too plainly how she had passed the night. Poor Mary ! she has enough of following a soldier, by this, I fear. I stepped forward, and was not a little surprised to see standing against the railing on the larboard bow, the motionless figure of an Indian girl of sixteen. Her dark eye was fixed on the line of the horizon we were leaving behind, her arms were folded on her bosom, and she seemed not even to breathe. A com- mon shawl was wrapped carelessly around her, and another glance betrayed to me that she was in a situ- ation soon to become a mother. Her feet were pro- tected by a pair of once gaudy but now shabby and torn moccasins, singularly small ; her hands were of a delicate thinness unusual to her race, and her hollow cheeks, and forehead marked with an expression of pain, told all I could have prophesied of the history of a white man's tender mercies. I approached very near, quite unperceived. A small burning spot was just perceptible in the centre of her dark cheek, and as I looked at her steadfastly, I could see a working of the muscles of her dusky brow, which betrayed, in one of a race so trained to stony calmness, an unusual fever of feeling. I looked around for the place in which she must have slept. A mantle of wampum-work, folded across a heap of confused baggage, partly oc- cupied as a pillow by a brutal-looking and sleeping soldier, told at once the main part of her story. 1 felt for her, from my soul ! " You can hear the great waterfall no more," I said, touching her arm. " I hear it when I think of it," she replied, turning her eyes upon me as slowly, and with as little surprise, as if I had been talking to her an hour. I pointed to the sleeping soldier. "Are you going with him to his country ?" 'Yes." " Are you his wife ?" " My father gave me to him." " Has he sworn before the priest in the name of the Great Spirit to be your husband !" " No." She looked intently into my eyes as she answered, as if she tried in vain to read my meaning. " Is he kind to you ?" She smiled bitterly. " Why then did you follow him ?" Her eyes dropped upon the burden she bore at hei heart. The answer could not have been clearer if written with a sunbeam. I said a few words of kind- ness, and left her to turn over in my mind how I could best interfeie for her happiness. III. — THE ST. LAWRENCE. On the third evening we had entered upon the St. Lawrence, and were winding cautiously into the channel of the Thousand Isles. I think there is not, within the knowledge of the "all-beholding sun," a spot so singularly and exquisitely beautiful. Between the Mississippi and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, I know there is not, for I have pic-nicked from the Sy mplegades westward. The Thousand Isles of the St. Lawrence are as imprinted on my mind as the stars of heaven. I could forget them as soon. The river is here as wide as a lake, while the chan- nel just permits the passage of a steamer. The islands, more than a thousand in number, are a sin- gular formation of flat, rectangular rock, split, as it were, by regular mathematical fissures, and over- flowed nearly to the tops, which are loaded with a most luxuriant vegetation. They vary in size, but the generality of them would about accommodate a tea-party of six. The water is deep enough to float a large steamer directly at the edge, and an active deer would leap across from one to the other in any direc- tion. What is very singular, these little rocky plat- forms are covered with a rich loam, and carpeted with moss and flowers, while immense trees take root in the clefts, and interlace their branches with those of the neighboring islets, shadowing the water with the un- sunned dimness of the wilderness. It is a very odd thing to glide through in a steamer. The luxuriant leaves sweep the deck, and the black funnel parts the drooping sprays as it keeps its way, and you may pluck the blossoms of the acacia, or the rich chestnut flowers, sitting on the tartVail, and, really, a mag.c pas- sage in a witch's steamer, beneath the tree-tops ol an untrodden forest, could not be more novel and start- ling. Then the solitude and silence of tlie dun and still waters are continually broken by the plunge and leap of the wild deer springing or swimming from one 372 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. island to another, and the swift and shadowy canoe of the Indian glides out from some unseen channel, and with a single stroke of his broad paddle he vanishes, and is lost again, even to the ear. If the beauty-sick and nature-searching spirit of Keats is abroad in the world, " my basnet to a 'prentice-cap" he passes his summers amid the thousand isles of the St. Law- rence ! I would we were there with our tea-things, sweet Rosa Matilda! We had dined on the quarter-deck, and were sitting over the colonel's wine, pulling the elm-leaves from the branches as they swept saucily over the table, and listening to the band, who were playing waltzes that probably ended in the confirmed insanity of every wild heron and red deer that happened that afternoon to come within ear-shot of the good steamer Queens- ton. The paddles began to slacken in their spattering, and the boat came to, at the sharp side of one of the largest of the shadowy islands. We were to stop an hour or two, and take in wood. Everybody was soon ashore for a ramble, leaving only the colonel, who was a cripple from a score of Waterloo tokens, and your servant, reader, who had something on his mind. " Colonel ! will you oblige me by sending for Ma- honey ? Steward J call me that Indian girl sitting with her head on her knees in the boat's bow." They stood before us. " How is this ?" exclaimed the colonel ; " another ! good God ! these Irishmen ! Well, sir! what do you intend to do with this girl, now that you have ruined her?" Mahoney looked at her out of a corner of his eye with a libertine contempt that made my blood boil. The girl watched for his answer with an intense but calm gaze into his face, that if he had had a soul, would have killed him. Her lips were set firmly but not fiercely together, and as the private stood looking from one side to the other, unable or unwilling to an- swer, she suppressed a rising emotion in her throat, and turned her look on the commanding officer with a proud coldness that would have become Medea. "Mahoney!" said the colonel, sternly, "will you marry this poor girl ?" " Never, I hope, your honor !" The wasted and noble creature raised her burdened form to its fullest height, and, with an inaudible mur- mur bursting from her lips, walked back to the bow of the vessel. The colonel pursued his conversation with Mahoney, and the obstinate brute was still re- fusing the only reparation he could make the poor Indian, when she suddenly reappeared. The shawl was no longer around her shoulders. A coarse blan- ket was bound below her breast with a belt of wam- pum, leaving her fine bust entirely bare, her small feet trod the deck with the elasticity of a leopard about to leap on his prey, and her dark, heavily- fringed eyes, glowed like coals of fire. She seized the colonel's hand, and imprinted a kiss upon it, another upon mine, and without a look at the father of her child, dived with a single leap over the gangway. She rose di- rectly in the clear water, swam with powerful strokes to one of the most distant islands, and turning once more to wave her hand as she stood on the "shore, strode on, and was lost in the tangles of the forest. THE CHEROKEE'S THREAT. " Notre bonheur, mon cher, se liendra toujours etitre la planle de nos pieds et, notre occiput ; et qu'il coute un million par an ou cent louis, la perception intrinsique est la meme au-dedans de nous." Le Pere Goriot, There were a hundred students in the new class matriculated at Yale College in Connecticut, in the year 18 — . They were young men of different ages and of all conditions in life, but less various in their mien and breeding than in the characteristics of the widely-separate states from which they came. It is not thought extraordinary in Europe that the French and English, the German, and the Italian, should pos- sess distinct national traits : yet one American is sup- posed to be like every other, though the two between whom the comparison is drawn were born and bred as far apart, and in as different latitudes, as the Highland cateran and the brigand of Calabria. I looked around me with some interest, when, on the first morning of the term, the president, professors, and students of the university assembled in the college chapel at the sound of the prayer-bell, and, with my brother freshmen, I stood in the side aisle, closing up with our motley, and, as yet, unclassical heads and habiliments, the long files of the more initiated classes. The berry-brown tan of the sun of Georgia, unblanched by study, was still dark and deep on the cheek of one; the look of command, breathing through the indolent attitude, betrayed, in another, the young Carolinian and slave-master ; a coat of green, garnished with fur and bright buttons, and shaped less by the tailor than by the Herculean and expansive frame over which it was strained, had a taste of Kentucky in its complex- ion ; the white skin and red or sandy hair, cold ex- pression, stiff black coat, and serious attention to the service, told of the puritan son of New Hampshire or Vermont ; and, perked up in his well-fitted coat, the exquisite of the class, stood the slight and metropolitan New-Yorker, with a firm belief in his tailor and him- self written on his effeminate lip, and an occasional look at his neighbors' coats and shoulders, that might have been construed into wonder upon what western river or mountain dwelt the builders of such coats and men ! Rather annoyed at last by the glances of one or two seniors, who were amusing themselves with my simple gaze of curiosity, I turned my attention to my more immediate neighborhood. A youth with close, curl- ing, brown hair, rather under-size, but with a certain decision and nerve in his lip which struck me imme- diately, and which seemed to express somehow a con- fidence in himself which his limbs scarce bore out, stood with his back to the pulpit, and, with his foot on the seat and his elbow on his knee, seemed to have fallen at once into the habit of the place, and to be beyond surprise or interest. As it was the custom of the college to take places at prayers and recitation alphabetically, and he was likely to be my neighbor in chapel and hall for the next four years, I speculated rather more than I should else have done on his face and manner; and as the president came to his Amen, I came to the conclusion, that whatever might be Mr. "S.'s" capacity for friendship, his ill-will would be very demonstrative and uncomfortable. The term went on, the politics of the little republic fermented, and as first appearances wore away, or peculiarities wore off by collision or developed by in- timacy, the different members of the class rose or fell in the general estimation, and the graduation of talent and spirit became more just and definite. The " Southerners and Northerners," as they are called, soon discovered, like the classes that had gone before them, that they had no qualities in common, and, of the secret societies which exist among the students in that university, joined each that of his own compatri- ots. The Carolinian or Georgian, who had passed his life on a plantation, secluded from the society of his equals, soon found out the value of his chivalrous de- portment and graceful indolence in the gay society for which the town is remarkable ; while the Vermontese, or White-Mountaineer, " made unfashionably," and ill at ease on a carpet, took another line of ambition, and sat down with the advantage of constitutional patience INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 373 aud perseverance to the study which he would find in the end a " better continuer," even in the race for a lady's favor. It was the only republic I have ever known — that class of freshmen. It was a fair arena ; and neither in politics, nor society, nor literature, nor love, nor re- ligion, have I, in much searching through the world, found the same fair play or good feeling. Talk of our own republic! — its society is the very core and gall of the worst growth of aristocracy. Talk of the republic of letters !— the two graves by the pyramid of Caius Cestius laugh it to scorn. Of love! — of religion. What is bought and sold like that which has the name of the first 1 What is made a snare and a tool by the designing like the last? But here— with a govern- ment over us ever kindly aud paternal, no favor shown, aud no privilege denied; every equality in the com- petitors at all possible — age, previous education, and, above all, worldly position — it was an arena in which a generous spirit would wrestle with an abandon of heart and limb he might never know in the world again. Every individual rising or falling by the esti- mation he exacts of his fellows, there is no such school of honor ; each, of the many palms of scholar- ship, from the severest to the lightest, aiming at that which best suits his genius, and as welcome as another to the goal, there is no apology for the laggard. Of the feelings that stir the heart in our youth — of the few, the very few, which have no recoil, and leave no repentance — this leaping from the starting-post of mind — this first spread of the encouraged wing in the free heaven of thought and knowledge — is recorded in my own slender experience as the most joyous and the most unmingled. He who has soiled his bright honor with the tools of political ambition — he who has leant his soul upon the charity of a sect in religion — he who has loved, hoped, and trusted, in the greater arena of life and manhood — must look back on days like these as the broken-winged eagle to the sky — as the Indian's subdued horse to the prairie. II. New Haven is not alone the seat of a university. It is a kind of metropolis of education. The excessive beauty of the town, with its embowered streets and sunny gardens, the refinement of its society, its cen- tral position and accessibility, and the facilities for at- tending the lectures of the college professors, render it a most desirable place of instruction in every de- partment. Among others, the female schools of the place have a great reputation, and this, which in Eu- rope, or with a European state of society, would probably be an evil, is, from the simple and frank character of manners in America, a mutual and de- cided advantage. The daughters of the first families of the country are sent here, committed for two, three, and four years, to the exclusive care of the head of the establishment, and (as one of the privileges and advantages of the school) associating freely with the general society of the town, the male part, of course, composed principally of students. A more easy and liberal intercourse exists in no society in the world, and in no society that I have ever seen is the tone of morals and manners so high and unexceptionable. Attachments are often formed, and little harm is thought of it ; and unless it is a very strong case of disparity or objection, no obstacle is thrown in the way of the common intercourse between lovers; and the lady returns to her family, and the gentleman senior disappears with his degree, and they meet and marry — if they like. If they do not, the lady stands as well in the matrimonial market as ever, and the gentleman (unlike his horse) is not damaged by hav- ing been on his knees. Like " Le Noir Faineant," at the tournament, my friend St. John seemed more a looker-on than an actor in the various pursuits of the university. A sudden interference in a quarrel, in which a brother freshman was contending against odds, enlightened the class as to his spirit and personal strength; he acquitted him- self at recitations with the air of self-contempt for such easy excellence ; he dressed plainly, but with instinctive taste ; and at the end of the first term, having shrunk from all intimacy, and lived alone with his books and a kind of trapper's dog he had brought with him from the west, he had acquired an ascen- dency in the opinion of the class for which no one could well account, but to which every one unhes- itatingly assented. We returned after our first short vacation, and of my hundred class-mates there was but one whom I much cared to meet again. St. John had passed the vacation in his rooms, and my evident pleasure at meeting him, for the first time, seemed to open his heart to me. He invited me to breakfast with him. By favor seldom granted to a freshman, he had a lodg- ing in the town — the rest of the class being compelled to live with a chum in the college buildings. I found his rooms — (I was the first of the class who had en- tered them) — more luxuriously furnished than I had expected from the simplicity of his appearance, but his books, not many, but select, and (what is in America an expensive luxury) in the best English editions and superbly bound, excited most my envy and surprise. How he should have acquired tastes of such ultra- civilization in the forests of the west was a mystery that remained to be solved. III. At the extremity of a green lane in the outer skirt of the fashionable suburb of New Haven stood a ram- bling old Dutch house, built probably when the cattle of Mynheer grazed over the present site of the town. It was a wilderness of irregular rooms, of no describa- ble shape in its exterior, and from its southern balcony, to use an expressive Gallicism, "gave upon the bay." Long Island sound, the great highway from the north- ern Atlantic to New York, weltered in alternate lead and silver (oftener like the brighter metal, for the cli- mate is divine), between the curving lip of the bay and the interminable and sandy shore of the island some six leagues distant ; the procession of ships and steam- ers stole past with an imperceptible progress ; the ceaseless bells of the college chapel came deadened through the trees from behind, and (the day being one of golden autumn, and myself and St. John waiting while black Agatha answered the door-bell) the sun- steeped precipice of East Rock, with its tiara of blood- red maples flushing like a Turk's banner in the light, drew from us both a truant wish for a ramble and a holyday. I shall have more to say anon of the foliage of an American October: but just now, while I remem- ber it, I wish to record a belief of my own, that if, as philosophy supposes, we have lived other lives — if "our star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar" — it is surely in the days tempered like the one I am re- membering and describing — profoundly serene, sunny as the top of Olympus, heavenly pure, holy, and more invigorating and intoxicating than luxurious or balmy ; the sort of air that the visiting angels might have brought with them to the tent of Abraham— it is on such days, I would record, that my own memory steps back over the dim threshold of life (so it seems to me), and on such days only. It is worth the translation of our youth and our household gods to a sunnier land, if it were alone for those immortal revelations. In a few minutes from this time were assembled in 374 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. Mrs. Ilfrington's drawing-room the six or seven young ladies of my more particular acquaintance among her pupils, of whom one was a newcomer, and the object of my mingled curiosity and admiration. It was the one day of the week when morning visiters were ad- mitted, and I was there, in compliance with an unex- pected request from my friend, to present him to the agreeable circle of Mrs. Ilfrington. As an habitue in her family, this excellent lady had taken occasion to introduce to me, a week or two before, the newcomer of whom I have spoken above — a departure from the ordinary rule of the establishment, which I felt to be a compliment, and which gave me, I presumed, a tacit claim to mix myself up in that young lady's destiny as deeply as I should find agreeable. The newcomer was the daughter of an Indian chief, and her name was Nunu. The wrongs of civilization to the noble aborigines of America are a subject of much poetical feeling in the United States, and will ultimately become the po- etry of the nation. At present the sentiment takes occasionally a tangible shape, and the transmission of the daughter of a Cherokee chief to New Haven, to be educated at the expense of the government, and of several young men of the same high birth to different colleges, will be recorded among the evidences in his- tory that we did not plough the bones of their fathers into our fields without some feelings of compunction. Nunu had come to the seaboard under the charge of a female missionary, whose pupil she had been in one of the native schools of the west, and was destined, though a chief's daughter, to return as a teacher to her tribe when she should have mastered some of the higher accomplishments of her sex. She was an apt scholar, but her settled melancholy, when away from her books, had determined Mrs. Ilfrington to try the effect of a little society upon her, and hence my privilege to ask for her appearance in the drawing- room. As we strolled down in the alternate shade and sun- shine of the road, I had been a little piqued at the want of interest, and the manner of course, with which St. John had received my animated descriptions of the personal beauty of the Cherokee. " I have hunted with the tribe," was his only an- swer, " and know their features." " But she is not like them," I replied, with a tone of some impatience ; " she is the beau ideal of a red skin, but it is with the softened features of an Arab or an Egyptian. She is more willowy than erect, and has no higher cheek-bones than the plaster Venus in your chambers. If it were not for the lambent fire in her eye, you might take her, in the sculptured pose of her attitudes, for an immortal bronze of Cleopatra. I tell you she is divine." St. John called to his dog, and we turned along the green bank above the beach, with Mrs. Ilfrington's house in view, and so opens a new chapter in my story. IV. In the united pictures of Paul Veronese and Ra- phael, steeped as their colors seem to have been in the divinest age of Venetian and Roman female beauty, I have scarcely found so many lovely women, of so dif- ferent models and so perfect, as were assembled during my sophomore year under the roof of Mrs. Ilfrington. They went about in their evening walks, graceful and angelic, but, like the virgin pearls of the sea, they poured the light of their loveliness on the vegeta- ting oysters about them, and no diver of fashion had yet taught them their value. Ignorant myself in those days of the scale of beauty, their features are enam- elled in my memory, and I have tried insensibly by that standard (and found wanting) of every court in Europe the dames most worshipped and highest born. Queen of the Sicilies, loveliest in your own realm of sunshine and passion ! Pale and transparent princess — pearl of the court of Florence — than whom the cre- ations on the immortal walls of the Pitti less discipline our eye for the shapes of heaven ! Gipsy of the Pac- tolus ! Jewess of the Thracian Gallipolis ! Bright and gifted cynosure of the aristocracy of England ! — ye are five women I have seen in as many years' wan- dering over the world, lived to gaze upon, and live to remember and admire — a constellation, I almost be- lieve, that has absorbed all the intensest light of the beauty of a hemisphere — yet, with your pictures col- ored to life in my memory, and the pride of rank and state thrown over most of you like an elevating charm, I go back to the school of Mrs. Ilfrington, and (smile if you will !) they were as lovely, and stately, and as worthy of the worship of the world. I introduced St. John to the young ladies as they came in. Having never seen him, except in the pres- ence of men, 1 was a little curious to know whether his singular aplomb would serve him as well with the other sex, of which I was aware he had had a very slender experience. My attention was distracted at the moment of mentioning his name to a lovely little Georgian (with eyes full of the liquid sunshine of the south), by a sudden bark of joy from the dog, who had been left in the hall ; and as the door opened, and the slight and graceful Indian girl entered the room, the usually unsocial animal sprang bounding in, lavishing caresses on her, and seemingly wild with the delight of a recognition. In the confusion of taking the dog from the room, I had again lost the moment of remarking St. John's manner, and on the entrance of Mrs. Ilfrington, Nunu was sitting calmly by the piano, and my friend was talking in a quiet undertone with the passionate Geor- gian. " I must apologize for my dog," said St. John, bow- ing gracefully to the mistress of the house; " he was bred by Indians, and the sight of a Cherokee remind- ed him of happier days — as it did his master." Nunu turned her eyes quickly upon him, but im- mediately resumed her apparent deep study of the ab- struse figures in the Kidderminster carpet. " You are well arrived, young gentlemen," said Mrs. Ilfrington ; " we press you into our service for a bo- tanical ramble. Mr. Slingsby is at leisure, and will be delighted, I am sure. Shall I say as much for you, Mr. St. John ?" St. John bowed, and the ladies left the room for their bonnets — Mrs. Ilfrington last. The door was scarcely closed when Nunu reappeared, and checking herself with a sudden feeling at the first step over the threshold, stood gazing at St. John, evidently under very powerful emotion. " Nunu !" he said, smiling slowly and unwillingly, and holding out his hand with the air of one who for- gives an offence. She sprang upon his bosom with the bound of a leveret, and between her fast kisses broke the endear- ing epithets of her native tongue, in words that I only understood by their passionate and thrilling accent. The language of the heart is universal. The fair scholars came in one after another, and we were soon on our way through the green fields to the flowery mountain-side of East Rock; Mrs. Ilfrington's arm and conversation having fallen to my share, and St. John rambling at large with the rest of the party, but more particularly beset by Miss Temple, whose Christian name was Isabella, and whose Christian char- ity had no bowels for broken hearts. The most sociable individuals of the party for a while were Nunu and Lash ; the dog's recollections of the past seeming, like those of wiser animals, more agreea- ble than the present. The Cherokee astonished Mrs. Ilfrington by an abandonment to joy and frolic whicb INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 375 she had never displayed before— sometimes fairly out- running the dog at full speed, and sometimes sitting down breathless upon a green bank, while the rude creature overpowered her with his caresses. The scene gave origin to a grave discussion between that well-instructed lady and myself, upon the singular force of childish association— the extraordinary intima- cy between the Indian and the trapper's dog being explained satisfactorily (to her, at least) on that at- tractive principle. Had she but seen Nunu spring into the bosom of my friend half an hour before, she might have added a material corollary to her proposi- tion. If the dog and the chief's daughter were not old friends, the chief's daughter and St. John certain- ly were. A.s well as I could judge by the motions of two people walking before me, St. John was advancing fast in the favor and acquaintance of the graceful Georgian. Her southern indolence was probably an apology in Mrs. Ilfrington's eyes for leaning heavily on her com- panion's arm ; but, in a momentary halt, the capricious beauty disembarrassed herself of the bright scarf that had floated over her shoulders, and bound it playfully around his waist. This was rather strong on a first acquaintance, and Mrs. Ilfrington was of that opin- ion. " Miss Temple !" said she, advancing to whisper a reproof in the beauty's ear. Before she had taken a second step, Nunu bounded over the low hedge, followed by the dog, with whom she had been chasing a butterfly, and springing upon St. John with eyes that flashed fire, she tore the scarf into shreds, and stood trembling and pale, with her feet on the silken fragments. " Madam !" said St. John, advancing to Mrs. Ilfring- ton, after casting on the Cherokee a look of surprise and displeasure, " I should have told you before that your pupil and myself are not new acquaintances. Her father is my friend. I have hunted with the tribe, and have hitherto looked upon Nunu as a child. You will believe me, I trust, when I say her conduct surprises me, and I beg to assure you that any influence I may have over her will be in accordance with your own wishes exclusively." His tone was cold, and Nunu listened with fixed lips and frowning eyes. "Have you seen her before since her arrival?" asked Mrs. Ilfrington. " My dog brought me yesterday the first intelligence that she was here : he returned from his morning ram- ble with a string of wampum about his neck, which had the mark of the tribe. He was her gift," he added, patting the head of the dog, and looking with a soft- ened expression at Nunu, who dropped her head upon her bosom, and walked on in tears. The chain of the Green mountains, after a gallop of some five hundred miles, from Canada to Connecticut, suddenly pulls up on the shore of Long-island sound, and stands rearing with a bristling mane of pine-trees, three hundred feet in air, as if checked in mid career by the sea. Standing on the brink of this bold preci- pice, you have the bald face of the rock in a sheer per- pendicular below you ; and, spreading away from the broken masses at its feet, lies an emerald meadow, in- laid with a crystal and rambling river, across which, at a distance of a mile or two, rise the spires of the university, from what else were a thick-serried wilder- ness of elms. Back from the edge of the precipice extends a wild forest of hemlock and fir, ploughed on its northern side by a mountain-torrent, whose bed of marl, dry and overhung with trees in the summer, serve as a path and a guide from the plain to the summit. It were a toilsome ascent but for that smooth and hard pavement, and the impervious and green thatch of pine tassels overhung. Antiquity in America extends no farther back than the days of Cromwell, and East Rock is traditionary ground with us — for there harbored the regicides Whalley and Goffe, and many a breath-hushing tale is told of them over the smouldering log-fires of Con- necticut. Not to rob the historian, I pass on to say that this cavernous path to the mountain-top was the resort in the holyday summer afternoons of most of the poetical and otherwise well-disposed gentlemen sopho- mores, and, on the day of which I speak, of Mrs. Il- frington and herseven-and-twenty lovely scholars. The 1 kind mistress ascended with the assistance of my arm, j and St. John drew stoutly between Miss Temple and i a fat young lady with an incipient asthma. Nunu had ! not been seen since the first cluster of hanging flow- ers had hidden her from our sight, as she bounded upward. The hour or two of slanting sunshine, poured in upon the summit of the precipice from the west, had been sufficient to induce a fine and silken moss to show its fibres and small blossoms above the carpet of pine-tassels ; and emerging from the brown shadow of the wood, you stood on a verdant platform, the foliage of sighing trees overhead, a fairies' velvet beneath you, and a view below that you may as well (if you would not die in your ignorance) make a voyage over the water to see. We found Nunu lying thoughtfully near the brink of the precipice, and gazing oft* over the waters of the sound, as if she watched the coming or going of a friend under the white sails that spotted its bosom. We recovered our breath in silence, I alone, perhaps, of that considerable company gazing with admiration at the lithe and unconscious figure of grace lying in the attitude of the Grecian Hermaphrodite on the brow of the rock before us. Her eyes were moist and mo- tionless with abstraction, her lips just perceptibly curved in an expression of mingled pride and sorrow, her small hand buried and clinched in the moss, and | her left foot and ankle, models of spirited symmetry, es- caped carelessly from her dress, the high instep strained back as if recovering from a leap, with the tense con- trol of emotion. The game of the coquettish Georgian was well played. With a true woman's pique, she had re- doubled her attentions to my friend from the moment that she found it gave pain to another of her sex ; and St. John, like most men, seemed not unwilling to see a new altar kindled to his vanity, though a heart he had already won was stifling with the incense. Miss Temple was very lovely. Her skin, of that teint of opaque and patrican white which is found oftenest in Asian latitudes, was just perceptibly warmed toward the centre of the cheek with a glow like sunshine through the thick white petal of a magnolia; her eyes were hazel, with those inky lashes which enhance the expression a thousand-fold, either of passion or mel- ancholy ; .her teeth were like strips from the lily's heart; and she was clever, captivating, graceful, and a thorough coquette. St. John was mysterious, roman- tic-looking, superior, and, just now, the only victim in the way. He admired, as all men do, those qualities which, to her own sex, rendered the fair Isabella un- amiable ; and yielded himself, as all men will, a satis- fied prey to enchantments of which he knew the springs were the pique and vanity of the enchantress. How singular it is that the highest and best qualities of the female heart are those with which men are the least captivated ! A rib of the mountain formed a natural seat a little back from the pitch of the precipice, and here sat Miss Temple, triumphant in drawing all eyes upon herself and her tamed lion ; her lap full of flowers, which he had found time to gather on the way, and her white 376 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. hands employed in arranging a bouquet, of which the destiny was yet a secret. Next 'to their own loves, ladies like nothing on earth like mending or marring the loves of others ; and while the violets and already- drooping wild flowers were coquettishly chosen or re- jected by those slender fingers, the sun might have swung back to the east like a pendulum, and those seven-and-twenty misses would have watched their lovely schoolfellow the same. Nunu turned her head slowly around at last, and silently looked on. St. John lay at the feet of the Georgian, glancing from the flowers to her face, and from her face to the flow- ers, with an admiration not at all equivocal. Mrs. Ufrington sat apart, absorbed in finishing a sketch of New-Haven ; and I, interested painfully in watching the emotions of the Cherokee, sat with my back to the trunk of a hemlock — the only spectator who comprehended the whole extent of the drama. A wild rose was set in the heart of the bouquet at last, a spear of riband-grass added to give it grace and point, and nothing was wanting but a string. Ret- icules were searched, pockets turned inside out, and never a bit of riband to be found. The beauty was in despair " Stay," said St. John, springing to his feet. "Lash! Lash!" The dog came coursing in from the wood, and crouched to his master's hand. " Will a string of wampum do ?" he asked, feeling under the long hair on the dog's neck, and untying a fine and variegated thread of many-colored beads, worked "exquisitely. The dog growled, and Nunu sprang into the mid- dle of the circle with the fling of an adder, and seiz- ing the wampum as he handed it to her rival, called the dog, and fastened it once more around his neck. The ladies rose in alarm ; the belle turned pale, and clung to St. Johu's arm ; the dog, with his hair brist- ling upon his back, stood close to her feet in an atti- tude of defiance ; and the superb Indian, the peculiar genius of her beauty developed by her indignation, her nostrils expanded, and her eyes almost showering fire in their flashes, stood before them like a young Pythoness, ready to strike them dead with a regard. St. John recovered from his astonishment after a moment, and leaving the arm of Miss Temple, ad- vanced a step, and called to his dog. The Cherokee patted the animal on his back, and spoke to him in her own language ; and, as St. John still advanced, Nunu drew herself to her fullest height, placed herself before the dog, who slunk growling from his master, and said to him, as she folded her arms, " The wampum is mine." St. John colored to the temples with shame. 44 Lash !" he cried, stamping with his feet, and en- deavoring to fright him from his protectress. The dog howled and crept away, half crouching with fear, toward the precipice ; and St. John shoot- ing suddenly past Nunu, seized him on the brink, and held him down by the throat. The next instant, a scream of horror from Mrs. II- frington, followed by a terrific echo from every female present, started the rude Kentuckian to his feet. Clear over the abyss, hanging with one hand by an ashen sapling, the point of her tiny foot just poising on a projecting ledge of rock, swung the desperate Cherokee, sustaining herself with perfect ease, but with all the determination of her iron race collected in calm concentration on her lips. " Restore the wampum to his neck," she cried, with a voice that thrilled the very marrow with its subdued fierceness, " or my blood rest on your soul !" St. John flung it toward the dog, and clasped his hands in silent horror. The Cherokee bore down the sapling till its slender stem cracked with the tension, and rising lightly with the rebound, alit like a feather upon the rock. The subdued student sprang to her side ; but with scorn on her lip, and the flush of exertion already vanished from her cheek, she called to the dog, and with rapid strides took her way alone down the mountain. VI. Five years had elapsed. I had put to sea from the sheltered river of boyhood — had encountered the storms of a first entrance into life — had trimmed my boat, shortened sail, and, with a sharp eye to wind- ward, was lying fairly on my course. Among others from whom I had parted company was Paul St. John, who had shaken hands with me at the university gate, leaving me, after four years' intimacy, as much in doubt as to his real character and history as the first day we met. I had never heard him speak of either father or mother, nor had he, to my knowledge, re- ceived a letter from the day of his matriculation. He passed his vacations at the university ; he had studied well, yet refused one of the highest college honors offered him with his degree ; he had shown many good qualities, yet some unaccountable faults ; and, all in all, was an enigma to myself and the class. I knew him, clever, accomplished, and conscious of superiority ; and my knowledge went no farther. The coach was at the gate, and I was there to see him off; and, after four years' constant association, I had not an idea where he was going, or to what he was des- tined. The driver blew his horn. " God bless you, Slingsby !" "God bless you, St. John " And so we parted. It was five years from this time, I say, and, in the bitter struggles of first manhood, I had almost forgot- ten there was such a being in the world. Late in the j month of October, in 1829, I was on my way west- ward, giving myself a vacation from the law. I em- barked, on a clear and delicious day, in the small steamer which plies up and down the Cayuga lake, ! looking forward to a calm feast of scenery, and caring j little who were to be my fellow-passengers. As we got out of the little harbor of Cayuga, I walked astern for the first time, and saw the not very unusual sight of a group of Indians standing motionless by the wheel. They were chiefs, returning from a diplomatic visit to Washington. I sat down by the companion-ladder, and opened I soul and eye to the glorious scenery we were gliding j through. The first severe frost had come, and the j miraculous change had passed upon the leaves which j is known only in America. The blood-red sugar ma- ple, with a leaf brighter and more delicate than a Cir- cassian lip, stood here and there in the forest like the Sultan's standard in a host — the solitary and far-seen aristocrat of the wilderness ; the birch, with its spirit- like and amber leaves, ghosts of the departed summer, turned out along the edges of the woods like a lining of the palest gold ; the broad sycamore and the fan- like catalpa flaunted their saffron foliage in the sun, spotted with gold like the wings of a lady-bird ; the kingly oak, with its summit shaken bare, still hid its majestic trunk in a drapery of sumptuous dyes, like a stricken monarch, gathering his robes of state about him to die royally in his purple ; the tall poplar, with its minaret of silver leaves, stood blanched like a cow- ard in the dying forest, burthening every breeze with its complainings ; the hickory paled through its en- during green ; the bright berries of the mountain-ash flushed with a more sanguine glory in the unobstructed sun ; the gaudy tulip-tree, the Sybarite of vegetation, stripped of its golden cups, still drank the intoxicating light of noonday in leaves than which the lip of an Indian shell was never more delicately teinted ; the still deeper-dyed vines of the lavish wilderness, perish- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 377 ing with the noble things whose summer they had 6hared, outshone them in their decline, as woman in her death is heavenlier than the being on whom in life she leaned; and alone and unsympathizing in this universal decay, outlaws from Nature, stood the fir and the hemlock, their frowning and sombre heads darker and less lovely than ever, in contrast with the death-struck glory of their companions. The dull colors of English autumnal foliage give you no conception of this marvellous phenomenon. The change here is gradual ; in America it is the work of a night — of a single frost ! Oh, to have seen the sun set on hills bright in the still green and lingering summer, and to wake in the morning to a spectacle like this! It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through the tree-tops — as if the sunsets of a summer — gold, purple, and crimson — had been fused in the alembic of the west, and poured back in a new deluge of light and color over the wilderness. It is as if every leaf in those countless trees had been painted to outflush the tulip — as if, by some electric miracle, the dyes of the earth's heart had struck upward, and her crystals and ores, her sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies, had let forth their imprisoned colors to mount through the roots of the forest, and, like the angels that in olden time entered the body of the dying, reanimate the per- ishing leaves, and revel an hour in their bravery. I was sitting by the companion-ladder, thinking to what on earth these masses of foliage could be resem- bled, when a dog sprang upon my knees, and, the moment after, a hand was laid on my shoulder. "St. John? Impossible!" " Bodily!" answered my quondam classmate. I looked at him with astonishment. The soigne man of fashion I had once known was enveloped in a kind of hunter's frock, loose and large, and girded to his waist by a belt; his hat was exchanged for a cap of rich otter skin ; his pantaloons spread with a slov- enly carelessness over his feet ; and, altogether, there was that in his air which told me at a glance that he had renounced the world. Lash had recovered his leanness, and, after wagging out his joy, he crouched between my feet, and lay looking into my face, as if he was brooding over the more idle days in which we had been acquainted. " And where are you bound ?" I asked, having an- swered the same question for myself. " Westward with the chiefs !" "For how long ?" " The remainder of my life." I could not forbear an exclamation of surprise. " You would wonder less," said he, with an impa- tient gesture, "if you knew more of me. And, by- the-way," he added with a smile, " I think I never told you the first half of the story — my life up to the time I met you." " It was not for want of a catechist," I answered, settling myself in an attitifde of attention. " No ; and I was often tempted to gratify your cu- riosity : but from the little intercourse I had had with the world, I had adopted some precocious principles; and one was, that a man's influence over others was vulgarized and diminished by a knowledge of his history." I smiled, and as the boat sped on her way over the calm waters of the Cayuga, St. John went on lei- surely with a story which is scarce remarkable enough for a repetition. He believed himself the natural son of a western hunter, but only knew that he had passed his early youth on the borders of civilization, between whites and Indians, and that he had been more par- ticularly indebted for protection to the father of Nunu. Mingled ambition and curiosity had led him eastward while still a lad, and a year or two of a most vagabond hfe in the different cities had taught him the caution and bitterness for which he was so remarkable. A fortunate experiment in lotteries supplied him with the means of education, and, with singular application in a youth of such wandering habits, he had applied himself to study under a private master, fitted him- self for the university in half the usual time, and cul- tivated, in addition, the literary taste which I have re- marked upon. " This," he said, smiling at my look of astonish- ment, " brings me up to the time when we met. I came to college at the age of eighteen, with a few hundred dollars in my pocket, some pregnant experi- ence of the rough side of the world, great confidence in myself, and distrust of others, and, I believe, a kind of instinct of good manners, which made me ambi- tious of shining in society. Yon were a witness to my debHt. Miss Temple was the first highly-edu- cated woman I had ever known, and you saw her effect on me." " And since we parted ?" " Oh, since we parted my life has been vulgar enough. I have ransacked civilized life to the bot- tom, and found it a heap of unredeemed falsehoods. I do not say it from common disappointment, for I I may say I succeeded in everything I undertook " "Except Miss Temple," 1 said, interrupting, at the I hazard of wounding him. " No ; she was a coquette, and I pursued her till I ! had my turn. You see me in my new character now. But a month ago I was the Apollo of Saratoga, play- ing my own game with Miss Temple. I left her for a woman worth ten thousand of her — and here she is." As Nunu came up the companion-way from the cabin, I thought I had never seen breathing creature so exquisitely lovely. With the exception of a pair of brilliant moccasins on her feet, she was dressed in the usual manner, but with the most absolute sim- plicity. She had changed in those five years from the child to the woman, and, with a round and well- developed figure, additional height, and manners at once gracious and dignified, she walked and looked the chieftain's daughter. St. John took her hand, and gazed on her with moisture in his eyes. " That I could ever have put a creature like this," he said, " into comparison with the dolls of civiliza- tion!" We parted at Buffalo ; St. John with his wife and the chiefs to pursue their way westward by Lake Erie, and I to go moralizing on my way to Niagara. F. SMITH. " Nature had made him for some other planet, And pressed his soul into a human shape By accident or malice." Coleridge. " I 'U have you chronicled, and chronicled, and cut-and-chron- icled, and sung in all-to-be-praised sonnets, and graved in new brave ballads, that all tongues shall troule you."— Philaster. If you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the length of a continent with one arm stretched out into the midst of the sea, the place to which I would trans- port you, reader mine ! would lie as it were in the palm of the giant's hand. The small promontory to which I refer, which becomes an island in certain states of the tide, is at the end of one of the long capes of Massachusetts, and is still called by its Indian name, Nahant. Not to make you uncomfortable, I beg to introduce you at once to a pretentious hotel, "squat like a toad" upon the unsheltered and highest poiut of this citadel in mid sea, and a very great resort for j the metropolitan New-Englanders. Nahant is per- 378 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. haps, liberally measured, a square half-mile; and it is distant from what may fairly be called mainland, per- haps a league. Road to Nahant there is none. The oi polloi go there by steam ; but when the tide is down, you may drive there with a thousand chariots over the bottom of the sea. As I suppose there is not such another place in the known world, my tale will wait while I describe it more fully. If the Bible had been a fic- tion (not to speak profanely), I should have thought the idea of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host hud its origin in some such wonder of nature. Nahant is so far out into the ocean, that what is called the "ground swell," the majestic heave of its great bosom going on for ever like respiration (though its face may be like a mirror beneath the sun, and a wind may not have crisped its surface for days and weeks), is as broad and powerful within a rood of the shore as it is a thousand miles at sea. The promontory itself is never wholly left by the ebb ; but, from its western extremity, there runs a narrow ridge, scarce broad enough for a horse-path, impassible for the rocks and sea-weed of which it is matted, and extending at just high-water mark from Nahant to the mainland. Seaward from this ridge, which is the only connexion of the promontory with the continent, descends an expanse of sand, left bare six hours out of the twelve by the retreating sea, as smooth and hard as marble, and as broad and appa- rently as level as the plain of the Hermus. For three miles it stretches away without shell or stone, a sur- face of white, fine-grained sand, beaten so hard by the eternal hammer of the surf, that the hoof of a horse scarce marks it, and the heaviest wheel leaves it as printless as a floor of granite. This will be easily un- derstood when you remember the tremendous rise and fall of the ocean swell, from the very bosom of which, in all its breadth and strength, roll in the waves of the flowing tide, breaking down on the beach, every one, with tlie thunder of a host precipitated from the bat- tlements of a castle. Nothing could be more solemn and anthem-like than the succession of these plunging surges. And when the " tenth wave" gathers, far out at sea, and rolls onward to the shore, first with a glassy and heaving swell as if some mighty monster were lurching inland beneath the water, and then, bursting up into foam, with a front like an endless and sparry crystal wall, advances and overwhelms every- thing in its progress, till it breaks with a centupled thunder on the beach — it has seemed to me, standing there, as if thus might have beaten the first surge on the shore after the fiat which " divided sea and land." I am no Cameronian, but the sea (myself on shore) always drives me to Scripture for an illustration of my feelings. I The promontory of Nahant must be based on the earth's axle, else 1 can not imagirie how it should have lasted so long. In the mildest weather, the ground- swell of the sea gives it a fillip at every heave that would lay the " castled crag of Drachenfels" as low as Memphis. The wine trembles in your beaker of claret as you sit after dinner at the hotel ; and if you look out at the eastern balcony (for it is a wooden pagoda, with balconies, verandahs, and colonnades ad Libitum), you will see the grass breathless in the sun- shine upon the lawn, and the ocean as polished and calm as MilacWs brow beyond, and yet the spray and foam dashing fifty feet into the air between, and en- veloping the "Devil's Pulpit" (a tall rock split off from the promontory's front) in a perpetual kaleidoscope of mist and rainbows. Take the trouble to transport yourself there ! I will do the remaining honors on the spot. A cavern as cool (not as silent) as those of Trophonius lies just under the brow of yonder preci- pice, and the waiter shall come after us with our wine. You have dined with the Borromeo in the grotto of Isola Bella, I doubt not, and know the perfection of art — I will show you that of nature. (I should like to transport you for a similar contrast from Terni to Niagara, or from San Giovanni Laterano to an aisle in a forest of Michigan ; but the Daedalian mystery, alas ! is unsolved. We "fly not yet.") Here we are, then, in the "Swallow's Cave." The floor descends by a gentle declivity to the sea, and from the long dark cleft stretching outward you look forth upon the broad Atlantic — the shore of Ireland the first terra firma in the path of your eye. Here is a dark pool left by the retreating tide for a refrigerator, and with the champagne in the midst, we will recline about it like the soft Asiatics of whom we learned pleasure in the east, and drink to the small-featured and purple-lipped " Mignons" of Syria — those fine- limbed and fiery slaves, adorable as Peris, and by turns languishing and stormy, whom you buy for a pinch of piastres (say bl. bs.) in sunny Damascus. Your drowsy Circassian, faint and dreamy, or your crockery Georgian — fit dolls for the sensual Turk — is, to him who would buy soul, dear at a para the hecatomb. We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid, with a hundred feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth side open to the sky. The light comes in mellow and dim, and the sharp edges of the rocky portal seem let into the pearly arch of heaven. The tide is at half- ebb, and the advancing and retreating waves, which at first just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip of the cavern, now dash their spray-pearls on the rock below, the "tenth" surge alone rallying as if in scorn of its retreating fellows, and, like the chieftain of Cul- loden Moor, rushing back singly to the contest. And now that the waters reach the entrance no more, come forward and look on the sea ! The swell lifts ! — would you not think the bases of the earth rising beneath it? It falls ! — would you not think the foundation of the deep had given way? A plain, broad enough for the navies of the world to ride at large, heaves up evenly and steadily as if it would lie against the sky, rests a moment spell-bound in its place, and falls again as far — the respiration of a sleeping child not more reg- ular and full of slumber. It is only on the shore that it chafes. Blessed emblem ! it is at peace with itself! The rocks war with a nature so unlike their own, and the hoarse din of their border onsets resounds through the caverns they have rent open ; but beyond, in the calm bosom of the ocean, what heavenly dignity! what godlike unconsciousness of alarm ! I did not think we should stumble on such a moral in the cave ! By the deeper base of its hoarse organ, the sea is now playing upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down. Hear! how it rushes in beneath the rocks, broken and stilled in its tortuous way, till it ends with a washing and dull hiss among the sea-weed, and, like a myriad of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the crags is audible. There is fine music in the sea! And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to cool and darken, and the fifst gold teint of sunset is stealing into the sky, and the sea looks of a changing opal, green, purple, and white, as if its floor were paved with pearl, and the changing light struck up through the waters. And there heaves a ship into the horizon, like a white-winged bird lying with dark breast on the waves, abandoned of the sea-breeze within sight of port, and repelled even by the spicy breath that comes with a welcome off the shore. She comes from "merry England." She is freighted with more than merchandise. The home-sick exile will gaze on her snowy sail as she sets in with the morning breeze, and bless it ; for the wind that first filled it on its way swept through the green valley of his home ! What links of human affection brings she over the sea? How much comes in her that is not in her "bill of lading," yet worth, to the heart that is waiting for it, a thousand times the purchase of her whole venture! INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 379 Mais montons nous ! I hear the small hoofs of Thalaba; my stanhope waits; we will leave this half Dottle of champagne, that " remainder biscuit," and the echoes of our philosophy, to the Naiads who have lent us their drawing-room. Undine, or Egeria! Lurly, or Arethusa! whatever thou art called, nympth of this shadowy cave! adieu! Slowly, Thalaba ! Tread gingerly down this rocky descent ! So ! Here we are on the floor of the vasty deep! What a glorious race-course ! The polished and printless sand spreads away before you as far as the eye can see, the surf comes in below, breast-high ere it breaks, and the white fringe of the sliding wave shoots up the beach, but leaves room for the marching of a Persian phalanx on the sands it has deserted. Oh, how noiselessly runs the wheel, and how dreamily we slide along, feeling our motion but in the resist- ance of the wind, and by the trout-like pull of the ribands by the excited animal before us. Mark the color of the sand ! White at high-water mark, and thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has evaporated less — a slab of Egyptian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter's not more polished and unimpres- sible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is none ; and mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust of the foot of man, by the returning sea. You may write upon its fine-grained face with a crow- quill — you may course over its dazzling expanse with a troop of chariots. Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty yards of the surf, or for an hour after the tide has left the sand, it holds the water without losing its firm- ness, and is like a gray mirror, bright as the bosom of the sea. (By your leave, Thalaba!) And now lean over the dasher, and see those small fetlocks striking up from beneath — the flying mane, the thorough-bred action, the small and expressive head, as perfect in the reflection as in the reality; like Wordsworth's swan, he u Trots double, horse and shadow." You would swear you were skimming the surface of the sea; and the delusion is more complete as the white foam of the "tenth wave" skims in beneath wheel and hoof, and you urge on with the treacherous element gliding away visibly beneath you. We seem not to have driven fast, yet three miles, fairly measured, are left behind, and Thalaba's blood is up. Fine creature! I would not give him " For the best horse the Sun has in his stable." We have won champagne ere now, Thalaba, and I, trotting on this silvery beach ; and if ever old age comes on me, and I intend it never shall on aught save my mortal coil (my spirit vowed to perpetual youth), I think these vital breezes, and a trot on these exhilarating sands, would sooner renew my prime than a rock in St. Hilary's cradle, or a dip in the well of Kanathos. May we try the experiment together, gentle reader! I am not settled in my own mind whether this de- scription of one of my favorite haunts in America was written most to introduce the story that is to fol- low, or the story to introduce the description. Possi- bly the latter, for having consumed by callow youth in wandering " to and fro in the earth," like Sathanas of old, and looking on my country now with an eye from which all the minor and temporary features have gradually faded, I find my pride in it (after its glory as a republic) settling principally on the superior handiwork of nature in its land and water. When I talk of it now, it is looking through another's eyes — his who listens. I do not describe it after my own memory of what it was once to ?ne, but according to my idea of what it will seem now to a stranger. Hence I speak not of the friends I made, rambling by lake or river. The lake and the river are there, but the friends are changed — to themselves and me. I speak not of the lovely and loving ones that stood by me, looking on glen or waterfall. The glen and the waterfall ar« romantic still, but the form and the heart that breathed through it are no longer lovely or loving. I should renew my joys by the old mountain and river, for, all they ever were I should find them still, and never seem to myself grown old, or cankered of the world, or changed in form or spirit, while they reminded me but of my youth, with their familiar sunshine and beauty. But the friends that I knew — as I knew them — are dead. They look no longer the same; they have another heart in them; the kindness of the eye, the smilingness of the lip, are no more there. Philosophy tells me the material and living body changes and renews, particle by par- ticle, with time ; and experience — cold-blooded and j stony monitor — tells me, in his frozen monotone, that heart and spirit change with it and renew ! But the 1 name remains, mockery that it is! and the memory ! sometimes; and so these apparitions of the past — that ; we almost fear to question when they encounter us, ; lest the change they have undergone should freeze our i blood — stare coldly on us, yet call us by name, and ; answer, though coldly to their own, and have that j terrible similitude to what they were, mingled with j their unsympathizing and hollow mummery, that we wish the grave of the past, with all that it contained of kind or lovely, had been sealed for ever. The | heart we have lain near before our birth (so read I the i book of human life) is the only one that can not for- get that it has loved us. Saith well and affection- ately an American poet, in some birth-day verses to ! his mother — " Mother ! dear mother ! the feelings nurst As I hung at thy bosom, clung round thee first — 'Twas the earliest link in love's warm chain, 'Tis the only one that will long remain ; And as, year by year, and day by day, Some friend, still trusted, drops away, Mother ! dear mother ! oh, dost thou see How the shortened chain brings me nearer thee .'" II. I have observed that of all the friends one has in the course of his life, the truest and most attached is ex- actly the one who, from his dissimilarity to yourself, the world finds it very odd you should fancy. We hear sometimes of lovers who " are made for each other," but rarely of the same natural match in friend- ship. It is no great marvel. In a world like this, where we pluck so desperately at the fruit of pleasure, we prefer for company those who are not formed with precisely the same palate as ourselves. You will sel- dom go wrong, dear reader, if you refer any human question about which you are in doubt to that icy oracle — selfishness. My shadow for many years was a gentle monster, whom I have before mentioned, baptized by the name of Forbearance Smith. He was a Vermontese, a de- scendant of one of the puritan pilgrims, and the first of his family who had left the Green mountains since the flight of the regicides to America. We assimilate to what we live among, and Forbearance was very green, and very like a mountain. He had a general resemblance to one of Thorwaldsen's unfinished apos- tles — larger than life, and just hewn into outline. My acquaintance with him commenced during my first year at the university. He stalked into my room one morning with a hair-trunk on his back, and handed me the following note from the tutor : — " Sir : The faculty have decided to impose upon you the fine of ten dollars and damages, for painting 380 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. the president's horse on sabbath night while grazing on the college green. They, moreover, have removed Freshman Wilding from your rooms, and appoint as your future chum the studious and exemplary bearer, Forbearance Smith, to whom you are desired to show a becoming respect. " Your obedient servant, " Erasmus Snufflegreek. N To Freshman Slingsby." Rather relieved by my lenient sentence (for, till the next shedding of his well-saturated coat, the sky-blue body and red mane and tail of the president's once gray mare would interfere with that esteemed animal's usefulness), I received Mr. Smith with more polite- ness than he expected. He deposited his hair-trunk in the vacant bedroom, remarked with a good-humored smile that it was a cold morning, and seating himself in my easiest chair, opened his Euclid, and went to work upon a problem, as perfectly at home as if he had furnished the room himself, and lived in it from his matriculation. I had expected some preparatory apology at least, and was a little annoyed ; but being upon my good behavior, I bit my lips, and resumed the "Art of Love," upon which I was just then prac- tising my nascent Latinity, instead of calculating loga- rithms for recitation. In about an hour, my new chum suddenly vociferated "Eureka!" shut up his book, and having stretched himself (a very unnecessary op- eration), coolly walked to my dressing-table, selected my best hair-brush, redolent of Macassar, and used it with the greatest apparent satisfaction. " Have you done with that hair-brush ?" I asked, as he laid it in its place again. " Oh yes !" " Then, perhaps, you will do me the favor to throw it out of the window." He did it without the slightest hesitation. He then resumed his seat by the fire, and I went on with my book in silence. Twenty minutes had elapsed, per- haps, when he rose very deliberately, and without a word of preparation, gave me a cuff that sent me fly- ing into the wood-basket in the corner behind me. As soon as I could pick myself out, I flew upon him, but I might as well have grappled with a boa-constrictor. He held me off at arm's length till I was quite ex- hausted with rage, and, at last, when I could struggle no more, I found breath to ask him what the devil he meant. " To resent what seemed to me, on reflection, to be an insult," he answered, in the calmest tone, " and now to ask your pardon for a fault of ignorance. The first was due to myself, the second to you." Thenceforth, to the surprise of everybody, and Bob Wilding and the tutor, we were inseparable. I took Bruin (by a double elision Forbearance became " bear," and by paraphrase Bruin, and he answered to the name)— I took him, I say, to the omnium shop, and presented him with a dressing-case, and other appli- ances for his outer man ; and as my inner man was relatively as much in need of his assistance, we mu- tually improved. I instructed him in poetry and po- liteness, and he returned the lesson in problems and politics. My star was never in more fortunate con- junction. Four years had woven their threads of memory about us, and there was never woof more free from blemish. Our friendship was proverbial. All that much care and Macassar could do for Bruin had been done, but there was no abating his seven feet of stature, nor re- ducing the size of his feet proper, nor making the mus- cles of his face answer to their natural wires. At his most placid smile, a strange waiter would run for a hot towel and the doctor (colic was not more like it- self than that like colic) ; and for his motions — oh Lord ! a skeleton, with each individual bone append- ed to its neighbor with a string, would execute a pas seul with the same expression. His mind, however, had none of the awkwardness of his body. A simpli- city and truth, amounting to the greatest naivete, and a fatuitous unconsciousness of the effect on beholders of his outer man, were its only approaches to fault or foible. With the finest sense of the beautiful, the most unerring judgment in literary taste, the purest romance, a fervid enthusiasm, constancy, courage, and good temper, he walked about the world in a mask — an admirable creature, in the guise and seeming of a ludicrous monster. Bruin was sensitive on but one point. He never could forgive his father and mother for the wrong they had entailed on him at his baptism. "Forbearance Smith !" he would say to himself sometimes in uncon- scious soliloquy, "they should have given me the vir- tue as well as the name !" And then he would sit with a pen, and scrawl " F. Smith" on a sheet of paper by the hour together. To insist upon knowing his Christian name was the one impertinence he never forgave. III. My party at Nahant consisted of Thalaba, Forbear- ance, and myself. The place was crowded, but 1 I passed my time very much between my horse and my J friend, and was as certain to be found on the beach ; when the tide was down, as the sea to have left the I sands. Job (a synonyme for Forbearance which be- ! came at this time his common soubriquet) was, of ' ! course, in love. Not the least to the prejudice, how- | ever, of his last faithful passion — for he was as fond ;, of the memory of an old love, as he was tender in the i presence of the new. I intended to have had him dis- I sected after his death, to see whether his organization | was not peculiar. I strongly incline to the opinion II that we should have found a mirror in the place of his heart. Strange ! how the same man who is so fickle in love, will be so constant in friendship ! But is it fickleness ? Is it not rather a supcrjlu of tenderness in the nature, which overflows to all who approach the fountain ? I have ever observed that the most suscep- tible men are the most remarkable for the finer quali- ties of character. They are more generous, more delicate, and of a more chivalrous complexion alto- gether, than other men. It was surprising how reason- ably Bruin would argue upon this point. " Because I was happy at Niagara," he was saying one day as we sat upon the rocks, " shall I take no pleasure in the falls of Montmorenci ? Because the sunset was glorious yesterday, shall I find no beauty in that of to-day ? Is my fancy to be used but once, and the key turned upon it for ever? Is the heart like a bon- || bon, to be eaten up by the first favorite, and thought I of no more ? Are our eyes blind, save to one shape ! ! of beauty ? Are our ears insensible to the music save of one voice ?" 11 But do you not weaken the heart, and become in- capable of a lasting attachment, by this habit of incon- stancy ?" " How long, my dear Phil, will you persist in talk- ! ing as if the heart was material, and held so much love as a cup so much water, and had legs to be weary, or organs to grow dull ? How is my sensibility lessened — how my capacity enfeebled ? What would I have done for my first love, that I would not do for my last ? I would have sacrificed my life to secure the happi- ness of one you wot of in days gone by : I would jump into the sea, if it would make Blanche Carroll happier to-morrow." " Sautez-donc /" said a thrilling voice behind ; and as if the utterance of her name had conjured her out of the ground, the object of all Job's admiration, and a little of my own, stood before us. She had a work- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 381 basket in her hand, a gipsy-hat tossed carelessly on her head, and had preceded a whole troop of belles and matrons, who were coming out to while away the morning, and breathe the invigorating sea-air on the rocks. , ,j 11 Blanche Carroll was what the women would call " a little love," but that phrase of endearment would not at all express the feeling with which she inspired the men. She was small, and her face and figure might have been framed in fairy-land for bewitching beauty ; but with the manner of a spoiled child, and, apparently, the most thoughtless playfulness of mind, she was as veritable a little devil as ever took the shape of woman. Scarce seventeen at this time, she had a knowledge of character that was like an instinct, and was an accomplished actress in any part it was neces- sary for her purpose to play. No grave Machiavel ever managed his cards with more finesse than that little intriguante the limited world of which she was the star. She was a natural master-spirit and plotter; and the talent that would have employed itself in the deeper game of politics, had she been born a woman of rank in Europe, displayed itself, in the simple so- ciety of a republic, in subduing to her power every- thing in the shape of a single man that ventured to her net. I have nothing to tell of her at all commensu- rate with the character I have drawn, for the disposal of her own heart (if she has one) must of course be the most important event of her life ; but I merely pencil the outline of the portrait in passing, as a specimen of the material that exists — even in the simplest society — for the dramatis personce of a court. We followed the light-footed beauty to the shelter of one of the caves opening on the sea, and seated our- selves about her upon the rocks. Some one proposed that Job or myself should read. "Oh, Mr. Smith," interrupted the belle, "where is my bracelet ? — and where are my verses ?" At the ball the night before she had dropped a Dracelet in the waltz, and Job had been permitted to take care of the fragments, on condition of restoring them, with a sonnet, the next morning. She had just thought of it. " Read them out ! read them out !" she cried, as Job, blushing a deep blue, extracted a tri-colored pink document from his pocket, and tried to give it to her unobservsd, with the packet of jewelry. Job looked at her imploringly, and she took the verses from his hand, and ran her eye through them. " Pretty well !" she said ; " but the last line might be improved. Give me a pencil, some one !" And bending over it, till her luxuriant hair concealed her fairy fingers in their employment, she wrote a moment upon her knee, and tossing the paper to me, bade me read it out with the emendation. Bruin had, mean- time, modestly disappeared, and I read with the more freedom • — " 'Twas broken in the gliding dance, When thou wert in ihe dream of power ; When shape and motion, tone and glance, Were glorious all — the woman's hour ! The light lay soft upon thy brow, The music melted in thine ear, And one perhaps forgotten now, With 'wildered thoughts stood listening near, Marvelling not that links of gold A pulse like thine had not controlled. " 'Tis midnight now. The dance is done, And thou, in thy soft dreams, asleep, And I, awake, am gazing on The fragments given me to keep : I think of every glowing vein That ran beneath these links of gold, And wonder if a thrill of pain Made those bright channels ever cold ! With gifts like thine, I can not think Orief ever chilled this broken link. " Good-night ! 'Tis little now to thee That in my ear thy words were spoken, And thou wilt think of them and me As long as of the bracelet broken. For thus is riven many a chain That thou hast fastened but to break, And thus thou'lt sink to sleep again, As careless that another wake : The only thought thy heart can rend Is— what the fellow'll charge to mend .'" Job's conclusion was more pathetic, but probably less true. He appeared alter the applause had ceased, and resumed his place at the lady's feet, with a look in his countenance of having deserved an abatement of persecution. The beauty spread out the fragments of the broken bracelet on the rock beside her. " Mr. Smith !" said she, in her most conciliating tone. Job leaned toward her with a look of devoted in- quiry. " Has the tide turned ?" " Certainly. Two hours since." " The beach is passable, then ?" " Hardly, I fear." " No matter. How many hours' drive is it to Sa- lem ?" " Mr. Slingsby drives it in two." " Then you'll get Mr. Slingsby to lend you his stanhope, drive to Salem, have this bracelet mended, and bring it back in time for the ball. / have spoken, as the grand Turk says. Allez !" " But my dear Miss Carroll " She laid her hand on his mouth as he began to re- monstrate, and while I made signs to him to refuse, she said something to him which I lost in a sudden dash of the waters. He looked at me for my consent. " Oh ! you can have Mr. Slingsby's horse," said the beauty, as I hesitated whether my refusal would not check her tyranny, " and I'll drive him out this even- ing for his reward, iV est -ce pas? you cross man !" So, with a sun hot enough to fry the brains in his skull, and a quivering reflection on the sands that would burn his face to a blister, exit Job, with the broken bracelet in his bosom. "Stop, Mr. Slingsby," said the imperious little belle, as I was making up a mouth, after his departure, to express my disapprobation of her measures, "no lec- ture, if you please. Give me that book of plays, and I'll read you a precedent. Because you are virtuous, shall we have no more cakes and ale ? Ecoutez ! And, with an emphasis and expression that would have been perfect on the stage, she read the following passage from " The Careless Husband :" — " Lady Betty. — The men of sense, my dear, make the best Yools in the world; their sincerity and good breeding throw them so entirely into one's power, and give one such an agreeable thirst of using them ill, to show that power — 'tis impossible not to quench it. "Lady Easy. — But, my Lord Morelove — " Lady B. — Pooh ! my Lord Morelove's a mere In- dian damask — one can't wear him out: o' my con- science, I must give him to my woman at last. 1 begin to be known by him ; had I not best leave him oil", tin- dear ? " Lady E. — Why did .you ever encourage him > " Lady B.— Why, what would you have one do ? For my part, I could no more choose a man by my eye than a shoe— one must draw them on a little, to see if they are right to one's foot. " Lady E— But I'd no more fool on with a man I could not like, than wear a shoe that pinched me. " Lady B.—Ay ; but then a poor wretch tells one he'll widen 'em, or do anything, and is so evil and silly, that one does not know how to turn such a trifle as a pair of shoes, or a heart, upon a fellow's hands again. " Lady TS.—And thpre's my Lord Fnppington. 382 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. "Lady B. — My dear! fine fruit will have flies about it ; but, poor things! they do it no harm; for, if you observe, people are generally most apt to choose that the flies have been busy with. Ha ! ha ! " Lady E. — Thou art a strange, giddy creature ! 14 Lady B. — That may be from too much circula- tion of thought, my dear !" " Pray, Miss Carroll," said I, as she threw aside the book with a theatrical air, " have you any precedent for broiling a man's brains, as well as breaking his heart ? For, by this time, my friend Forbearance has a coup de soleil, and is hissing over the beach like a steam-engine." " How tiresome you are ! Do you really think it will kill him ?" " It might injure him seriously — let alone the dan- ger of driving a spirited horse over the beach, with the tide quarter-down." " What shall I do to be ' taken out of the corner,' Mr. Slingsby ?" "Order your horses an hour sooner, and drive to Lynn, to meet him halfway on his return. I will re- sume my stanhope, and give him the happiness of driving back with you." " And shall I be gentle Blanche Carroll, and no ogre, if I do?" "Yes; Mr. Smith surviving." " Take the trouble to give my orders, then ; and come back immediately, and read to me till it is time to go. Meantime, I shall look at myself in this black mirror." And the spoilt, but most lovely girl bent over a dark pool in the corner of the cave, forming a picture on its shadowy background that drew a mur- mur of admiration even from the neglected group who had been the silent and disapproving witnesses of her caprice." IV A thunder-cloud strode into the sky with the rapid- ity which marks that common phenomenon of a breathless summer afternoon in America, darkened the air for a few minutes, so that the birds betook them- selves to their nests, and then poured out its refresh- ing waters with the most terrific flashes of lightning, and crashes of thunder, which for a moment seemed to still even the eternal base of the sea. With the same fearful rapidity, the black roof of the sky tore apart, and fell back, in rolling and changing masses, upon the horizon ; the sun darted with intense brilliancy through the clarified and transparent air ; the light- stirring breeze came freighted with delicious coolness; and the heavy sea-birds, who had lain brooding on the waves while the tumult of the elements went on, rose on their cimeter-like wings, and fled away, with in- comprehensible instinct, from the beautiful and freshen- ed land. The whole face of earth and sky had been changed in an hour. Oh, of what fulness of delight are even the senses capable ! What a nerve there is sometimes in every pore ! What love for all living and all inanimate things may be born of a summer shower ! How stirs the fancy, and brightens hope, and warms the heart, and sings the spirit within us, at the mere animal joy with which the lark flees into heaven ! And yet, of this exquisite capacity for pleasure we take so little care ! We refine our taste, we elaborate and finish our mental perception, we study the beautiful, that we may know it when it appears — yet the senses by which these faculties are approached, the stops by which this fine instrument is played, are trifled with and neglected. We forget that a single excess blurs and confuses the music written on our minds ; we forget that an untimely vigil weakens and bewilders the delicate minister to our inner temple; we know not, or act as if we knew not, that the fine and easily- jarred harmony of health is the only interpreter of Nature to our souls ; in short, we drink too much claret, and eat too much pale foie gras. Do you un- derstand me, gourmand et gourmet ? Blanche Carroll was a beautiful whip, and the two bay ponies in her phaeton were quite aware of it. La Bruyere says, with his usual wisdom, " Une belle femme qui a les qualit6s d'un honnete homme est ce qu'il y a au monde d'un commerce plus delicieux ;" and, to a certain degree, masculine accomplishments too, are very winning in a woman — if pretty ; if plain, she is expected not only to be quite feminine, but quite perfect. Foibles are as hateful in a woman who does not possess beauty, as they are engaging in a wo- man who does. Clouds are only lovely when the heavens are bright. She looked loveliest while driving, did Blanche Carroll, for she was born to rule, and the expression native to her lip was energy and nerve ; and as she sat with her little foot pressed against the dasher, and reined in those spirited horses, the finely-pencilled mouth, usually playful or pettish, was pressed to- gether in a curve as warlike as Minerva's, and twice as captivating. She drove, too, as capriciously as she acted. At one moment her fleet ponies fled over the sand at the top of their speed, and at the next they were brought down to a walk, with a suddenness which threatened to bring them upon their haunches. Now far up on the dry sand, cutting a zigzag to lengthen the way, and again below at the tide edge, with the waves breaking over her seaward wheel ; all her powers at one instant engrossed in pushing them to their fastest trot, and in another the reins lying loose on their backs, while she discussed some sudden flight of philosophy. " Be his fairy, his page, his everything that love and poetry have invented," said Roger Ascham to Lady Jane Grey, just before her marriage; but Blanche Carroll was almost the only woman I ever saw capable of the beau ideal of fascina- ting characters. Between Miss Carroll and myself there was a safe and cordial friendship. Besides loving another better, she was neither earnest, nor true, nor affectionate enough to come at all within the range of my possible attachments, and though I admired her, she felt that the necessary sympathy was wanting for love ; and, the idea of fooling me with the rest once abandoned, we were the greatest of allies. She told me all her triumphs, and I listened and laughed without thinking it worth while to burden her with my confidence in return ; and you may as well make a memorandum, gentle reader, that that is a very good basis for a friend- ship. Nothing bores women or worldly persons so much as to return their secrets with your own. As we drew near the extremity of the beach, a boy rode up on horseback, and presented Miss Carroll with a note I observed that it was written on a very dirty slip of paper, and was waiting to be enlightened as to its contents, when she slipped it into her belt, took the whip from the box, and flogging her ponies through the heavy sand of the outer beach, went off, at a pace which seemed to engross all her attention, on her road to Lynn. We reached the hotel and she had not spoken a syllable, and as I made a point of never in- quiring into anything that seemed odd in her conduct, I merely stole a glance at her face, which wore the expression of mischievous satisfaction which I liked the least of its common expressions, and descended from the phaeton with the simple remark, that Job could not have arrived, as I saw nothing of my stan- hope in the yard. " Mr. Slingsby." It was the usual preface to asking some particular favor. " Miss Carroll." " Will you be so kind as to walk to the library and INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 383 select me a book to your own taste, and ask no ques- tions as to what I do with myself meantime ?" "But, my dear Miss Carroll — your father " " Will feel quite satisfied when he hears that Cato was with me. Leave the ponies to the groom, Cato, and follow me." I looked after her as she walked down the village street with the old black behind her, not at all certain of the propriety of my acquiescence, but feeling that there was no help for it. I lounged away a half hour at the library, and found Miss Carroll waiting for me on my return. There were no signs of Bruin ; and as she seemed impatient to be off, I jumped into the phaeton, and away we flew to the beach as fast as her ponies could be driven under the whip. As we descended upon the sands she spoke for the first time. " It is so civil of you to ask no questions, Mr. Slings- by; but you are not offended with me ?" " If you have got into no scrape while under my charge, I shall certainly be too happy to shake hands upon it to-morrow." " Are you quite sure ?" she asked archly. " Quite sure." " So am not I," she said with a merry laugh; and in her excessive amusement she drove down to the sea, till the surf broke over the nearest pony's back, and filled the bottom of the phaeton with water. Our wet feet were now a fair apology for haste, and taking the reins from her, I drove rapidly home, while she wrap- ped herself in her shawl, and sat apparently absorbed in the coming of the twilight over the sea. I slept late after the ball, though I had gone to bed exceedingly anxious about Bruin, who had not yet made his appearance. The tide would prevent his crossing the beach afrer ten in the morning, however, and I made myself tolerably easy till the sands were passable with the evening ebb. The high-water mark was scarcely deserted by the waves, when the same boy who had delivered the note to Miss Carroll the day before, rode up from the beach on a panting horse, and delivered me the following note : — " Dear Philip : You will be surprised to hear that I am in the Lynn jail on a charge of theft and utterance of counterfeit money. I do not wait to tell you the particulars. Please come and identify, " Yours truly, " F. Smith." I got upon the boy's horse, and hurried over the beach with whip and spur. I stopped at the justice's office, and that worthy seemed uncommonly pleased to see me. " We have got him, sir," said he. " Got whom ?" I asked rather shortly. •« Why, the fellow that stole your stanhope and Miss Carroll's bracelet, and passed a twenty dollar counter- feit bill — ha'n't you hearn on't ?" The justice's incredulity, when I told him it was probably the most intimate friend I had in the world, would have amused me at any other time. " Will you allow me to see the prisoner?" I asked. " Be sure I will. I let Miss Carroll have a peep at him yesterday, and what do you think ? Oh, Lord ! he wanted to make her believe she knew him ! Good ! wasn't it? Ha! ha! And such an ill-looking fel- low ! Why, I'd know him for a thief anywhere ! Your intimate friend, Mr. Slingsby ! Oh, Lord ! when you come to see him ! Ha ! ha !" We were at the prison-door. The grating bolts turned slowly, the door swung rustily on its hinges as if it was not often used, and in the next minute I was enfolded in Job's arms, who sobbed and laughed, and was quite hysterical with his delight. I scarce won- dered at the justice's prepossessions when I looked at the figure he made. His hat knocked in, his coat muddy, his hair full of the dust of straw — the natural hideousness of poor Job had every possible aggrava- tion. We were in the stanhope, and fairly on the beach, before he had sufficiently recovered to tell me the story. He had arrived quite overheated at Lynn, but, in a hurry to execute Miss Carroll's commission, he merely took a glass of soda-water, had Thalaba's mouth washed, and drove on. A mile on his way, he was overtaken by a couple of ostlers on horseback, who very roughly ordered him back to the inn. He refused, and a fight ensued, which ended in his being tied into the stanhope, and driven back as a prisoner. The large note, which he had given for his soda-water, it appeared, was a counterfeit, and placards, offering a reward for the detection of a villain, described in the usual manner as an ill-looking fellow, had been stick- ing up for some days in the village. He was taken before the justice, who declared at first sight that he answered the description in the advertisement. His stubborn refusal to give the whole of his name (he would rather have died, I suppose), his possession of my stanhope, which was immediately recognised, and lastly, the bracelet found in his pocket, of which he refused indignantly to give any account, were circum- stances enough to leave no doubt on the mind of the worthy justice. He made out his mittimus forthwith, granting Job's request that he might be allowed to write a note to Miss Carroll (who, he knew, would drive over the beach toward evening), as a very great favor. She arrived as he expected. " And what in Heaven's name did she say V- said I, interested beyond my patience at this part of the story. "Expressed the greatest astonishment when the justice showed her the bracelet, and declared she never saw me before in her life .'" That Job forgave Blanche Carroll in two days, and gave her a pair of gloves with some verses on the third, will surprise only those who have not seen that lady. It would seem incredible, but here are the verses, as large as life : — " Slave of the snow-white hand ! I fold My spirit in thy fabric fair ; And when that dainty hand is cold, And rudely comes the wintry air, Press in thy light and straining form Those slender fingers soft and warm ; And, as the fine-traced veins within Quicken their bright and rosy flow, And gratefully the dewy skin Clings to the form that warms it so Tell her my heart is hiding there, Trembling to be so closely prest, Yet feels how brief its moments are, And saddens even to be blest — Fated to serve her for a day, And then, like thee, be flung away." EDITH L1NSEY. PART 1. FROST AND FLIRTATION. Oh yes — for you're in love with me! (I'm very glad of it, I'm sure ;) But then you are not rich, you see, And I you know I'm very poor ! 'Tis true that I can drive a tandem— 'Tis true that I can turn a sonnet— 'Tis true I leave the law at random, When I should study— plague upon it ! But this is not— excuse me !— m y ! (A thing they give for house and land ;) And we must eat in matrimony— And love is neither bread nor honey— And so you understand ?" 384 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. " Thou art spotless as the snow, lady mine, lady mine ! Thou art spotless as the snow, lady mine ! But the noon will have its ray, And snow-wreaths melt away — And hearts — why should not thevt — Why not thine V It began to snow. The air softened; the pattering of the horse's hoofs was muffled with the impeded vi- bration ; the sleigh glided on with a duller sound ; the large loose flakes fell soft and fast, and the low and just audible murmur, like the tread of a fairy host, melted on the ear with a drowsy influence, as if it were a descent of palpable sleep upon the earth. You may talk of falling water — of the running of a brook — of the humming song of an old crone on a sick vigil — or of the levi susurro of the bees of Hybla — but there is nothing like the falling of the snow for soft and soothing music. You hear it or not, as you will, but it melts into your soul unaware. If you have ever a heartache, or feel the need of "poppy or man- dragora," or, like myself, grow sometimes a-weary of the stale repetitions of this unvaried world, seek me out in Massachusetts, when the wind softens and veers south, after a frost — say in January. There shall have been a long-lying snow on the ground, well- trodden. The road shall be as smooth as the paths to our first sins — of a seeming perpetual declivity, as it were — and never a jolt or jar between us and the edge of the horizon ; but all onward and down appa- rently, with an insensible ease. You sit beside me in my spring-sleigh, hung with the lightness of a cob- web cradle for a fairy's child in the trees. Our horse is, in the harness, of a swift and even pace, and around his neck is a string of fine small bells, that ring to his measured step in a kind of muffled music, softer and softer as the snow-flakes thicken in the air. Your seat is of the shape of the fauteuil in your library, cushioned and deep, and with a backward and gentle slope, and you are enveloped to the eyelids in warm furs. You settle down, with every muscle in repose, the visor of your ermine cap just shedding the snow from your forehead, and with a word, the groom stands back, and the horse speeds on, steady, but beautifully fast. The bells, which you hear loudly at first, begin to dcaderi, and the low hum of the alighting flakes steals gradually on your ear ; and soon the hoof- strokes are as silent as if the steed were shod with wool, and away you flee through the white air, like birds asleep upon the wing diving through the feathery fleeces of the moon. Your eyelids fall — forgetfulness steals upon the senses — a delicious torpor takes pos- session of the uneasy blood — and brain and thought yield to an intoxicating and trance-like slumber. It were perhaps too much to ask that any human bosom may go scathless to the grave ; but in my own un- worthy petitions I usually supplicate that my heart may be broken about Christmas. I know an anodyne o' that season. Fred Fleming and I occupied one of the seven long seats in a stage-sleigh, flying at this time twelve miles in the hour (yet not fast enough for our impatience), westward from the university gates. The sleighing had been perfect for a week, and the cold keen air had softened for the first time that morning, and assumed the warm and woolly complexion that foretokened snow. Though not very cheerful in its aspect, this is an atmosphere particularly pleasant to breathe, and Fred, who was making his first move after a six weeks' fever, sat with the furs away from his mouth, nostrils expanded, lips parted, and the countenance altogether of a man in a high state of physical enjoyment. I had nursed him through his illness, by-the-way, in my own rooms, and hence our position as fellow- travellers. A pressing invitation from his father to come home with him to Skaneateles, for the holydays, had divened me from my usual winter journey to the North ; and for the first time in my life, I was going upon a long visit to a strange roof. My imagination had never more business upon its hands. Fred had described to me, over and over again, every person I was to meet, brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and friends — a household of thirty people, guests included ; but there was one person among them of whom his descriptions, amplified as they were, were very unsatisfactory. '• Is she so very plain ?" I asked for the twentieth time. m Abominably !" " And immense black eyes?" " Saucers !" "And large mouth?" "Huge!" " And very dark ?" " Like a squaw !" "And skinny hands, did you say ?" " Lean, long, and pokerish !" " And so very clever ?" " Knows everything, Phil !" " But a sweet voice ?" " Um ! everybody says so." "And high temper?" " She's the devil, Phil ! don't ask any more ques- tions about her." " You don't like her, then ?" " She never condescends to speak to me ; how should I ?" And thereupon I put my head out of the sleigh, and employed myself with catching the snow-flakes on my nose, and thinking whether Edith Linsey would like me or no ; for through all Fred's derogatory descrip- tions, it was clearly evident that she was the ruling spirit of the hospitable household of the Flemings. As we got farther on, the new snow became deeper, and we found that the last storm had been heavier here than in the country from which we had come. The occasional farm-houses were almost wholly buried, the black chimney alone appearing above the ridgy drifts, while the tops of the doors and windows lay below the level of the trodden road, from which a descending passage was cut to the threshold, like the entrance to a cave in the earth. The fences were quite invisible. The fruit-trees looked diminished to shrubberies of snow-flowers, their trunks buried under the visible surface, and their branches loaded with the still falling flakes, till they bent beneath the burden. Nothing was abroad, for nothing could stir out of the road without danger of being lost, and we dreaded to meet even a single sleigh, lest in turning out, the horses should "slump" beyond their depth, in the untrodden drifts. The poor animals began to labor severely, and sunk at every step over their knees in the clogging and wool-like substance ; and the long and cumbrous sleigh rose and fell in the deep pits like a boat in a heavy sea. It seemed impossible to get on. Twice we brought up with a terrible plunge and stood suddenly still, for the runners had struck in too deep for the strength of the horses; and with the snow- shovels, which formed a part of the furniture of the vehicle, we dug them from their concrete beds. Our progress at last was reduced to scarce a mile in the hour, and we began to have apprehensions that our team would give out between the post-houses. For- tunately it was still warm, for the numbness of cold would have paralyzed our already flagging exertions. "We had reached the summit of a long hill with the greatest difficulty. The poor beasts stood panting and reeking with sweat ; the runners of the sleigh were clogged with hard cakes of snow, and the air was close and dispiriting. We came to a stand-still, with the vehicle lying over almost on its side, and I stepped out to speak to the driver and look forward. It was a discouraging prospect ; a long deep valley lay before us, closed at the distance of a couple of INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 385 miles by another steep bill, through a cleft in the top of wliicli lay our way. We could not even distinguish the line of the road between. Our disheartened ani- mals stood at this moment buried to their breasts, and to get forward without rearing at every step seemed impossible. The driver sat on his box looking un- easily down into the valley. It was one undulating ocean of snow, not a sign of a human habitation to be seen, and even the trees indistinguishable from the general mass by their whitened and overladen branch- es. The storm had ceased, but the usual sharp cold that succeeds a warm fall of snow had not yet light- I ened the clamminess of the new-fallen flakes, and they clung around the foot like clay, rendering every ' step a toil. " Your leaders are quite blown," I said to the dri- ver, as he slid off his uncomfortable seat. " Pretty nearly, sir !" "And your wheelers are not much better." " Sca'cely." "And what do you think of the weather?" " It'll be darn at ion cold in an hour." As he spoke he looked up to the sky, which was already peeling off its clouds in long stripes, like the skin of an orange, and looked as hard and cold as marble be- tween the widening rifts. A sudden gust of a more \ chilling temperature followed immediately upon his prediction, and the long cloth curtains of the sleigh flew clear of their slight pillars, and shook off their fringes of icicles. " Could you shovel a little, mister?" said the dri- ver, handing me one of the broad wooden utensils from his foot-board, and commencing himself, after having thrown off his box-coat, by heaving up a solid cake of the moist snow at the side of the road. "It's just to make a place to rub down them ere- j turs," said he, as I looked at him, quite puzzled to know what he was going to do. Fred was too weak to assist us, and having righted the vehicle a little, and tied down the flapping cur- tains, he wrapped himself in his cloak, and I set heart- ! ily to work with my shovel. In a (ew minutes, taking i advantage of the hollow of a drift, we had cleared a ' small area of frozen ground, and releasing the tired i animals from their harness, we rubbed them well down with the straw from the bottom of the sleigh. The l persevering driver then cleared the runners of their iced and clinging masses, and a half hour having elapsed, he produced two bottles of rum from his box, and, giving each of the horses a dose, put them again to their traces. We heaved out of the pit into which the sleigh had settled, and for the first mile it was down-hill, and we ! got on with comparative ease. The sky was by this time almost bare, a dark, slaty mass of clouds alone ! settling on the horizon in the quarter of the wind, I while the sun, as powerless as moonlight, poured with dazzling splendor on the snow, and the gusts came keen and bitter across the sparkling waste, rimming the nostrils as if with bands of steel, and penetrating to the innermost nerve with their pungent iciness. No ' protection seemed of any avail. The whole surface of the body ached as if it were laid against a slab of : ice. The throat closed instinctively, and contracted its unpleasant respiration — the body and limbs drew irresistibly together, to economize, like a hedge-hog, the exposed surface — the hands and feet felt transmu- ted to lead — and across the forehead, below the pres- sure of the cap, there was a binding and oppressive ache, as if a bar of frosty iron had been let into the scull. The mind, meantime, seemed freezing up — un- willingness to stir, and inability to think of anything but the cold, becoming every instant more decided. From the bend of" the valley our difficulties became more serious. The drifts often lay across the road like a wall, some feet above the heads of the horses, 25 and we had dug through one or two, and had been once upset, and often near it, before we came to the steepest part of the ascent. The horses had by this time begun to feel the excitement of the rum. and bounded on through the snow with continual leaps, jerking the sleigh after them with a violence that threatened momently to break the traces. The steam from their bodies froze instantly, and covered them with a coat like hoar-frost, and spite of their heat, and the unnatural and violent exertions they were making, it was evident by the pricking of their ears, and the sudden crouch of the body when a stronger blast swept over, that the cold struck through even their hot and intoxicated blood. We toiled up, leap after leap, and it seemed mirac- ulous to me that the now infuriated animals did not burst a blood-vessel or crack a sinew with every one of those terrible springs. The sleigh plunged on af- ter them, stopping dead and short at every other mo- ment, and reeling over the heavy drifts, like a boat in a surging sea. A finer crystallization had meantime taken place upon the surface of the moist snow, and the powdered particles flew almost insensibly on the blasts of wind, filling the eyes and hair, and cutting the skin with a sensation like the touch of needle- points. The driver and his maddened but almost ex- hausted team were blinded by the glittering and « hill- ing eddies, the cold grew in tenser every moment, the forward motion gradually less and less, and when, with the very last effort apparently, we reached a spot on the summit of the hill, which, from its exposed situa- tion, had been kept bare by the wind, the patient and persevering whip brought his horses to a stand, and despaired, for the first time, of his prospects of getting on. I crept out of the sleish, the iron-bound runners of which now grated on the bare ground, but found it impossible to stand upright. " If you can use your hands," said the driver, turn- ing his back to the wind which stung the face like the lash of a whip, " I'll trouble you to untackle them horses." I set about it, while he buried his hands and face in the snow to relieve them for a moment from the agony of cold. The poor animals staggered stiffly as 1 poshed them aside, and every vein stood out from their bodies like ropes under the skin. " What are you going to do ?" 1 asked, as he joined me again, and taking off the harness of one of the leaders, flung it into the snow. " Ride for life !" was his ominous answer. " Good God ! and what is to become of my sick friend ?" " The Almighty knows — if he can't ride to the tavern !" I sprang instantly to poor Fred, who was lying in the bottom of the sleigh almost frozen to death, in- formed him of the driver's decision, and asked him if he thought he could ride one of the horses. He was beginning to grow drowsy, the first symptom of" death by cold, and could with difficulty be roused. With the driver's assistance, however. I lifted him out of the sleigh, shook him soundly, and making stirrups of the traces, set him upon one of the horses, and started him off before us. The poor beasts seemed to have a presentiment of the necessity of exertion, and though stiff and sluggish, entered willingly upon the deep drift which blocked up the way, and toiled exhaustedly I on. The cold in our exposed position was agonizing. Every small fibre in the skin of my own face felt split- ting and cracked, and my eyelids seemed made of ice. Our limbs soon lost all sensation. I could only press 1 with my knees to the horse's side, and the whole col- ' lected energy of inv frame seemed expended in the exertion. Fred held on wonderfully. The driver had still the use of hi? arm, and rode beh'wd, flogging the i poor animals on. whose every step seemed to be the 386 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. last summons of energy. The sun set, and it was rather a relief, for the glitter upon the snow was ex- ceedingly painful to the sight, and there was no warmth in its beams. I could see my poor friend drooping gradually to the neck of his horse, but until he should drop off it was impossible to assist him, and his faith- ful animal still waded on. 1 felt my own strength fast ebbing away. If I had been alone, I should certainly have lain down, with the almost irresistible inclination to sleep ; but the thought of my friend, and the shout- ing of the energetic driver, nerved me from time to time — and with hands hanging helplessly down, and elbows fastened convulsively to my side, we plunged and struggled painfully forward. I but remember being taken afterward to a fire, and shrinking from it with a shriek — the suffering of reviving consciousness was so intolerable. We had reached the tavern liter- ally frozen upon our horses. II. I was balancing my spoon on the edge of a cup at the breakfast-table, the morning after our arrival, when Fred stopped in the middle of an eulogium on my virtues as a nurse, and a lady entering at the same moment, he said simply in parenthesis, " My cousin Edith, Mr. Slingsby," and went on with his story. I rose and bowed, and as Fred had the parole, I had time to collect my courage, and take a look at the enemy's camp — for, of that considerable household, I felt my star to be in conjunction or opposition with hers only, who was at that moment my vis-d-vis across a dish of stewed oysters. In about five minutes of rapid mental portrait-paint- ing, I had taken a likeness of Edith Linsey, which I see at this moment (I have carried it about the world for ten years) as distinctly as the incipient lines of age in this thin-wearing hand. My feelings changed in that lime from dread or admiration, or something be- tween these, to pity ; she was so unscrupulously and hopelessly plain — so wretchedly ill and suffering in her aspect — so spiritless and unhappy in every motion and look. " I'll win her heart," thought I, " by being kind to her. Poor thing ! it will be something new to her, 1 daresay !" Oh, Philip Slingsby ! what a doomed donkey thou wert for that silly soliloquy! And yet even as she sat there, leaning over her un- tasted breakfast, listless, ill, and melancholy — with her large mouth, her protruding eyes, her dead and sallow complexion, and not one redeeming feature — there was something in her face which produced a phantom of beauty in my mind — a glimpse, a shadowing of a countenance that Beatrice Cenci might have worn at her last innocent orison — a loveliness moulded and exalted by superhuman and overpowering mind — in- stinct through all its sweetness with energy and fire. So strong was this phantom portrait, that in all my thoughts of her as an angel in heaven (for [ supposed her dying for many a month, and a future existence was her own most frequent theme), she always rose to my fancy with a face half xN"iobe. half Psyche, radiantly lovely. And this, too, with a face of her own, a bond fide physiognomy, that must have made a mirror an unpleasant article of furniture in her chamber. I have no suspicion in my own mind whether Time was drunk or sober during the succeeding week of those Christmas holydays. The second Saturday had come round, and I just remember that Fred was very much out of humor with me for having appeared to his friends to be everything he had said I was not, and nothing he had said I was. He had described me as the most uproarious, noisy, good-humored, and agree- able dog in the world. And I was not that at all — particularly the last. The old judge told him he had not improved in his penetration at the university. A week ! and what a life had been clasped within its brief calendar, for me ! Edith Linsey was two years older than I, and I was considered a boy. She was thought to be dying slowly, but irretrievably, of consumption ; and it was little matter whom she loved, or how. They would only have been pleased, if, by a new affection, she could beguile the preying melan- choly of illness ; for by that gentle name they called, in their kindness, a caprice and a bitterness of charac- ter that, had she been less a sufferer, would not have been endured for a day. But she was not capricious, or bitter to vie ! Oh no ! And from the very extreme of her impatience with others — from her rudeness, her violence, her sarcasm — she came to me with a heart softer than a child's, and wept upon my hands, and weighed every word that might give me offence, and watched to anticipate my lightest wish, and was hum- ble, and generous, and passionately loving and depen- dant. Her heart sprang to me with a rebound. She gave herself up to me with an utter and desperate abandonment, that owed something to her peculiar character, but more to her own solemn conviction that she was dying — that her best hope of life was not worth a week's purchase. We had begun with books, and upon them her past enthusiasm had hitherto been released. She loved her favorite authors with a passion. They had relieved her heart ; and there was nothing of poetry or philoso- phy that was deep or beautiful, in which she had not steeped her very soul. How well I remember her re- peating to me from Shelley those glorious lines to the soaring swan : — " Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird ! Thou voyagest to thy home — Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright with the lustre of their own fond joy ! And what am I, that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers To the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts !" There was a long room in the southern wing of the house, fitted up as a library. It was a heavily-curtain- ed, dim old place, with deep-embayed windows, and so many nooks, and so much furniture, that there was that hushed air, that absence of echo within it, which is the great charm of a haunt for study or thought. It was Edith's kingdom. She might lock the door, if she pleased, or shut or open the windows ; in short, when she was there, no one thought of disturbing her, and she was like a " spirit in its cell," invisible and inviolate. And heie I drank into my very life and soul the outpourings of a bosom that had been locked till (as we both thought) the last hour of its life — a flow of mingled intellect and passion that overran my heart like lava, sweeping everything into its resistless fire, and (may God forgive her!) leaving it scorched and desolate when its mocking brightness had gone out. I remember that " Elia" — Charles Lamb's Elia — was the favorite of favorites among her books ; and partly that the late death of this most-to-be-loved au- thor reminded me to look it up, and partly to have time to draw back my indifference over a subject that it something stirs me to recall, you shall read an imi- tation (or continuation, if you will) that I did for Editli's eye, of his " Essay on Books and Reading." I sat with her dry and fleshless hand in mine while I read it to her, and the fingers of Psyche were never fairer to Canova than they to me. "It is a little singular," I began (looking into her eyes as long as I could remember what I had written), " that, among all the elegancies of sentiment for which the age is remarkable, no one should ever have thought of writing a book upon ' Reading.' The refinement* INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 387 of the true epicure in hooks are 3urelv as various as those of the gastronome and the opium-eater; and I can conceive of no reason why a topic of such natural occurrence should have been so long neglected, unless it is that the taste itself, being rather a growth of indo- lence, has never numbered among its votaries one of the busy craft of writers. M The great proportion of men read, as they eat, for hunger. I do not consider them readers. The true secret of the thing is no more adapted to their compre- hension, than the sublimations of Louis Eustache Ude for the taste of a day-laborer. The refined reading- taste, like the palate of gourmand eric, must have got beyond appetite — gross appetite. It shall be that of a man who, having fed through childhood and youth on simple knowledge, values now only, as it were, the apotheosis of learning — the spiritual mire. There are, it is true, instances of a keen natural relish : a boy, as you will sometimes find one, of a premature thought- fulness, will carry a favorite author in his bosom, and feast greedily on it in his stolen hours. Elia tells the exquisite story : — ' I saw a hoy, with eager eye, Open a book upon a stall, And read as he'd devour it all ; Which, when the stall-mm did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, " You sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you •shall not look !" The boy passed slowly on. and with a sigh, He wished he had never been taught to read — Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need.' "The pleasure as well as the profit of reading de- pends as much upon time and manner, as upon the book. The mind is an opal — changing its color with every shifting shade. Ease of position is especially necessary. A muscle strained, a nerve unpoised, an admitted sunbeam caught upon a mirror, are slight circumstances; but a feather may tickle the dreamer from paradise to earth. ' Many a fro ward axiom,' says a refined writer, ' many an inhumane thought hath arisen from sitting uncomfortably, or from a want of symmetry in your chamber.' Who has not felt, at times, an unaccountable disrelish for a favorite author? Who has not, by a sudden noise in the street, been startled from a reading dream, and found, afterward, that the broken spell was not to be rewound ? An ill-tied cravat may unlink the rich harmonies of Tay- lor. You would not think Barry Cornwall the de- licious heart he is, reading him in a tottering chair. "There is much in the mood with which you come to a book. If you have been vexed out of doors, the good humor of an author seems unnatural. I think I should scarce relish the 'gentle spiriting' of Ariel with a pulse of ninety in the minute. Or if I had been touched by the unkindness of a friend, Jack Falstalf would not move me to laughter as easily as he is wont. There are tones of the mind, however, to which a book will vibrate with a harmony than which there is nothing more exquisite in nature. To go abroad at sunrise in June, and admit all the holy influences of the hour — stillness, and purity, and balm — to a mind subdued and dignified, as the mind will be by the sacred tranquillity of sleep, and then to come in with bathed and refreshed senses, and a tem- per of as clear joyfulness as the soaring lark's and sit down to Milton or Spenser, or, almost loftier still, the divine 'Prometheus' of Shelley, has seemed to me a harmony of delight almost too heavenly to be human. The great secret of such pleasure is sym- pathy. You must climb to the easle poet's eyry. You hum have senses, like his, for the music that is only audible to the fine ear of thought, and the beauty that is visible only to the "spirit-eye of a clear, and for the time, unpolluted fancy. The stamp and pressure of the magician's own time and season must be upon you. You would not read Ossian, for example, in a bath, or sitting under a tree in a sultry noon; but after rushing into the eye of the wind wish a fleet horse, with all his gallant piide and glorious stiength and file obedient to your rem, and so mingling, as it will, with his rider's consciousness, that you feel as if you were gifted in your own body with the swift- ness and energy of an angel ; after this, to sit down to Ossian, is to read him with a magnificence of de lusion, to my mind scarce less than reality. 1 never envied Napoleon till 1 heard it was his habit, alter a j battle, to read Ossian. "You can not often read to music. But 1 love, ; when the voluntary is pealing in church — every breath | in the congregation suppressed, and the deep voiiimed notes pouring through the arches of the roof with the sublime and almost articulate praise of the organ — to read, from the pew Bible, the book of Ecelesiastes. j The solemn stateliness of its periods is fitted to music like a hymn. It is to me a spring of the most thril- { ling devotion — though I shame to confess that the richness of its eastern imagery, and, above all, the in- imitable beauty of its philosophy, stand out somewhat definitely in the reminiscences of the hour. "A taste for reading comes comparatively late. 'Robinson Crusoe' will turn a boy's head at ten. The 'Arabian Nights' are taken to bed with us at twelve. At fourteen, a forward boy will read the ' Lady of the Lake,' ' Tom Jones,' and 'Peregrine Pickle;' and at seventeen (not before) he is ready for Shakspere, and, if he is of a thoughtful turn, Milton. Most men do not read these last with a true relish till after this period. The hidden beauties of standard authors break upon the mind by sui prise. It is like discovering a secret spring in an old jewel. You take up the hook in an idle moment, as you have done a thousand times before, perhaps wondering, as you turn over the leaves, what the world finds in it to ad- mire, when suddenly, as you read, your fingers press close upon the covers, your frame thrills, and the passage you have chanced upon chains you like a spell — it is so vividly true and beautiful. Milton's 'Comus' flashed upon me in this way. J never could read the 'Rape of the Lock' till a friend quoted some passages from it during a walk. I know no more ex- quisite sensation than this wanning of the heart to an old author; and it seems to me that the most delictus portion of intellectual existence is the brief period in which, one by one, the great minds of old are admit- ted with all their time- mellowed worth to the affec- tions. With what delight 1 read, for the fust time, the 'kind-hearted plays' of Beaumont and Fletcher! How 1 doated on Burton! What treasures to me were the 'Fairy Queen' and the Lyrics of Milton! "I used to think, when studying the Greek and Latin poets in my boyhood, that to be made a school- author was a fair offset against immortality. 1 would as lief, it seemed to me, have my verses handed down by the town-crier. But latterly, after an interval of a few years, I have taken up my classics (the identical school copies with the hard places all thummed and pencilled) and have read them with no little pleasure. It is not to be believed with what a satisfaction the riper eye glides smoothly over the once difficult line, finding the golden cadence of poetry beneath what once seemed only a tangled chaos of inversion. The associations of hard study, instead of reviving the old distaste, added wonderfully to the interest of a re- perusal. I could see now what brightened the sunken eye of the pale and sickly master, as he took up the hesitating passage, and read on, forgetful of the delin- quent, to the end. I could enjoy now, what was a dead letter to me then, the heightened fulness of He- rodotus, and the strong-woven style of Thucydides, and the magnificent invention of Ks.hylus. 1 took an aversion to Homer from hearing a classmate in the next room scan it perpetually through his nose. 388 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. There is no music for me in the ' Iliad.' But, spite of the lecollections scored alike upon my palm and the margin, 1 own to an Augustan relish for the smooth melody of Virgil, and freely forgive the sometime troublesome ferule — enjoying by its aid the raciness of Horace and Juvenal, and the lofty philosophy of Lucretius. It will be a dear friend to whom 1 put down in my will that shelf of defaced classics. " There are some books that bear reading pleasantly once a year. 'Tristram Shandy' is an annual with me. Tread him regularly about Christmas. Jeremy Taylor (not to mingle things holy and profane) is a good table-book, to be used when you would collect your thoughts and be serious a while. A man of taste need never want for Sunday reading while he can find the sermons of Taylor, and South, and Ful- ler — writers of good theological repute — though, be- tween ourselves, I think one likelier to be delighted with the poetry and quaint fancifulness of their style, than edified by the piety it covers. I like to have a quarto edition of Sir Thomas Brown on a near shelf, or Milton's prose works, or Bacon. These are health- ful moods of the mind when lighter nutriment is dis- tasteful. " I am growing fastidious in poetry, and confine myself more and more to the old writers. Castaly of late runs shallow. Shelley's (peace to his passionate heart!) was a deep draught, and Wordsworth and Wilson sit near the well, and Keats and Barry Corn- wall have been to the fountain's lip, feeding their imaginations (the latter his heart as well), but they have brought back little for the world. The 'small silver stream' will, I fear, soon cease to flow down to us, and as it dries back to its source, we shall close nearer and nearer upon the 'pure English undefiled.' The dabblers in muddy waters (tributaries to Lethe) will liave Parnassus to themselves. "The finest pleasures of reading come unbidden. You can not, with your choicest appliances for the boJy, always command the many-toned mind. In the twilight alcove of a library, with a time-mellowed chair yielding luxuriously to your pressure, a June wind laden with idleness and balm floating in at the window, and in your hand some Russia-bound ram- bling old author, as Izaak Walton, good-humored and quaint, one would think the spirit could scarce fail to be conjureJ. Yet often, after spending a morning hour restlessly thus, I have risen with my mind un- hinged, and strolled off with a book in my pocket to the woods; and, as I live, the mood has descended upon me under some chance tree, with a crooked root under my head, and I have lain there, reading and sleeping by turns, till the letters were blurred in the dimness of twilight. It is the evil of refinement that it breeds caprice. You will sometimes stand unfa- tigued for hours on the steps of a library; or in a shop, the eye will be arrested, and all the jostling of customers and the looks of the jealous shopman will not divert you till you have read out the chapter. "I do not often indulge in the supernatural, for I am an unwilling believer in ghosts, and the topic ex- cites me. But, for its connexion with the subject upon which I am writing, I must conclude these rambling observations with a late mysterious visitation of my own. " 1 had, during the last year, given up the early summer tea-parties common in the town in which the university stands ; and having, of course, three or four more hours than usual on my hands, I took to an afternoon habit of imaginative reading. Shakspere came first, naturally; and I feasted for the hundredth time upon what I think his (and the world's) most delicate creation — the 'Tempest.' The twilight of the first day overtook me at the third act, where the banquet is brought in with solemn music by the fairy troop of Prospero, and set before th& shipwrecked king and his followers. I closed the book, and lean- ing back in my chair, abandoned myself to the crowd of images which throng always upon the traces of Shakspere. The fancy music was still in my mind, when an apparently real strain of the most solemn melody came to my ear, dying, it seemed to me as it reached it, the tones were so expiringly faint and low. I was not startled, but lay quietly, holding my breath, and more fearing when the strain would be broken, than curious whence it came. The twilight deepened, till it was dark, and it still played on, changing the tune at intervals, but always of the same melancholy sweetness; till, by-and-by, I lost all curiosity, and, giving in to the charm, the scenes I had been reading began to form again in my mind, and Ariel, with his delicate ministers, and Prospero, and Miranda, and Caliban, came moving before me to the measure, as bright and vivid as the reality. I was disturbed in the midst of it by Alfonse, who came in at the usual hour with my tea; and, on starting to my feet, I lis- tened in vain for the continuance of the music. I sat thinking of it a while, but dismissed it at last, and went out to enjoy, in a solitary walk, the loveliness of the summer night. The next day I resumed my book, with a smile at my previous credulity, and had read through the last scenes of the 'Tempest.' when the light failed me. I again closed the book, and pres- ently again, as if the sympathy was instantaneous, the strain broke in, playing the same low and solemn mel- odies, and falling with the same dying cadence upon the ear. I listened to it, as before, with breathless at- tention ; abandoned myself once more to its irresistible spell; and, half-wakng, half-sleeping, fell again into a'vivid dream, brilliait as fairy-land, and creating itself to the measures of the still audible music. 1 could not now shake off my belief in its reality ; but I was so wrapt with its strange sweetness, and the beauty of my dream, that I cared not whether it came from earth or air. My indifference, singularly enough, continued for several days; and, regularly at twilight, I threw aside my book, and listened with dreamy wakefulness for the music. It never failed me, and its results were as constant as its coming. Whatever J had read — sometimes a canto of Spenser, sometimes an act of a play, or a chapter of romance — the scene rose before me with the stately reality of a pageant. At last I began to think of it more seriously ; and it was a relief to me one evening when Alfonse came in earlier than usual with a message. 1 told him to stand perfectly still; and after a minute's pause, during which 1 heard distinctly an entire passage of a funeral hymn, I asked him if he heard any music ? He said he did not. My blood chilled at his positive reply, and I bade him listen once more. Still he heard nothing. 1 could endure it no longer. It was to me as distinct and audible as my own voice; and I rushed from my room as he left me, shuddering to be left alone. "The next day I thought of nothing but death. Warnings by knells in the air, by apparitions, by mys- terious voices, were things I had believed in specula- tively for years, and now their truth came upon me like conviction. I felt a dull, leaden presentiment about my heart, growing heavier and heavier with every passing hour. Evening came at last, and with it, like a summons from the grave, a ' dead march' swelled clearly on the air. I felt faint and sick at heart. This could not be fancy; and why was it, as I thought 1 had proved, audible to my ear alone ? I threw open the window, and the first rush of the cool north wind refreshed me ; but, as if to mock my at- tempts at relief, the dirge-like sounds rose, at the in- stant, with treble distinctness. I seized my hat and rushed into the street, but, to my dismay, every step seemed to bring me nearer to the knell. Still I hur- ried on, the dismal sounds growing distractingly loud- er, till, on turning a corner that leads to the lovely INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 389 bury'mg-ground of New Haven, I came suddenly upon — a bell foundry ! In the rear had lately been hung, for trial, the chiming bells just completed for the new Trinity church, and the master of the establishment informed me that one of his journeymen was a fine player, and every day after his work, he was in the habit of amusing himself with the 4 Dead March in Saul,' the ' Marsellois Hymn,' and other melancholy and easy tunes, muhTmg the hammers that he might not disturb the neighbors." I have had my reward for these speculations, dear reader — a smile that is lying at this instant, perdu, in the innermost recess of memory — and I care not much (without offence) whether you like it or no. She thanked me — she thought it well done — she laid her head on my bosom while I read it in the old library of the Flemings, and every word has been " paid for in fairy gold." I have taken up a thread that lengthens as I unra- vel it, and I can not well see how I shall come to the end, without trespassing on your patience. We will cut it here, if you like, and resume it after a pause ; but before 1 close, 1 must give you a little instance of how love makes the dullest earth poetical. Edith had given me a portefeuille crammed with all kinds of embossed and curious note-paper, all quite too pret- ty for use, and what I would show you are my verses on the occasion. For a hand unpractised, then, in aught save the " Gradus ad Parnassum," I must own I have fished them out of that same old portefeuille (faded now from its glory, and worn with travel — but O how cherished !) with a pleasant feeling of paternity : i: Thanks for thy gift ! But heardst thou ever A story of a wandering fay, Who, tired of playing sylph for ever, Came romping to the earth one day ; And, flirting like a little love With everything that flew and flirted, Made captive of a sober dove, Whose pinions (so the tale asserted), Though neither very fresh nor fair, Were well enough tor common wear. u The dove, though plain, was gentle bred, And cooed agreeably, though low ; But still the fairy shook her head, And, patting with her foot, said ' No ." 'Twas true that he was rather fat : But that was living in an abbey ; — . And solemn— but it was not that. ' What then?' ' Why, sir, your wings are shabby.' " The dove was dumb : he drooped, and sidled In shame along the abbey-wall ; And then the haughty fay unbridled, And blew her snail-shell trumpet-call ; And summoning her waiting-sprite, Who bore her wardrobe on his back, She took the wings she wore at night, (Silvery stars on plumes of black,) And, smiling, begged that he would take And wear them for his lady's sake. " He took them ; but he could not fly .' A fay-wing was too fine for him ; And when she pouted, by-and-by, And left him for some other whim, He laid them softly in his nest, And did his flying with his own, And they were soft upon his breast, When many a night he slept alone ; And many a thought those wings would stir, And many a dream of love and her." PART II. LOVE AND SPECULATION. Edith Linset was religious. There are many intensijiers (a new word, that I can't get on without : I submit it for admission into the language) ; there are many intensifies, I say, to the passion of love : such as pride, jealousy, poetry (money, sometimes, Dio mio !) and idleness:* but, if the experience of one who first studied the Art of Love in an "evan- gelical" country is worth a para, there is nothing within the bend of the rainbow that deepens the ten- der passion like religion. I speak it not irreverently. The human being that loves us throws the value of its existence into the crucible, and it can do no more. Love's best alchymy can only turn into affection what is in the heart. The vain, the proud, the poetical, the selfish, the weak, can and do fling their vanity, pride, poetry, selfishness, and weakness, into a first passion: but these are earthly elements, and there is an antagonism in their natures that is for ever stri- ving to resolve them back to their original earth. But religion is of the soul as well as the heart — the mind as well as the affections — and when it mingles in love, it is the infusion of an immortal essence into an un- worthy and else perishable mixture. Edith's religion was equally without cant, and without hesitation or disguise. She had arrived at it by elevation of mind, aided by the habit of never counting on her tenure of life beyond the setting of the next sun, and with her it was rather an intellec- tual exaltation than an humility of heart. She thought of God because the subject was illimitable, and her powerful imagination found in it the scope for which she pined. She talked of goodness, and purity, and disinterestedness, because she found them easy virtues with a frame worn down with disease, and she was removed by the sheltered position of an invalid from the collision which tries so shrewdly in common life the ring of our metal. She prayed, because the ful- ness of her heart was loosed by her eloquence when on her knees, and she found that an indistinct and mystic unburthening of her bosom, even to the Deity, was a hush and a relief. The heart does not always require rhyme and reason of language and tears. There are many persons of religious feeling who, from a fear of ridicule or misconception, conduct them- selves as if to express a devout sentiment was a want of taste or good-breeding. Edith was not of these. Religion was to her a powerful enthusiasm, applied without exception to every pursuit and affection. She used it as a painter ventures on a daring color, or a musician a new string in his instrument. She felt that she aggrandized botany, or history, or friendship, or love, or what you will, by making it a stepping- stone to heaven, and she made as little mystery of it as she did of breathing and sleep, and talked o*f subjects which the serious usually enter upon with a sup- pressed breath, as she would comment upon a poem or define a new philosophy. It was surprising what an impressiveness this threw over her in everything; how elevated she seemed above the best of those about her; and with what a worshipping and half- reverent admiration she inspired all whom she did not utterly neglect or despise. For myself, my soul was drank up in hers as the lark is taken into the sky, and I forgot there was a world beneath me in my intoxica- tion. I thought her an angel unrecognised on earth. I believed her as pure from worldliness, and as spot- less from sin, as a cherub with his breast upon his lute; and I knelt by her when she prayed, and held her upon my bosom in her fits of faintness and ex- haustion, and sat at her feet with my face in her hands listening to her wild speculations (often till the morn- ing brightened behind the curtains) with an utter and irresistible abandonment of my existence to hers, which seems to me now like a recollection of another life — it were, with this conscious body and mind, a self-relinquishment so impossible ! Our life was a singular one. Living in the midst * " La paresse dans les femmes est le presage de l'amour." —La Bruvere. 390 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. of a numerous household, with kind and cultivated people about us, we were as separated from them as if the rin° of Gyges encircled us from their sight. Fred wished me juy of my giraffe, as he offensively called his cousin, and his sisters, who were quite too pretty to have been left out of my story so long, were more indul- gent, I thought, to the indigenous beaux of Skaneat- eles than those aboriginal specimens had a right to expect; but I had no eyes, ears, sense, or civility for anything but Edith. The library became a forbidden spot to all feet but ours ; we met at noon after our late vigils and breakfasted together; a light sleigh was set apart for our tele-a tele drives over the frozen lake, and the world seemed to me to revolve on its axle with a special reference to Philip Slingsby's happiness. 1 won ler whether an angel out of heaven would have made me believe that I should ever write the story of those passionate hours with a smile and a sneer ! I tell thee, Edith ! (for thou wilt read every line that I have written, and feel it, as far as thou canst feel any- thing), that I have read " Faust" since, and thought thee Mephistopheles ! I have looked on thee since, with thy cheek rosy dark, thy lip filled with the blood of health, and curled with thy contempt of the world and thy yet wild ambition to be its master-spirit and idol, and struck my breast with instinctive self-ques- tioning if thou hadst given back my soul that was thine own ! I fear thee, Edith. Thou hast grown beautiful that wert so hideous — the wonder-wrought miricle of health and intellect, filling thy veins, and breathing almost a newer shape over form and feature; but it is not thy beauty; no, nor thy enthronement in the admiration of thy woman's world. These are little to me ; for [ saw thy loveliness from the first, and I worshipped thee more in the duration of a thought than a hecatomb of these worldlings in their lifetime. I fear thy mysterious and unaccountable power over the human soul! I can scorn thee here, in another land, with an ocean weltering between us, and anatomize the character that 1 alone have read truly and too well, for the instruction of the world (its amusement, too, proud woman — thou wilt writhe at that) — but [ confess to a natural and irresistible obedi- ence to the mastery of thy spirit over mine. I would not willingly again touch the radius of thy sphere. I would come out of Paradise to walk alone with the devil as soon. How little even the most instructed women knew the secret of this power ! They make the mistake of cultivating only their own minds. They think that, by $e//*e legation, they will climb up to'lhe intellects of men, and win them by seeming their equals. Shal- low philosophers! You never remember that to sub- due a human being to your will, it is more necessary to know his mind than you own—that, in conquering a heart vanity is the first out-post — that while your are employing your wits in thinking how most effectually to dazzle him, you should be sounding his character for its undeveloped powers to assist him to dazzle you —that love is a reflected light, and to be pleased with others we must be first pleased with ourselves ! Edith (it his occurred to me in my speculations since) seemed to me always an echo of myself. She expressed my thought as it sprang into my brain. I thought that in her I had met my double and coun- terpirt, with the reservation that I was a little the stronger spirit, and that in my mind lay the material of the eloquence that flowed from her lips — as the al- mond that you endeavor to split equally leaves the kernel in the deeper cavity of its shell. Whatever the topic, she seemed using my thoughts, anticipating mji reflections, and, with an unobtrusive but thrilling flattery, referring me to myself for the truth of what 1 must know was but a suggestion of my own ! O! Lucrezia Borgia ! if iVIachiavelli had but practised that subtle cunning upon thee, thou wouldst have had lit- tle space in thy delirious heart for the passion that, in the history of crime, has made thee the marvel and the monster. The charm of Edith to most people was that she was no sublimation. Her mind seemed of ai y or no stature. She was as natural, and earnest, and as sat- isfied to converse, on the meanest subject as on the highest. She overpowered nobody. She (apparently) eclipsed nobody. Her passionate and powerful elo- quence was only lavished on the passionate and pow- eiful. She never ?nisapplied herself: and what a secret of influence and superiority is contained in that single phrase ! We so hate him who out-measures us, as we stand side by side before the world ! I have in my portfolio several numbers of a manu- script " Gazette," with which the Flemings amused themselves during the deep snows of the winter io which I visited them. It was contributed to by every- body in the house, and read aloud at the breakfast j table on the day of its weekly appearance, and, quit* j apropos to these remarks upon the universality ol I Edith's mind, there is in one of them an essay of hers | on what she calls minute philosophies. It is curiou9 ' as showing how, with all her loftiness of speculation j she descended sometimes to the examination of the. j smallest machinery of enjoyment. " The principal sources of everyday happiness," (I am copying out a part of the essay, dear reader), "are I too obvious to need a place in a chapter of breakfast- | table philosophy. Occupation and a clear conscience, the very truant in the fields will tell you, are craving necessities. But when these are secured, there are lighter matters, which, to the sensitive and educated at least, are to happiness what foliage is to the tree. They are refinements which add to the beauty of life without diminishing its strength; and, as they spring only from a better use of our common gifts, they are neither costly nor rare. I have learned secrets under the roof of a poor man, which would add to the lux- ury of the rich. The blessings of a cheerful fancy and a quick eye come from nature, and the trailing of a vine may develop them as well as the curtaining of a king's chamber. " Riding and driving are such stimulating pleasures, that to talk of any management, in their indulgence seems superfluous. Yet we are, in motion or at rest, equally liable to the caprices of feeling, and, perhaps, the gayer the mood the deeper the shade cast on it by untoward circumstances. The time of riding should never be regular. It then becomes a habit, and hab- its, though sometimes comfortable, never amount to positive pleasure. I would ride when nature prompt- ed — when the shower was past, or the air balmy, or the sky beautiful— whenever and wherever the sig- nificant finger of Desire pointed. Oh! to leap into the saddle when the west wind blows freshly, and gal- lop off" into its very eye, with an undrawn rein, care- less how far or whither ; or, to spring up from a hook when the sun breaks through after a storm, and drive away under the white clouds, through light and shad- ow, while the trees are wet and the earth damp and spicy; or, in the clear sunny afternoons of autumn, with a pleasant companion on the seat beside you, and the glorious splendor of the decaying foliage flushing in the sunshine, to loiter up the valley dreaming over the thousand airy castles that are stirred by such shifting beauty — these are pleasures indeed, and such as he who rides regularly after his dinner knows as little of as the dray-horse of the exultation of the courser. " There is a great deal in the choice of a compan- ion. If he is an indifferent acquaintance, or an indis- criminate talker, or has a coarse eye for beauty, or is insensible to the delicacies of sensation or thought — if he is sensual, or stupid, or practical constitutionally — he will never do. He must be a man who can de- INKLINGS OF ADVENTITRE. 391 tect a rare color in a leaf, or appreciate a peculiar passage in scenery, or admire a grand outline in a cloud ; he must have accurate and fine senses, and a heart, noble at least by nature, and subject still to her direct influences ; lie must be a lover of the beautiful in whatever shape it comes; and, above all, he must have read and thought like a scholar, if not like a poet. He will then ride by your side without crossing your humor : if talkative, he will talk well, and if silent, you are content, for you know that the same grandeur or beauty which has wrought the silence, in your own thoughts has given a color to his. »• There is much in the manner of driving. I like a capricious rein — now fast through a hollow, and now loiteringly on the edge of a road or by the bank of a river. There is a singular delight in quickening your speed in the animation of a climax, and in coming down gently to a walk with a digression of feeling, or a sudden sadness. "An important item in household matters is the management of light. A small room well lighted is much more imposing than a large one lighted ill. Cross lights are painful to the eye, and they destroy besides the cool and picturesque shadows of the fur- niture and figures 1 would have a room always par- tially darkened : there is a repose in the twilight dim- ness of a drawing-room which affects one with the proper gentleness of the place : the out-of-door hu- mor of men is too rude, and the secluded light sub- dues them fitly as they enter. I like curtains — heavy, and of the richest material: there is a magnificence in large crimson folds which nothing else equals, and the color gives everything a beautiful teint as the light streams through them. Plants tastefully arranged are pretty; flowers are always beautiful. I would have my own room like a painter's — one curtain partly drawn ; a double shadow has a nervous look. The effect of a proper disposal of light upon the feelings is by most people surprisingly neglected. I have no doubt (hat as an habitual thing it materially affects the character ; the disposition for study and thought is certainly de- pendant on it in no slight degree. What is more contemplative than the twilight of a deep alcove in a | library / What more awakens thought than the dim interior of an old church with its massive and shadowy pillars ? " There may be the most exquisite luxury in furni- ture. A crowded room has a look of comfort, and suspended lamps throw a mellow depth into the fea- tures. Descending light is always the most becoming ; it deepens the eye, and distributes the shadows in the face judiciously. Chairs should be of different and curious fashions, made to humor every possible wea- riness. A spice-lamp should burn in the corner, and the pictures should be colored of a pleasant tone, and the subjects should be subdued and dreamy. It should be a place you would live in for a century without an uncomfortable thought. I hate a neat room. A dozen of the finest old authors should lie about, and a new novel, and the last new prints. I rather like the French fashion of a bonbonniere, though that perhaps is an ex- travagance. *" There is a management of one's own familiar in- tercourse which is more neglected, and at the same time more important to happiness, than every other; it is particularly a pity that this is not oftener under- stood by newly-married people ; as far as my own observation goes, I have rarely failed to detect, far too early, signs of ill-disguised and disappointed weariness. It was not the reaction of excitement — not the return to the quiet ways of home — but a new manner — a for- getful indifference, believing itself concealed, and yet betraying itself continually by unconscious and irre- pressible symptoms. I believe it resulted oftenest from the same causes : partly that they saw each other too much, and partly that when the form of eti- quette was removed, they forgot to retain its invalua- ble essence — an assiduous and minute disinterested- ness. It seems nonsense tolovers, but absence is the secret of respect, and therefore of affection. Love is divine, but its flame is too del : cate for a perpetual household lamp; it should be burned only for incense, and even then trimmed skilfully. It is wonderful how a slight neglect, or a glimpse of a weakness, or a chance defect of knowledge, dims its new glory. Lovers, mar- ried or single, should have separate pursuits — they should meet to respect each other for new and distinct acquisitions. It is the weakness of human affections that they are founded on pride, and waste with over- much familiarity. And oh, the delight to meet alter hours of absence — to sit down by the evening lamp, and with a mind unexhausted by the intercourse of the day, to yield to the fascinating freedom of conver- sation, and clothe the rising thoughts of affection in i fresh and unhackneyed language ! How richly the I treasures of the mind are colored — not doled out, i counter by counter, as the visible machinery of thought ' coins them, but heaped upon the mutual altar in lavish and unhesitating profusion ! And how a bold fancy as- ; sumes beauty and power — not traced up through all its petty springs till its dignity is lost by association, but j flashing full-grown and suddenly on the sense ! The gifts of no one mind are equal to the constant draught of a lifetime ; and even if they were, there is no one taste which could always relish them. It is an humilia- I ting thought that immortal mind must be husbanded j like material treasure ! " There is a remark of Godwin, which, in rather j too strong language, contains a valuable truth: 'A judicious and limited voluptuousness,* he says, ' is ne- cessary to the cultivation of the mind, to the polishing ; of the manners, to the refinement of the sentiment, i and to the development of the understanding ; and a woman deficient in this respect may be of use in the government of our families, but can not add to the enjoyment, nor fix the partiality of a man of taste !' Since the days when ' St. Leon' was written, the word by which the author expressed his meaning is grown perhaps into disrepute, but the remark is still one of ! keen and observant discrimination. It refers (at least i so I take it) to that susceptibility to delicate attentions, that fine sense of the nameless and exquisite ten- derness of manner and thought, which constitute in the minds of its possessors the deepest undercurrent of life — the felt and treasured, but unseen and inex- pressible richness of affection. It is rarely found in the characters of men, but it outweighs, when it is, all grosser qualities — for its possession implies a generous nature, purity, fine affections, and a heart open to all the sunshine and meaning of the universe. It belongs more to the nature of woman ; but indispensable as it is to her character, it is oftener than anything else, wanting. And without it, what is she? What is love to a being of such dull sense that she hears only its common and audible language, and sees nothing but what it brings to her feet to be eaten, and worn, and looked upon ? What is woman, if the impassioned language of the eye, or the deepened fulness of the tone, or the tenderness of a slight attention, are things unnoticed and of no value ? — one who answers you when you speak, smiles when you tell her she is grave, assents barely to the expression of your enthusiasm, but has no dream beyond — no suspicion that she has not felt and reciprocated your feelings as fully as you could expect or desire ? It is a matter too little looked to. Sensitive and ardent men too often marry with a blindfold admiration of mere goodness or loveliness. The abandon of matrimony soon dissipates the gay dream, and they find themselves suddenly unsphered, linked indissolubly with affections strangely different from their own, and lavishing their only treasure on those who can neither appreciate nor return it. The INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. after-life of such men is a stifling solitude of feeling. Their avenues of enjoyment are their manifonn sym- pathies, and when these are shut up or neglected, the h^art is dark, and they have nothing to do thencefor- ward but to forget. " There are many, who, possessed of the capacity for the more elevated affections, waste and lose it by a careless and often unconscious neglect. It is not a plant to grow untended. The breath of indifference, or a rude touch, may destroy for ever its delicate tex- ture. To drop the figure, there is a daily attention to the slight courtesies of life, and an artifice in detecting ihe passing shadows of feeling, which alone can pre- serve, through life, the first freshness of passion. The easy surprises of pleasure, and earnest cheerfulness of assent to slight wishes, the habitual respect to opin- ions, the polite abstinence from personal topics in the company of others, the assiduous and unwavering at- tention to her comfort, at home and abroad, and, above all, the absolute preservation in private of those pro- prieties of conversation and manner which are sacred before the world — are some of the thousand secrets of that rare happiness which age and habit alike fail to impair or diminish." II. Vacation was over, but Fred and myself were still lingering at Fleming Farm. The roads were impas- sable with a premature thaw. Perhaps there is noth- ing so peculiar in American meteorology as the phe- nomenon which 1 alone probably, of all the imprisoned inhabitants of Skaneateles, attributed to a kind and " special Providence." Summer had come back, like Napoleon from Elba, and astonished usurping winter in the plenitude of apparent possession and security. No cloud foreboded the change, as no alarm preceded the apparition of" the child of destiny." We awoke on a February morning, with the snow lying chin- deep oil the earth, and it was June ! The air was soft and warm — the sky was clear, and of the milky ceru- lean of chrysoprase — the south wind (the same, save his unpeifumed wings, who had crept off like a sa- tiated lover in October) stole back suddenly from the tropics, and found his flowery mistress asleep and in- sensible to his kisses beneath her snowy mantle. The sunset warmeJ back from its wintry purple to the golden teints of heat, the stars burned with a less vitreous sparkle, the meteors slid once more lambent- ly down the sky, and the house-dove sat on the eaves, washing her breast in the snow-water, and thinking (like a neglected wife at a capricious return of her truant's tenderness) that the sunshine would last for ever ! Th air was now full of music. The water trickled away under the snow, and, as you looked around and saw no change or motion in the white carpet of the earth, it seemed as if a myriad of small bells were ring- ing under ground — fairies, perhaps, startled in mid- revel with the (alse alarm of summer, and hurrying about with their silver anklets, to wake up the slum- bering flowers. The mountain-torrents were loosed, and rushed down upon the valleys like the Children of the Mist; and the hoarse war-cry, swelling and fal- ling upon the wind, maintained its perpetual undertone like an accompaniment of bassoons ; and occasionally, in a sudden lull of the breeze, you would hear the click of the undermined snow-drifts dropping upon the earth, as if the chorister of spring were beating time to the reviving anthem of nature. The snow sunk perhaps a foot in a day, but it was only perceptible to the eye where you could measure its wet mark against a tree from which it had fallen away, or by the rock, from which the dissolving bank shrunk and separated, as if roclo and snow were as heartless as ourselves and threw off their friends, too, in their extremity ! The low-lying lake, meantime, surrounded by melting mountains, received the aban- doned waters upon its frozen bosom, and, spreading them into a placid and shallow lagoon, separate by a crystal plane from its own lower depths, gave them the repose denied in the more elevated sphere in which lay their birthright. And thus — (oh, how full is na- ture of these gentle moralities !) — and thus sometimes do the lowly, whose bosom, like the frozen lake, is at first cold and unsympathetic to the rich and noble, still receive them in adversity, and, when neighbor- hood and dependance have convinced them that they are made of the same common element, as the lake melts its dividing and icy plane, and mingles the strange waters with its own, do they dissolve the unnatural bar- rier of prejudice, and take the humbled wanderer to their bosom ! The face of the snow lost its dazzling whiteness as the thaw went on — as disease steals away the beauty of those we love — but it was only in the distance, where the sun threw a shadow into the irregular pits of the dissolving surface. Near to the eye (as the dying one pressed to the bosom), it was still of its original beauty, unchanged and spotless. And now you are tired of my loitering speculations, gentle read- er, and we will return (please Heaven, only on paper!) to Edith Linsey. The roads were at last reduced to what is expres- sively called, in New England, slosh (in New York, posh, but equally descriptive), and Fred received a hint from the judge that the mail had arrived in the usual time, and his beaux jours were at an end. A slighter thing than my departure would have been sufficient to stagger the tottering spirits of Edith. We were sitting at table when the letters came in, and the dates wete announced that proved the opening of the roads ; and I scarce dared to turn my eyes upon the pale face that I could just see had dropped upon her bosom. The next instant there was a general confu- sion, and she was carried lifeless to her chamber. A note, scarce legible, was put into my hand in the course of the evening, requesting me to sit up for her in the library. She would come to me, she said, if she had strength. It was a night of extraordinary beauty. The full moon was high in the heavens at midnight, and there had been a slight shower soon after sunset, which, with the clearing-up wind, had frozen thinly into a most fragile rime, and glazed everything open to the sky with transparent crystal. The distant forest looked serried with metallic trees, dazzlingly and unspeakably gorgeous ; and, as the night-wind stirred through them and shook their crystal points in the moonlight — the aggregated stars of heaven springing from their Ma- ker's hand to the spheres of their destiny, or the march of the host of the archangel Michael with their irradiate spear-points glittering in the air, or the dia- mond beds of central earth thrust up to the sun in some throe of the universe — would, each or all, have been well bodied forth by such similitude. It was an hour after midnight when Edith was sup- ported in by her maid, and, choosing her own position, sunk into the broad window-seat, and lay with her head on my bosom, and her face turned outward to the glit- tering night. Her eyes had become. I thought, un- naturally bright, and she spoke with an exhausted faintness that gradually strengthened to a tone of the most thrilling and melodious sweetness. I shall never get that music out of my brain ! " Philip !" she said. " I listen, dear Edith !" " I am dying." And she looked it, and I believed her; and my heart sunk to its deepest abyss of wretchedness with the conviction. She went on to talk of death. It was the subject INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 393 that pressed most upon her mind, and she could I scarce fail to be. eloquent on any •abject. She was j very eloquent on this. I was so impressed with the j manner in which she seemed almost to rhapsodize ; between the periods of her fainlness, as she lay in ! my arms that night, that every word she uttered is j stdl fresh in my memory. She seemed to forget my presence, and to commune with her own thoughts . aloud. m I recollect," she said, " when I was strong and ; well (years ano, dear Philip!), I left my books on a morning in May, and look ids; up to find the course of j the wind, started olf alone for a walk into its very eye. i A moist steady breeze came from the southwest, dri- | ving before it fragments of the dispersed clouds. The ; air was elastic and clear — a freshness that entered free- It at every pore was coming up, mingled with the pro- fuse perfume of gr.iss and flowers — the colors of the new, tender foliage were particularly soothing to an eye pained with close attention — and the just percep- tible murmur of the drops shaken from the trees, and the peculiarly soft rustle of the wet leaves, made as ! much music as an ear accustomed to the silence of solitude could well relish. Altogether, it was one of j those rarely-tempered days when every sense is satis- I fied, and the mind is content to lie still with its com- mon thoughts, and simply enjoy. " I had proceeded perhaps a mile — my forehead held up to the wind, my hair blowing back, and the j blood slowing in my cheeks with the most vivid flush j of exercise and health — when I saw coming toward me a man apparently in middle life, but wasted by ill- i ness to (he extreinest emaciation. His lip was color- | less, his skin dry and white, and his sunken eyes had j that expression of inquiring earnestness which comes | always with impatient sickness. He raised his head, j and looked steadily at me as I came on. My lips were ! open, and my whole air must have been that of a per- , son in the most exulting enjoyment of healih. I was \ just against him, gliding; past with an elastic step, j when, with his eye still fixed on me, he half turned, j and in a voice of inexpressible meaning, exclaimed, i ' Merciful Heaven ! how well she is ." I passed on, \ with his voice still ringing in my ear. It haunted me like a tone in the air. It was repeated in the echo of j my tread —in the panting of my heart. I felt it in the j beating of the strong pulse in my temples. As if it j was strange that I should be so well ! I had never before realized that it could be otherwise. It seemed j impossible, to me that my strong limbs should fail me, or the pure blood I felt bounding so bravely through j my veins could be reached and tainted by disease. How should it come ? [f I ate, would it not nourish j me ? If I slept, would it not refresh me ? If I came out in the cool, free air, would not my lungs heave, j and my muscles spring, and my face feel its grateful I freshness ? I held out my arm, for the first time in my ! life, with a doubt of its strength. I closed my hand unconsciously, with a fear it would not obey. I drew | a deep breath, to feel if it was difficult to breathe ; and j even my bounding step, that was as elastic then as a i fawn's, seemed to my excited imagination already to have become decrepit and feeble. " I walked on, and thought of death. I had never; before done so definitely ; it was like a terrible shape ! that had always pursued me dimly, but which I had never before turned and looked steadily on. Strange! that we can live so constantly with that threatening hand hung over us, and not think of italways! Strange! | that we can use a limb, or enter with interest into any j pursuit of time, when we know that our continued life is almost a daily miracle ! " How difficult it is to realize death ! How difficult it is to believe that the hand with whose every vein you are familiar, will ever lose its motion and its warmth ? That the quick eye, which is so restless | new, will settle and mow dull ? That the refined lip, which now shrinks so sensitively from defilement, wdl not feel the earth lying upon it, and the tooth of the feeding worm ? That the free breath will be choked, and the forehead be pressed heavily on by the decay- ing coffin, and the light and air of heaven be shut quite out ; and this very body, warm, and breathing, and active as it is now, will not feel uneasiness or pain ? I could not help looking at my frame as these thoughts crowded on me; and I confess I almost doubted my own convictions — there was so much strength and quickness in it — my hand opened so freely, and my nostrils expanded with such a satisfied thirst to the moist air. Ah ! it is hard to believe at first that we must die ! harder still to believe and realize the repul- sive circumstances that follow that terrible change ! It is a bitter thought at the lightest. There is little comfort in knowing that the soul will not be there — that the sense and the mind that feel and measure suf- fering, will be gone. The separation is too great a mystery to satisfy fear. It is the body that we krtmo. It is this material frame in which the affections have grown up. The spirit is a mere thought — a presence that we are told of, but do not see. Philosophize as we will, the idea of existence is connected indissolubly with the visible body, and its pleasant and familiar senses. We talk of, and believe, the soul's ascent to its Maker; but it is not ourselves — it is not our own conscious breathing identity that we send up in ima- gination through the invisible air. It is some phantom that is to issue forth mysteriously, and leave us gazing on it in wonder. We do not understand, we can not realize it. "At the time I speak of, my health had been always unbroken. Since then, I have known disease in many forms, and have had, of course, more time and occa- sion for the contemplation of death. I have never, till late, known resignation. With my utmost energy I was merely able, in other days, to look upon it with quiet despair; as a terrible, unavoidable evil. Ire- member once, after severe suffering for weeks, I over- heard the physician telling my mother that I must die, and from that moment the thought never left me. A thin line of light came in between the shutters of the south window ; and, with this one thought fasten- ed on my mind, like the vulture of Prometheus, 1 lay and watched it, day after day, as it passed with its imperceptible progress over the folds of my curtains. The last faint gleam of sunset never faded from its damask edge, without an inexpressible sinking of my heart, and a belief that I should see its pleasant light no more. I turned from the window when even ima- gination could find the daylight no longer there, and felt my pulse and lifted my head to try my remaining strength. And then every object, yes, even the mean- est, grew unutterably dear to me ; my pillow, and the cup with which my lips were moistened, and the cool- ing amber which 1 had held in my hand, and pressed to my burning lips when the fever was on me — every- thing that was connected with life, and that would re- main among the living when I was gone. " It is strange, but with all this clinging to the world my affection for the living decreased sensibly. I grew selfish in my weakness. I could not bear that they should go from my chamber into the fresh air, and ! have no fear of sickness and no pain. It seemed un- feeling that they did not stay and breathe the close atmosphere of my room — at least till J was dead. — How could they walk round so carelessly, and look on a fellow-creature dying helplessly and unwillingly, and never shed a tear ! And then the passing cour- tesies exchanged with the Aimily at the door, and the quickened step on the sidewalk, and the wandering looks about my room, even while I was answering with my difficult breath their cold inquiries! There was an in- human carelessness in all this that stung me to the soul. 394 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. " I craved sympathy as I did life ; and yet I doubted it all. There was not a word spoken by the friends who were admitted to see me, that I did not ponder over when they were gone, and always with an im- patient dissatisfaction. The tone, and the manner, and the expression of face, all seemed forced ; and often, in my earlier sickness, when I had pondered for hours on the expressed sympathy of some one I had loved, the sense of utter helplessness which crowded on me with my conviction of their insincerity, quite overcame me. I have lain night after night, and looked at my indifferent watchers: and oh how I hated them for their careless ease, and their snatched moments of repose! I could scarce keep from dashing aside the cup they came to give me so sluggishly. " It is singular that, with all our experience of sick- ness, we do not attend more to these slight circum- stances. It can scarce be conceived how an ill-man- aged light, or a suppressed whispering, or a careless change of attitude, in the presence of one whose senses are so sharpened, and whose mind is so sensitive as a sick person's, irritate and annoy. And, perhaps, more than these to bear, is the affectedly subdued tone of condolence. 1 remember nothing which I endured so impatiently. " Annoyances like these, however, scarcely diverted for a moment the one great thought of death. It be- came at last familiar, but, if possible, more dreadfully horrible from that very fact. It was giving it a new character. I realized it more, The minute circum- stances became nearer and more real — I tried the posi- tion in which I should he in my coffin — I lay with my arms to my side, and my feet together, and with the cold sweat standing in large drops on my lip, com- posed my features into a forced expression of tran- quillity. " I awoke ^on the second morning after the hope of my recovery had been abandoned. There was a nar- row sunbeam lying in a clear crimson line across the curtain, and I lay and watched the specks of lint sail- ing through it, like silver-winged insects, and the thin dust, quivering and disappearing on its definite limit, in a dream of wonder. I had thought not to see another sun, and my mind was still fresh with the ex- pectation of an immediate change ; I could not believe that I was alive. The dizzy throb in my temples was done ; my limbs felt cool and refreshed; my mind had that feeling of transparency which is common after healthful and sweet sleep; and an indefinite sensation of pleasure trembled in every nerve. I thought that this might be death, and that, with this exquisite feel- ing of repose, I was to linger thus consciously with the body till the last day ; and I dwelt on it pleasantly with my delicious freedom from pain. I felt no regret for life — none for a friend even : I was willing — quite willing— to lie thus for ages. Presently the physician entered; he came and laid his fingers on my'pulse, and his face brightened. ' You will get well,' he said, and I heard it almost without emotion. Gradually, however, the love of life returned; and as I realized it fully, and all the thousand chords which bound me to it vibrated once more, the tears came thickly to my eyes, and a crowd of delightful thoughts pressed cheerfully and glowingly on me. No language can do justice to the pleasure of convalescence from extreme sick- ness. The first step upon the living grass — the first breath of free air — the first unsuppressed salutation of a frieud — my fainting heart, dear Philip, rallies and quickens even now with the recollection." I have thrown into a continuous strain what was murmured to me between pauses of faintness, and with difficulty of breath that seemed overpowered only by the mastery of the eloquent spirit apparently trembling on its departure. I believed Edith Linsey would die that night; I believed myself listening to words spoken almost from heaven ; and if I have wearied you, dear reader, with what must be more interesting to me than to you, it is because every syllable was burnt like enamel into my soul, in my boundless reverence and love. It was two o'clock, and she still lay breathing pain- fully in my arms. 1 had thrown up the window, and the soft south wind, stirring gently among the tinkling icicles of the trees, came in, warm and genial, and she leaned over to inhale it, as if it came from the source of life. The stars burned gloriously in the heavens ; and, in a respite of her pain, she lay back her head, and gazed up at them with an inarticulate motion of her lips, and eyes so unnaturally kindled, that I thought reason had abandoned her. "How beautiful are the stars to night, Edith!" I said, with half a fear that she would answer me in madness. " Yes," she said, putting my hand (that pressed her closer, involuntary, to my bosom) first to her lips — "Yes; and, beautiful as they are, they are all accu- rately numbered and governed, and just as they burn now have they burned since the creation, never 'faint in their watches,' aud never absent from their place. Bow glorious they are! How thrilling it is to see them stand with such a constant silence in the sky, un- steadied and unsupported, obeying the great law of their Maker! What pure and silvery light it is! How steadily it pours from those small fountains, giving every spot of earth its due portion ! The hovel and the palace are shone upon equally, and the shepherd gets as broad a beam as the king, and these few rays that are now streaming into my feverish eyes were meant and lavished only for me ! I have often thought — has it never occurred to you, dear Philip ? — how ungrateful we are to call ourselves poor, when there is so much that no poverty can take away ! Clusters of silver rays from every star in these heavens are mine. Every breeze that breaks on my forehead was sent for my refreshment. Every tinkle and ray from those stirring and glistening icicles, and the in- vigorating freshness of this unseasonable and delicious wind, and moonlight, and sunshine, and the glory of the planets, are all gifts that poverty could not take away ! It is not often that I forget these treasures ; for I have loved nature, and the skies of night and day, in all their changes, from my childhood, and they have been unspeakably dear to me ; for in them I see the evidence of an Almighty Maker, and in the excessive beauty of the stars and the unfading and equal splen- dor of their steadfast fires, I see glimpses of an im- mortal life, and find an answer to the eternal question- ing within me ! " Three ! The village clock reaches us to night. Nay, the wind can not harm me now. Turn me more to the window, for I would look nearer upon the stars: it is the last time — I am sure of it — the very last! Yet to-morrow night those stars will all be there — not one missing from the sky, nor shining one ray the less be- cause I am dead ! It is strange that this thought should be so bitter — strange that the companionship should be so close between our earthly affections and those spiritual worlds — and stranger yet, that, satis- fied as we must be that we shall know them nearer and better when released from our flesh, we still cling so fondly to our earthly and imperfect vision. I feel, Philip, that I shall traverse hereafter every star in those bright heavens. If the course of that career of knowl- edge, which I believe in my soul it will be the reward of the blessed to run, be determined in any degree by the strong desires that yearn so sickeningly within us, I see the thousand gates of my future heaven shining at this instant above me. There they are! the clus- tering Pleiades, with ' their sweet influences ;' and the morning star, melting into the east with its trans- cendent lambency and whiteness; and the broad gal- axy, with its myriads of bright spheres, dissolving into INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 395 each other's light, nnd belting the heavens like a gir- dle. J shall see them all ! 1 shall know them and the r inhabitant! as the angels of (iod know them; the mvsiery of their order, and the secret of their wond li'ul harmonv, and the duration of their appoint- ed courses — all will he made clear!" J have trespassed again, most indulgent reader, on the limits of these Procrustean papers, i must defer the " change" that " came o'er the spirit of my dream" till another mood an I time. Meanwhile, you may consi ler Edith, if you like, the true heart she thought heiself (and I thought her) during her nine deaths in the library; and you will have leisuie to imagine the i three years over which we shall skip with this finale, j during which 1 made a journey to the north, and danced i out a winter in your own territories at Quebec — a cir- ; cums:ance I allu le to, no less to record the hospitali- j ties ol'ihe garrison of that time (this was in 27' — were you there ?) than to pluck forth from Time's hinder- j most wallet a modest copy of verses 1 addressed thence | to Edith. She sent them back to me considerably mended; but I give you the original draught, scorn- ing her finger in my poesies. TO EDITH, FROM THE NORTH. As, gazing on the Pleiades, We count each fair and starry one, Yet wander from the light of these To muse upon the ' Pleiad cone ;' — As, bendhig o'er fresh-g uhered flowers, The rose s most enchanting hue Reminds us hut of other hours, Whose roses were all lovely, too ; — So, dearest, when I rove among The brght ones of this northern sky, And mark the smile, and list the song, And watch the dancers gliding by — The fairer still they seem to be, The more it stirs a thought of thee. The sad, sweet bells of twilight chime, Of many hearts may touch but one, And so this seeming careless rhyme Will whisper to thy heart alone. I give it to the winds. The bird, Let loose, to his far nest will flee : And love, though breathed but on a word, Wid find thee over land and sea. Though clouds across he sky have driven, We trust the star at last will shine ; And like the very light of heaven, 1 trust thy love — trust thou in mine ! PART III. A DIGRESSION. •• B"y. Will you not sleep, sir? Knight Fling the window up ! I'll look upon the stars. Where twinkle now The I'leiiides? Boy. Here, master ! K tight. Throw me now Mv cioak upon my shou'ders, and good night ! I have no mind to sleep ! * * * * * * * She bade me look Upon hi< band of stars when other eyes Beamed on me brightly, and remember her By the Lost Pleiad. Roy. Are you well, sir 1 Knight. Boy ! Love you the stars 7 Boy. When they first spring: at eva Better than near to morning. Knight. Fickle child ! Are they more fair in twilight ? Hoy. Master, no ! Brighter as nisht wears on— but I forget Their beauty, looking on thrni long ."' * "Sir Fabian," an unpublished Poem. It was a September night at the university. On the morrow I was to appear upon the stage as the winner of the first honors of my year. I was the envy— the admiration— in some degree the wender, of the col- legiate town in which the university stands; for I had commenced my career as the idlest and most riotous of freshmen. What it was that had suddenly made me enamored of my chambers and my books — that had saddened my manners and softened my voice — that had given me a disgust to champagne and my old al- lies, in favor of cold water and the Platonists — that, in short, had metamorphosed, as Bob Wilding would have said, a gentleman-like rake and vau-rien into so dull a thing as an exemplary academician — was past the divining of most of my acquaintances. Oh, once- loved Edith! hast thou any inkling in thy downward metempsychosis of the philosophy of this marvel ? If you were to set a poet to make a town, with carte blanche as to trees, gardens, and green blinds, he would probably turn out very much such a place as New Haven. (Supposing your education in ge- ography to have been neglected, dear reader, this is the second capital of Connecticut, a half-rural, half- metropolitan town, lying between a precipice that makes the fag-end of the (Jreen mountains and a handsome bay in Long-Island sound.) The fust thought of the inventor of New Haven was to lay out the streets in parallelograms, and the second was to plant them from suburb to water-side with the mag- nificent elms of the country. The result is, that at the end of fifty years, the town is buried in leaves, ff it were not for the spires of the churches, a bird flying over on his autumn voyage to the Floridas would never mention having seen it in his travels. It is a glorious tree, the elm — and those of the place I speak of are famous, even in our land of trees, for their sur- prising size and beauty. With the curve of their stems in the sky, the long weepers of their outer and lower branches drop into the street, fanning your face as you pass under wiih their geranium-like leaves; and close overhead, interwoven like the trellice of a vine, they break up the light of the sky into golden flecks, and make you, of the common highway, a bower of the most approved secludedness and beauty. The houses are something between an Italian palace and an English cottage — built of wood, but, in the dim light of those overshadowing trees, as fair to the eye as marble with their triennial coats of paint; aud each stands in the midst of its own encircling grass- plot, half buried in vines and flowers, and facing out- ward from a cluster of gardens divided by slender palings, and filling up with fruit-trees and summer- houses the square on whose limit it stands. Then, like the vari-colored parallelograms upon a chess- board, green openings are left throughout the town, fringed with triple and interweaving elm-rows, the long and weeping branches sweeping downward to the grass, and with their enclosing shadows keeping moist and cool the road they overhang; and fair forms (it is the garden of American beauty — New-Haven) flit about in the green light in primitive security and free- dom, and you would think the place, if you alit upon it in a summer's evening — what it seems to me now in memory, and what I have made it in this Rosa- Matilda description — a scene from Boccacio, or a vision from long-lost Arcady. New Haven may have eight thousand inhabitants. Its steamers run to New York in six hours (or did in my time — I have ceased to be astonished on that sub- ject, and should not wonder if they did it now in one — a trifle of seventy miles up the sound), and the ladies go up in the morning for a yard of bobbin and return at night, and the gentlemen the same for a stroll in Broadway ; and it is to this circumstance that, while it preserves its rural exterior, it is a very metro- politan place in the character of its society. The Armaryllis of the petty cottage you admire wears the fashion twenty days from Paris, and her shepherd has a coat from Nugee, the divine peculiarity of which is not yet suspected east of Bond street ; and, in the 396 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. newspaper hanging half out of the window, there is news, red-hot with the velocity of its arrival, from Russia and the Rocky Mountains, from the sources of the Mississippi and the brain of Monsieur Herbault. Distance is an imaginary quantity, and Time, that used to give everything the go-by, has come to a stand-still in his astonishment. There will be a prop- osition in congress ere long to do without him alto- gether — every new thing " saves time" so marvel- lously. Bright as seems to me this seat of my Alma Mater, however, and gayly as 1 describe it, it is to me, if I may so express it, a picture of memory glazed and put away; if I see it ever again, it will be but to walk through its embowered streets by a midnight moon. It is vain and heart-breaking to go back, after absence, to any spot of earth of which the interest was the human love whose home and cradle it had been. But there is a period in our lives when the heart fuses and compounds with the things about it, and the close enamel with which it overruns and binds in the affections, and which hardens in the lapse of years till the immortal germ within is not more durable and unwasting, warms never again, nor softens; and there is nothing on earth so mournful and unavailing as to return to the scenes which are unchanged, and look to return to ourselves and others as we were when we thus knew them. Yet we think (I judge you by my own soul, gentle reader) that it is others — not we — who are changed ! We meet the friend that we loved in our youth, and it is ever he who is cold and altered ! We take the hand that we bent over with our passionate kisses in boyhood, and our raining tears when we last parted, and it is ever hers that returns not the pressure, and her eyes, and not ours — oh, not ours! — that look back the moistened and once familiar regard with a dry lid and a gaze of stone ! Oh God ! it is ever he — the friend you have worshipped — for whom you would have died — who gives you the tips of his ringers, and greets you with a phrase of fashion, when you would rush into his bosom and break your heart with weep- ing out the imprisoned tenderness of years ! I could carve out the heart from my bosom, and fling it with a malison into the sea, when I think how utterly and worse than useless it is in this world of mocking names ! Yet " love" and " friendship" are words that read well. You could scarce spare them in poetry. II. It was, as I have said, a moonlight night of unpar- alleled splendor. The morrow was the college anni- versary—the day of the departure of the senior class — and the town, which is, as it were, a part of the uni- versity, was in the usual tumult of the gayest and saddest evening of the year. The night was warm, and the houses, of which the drawing-rooms are all on a level with the gardens in the rear, and through which a long hall stretches like a ball-room, were thrown open, doors and windows, and the thousand students of the university, and the crowds of their friends, and the hosts of strangers drawn to the place at this season by the annual festivities, and the fami- lies, every one with a troop of daughters (as the leaves on our trees, compared with those of old countries — three to one — so are our sons and daughters) were all sitting without lamps in the moon-lit rooms, or strol- ling together, lovers and friends, in the fragrant gar- dens, or looking out upon the street, returning the greetings of the passers-by, or, with heads uncovered, pacing backward and forward beneath the elms before the door — the whole scene one that the angels in heaven might make a holyday to see. There were a hundred of my fellow-seniors — young men of from eighteen to twenty -four — every one of whom was passing the last evening of the four most impressible and attaching years of his life, with the family in which he had been most intimate, in a town where refinement and education had done their ut- most upon the society, and which was renowned throughout America for the extraordinary beauty of its women. They had come from every state in the Union, and the Georgian and the Vermontese, the Kentuckian and the Virginian, were to start alike on I the morrow-night with a lengthening chain for home, each bearing away the hearts he had attached to him I (one or more !) and leaving his own, till, like the mag- i netized needle, it should drop away with the weak- j ened attraction ; and there was probably but one that i night in the departing troop who was no; whispering in some throbbing ear the passionate but vain and j mocking avowal of fidelity in love ! And yet I had I had my attachments too ; and there was scarce a house in that leafy and murmuring paradise of friend- ship and trees, that would not have hailed me with acclamation had I entered the door; and I make this record of kindness and hospitality (unforgotten after long years of vicissitude and travel), with the hope that there may yet live some memory as constant as mine, and that some eye will read it with a warmth in its lid, and some lip — some one at least — murmur, "f remember him!" There are trees in that town whose drooping leaves I could press to my lips with an affec- | tion as passionate as if they were human, though the 1 lips and voices that have endeared them to me are as changed as the foliage upon the branch, and would recognise my love as coldly. There was one, I say, who walked the thronged pavement alone that night, or but with such company as Uhland's ;* yet the heart of that solitary senior was far from lonely. The palm of years of ambition was in his grasp — the reward of daily self-denial and mid- night watching — the prize of a straining mind and a yearning desire ; and there was not one of the many who spoke of him that night in those crowded rooms, either to rejoice in his success or to wonder at its at- tainment, who had the shadow of an idea what spirit sat uppermost in his bosom. Oh! how common is this ignorance of human motives ! How distant, and slight, and unsuspected, are the springs often of the most desperate achievement! How little the world knows for what the poet writes, the scholar toils, the politician sells his soul, and the soldier perils his life ! And how insignificant and unequal to the result would seem these invisible wires, could they be traced back from the hearts whose innermost resource and faculty they have waked and exhausted ! It is a startling thing to question even your own soul for its motive. Ay, even in trifles. Ten to one yon are surprised at the answer. I have asked myself, while writing this sentence, whose eye it is most meant to please; and, as I live, the face that is conjured up at my bidding is of one of whom I have not had a definite thought for years. I would lay my life she thinks at this instant I have forgotten her very name. Yet I know she will read this page with an interest no other could awaken, striving to trace in it the changes that have come over me since we parted. I know (and 1 knew then, though we never exchanged a word save in friendship), that she devoted her innermost soul when we strayed together by that wild river in the West (dost thou remember it, dear friend ? for now I speak to thee !) to the study of a mind and character of which * Almost the sweetest thing I remeAber is the German poet's thought when crossing the ferry to his wife and child ;— " Take, O boatman ! thrice thy fee, Take, I give it willingly : For, invis/bly to thee, Spirits twain have crossed with m*." INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 397 she thought better than the world or their possessor; BD d I know— oh, how well I know!— that with hus- band and children around her, whom she loves and 10 whom she is devoted, the memory ol me 18 hud away in her heart like a fond hut incomplete dream ol what once seemed possible— the feeling with which the mother looks on her witless boy, and loves him more lor what he wight have been, than his brothers for what they are! I scarce know what thread I dropped to take up this tm/romta digression (for, like "Opportunity and the ..' .. T .. l__l. 1 1, ."*\ Hours," I •• never look back :"*) but let us return to the shadow of the thousand elms of New Haven. The Gascon thought his own thunder and lightning superior to that ol other countries, but I must run the hazard of your incredulity as well, in preierrmg an American moon. In Greece and Asia Minor, perhaps tngione—ahe was first worshipped there), Cythens shines as brightly; but the Ephesian of Connecticut sees the flaws upon the pearly buckler of the goddess, as does the habitant of no other clime. His eye lies close to the moon. There is no film, and no visible beam in the clarified atmosphere. Her light is less an emanation than a presence— the difference between n the water in a thunder-shower and the depths of | the sea. The moon struggles to you in England— | ; she is all about you, like an element of the air, in jj America unconsciously stopped, and looked unobserved into the rooms. It was the residence of a magnificent girl, who was generally known as the Connecticut beauty — a singular instance in America of what is called in England a fine woman. (With us that word applies wholly to moral qualities.) She was as large as Juno, and a great deal handsomer, if the painters have done that much-snubbed goddess justice. She was a "book of beauty" printed with virgin type; and that, by the way, suggests to me what I have all my life been trying to express— that some women seem wrought of new material altogether, apropos to others who seem mortal rechauffes— as if every limb and feature had been used, and got out of shape in some other person's service. The lady I speak of looked new — and her name was Isidora. She was standing just under the lamp, with a single rose in her hair, listening to a handsome coxcomb of a classmate of mine with evident pleasure. She was a great fool, (did I mention that before?) but weak, and vacant, and innocent of an idea as she was, Faustina was not more naturally majestic, nor Psyche ! (soit elle en grande) more divinely and meaningly '• graceful. Loveliness and fascination came to her as ' dew and sunshine to the flowers, and she obeyed her instinct, as they theirs, and was helplessly, and with- out design, the loveliest thing in nature. 1 do not see for my part, why all women should not be so. ThTu'ight was breathless, and the fragmented light jj They are as useful as flowers ; they perpetuate our lav on the navement in motionless stars, as clear and < species. . SMtelCS£«ifS« "patines of bright gold" I was looking at her with irresistible adm.ra ion ha drop >e through the trees/and lay glittering be- when a figure stepped out from the shadow of a tree, neat my fee There was a kind of darkness visible and my chum, monster, and ally. Job Smith (of whom In the streets, overshadowed as they were by the massy ;! I have before spoken in these historical papers), laid and leaf-burthened elms, and as I looked through the || his hand on my should- houses, standing in obscurity myself, the gardens seemed full of daylight— the unobstructed moon poured with such a flood of radiance on the flowery alleys within, and their gay troops of promenaders. And as I distinguished one and another familiar friend, with a form as familiar clinging to his side, and, with drooping head and faltering step, listening or replying (I well knew), to the avowals of love and truth, I mur- mured in thought to my own far away, but never-for- gotten Edith, a vow as deep— ay, deeper than theirs, as my spirit and hers had been sounded by the pro- founder plummet of sorrow and separation. How the very moonlight— how the stars of heaven— how the balm in the air, and the lahguor of summer night in my indolent frame, seemed, in those hours of loneli- ness, ministers at the passionate altar-fires of my love! Forsworn and treacherous Edith ! do I live to write this for thine eye ? I linger upon these trifles of the past — these hours for which I would have borrowed wings when they were here— and, as then they seemed but the flowering promise of happiness, they seem vow like the fruit, enjoyed and departed. Past and future bliss there would seem to be in the world— knows any one of such a commodity in the present 1 I have not seen it in my travels. III. I was strolling on through one of the most fashion- able and romantic streets (when did these two words ever before find themselves in a sentence together?) when a drawing-room with which I was very familiar, lit, unlike most others on that bright night, by a sus- pended lamp, and crowded with company, attracted my attention for a moment. Between the house and the street there was a slight shrubbery shut in by a white paling, just sufficient to give an air of seclusion to the low windows without concealing them from the passer-by, and, with the freedom of an old visiter, 1 • Walter Savage Landor. Do you know, my dear Job," I said, in a solemn one of admonition, "that blind John was imprisoned ! for looking into people's windows?" But Job was not in the vein for pleasantry. The light fell on his face as I spoke to him, and a more haggard, almost blasted expression of countenance, I never saw even in a madhouse. I well knew he had loved the splendid girl that stood unconsciously in our sight, since his first year in college ; but that it would ever so master him, or that he could link his mon- strous deformity, even in thought, with that radiant vision of beauty, was a thing that I thought as prob- able as that hirsute Pan would tempt from her sphere the moon that kissed Endymion. " I have been standing here looking at Isidora, ever since you left me," said he. (We had parted three hours "before, at twilight.) "And why not go in, in the name of common sense "Oh! God, Phil! — with this demon in my heart? Can you see my face in this light ?" It was too true, he would have frightened the household gods from their pedestals. "But what would you do, my dear Job? Why come here to madden yourself with a sight you must have known you would see. "Phil?" "What, my dear boy?" "Will you do me a kindness?" "Certainly." " Isidora would do anything you wished her to do. "Urn! with a reservation, my dear chum !" " But she would give you the rose that is m her hair." " Without a doubt." "And for me— if you told her it was for me. Would she not?" "Perhaps. But will that content you ! " It will soften my despair. I will never look on her face more ; but I should like my last sight of her to be associated with kindness ?" 398 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. Poor Job! how true it is that " affection is a fire which kindleih as well in the bramble as in the oak, and catchelli hold where it first lighteth, not where it may best burn." ] do believe in my heart that the soul in thee was designed for a presentable body — thy instincts were so invariably mistaken. When didst thou ever think a thought, or stir hand or foot, that it did not seem prompted, monster though thou wert, by j conscious good-looking-ness! What a lying simili- j tude it was that was written on every blank page in ! thy Lexicon: ''Larks that mount in the air, build ; their nests below in the- earth; and women that cast their eyes upon kings, may place their hearts upon | vassals." Apelles must have been better looking than ; Alexander, when Campaspe said that ! As a general thing you may ask a friend freely to i break any three of the commandments in your service, I but you should hesitate to require of friendship a vio- lation of etiquette. 1 was in a round jacket and boots, and it was a dress evening throughout New Haven. I : looked at my dust-covered feet, when Job asked me ' to enter a soiree upon his errand, and passed my j thumb and finger around the edge of my white jacket; but I loved Job as the Arabian loves his camel, and for the same reason, with a difference — the imperishable J well-spring he carried in his heart through the desert j of the world, and which I well knew he would give up ! his life to offer at need, as patiently as the animal whose construction (inner and outer) he so remarkably resembled. When I hesitated, and looked down at j my boots, therefore, it was less to seek for an excuse | to evade the sacrificing office required of me, than to beat about in my unprepared mind for a preface to my [ request. If she had been a woman of sense, 1 should have had no difficulty ; but it requires caution and skill to go out of the beaten track with a fool. "Would not the rose do as well," said I, in despe- rate embarrassment, " if she does not know that it is for you, my dear Job?" It would have been very easy to have asked for it for myself. Job laid his hand upon his side, as if I could not comprehend the pang my proposition gave him. "Away prop, and down, scaffold," thought I, as I gave my jacket a hitch, and entered the door. "Mr. Slingsby," announced the servant. " Mr. Slingsby ?" inquired the mistress of the house, seeing only a white jacket in the clair obscur of the hall. "Mr. Slingsby!!!" cried out twenty voices in amazement, as 1 stepped over the threshold into the light. It has happened since the days of Thebet Ren Kho- rat, that scholars have gone mad, and my sanity was evidently the uppermost concern in the minds of all present. (I should observe, that in those days, I rel- ished rather of dandyism.) As I read the suspicion in their minds, however, a thought struck me. I went straight up to xMiss Higgins, and, sotto voce, asked her to take a turn with me in the garden. " Isidora," 1 said, " i have long known your supe- riority of mind" (when - you want anything of a wo- man, praise her for that in which she is most deficient, says La Bruyere), "and I have great occasion to rely on it in the request I am about to make of you." She opened her eyes, and sailed along the gravel- walk with heightened majesty. I had not had occa- sion to pay her a compliment before since my fresh- man year. " What is it, Mr. Slingsby ?" "You know Smith — my chum." "Certainly." " I have just come from him." "Well!" " He is gone mad !" "Mad! Mr. Slingsby?" "Stark and furious!" " Gracious goodness !" "And all for you !" " For me ! !" "For you !" I thought her great blue eyes would have become what they call in America "sot," at this astounding communication. "Now, Miss Higgins," I continued, "pray listen; my poor friend has such extraordinary muscular strength, that seven men can not hold him." " Gracious!" "And he has broken away, and is here at your door." " Good gracious!" " Don't be afraid ! He is as gentle as a kitten when I am present. And now hear my request. He leaves town to-morrow, as you well know, not to return. I shall take him home to Vermont with keepers. He is bent upon one thing, and in that you must humor him." Miss Higgins began to be alarmed. "He has looked through the window and seen you with a rose in your hair, and, despairing even in his madness of your love, he says, that if you would give him that rose, with a kind word, and a farewell, he should be happy. You will do it, will you not ?" " Dear me ! 1 should be so afraid to speak to him!" " But will you ? and I 'II tell you what to say." Miss Higgins gave a reluctant consent, and 1 passed ten minutes in drilling her upon two sentences, which, with her fine manner and sweet voice, really sounded like the most interesting thing in the world. I left her in the summer-house at the end of the garden, and returned to Job. "You have come without it !" said the despairing lover, falling back against the tree. " Miss Higgins' compliments, and begs you will go round by the gate, and meet her in the summer-house. She prefers to manage her own affairs." "Good God! are you mocking me?" " I will accompany you, my dear boy." There was a mixture of pathos and ludicrousness in that scene which starts a tear and a laugh together, whenever I recall it to my mind. The finest heart in the world, the most generous, the most diffident of itself, yet the most self sacrificing and delicate, was at the altar of its devotion, offering its all in passionate abandonment for a flower and a kind word: and she, a goose in the guise of an angel, repeated a phrase of kindness of which she could not comprehend the meaning or the worth, but which was to be garnered up by that half-broken heart, as a treasure that repaid him for years of unrequited affection! She recited it really very well. I stood at the latticed door, and in- terrupted them the instant there was a pause in the dialogue; and getting Job away as fast as possible, I left Miss Higgins with a promise of secrecy, and re- sumed my midnight stroll. Apropos — among Job's letters is a copy of verses, which, spite of some little inconsistencies, I think were written on this very occasion : — Nay — smile not on me — I have borne Indifference and repulse from thee ; With my heart sickening 1 have worn A brow, as thine own eoldxme, free ; My lip has been as gay as thine, Ever thine own light mirth repeating, Though, in this burning brain of mine, A throb the while, like death, was beating : My spirit did not shrink or swerve — Thy look — I thank thee ! — froze the nerve ! But now again, as when I met . And loved thee in my happier days, A smile upon thy bright lip plays, And kindness in thine eye is set — INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 399 And this I can not bear ! It melts the manhood from my pride, It brngs me closer to thy side- Bewilders -chains me there — There — where my dearest hope was crushed and died ! Oh, if thou couldsl but know the deep Of love that hope has nursed for years, How in the heart's still chambers sleep Its hoarded thoughts, its trembling fears — Treasure that love has brooded o'er Till life, than this, has nothing more— And couldst thou — but 'tis vain ! — I will not, can not tell thee, how That hoard consumes its coffer now — I may not write of pain That sickens in the heart, and maddens in the brain Then smile not on me ! pass me by Coldly, and with a careless mien — 'Twill pierce my heart, and fill mine eye, But 1 shall be as I have been — Quiet in my despair ! 'Tis better than the throbbing fever, That else were in my brain for ever, And easier to bear ! I'll not upbraid the coldest look — The bitterest word thou hast, in my sad pride I'll brook ! If Job had rejoiced in a more euphonious name, I should have bought a criticism in some review, and started him fairly as a poet. But " Job Smith!" — " Poems by Job Smith !" — It would never do ! If he wrote like a seraph, and printed the book at his own expense, illustrated and illuminated, and half-a-crown to each person that would take one away, the critics would damn him all the same ! Really, one's father and mother have a great deal to answer for ! But Job is a poet who should have lived in the middle ages, no less for the convenience of the nom de guerre, fashionable in those days, than because his poetry, being chiefly the mixed product of feeling and courtesy, is particularly susceptible to ridicule. The philosophical and iron-wire poetry of our day stands an attack like a fortification, and comes down upon the besieger with reason and logic as good as his own. But the more delicate offspring of tenderness and chiv- alry, intending no violence, and venturing out to sea upon a rose -leaf, is destroyed and sunk beyond diving- bells by half a breath of scorn. I would subscribe liberally myself to a private press and a court of honor in poetry — critics, if admitted, to be dumb upon a penalty. Will no Howard or Wilberforce act upon this hint ? Poets now-a-days ate more slaves and felons than your African, or your culprit at the old Bailey ! 1 would go a great way. privately, to find a genuine spark of chivalry, and Job lit his everyday lamp with it. See what a redolence of old time there is in these verses, which I copied long ago from a lady's album. Yet, you may ridicule them if you like ! — There is a story I have met, Of a high angel, pure and true, With eyes that tears had never wet, And lips that pity never knew ; But ever on his throne he sate, With his white pinions proudly furled, And, looking from his high estate, Beheld the errors of a world : Yet, never, as they rose to heaven, Plead even for one to be forgiven. God looked at last upon his pride, And bade him fold his shining wing, And o'er a land where tempters bide, He made the heartless angel king. 'Tis lovely reading in the tale, The glorious spells they tried on him, Ere gTew his heavenly birth-star pale, Ere grew his frontlet jewel dim — Cups of such rare and ravishing wines As even a god might drink and bless, Gems from unsearched and central mines, Whose light than heaven's was scarcely less — Gold of a sheen like crystal spars, And silver whiter than the moon's, And music like the songs of stars, And perfume like a thousand Junes, And breezes, soft as heaven's own air Like fingers playing in his hair ! He shut his eyes — he closed his ears — He bade them, in God's name, begone ! And, through the yet eternal years, Had stood, the tried and sinless one : But there was yet one untried spell — A woman tempted— and he fell ! And I — if semblance I may find Between such glorious sphere and mine — Am not to the high honor blind, Of filling this fair page of thine — Writing my unheard n.ime among Sages and sires and men of song ; But honor, though the best e'er given, And glory, though it were a king's, And power, though loving it like heaven, Were, to my seeming, lesser things, And less temptation, far, to me, Than half a hope of serving thee ! I am mounted upon my hobby now, dear reader; for Job Smith, though as hideous an idol as ever was worshipped on the Indus, was still my idol. Here is a little touch of his quality : — I look upon the fading flowers Thou gav'st me, lady, in thy mirth, And mourn, that, with the perishing hours Such fair things perish from the earth — For thus, I know, the moment's feeling Its own light web of life unweaves, The deepest trace from memory stealing, Like perfume from these dying leaves — The thought that gave it, anil the flower, Alike the creatures of an hour. And thus it better were, perhaps, For feeling is the nurse of pain, And joys that linger in their lapse, Must die at last, and so are vain ! Could I revive these faded flowers, Could 1 call back departed bliss, I would not, though this world of ours Were ten times brighter than it is ! They must — and let them— pass away ! We are forgotten — even as they ! I think I must give Edith another reprieve. I have no idea why I have digressed this time from the story which (you may see by the motto at the beginning of the paper) I have not yet told. I can conceive easily how people, who have nothing to do, betake them- selves to autobiography — it is so pleasant rambling about over the past, and regathering only the flowers. Why should pain and mortification be unsepultured .' The world is no wiser for these written experiences. " The best book," said Southey, " does but little good to the world, and much harm to the author." I shall deliberate whether to enlighten the world as to Edith's metempsychosis, or no. PART IV. SCENERY AND A SCENE. " Truth is no doctoresse ; she takes no decrees at Paris or Oxford, among great clerks, disputants, subtle Aristotles, men nodn.ri mge- nii, ab'e to take Lully by the chin j but oftentimes, to such a one as myself, an idiota or common person, no great things, melanchoii- zing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains ; whereas the sillv man, expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with na- ture, her pleasaunt scenes, woods, waterfalls: on a sudden the goddess herself, Truth, has appeared with a shining light and a sparkling countenance, so as ye may not b« able lightly to resist her." — Bobtom. 400 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. " Lver thus Drop from us treasures one tiy one ; They who have been frmn youth with us, Whose every look, whose every tone. Is linked to us like leaves to flowers— They who have shared our pleasant hours— Whose voices, so familiar grown. They almost seem to us our own— The echoes of each breath of ours — They who have ever been our pride, Yet in their hours of triumph dearest — They whom we must have known and tried, And loved the most when tiied the nearest — They pass from us, like stars that wane, The brightest still before, Or gold links broken from a chain That can be joined no more !" Job Smith and myself were on the return from Ni- agara. It was in the slumberous and leafy midst of June. Lake Erie had lain with a silver glaze upon its bosom for days; the ragged trees upon its green shore dropping their branches into the stirless water, as if it were some rigid imitation — the lake glass, and the leaves emerald ; the sky was of an April blue, as ! if a night-rain had washed out its milkiness. till you J could see through its clarified depths to the gates of I heaven ; and yet breathless and sunny as was the face of the earth, there was a nerve and a vitality in j the air that exacted of every pulse its full compass — J searched every pore for its capacity of the joy of ex- I istence. No one can conceive, who has not had his imagina- tion stretched at the foot of Niagara, or in the Titanic solitudes of the west, the vastness of the unbroken phases of nature ; where every tree looks a king, and every flower a marvel of glorious form and color — where the rocks are rent every one as by the " tenth" thunderbolt — and lake, mountain, or river, ravine or waterfall, cave or eagle's nest, whatever it may be that feeds the eye or the fancy, is as the elements have shaped and left it — where the sculpture, and the paint- ing, and the poetry, and the wonderful alchymy of nature, go on under the naked eye of the Almighty, and by his own visible and uninterrupted hand, and where the music of nature, from the anthem of the torrent and storm, broken only by the scream of the vulture, to the trill of the rivulet with its accompani- ment of singing birds and winds, is for ever ringing its changes, as if for the stars to hear — in such scenes, I say, and in such scenes only, is the imagination over- tasked or stretched to the capacity of a seraph's ; and while common minds sink beneath them to the mere inanition of their animal senses, the loftier spirit takes their color and stature, and outgrows the common and pitiful standards of the world. Cooper and Leather- stocking thus became what they are — the one a high- priest of imagination and poetry, and the other a sim- ple-hearted but mere creature of instinct; and Cooper is no more a living man, liable to the common laws of hum an nature, than Leatherstocking a true and life- like transcript of the more common effect of those overpowering solitudes on the character. We got on board the canal-boat at noon, and Job and myself, seated on the well-cushioned seats, with the blinds half-turned to give us the prospect and ex- clude the sun, sat disputing in our usual amicable way. He was the only man I ever knew with whom I could argue without losing my temper ; and the reason was, that I always had the last word, and thought myself victorious. " We are about to return into the bosom of society, my dear Job," said I, " looking with unctuous good nature on the well-shaped boot I had put on for the first time in a month that morning. (It is an unsen- timental fact that hob-nailed shoes are indispensable on the most poetical spots of earth.) " Yes," said Job; " but how superior is the society we leave behind ! Niagara and Erie * What in your crowded city is comparable to these ?" " Nothing, for size '. — but for society — you will think me a pagan, dear chum — but, on my honor, straight from Niagara as 1 come, I feel a most dissatisfied yearn- ing for the society of Miss Popkins !" "Oh, Phil!" " On my honor !" " You, who were in such raptures at the falls !" " And real ones — but I wanted a woman at my el- bow to listen to them. Do you know, Job, I have made up my mind on a great principle since we have been on our travels ? Have you observed that 1 was pensive ?" " Not particularly — but what is your principle ?" " That a man is a much more interesting object than a mountain." "A man ! did you say ?" " Yes — but I meant a woman !" " I don't think so." " I do ! — and 1 judge by myself. When did I ever see wonder of nature — tree, sunset, waterfall, rapid, lake, or river — that I would not rather have been talk- ing to a woman the while ? Do you remember the three days we were tramping through the forest with- out seeing the sun, as if we had been in the endless aisle of a cathedral?. Do you remember the long morn- ing when we lay on the moss at the foot of Niagara, and it was a divine luxury only 10 breathe ? Do you remember the lunar rainbows at midnight on Goat island ? Do you remember the ten thousand glorious moments we have enjoyed between weather and scene- ry since the bursting of these summer leaves? Do you ?"' " Certainly, my dear boy !" " Well, then, much as I love nature and you, there has not been an hour since we packed our knapsacks, that, if I coul I have distilled a charming girl out of a mixture of you and any mountain, river, or rock, that I have seen, I would not have flung you, without re- morse, into any witch's caldron that was large enough, and would boil at my bidding." " Monster !" "And I believe I should have the same feelings in Italy or Greece, or wherever people go into raptures with things you can neither eat nor make love to." " Would not even the Venus fill your fancy for a day ?" " An hour, perhaps, it might ; for I should be study- ing, in its cold Parian proportions, the warm structure of some living Musidora — but I should soon tire of it, and long for my lunch or my love ; and I give you my honor I would not lose the three meals of a single day to see Santa Croce and St. Peter's." " Both ?" "Both." Job disdained to argue against such a want of sen- timental principle, and pulling up the blind, he fixed his eyes on the slowly-gliding panorama of rock and forest, and I mounted for a promenade upon the deck. Mephistopheles could hardly have found a more striking amusement for Faust than the passage of three hundred miles in the canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson. As I walked up and down the deck of the packet-boat. I thought to myself, that if it were not for thoughts of things that come more home to one's " business and bosom" (particularly " bosom"), I could be content to retake my berth at Schenectady, and re- turn to Buffalo for amusement. The P>ie canal-boat is a long and very pretty drawing-room afloat. It has a library, sofas, a tolerable cook, curtains or Venetian blinds, a civil captain, and no smell of steam or per- ceptible motion. It is drawn generally by three horses at a fair trot, and gets you through about a hundred miles a day, as softly as if you were witched over the ground by Puck and Mustard-seed. The company (say fifty people) is such as pleases Heaven ; though I must say (with my eye all along the shore, collecting the various dear friends I have made and left on that INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 401 long canal) there are few highways on which you will meet so many lovely and loving fellow-passengers On this occasion my star was bankrupt — Job Smith being my only civilized companion — and I was left to the unsatisfactory society of my own thoughts and the scenery. Discontented as I may seem to have been, I remem- ber, through eight or ten years of stirring and thickly- sown manhood, every moment of that lonely evening. I remember the progression of the sunset, from the lengthening shadows and the first gold upon the clouds, to the deepening twilight and the new-sprung star hung over the wilderness. And I remember what I am going to describe — a twilight anthem in the forest — as you remember an air of Rossini's, or a transition in the half-fiendish, half-heavenly creations of Meyer- beer. I thought time dragged heavily then, but I wish I had as light a heart and could feel as vividly now ! The Erie canal is cut a hundred or two miles through the heart of the primeval wilderness of America, and the boat was gliding on silently and swiftly, and never sailed a lost cloud through the abyss of space on a course more apparently new and untrodden. The luxuriant soil had sent up a rank grass that covered the horse-path like velvet ; the Erie water was clear as a brook in the winding canal ; the old shafts of the gigantic forest spurred into the sky by thousands, and the yet unscared eagle swung off from the dead branch of the pine, and skimmed the tree-tops for another perch, as if he had grown to believe that gliding spectre a harmless phenomenon of nature. The horses drew steadily and unheard at the end of the long line ; the steersman stood mo- tionless at the tiller, and I lay on a heap of baggage in the prow, attentive to the slightest breathing of na- ture, but thinking, with an ache at my heart, of Edith Linsey, to whose feet (did I mention it?) I was has- tening with a lover's proper impatience. I might as well have taken another turn in my " fool's paradise." The gold of the sunset had glided up the dark pine tops and disappeared, like a ring taken slowly from an Ethiop's finger; the whip-poor-will had chanted the first stave of his lament; the bat was abroad, and the screech-owl, like all bad singers, commenced without waiting to be importuned, though we were listening for the nightingale. The air, as I said before, had been all day breathless; but as the first chill of eve- ning displaced the warm atmosphere of the departed sun, a slight breeze crisped the mirrored bosom of the canal, and then commenced the night anthem of the forest, audible, I would fain believe, in its soothing changes, by the dead tribes whose bones whiten amid the perishing leaves. First, whisperingly yet articu- lately, the suspended and wavering foliage of the birch was touched by the many-fingered wind, and, like a faint prelude, the silver-lined leaves rustled in the low branches ; and, with a moment's pause, when you could hear the moving of the vulture's claws upon the bark, as he turned to get his breast to the wind, the increasing breeze swept into the pine-tops, and drew forth from their fringe-like and myriad tassels a low monotone like the refrain of a far-off dirge; and still as it murmured (seeming to you sometimes like the confused and heart-broken responses of the peni- tents on a cathedral floor), the blast strengthened and filled, and the rigid leaves of the oak, and the swaying fans and chalices of the magnolia, and the rich cups of the tulip-trees, stirred and answered with their dif- ferent voices like many-toned harps ; and when the wind was fully abroad, and every moving thing on the breast of the earth was roused from its daylight repose, the irregular and capricious blast, like a player on an organ of a thousand stops, lulled and strengthened by turns, and from the hiss in the rank grass, low as the whisper of fairies, to the thunder of the impinging and groaning branches of the larch and the fir, the anthem went ceaselessly through its changes, and the harmony (though the owl broke in with his scream, and though the over-blown monarch of the wood came crashing to the earth), was still perfect and with- out ajar. It is strange that there is no sound of na- ture out of tune. The roar of the waterfall comes into this anthem of the forest like an accompaniment of bassoons, and the occasional bark of the wolf, or the scream of a night-bird, or even the deep-throated croak of the frog, is no more discordant than the out- burst of an octave flute above the even melody of an orchestra ; and it is surprising how the large rain- drops, pattering on the leaves, and the small voice of the nightingale (singing, like nothing but himself, sweetest in the darkness) seems an intensitive and a low burthen to the general anthem of the earth — as it were, a single voice among instruments. I had what Wordsworth calls a " couchant ear" in my youth, and my story will wait, dear reader, while I tell you of another harmony that I learned to love in the wilderness. There will come sometimes in the spring — say in May, or whenever the snow-drops and sulphur butter- flies are tempted out by the first timorous sunshine — there will come, I say, in that yearning and youth- I renewing season, a warm shower at noon. Our tent shall be pitched on the skirts of a forest of young pines, and the evergreen foliage, if foliage it may be called, shall be a daily refreshment to our eye while watching, with the west wind upon our cheeks, the unclothed branches of the elm. The rain descends softly and warm ; but with the sunset the clouds break away, and it grows suddenly cold enough to freeze. The next morning you shall come out with me to a hill-side looking upon the south, and lie down with your ear to the earth. The pine tassels hold in every four of their fine fingers a drop of rain frozen like a pearl in a long ear-ring, sustained in their loose grasp by the rigidity of the cold. The sun grows warm at ten, and the slight green fingers begin to relax and yield, and by eleven they are all drooping their icy pearls upon the dead leaves with a murmur through the forest like the swarming of the bees of Hybla. There is not much variety in its music, but it is a pleasant monotone for thought, and if you have a restless fever in your bosom (as I had, when I learned to love it, for the travel which has corrupted the heart and the ear that it soothed and satisfied then) you may lie down with a crooked root under your head in the skirts of the forest, and thank Heaven for an anodyne to care. And it is better than the voice of your friend, or the song of your lady-love, for it exacts no grati- tude, and will not desert you ere the echo dies upon the wind. Oh, how many of these harmonies there are ! — how many that we hear, and how many that are " too constant to be heard!" 1 could go back to my youth, now, with this thread of recollection, and unsepulture a hoard of simple and long-buried joys that would bring the blush upon my cheek to think how my senses are dulled since such things could give me pleasure! Is there no " well of Kanathos" for renewing the youth of the soul ? — no St. Hilary's cradle? no elixir to cast the slough of heart-sickening and heart-tar- nishing custom? Find me an alchymy for that, with your alembic and crucible, and you may resolve to dross again your philosopher's stone ! II. Everybody who makes the passage of the Erie canal, stops at the half-way town of Utica, to visit a wonder of nature fourteen miles to the west of it, called Trenton Falls. It would be becoming in me, before mentioning the falls, however, to sing the praises of 402 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. Utica and its twenty thousand inhabitants — having received much hospitality from the worthy burghers, and philandered up and down their well-flagged trot- toir very much to my private satisfaction. I should scorn any man's judgment who should attempt to con- vince me that the Erie water, which comes down the canal a hundred and fifty miles, and passes through the market-place of that pleasant town, has not com- municated to the hearts of its citizens the expansion and depth of the parent lake from which it is drawn. I have a theory on that subject with which I intend to surprise the world whenever politics and Mr. Bulwer draw less engrossingly on its attention. Will any one tell me that the dark eyes I knew there, and whose like for softness and meaning I have inquired for in vain through Italy, and the voice that accompanied their gaze — (that Pasta, in her divinest out-gush of melody and soul, alone recalls to me) — that these, and the noble heart, and high mind, and even the genius, that were other gifts of the same marvel among wo- men — that these were born of common parentage, and nursed by the air of a demi-metropolis? We were but the kindest of friends, that bright creature and my- self, and I may say, without charging myself with the blindness of love, that I believe in my heart she was the foster-child of the water-spirits on whose wander- ing streamlet she lived — that the thousand odors that swept down from the wilderness upon Lake Erie, and the unseen but wild and innumerable influences of nature, or whatever you call that which makes the Indian a believer in the Great Spirit — that these came down with those clear waters, ministering to the mind and watching over the budding beauty of this noble and most high-hearted woman! If you do not believe it, 1 should like you to tell me how else such a creature was "raised," as they phrase it in Virginia. I shall hold to my theory till you furnish me with a more reasonable. We heard at the hotel that there were several large parties at Trenton Falls, and with an abridgment of our toilets in our pockets, Job and I galloped out of Utica about four o'clock of as bright a summer's after- noon as was ever promised in the almanac. We drew rein a mile or two out of town, and dawdled along the wild road more leisurely, Job's Green mountain pro- portions fitting to the saddle something in the manner and relative fitness of a skeleton on a poodle. By the same token he rode safely, the looseness of his bones accommodating itself with singular facility to the irregularities in the pace of the surprised animal be- neath him. I dislike to pass over the minutest detail of a period of my life that will be rather interesting in my biogra- phy (it is my intention to be famous enough to merit that distinction, and I would recommend to my friends to be noting my " little peculiarities"), and with this posthumous benevolence in my heart, I simply record, that our conversation on the road turned upon Edith Linsey— at this time the lady of my constant love — for whose sake and at whose bidding' I was just conclu- ding (with success I presumed) a probation of three years of absence, silence, hard study, and rigid morals, and upon whose parting promise (God forgive her!) I had built my uttermost gleaning and sand of earthly hope and desire. I tell you in the tail of this mock- ing paragraph, dear reader, that the bend of the rain- bow spans not the earth more perfectly than did the love of that woman my hopes of future bliss; and the ephemeral arc does not sooner melt into the clouds — but I am anticipating my story. Job's extraordinary appearance, as he extricated himself from his horse, usually attracted the entire at- tention of the by-standers at a strange inn, and under cover of this, I usually contrived to get into the house and commit him by ordering the dinner as soon as it could be got ready. Else, if it was in the neighbor- hood of scenery, he was off till Heaven knew when, and as I had that delicacy for his feelings never to dine without him, you may imagine the necessity of my hungry manoeuvre. We dined upon the trout of the glorious stream we had come to see ; and as our host's eldest daughter waited upon us (recorded in Job's journal, in my pos- session at this moment, as " the most comely and gra- cious virgin" he had seen in his travels), we felt bound to adapt our conversation to the purity of her mind, and discussed only the philosophical point, whether the beauty of the stream could be tasted in the flavor of the fish — Job for it, I against it. The argument was only interrupted by the entrance of an apple- pudding, so hot that our tongues were fully occupied in removing it from place to place as the mouth felt its heat inconvenient, and then, being in a country of liberty and equality, and the damsel in waiting, as Job smilingly remarked, as much a lady as the Presi- dent's wife, he requested permission to propose her health in a cool tumbler of cider, and we adjourned to the moonlight. III. Ten or fifteen years ago, the existence of Trenton Falls was not known. It was discovered, like Paestum, by a wandering artist, when there was a town of ten thousand inhabitants, a canal, a theatre, a liberty- pole, and forty churches, within fourteen miles of it. It may be mentioned to the credit of the Americans, that in the "hardness" of character of which travel- lers complain, there is the soft trait of a passion for scenery ; and before the fact of its discovery had got well into the "Cahawba Democrat" and "Go-the- whoIe-hog-Courier," there was a splendid wooden hotel on the edge of the precipice, with a French cook, soda-water, and olives, and a law was passed by the Kentucky Travellers' Club, requiring a hanging- bird's nest from the trees " frowning down the awful abysm," (so expressed in the regulation), as a qual- ification for membership. Thenceforward to the pres- ent time it has been a place of fashionable resort during the summer solstice, and the pine woods, in which the hotel stands, being impervious to the sun, it is prescribed by oculists for gentlemen and ladies with weak eyes. If the luxury of corn-cutters had penetrated to the United States, it might be prescribed for tender feet as well — the soft floor of pine-tassels spread under the grassless woods, being considered an improvement upon Turkey carpets and green- sward. . Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I scarcely know what you would call it. but the wonder of na- ture which bears the name is a tremendous torrent, whose bed, for several miles, is sunk fathoms deep into the earth — a roaring and dashing stream, so far below the surface of the forest in which it is lost, that you would think, as you come suddenly upon the edge of its long precipice, that it was a river in some inner world (coiled within ours, as we in the outer circle of the firmament), and laid open by some Titanic throe that had cracked clear asunder the crust of this "shallow earth." The idea is rather assisted if you happen to see below you, on its abysmal shore, a party of adventurous travellers; for, at that vast depth, and in contrast with the gigantic trees and rocks, the same number of well-shaped pismires, dressed in the last fashions, and philandering upon your parlor floor, would be about of their apparent size and distinctness. They showed me at Eleusis the well by which ! Proserpine ascends to the regions of day on her an- nual visit to the plains of Thessaly — but with the J genius loci at my elbow in the shape of a Greek girl '■ as lovely as Phryne, my memory reverted to the bared INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 403 axle of the earth in the bed of this American river, and I was persuaded (looking the while at the fero- niere of gold sequins on the Phidian forehead of my Katioka) that supposing Hades in the centre of the earth, you are nearer to it by some fathoms at Tren- ton. I confess I have had, since my first descent into those depths, an uncomfortable doubt of the solidity of the globe — how the deuse it can hold together with such a crack in its bottom ! It was a night to play Endymion, or do any Tom- foolery that could be laid to the charge of the moon, for a more omnipresent and radiant atmosphere of moonlight never sprinkled the wilderness with silver. It was a night in which to wish it might never be day again — a night to be enamored of the stars, and bid God bless them like human creatures on their bright journey — a night to love in, to dissolve in — to do everything but what night is made for — sleep ! Oh heaven ! when I think how precious is life in such moments ; how the aroma — the celestial bloom and flower of the soul — the yearning and fast-perishing enthusiasm of youth — waste themselves in the solitude of such nights on the senseless and unanswering air; when I wander alone, unloving and unloved, beneath influences that could inspire me with the elevation of a seraph, were I at the ear of a human creature that could summon forth and measure my limitless capaci- ty of devotion — when I think this, and feel this, and so waste my existence in vain yearnings — I could ex- tinguish the divine spark within me like a lamp on an unvisited shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimila- tion to the animals I walk among ! And that is the substance of a speech I made to Job as a sequitur of a well-meant remark of his own, that " it was a pity Edith Linsey was not there." He took the clause about the " animals" to himself, and I made an apology for the same a year after. We sometimes give our friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our rhapsodies ! Most people talk of the sublimity of Trenton, but I have haunted it by the week together for its mere loveliness. The river, in the heart of that fearful chasm, is the most varied and beautiful assemblage of the thousand forms and shapes of running water that I know in the world. The soil and the deep-striking roots of the forest terminate far above you, looking like a black rim on the enclosing precipices; the bed of the river and its sky-sustaining walls are of solid rock, and, with the tremendous descent of the stream — forming for miles one continuous succession of falls and rapids — the channel is worn into curves and cavi- ties which throw the clear waters into forms of in- conceivable brilliancy and variety. It is a sort of half twilight below, with here and there a long beam of sunshine reaching down to kiss the lip of an eddy or form a rainbow over a fall, and the reverberating and changing echoes:— " Like a ring of bells whose sound the wind still alters," maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying at every step with the varying phase of the current. Cascades of from twenty to thirty feet, over which the river flies with a single and hurrying leap (not a drop missing from the glassy and bending sheet,) oc- cur frequently as you ascend; and it is from these that the place takes its name. But the falls, though beautiful, are only peculiar from the dazzling and un- equalled rapidity with which the waters come to the leap. If it were not for the leaf which drops waver- ing down into the abysm from trees apparently painted on the sky, and which is caught away by the flashing current as if the lightning had suddenly crossed it, you would think the vault of the steadfast heavens a flying element as soon. The spot in that long gulf of beauty that I best remember is a smooth descent of some hundred yards, where the river in full and undivided volume skims over a plane as polished as a table of scagliola, looking, in its invisible speed, like one mir- ror of gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above, there is a sudden turn in the glen which sends the water like a catapult against the opposite angle of the rock, and, in the action of years, it has worn out a cavern of unknown depth, into which the whole mass of the river plunges with the abandonment of a flying fiend into hell, and, reappearing like the angel that has pursued him, glides swiftly but with divine serenity on its way. (I am indebted for that last figure to Job, who travelled with a Milton in his pocket, and had a natural redolence of " Paradise Lost" in his conversation.) Much as I detest water in small quantities (to drink), I have a hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. It is, by much, the belle in the family of i the elements. Earth is never tolerable unless dis- i guised in green. Air is so thin as only to be visible when she borrows drapery of water ; and Fire is so j staringly bright as to be unpleasant to the eyesight ; i but water! soft, pure, graceful water! there is no shape into which you can throw her that she does not ; seem lovelier than before. She can borrow nothing of her sisters. Earth has no jewels in her lap so bril- | liant as her own spray- pearls and emeralds; Fire has | no rubies like what she steals from the sunset ; Air has no robes like the grace of her fine-woven and ever- ! changing drapery of silver. A health (in wine !) to ; Watkr ! Who is there that did not love some stream in his ! youth ? Who is there in whose vision of the past j there does not sparkle up, from every picture of child- j hood, a spring or a rivulent woven through the darken- ed and torn woof of first affections like a thread of unchanged silver ? How do you interpret the in- stinctive yearning with which you search for the : river-side or the fountain in every scene of nature — | the clinging unaware to the river's course when a truant in the fields in June — the dull void you find in j every landscape of which it is not the ornament and the centre ? For myself, I hold with the Greek : " Water is the first principle of all things : we were ! made from it and we shall be resolved into it."* IV. The awkward thing in all story-telling is transition. I Invention you do not need if you have experience ; ' for fact is stranger than fiction. A beginning in these days of startling abruptness is as simple as open your mouth ; and when you have once begun you can end whenever you like, and leave the sequel to the reader's imagination : but the hinges of a story — the turning gracefully back from a digression (it is easy to turn into one) — is the pas qui coute. My education on that point was neglected. It was, as I said before, a moonlight night, and Job and myself having, like Sir Fabian, " no mind to sleep," followed the fashion and the rest of the com- pany at the inn, and strolled down to see the falls by moonlight. I had been there before, and I took Job straight to the spot in the bed of the river which I have described above as my favorite, and, after watch- ing it for a few minutes, we turned back to a dark cleft in the rock which afforded a rude seat, and sat musing in silence. Several parties had strolled past without seeing us in our recess, when two female figures, with their ! arms around each other's waists, sauntered slowly | around the jutting rock below, and approached us, ! eagerly engaged in conversation. They came on to the very edge of the shadow which enveloped us, and turned to look back at the scene. As the head nearest me was raised to the light, I started half to * The Ionic philosophy, supported by Thale*. 404 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. my feet : it was Edith ! In the same instant her voice of music broke on my ear, and an irresistible impulse to listen unobserved drew me down again upon my seat, and Job, with a similar instinct, laid his hand on my arm. "It was his favorite spot!" said Edith. (We had been at Trenton together years before.) "I stood here with him, and I wish he stood here now, that I might tell him what my hand hesitates to write." "Poor Philip !" said her companion, whom by the voice I recognised as the youngest of the Flemings, "I can not conceive how you can resolve so coldly to break his heart." I felt a dagger entering my bosom, but still I listen- ed. Edith went on. " Why, I will tell you, my dear little innocent. I loved Philip Slingsby when I thought I was going to die. It was then a fitting attachment, for I never thought to need, of the goods of this world, more than a sick chamber and a nurse ; and Phil was kind- hearted and devoted to me, and I lived at home. But, with returned health, a thousand ambitious de- sires have sprung up in my heart, and I find myself admired by whom I will, and every day growing more selfish and less poetical. Philip is poor, and love in a cottage, though very well for you if you like it, would never do for me. I should like him very well for a friend, for he is gentlemanlike and devoted, but, with my ideas, I should only make him miserable, and so — I think I had better put him out of misery at once — don't you think? A half-smothered groan of anguish escaped my lips ; but it was lost in the roar of the waters, and Edith's voice, as she walked on, lessened and became inaudi- ble to my ear. As her figure was lost in the shadow of the rocks beyond, I threw myself on the bosom of my friend, and wept in the unutterable agony of a crushed heart. I know not how that night was spent, but I awoke at noon of the next day, in my bed, with Job's hand clasped tenderly in my own. V. I kept my tryst. I was to meet Edith Linsey at Saratoga in July — the last month of the probation by which I had won a right to her love. I had not spo- ken to her, or written, or seen her (save, unknown to her, in the moment I have described), in the three long years to which my constancy was devoted. I had gained the usual meed of industry in my profes- sion, and was admitted to its practice. I was on the threshold of manhood ; and she had promised, before heaven, here to give me heart and hand- I had parted from her at twelve on that night three years, and, as the clock struck, I stood again by her side in the crowded ballroom of Saratoga. " Good God ! Mr. Slingsby !" she exclaimed, as I put out my hand. " Am I so changed that you do not know me, Miss Linsey ?" I asked, as she still looked with a wonder- ing gaze into my face— pressing my hand, however, with real warmth, and evidently under the control, for the moment, of the feelings with which we had parted. " Changed, indeed ! Why, you have studied your- self to a skeleton ! My dear Philip, you are ill !" I was — but it was only for a moment. I asked her hand for a waltz, and never before or since came wit and laughter so freely to my lip. I was collected, but, at the same time, I was the gayest of the gay ; and when everybody had congratulated me, in her hear- ing, on the school to which I had put my wits in my long apprenticeship to the law, I retired to the gallery looking down upon the garden, and cooled my brow and rallied my sinking heart. The candles were burning low, and the ball whs nearly over, when I entered the room again, and re quested Edith to take a turn with me on the colon- nade. She at once assented, and I could feel by her arm in mine, and see by the fixed expression on her lip, that she did so with the intention of revealing to me what she little thought I could so well anticipate. " My probation is over," I said, breaking the si- lence which she seemed willing to prolong, and which had lasted till we had twice measured the long colon- nade. " It was three years ago to-night, I think, since we parted." She spoke in an absent and careless tone, as if trying to work out another more prominent thought in her mind. " Do you find me changed ?" I asked. " Yes — oh, yes ! very !" " But I am more changed than I seem, dear Edith !" She turned to me as if to ask me to explain my- self. " Will you listen to me while I tell you how ?" " What can you mean ? Certainly." " Then listen, for I fear I can scarce bring myself to repeat what I am going to say. When I first learned to love you, and when I promised to love you for life, you were thought to be dying, and I was a boy. I did not count on the future, for I despaired of your living to share it with me, and, if I had done so, I was still a child, and knew nothing of the world. I have since grown more ambitious, and, I may as well say at once, more selfish and less poetical. You will easily divine my drift. You are poor, and I find my- self, as you have seen to-night, in a position which will enable me to marry more to my advantage ; and, with these views, I am sure I should only make you miserable by fulfilling my contract with you, and you will agree with me that I consult our mutual happi- ness by this course — don't you think ?" At this instant I gave a signal to Job, who approached and made some sensible remarks about the weather; and, after another turn or two, I released Miss Linsey's arm, and cautioning her against the night air, left her to finish her promenade and swallow her own project- ed speech and mine, and went to bed. And so ended my first love ! SCENES OF FEAR. No. I. THE DISTURBED VIGIL. " Antonio. — Get me a conjurer, I say ! Inquire me out a man that lets out devils '." Old Play. Such a night ! It was like a festival of Dian. A burst of a summer shower at sunset, with a clap or two of thunder, had purified the air to an intoxicating rareness, and the free breathing of the flowers, and the delicious perfume from the earth and grass, and the fresh foliage of the new spring, showed the delight and sympathy of inanimate Nature in the night's beau- ty. There was no atmosphere — nothing between the eye and the pearly moon — and she rode through the heavens without a veil, like a queen as she is, giving a glimpse of her nearer beauty for a festal favor to the worshipping stars. I was a student at the famed university of Connecti- cut, and the bewilderments of philosophy and poetry were strong upon me, in a place where exquisite natu- ral beauty, and the absence of all other temptation, secure to the classic neophite an almost supernatural wakefulness of fancy. I contracted a taste for the horrible in those days, which still clings to me. I INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 405 have travelled the world over, with no object but gen- eral observation, and have dawdled my hour at courts and operas with little interest, while the sacking and drowning of a woman in the Bosphorus, the impale- ment of a robber on the Nile, and the insane hospitals from Liverpool to Cathay, are described in my capri- cious journal with the vividness of the most stirring adventure. There is a kind of crystallization in the circum- stances of one's life. A peculiar turn of mind draws to itself events fitted to its particular nucleus, and it is frequently a subject of wonder why one man meets with more remarkable things than another, when it is owing merely to a difference of natural character. It was, as I was saying, a night of wonderful beauty. T was watching a corpse. In that part of the United States, the dead are never left alone till the earth is thrown upon them ; and, as a friend of the family, I had been called upon for this melancholy service on the night preceding the interment. It was a death which had left a family of broken hearts ; for, beneath the sheet which sank so appallingly to the outline of a human form, lay a wreck of beauty and sweetness whose loss seemed to the survivors to have darkened the face of the earth. The ethereal and touching loveliness of that dying girl, whom I had known only a hopeless victim of consumption, springs up in my memory even yet, and mingles with every conception of female beauty. Two ladies, friends of the deceased, were to share my vigils. I knew them but slightly, and, having read them to sleep an hour after midnight, I performed my half-hourly duty of entering the room where the corpse lay, to look after the lights, and then strolled into the garden to enjoy the quiet of the summer night. The flowers were glittering in their pearl-drops, and the air was breathless. The sight of the long, sheeted corpse, the sudden flare of lights as the long snuffs were removed from the candles, the stillness of the close-shuttered room, and my own predisposition to invest death with a su- pernatural interest, had raised my heart to my throat. I walked backward and forward in the garden-path ; and the black shadows beneath the lilacs, and even the glittering of the glow-worms within them, seemed weird and fearful. The clock struck, and I re-entered. My compan- ions still slept, and I passed on to the inner chamber. I trimmed the lights, and stood and looked at the white heap lying so fearfully still within the shadow of the curtains ; and my blood seemed to freeze. At the moment when I was turning away with a strong effort at a more composed feeling, a noise like a flutter of wings, followed by a rush and a sudden silence, struck on my startled ear. The street was as quiet as death, and the noise, which was far too audible to be a deception of the fancy, had come from the side toward an uninhabited wing of the house. My heart stood still. Another instant, and the fire-screen was dashed down, and a white cat rushed past me, and with the speed of light sprang like an hyena upon the corpse. The flight of a vampyre into the chamber would not have more curdled my veins. A convulsive shudder ran cold over me, but recovering my self-command, I rushed to the animal (of whose horrible appetite for the flesh of the dead I had read incredulously), and at- tempted to tear her from the body. With her claws fixed in the breast, and a yowl like the wail of an infer- nal spirit, she crouched fearlessly upon it, and the stains already upon the sheet convinced me that it would be impossible to remove her without shockingly disfiguring the corpse. I seized her by the throat, in the hope of choking her ; but with the first pressure of my fingers, she flew into my face, and the infuriated animal seemed persuaded that it was a contest for life. Half blinded by the fury of her attack, I loosed her for a moment, and she immediately leaped again upon the corpse, and had covered her feet and face with blood before I could recover my hold upon her. The body was no longer in a situation to be spared, and I seized her with a desperate grasp to draw her of! ; but to my horror, the half-covered and bloody corpse rose upright in her fangs, and, while I paused in fear, sat with drooping arms, and head fallen with ghastly help- lessness over the shoulder. Years have not removed that fearful spectacle from my eyes. The corpse sank back, and I succeeded in throttling the monster, and threw her at last lifeless from the window. I then composed the disturbed limbs, laid the hair away once more smoothly on the forehead, and, crossing the hands over the bosom, covered the violated remains, and left them again to their repose. My companions, strangely enough, slept on, and I paced the garden-walk alone, till the day, to my inexpressible relief, dawned over the mountains. No. II. THE MAD SENIOR. I was called upon in my senior year to watch with an insane student. He was a man who had attracted a great deal of attention in college. He appeared in an extraordinary costume at the beginning of our freshman term, and wrote himself down as Washing- ton Greyling, of , an unheard-of settlement somewhere beyond the Mississippi. His coat and oth- er gear might have been the work of a Chickasaw tailor, aided by the superintending taste of some white huntsman, who remembered faintly the outline of ha- biliments he had not seen for half a century. It was a body of green cloth, eked out with wampum and otter-skin, and would have been ridiculous if it had not encased one of the finest models of a manly frame that ever trod the earth. With close-curling black hair, a fine weather-browned complexion, Spanish fea- tures (from his mother — a frequent physiognomy in the countries bordering on Spanish America), and the port and lithe motion of a lion, he was a figure to look upon in any disguise with warm admiration. He was soon put into the hands of a tailor-proper, and, with the facility which belongs to his country- men, became in a month the best-dressed man in col- lege. His manners were of a gentleman-like mildness, energetic, but courteous and chivalresque, and, unlike most savages and all coins, he polished without " losing his mark." At the end of his first term, he would have been called a high-bred gentleman at any court in Europe. The opening of his mind was almost as rapid and extraordinary. He seized everything with an ardor and freshness that habit and difficulty never deadened. He was like a man who had tumbled into a new star, and was collecting knowledge for a world to which he was to return. The first in all games, the wildest in all adventure, the most distinguished even in the ele- gant society for which the town is remarkable, nnd unfailingly brilliant in his recitations and college per- formances, he was looked upon as a sort of admirable phenomenon, and neither envied nor opposed in any- thing. I have often thought, in looking on him, that his sensations at coming fresh from a wild western prairie, and, at the first measure of his capacilies with men of better advantages, finding himself so uniformly superior, must have been stirringly delightful. It is a wonder he never became arrogant ; but it was the last foible of which he could have been accused. We were reading hard for the honors in the senior year, when Greyling suddenly lost his reason. He 406 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. had not been otherwise ill, and had, apparently in the midst of high health, gone mad at a moment's warn- ing. The physicians scarce knew how to treat him. The confinement to which he was at first subjected, however, was thought inexpedient, and he seemed to justify their lenity by the gentlest behavior when at liberty. He seemed oppressed by a heart-breaking melancholy. We took our turns in guarding and watching with him, and it was upon my first night of duty that the incident happened which I have thus endeavored to intioduce. It was scarce like a vigil with a sick man, for our patient went regularly to bed, and usually slept well. I took my " Lucretius" and the " Book of the Mar- tyrs," which was just then my favorite reading, and with hot punch, a cold chicken, books, and a fire, I looked forward to it as merely a studious night ; and, as the wintry wind of January rattled in at the old college windows, I thrust my feet into slippers, drew my dressing-gown about me, and congratulated my- self on the excessive comfortableness of my position. The Sybarite's bed of roses would have been no temp- tation. It had snowed all day, but the sun had set with a red rift in the clouds, and the face of the sky was swept in an hour to the clearness of — I want a com- parison — your own blue eye, dear Mary ! The all- glorious arch of heaven was a mass of sparkling stars. Grey ling slept, and I, wearied of the cold philosophy of the Latin poet, took to my " Book of Martyrs." I read on, and read on. The college clock struck, it seemed to me, the quarters rather than the hours. Time flew : it was three. "Horrible! most horrible !" I started from my chair with the exclamation, and felt as if my scalp were self-lifted from my head. It was a description in the harrowing faithfulness of the language of olden time, painting almost the articulate groans of an impaled Christian. I clasped the old iron-bound book, and rushed to the window as if my heart was stifling for fresh air. Again at the fire. The large walnut fagots had burnt to a bed of bright coals, and I sat gazing into it, totally unable to shake off the fearful incubus from my breast. The martyr was there — on the very hearth — with the stakes scornfully crossed in his body ; and as the large coals cracked asunder and revealed the prightness within, I seemed to follow the nerve-rending instrument from hip to shoulder, and suffer with him pang for pang, as if the burning redness were the pools of his fevered blood. "Aha!" It struck on my ear like the cry of an exulting fiend. "Aha!" I shrunk into the chair as the awful cry was re- peated, and looked slowly and with difficult courage over my shoulder. A single fierce eye was fixed upon me from the mass of bed-clothes, and, for a moment, the relief from the fear of some supernatural presence was like water to a parched tongue. I sank back re- lieved into the chair. There was a rustling immediately in the bed, and, starting again, I found the wild eyes of my patient fixed still steadfastly upon me. He was creeping stealthily out of bed. His bare foot touched the floor, and his toes worked upon it as if he was feeling its strength, and in a moment he stood upright on his feet, and, with his head forward and his pale face livid with rage, stepped toward me. I looked to the door. He observed the glance, and in the next instant he sprang clear over the bed, turned the key, and dashed it furiously through the window. "Now!" said he. "Greyling!" I said. 1 had heard that a calm and fixed gaze would control a madman, and with the most difficult exertion of nerve, I met his lowering eye, and we stood looking at each other for a full minute, like men of marble. " Why have you left your bed ?" I mildly asked. " To kill you!" was the appalling answer; and in another moment the light-stand was swept from be- tween us, and he struck me down with a blow that would have felled a giant. Naked as he was, I had no hold upon him, even if in muscular strength I had been his match ; and with a minute's struggle I yielded, for resistance was vain. His knee was now upon my breast and his left hand in my hair, and he seemed by the tremulousness of his clutch to be hesitating whether he should dash my brains out on the hearth. I could scarce breathe with his weight upon my chest, but I tried, with the broken words I could command, to move his pity. He laughed, as only maniacs can, and placed his hand on my throat. Oh God! shall I ever forget the fiendish deliberation with which he closed those feverish fingers? " Greyling ! for God's sake ! Greyling !" "Die! curse you!" In the agonies of suffocation I struck out my arm, and almost buried it in the fire upon the hearth. With an expiring thought, I grasped a handful of the red-hot coals, and had just strength sufficient to press them hard against his side. "Thank God!" I exclaimed with my first breath, as my eyes recovered from their sickness, and I looked upon the familiar objects of my chamber once more. The madman sat crouched like a whipped dog in the farthest corner of the room, gibbering and moan- ing, with his hands upon his burnt side. I felt that I had escaped death by a miracle. The door was locked, and, in dread of another at- tack, I threw up the broken window, and to my unutterable joy the figure of a man was visible upon the snow near the out-buildings of the college. It was a charity-student, risen before day to labor in the wood-yard. I shouted to him, and Greyling leaped to his feet. "There is time yet!" said the madman; but as he came toward me again with the same panther-like caution as before, I seized a heavy stone pitcher standing in the window-seat, and hurling it at him with a fortunate force and aim, he fell stunned and bleeding on the floor. The door was burst open at the next moment, and, calling for assistance, we tied the wild Missourian into his bed, bound up his head and side, and committed him to fresh watchers. . . . We have killed bears together at a Missouri salt- lick since then; but I never see Wash. Greyling with a smile off his face, without a disposition to look around for the door. No. III. THE LUNATIC'S SKATE. I have only, in my life, known one lunatic — prop- erly so called. In the days when I carried a satchel on the banks of the Shawsheen (a river whose half- lovely, half-wild scenery is tied like a silver thread about my heart), Larry Wynn and myself were the farthest boarders from school, in a solitary farm-house on the edge of a lake of some miles square, called by the undignified title of Pomp's pond. An old negro, who was believed by the boys to have come over with Christopher Columbus, was the only other human being within anything like a neighborhood of the lake (it took its name from him), and the only ap- proaches to its waters, girded in as it was by an almost impenetrable forest, were the path through old Pomp's clearing, and that by our own door. Out of school, Larry and I were inseparable. He was a pale, sad- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 407 faced boy, and, in the first days of our intimacy, he had confided a secret to me which, from its uncom- mon nature, and the excessive caution with which he kept it from every one else, bound me to him with more than the common ties of schoolfellow attach- ment. "We built wigwams together in the woods, had our tomahawks made of the same fashion, united our property in fox-traps, and played Indians with perfect contentment in each other's approbation. I had found out, soon after my arrival at school, that Larry never slept on a moonlight night. With the first slender horn that dropped its silver and grace- ful shape behind the hills, his uneasiness commenced, and by the time its full and perfect orb poured a flood of radiance over vale and mountain, he was like one haunted by a pursuing demon. At early twilight he closed the shutters, stuffing every crevice that could admit a ray; and then, lighting as many candles as he could beg or steal from our thrifty landlord, he sat down with his book in moody silence, or paced the room with an uneven step, and a solemn melancholy in his fine countenance, of which, with all my famil- iarity with him, I was almost afraid. Violent exer- cise seemed the only relief, and when the candles burnt low after midnight, and the stillness around the lone farm-house became too absolute to endure, he would throw up the window, and, leaping desperately out into the moonlight, rush up the hill into the depths of the wild forest, and walk on with supernatural excitement till the day dawned. Faint and pale he would then creep into his bed, and, begging me to make his very common and always credited excuse of illness, sleep soundly till I returned from school. I soon became used to his way, ceased to follow him, as I had once or twice endeavored to do, into the forest, and never attempted to break in on the fixed and wrapt silence which seemed to transform his lips to marble. And for all this Larry loved me. Our preparatory studies were completed, and, to our mutual despair, we were destined to different universities. Larry's father was a disciple of the great Channing, and mine a Trinitarian of uncommon zeal; and the two institutions of Yale and Harvard were in the hands of most eminent men of either persuasion, and few are the minds that could resist a four years' ordeal in either. A student was as certain to come forth a Unitarian from one as a Calvinist from the other; and in the New England states these two sects are bitterly hostile. So, to the glittering atmosphere of Channing and Everett went poor Larry, lonely and dispirited; and I was committed to the sincere zealots of Connecticut, some two hundred miles off, to learn Latin and Greek, if it pleased Heaven, but the mysteries of " election and free grace," whether or no. Time crept, ambled, and galloped, by turns, as we were in love or out, moping in term-time, or revelling in vacation, and gradually, I know not why, our cor- respondence had dropped, and the four years had come to their successive deaths, and we had never met. I grieved over it; for in those days I believed with a school-boy's fatuity, " That two, or one, are almost what they seem ;" and I loved Larry Wynn, as I hope I may never love man or woman again — with a pain at my heart. I wrote one or two reproachful letters in my senior years, but his answers were overstrained, and too full of protestations by half; and seeing that absence had done its usual work on him, I gave it up, and wrote an epitaph on a departed friendship. I do not know, by the way, why I am detaining you with all this, for it has nothing to do with my story ; but let it pass as an evidence that it is a true one. The climax of things in real life has not the regular procession of incidents in a tragedy. Some two or three years after we had taken " the irrevocable yoke" of life upon us (not matrimony, but money-making), a winter occurred of uncom- monly fine sleighing — sledging, you call it in Eng- land. At such times the American world is all abroad, either for business or pleasure. The roads are passable at any rate of velocity of which a horse is capable; smooth as ?7ionlagnes Russes, and hard as is good for hoofs; and a hundred miles is dimin- ished to ten in facility of locomotion. The hunter brings down his venison to the cities, the western trader takes his family a hundred leagues to buy calicoes and tracts, and parties of all kinds scour the country, drinking mulled wine and "flip," and shaking the very nests out of the fir-trees with the ringing of their horses' bells. You would think death and sor- row were buried in the snow with the leaves of the last autumn. I do not know why I undertook, at this time, a journey to the west; certainly not for scenery, for it was a world of waste, desolate, and dazzling white- ness, for a thousand unbroken miles. The trees were weighed down with snow, and the houses were thatched and half-buried in it, and the mountains and valleys were like the vast waves of an illimitable sea, congealed with its yesty foam in the wildest hour of a tempest. The eye lost its powers in gazing on it. The " spirit-bird" that spread his refreshing green wings before the pained eyes of Thalaba would have been an inestimable fellow-traveller. The worth of the eyesight lay in the purchase of a pair of green goggles. In the course of a week or two, after skimming over the buried scenery of half a dozen states, each as large as Great Britain (more or less), I found myself in a small town on the border of one of our western lakes. It was some twenty years since the bears had found it thinly settled enough for their purposes, and now it contained perhaps twenty thousand souls. The oldest inhabitant, born in the town, was a youth in his minority. With the usual precocity of new settlements, it had already most of the peculiarities of an old metropolis. The burnt stumps still stood about among the houses, but there was a fashionable circle, at the head of which were the lawyer's wife and the member of Congress's daughter; and people ate their peas with silver forks, and drank their tea with scan- dal, and forgave men's many sins and refused to for- give woman's one, very much as in towns whose his- tory is written in black letter. I dare say there were not more than one or two offences against the moral and Levitical law, fashionable on this side the water, which had not been committed, with the authentic aggravations, in the town of ; I would mention the name if this were not a true story. Larry Wynn (now Lawrence Wynn, Esq.) lived here. He had, as they say in the United States, "hung out a shingle" (Londonice, put up a sign) as attorney- at-law, and to all the twenty thousand innocent in- habitants of the place, he was the oracle and the squire. He was besides colonel of militia, churchwarden, and canal commissioner; appointments which speak volumes for the prospects of " rising young men" in our flourishing republic. Larry was glad to see me — very. I was more glad to see him. I have a soft heart, and forgive a wrong generally, if it touches neither my vanity nor my ! purse. I forgot his neglect, and called him " Larry." By the same token he did not call me " Phil." (There are very few that love me, patient reader ; but those who do, thus abbreviate my pleasant name of Philip. I was called after the Indian sachem of that name, whose blood runs in this tawny hand.) Larry looked upon me as a man. I looked on him, with all his dignities and changes, through the sweet vista of memory — as a boy. His mouth had acquired the 408 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. pinched corners of caution and mistrust common to those who know their fellow-men ; but I never saw it unless when speculating as I am now. He was to me the pale-faced and melancholy friend of my boyhood ; and I could have slept, as I used to do, with my arm around his neck, and feared to stir lest I should wake him. Had my last earthy hope lain in the palm of my hand, I could have given it to him, had he needed it, but to make him sleep ; and yet he thought of me but as a stranger under his roof, and added, in his warmest moments, a "Mr." to my name! There is but one circumstance in my life that has wounded me more. Memory avaunt ! Why should there be no unchangeableness in the world ? why no friendship ? or why am I, and you, gentle reader (for by your continuing to pore over these idle musings, you have a heart too), gifted with this useless and restless organ beating in our bosoms, if its thirst for love is never to be slaked, and its ach- ing self-fulness never to find flow or utterance ? I would positively sell my whole stock of affections for three farthings. Will you say " two?" " You are come in good time," said Larry one morn- ing, with a half-smile, " and shall be groomsman to me. I am going to be married." "Married?" " Married." I repeated the word after him, for I was surprised. He had never opened his lips about his unhappy luna- cy since my arrival, and I had felt hurt at this ap- parent unwillingness to renew our ancient confidence, but had felt a repugnance to any forcing of the topic upon him, and could only hope that he had outgrown or overcome it. I argued, immediately on this infor- mation of his intended marriage, that it must be so. No man in his senses, I thought, would link' an im- pending madness to the fate of a confiding and lovely woman. He took me into his sleigh, and we drove to her father's house. She was a flower in the wilderness. Of a delicate form, as all my countrywomen are, and lovely, as quite all certainly are not, large-eyed, soft in her manners, and yet less timid than confiding and sister-like, with a shade of melancholy in her smile, caught, perhaps, with the " trick of sadness" from him- self, and a patrician slightness of reserve, or pride, which Nature sometimes, in very mockery of high birth, teaches her most secluded child — the bride elect was, as I said before, a flower in the wilderness. She was one of those women we sigh to look upon as they pass by, as if there went a fragment of the wreck of some blessed dream. The day arrived for the wedding, and the sleigh- bells jingled merrily into the village. The morning was as soft and genial as June, and the light snow on the surface of the lake melted, and lay on the breast of the solid ice beneath, giving it the effect of one white silver mirror, stretching to the edge of the horizon. It was exquisitely beautiful, and I was standing at the window in the afternoon, looking off upon the "shining expanse, when Larry approached, and laid his hand familiarly on my shoulder. "What glorious skating we shall have," said I, "if this smooth water freezes to-night !" I lurned the next moment to look at him ; for we had not skated together since I went out, at his earnest entreaty, at midnight, to skim the little lake where we had passed our boyhood, and drive away the fever from his brain, under the light of a full moon. He remembered it, and so did I; and I put my arm behind him, for the color fled from his face, and I thought he would have sunk to the floor. " The moon is full to-night," said he, recovering in- stantly to a cold self-possession. I took hold of his hand firmly, and, in as kind a tone as I could summon, spoke of our early friend- ship, and apologizing thus for the freedom, asked if he had quite overcome his melancholy disease. His face worked with emotion, and he tried to withdraw his hand from my clasp, and evidently wished to avoid an answer. " Tell me, dear Larry," said I. " Oh God ! No /" said he, breaking violently from me, and throwing himself with his face downward upon the sofa. The tears streamed through his fingers upon the silken cushion. " Not cured ? And does she know it ?" " No ! no ! thank God ! not yet !" I remained silent a few minutes, listening to his suppressed moans (for he seemed heart-broken with the confession), and pitying while I inwardly con- demned him. And then the picture of that lovely and fond woman rose up before me, and the impossibility of concealing his fearful malady from his wife, and the fixed insanity in which it must end, and the whole wreck of her hopes and his own prospects and happi- ness — and my heart grew sick. I sat down by him, and, as it was too late to remon- strate on the injustice he was committing toward her, I asked how he came to appoint the night of a full moon for his wedding. He gave up his reserve, calm- ed himself, and talked of it at last as if he were relieved by the communication. Never shall I forget the doomed pallor, the straining eye, and feverish hand, of my poor friend during that half hour. Since he had left college he had striven with the whole energy of his soul against it. He had plunged into business — he had kept his bed resolutely night after night, till his brain seemed on the verge of phrensy with the effort — he had taken opium to secure to him- self an artificial sleep ; but he had never dared to con- fide it to any one, and he had no friend to sustain him in his fearful and lonely hours ; and it grew upon him rather than diminished. He described to me with the most touching pathos how he had concealed it for years — how he had stolen out like a thief to give vent to his insane restlessness in the silent streets of the city at midnight, and in the more silent solitudes of the forest — how he had prayed, and wrestled, and wept over it — and finally, how he had come to believe that there was no hope for him except in the assistance and constant presence of some one who would devote life to him in love and pity. Poor Larry ! I put up a silent prayer in my heart that the desperate experiment might not end in agony and death. The sun set, and, according to my prediction, the wind changed suddenly to the north, and the whole surface of the lake in a couple of hours became of the lustre of polished steel. It was intensely cold. The fires blazed in every room of the bride's pater- nal mansion, and I was there early to fulfil my office of master of ceremonies at the bridal. My heart was weighed down with a sad boding, but 1 shook off at least the appearance of it, and superintended the con- coction of a huge bowl of punch with a merriment which communicated itself in the shape of most joyous hilarity to a troop of juvenile relations. The house resounded with their shouts of laughter. In the midst of our noise in the small inner room entered Larry. I started back, for he looked more like a demon possessed than a Christian man. He had walk- ed to the house alone in the moonlight, not daring to trust himself in company. I turned out the turbulent troop about me, and tried to dispel his gloom, for a face like his at that moment would have put to flight the rudest bridal party ever assembled on holy ground. He seized on the bowl of strong spirits which I had mixed for a set of hardy farmers, and before I could tear it from his lips had drank a quantity which, in an ordinary mood, would have intoxicated him helplessly in an hour. He then sat down with his face buried in his hands, and in a few minutes rose, his eyes spark- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 409 ling with excitement, and the whole character of his face utterly changed. I thought he had gone wild. " Now, Phil," said he ; " now for my bride !" And with an unbecoming levity he threw open the door, and went half dancing into the room where the friends were already assembled to witness the ceremony. I followed with fear and anxiety. He took his place by the side of the fair creature on whom he had placed his hopes of life, and, though sobered somewhat by the impressiveness of the scene, the wild sparkle still danced in his eyes, and I could see that every nerve in his frame was excited to the last pitch of tension. If he had fallen a gibbering maniac on the floor, I should not have been astonished. The ceremony proceeded, and the first tone of his voice in the response startled even the bride. If it had rung from the depths of a cavern, it could not have been more sepulchral. I looked at him with a shud- i der. His lips were curled with an exulting expres- sion, mixed with an indefinable fear; and all the blood ia his face seemed settled about his eyes, which were so bloodshot and fiery, that I have ever since wondered he was not, at the first glance, suspected of insanity. But oh ! the heavenly sweetness with which that love- ; liest of creatures promised to love and cherish him, in sickness and in health ! I never go to a bridal but it half breaks my heart ; and as the soft voice of that beautiful girl fell with its eloquent meaning on my ear, and I looked at her, with lips calm and eyes moist- Med, vowing a love which I knew to be stronger than ; death, to one who, I feared, was to bring only pain and sorrow into her bosom, my eyes warmed with irrepres- sible tears, and I wept. The stir in the room as the clergyman closed his prayer, seemed to awake him from a trance. He looked around with a troubled face for a moment ; and then, fixing his eyes on his bride, he suddenly clasped his arms about her, and straining her violently to his bosom, broke into an hysterical passion of tears and laughter. Then suddenly resuming his self-command, he apologized for the over-excitement of his feelings, and behaved with forced and gentle propriety till the j guests departed. There was an apprehensive gloom over the spirits of the small bridal party left in the lighted rooms ; and , as they gathered round the fire, I approached, and en- ' deavored to take a gay farewell. Larry was sitting with his arm about his wife, and he wrung my hand in silence as 1 said, " Good-night," and dropped his head upon her shoulder. I made some futile attempt to rally him, but it jarred on the general feeling, and I ieft the house. It was a glorious night. The clear piercing air had a vitreous brilliancy, which I have never seen in any other climate, the rays of the moonlight almost visi- j bly splintering with the keenness of the frost. The \ moon herself was in the zenith, and there seemed nothing between her and the earth but palpable and , glittering cold. I hurried home : it was but eleven o'clock ; and, ! heaping up the wood in the large fireplace, I took a ' volume of" Ivanhoe," which had just then appeared, ! and endeavored to rid myself of my unpleasant j thoughts. I read on till midnight ; and then, in a j pause of the story, I rose to look out upon the night, I hoping, for poor Larry's sake, that the moon was j buried in clouds. The house was near the edge of i the lake ; and as I looked down upon the glassy waste, ! spreading away from the land, I saw the dark figure j of a man kneeling directly in the path of the moon's j rays. In another moment he rose to his feet, and j the tall, slight form of my poor friend was distinctly visible, as, with long and powerful strokes, he sped away upon his skates along the shore. To take my own Hollanders, put a collar of fur I around my mouth, and hurry after him, was the work | of but a minute. My straps were soon fastened ; and, following in the marks of the sharp irons at the top of my speed, I gained sight of him in about half an hour, and with great effort neared him sufficiently to shout his name with a hope of being heard. " Larry ! Larry !" The lofty mountain-shore gave back the cry in re- peated echoes — but he redoubled his strokes, and sped on faster than before. At my utmost speed I followed on ; and when, at last, I could almost lay my hand on his shoulder, I summoned my strength to my breathless lungs, and shouted again — " Larry ! Larry !" He half looked back, and the full moon at that in- stant streamed full into his eyes. I have thought since that he could not have seen me for its dazzling brightness ; but I saw every line of his features with the distinctness of daylight, and I shall never forget them. A line of white foam ran through his half- parted lips ; his hair streamed wildly over his forehead, on which the perspiration glittered in large drops; and every lineament of his expressive face was stamped with unutterable and awful horror. He looked back no more ; but, increasing his speed with an energy of which I did not think his slender frame capable, he began gradually to outstrip me. Trees, rocks, and hills, fled back like magic. My limbs began to grow numb ; my fingers had lost all feeling, but a strong northeast wind was behind us, and the ice smoother than a mirror : and I struck out my feet mechanically, and still sped on. For two hours we had kept along the shore. The branches of the trees were reflected in the polished ice, and the hills seemed hanging in the air, and float- ing past us with the velocity of storm-clouds. Far down the lake, however, there glimmered the just visible light of a fire, and I was thanking God that we were probably approaching some human succor, when, to my horror, the retreating figure before me suddenly darted off to the left, and made swifter than before toward the centre of the icy waste. Oh, God ! what feelings were mine at that moment ! Follow him far I dared not ; for, the sight of land once lost, as it would be almost instantly with our tremendous speed, we perished, without a possibility of relief. He was far beyond my voice, and to overtake him was the only hope. I summoned my last nerve for* the effort, and keeping him in my eye, struck across at a sharper angle, with the advantage of the wind full I in my back. I had taken note of the mountains, and knew that we were already forty miles from home, a distance it would be impossible to retrace against the wind ; and the thought of freezing to death, even if I could overtake him, forced itself appallingly upon me. Away I flew, despair giving new force to my limbs, and soon gained on the poor lunatic, whose efforts seemed flagging and faint. I neared him. Another struggle ! I could have dropped down where I was, and slept, if there were death in the first minute, so stiff and drowsy was every muscle in my frame. " Larry !" I shouted. " Larry !" He started at the sound, and I could hear a smoth- ered and breathless shriek, as, with supernatural strength, he straightened up his bending figure, and, leaning forward again, sped away from me like a phantom on the blast. I could follow no longer. I stood stiff on my skates, still going on rapidly before the wind, and tried to look after him, but the frost had stiffened my eyes, and there was a mist before them, and they felt like glass. Nothing was visible around me but moonlight and ice, and dimly and slowly I began to retrace the slight path of semicircles toward the shore. It was painful work. The wind seemed to divide the very fibres of the skin upon my face. Violent exercise no 410 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. longer warmed my body, and I felt the cold shoot |j sharply into my loins, and bind across my breast like a chain of ice; and, with the utmost strength of mind at my command, I could just resist the terrible incli- nation to lie down and sleep. I forgot poor Larry. Life — dear life ! — was now my only thought! So self- ish are we in our extremity ! With difficulty I at last reached the shore, and then, unbuttoning my co-it, and spreading it wide for a sail, I set my feet together, and went slowly down before the wind, till the fire which I had before noticed be- gan to blaze cheerily in the distance. It seemed an eternity in my slow progress. Tree after tree threw the shadow of its naked branches across the way ; hill after hill glided slowly backward ; but my knees seemed frozen together, and my joints fixed in ice ; and if my life had depended on striking out my feet, I should have died powerless. My jaws were locked, my shoulders drawn half down to my knees, and in a few minutes more, I am well convinced, the blood would have thickened in my veins, and stood still, for ever. I could see the tongues of the flames — I counted the burning fagots — a form passed between me and the fire — I struck, and fell prostrate on the snow ; and I remember no more. The sun was darting a slant beam through the trees when I awoke. The genial warmth of a large bed of embers played on my cheek, a thick blanket enveloped me, and beneath my head was a soft cushion of with- ered leaves. On the opposite side of the fire lay four Indians wrapped in their blankets, and, with her head on her knees, and her hands clasped over her ankles, sat an Indian woman, who had apparently fallen asleep upon her watch. The stir I made aroused her, and, as she piled on fresh fagots, and kindled them to a bright blaze with a handful of leaves, drowsiness came over me again, and I wrapped the blanket about me more closely, and shut my eyes to sleep. I awoke refreshed. It must have been ten o'clock by the sun. The Indians were about, occupied in va- rious avocations, and the woman was broiling a slice of deer's flesh on the coals. She offered it to me as I rose ; and having eaten part of it with a piece of a cake made of meal, 1 requested her to call in the men, and, with offers of reward, easily induced them to go with •me in search of my lost friend. We found him, as 1 had anticipated, frozen to death, far out on the lake. The Indians tracked him by the marks of his skate-irons, and from their appearance he had sunk quietly down, probably drowsy and ex- hausted, and had died of course without pain. His | last act seemed to have been under the influence of his strange madness, for he lay on his face, turned from the quarter of the setting moon. We carried him home to his bride. Even the In- dians were affected by her uncontrollable agony. I can not describe that scene, familiar as I am with pic- tures of horror. I made inquiries with respect to the position of his bridal chamber. There were no shutters, and the moon streamed broadly into it : and after kissing his shrinking bride with the violence of a madman, he sprang out of the room with a terrific scream, and she saw him no more till he lay dead on his bridal bed. INCIDENTS ON THE HUDSON. M. Chabert, the fire-eater, would have found New York uncomfortable. I would mention the height of the thermometer, but for an aversion I have to figures. Broadway, at noon, had been known to fry soles. I had fixed upon the first of August for my annua trip to Saratoga — and with a straw hat, a portmanteau, and a black boy, was huddled into the " rather-faster- than-lightning" steamer, " North America," with about seven hundred other people, like myself, just in time. Some hundred and fifty gentlemen and ladies, thirty seconds too late, stood " larding" the pine chips upon the pier, gazing after the vanishing boat through show- ers of perspiration. Away we " streaked" at the rate of twelve miles in the hour against the current, and by the time I had penetrated to the baggage-closet, and seated William Wilberforce upon my portmanteau, with orders not to stir for eleven hours and seven min- utes, we were far up the Hudson, opening into its hills and rocks, like a witches' party steaming through the Hartz in a caldron. A North-river steamboat, as a Vermont boy would phrase it, is another guess sort o' thing from a Brit- isher. A coal-barge and an eight-oars on the Thames are scarce more dissimilar. Built for smooth water only, our river boats are long, shallow, and graceful, of the exquisite proportions of a pleasure-yacht, and painted as brilliantly and fantastically as an Indian shell. With her bow just leaning up from the surface of the stream, her cut-water throwing off a curved and transparent sheet from either side, her white awnings, her magical speed, and the gay spectacle of a thousand well-dressed people on her open decks, I know noth- ing prettier than the vision that shoots by your door as you sit smoking in your leaf-darkened portico on the bold shore of the Hudson. The American edition of Mrs. Trollope (several copies of which are to be found in every boat, serving the same purpose to the feelings of the passengers as the escape-valve to the engine) lay on a sofa beside me, and taking it up, as to say, " I will be let alone," I commenced dividing my attention in my usual quiet way between the varied panorama of rock and valley flying backward in our progress, and the as varied multitude about me. For the mass of the women, as far as satin slippers, hats, dresses, and gloves, could go, a Frenchman might have fancied himself in the midst of a transplantation from the Boulevards. In London, French fashions are in a manner Anglified : but an American woman looks on the productions of Herbault, Boivin, and Maneuri, as a translator of the Talmud on the inspired text. The slight figure and small feet of the race rather favor the resemblance; and a French milliner, who would prob- ably come to America expecting to see bears and buf- faloes prowling about the landing-place, would rub her eyes in New York, and imagine she was still in France, and had crossed, perhaps, only the broad part of the Seine. The men were a more original study. Near me sat a Kentuckian on three chairs. He had been to the me- tropolis, evidently for the first time, and had " looked round sharp." In a fist of no very delicate propor- tions, was crushed a pair of French kid-gloves, which, if they fulfilled to him a glove's destiny, would flatter " the rich man" that "the camel" might yet give him the required precedent. His hair had still the traces of having been astonished with curling-tongs, and across his Atlantean breast was looped, in a compli- cated zig-zag, a chain that must have cost him a wil- derness of rackoon-skins. His coat was evidently the production of a Mississippi tailor, though of the finest English material; his shirt-bosom was ruffled like a swan with her feathers full spread, and a black silk cravat, tied in a kind of a curse-me-if-I-care-sort-of-a- knot, flung out its ends like the arms of an Italian improvisatore. With all this he was a man to look upon with respect. His under jaw was set up to its fellow with an habitual determination that would throw a hickory-tree into a shiver ; but frank good- nature, and the most absolute freedom from suspi-. INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 411 cion, lay at large on his Ajacean features, mixed with an earnestness that commended itself at once lo your liking. In a retired corner, near the wheel, stood a group of Indians, as motionless by the hour together as figures carved in rosso antico. They had been on their melancholy annual visit to the now-cultivated shores of Connecticut, the burial-place, but unforgot- ten and once wild home of their fathers. With the money given them by the romantic persons whose sympathies are yearly moved by these stern and poet- ical pilgrims, they had taken a passage in the "fire- canoe," which would set them two hundred miles on their weary journey back to the prairies. Their Apollo-like forms loosely dressed in blankets, their gaudy wampum-belts and feathers, the muscular arm and close clutch upon the rifle, the total absence of surprise at the unaccustomed wonders about them, and the lowering and settled scorn and dislike ex- pressed in their copper faces, would have powerfully impressed a European. The only person on whom they deigned to cast a glance was the Kentuckian, and at him they occasionally stole a look, as if, through all his metropolian finery, they recognised metal with whose ring they were familiar. There were three foreigners on board, two of them companions, and one apparently alone. With their coats too small for them, their thick-soled boots and sturdy figures, collarless cravats, and assumed uncon- sciousness of the presence of another living soul, they were recognisable at once as Englishmen. To most of the people on board they probably appeared equally well-dressed, and of equal pretensions to the character of gentlemen; but any one who had made observations between Temple Bar and the steps of Crockford's, would easily resolve them into two Birmingham bag- men "sinking the shop," and a quiet gentleman on a tour of information. The only other persons I particularly noted were a southerner, probably the son of a planter from Ala- bama, and a beautiful girl, dressed in singularly bad taste, who seemed his sister. I knew the "specimen" well. The indolent attitude, the thin but powerfully- jointed frame, the prompt politeness, the air of superi- ority acquired from constant command over slaves, the mouth habitually flexible and looking eloquent even in silence, and the eye in which slept a volcano of vio- lent passions, were the marks that showed him of a race that I had studied much, and preferred to all the many and distinct classes of my countrymen. His sister was of the slightest and most fragile figure, graceful as a fawn, but with no trace of the dancing master's precepts in her motions, vivid in her attention to everything about her, and amused with all she saw ; a copy of Lalla Rookh sticking from the pocket of her French apron, a number of gold chains hung out- side her travelling habit, and looped to her belt, and a glorious profusion of dark curls broken loose from her combs and floating unheeded over her shoulders. Toward noon we rounded West Point, and shot suddenly into the overshadowed gorge of the moun- tains, as if we were dashing into the vein of a silver mine, laid open and molten into a flowing river by a flash of lightning. (The figure should be Mont- gomery's; but I can in no other way give an idea of the sudden darkening of the Hudson, and the under- ground effect of the sharp over-hanging mountains as you sweep first into the highlands.) The solitary Englishman, who had been watching the southern beauty with the greatest apparent in- terest, had lounged over to her side of the boat, and, with the instinctive knowledge that women have of character, she had shrunk from the more obtrusive attempts of the Brummagems to engage her in con- versation, and had addressed some remark to him, which seemed to have advanced them at once to ac- quaintances of a year. They were admiring the stu- pendous scenery together a moment before the boat stopped for a passenger, off a small town above the point. As the wheels were checked, there was a sud- den splash in the water, and a cry of " a lady over- board !" I looked for the fair creature who had been standing before me, and she was gone. The boat was sweeping on, and as I darted to the railing I saw the gurgling eddy where something had just gone down; and in the next minute the Kentuckian and the youngest of the Indians rushed together to the stern, and clearing the taffrail with tremendous leaps, dived side by side into the very centre of the foaming circle. The Englishman had coolly seized a rope, and, by the time they reappeared, stood on the railing with a coil in his hand, and flung it with accurate calculation directly over them. With immovably grave faces, and eyes blinded with water, the two divers rose, holding high between them — a large pine fagot ! Shouts of laughter pealed from the boat, and the Kentuckian, discovering his error, gave the log an indignant fling behind, and, taking hold of the rope, lay quietly to be drawn in; while the Indian, disdaining assistance, darted through the wake of the boat with arrowy swiftness, and sprang up the side with the agility of a tiger-cat. The lady reappeared from the cabin as they jumped dripping upon the deck ; the Kentuckian shook himself, and sat down in the sun to dry; and the graceful and stern Indian, too proud even to put <he wet hair away from his forehead, resumed his place, and folded his arms, as indifferent and calm, save the suppressed heaving of his chest, as if he had never stirred from his stone-like posture. An hour or two more brought us to the foot of the Catskills, and here the boat lay alongside the pier to discharge those of her passengers who were bound to the house on the mountain. A hundred or more moved to the gangway at the summons to get ready, and among them the southerners and the Kentuckian. I had begun to feel an interest in our fair fellow-pas- senger, and I suddenly determined to join their party — a resolution which the Englishman seemed to come to at the same moment, and probably for the same reason. We slept at the pretty village on the bank of the river, and the next day made the twelve hours' ascent through glen and forest, our way skirted with the most gorgeous and odorent flowers, and turned aside and towered over the trees whose hoary and moss- covered trunks would have stretched the conceptions of the " Savage Rosa." Everything that was not lovely was gigantesque and awful. The rocks were split with the visible impress of the Almighty power that had torn them apart, and the daring and dizzy crags spurred into the sky, as if the arms of a buried and phrensied Titan were thrusting them from the mountain's bosom. It gave one a kind of maddening desire to shout and leap — the energy with which it filled the mind so out-measured the power of the frame. Near the end of our journey, we stopped together on a jutting rock, to look back on the obstacles we had overcome. The view extended over forty or fifty miles of vale and mountain, and, with a half-shut eye, it looked, in its green and lavish foliage, like a near and unequal bed of verdure, while the distant Hudson crept through it like a half-hid satin riband, lost as if in clumps of moss among the broken banks of the highlands. I was trying to fix the eye of my com- panion upon West Point, when a steamer, with its black funnel and retreating line of smoke, issued as if from the bosom of the hills into an open break of the river. It was as small apparently as the white hand that pointed to it so rapturously. "Oh!" said the half-breathless girl, "is it not like some fairy bark on an eastern stream, with a spice- lamp alight in its prow?" 412 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. " More like an old shoe afloat, with a cigar stuck in it," interrupted Kentucky. As the sun began to kindle into a blaze of fire, the tumultuous masses, so peculiar to an American sky, turning every tree and rock to a lambent and rosy gold, we stood on the broad platform on which the house is built, braced even beyond weariness by the invigorating and rarified air of the mountain. A hot supper and an early pillow, with the feather beds and blankets of winter, were unromantic circumstances, but I am not aware that any one of the party made any audible objection to them; I sat next the Ken- tuckian at table, and can answer for two. A mile or two back from the mountain-house, on nearly the same level, the gigantic forest suddenly sinks' two or three hundred feet into the earth, forming a tremendous chasm, over which a bold stag might almost leap, and above which the rocks hang on either side with the most threatening and frowning grandeur. A mountain-stream creeps through the forest to the precipice, and leaps as suddenly over, as if, Arethusa-like, it fled into the earth from the pur- suing steps of a satyr. Thirty paces from its brink, you would never suspect, but for the hollow rever- beration of the plunging stream, that anything but a dim and mazy wood was within a day's journey. It is visited as a great curiosity in scenery, under the name of Cauterskill Falls. We were all on the spot by ten the next morning, after a fatiguing tramp through the forest; for the Kentuckian had rejected the offer of a guide, under- taking to bring us to it in a straight line by only the signs of the water- course. The caprices of the little stream had misled him, however, and we arrived half- dead with the fatigue of our cross-marches. I sat down on the bald edge of the precipice, and suffered my more impatient companions to attempt the difficult and dizzy descent before me. The Ken- tuckian leaped from rock to rock, followed daringly by the southerner; and the Englishman, thoroughly enamored of the exquisite child of nature, who knew no reserve beyond her maidenly modesty, devoted himself to her assistance, and compelled her with anxious entreaties to descend more cautiously. I lay at my length as they proceeded, and with my head over the projecting edge of the most prominent crag, watched them in a giddy dream, half-stupified by the grandeur of the scene, half-interested in their motions. They reached the bottom of the glen at last, and shouted to the two who had gone before, but they had followed the dark passage of the stream to find its vent, and were beyond sight or hearing. After sitting a minute or two, the restless but over- fatigued girl rose to go nearer the fall, and I was re- marking to myself the sudden heaviness of her steps, when she staggered, and turning toward her compan- ion, fell senseless into his arms. The closeness of the air below, combined with over-exertion, had been too much for her. The small hut of an old man who served as a guide stood a little back from the glen, and 1 had rushed into it, and was on the first step of the descent with a flask of spirits, when a cry from the opposite crag, in the husky and choking scream of infuriated passion, suddenly arrested me. On the edge of the yawning chasm, gazing down into it with a livid and death-like paleness, stood the southerner. I mechanically fol- lowed his eye. His sister lay on her back upon a flat rock immediately below him, and over her knelt the Englishman, loosening the dress that pressed close upon her throat, and with his face so near to hers as to conceal it entirely from the view. I felt the brother's misapprehension at a glance, but my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth ; for in the madness of his fury he stood stretching clear over the brink, and every instant I looked to see him plunge headlong. Be- fore I could recover my breath, he started back, gazed wildly round, and seizing upon a huge fragment of rock, heaved it up with supernatural strength, and hurled it into the abyss. Giddy and sick with horror, I turned away and covered up my eyes. I felt assured he had dashed them to atoms. The lion roar of the Kentuckian was the first sound that followed the thundering crash of the fragments. " Hallo, youngster ! what in tarnation are you arter ? You've killed the gal, by gosh!" The next moment I heard the loosened stones as he went plunging down into the glen, and hurrying after him with my restorative, I found the poor English- man lying senseless on the rocks, and the fainting girl, escaped miraculously from harm, struggling slowly to her senses. On examination, the new sufferer appeared only stunned by a small fragment which had struck him on the temple, and the Kentuckian, taking him up in his arms like a child, strode through the spray of the fall, and held his head under the descending torrent till he kicked lustily for his freedom. With a draught from the flask, the pale Alabamian was soon perfectly restored, and we stood on the rock together looking at each other like people who had survived an earth- quake. We climbed the ascent and found the brother lying with his face to the earth, beside himself with his conflicting feelings. The rough tongue of the Ken- tuckian to whom 1 had explained the apparent cause of the rash act, soon cleared up the tempest, and he joined us presently, and walked back by his sister's side in silence. We made ourselves into a party to pass the remain- der of the summer on the lakes, unwillingly letting off the Kentuckian, who was in a hurry to get back to propose himself for the legislature. Three or four years have elapsed, and I find myself a traveller in England. Thickly sown as are the wonders and pleasures of London, an occasional din- ner with a lovely countrywoman in Square, and a gossip with her husband over a glass of wine, in which Cauterskill Falls are not forgotten, are mem- orandums in my diary never written but in "red letters." THE GIPSY OF SARDIS. . . . . " And thou art far, Asia ! who, when my being overflowed, Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine, Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust." Shelley's Phombtheus. Our tents were pitched in the vestibule of the house of Croesus, on the natural terrace which was once the imperial site of Sardis. A humpbacked Dutch artist, who had been in the service of Lady Hester Stanhope as a draughtsman, and who had lingered about be- tween Jerusalem and the Nile till he was as much at home in the east as a Hajji or a crocodile ; an Eng- lishman qualifying himself for "The Travellers';" a Smyrniote merchant in figs and opium ; Job Smith (my inseparable shadow) and myself, composed a party at this time (August, 1834), rambling about Asia Minor in turbans and Turkish saddles, and pitch- ing our tents, and cooking our pilau, wherever it pleased Heaven and the inexorable suridji who was our guide and caterer. I thought at the time that I would compound to abandon all the romance of that renowned spot, for a clean shirt and something softer than a marble frustrum for a pillow ; but in the distance of memory, and my- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 413 self at this present in a deep morocco chair in the library at " The Travellers' ;" the same scene in the ruins of Sardis does not seem destitute of interest. It was about four in the lazy summer afternoon. We had arrived at Sardis at mid-day, and after a quarrel whether we should eat immediately or wait till the fashionable hour of three, the wooden dish con- taining two chickens buried in a tumulus of rice, shaped (in compliment to the spirit of the spot) like the Mound of Alyattis in the plain below, was placed in the centre of a marble pedestal ; and with Job and the Dutchman seated on the prostrate column dislodged for our benefit, and the remainder of the party squatted in the high grass, which grew in the royal palace as if it had no memory of the foot-prints of the kings of Lydia, we spooned away at the saturated rice, and pulled the smothered chickens to pieces with an inde- pendence of knives and forks that was worthy of the M certain poor man in Attica." Old Solon himself, who stood, we will suppose, while reproving the osten- tatious monarch, at the base of that very column now ridden astride by an inhabitant of a country of which he never dreamed — (at least it strikes me there is no mention of the Yankees in hid philosophy) — the old graybeard of the Academy himself, I say, would have been edified at the primitive simplicity of our repast. The salt (he would have asked if it was Attic) was contained in a ragged play-bill, which the Dutchman had purloined as a specimen of Modern Greek, from the side of a house in Corfu ; the mustard was in a cracked powder-horn, which had been slung at the breast of old Whalley the regicide, in the American revolution, and which Job had brought from the Green mountains, and held, till its present base uses, in re- ligious veneration ; the ham (I should have mentioned that respectable entremet before) was half enveloped in a copy of the " Morning Post ;" and the bread, which had been seven days out from Smyrna, and had been kept warm in the suridji's saddle bags twelve hours in the twenty-four, lay in disjecta membra around the marble table, with marks of vain but persevering attacks in its nibbled edges. The luxury of our lar- der was comprised in a flask which had once held Har- vey's sauce, and though the last drop had served as a condiment to a roasted kid some three months before, in the Acropolis at Athens, we still clung to it with affectionate remembrance, and it was offered and re- fused daily around the table for the melancholy pleasure of hearing the mention of its name It was unlucky that the only thing which the place afforded of the best quality, and in sufficient quanities, was precisely the one thing in the world for which no individual of the party had any particular relish — water ! It was brought in a gourd from the bed of the " golden-sand- ed Pactolus," rippling away to the plain within pistol- shot of the dining-room ; but, to the shame of our sim- plicity I must record, that a high-shouldered jug of the rough wine of Samos, trodden out by the feet of the lovely slaves of the JEgean, and bought for a far- thing the bottle, went oftener to the unclassical lips of the company. Methinks, now (the wind east in Lon- don, and the day wet and abominable). I could barter the dinner that I shall presently discuss, with its suite of sherries and anchovy, to kneel down by that golden river in the sunshine, and drink a draught of pure lymph under the sky of effeminate Asia. Yet, when I was there — so rarely do we recognise happiness till she is gone — I wished myself (where I had never been) in " merry England." " Merry," quotha ? Scratch it out, and write comfortable'. I have seen none " merry" in England, save those who have most cause to be sad — the abandoned of themselves and the world ! Out of the reach of ladies and the laws of society, the most refined persons return very much to the na- tural instincts from which they have departed in the progress of civilization. Job rolled off the marble column when there was nothing more to eat, and went to sleep with the marks of the Samian wine turning up the corners of his mouth like the salacious grin of a satyr. The Dutchman got his hump into a hollow, and buried his head in the long grass with the same obe- dience to the prompting of nature, and idem the suridji and the fig-merchant, leaving me seated alone among the promiscuous ruins of Sardis and the dinner. The dish of philosophy I had with myself on that occasion will appear as a rechavffe in my novel (I intend to write one) ; but meantime I may as well give you the practical inference ; that, as sleeping after dinner is evidently Nature's law, Washington Irving is highly excusable for the practice, and he would be a friend of reason who should introduce couches and coffee at that somnolent period, the digestive nap taking the place of the indigestible politics usually forced upon the com- pany on the disappearance of the ladies. Why should the world be wedded for ever to these bigoted incon- veniences ! The grand track from the south and west of Asia Minor passes along the plain between the lofty Acropo- lis of Sardis and the tombs of her kings ; and with the snore of travellers from five different nations in my ear, I sat and counted the camels in one of the immense caravans never out of sight in the valley of the Hermus. The long procession of those brown monsters wound slowly past on their way to Smyrna, their enormous burthens covered with colored trap- pings and swaying backward and forward with their dis- jointed gait, and their turbaned masters dozing on the backs of the small asses of the east, leading each a score by the tether at his back ; the tinkling of their hundred bells swarmed up through the hot air of the afternoon with the drowsiest of monotones ; the native oleanders, slender-leaved and tall, and just now in all their glory, with a color in their bright flowers stolen from the bleeding lips of Houris, brightened the plains of Lydia like the flush of sunset lying low on the earth ; the black goats of uncounted herds browsed along the ancient Sarabat, with their bearded faces turned every one to the faintly coming wind : the eagles (that abound now in the mountains from which Sardis and a hundred silent cities once scared their bold progenitors) sailed slowly and fearlessly around the airy citadel that flung open its gates to the Lacedaemonian ; and, gradually, as you may have lost yourself in this tangled paragraph, dear reader, my senses became confused among the objects it enumerates, and I fell asleep with the speech of Solon in my ears, and my back to the crumbling portico of Croesus. The Dutchman was drawing my picture when I awoke, the sun was setting, and Job and the suridji were making tea. I am not a very picturesque object, generally speaking, but done as a wild Arab lying at the base of a column in a white turban, with a stork's nest over my head, I am not so ill-looking as you would suppose. As the Dutchman drew for gelt, and hoped to sell his picture to some traveller at Smyrna who would take that opportunity to affirm in his book that he had been at Sardis (as vide his own sketch), I do not despair of seeing myself yet in lithograph. And, talking of pictures, I would give something now if I had engaged that hump-backed draughtsman to make me a sketch of Job, squat on his hams before a fire in the wall, and making tea in a tin pot with a " malig- nant and turbaned Turk," feeding the blaze with the dry thorn of Syria.* It would have been consolation to his respectable mother, whom he left in the Green mountains (wondering what he could have to do with following such a scapegrace as myself through the * It has the peculiarity of a hooked thorn alternating with the straight, and it is difficult to touch it without lacerating the hands. It is the common thorn of the east, and it is supposed that our Savior's crown at his crucifixion was made of it. 414 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. world), to have seen him in the turban of a Hajji tak- ing his tea quietly in ancient Lydia. The green tur- ban, the sign of the Hajji, belonged more properly to myself; for though it was Job who went bodily to Jerusalem (leaving me ill of a fig-fever at Smyrna), the sanctity of the pilgrimage by the Mohammedan law falls on him who provides the pilgrim with scallop-shell and sandals, aptly figured forth in this case, we will sup- pose, by the sixty American dollars paid by myself for his voyage to Jaffa and back. The suridji was a Hajji, too, and it was amusing to see Job, who respect- ed every man's religious opinions, and had a little vanity besides in sharing with the Turk* the dignity of a pilgrimage to the sacred city, washing his knees and elbows at the hour of prayer, and considerately, but very much to his own inconvenience, transferring the ham of the unclean beast from the Mussulman's sad- dle-bags to his own. It was a delicate sacrifice to a pagan's prejudices worthy of Socrates or a Christian. II. In all simple states of society, sunset is the hour of better angels. The traveller in the desert remembers his home — the sea-tost boy his mother and her last words — the Turk talks, for a wonder, and the chatter- ing Greek is silent, for the same — the Italian forgets his mustache, and hums la patria — and the English- man delivers himself of the society of his companions, and " takes a walk." It is something in the influences of the hour, and I shall take trouble, some day. to maintain that morn, noon, and midnight, have their ministry as well, and exercise each an unobserved but salutary and peculiar office on the feelings. We all separated " after tea ;" the Suridji was off to. find a tethering place for his horses; the Englishman strolled away by himself to a group of the " tents of Kedar" far down in the valley with their herds and herdsmen ; theSmyrniote merchant sat by the camel- track at the foot of the hill waiting for the passing of a caravan; the Green-Mountaineer was wandering around the ruins of the apostolic church; the Dutchman was sketching the two Ionic shafts of the fair temple of Cybele ; and I, with a passion for running water which I have elsewhere alluded to, idled by the green bank of the Pactolus, dreaming sometimes of Gyges and Alexander, and sometimes of you, dear Mary! I passed Job on my way, for the four walls over which the " Angel of the Church of Sardis" kept his brooding watch in the days of the Apocalypse stand not far from the swelling bank of the Pactolus, and nearly in a line between it and the palace of Croesus. I must say that my heart almost stood still with awe as I stepped over the threshold. In the next moment, the strong and never-wasting under-current of early reli- gious feeling rushed back on me, and I involuntarily uncovered my head, and felt myself stricken with the spell of holy ground. My friend, who was never with- out the Bible that was his mother's parting gift, sat on the end of the broken wall of the vestibule with the sacred volume open at the Revelation in his hand. " I think, Philip," said he, as I stood looking at him in silence, " I think my mother will have been told by an angel that I am here." He spoke with a solemnity that, spite of every other feeling, seemed to me as weighty and true as prophecy. " Listen, Philip," said he, "it will be something to tell your mother as well as mine, that we have read the Apocalypse together in the Church of Sardis." I listened with what I never thought to have heard * The Mussulmans make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and pray at all the places consecrated to our Savior and the Virein, ex- cept only the tomb of Christ, which they do not acknowledge. They believe that Christ did not die, but ascended alive into heaven, leaving the likeness of his face to Judas, who was «ruein>d for him. in Asia — my mother's voice loud at my heart, as I had heard it in prayer in my childhood : — " Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments ; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy." I strolled on. A little farther up the Pactolus stood the Temple of Cybele. The church to which "He" spoke " who hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars," was a small and humble ruin of brick and mor- tar ; but, of the temple of the Heathen Mother of the world, remained two fair columns of marble with their curiously carved capitals, and the earth around was strewn with the gigantic frusta of an edifice, stately even in the fragments of its prostration. I saw for a moment the religion of Jupiter and of Christ with the eyes of Croesus and the philosopher from Athens; and then I turned to the living nations that I had left to wander among these dead empires, and looking still on the eloquent monuments of what these religions were, thought of them as they are, in wide-spread Christendom. We visit Rome and Athens, and walk over the ruined temples of their gods of wood and stone, and take pride to ourselves that our imaginations awake the •' spirit of the spot." But the primitive church of Christ, over which an angel of God kept watch — whose undefiled members, if there is truth in Holy Writ, are now " walking with him in white" before the face of the Almighty — a spot on which the Savior and his apos- tles prayed, and for whose weal, with the other church- es of Asia, the sublime revelation was made to John — this, the while, is an unvisited shrine, and the " classic" of pagan idolatry is dearer to the memories of men than the holy antiquities of a religion they profess ! III. The Ionic capitals of the two fair columns of the fallen temple were still tinged with rosy light on the side toward the sunset, when the full moon, rising in the east, burnished the other like a shaft of sil- ver. The two lights mingled in the sky in a twilight of opal. " Job," said I, stooping to reach a handful of sand as we strolled up the western bank of the river, " can you resolve me why the poets have chosen to call this pretty stream the 'golden-sanded Pactolus?' Did you ever see sand of a duller gray ?" "As easy as give you a reason," answered Job, " why we found the turbidus Hermus, yesterday, the clearest stream we have forded — why 1 am no more beautiful than before, though I have bathed like Ve- nus in the Scamander — why the pumice of Naxos no longer reduces the female bust to its virgin propor- tions — and why Smyrna and Malta are not the best places for figs and oranges !" " And why the old king of Lydia, who possessed the invisible ring, and kept a devil in his dog's collar, lies quietly under the earth in the plain below us, and his ring and his devil were not bequeathed to his suc- cessors. What a pleasant auxiliary to sin must have been that invisible ring ! Spirit of Gyges, thrust thy finger out of the earth, and commit it once more to a mortal ! Sit down, my dear monster, and let us spec- ulate in this bright moonshine on the enormities we would commit !" As Job was proceeding, in a cautious periphrasis, to rebuke my irreverent familiarity with the prince of darkness and his works, the twilight had deepened, and my eye was caught by a steady light twinkling far above us in the ascending bed of the river. The green valley wound down from the rear of the Acropolis, and the single frowning tower stood in broken and strong relief against the sky ; and from the mass of shadow be- low peered out, like a star from a cloud-rack, the steady blare of a lamp. INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 415 "Allons! Job !" said I, making sure of an adven- ture, " let us see for whose pleasure a lamp is lit in the solitude of this ruined city." " I could not answer to your honored mother," said my scrupulous friend, " if I did not remind you that this is a spot much frequented by robbers, and that probably no honest man harbors at that inconvenient altitude." I made a leap over a half-buried frieze that had served me as a pillow, and commenced the ascent. " I could as ill answer to your anxious parent," said Job, following with uncommon alacrity, " if I did not partake your dangers when they are inevitable." We scrambled up with some difficulty in the dark- ness, now rolling into an unseen hollow, now stumbling over a block of marble — held fast one moment by the lacerating hooked thorn of Syria, and the next brought to a stand-still by impenetrable thickets of brushwood. With a half hour's toil, however, we stood on a clear platform of grass, panting and hot ; and as I was sug- gesting to Job that we had possibly got too high, he laid his hand on my arm, and, with a sign of silence, drew me down on the grass beside him. In a small fairy amphitheatre, half encircled by a bend of the Pactolus, and lying a few feet below the small platform from which we looked, lay six low tents, disposed in a crescent opposite to that of the stream, and enclosing a circular area of bright and dewy grass, of scarce ten feet in diameter. The tents were round, and laced neatly with wicker-work, with their curtain- doors opening inward upon the circle. In the largest one, which faced nearly down the valley, hung a small iron lamp of an antique shape, with a wick alight in one of its two projecting extremities, and beneath it swung a basket-cradle suspended between two stakes, and kept in motion by a woman apparently of about forty, whose beauty, but for another more attractive object, would have rewarded us alone for our toil. The other tents were closed and seemed unoccupied, but the curtain of the one into which our eyes were now strain- ing with intense eagerness, was looped entirely back to give admission to the cool night air; and, in and out, between the light of the lamp and the full moon, stole on naked feet a girl of fifteen, whose exquisite symme- try and unconscious but divine grace of movement filled my sense of beauty as it had never been filled by the divinest chisel of the Tribune. She was of the height and mould of the younger water-nymph in Gibson's Hylas,* with limbs and lips that, had I cre- ated and warmed her to life like Pygmalion, I should have just hesitated whether or not they wanted anoth- er half-shade of fulness. The large shawl of the east, which was attached to her girdle, and in more guard- ed hours concealed all but her eyes, hung in loose folds from her waist to her heels, leaving her bust and smoothly-rounded shoulders entirely bare ; and, in strong relief even upon her clear brown skin, the flakes of her glossy and raven hair floated over her back, and swept around her with a grace of a cloud in her indo- lent motions. A short petticoat of striped Brusa silk stretched to her knees, and below appeared the full trowser of the east, of the same material, narrowed at the ankle, and bound with what looked in the moon- light an anklet of silver. A profusion of rings on her fingers, and a gold sequin on her forehead, suspended from a colored fillet, completed her* dr*»«», and left nothing to be added by the prude or the painter. She was at that ravishing and divinest moment of female life, when almost the next hour would complete her womanhood — like the lotus ere it lays back to ihe prying moonlight the snowy leaf nearest its heart. • A group that will be immortal in the love and wonder of the world, when the divine hand of the English Praxiteles has long passed from the earth. Two more exquisite shapes of women than those lily-crowned nymphs never lay in the womb —of marble or human mother. Rome is brighter for them. She was employed in filling a large jar which stood at the back of the tent, with water from the Pactolus, and as she turned with her empty pitcher, and came under the full blaze of the lamp in her way outward, treading lightly lest she should disturb the slumber of the child in the cradle, and pressing her two round hands closely to the sides of the vessel, the gradual compression of my arm by the bony hand which still / held it for sympathy, satisfied me that my own leaping pulse of admiration found an answering beat in the bosom of my friend. A silent nod from the woman, whose Greek profile was turned to us under the lamp- light, informed the lovely water-bearer that her labors were at an end ; and with a gesture expressive of heat, she drew out the shawl from her girdle, untied the short petticoat, and threw them aside, and then trip- ping out into the moonlight with only the full silken trowsers from her waist to her ankles, she sat down on the brink of the small stream, and with her feet in the water, dropped her head on her knees, and sat as mo- tionless as marble. " Gibson should see her now," I whispered to Job, " with the glance of the moonlight on that dimpled and polished back, and her almost glittering hair veil- ing about her in such masses, like folds of gossamer !" "And those slender fingers clasped over her knees, and the air of melancholy repose which is breathed into her attitude, and which seems inseparable from those indolent Asiatics. She is probably a gipsy." The noise of the water dashing over a small cascade a little farther up the stream had covered our approach and rendered our whispers inaudible. Job's conjecture was probably right, and we had stumbled on a small encampment of gipsies — the men possibly asleep in those closed tents, or possibly absent at Smyrna. Af- ter a little consultation, I agreed with Job that it would be impolitic to alarm the camp at night, and resolving on a visit in the morning, we quietly and unobserved withdrew from our position, and descended to our own tents in the ruins of the palace. IV. The suridji had given us our spiced coffee in the small china cups and filagree holders, and we sat dis- cussing, to the great annoyance of the storks over our heads, whether we should loiter another day at Sardis, j or eat melons at noon at Casabar on our way to Con- 1 stantinople. To the very great surprise of the Dutch- man, who wished to stay to finish his drawings, Job and myself voted for remaining — a view of the subject which was in direct contradiction to our vote of the preceding I evening. The Englishman, who was always in a hur- | ry, flew into a passion, and went off with the phleg- matic suridji to look after his horse ; and having dis- posed of our Smyrniote, by seeing a caravan (which was not to be seen) coming southward from Mount Tmolus, I and my monster started for the encamp- ment of the gipsies. As we rounded the battered wall of the Christian church, a woman stepped out from the shadow ; through a tattered dress, and under a turban of soiled cotton set far over her forehead, and throwing a deep shadow into her eyes, I recognised at once the gipsy woman whom we had seen sitting by the cradle. " Buon giorno, signori" she said, making a kind of salaam, and relieving me at once by the Italian saluta- tion of my fears of being unintelligible. Job gave her the good-morning, but she looked at him with a very unsatisfactory glance, and coming close to my ear, she wished me to speak to her out of the hearing of "il rnio domestico .'" "Amicopiu tosfo /" I added immediately with a con- sideration for Job's feelings, which, I must do myself the justice to say, I always manifested, except in very elegant society. I gave myself the greater credit in 416 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. this case, as, in myimpatience to know the nature of the gipsy's communication, I might be excused for caring little at the moment whether my friend was taken for a gentleman or a gentleman's gentleman. The gipsy looked vexed at her mistake, and with a half-apologetic inclination to Job, she drew me into the shade of the ruin, and perused my face with great earnestness. " The same to yourself," thought I, as I gave back her glance, and searched for her meaning in two as liquid and loving eyes as ever looked out of the gates of the Prophet's paradise for the coming of a young believer. It was a face that had been divine, and in the hands of a lady of fashion would have still made a hello rifacimenlo. " Inglese ?" she said at last. " No, madre — Americano." She looked disappointed. " And where are you going, Jilio mio ?" " To Stamboul." " Benissimo ."' she answered, and her face bright- ened. " Do you want a servant ?" " Unless it is yourself, no !" •' It is my son." It was on my lips to ask if he was like her daughter, but an air of uneasiness and mystery in her manner put me on the reserve, and I kept my knowledge to myself. She persevered in her suit, and at last the truth came out, thai her boy was bound on an errand to Constan- tinople, and she wished safe conduct for him. The rest of the troop, she said, were at Smyrna, and she was left in care of the tents with the boy and an infant child. As she did not mention the girl, who, from the resemblance, was evidently her daughter — I thought it unwise to allude to our discovery : and promising that, if the boy was mounted, every possible care should be taken of him? I told her the hour on the following morning when we should be in the saddle, and rid my- self of her with the intention of stealing a march on the camp. I took rather a circuitous route, but the gipsy was there before me, and apparently alone. She had sent the boy to the plains for a horse, and though I pre- sumed that the loveliest creature in Asia was concealed in one or the other of those small tents, the curtains were closely tied, and I could find no apology for in- truding either my eyes or my inquiries. The hand- some Zingara, too, began to look rather becomingly jiere ; and as I had left Job behind, and was always naturally afraid of a woman, I reluctantly felt myself under the necessity of comprehending her last injunc- tion, and with a promise that the boy should join us before we reached the foot of Mount Sypilus, she fair- ly bowed me oft' the premises. I could have forsworn my complexion and studied palmistry for a gipsy, had the devil then tempted me ! We struck our tents at sunrise, and were soon dash- ing on through the oleanders upon the broad plain of the Hermus, the dew lying upon their bright vermeil flowers like the pellucid gum on the petals of the ice- plant, and nature, and my five companions, in their gayest humor. I was' not. My thoughts were of moonlight and the Pactolus, and two round feet ankle-deep in running water. Job rode up to my side. " My dear Phil ! take notice that you are nearing Mount Sypilus, in which the magnetic ore was first discovered." " It acts negatively on me, my dear chum ! for I drag a lengthening chain from the other direction." Silence once more, and the bright red flowers still fled backward in our career. Job rode up again. " You must excuse my interrupting your revery,but I thought you would like to know that the town where we sleep to-night is the residence of the ' beys of Og- lou,' mentioned in the ' Bride of Abydos.' " No answer, and the bright red blossoms still flew scattered in our path as our steeds flew through the coppice, and the shovel-like blades of the Turkish stir- rups cut into them right and left in the irregular gallop. Job rode again to my side. " My dear Philip, did you know that this town of Magnesia was once the capital of the Turkish empire — the city of Timour the Tartar ?" "Well!" "And did you know that when Themistocles was in exile, and Artaxerxes presented him with the tribute of three cities to provide the necessaries of life, Mag- nesia* found him in bread?" "And Lampascus in wine. Don't bore me, Job!" We sped on. As we neared Casabar toward noon, and (spite of romance) I was beginning to think with complacency upon the melons, for which the town is famous, a rattling of hoofs behind put our horses upon their mettle, and in another moment a boy dashed into the midst of our troop, and reining up with a fine dis- play of horsemanship, put the promised token into my hand. He was mounted on a small Arabian mare, remarkable for nothing but a thin and fiery nostril, and a most lavish action, and his jacket and turban were fitted to a shape and head that could not well be disguised. The beauty of the gipsy camp was beside me ! It was as well for my self-command, that I had sworn Job to secrecy in case of the boy's joining us, and that I had given the elder gipsy, as a token, a very voluminous and closely-written letter of my mother's. In the twenty minutes which the reading of so appa- rently "lengthy" a document would occupy, I had leisure to resume my self-control, and resolve on my own course of conduct toward the fair masquerader. My travelling companions were not a little astonished to see me receive a letter by courier in the heart of Asia, but that was for their own digestion. All the information I condescended to give, was that the boy was sent to my charge on his road to Constantinople; and as Job displayed no astonishment, and entered simply into my arrangements, and I was the only per- son in the company who could communicate with the suridji (I had picked up a little modern Greek in the Morea), they were compelled (the Dutchman, John Bull, and the fig-merchant) to content themselves with such theories on the subject as Heaven might supply them withal. How Job and I speculated apart on what could be the errand of this fair creature to Constantinople — how beautifully she rode and sustained her character as a boy — how I requested her, though she spoke Italian like her mother, never to open her lips in any Christian language to my companions — how she slept at my feet at the khans, and rode at my side on the journey, and, at the end of seven days, arriving at Scutari, and beholding across the Bosphorus the golden spires of Stamboul, how she looked at me with tears in her unfathomable eyes, and spurred her fleet Arab to his speed to conceal her emotion, and how 1 felt that I could bury myself with her in the vizier's tomb we were passing at the moment, and be fed on rice with a goule's bodkin, if so alone we might not be parted- -all these are matters which would make sundry respectable chapters in a novel, but of which you are spared the particulars in a true story. There was a convenience both to the dramatist and the au- dience in the "cetera inlus agentur" of the Romans. VI. We emerged from the pinnacled cypresses of the cemetery overlooking Constantinople, and dismount- * Not pronounced as in the apothecary's shop. It is a fine large town at th*» foot of Mount Sypilus INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 417 ing from my horse, I climbed upon the gilded turban crowning the mausoleum of a royal Ichoglan (a sul- tan's page, honored more in his burial than in his life), and feasted my eyes on the desecrated but princely fair birth-right of the Pakeologi. The Nekropolis — the city of the dead — on the outermost tomb of whose gloomy precincts I had profanely mounted, stands high and black over the Bosphorus on one side, while on the other, upon similar eminences, stand the gleam- ing minarets and latticed gardens of the matchless city of the living — as if, while Europe flung up her laugh- ing and breathing child to the sun, expiring Asia, the bereaved emperess of the world, lifted her head to the same heavens in majestic and speechless sorrow. But oh ! how fairer than Venice in her waters — than Florence and Rome in their hills and habitations, than all the cities of the world in that which is most their pride and glory — is this fairest metropolis of the Mahomets ! With its two hundred mosques, each with a golden sheaf of minarets laying their pointed fingers against the stars, and encircled with the fretted galleries of the callers to prayer, like the hand of a cardinal with its costly ring — with its seraglio gardens washed on one side by the sea, and on the other by the gentle stream that glides out of the "Valley of Sweet Waters;" men-of-war on one side, flaunting their red pennants over the nightingale's nest which sings for the delight of a princess, and the swift caique on the other gliding in protected waters, where the same im- prisoned fair one might fling into it a flower (so slen- der is the dividing cape that shuts in the bay) — with its Bosphorus, its radiant and unmatched Bosphorus — the most richly-gemmed river within the span of the sun, extending with its fringe of palaces and castles from sea to sea, and reflecting in its glassy eddies a pomp and sumptuousness of costume and architecture which exceeds even your boyish dreams of Bagdad and the califs — Constantinople, I say, with its tur- baned and bright-garmented population — its swarm- ing sea and rivers — its columns, and aqueducts, and strange ships of the east — is impenetrable seraglio, and its close-shuttered harems — its bezestein and its Hippodrome — Constantinople lay before me ! If the star I had worshipped had descended to my hand out of the sky — if my unapproachable and yearning dream of woman's beauty had been bodied forth warm and real — if the missing star in the heel of Serpentarius, and the lost sister of the Pleiades had waltzed back together to their places — if poets were once more prophets, not felons, and books were read for the good that is in them, not for the evil — if love and truth had been seen again, or any impossible or improbable thing had come to pass — I should not have felt more thril- lingly than now the emotions of surprise and wonder! While I stood upon the marble turban of the Icho- glan, my companions had descended the streets of Scutari, and I was left alone with the gipsy. She sat on her Arab with her head bowed to his neck, and when I withdrew my eye from the scene I have faintly described, the tear-drops were glistening in the flow- ing mane, and her breast was heaving under her em- broidered jacket with uncontrollable grief. I jumped to the ground, and taking her head between my hands, pressed her wet cheek to my lips. "We part here, signor," said she, winding around her head the masses of hair that had escaped from her turban, and raising herself in the saddle as if to go on. " I hope not, Maimuna!" She bent her moist eyes on me with a look or ear- nest inquiry. " You are forbidden to intrust me with your errand to Constantinople, and you have kept your word to your mother. But whatever that errand may be, I hope it does not involve your personal liberty ?" She looked embarrassed, hut did not answer. 27 "You are very young to be trusted so far from your mother, Maimuna!" "Signor, si!" "But I think she can scarce have loved you so well as I do to have suffered you to come here alone !" " She intrusted me to you, signor." I was well reminded of my promise. I had given my word to the gipsy that I would leave her child at the Persian fountain of Tophana. Maimuna was evidently under a control stronger than the love I half- hoped and half-feared I had awakened. " Andiamo!" she said, dropping her head upon her bosom with the tears pouring once more over it like rain ; and driving her stirrups with abandoned energy into the sides of her Arabian, she dashed headlong down the uneven streets of Scutari, and in a few min- utes we stood on the limit of Asia. We left our horses in the "silver city,"* crossing to the "golden" in a caique, and with Maimuna in my bosom, and every contending emotion at work in my heart, the scene about me still made an indelible im- pression on my memory. The star-shaped bay, a mile perhaps in diameter, was one swarm of boats of every most slender and graceful form, the caikjis, in their silken shirts, and vari-colored turbans, driving them through the water with a speed and skill which put to shame the gondolier of Venice, and almost the Indian in his canoe; the gilded lattices and belvideres of the seraglio, and the cypresses and flowering trees that mingle their gay and sad foliage above them, were already so near that I could count the roses upon the bars, and see the moving of the trees in the evening wind; the muezzins were calling to sunset-prayer, their voices coming clear and prolonged over the water; the men-of-war in the mouth of the Bosphorus were lowering their blood-red flags; the shore we were approaching was thronged with veiled women, and bearded old men, and boys with the yellow slipper and red scull-cap of the east; and watching our ap- proach, stood apart, a group of Jews and Armenians, marked by their costume for an inferior race, but look- ing to my cosmopolite eye as noble in their black robes and towering caps as the haughty Mussulman that stood aloof from their company. We set foot in Constantinople. It was the suburb of Tophana, and the suridji pointed out to Maimuna, as we landed, a fountain of inlaid marble and brass, around whose projecting frieze were traced inscrip- tions in the Persian. She sprang to my hand. "Remember, Maimuna!" I said, "that I offer you a mother and a home in another and a happier land. I will not interfere with your duty, but when your errand is done, you may find me if" you will. Fare- well." With a passionate kiss in the palm of my hand, and one beaming look of love and sorrow in her large and lustrous eyes, the gipsy turned to the fountain, and striking suddenly to the left around the mosque of Sultan Selim, she plunged into the narrow street run- ning along the water-side to Galata. VII. We had wandered out from our semi-European, semi-Turkish lodgings on the third morning after our arrival at Constantinople, and picking our way list- lessly over the bad pavement of the suburb of Pera, stood at last in the small burying-ground at the sum- mit of the hill, disputing amicably upon what quarter of the fair city beneath us we should bestow our share in the bliss of that June morning. "It is a heavenly day," said Job, sitting down un- thinkingly upon a large sculptured turban that formed * Galata, the suburb on the European side, was the Chrysop. olis, and Scutari, on the Asian, the Argentopolis of the an- cients. 418 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. the head-stone to the grave of some once-wealthy pagan, and looking off wistfully toward the green sum- mit of Bulgurlu. The difference between Job and myself was a mania, on his part for green fields, and on mine for human faces. I knew very well that his remark was a leader to some proposition for a stroll over the wilder hills of the Bosphorus, and I was determined that he should enjoy, instead, the pleasure of sympathy in my never- tiring amusement of wandering in the crowded bazars on the other side of the water. The only way to ac- complish it, was to appear to yield the point, and then rally upon his generosity. I had that delicacy for his feelings (I had brought him all the way from the Green mountains at my own expense) never to carry my measures too ostentatiously. Job was looking south, and my face was as resolute- ly turned north. "We must take a caique in any case at Galata (lying just below us) but if we turned the prow south in the first instance, farewell at every stroke to the city ! Whereas a northern course took us straight up the Golden Horn, and I could appear to change my mind at any moment, and land immediate- ly in a street leading to the bazars. Luckily, while I was devising an errand to go up the channel instead of down, a small red flag appeared gliding through the forest of masts around the curve of the water-side at Tophana, and, in a moment more, a high-pooped vessel; with the carved railings and outlandish rigging of the ships from the far east, shot out into the middle of the bay with the strong current of the Bosphorus, and squaring her lateen sail, she rounded a vessel lying at anchor with the flag of Palestine, and steered with a fair wind up the channel of the Golden Horn. A second look at her deck disclosed to me a crowd of people, mostly women, standing amid-ships, and the supposition with which I was about inducing Job to take a caique and pull up the harbor after her seemed to me now almost a certainty. " It is a slave-ship from Trebizond, ten to one, my dear Job !" He slid off the marble turban which he had pro- faned so unscrupulously, and the next minute we passed the gate that divides the European from the commercial suburb, and were plunging down the steep and narrow straits of Galata with a haste that, to the slippered and shuffling Turks we met or left behind, seemed propably little short of madness. Of a hun- dred slender and tossing caiques lying in the disturbed waters of the bay, we selected the slenderest and best manned ; and getting Job in with the usual imminent danger of driving his long lea;s through the bottom of the egg-shell craft, we took in one of the obsequious Jews who swarm about the pier as interpreters, coiled our legs under us in the hollow womb of the caique, and shot away like a nautilus after the slaver. The deep-lying river that coils around the throbbing heart of Constantinople is a place of as delicate navi- gation as a Venetian lagoon on a festa, or a soiree of middling authors. The Turk, like your plain-spoken friend, rows backward, and with ten thousand egg- shells swarming about him in every direction, and his own prow rounded off in a pretty iron point, an extra piastre for speed draws down curses on the caikji and the Christian dogs who pay him for the holes he lets into his neighbors' boats, which is only equalled in bit- terness and profusion by the execrations which follow what is called "speaking your mind." The Jew laughed, as Jews do since Shylock, at the misfortunes of his oppressors ; and, in the exercise of his vocation, translated us the oaths as they came in right and left — most of them very gratuitous attacks on those (as Job gravely remarked), of whom they could know very little — our respected mothers. The slackening vessel lost her way as she got oppo- site the bazar of dried fruits, and, as her yards came down by the run, she put up her helm, and ran her towering prow between a piratical-looking Egyptian craft, and a black and bluff English collier, inscribed appropriately on the stern as the " snow-drop" from Newcastle. Down plumped her anchor, and in the next moment the Jew hailed her by our orders, and my conjecture was proved to be right. She was from Trebizond, with slaves and spices. " What would they do if we were to climb up her side ?" I asked the Israelite. He stretched up his crouching neck till his twisted beard hung clear off like a waterfall from his chin, and looked through the carved railing very intently. " The slaves are Georgians," he answered, after awhile, "and if there were no Turkish purchasers on board, they might simply order you down again." " And if there were " " The women would be considered damaged by a Christian eye, and the slave merchant might shoot you or pitch you overboard." "Is that all?" said Job, evolving his length very deliberately from his coil, and offering me a hand the next moment from the deck of the slaver. Whether the precedence he took in all dangers arose from affec- tion for me, or from a praiseworthy indifference to the fate of such a trumpery collection as his own body and limbs, I have never decided to my own satisfac- tion. In the confusion of port-officers and boats alongside, all hailing and crying out together, we stood on the outer side of the deck unobserved, and I was soon in- tently occupied in watching the surprise and wonder of the pretty toys who found themselves for the first time in the heart of a great city. The owner of their charms, whichever of a dozen villanous Turks I saw about them it might be, had no time to pay them very particular attention, and dropping their dirty veils about their shoulders, they stood open-mouthed and staring — ten or twelve rosy damsels in their teens, with eyes as deep as a well, and almost as large and liquid. Their features were all good, their skins without a flaw, hair abundant, and figures of a healthy plump- ness — looking, with the exception of their eyes, which were very oriental and magnificent, like the great, fat, pie-eating, yawning, boarding-school misses one sees over a hedge at Hampstead. It was delicious to see their excessive astonishment at the splendors of the Golden Horn — they from the desert mountains of Georgia or Circassia, and the scene about them (mosques, minarets, people, and men-of-war, all to- gether), probably the most brilliant and striking in the world. I was busy following their eyes and trying to divine their impressions, when Job seized me by the arm. An old Turk had just entered the vessel from the land-side, and was assisting a closely-veiled female to mount after him. Half a glance satisfied me that it was the Gipsy of Sardis — the lovely companion of our journey to Constantinople. " Maimuna !" I exclaimed, darting forward on the instant. A heavy hand struck me back as I touched her, and as I returned the blow, the swarthy crew of Arabs closed about us, and we were hurried with a most un- ceremonious haste to the side of the vessel. I scarce know, between my indignation and the stunning effect of the blow I had received, how I got into the caique, but we were pulling fast up the Golden Horn by the time I could speak, and in half an hour were set ashore on the green bank of the Barbyses, bound on a solita- ry ramble up the valley of Sweet Waters. VIII. The art of printing was introduced into the Mo- hammedan empire in the reigns of Achmet III. and Louis XV. I seldom state a statistical fact, but this INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 419 ia one I happen to know, and I mention it because the most fanciful and romantic abode with which I am ac- quainted in the world was originally built to contain the first printing-press brought from the court of Ver- sailles by Mehemet Effendi, ambassador from the "Brother of the Sun." It is now a maison de plais- ancc for the sultan's favorite women, and in all the dreams of perfect felicity which visit those who have once seen it, it rises as the Paradise of retreats from the world. The serai of Khyat-Khana is a building of gold and j marble, dropped down unfenced upon the green- j sward in the middle of a long emerald valley, more like some fairy vision, conjured and forgotten to be ! dissolved, than a house to live in, real weather-proof, j and to be seen for the value of one and sixpence. The [ Barbyses falls over the lip of a sea-shell (a marble cascade sculptured in that pretty device), sending up its spray and its perpetual music close under the gilded lattice of the sultana, and following it back with the eye, like a silver thread in a broidery of green velvet, it comes stealing down through miles of the tenderest verdure, without tree or shrub upon its borders, but shut in with the seclusion of an enchanted stream and I valley by mountains which rise in abrupt precipices from the edges of its carpet of grass, and fling their irregular shadows across it at every hour save high noon— sacred in the east to the sleep of beauty and idleness. \n the loving month of May it is death to set foot in the Khyat-Khana. The ascending caique is Stopped in the Golden Horn, and on the point of every hill is stationed a mounted eunuch with drawn sabre. The Arab steeds of the sultan are picketed on the low-ly- ing grass of the valley, and his hundred Circassians come from their perfumed chambers in the seraglio, and sun their untold loveliness on the velvet banks of the Barbyses. From the Golden Horn to Belgrade, twelve miles of greensward (sheltered like a vein of ore in the bosom of the earth, and winding away after the course of that pebbly river, unseen, save by the eye of the sun and stars), are sacred in this passion- born month from the foot of man, and, riding in their scarlet arubas with the many-colored ribands floating back from the horns of their bullocks, and their own snowy veils dropped from their guarded shoulders and deep-dyed lips, wander, from sunrise to sunset, these caged birds of a sultan's delight, longing as wildly (who shall doubt?) to pass that guarded barrier into the forbidden world, as we, who sigh for them without, j to fly from falsehood and wrong, and forget that same world in their bosoms! How few are content ! How restless are even the most spoiled children of fortune ! How inevitably the heart sighs for that which it has not, even though its only want is a cloud on its perpetual sunshine ! We were not of those — Job and I — for we were of that school of philosophers* who "had little and wanted nothing ;" but we agreed, as we sat upon the marble bridge sprung like a wind-lifted cobweb over the Barbyses, that the envy of a human heart would poison even the content of a beggar ! He is a fool who is sheltered from hunger and cold and still com- plains of fortune ; but he is only not a slave or a seraph, who feeling on the innermost fibre of his sensibility the icy breath of malice, utters his eternal malison on the j fiend who can neither be grappled with nor avoided. ' I could make a paradise with loveliness and sunshine, if envy could be forbidden at the gate ! We had walked around the Serai and tried all its entrances in vain, when Job spied, under the shelter of the southern hill, a blood-red flag flying at the top of a small tent of the Prophet's green — doubtless con- cealing the kervas, who kept his lonely guard over the # With a difference " Nihil est, nihil deest," was their motto. precincts. I sent my friend with a " pinch of piastres" to tempt the trowsered infidel to our will, and he soon came shuffling in his unmilitary slippers, with keys, which, the month before, were guarded like the lamp of Aladdin. We entered. We rambled over the chambers of the chosen houries of the east ; we looked through their lattices, and laid the palms of our hands on the silken cushions dimmed in oval spots by the moisture of their cheeks as they slept ; we could see by the tarnished gold, breast-high at the windows, where they had pressed to the slender lattices to look forth upon the valley ; and Job, more watchfully alive to the thrilling traces of beauty, showed me in the dia- mond-shaped bars the marks of their moist fingers and the stain as of lips between, betraying where they had clung and laid their faces against the trellis in the indoient attitude of gazers from a wearisome prison. Mirrors and ottomans were the only furniture ; and never, for me, would the wand of Cornelius Agrippa have been more welcome, than to wave back into those senseless mirrors the images of beauty they had lost. I sat down on a raised corner of the divan, probably the privileged seat of the favorite of the hour. Job stood with his lips apart, brooding in speechless poeti- calness on his own thoughts. " Do you think, after all," said I, reverting to the matter-of-fact vein of my own mind, which was para- mount usually to the romantic — " do you think really, Job, that the Zuleikas and Fatimas who have by turns pressed this silken cushion with their crossed feet were not probably inferior in attraction to the most third-rate belle of New England ? How long would you love a woman that could neither read, nor write, nor think five minutes on any given theme ? The ut- most exertion of intellect in the loveliest of these deep- eyed Circassians is probably the language of flowers ; and, good Heavens ! think how one of your della Cruscan sentiments would be lost upon her ! And yet, here you are, ready to go mad with romantic fan- cies about women that were never taught even their letters." Job began to hum a stave of his favorite song, which was always a sign that he was vexed and disenchanted of himself. " How little women think," said I, proceeding with my unsentimental vein, while Job looked out of the window, and the kervas smoked his pipe on the sul- tana's ottoman — " how little women think that the birch and the dark closet, and the thumbed and dog- eared spelling-book (or whatever else more refined tor- ments their tender years in the shape of education), was, after all, the groundwork and secret of their fas- cination over men ! What a process it is to arrive at love! ' D-o-g, dog — c-a-t, catP If you had not learned this, bright Lady Melicent, I fear Captain Augustus Fitz-Somerset would never have sat. as 1 saw him last night, cutting your initials with a dia- mond ring on the purple-claret glass which had just poured a bumper to your beauty !" " You are not far wrong," said Job, after a long pause, during which I had delivered myself, unheard, of the above practical apostrophe—" you are not far wrong, quoad the women of New England. They would be considerable bores if they had not learned, in their days of bread-and-butter, to read, write, and reason. But, for the women of the softer south and east, I am by no means clear that education would not be inconsistent with the genius of the clime. Take yourself back to Italy, for example, where, for two mortal years, you philandered up and down between Venice and Amalfi, never out of the sunshine or away from the feet of women, and, in all that precious epi- sode of your youth, never guilty, I will venture to pre- sume, of either suggesting or expressing a new thought. And the reason is, not that the imagination is dull, bu 420 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. that nobody thinks, except upon exigency, in these latitudes. It would be violent and inapt to the spirit of the hour. Indolence, voluptuous indolence of body and mind (the latter at the same time lying broad awake in its chamber, and alive to every pleasurable image that passes uncalled before its windows) is the genius, the only genius, of the night and day. What would be so discordant as an argument by moonlight in the Coliseum ? What so ill-bred and atrocious as the destruction by logic of the most loose-spun theory by the murmuring fountains of the Pamfili 1 To live is enough in these lands of the sun. But merely to live, in ours, is to be bound, Prometheus-like, to a rock, with a vulture at our vitals. Even in the most passionate intercourse of love in your northern clime, you read to your mistress, or she sings to you, or you think it necessary to drive or ride ; but I know nothing that would more have astonished your Venetian Honda than, when the lamp was lit in the gondola that you might see her beauty on the lagune in the starless night, to have pulled a book from your pocket, and read even a tale of love from Boccaccio. And that is why I could be more content to be a pipe-bearer in Asia than a schoolmaster in Vermont, or, sooner than a judge's ermine in England, to wear a scrivener's rags, and sit in the shade of a portico, writing love-let- ters for the peasant-girls of Rome. Talk of republics — your only land of equality is that in which to breathe is the supreme happiness. The monarch throws open his window for the air that comes to him past the brow of a lazzaroni, and the wine on the patrician's lip in- toxicates less than the water from the fountain that is free to all, though it gush from the marble bosom of a nymph. If I were to make a world, I would have the climate of Greece, and no knowledge that did not come by intuition. Men and women should grow wise enough, as the flowers grow fair enough, with sunshine and air, and they should follow their instincts like the birds, and go from sweet to sweet with as lit- tle reason or trouble. Exertion should be a misde- meanor, and desire of action, if it were not too mon- strous to require legislation, should be treason to the -tate." " Long live King Job !" PART II. I had many unhappy thougnts about Maimuna : the gince I had snatched on board the Trebizond slaver lo t in my memory a pair of dark eyes full of uneasi- ness and doubt, and I knew her elastic motions so well, that there was something in her single step as she came over the gangway which assured me that she wau dispirited and uncertain of her errand. Who was the old Turk who dragged her up the vessel's side with so little ceremony ? What could the child of a gipsy be doing on the deck of a slaver from Trebi- zond ? With no very definite ideas as to the disposal of this lovely child should I succeed in my wishes, I had insensibly made up my mind that she could never be happy without me, and that my one object in Constan- tinople was to get her into my possession. I had a delicacy in communicating the full extent of my design to Job, for, aside from the grave view he would take of the morality of the step, and her probable fate as a woman, he would have painful and just doubts of my ability to bear this additional demand upon my means. Though entirely dependant himself, Job had that nat- ural contempt for the precions metals, that he could not too freely assist any one to their possession who happened to set a value on the amount in his pocket ; and this, I may say, was the one point which, between my affectionate monster and myself, was not discussed as harmoniously as the loves of Corydon and Alexis. The account of his expenditure, which I regularly ex- acted of him before he tied on his bandanna at night, was always more or less unsatisfactory ; and though he would not have hesitated to bestow a whole scudo unthinkingly on the first dirty dervish he should meet, he was still sufficiently impressed with the necessity of economy to remember it in an argument of any length or importance : and for this and some other reasons I reserved my confidence upon the intended addition to my suite. Not far from the Burnt Column, in the very heart of Stamboul, lived an old merchant in attar and jessa- mine, called Mustapha. Every one who has been at Constantinople will remember him and his Nubian slave in a small shop on the right, as you ascend to the Hippodrome. He calls himself essence-seller to the sultan, but his principal source of profit is the stranger who is brought to his divans by the interpre- ters in his pay ; and to his credit be it said, that, for the courtesy of his dealings, and for the excellence of his extracts, the stranger could not well fall into better hands. It had been my fortune, on my first visit to Musta- pha, to conciliate his good will. I had laid in my small stock of spice-woods and essences on that occa- sion, and the call which I made religiously every time I crossed the Golden Horn was purely a matter of friendship. In addition to one or two trifling pres- ents, vv^ich (with a knowledge of human nature) I had returned in the shape of two mortal sins — a keg of brandy and a flask of gin, bought out of the Eng- lish collier lying in the bay — in addition to his kind presents, I say, my large-trovvsered friend had made me many pressing offers of service. There was little probability, it was true, that I should ever find occa- sion to profit by them ; but I nevertheless believed that his hand was laid upon his heart in earnest sin- cerity, and in the course of my reflections upon the fate of Maimuna, it had occurred to me more than once that he might be of use in clearing up the mys- tery of her motions. " Job !" said I, as we were dawdling along the street of confectioners with our Jew behind us one lovely morning, "I am going to call at Mustapha's." We had started to go to the haunt of the opium- eaters, and he was rather surprised at my proposition, but, with his usual amiableness (very inconvenient and vexatious in this particular instance), he stepped over the gutter without saying a word, and made for the first turning to the right. It was the first time since we had left New England that I wished myself rid of his company. "But, Job," said I, calling him back to the shady side of the street, and giving him a great lump of candy from the nearest stall (its oriental name, by the way, is " peace-to-your-throat,") " I thought you were bent on eating opium to-day?" My poor friend looked at me for a minute, as if to comprehend the drift of my remark, and as he arrived by regular deduction at the result, I read very clearly in his hideous physiognomy the painful embarrassment it occasioned him. It was only the day before, that, in descending the Bosphorus, we had seen a party of the summary administrators of justice quietly sus- pending a Turkish woman and her Greek paramour from the shutters of a chamber-window — intercourse with a Christian in that country of liberal legislation being punishable without trial or benefit of dervish. From certain observations on my disposition in the course of my adventures, Job had made up his mind, I well knew, that my danger was more from Delilah than the Philistines ; and while these victims of love were kicking their silken trowsers in the air, I saw, by the look of tender anxiety he cast upon me, from the bottom of the caique, that the moral in his mind would INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 421 result in an increased vigilance over my motions. While he stood with his teeth stuck full of " peace- to-your-throat," therefore, forgetting even the instinct of mastication in his surprise and sorrow, I well un- derstood what picture was in his mind, and what con- struction he put upon my sudden desire to solitude. "My dear Philip!" he began, speaking with dif- ficulty from the stickiness of the candy in his teeth, "your respected mother " At this instant a kervas, preceding a Turk of rank, jostled suddenly against him, and as the mounted Mussulman, with his train of runners and pipe-bearers, came sweeping by, I took the opportunity of Job's surprise to slip past with the rest, and, turning down an ally, quietly mounted one of the saddle-horses standing for hire at the first mosque, and pursued my way alone to the shop of the attar-merchant. To dismount and hurry Mustapha into his inner and pri- vate apartment, with aa order to the Nubian to deny me to everybody who should inquire, was the work of a minute, but it was scarcely done before I heard Job breathless at the door. "Ha visto il signore?'" he exclaimed, getting to the back of the shop with a single stride. " Effcndi, no!" said the imperturbable Turk, and he laid his hand on his heart, as he advanced, and offered him with grave courtesy the pipe from his lips. The Jew had come puffing into the shop with his slippers in his hand, and dropping upon his hams near the door, he took oft' his small gray turban, and was wiping the perspiration from his high and narrow fore- head, when Job darted again into the street with a sign to him to follow. The look of despair and ex- haustion with which he shook out his baggy trowsers and made after the striding Yankee, was too much even for the gravity of Mustapha. He laid aside his pipe, and, as the Nubian struck in with the peculiar cackle of his race, I joined myself in their merriment with a heartiness to which many a better joke might have failed to move me. While Mustapha was concluding his laugh between the puffs of his amber pipe, I had thrown myself along the divan, and was studying with some curiosity the inner apartment in which I had been concealed. A curtain of thick but tarnished gold cloth (as sacred from intrusion in the east as the bolted and barred doors of Europe) separated from the outer shop a small octagonal room, that, in size and furniture, re- sembled the Turkish boudoirs, which, in the luxurious palaces of Europe, sometimes adjoin a lady's chamber. The slippered foot was almost buried in the rich car- pets laid, but not fitted to the floor. The divans were covered with the flowered and lustrous silk of Brusa, and piled with vari-colored cushions. A perpetual spice-lamp sent up its thin wreaths of smoke to the black and carved ceiling, diffusing through the room a perfume which, while it stole to the innermost fibres of the brain with a sense of pleasure, weighed on the eyelids and relaxed the limbs ; and as the eye became more accustomed to the dim light which struggled in from a window in the arched ceiling, and dissolved in the luxurious and spicy atmosphere, heaps of the rich shawls of the east became distinguishable with their sumptuous dyes, and, in a corner, stood a cluster of crystal narghiles, faintly reflecting the light in their dim globes of rose-water, while costly pipes, silver- mounted pistols, and a rich Damascus sabre in a sheath of red velvet, added gorgeousness to the apart- ment. Mustapha was a bit of a philosopher in his way, and he had made his own observations on the Europeans who came to his shop. The secluded and oriental luxuriousness of the room I have described was one of his lures to that passion for the picturesque which he saw in every traveller; and another was his gigantic Nubian, who, with bracelets and anklets of gold, a ! white turban, and naked legs and arms, stood always at the door of his shop, inviting the passers-by — not to buy essences and pastilles — but to come in and take I sherbet with his master. You will have been an hour i upon his comfortable divans, have smoked a pipe or j two, and eaten a snowy sherbet or a dish of rice-paste I and sugar, before Mustapha nods to his slave, and pro- ! duces his gold-rimmed jars of essences, from which, : with his fat fore-finger, he anoints the palm of your hand, or, with a compliment to the beauty of your hair, throws a drop into the curl on your temples. i Meanwhile, as you smoke, the slave lays in the bowl of your pipe a small pastille wrapped in gold leaf, from which presently arrives to your nostrils a per- fume that might delight a sultan ; and then, from the two black hands which are held to you full of cubical- | edged vials with gilded stoppers, you are requested i with the same bland courtesy to select such as in j size or shape suit your taste and convenience — the smallest of them, when filled with attar, worth near a gold piastre. This is not very ruinous, and your next temptation comes in the shape of a curiously-wrought censer, upon the filagree grating of which is laid strips of odorent wood which, with the heat of the coals be- neath, give out a perfume like gums from Araby. This, Mustapha swears to you by his beard, has a spell in its spicy breath provocative as a philtre, and is to be burnt in your lady's chamber. It is worth its weight in gold, and for a handful of black chips you are persuaded to pay a price which would freight a caique with cinnamon. Then come bracelets, and amulets, and purses, all fragrant and precious, and, while you hesitate, the Nubian brings you coffee that 1 would open the heart of Shylock, and you drink and pnrchase. And when you have spent all your money, you go away delighted with Mustapha, and quite per- I suaded that you are vastly obliged to him. And, all things considered, so you are ! When Mustapha had finished his prayers (did I say that it was noon?) he called in the Nubian to roll up the sacred carpet, and then closing the curtain be- I tween us and the shop, listened patiently to my story I of the gipsy, which I told him faithfully from the beginning. When I arrived at the incident on board the slaver, a sudden light seemed to strike upon his mind. "Pekhe, filio mio ! pekhe!" he exclaimed, running his fore-finger down the middle of his beard, and I pouring out a volume of smoke from his mouth and | nostrils which obscured him for a moment from my j sight. (I dislike the introduction of foreign words into a story, but the Turkish dissyllable in the foregoing sentence is as constantly on an eastern lip as the amber of the pipe.) He clapped his hands as I finished my narration, and the Nubian appeared. Some conversation passed between them in Turkish, and the slave tightened his girdle, made a salaam, and taking his slippers at the outer door, left the shop. " We shall find her at the slave-market," said Mus- tapha. I started. The thought had once or twice passed through my mind, but I had as often rejected it as impossible. A freeborn Zingara, and on a confiden- tial errand from her own mother!— I did not see how her freedom, if there were danger, should have been so carelessly put in peril. _ "And if she is there!" said I; remembering, first, that it was against the Mohammedan law lor a Christian to purchase a slave, and next, that the price, if it did not ruin me at once, would certainly leave me in a sit- uation rather to lessen than increase my expenses. " I will buy her for you," said Mustapha. The Nubian returned at this moment, and laid at 422 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. my feet a bundle of wearing apparel. He then took from a shelf a shaving apparatus, with which he pro- ceeded to lather my forehead and temples, and after a short argument with Mustapha, in which I pleaded in vain for two very seducing clusters of curls, those caressed minions dropped into the black hand of the slave, and nothing was left for the petils soins of my thumb and fore-finger in their leisure hours save a well-coaxed and rather respectable mustache. A scull-cap and turban completed the transformation of my head, and then, with some awkwardness, I got into a silk shirt, big trowsers, jacket, and slippers, and stood up to look at myself in the mirror. I was as like one of the common Turks of the street as possi- ble, save that the European cravat and stockings had preserved an unoriental whiteness in my neck and ankles. This was soon remedied with a little brown juice, and after a few cautions from Mustapha as to my behavior, I settled my turban and followed him into the street. It is a singular sensation to be walking about in a strange costume, and find that nobody looks surprised. I could not avoid a slight feeling of mortification at the rude manner with which every dirty mussulman took the wall of me. After long travel in foreign lands, the habit of everywhere exciting notice as a stranger, and the species of consequence attached to the person and movements of a traveller, become rather pleasures than otherwise, and it is not without pain that one finds oneself once more like common people. I have not yet returned to my own land (Slingsby is an American, gentle reader), and can not judge, therefore, how far this feeling is modified by the pleasures of a recovered home ; but I was vexed not to be stared at when playing the Turk at Con- stantinople, and, amusing as it was to betaken for an Englishman on first arriving in England (different as it is from every land I have seen, and still more differ- ent from my own), I must confess to have experienced again a feeling of lessened consequence, when, on my first entrance into an hotel in London, I was taken for an Oxonian, " come up for a lark" in term-time. Per- haps I have stumbled in this remark upon one of those unconfessed reasons why a returned traveller is pro- verbially discontented with his home. Whether Mustapha wished to exhibit his new pipe- bearer to his acquaintances, or whether there was fun enough in his obese composition to enjoy my difficul- ties in adapting myself to my new circumstances, I can not precisely say ; but I soon found that we were not going straight to the slave-market. I had several times forgotten my disguise so far as to keep the nar- row walk till I stood face to face with the bearded Mussulmans, who were only so much astonished at my audacity that they forgot to kick me over the gutter ; and passing, in the bazar of saddle-cloths, an Eng- lish officer of my acquaintance, who belonged to the corvette lying in the Bosphorus, I could not resist the temptation of whispering in his ear the name of his sweetheart (which he had confided to me over a bot- tle at Smyrna), though I rather expected to be seized by the turban the next moment, with the pleasant con- sequences of a mob and an exposure. My friend was so thoroughly amazed, however, that I was deep in the crowd before he had drawn breath, and I look daily now for his arrival in England (I have not seen him since), with a curiosity to know how he supposes a "blackguard Turk" knew anything of the lock of hair he carried in his waistcoat pocket. The essence-seller had stopped in the book-bazar, and was condescendingly smoking a pipe, with his legs crossed on the counter of a venerable Armenian, I who sat buried to the chin in his own wares, when ! who should come pottering along (as Mrs. Butler would ' say) but Job with his Jew behind him. Mustapha I (probably unwilling to be seen smoking with an Ar- | menian) had ensconced himself behind a towering heap of folios, and his vexed and impatient pipe-bearer had taken his more humble position on the narrow base of one of the chequered columns which are pe- culiar to the bazar devoted to the bibliopolists. As my friend came floundering along " all abroad" with his legs and arms, as usual, 1 contrived, by an adroit insertion of one of my feet between his, to spread him over the musty tomes of the Armenian in away calcu- lated to derange materially the well-ordered sequence of the volumes. " Allah ! Mashallah !" exclaimed Mustapha, whose spreading lap was filled with black-letter copies of the Khoran, while the bowl of his pipe was buried in the fallen pyramid. " Bestia Inglese !" muttered the Armenian, as Job put oue hand in the inkstand in endeavoring to rise, and with the next effort laid his blackened fingers on a heap of choice volumes bound in snowy vellum. The officious Jew took up the topmost copy, marked like a cinq-foil with his spreading thumb and fingers, and quietly asked the Armenian what il signore would be expected to pay. As I knew he had no money in his pocket, I calculated safely on his new embarrass- ment to divert his anger from the original cause of his overthrow. "Tre colonati," said the bookseller. Job opened the book, and his well-known guttural of surprise and delight assured me that I might come out from behind the column and look over his shoul- der. It was an illuminated copy of Hafiz, with a Latin translation — a treasure which his heart had been set upon from our first arrival in the east, and for which I well knew he would sell his coat off his back without hesitation. The desire to give it him passed through my mind, but I could see no means, under my present circumstances, either of buying the book or relieving him from his embar- rassment ; and as he buried his nose deeper between the leaves, and sat down on the low counter, forget- ful alike of his dilemma and his lost friend, I nod- ded to Mustapha to get off as quietly as possible, and, fortunately slipping past both him and the Jew unrecognised, left him to finish the loves of Gulistan and settle his account with the incensed Armenian. II. As we entered the gates of the slave- market, Mus- tapha renewed his cautions to me with regard to my conduct, reminded me that, as a Christian, I should see the white female slaves at the peril of my life, and imme- diately assumed, himself, a sauntering and poco-curante manner, equally favorable to concealment and to his interests as a purchaser. I followed close at his heels with his pipe, and, as he stopped to chat with his ac- quaintances, I now and then gave a shove with the bowl between his jacket and girdle, rendered impatient to the last degree by the sight of the close lattices on every side of us, and the sounds of the chattering voices within. I should have been interested, had I been a mere spectator, in the scene about me, but Mustapha's unne- cessary and provoking delay, while (as I thought pos- sible, if she really were in the market), Maimuna might be bartered for at that moment within, wound my rage to a pitch at last scarcely endurable. We had come up from a cellar to which one of Mus- tapha's acquaintances had taken him to see a young white lad he was about to purchase, and I was hoping that my suspense was nearly over, when a man came for- ward into the middle of the court, ringing a hand-bell, and followed by a black girl, covered with a scant blank- et. Like most of her race (she was an Abyssinian), her head was that of a brute, but never were body and limbs INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 423 more exquisitely moulded. She gazed about without either surprise or shame, stepping after the crier with an elastic, leopard-like tread, her feet turned in like those of the North American Indian, her neck bent gracefully forward, and her shoulders and hips working with that easy play so lost in the constrained dress and motion of civilized women. The Mercury of Giovanni di Bologna springs not lighter from the jet of the foun- tain than did this ebon Venus from the ground on which j she stood. I ventured to whisper to Mustapha, that, under cover i of the sale of the Abyssinian, we might see the white ! slaves more unobserved. A bid was made for her. " Fifteen piastres !" said the attar-seller, wholly ab- sorbed in the sale, and not hearing a syllable I said to him, " She would be worth twice as much to gild my | pastilles !" And handing me his pipe, he waddled into ! the centre of the court, lifted the blanket from the slave's shoulders, turned her round and round, like a Venus on a pivot, looked at her teeth and hands, and after a conversation aside with the crier, he resumed his pipe, and the black disappeared from the ground. " I have bought her !" he said, with a salacious grin, as I handed him his tobacco-bag, and muttered a round , Italian execration in his ear. The idea that Maimuna might have become the property of that gross and sensual mousterjustas easily as the pretty negress he had brought, sent my blood boiling for an instant to my cheek. Yet I had seen this poor savage of seventeen sold without a thought, save mental congratulation that she would be better fed and clad. What a difference one's private feelings make in one's sympathies ! I was speculating, in a kind of tranquil despair, on I the luxurious evils of slavery, when Mustapha called to him an Egyptian, in a hooded blue cloak, whom I re- j membered to have seen on board the Trebisondian. He was a small-featured, black-lipped, willowy Asiatic, with heavy-lidded eyes, and hands as dry and rusty as j the claws of a harpy. After a little conversation, he rose from the platform on which he had crossed his legs, and taking my pro-tern pore master by the sleeve, traversed the quadrangle to a closed door in the best- looking of the miserable houses that surrounded the court. I followed close upon his heels with a beating heart. It seemed to me as if every eye in the crowded market-place must penetrate my disguise. He knock- ed, and answering to some one who spoke from within, the door was opened, and the next moment I found my- self in the presence of a dozen veiled women, seated in various attitudes on the floor. At the command of our conductor, carpets were brought for Mustapha and him- self; and, as they dropped upon their hams, every veil was removed, and a battery of staring and unwinking eyes was levelled full upon us. '• Is she here?" said Mustapha to me in Italian, as I stooped over to hand him his eternal pipe. " Dio mio ! no !" I felt insulted, that with half a glance at the Circas- sian and Georgian dolls sitting before us, he could ask me the question. Yet they were handsome! Red cheeks, white teeth, black eyes, and youth could scarce compose a plain woman ; and thus much of beauty seemed equally bestowed on all. " Has he no more ?" I asked, stooping to Mus- tapha's ear. I looked around while he was getting the informa- tion I wanted in his own deliberate way ; and, scarce knowing what I did, applied my eye to a crack in the wall, through which had been coming for some time a strong aroma of coffee. I saw at first only a small dim room, in the midst of which stood a Turkish manghal, or brazier of coals, sustaining the coffee-pot from which came the agreeable prefume I had inhaled. As my eye became accustomed to the light, I could distinguish a heap of what I took to be shawls lying in the centre of the floor; and presuming it was the dormitory of one of the slave-owners, I was about turning my head away, when the coffee on the manghal suddenly boiled over, and at the same instant started, from the heap at which I had been gazing, the living form of Maimuna ! " Mustapha !" I cried, starting back, and clasping my hands before him. Before I could utter another word, a grasp upon my ankle, that drew blood with every nail, restored me to my self-possession. The Circassians began to giggle, and the wary old Turk, taking no apparent notice of my agitation, ordered me, in a stern tone, to fill his pipe, and went on conversing with the Egyptian. I leaned with an effort at carelessness against the wall, and looked once more through the crevice. She stood by the manghal, filling a cup with a small fila- gree-holder from the coffee-pot, and by the light of the fire I could see every feature of her face as distinctly as daylight. She was alone, and had been sitting with her head on her knees, and the shawl, which had now fallen to her shoulders, drawn over her till it con- cealed her feet. A narrow carpet was beneath her, and as she moved from the fire, a slight noise drew my attention downward, and I saw that she was chained by the ankle to the floor. I stooped to the ear of Mus- tapha, told him in a whisper of my discovery, and im- plored him, for the love of Heaven, to get admission into her apartment. " Pekhe ! pekhe ! filio mio /" was the unsatisfactory answer to my impatience, while the Egyptian rose and proceeded to turn around, in the light of the window, the fattest of the fair Circassians, from whom he had removed every article of dress save her slippers and trousers. I returned to the crevice. Maimuna had drunk her coffee, and stood, with her arms folded, thoughtfully gazing on the fire. The expression in her beautiful and youthful face was one I could scarcely read to my satisfaction. The slight lips were firmly but calmly compressed, the forehead untroubled, the eye alone strained, and unnaturally fixed and lowering. I looked at her with the heart beating like a hammer in my bosom, and the impatience in my trembling limbs which it required every consideration of prudence to suppress. She moved slowly away at last, and sink- ing again to her carpet, drew out the chain from be- neath her, and drawing the shawl once more over her head, lav down, and sunk apparently to sleep. Mustapha left the Circassian, whose beauties he had risen to examine more nearly, and came to my side. " Are you sure that it is she?" he asked, in an al- most inaudible whisper. " Si ."' He took the pipe from my hand, and requested me, in the same suppressed voice, to return to his shop. " And Maimuna" His only answer was to point to the door, and think- ing it best to obey his orders implicity, I made the best of my way out of the slave-market, and was soon drinking a sherbet in his inner apartment, and listen- ing to the shuffle of every passing slipper for the com- ing of the light step of the gipsy. III. The rules of good-breeding discountenance in socie- ty what is usually called " a scene." I detest it as well on paper. There is no sufficient reason, f.ppa- rent to me, why my sensibilities should be drawj upon at sight, as I read, any more than when I pie? je myself by following my own devices in company. Violent sensations are, abstractly as well as conventionally, ill-bred. They derange the serenitv, fluster the man- ner, and irritate the complexion. It is for this reason that I forbear to describe the meeting between Maimu- 424 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. na and myself after she had been bought for forty pounds by the wily and worthy seller of essences and pastilles — how she fell on ray neck when she discovered that I, and not Mustapha, was her purchaser and mas- ter — how she explained, between her hysterical sobs, that the Turk who had sold her to the slave-dealer was a renegade gipsy, and her mother's brother (to whom she had been on an errand of affection) — and how she sobbed herself to sleep with her face in the palms of my hands, and her masses of raven hair covering my knees and feet like the spreading fountains of San Pie- tro — and how I pressed my lips to the starry parting of those raven tresses on the top of her fairest head, and blessed the relying child as she slept — are circum- stances, you will allow, my dear madam ! that could not be told passably well without moving your amiable tenderness to tears. You will consider this paragraph, therefore, less as an ingenious manner of disposing of the awkward angles of my story, than as a polite and praise-worthy consideration of your feelings and com- plexion. Flushed eyelids are so very unbecoming ! IV. My confidential interviews with Job began to take rather an unpleasant coloring. The forty pounds I had paid for Maimuna's liberty, with the premium to Mustapha, the suit of European clothes necessary to disguise my new companion, and the addition of a third person in our European lodgings at Pera, rather drove my finances to the wall. Job cared very little for the loss of his allowance of pocket-money, and made no resistance to eating kibaubs at a meat-shop, instead of his usual silver fork and French dinner at Madame Josepino's. He submitted with the same resignation to a one-oared caique on the Bosphorus, and several minor reductions in his expenses, thinking nothing a hardship, in short, which I shared cheerfully with him. He would have donned the sugar-loaf hat of a dervish, and begged his way home by Jerusalem or Mecca, so only I was content. But the morality of the thing ! " What will you do with this beautiful girl when you get to Rome? how will you dispose of her in Paris ? how will your friends receive a female, already arrived at the age of womanhood, who shall have travelled with you two or three years on the continent ? how will you provide for her? how educate her? how rid yourself of her, with any Christian feeling of com- passion, when she has become irrevocably attached to you?" We were pulling up to the Rymplegades while my plain-spoken Mentor thrust me these home questions, and Maimuna sat coiled between my feet in the bottom of the caique, gazing into my face with eyes that seemed as if they would search my very soul for the cause of my emotion. We seldom spoke English in her presence, for the pain it gave her when she felt excluded from the conversation amounted in her all- expressive features to a look of anguish that made it seem to me a cruelty. She dared not ask me, in words, why I was vexed ; but she gathered from Job's tone that there was reproof in what he said, and flashing a glance of inquiring anger at his serious face, she gently stole her hand under the cloak to mine, and laid the back of it softly in my palm. There was a delicacy and a confidingness in the motion that started a tear into my eye ; and as I smiled through it, and drew her to me and impressed a kiss on her fore- head, I inwardly resolved, that, as long as that lovely creature should choose to eat of my bread, it should be free to her in all honor and kindness, and, if need were, I would supply to her, with the devotion of my life, the wrong and misconstruction of the world. As I turned over that leaf in my heart, there crept through it a breath of peace, and I felt that my good angel had taken me into favor. Job began to fumble for the lunch, and the dancing caique shot forth mer- rily into the Black sea. "My dearest chum!" said I, as we sat round our brown paper of kibaubs on the highest point of the Symplegades, "you see yourself here at the outer- most limit of your travels." His mouth was full, but as soon as he could con- veniently swallow, he responded with the appropriate sigh. " Six thousand miles, more or less, lie between you and your spectacled and respectable mother; but nineteen thousand, the small remainder of the earth's circumference, extending due east from this paper of cold meat, remain to you untravelled !" Job fixed his eye on a white sea-bird apparently asleep on the wing, but diving away eastward into the sky, as if it were the heart within us sped onward with our boundless wishes. "Do you not envy him?" he asked enthusiastically. "Yes; for nature pays his travelling expenses, and I would our common mother were as considerate to me ! How soon, think you, he will see Trebisond, posting at that courier speed ?" " And Shiraz, and Isaphan, and the valley of Cash- mere ! To think how that stupid bird will flyover them, and, spite of all that Hafiz, and Saadi, and Tom Moore, have written on the lands that his shadow may glide throught, will return, as wise as he went, to Marmora ! To compound natures with him were a nice arrangement, now!" "You would be better looking, my dear Job!" " How very unpleasant you are, Mr. Slingsby ! But really, Philip, to cast the slough of this expensive and il-locomotive humanity, and find yourself afloat with all the necessary apparatus of life stowed snugly into breast and tail, your legs tucked quietly away under you, and, instead of coat and unmentionables to be put off and on and renewed at such inconvenient expense, a self-renewing tegument of cleanly feathers, brushed and washed in the common course of nature by wind and rain — no valet to be paid and drilled — no dressing- case to be supplied and left behind — no tooth-brushes to be mislaid — no tight boots — no corns — no passports nor host-horses! Do you know, Phil, on reflection, I find this 'mortal coil' a very inferior and inconvenient apparatus!" "If you mean your own, I quite agree with you." "I am surprised, Mr. Slingsby, that you, who value yourself on knowing what is due from one highly- civilized individual to another, should indulge in these very disagreeable reflections !" Maimuna did not quite comprehend the argument, but she saw that the tables were turned, and, without ill-will to Job, she paid me the compliment of always taking my side. I felt her slender arm around my neck, and as she got upon her knees behind me and put forward her little head to get a peep at my lips, her clear bird-like laugh of enjoyment and triumph added visibly to my friend's mortification. A compunctious visiting stole over me, and I began to feel that I should scarce have revenged myself for what was, after all, but a kind severity. " Do you know, Job," said I (anxious to restore his self-complacency without a direct apology for my ruds- ness), "do you know there is a very deep human truth hidden in the familiar story of ' Beauty and the Beast ?' I really am of opinion, that, between the extremes of hideousness and the highest perfection of loveliness, there is no face which, after a month's intercourse, does not depend exclusively on its expression (or, in other words, on the amiable qualities of the individual) for the admiration it excites. The plainest features become handsome unaware when associated only with kind feelings, and the loveliest face disagreeable when linked with ill-humor or caprice. People should re- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 425 member this when selecting a face which they are to see every morning across the breakfast-table for the re- mainder of their natural lives." Job was appeased by the indirect compliment con- tained in this speech; and, gathering up our kibaubs, we descended to the caique, and pulling around the easternmost point of the Symplegades, bade adieu to the orient, and took the first step westward with the smile of conciliation on our lips. We were soon in the strong current of the Bospho- rus, and shot swiftly down between Europe and Asia, by the light of a sunset that seemed to brighten the west for our return. It was a golden path homeward. The east looked cold behind ; and the welcome of our far-away kinsmen seemed sent to us on those pur- pling clouds, winning us back. Beneath that kindling horizon — below that departed sun — lay the fresh and free land of our inheritance. The light of the world seemed gone over to it. These, from which the day had declined, were countries of memory — ours, of hope. The sun, that was setting on these, was dawn- ing gloriously on ours. On ordinary occasions, Job would have given me a stave of " Hail Columbia !" after such a burst of pa- triotism. The cloud was on his soul, however. "We have turned to go back,'''' he said, in a kind of musing bitterness, " and see what we are leaving be- hind ! In this fairy-shaped boat you are gliding like a dream down the Bosphorus. The curving shore of Therapia yonder is fringed for miles with the pleasure- loving inhabitants of this delicious land, who think a life too short, of which the highest pleasure is to ram- ble on the edge of these calm waters with their kins- men and children. Is there a picture in the woild more beautiful than that palace-lined shore ? Is there a city so magnificent under the sun as that in which it terminates? Are there softer skies, greener hills, simpler or better people, to live among, than these ? Oh, Philip! ours, with all its freedom, is a 'working- day' land. There is no idleness there ! The sweat is ever on the brow, the 'serpent of care' never loosened about the heart! I confess myself a worshipper of leisure : I would let no moment of my golden youth go by unrecorded with a pleasure. Toil is ungodlike, and unworthy of the immortal spirit, that should walk unchained through the world. I love these idle orien- tals. Their sliding and haste-forbidding slippers, their flowing and ungirded habiliments, are signs most ex- pressive of their joy in life. Look around, and see how on every hill-top stands a maison de plaisance ; how every hill-side is shelved into those green plat- forms,* so expressive of their habits of enjoyment! Rich or poor, their pleasures are the same. The open air, freedom to roam, a caique at the water-side, and a sairgah on the hill — these are their means of happiness, and they are within the reach of all ; they are nearer Utopia than we, my dear Philip ! We shall be more like Turks than Christians in paradise!" " Inglorious Job!" "Why? Because I love idleness? Are there braver people in the world than the Turks? Are there people more capable of the romance of heroism ? Energy, though it sound a paradox, is the child of idleness. All extremes are natural and easy; and the most indolent in peace is likely to be the most fiery in war. Here we are, opposite the summer serai of Sul- tan Mahmoud; and who more luxurious and idle? Yet the massacre of the Janissaries was one of the boldest measures in history. There is the most per- fect orientalism in the description of the Persian beauty byHafiz:— J ' Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep.' • All around Constantinople are seen what are called sair- gafts— small greensward platforms levelled in the side of a hill, and usually commanding some lovely view, intended as spots on which those who are abroad for pleasure may spread Perhaps nothing would be so contradictory as the true analysis of the character of what is called jan indolent man. With all the tastes I have just professed, my strongest feeling on leaving the Symplegades, for ex- ample, was, and is still, an unwillingness to retrace my steps. ' Onward ! onward ." is the perpetual cry of my heart. I could pass my life in going from land to land, so only that every successive one was new. Italy will be old to us ; France, Germany, can scarce lure the imagination to adventure, with the knowledge we have: and England, though we have not seen it, is so familiar to us from its universality that it will not seem, even on a first visit, a strange country. We have sa- tiety before us, and the thought saddens me. I hate J to go back. I could start now, with Maimuna for a I guide, and turn gipsy in the wilds of Asia." "Will you go with him, Maimuna?" " Signor, no!" I am the worst of story-tellers, gentle reader ; for I | never get to the end. The truth is, that in these ram- 1 bling papers, I go over the incidents I describe, not as ! they should be written in a romance, but as they oc- curred in my travels : I write what I remember. There i are, of course, long intervals in adventure, filled up , sometimes by feasting or philosophy, sometimes with idleness, or love; and, to please myself, I must un- ' weave the thread as it was woven. It is strange how, in the memory of a traveller, the most wayside and un- important things are the best remembered. You may have stood in the Parthenon, and, looking back upon , it through the distance of years, a chance word of the j companion who happened to be with you, or the atti- tude of a Greek seen in the plain below, may come up more vividly to the recollection than the immortal | sculptures on the frieze. There is a natural antipathy j in the human mind to fulfil expectations. We wander j from the thing we are told to admire, to dwell on i something we have discovered ourselves. The child ; in church occupies itself with the fly on its prayer- I book, and "the child is father of the man." If I in- | dulge in the same perversity in story-telling, dear ! reader — if, in the most important crisis of my tale, I I digress to some trifling vein of speculation — if, at the | close even, the climax seem incomplete, and the moral i vain — I plead, upon all these counts, an adherence to truth and nature. Life — real life — is made up of half- finished romance. The most interesting procession of events is delayed, and travestied, and mixed with the I ridiculous and the trifling, and at the end, oftenest left imperfect. Who ever saw, off the stage, a five-act tragedy, with its proprieties and its climax? PART III. Ten o'clock A. M., and the weather like the prophet's paradise, " Warmth without heat, and coolness without cold." Madame Josepino stood at the door of her Turco-Ital- j ian boarding-house in the nasty and fashionable main j street of Pera, dividing her attention between a hand- i some Armenian, with a red button in the top of his black lamb's-wool cap,f and her three boarders, Job, Maimuna, and myself, at that critical moment about mounting our horses for a gallop to Belgrade. their carpets. I know nothing so expressive as this of the simple and natural lives led by these gentle orientals. tThe Armenians at Constantinople are despised by the Turks, and tacily submit, like the Jews, to occupy a degraded position as a people. A few, however, are employed as in- terpreters by the embassies, and these are allowed to wear the mark of a red worsted button in the high black cap of the race — a distinction which just serves to make them the great- est possible coxcombs. 426 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. We kissed our hands to the fat and fair Italian, and with a promise to be at home for supper, kicked our shovel-shaped stirrups into the sides of our horses, and pranced away up the street, getting many a glance of curiosity, and one or two that might be more freely translated, from the dark eyes that are seen day and night at the windows of the leaden-colored houses of the Armenians. We should have been an odd-looking cavalcade for the Boulevard or Bond street, but, blessed privilege of the east ! we were sufficiently comme il faut for Pera. To avoid the embarrassment of Maimuna's sex, I had dressed her, from an English "slop-shop" at Galata, in the checked shirt, jacket, and trowsers of a sailor- boy, but as she was obstinately determined that her long black hair should not be shorn, a turban was her only resource for concealment, and the dark and glossy mass was hidden in the folds of an Albanian shawl, forming altogether as inharmonious a costume as could well be imagined. With the white duck trowsers tight over her hips, and the jacket, which was a little too large for her, loose over her shoulders and breast, the checked collar tied with a black silk cravat close round her throat, and the silken and gold fringe of the shawl flowing coquetishly over her left cheek and ear, she was certainly an odd figure on horseback, and, but for her admirable riding and excessive grace of altitude, she might have been as much a subject for a caricature as her companion. Job rode soberly along at her side, in the green turban of a Hajji (which he had persisted in wearing ever since his pilgrimage to Jerusalem), and, as he usually put it on askew, the gaillard and rakish character of his head-dress, and the grave respectability of his black coat and salt-and- pepper trowsers, produced a contrast which elicited a smile even from the admiring damsels at the win- dows. Maimuna went caracoling along till the road entered the black shadow of the cemetery of Pera, and then, pulling up her well-managed horse, she rode close to my side, with the air of subdued respect which was more fitting to the spirit of the scene. It was a lovely morning, as I said, and the Turks, who are early risers, were sitting on the graves of their kindred with their veiled wives and children, the marble turbans in that thickly-sown nekropolis less numerous than those of the living, who had come, not to mourn the dead who lay beneath, but to pass a day of idleness and pleasure on the spot endeared by their memories. " I declare to you," said Job, following Maimuna's example in waiting till I came up, " that I think the Turks the most misrepresented and abused people on earth. Look at this scene ! Here are whole families seated upon graves over which the grass grows green and fresh, the children playing at their feet, and their own faces the pictures of calm cheerfulness and enjoy- ment. They are the by-word for brutes, and there is not a gentler or more poetical race of beings between the Indus and the Arkansas !" It was really a scene of great beauty. The Turkish tombs are as splendid as white marble can make them, with letters and devices in red and gold, and often the most delicious sculptures, and, with the crowded close- ness of the monuments, the vast extent of the burial- ground over hill and dale, and the cypresses (nowhere so magnificent) veiling all in a deep religious shadow, dim, and yet broken by spots of the clearest sunshine, a more impressive and peculiar scene could scarce be imagined. It might exist in other countries, but it would be a desert. To the Mussulman death is not repulsive, and he makes it a resort when he would be happiest. At all hours of the day you find the tombs of Constantinople surrounded by the living. They spread their carpets, and arrange their simple repast around the stone which records the name and virtues of their own dead, and talk of them as they do of the living and absent — parted from them to meet again, if not in life, in paradise. " For my own part," continued Job, " I see nothing in scripture which contradicts the supposition that we shall haunt, in the intermediate state between death and heaven, the familiar places to which we have been accustomed. In that case, how delightful are the hab- its of these people, and how cheeringly vanish the hor- rors of the grave ! Death, with us, is appalling ! The smile has scarce faded from our lips, the light scarce dead in our eye, when we are thrust into a noisome vault, and thought of but with a shudder and a fear. We are connected thenceforth, in the memories of our friends, with the pestilent air in which we lie, with the vermin that infest the gloom, with dullness, with dark- ness, with disease; and, memento as it is of their own coming destiny, what wonder if they chase us, and the forecast shadows of the grave, with the same hurried disgust from their remembrance. Suppose, for an in- stant (what is by no means improbable), that the spirits of the dead are about us, conscious and watch- ful ! Suppose that they have still a feeling of sympa- thy in the decaying form they have so long inhabited, in its organs, its senses, its once-admired and long- cherished grace and proportion; that they feel the contumely and disgust with which the features we pro- fessed to love are cast like garbage into the earth, and the indecent haste with which we turn away from the solitary spot, and think of it but as the abode of fester- ing and revolting corruption !" At this moment we turned to the left, descending to the Bosphorus, and Maimuna, who had ridden a little in advance during Job's unintelligible monologue, came galloping back to tell us that there was a corpse in the road. We quickened our pace, and the next moment our horses started aside from the bier, left in a bend of the highway with a single individual, the grave-digger, sitting cross-legged beside it. Without looking up at our approach, the man mumbled something between his teeth, and held up his hand as if to arrest us in our path. "What does he say ?" I asked of Maimuna. " He repeats a verse of the Koran," she replied, " which promises a reward in paradise to him who bears the dead forty steps on its way to the grave." Job sprang instantly from his horse, threw the bridle over the nearest tombstone, and made a sign to the grave-digger that he would officiate as bearer. The man nodded assent, but looked down the road without arising from his seat. " You are but three," said Maimuna, " and he waits for a fourth." I had dismounted by this time, not to be behind my friend in the humanities of life, and the grave-digger, seeing that we were Europeans, smiled with a kind of pleased surprise, and uttering the all-expressive " Pekkhe /" resumed his look-out for the fourth bearer. The corpse was that of a poor old man. The cof- fin was without a cover, and he lay in it, in his turban and slippers, his hands crossed over his breast, and the folds of his girdle stuck full of flowers. He might have been asleep, for any look of death about him. His lips were slightly unclosed, and his long beard was combed smoothly over his breast. The odor of the pipe and the pastille struggled with the perfume of the flowers, and there was in his whole aspect a life-like- ness and peace, that the shroud and the close coffin, and the additional horrors of approaching death, per- haps, combine, in other countries, utterly to do away. " Hitherto," said Job, as he gazed attentively on the calm old man, " I have envied the Scaligers their up- lifted and airy tombs in the midst of the cheerful street of Verona, and, next to theirs, the sunny sarcophagus of Petrarch, looking away over the peaceful Campagna of Lombardy ; but here is a Turkish beggar who will INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 427 be buried still more enviably. Is it not a paradise of tombs — a kind of Utopia of the dead ?" A young man with a load of vegetables for the market of Pera, came toiling; up the hill behind his mule. Sure of his assistance, the grave-digger arose, and as we took our places at the poles, the marketer quietly turned his beast out of the road, and assisted us in lifting the dead on our shoulders. The grave was not far off, and having deposited the corpse on its border, we returned to our horses, and, soon getting clear of the cemetery, galloped away with light hearts toward the valley of Sweet Waters. II. We were taking breath on the silken banks of the Barbyses — Maimuna prancing along the pebbly bed, up to her barb's girths in sparkling water, and Job and myself laughing at her frolics from either side, when an old woman, bent double with age, came hobbling toward us from a hovel in the hill-side. " Maimuna," said Job, fishing out some trumpery paras from the corner of his waistcoat pocket, " give this to that good woman, and tell her that he who gives it is happy, and would share his joy with her." The gipsy spurred up the bank, dismounted at a short distance from the decrepit creature, and after a little conversation returned, leading her horse. " She is not a beggar, and wishes to know why you give her money ?" " Tell her, to buy bread for her children." said my patriarchal friend. Maimuna went back, conversed with her again, and returned with the money. " She says she has no need of it. There is nohuman creature between her and Allah /" The old woman hobbled on, Job pocketed his re- jected paras, and Maimuna rode between us in silence. It was a gem of natural poetry that was worthy of the lips of an angel. III. We kept up the valley of Sweet Waters, tracing the Barbyses through its bosom, to the hills ; and then mounting a steep ascent, struck across to the east, over a country, which, though so near the capital of the Turkish empire, is as wild as the plains of the Hermus. Shrubs, forest-trees, and wild grass, cover the appa- rently illimitable waste, and save a half-visible horse- path which guides the traveller across, there is scarce an evidence that you are not the first adventurer in the wilderness. What a natural delight is freedom ! What a bound gives the heart at the sight of the unfenced earth, the unseparated hill-sides, the unhedged and unharvested valleys ! How thrilling it is — unlike any other joy — to spur a fiery horse to the hill-top, and gaze away over dell and precipice to the horizon, and never a wall between, nor a human limit to say " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther !" Oh, I think we have an instinct, dulled by civilization, which is like the caged eaglet's, or the antelope's that is reared in the Arab's tent ; an instinct of nature that scorns boundary and chain ; that yearns to the free desert ; that would have the earth, like the sea or the sky, unappropriated and open ; that rejoices in immeasurable liberty of foot and dwelling-place, and springs passionately back to its freedom even after years of subduing method and spirit-breaking confinement ! I have felt it on the sea, in the forests of America, on the desolated plains of Asia and Roumelia ; I should feel it till my heart burst, had I the wings of a bird ! The house once occupied by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu stands on the descent of a hill in the little vil- lage of Belgrade, some twelve or fourteen miles from Constantinople. It is a common-place two-story affair, but the best house of the dozen that form the village, and overlooks a dell below that reminds one of the "Emerald valleys of Cashmeer." We wandered through its deserted rooms, discussed the clever wo- man who has described her travels so graphically, and then followed Maimuna to the narrow street, in search ofkibaubs. The butcher's shop in Turkey is as open as the trottoir to the street, and with only an entire sheep hanging between us and a dozen hungry beg- gars, attracted by the presence of strangers, we crossed our legs on the straw carpet, and setting the wooden tripod in the centre, waited patiently the movements of our feeder, who combined in his single person the three vocations of butcher, cook, and waiter. One must have travelled east of Cape Colonna to relish a dinner so slightly disguised, but, once rid of European prejudices, there is nothing more simple than the fact that it is rather an attractive mode of feeding — a travel- ler's appetite subauditur. Our friend was a wholesome-looking Turk, with a snow-white turban, a black, well-conditioned beard, a mouth incapable of a smile, yet honest, and a most trenchant and janissarcsque style of handling his cleaver. Having laid open his bed of coals with a , kind of conjurer's flourish of the poker, he slapped the ; pendent mutton on the thigh in a fashion of encourage- ment, and waiting an instant for our admiration to sub- ' side, he whipping his knife from its sheath, and had out J a dozen strips from the chine (as Job expressed it in ' Vermontese) " in no time." With the same alacrity these were cut into bits " of the size of a piece of chalk" (another favorite expression of Job's), run j upon a skewer, and laid on the coals, and in three I minutes, more or less, they appeared smoking on the j trencher, half lost in a fine green salad, well peppered, I and of a most seducing and provocative savor. If you have performed your four ablutions A. M., like adevout I Mussulman, it is not conceived in Turkey that you I have occasion for the medium of a fork, and I frankly own, that I might have been seen at Belgrade, cross- legged in a kibaub-shay, betwee« my friend and the gipsy, and making a most diligent use of my thumb and fore-finger. I have dined since at the Rocher de J Cancale and the Traveller's with less satisfaction. Having paid something like sixpence sterling for our three dinners (rather an overcharge, Maimuna thought), we unpicketed our horses from the long grass, and bade adieu to Belgrade, on our way to the aqueducts. We were to follow down a verdant val- \ ley, and, exhilarated by a flask of Greek wine (which ; I forgot to mention), and the ever-thrilling circum- I stances of unlimited greensward and horses that wait not for the spur, we followed the daring little Asiatic : up hill and down, over bush and precipice, till Job ; cried us mercy. We pulled up on the edge of a sheet ' of calm water, and the vast marble wall, built by the sultans in the days of their magnificence and crossing the valley from side to side, burst upon us like a scene of enchantment in the wilderness. Those same sultans must have lived a great deal at Belgrade. Save these vast aqueducts, which are splen- did monuments of architecture, there is little in the first aspect to remind you that you are not in the wilds ! of Missouri; but a further search discloses, in the re- \ cesses of the hidden windings of the valley, circular ' staircases of marble leading to secluded baths, now 1 filled with leaves and neglected, but evidently on a I scale of the most imperial sumptuousness. From the perishable construction of Turkish dwelling-houses, all traces even of the most costly serai may easily have disappeared in a few years, when once abandoned to ruin; and I pleased myself with imagining, as we slackened bridle, and rode slowly beneath the gigantic trees of the forest, the gilded pavilions, and gay scenes of oriental pleasure that must have existed here in 428 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. the days of the warlike yet effeminate Selims. It is a place for the enchantments of the "Arabian Nights" to have been realized. I have followed the common error in giving these structures in the forest of Belgrade the name of aque- ducts. They are rather walls built across the deep valleys, of different altitudes, to create reservoirs for the supply of aqueducts, but are built with all the magnificence and ornament of a facade to a temple. We rode on from one to the other, 'arriving at last at the lowest, which divides the valley at its wildest part, forming a giddy wall across an apparently bottomless ravine, as dark and impracticable as the glen of the Cauterskill in America. Our road lay on the other side, but though with a steady eye one might venture to cross the parapet on foot, there were no means of getting our horses over, short of a return of half a mile to the path we had neglected higher up the valley. We might swim it, above the embankment, but the opposite shore was a precipice. " What shall we do ?" I asked. Job made no answer, but pulled round his beast, and started off in a sober canter to return. I stood a moment, gazing on the placid sheet of water above, and the abyss of rock and darkness be- low, and then calling to Maimuna, who had ridden farther down the bank, I turned my horse's head after him. "Signore!" cried the gipsy from below. "What is it, Carissima ?" "Maimuna never goes back!" "Silly child!" I answered, "you are not going to cross the ravine ?" " Yes !" was the reply, and the voice became more indistinguishable as she galloped away. " I will be over before you!" I was vexed, but I knew the self-will and temerity of the wild Asiatic, and, very certain that if there were danger it would be run before I could reach her, I drove the stirrups into my horse's sides, and overtook Job at the descent into the valley. We as- cended again, and rod* down the opposite shore to the embankment, at a sharp gallop. Maimuna was not there. " She will have perished in the abyss," said Job. I sprang from my horse to cross the parapet on foot in search of her, when I heard her horse's footsteps, and the next moment she dashed up the steep, having failed in her attempt, and stood once more where we had parted. The sun was setting, and we had ten miles to ride, and impatient of her obstinacy, I sharply ordered her to go up the ravine at speed, and cross as we had done. I think I never shall forget, angry as I was at the moment, the appearance of that lovely creature, as she resolutely refused to obey me. Her horse, the same fiery Arabian she had ridden from Sardis (an animal that, except when she was on his back, would scarce have sold for a gold sequin), stood with head erect and panting nostrils, glancing down with his wild eyes upon the abyss into which he had been urged— the whole group, horse and rider, completely relieved against the sky from the isolated mound they occupied, and, at this instant, the gold flood of the set- ting sun pouring full on them through a break in the masses of the forest. Her own fierce attitude, and beautiful and frowning face, the thin lip curled reso- lutely, and the brown and polished cheek deepened with a rosy glow, her full and breathing bosom swell- ing beneath its jacket, and her hair, which had escaped from the turban, flowing over her neck and shoulders, and mingling with the loosened fringes of red and gold in rich disorder — it was a picture which the pencil of Martin (and it would have suited his genius) could scarce have exaggerated. The stately half Arabic, half Grecian architecture of the aqueducts, and the cold and frowning tints of the abyss and the forest around, would have left him nothing to add to it as a composition. I was crossing the giddy edge of the parapet, look- ing well to my feet, with the intention of reasoning with the obstinate being, who, vexed at my reproaches and her own failure, was now in as pretty a rage as myself, when I heard the trampling of horses in the forest. I stopped mid-way to listen, and presently there sprang a horseman up the bank in an oriental costume, with pistols and ataghan flashing in the sun, and a cast of features that at once betrayed his origin. "A Zingara!" I shouted back to Job. The gipsy, who was about nineteen, and as well- made and gallant a figure for a man as Maimuna for a woman, seemed as much astonished as ourselves, and sat in his saddle gazing on the extraordinary figure I have described, evidently recognising one of his own race, but probably puzzled with the mixture of cos- tumes, and struck at the same time with Maimuna's excessive beauty. Lovely as she always was, I had never seen her to such advantage as now. She might have come from fairy-land, for the radiant vision she seemed in the gold of that burning sunset. I gazed on them both a moment, and was about finishing my traverse of the parapet, when a troop of mounted gipsies and baggage-horses came up the bank at a quick pace, and in another minute Maimuna was surrounded. I sprang to her bridle, and apprehensive of, I scarce knew what danger, gave her one of the two pistols I carried always in my bosom. The gipsy chief (for such he evidently was) meas- ured me from head to foot with a look of dislike, and speaking for the first time, addressed Maimuna in his own language, with a remark which sent the blood to her temples with a suddenness I had never before seen. " What does he say ?" I asked. " It is no matter, signore, but it is false !" Hei black eyes were like coals of fire, as she spoke. " Leave your horse," I said to her, in a low tone, " and cross the parapet. I will prevent his following you, and will join you on your own before you can reach Constantinople. Turn the horses' heads home- ward!" I continued in English to Job, who was crying out to me from the other side to come back. Maimuna laid her hand on the pommel to dismount, but the gipsy, anticipating her motion, touched his horse with the stirrup, and sprang with a single leap between her and the parapet. The troop had gath- ered into a circle behind us, and seeing our retreat thus cut off, I presented my pistol to the young chief, and demanded, in Italian, that he should clear the way. A blow from behind, the instant that I was pulling the trigger, sent the discharged pistol into the ravine, and, in the same instant, Maimuna dashed her horse against the unguarded gipsy, nearly overturning him into the abyss, and spurred desperately upon the para- pet. One cry from the whole gipsy troop, and then all was as silent as the grave, except the click of her horse's hoofs on the marble verge, as, trembling pal- pably in every limb, the terrified animal crossed the giddy chasm at a half trot, and, in the next minute, bounded up the opposite bank, and disappeared with a snort of fear and delight amid the branches of the forest. What with horror and wonder, and the shock of the blow which had nearly broken my arm, I stood mo- tionless where Maimuna had left me, till the gipsy, re- covering from his amazement, dismounted and put his pistol to my breast. " Call her back !" he said to me, in very good Ital- ian, and with a tone in which rage and determination were strangely mingled, "or you die where you stand ! INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 429 Without regarding his threat, I looked at him, with a new thought stealing into my mind. He probably read the pacific change in my feelings, for he dropped his arm, and the frown on his own features moderated to a steadfast and inquisitive regard. '•Zingara!" I said, "Maimuna is my slave." A clutch of his pistol-stock, and a fiery and impa- tient look from his fine eyes, interrupted me for an in- stant. I proceeded to tell him briefly how I had ob- tained possession of her, while the troop gradually closed around, attracted by his excessive look of in- terest in the tale, though they probably did not under- stand the language in which I spoke, and all fixing their wild eyes earnestly on my face. " And now, Zingara," I said, "I will bring her back on one condition — that, when the offer is fairly made her, if she chooses still to go with me, she shall be free to do so. I have protected her, and sworn still to protect her as long as she should choose to eat of my bread. Though my slave, she is pure and guilt- less as when she left the tent of her mother, and is worthy of the bosom of an emperor." The Zingara took my hand, and put it to his lips. "You agree to our compact, then?" I asked. He put his hand on his forehead, and then laid it, with a slight inclination, on his breast. " She can not have gone far," I said, and stepping on the mound above the parapet, I shouted her name till the woods rang again with the echo. A moment, and Job and Maimuna came riding to the verge of the opposite hill, and with a few words of explanation, fastened their horses to a tree, and crossed to us by the parapet. The chief returned his pistols to his girdle, and Btood aside while I spoke to Maimuna. It was a diffi- cult task, but I felt that it was a moment decisive of her destiny, and the responsibility weighed heavily on my breast. Though excessively attached to her — though she had been endeared to me by sacrifices, and by the ties of protection — though, in short, I loved her, not with a passion, but with an affection — as a father more than as a lover — I still felt it to be my duty to leave no means untried to induce her to abandon me, to return to her own people and remain in her own land of the sun. What her fate would be in the state of society to which I must else introduce her, had been eloquently depicted by Job, and will readily be imagined by the reader. After the first burst of incredulity and astonishment at my proposal, she folded her arms on her bosom, and, with the tears streaming like rain over her jacket, listened in silence and with averted eyes. I conclu- ded with representing to her, in rather strong colors, the feelings with which she might be received by my friends, and the difficulty she would find in accommo- dating herself to the customs of people, to whom not only she must be inferior in the accomplishments of a woman, but who might find, even in the color of that loveliest cheek, a reason to despise her. Her lip curled for an instant, but the grief in her heart was stronger than the scorn for an imaginary wrong, and she bowed her head again, and her tears flowed on. I was silent at last, and she looked up into my face. 41 I am a burthen to you," she said. " No, dearest Maimuna ! no ! but if I were to see you wretched hereafter, you would become so. Tell me ! the chief will make you his wife ; will you re- join your people ?" She flung herself upon the ground, and wept as if her heart would break. I thought it best to let her feelings have away, and walking apart with the young gipsy, I gave him more of the particulars of her his- tory, and exacted a promise that, if she should finally be left with the troop, he would return with her to the tribe of her mother, at Sardis. Maimuna stood gazing fixedly inlo the ravine when we turned back, and there was an erectness in her at- titude, and afierte in the air of her head, that, I must acknowledge, promised more for my fears than my wishes. Her pride was roused, it was easy with half a glance to see. With the suddenness of oriental passion, the young chief had become already enamored of her, and, with a feeling of jealousy which, even though I wished him success, I could not control, I saw him kneel at her feet and plead with her in an inaudible tone. She had been less than woman if she had been insensible to that passionate cadence, and the imploring earnest- ness of the noble countenance on which she looked. It was evident that she was interested, though she began with scarce deigning to lift her eyes from the ground. 1 felt a sinking of the heart which I can not describe when he rose to his feet and left her standing alone. The troop had withdrawn at his command, and Job, to whom the scene was too painful, had recrossed the ; parapet, and stood by his horse's head waiting the re- j suit. The twilight had deepened, the forest looked black around us, and a single star sprang int& the sky, while the west was still glowing in a fast purpling gold and crimson. " Signore !" said Maimuna, walking calmly to my hand, which I stretched instinctively to receive her, " I am breaking my heart ; 1 know not what to do." At this instant a faint meteor shot over the sky, and drew its reflection across the calm mirror whose verge we were approaching. "Stay !" she cried ; " the next shall decide the fate of Maimuna ! If it cross to the east, the will of Al- lah be done ! I will leave you !" I called to the gipsy, and we stood on the verge of the parapet in breathless expectation. The darkness \ deepened around us, the abyss grew black and indis- I tinguishable, and the night-birds flitted past like audi- ble shadows. I drew Maimuna to my bosom, and with my hands buried in her long hair, pressed her to my heart, that beat as painfully and as heavily as her ! own. A sudden shriek ! She started from my bosom, and as she fell upon the earth, my eye caught, on the face of the mirror from which 1 had forgetfully withdrawn my gaze, the vanishing pencil of a meteor, drawn like a beam of the sunset, from west to east ! I lifted the insensible child, impressed one long kiss ! on her lips, and flinging her into the arms of the gipsy, I crossed the parapet, and rode, with a speed that tried I in vain to outrun my anguish, to Constantinople. TOM FANE AND I. Tom Fane's four Canadian ponies were whizzing his light phaeton through the sand at a rate that would have put spirits into anything but a lover absent from his mistress. The " heaven-kissing" pines towered on every side like the thousand and one columns of the Palseologi at Constantinople ; their flat and spreading tops shutting out the light of heaven almost as effec- tually as the world of mussulmans, mosques, kiosks, bazars, and Giaours, sustained on those innumerable capitals, darkens the subterranean wonder of Stam- boul. An American pine forest is as like a temple, and a sublime one, as any dream that ever entered into the architectural brain of the slumbering Martin. The Vankee methodists in their camp-meetings, have 430 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. but followed an irresistible instinct to worship God in the religious dimness of these interminable aisles of the wilderness. Tom Fane and I had stoned the storks together in the palace of Croesus at Sardis. We had read Anas- tasius on a mufti's tomb in the Nekropolis of Scutari. We had burned with fig-fevers in the same caravanse- rai at Smyrna. We had cooled our hot foreheads and cursed the Greeks in emulous Romaic in the dim tomb of Agamemnon at Argos. We had been grave at Paris, and merry at Rome ; and we had pic-nic'd with the beauties of the Fanar in the Valley of Sweet Waters in pleasant Roumelia ; and when, after parting in France, he had returned to England and his regi- ment, and I to New England and law, whom should I meet in a summers trip to the St. Lawrence but Captain Tom Fane of the th, quartered at the cliff-perched and doughty garrison of Quebec, and ready for any " lark" that would vary the monotony of duty ! Having eaten seven mess-dinners, driven to the falls of Montmorenci, and paid my respects to Lord Dalhousie, the hospitable and able governor of the Canadas* Quebec had no longer a temptation: and obeying a magnet, of which more anon, I announced to Fane that my traps were packed, and my heart sent on, a Vavant courier, to Saratoga. " Is she pretty ?" said Tom. "As the starry-eyed Circassian we gazed at through the grill in the slave-market at Constantinople !" — (Heaven and my mistress forgive me for the compari- son ! — but it conveyed more to Tom Fane than a folio of more respectful similitudes.) " Have you any objection to be drawn to your lady- love by four cattle that would buy the soul of Osbal- diston ?" "'Objection!' quotha?" The next morning, four double-jointed and well- groomed ponies were munching their corn in the bow of a steamer, upon the St. Lawrence, wondering pos- sibly what, in the name of Bucephalus, had set the hills and churches flying at such a rate down the river. The hills and churches came to a stand-still with the steamer opposite Montreal, and the ponies were landed and put to their mettle for some twenty miles, where they were destined to be astonished by a similar flying phenomenon in the mountains girding the lengthening waters of Lake Champlain. Landed at Ticonderoga, a few miles' trot brought them to Lake George and a third steamer, and, with a winding passage among green islands and overhanging precipices loaded like a harvest-wagon with vegetation, we made our last landing on the edge of the pine forest, where our story opens. " Well, I must object,'* says Tom, setting his whip in the socket, and edging round upon his driving-box, " I must object to this republican gravity of yours. I should take it for melancholy, did I not know it was the ' complexion' of your never-smiling countrymen." " Spare me, Tom ! ' I see a hand you can not see.' Talk to your ponies, and let me be miserable, if you love me." " For what, in the name of common sense ? Are you not within five hours of your mistress? Is not this cursed sand your natal soil ? Do not ' The pine-boughs sing Old songs with new gladness ?' and in the years that we have dangled about, ' here- and-there-ians' together, were you ever before grave, sad, or sulky ? and will you without a precedent, and you a lawyer, inflict your stupidity upon me for the first time in this waste, and being-less solitude ? Half an hour more of the dread silence of this forest, and it will not need the horn of Astolpho to set me irre- mediably mad !" " If employment will save your wits, you may in- vent a scheme for marrying the son of a poor gentle- man to the ward of a rich trader in rice and molas- ses." " The programme of our approaching campaign, I presume ?" " Simply." " Is the lady willing ?" " I would fain believe so." " Is Mr. Popkins unwilling ?" "As the most romantic lover could desire." "And the state of the campaign ?" " Why, thus : Mr. George Washington Jefferson Frump, whom you have irreverently called Mr. Pop- kins, is sole guardian to the daughter of a dead West Indian planter, of whom he was once the agent. I fell in love with Kate Lorimer from description, when she was at school with my sister, saw her by favor of a garden-wall, and after the usual vows — " " Too romantic for a Yankee, by half!" " — Proposed by letter to Mr. Frump." " Oh, bathos !" " He refused me." " Because " "Imprimis, I was not myself in the 'sugar line,' and in secundis, my father wore gloves and ' did nothing for a living' — two blots in the eyes of Mr. Frump, which all the waters of Niagara would never wash from my escutcheon." "And what the devil hindered you from running ofl' with her ?" " Fifty shares in the Manhattan Insurance Compa- ny, a gold mine in Florida, Heaven knows how many hogsheads of treacle, and a million of acres on the banks of the Missouri." " 'Pluto's flame-colored daughter' defend us ! what a living El Dorado !" "All of which she forfeits if she marries without old Frump's consent." " I see — I see ! And this Io and her Argus are now drinking the waters at Saratoga ?" "Even so." "I'll bet you my four-in-hand to a sonnet, that I get her for you before the season is over." " Money and all ?" " Mines, molasses, and Missouri acres !" "And if you do, Tom, I'll give you a team of Vir- ginian bloods that would astonish Ascot, and throw you into the bargain a forgiveness for riding over me with your camel on the banks of the Hermus." " Santa Maria ! do you remember that spongy foot stepping over your frontispiece ? I had already cast my eyes up to Mont Sypilus to choose a clean niche for you out of the rock-hewn tombs of the kings of Lydia. I thought you would sleep with Alyattis, Phil !" We dashed on through dark forest and open clear- ing, through glens of tangled cedar and wild vine, over log bridges, corduroy marshes, and sand hills, till, tow- ard evening, a scattering shanty or two, and an occa- sional sound of a woodman's axe, betokened our vi- cinity to Saratoga. A turn around a clump of tall pines brought us immediately into the broad street of the village, and the flaunting shops, the overgrown, un- sightly hotels, riddled with windows like honeycombs, the fashionable idlers out for their evening lounge to the waters, the indolent smokers on the colonnades, and the dusty and loaded coaches driving from door to door in search of lodgings, formed the usual evening picture of the Bath of America. As it was necessary to Tom's plan that my arrival at Saratoga should not be known, he pulled up at a small tavern at the entrance of the street, and drop- ping me and my baggage, drove on to Congress Hall, with my best prayers, and a letter of introduction to my sister, whom I had left on her way to the Springs INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 431 with a party at my departure for Montreal. Unwil- ling to remain in such a tantalising vicinity, I hired a chaise the next morning, ana despatching a note to Tom, drove to seek a retreat at Barhydt's — a spot that can not well be described in the tail of a paragraph. Herr Barhydt is an old Dutch settler, who, till the mineral springs of Saratoga were discovered some five miles from his door, was buried in the depth of a forest solitude, unknown to all but the prowling Indian. The sky is supported above him (or looks to be) by a wil- derness of straight, columnar pine shafts, gigantic in girth, and with no foliage except at the top, where they branch out like round tables spread for a banquet in the clouds. A small ear-shaped lake, sunk as deep into the earth as the firs shoot above it, black as Ere- bus in the dim shadow of its hilly shore and the ob- structed light of the trees that nearly meet over it, and clear and unbroken as a mirror, save the pearl-spots of the thousand lotuses holding up their cups to the blue eye of heaven that peers through the leafy vault, sleeps beneath his window ; and around him, in the forest, lies, still unbroken, the elastic and brown carpet of the faded pine tassels, deposited in yearly layers since the continent rose from the flood, and rooted a foot beneath the surface to a rich mould that would fatten the Sympleglades to a flower-garden. With his black tarn well stocked with trout, his bit of a farm in the clearing near by, and an old Dutch bible, Herr Barhydt lived a life of Dutch musing, talked Dutch to his geese and chickens, sung Dutch psalms to the echoes of the mighty forest, and, except on his far- between visits to Albany, which grew rarer and rarer as the old Dutch inhabitants dropped faster away, saw never a white human face from one maple-blossoming to another. A roving mineralogist tasted the waters of Saratoga, and, like the work of a lath-and-plaster Aladdin, up sprung a thriving village around the fountain's lip, and hotels, tin tumblers, and apothecaries, multiplied in the usual proportion to each other, but out of all prece- dent, with everything else for rapidity. Libraries, newspapers, churches, livery stables, and lawyers, fol- lowed in their train ; and it was soon established, from the plams of Abraham to the savannahs of Alabama, that no person of fashionable taste or broken constitu- tion could exist through the months of July and Au- gust without a visit to the chalybeate springs and pop- ulous village of Saratoga. It contained seven thou- sand inhabitants before Herr Barhydt, living in his wooded seclusion only five miles off, became aware of its existence. A pair of lovers, philandering about the forest on horseback, popped in upon him one June morning, and thenceforth there was no rest for the soul of the Dutchman. Everybody rode down to eat his trout and make love in the dark shades of his mir- rored lagoon ; and at last, in self-defence, he added a room or two to his shanty, enclosed his cabbage-gar- den, and put a price upon his trout-dinners. The traveller now-a-days who has not dined at Barhydt's with his own champagne cold from the tarn, and the white-headed old settler " gargling" Dutch about the house, in his manifold vocation of cook, ostler, and waiter, may as well not have seen Niagara. Installed in the back-chamber of the old man's last addition to his house, with Barry Cornwall and Elia (old fellow-travellers of mine), a rude chair, a ruder, but clean bed, and a troop of thoughts so perpetually from home, that it mattered very little what was the complexion of anything about me, I waited Tom's op- erations with a lover's usual patience. Barhydt's visit- ers seldom arrived before two or three o'clock, and the long, soft mornings, quiet as a shadowy Elysium on the rim of that ebon lake, were as solitary as a melancholy man could desire. Didst thou but know, oh ! gentle Barry Cornwall ! how gratefully thou hast been read and mused upon in those dim and whispering aisles of the forest, three thousand and more miles from thy smoky whereabout, methinks it would warm up the flush of pleasure around thine eyelids, though the " golden-tressed Adelaide" were waiting her good- night kisses at thy knee ! I could stand it no longer. On the second evening of my seclusion, I made bold to borrow old Barhydt's superannuated roadster, and getting up the steam with infinite difficulty in his rickety engine, higgled away, with a pace to which I could not venture to affix a name, to the gay scenes of Saratoga. It was ten o'clock when I dismounted at the stable in Congress Hall, and, giving dcr Teufel, as the old man ambitiously styled his steed, to the hands of the ostler, stole round through the garden to the eastern colonnade. I feel called upon to describe " Congress Hall." Some fourteen or fifteen millions of white gentlemen and ladies consider that wooden and windowed Baby- I Ion as the proper palace of Delight — a sojourn to be sighed for, and sacrificed for, and economized for — the birthplace of Love, the haunt of Hymen, the arena ! of fashion — a place without which a new lease of life j were valueless — for which, if the conjuring cap of King | Erricus itself could not furnish a season ticket, it might lie on a lady's toilet as unnoticed as a bride's " ! night-cap a twelvemonth after marriage. I say to my- self, sometimes, as I pass the window at White's, and see a worldsick worldling with the curl of satiety and disgust on his lip, wondering how the next hour will come to its death, " If you but knew, my friend, what a campaign of pleasure you are losing in America — what belles than the bluebell slighter and fairer — what hearts than the dewdrops fresher and clearer — are liv- ing their pretty hour, like gems undived for in the ocean — what loads of foliage, what Titans of trees, what glorious wildernesses of rocks and waters, are lavishing their splendors on the clouds that sail over them, and all within the magic circle of which Con- gress Hall is the centre, and which a circling dove would measure to get an appetite for his breakfast — if you but knew this, my lord, as I know it, you would not be gazing so vacantly on the steps of Crockford's, nor consider « the graybeard' such a laggard in his hours !" Congress Hall is a wooden building, of which the size and capacity could never be definitely ascertained. It is built on a slight elevation, just above the strongly- impregnated spring whose name it bears, with little at- tempt at architecture, save a spacious and vine-covered colonnade, serving as a promenade on either side, and two wings, the extremities of which are lost in the dis- tance. A relic or two of the still-astonished forest towers above the chimneys, in the shape of a melan- choly group of firs ; and, five minutes' walk from the door, the dim old wilderness stands looking down on the village in its primeval grandeur, like the spirits of the wronged Indians, whose tracks are scarce vanished from the sand. In the strength of the summer sol- stice, from five hundred to a thousand people dine to- gether at Congress Hall, and after absorbing as many bottles of the best wines of the world, a sunset prome- nade plays the valve to the sentiment thus generated, and, with a cup of tea, the crowd separates to dress for the nightly ball. There are several other hotels in the village, equally crowded and equally spacious, and the ball is given alternately at each. Congress i Hall is the " crack" place, however, and I expect that | Mr. Westcott, the obliging proprietor, will give me the preference of rooms, on my next annual visit, for this just and honorable mention. The dinner-tables were piled into an orchestra, and | draped with green baize and green wreaths, the floor of the immense hall was chalked with American flags and the initials of all the heroes of the Revolution, and the band were playing a waltz in a style that made 432 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. the candles quiver, and the pines tremble audibly in their tassels. The ballroom was on the ground floor, and the colonnade upon the garden side was crowded with spectators, a row of grinning black fellows edging the cluster of heads at every window, and keeping time with their hands and feet in the irresistible sym- pathy of their music-»loving natures. Drawing my hat over my eyes, I stood at the least-thronged window, and concealing my face in the curtain, waited impa- tiently for the appearance of the dancers. The bevy in the drawing-room was sufficiently strong at last, and the lady patronesses, handed in by a state governor or two, and here and there a member of congress, achieved the entree with their usual intre- pidity. Followed beaux and followed belles. Such belles ! Slight, delicate, fragile-looking creatures, ele- gant as Retzsch's angels, warm-eyed as Mohammedan houries, yet timid as the antelope whose hazel orbs they eclipse, limbed like nothing earthly except an American woman — I would rather not go on ! When I speak of the beauty of my countrywomen, my heart swells. I do believe the New World has a newer mould for its mothers and daughters. I think I am not prejudiced. I have been years away. I have sighed in France ; I have loved in Italy ; I have bar- gained for Circassians in an eastern bezestein, and I have lounged at Howell and James's on a sunny day in the season ; and my eye is trained, and my percep- tions quickened : but I do think (honor bright ! and Heath's " Book of Beauty" forgiving me) that there is no such beautiful work of God under the arch of the sky as an American girl in her bellehood. Enter Tom Fane in a Stultz coat and Sparding tights, looking as a man who had been the mirror of Bond street might be supposed to look, a thousand leagues from his club-house. She leaned on his arm. I had never seen her half so lovely. Fresh and calm from the seclusion of her chamber, her transparent cheek was just tinged with the first mounting blood, from the excitement of lights and music. Her lips were slightly parted, her fine-lined eyebrows were arched with a girlish surprise, and her ungloved arm lay carelessly and confidingly within his, as white, round, and slender, as if Canova had wrought it in Parian for his Psyche. If you have never seen a beauty of northern blood nurtured in a southern clime, the cold fairness of her race warmed up as if it had been steeped in some golden sunset, and her deep blue eye darkened and filled with a fire as unnaturally re- splendent as the fusion of crysoprase into a diamond, and if you have never known the corresponding con- trast in the character, the intelligence and constancy of the north kindling with the enthusiasm and impulse, the passionateness and the abandon of a more burning latitude — you have seen nothing, let me insinuate, thougli you " have been i' the Indies twice," that could give you an idea of Kate Lorimer. She waltzed, and then Tom danced with my sister, and then, resigning her to another partner, he offered his arm again to Miss Lorimer, and left the ballroom with several other couples for a turn in the fresh air of the colonnade. I was not jealous, but I felt un- pleasantly at his returning to her so immediately. He was the handsomest man, out of all comparison, in the room, and he had dimmed my star too often in our rambles in Europe and Asia, not to suggest a thought, at least, that the same pleasant eclipse might occur in our American astronomy. I stepped off the colonnade, and took a turn in the garden. Those "children of eternity," as Walter Savage Landor poetically calls " the breezes," performed their soothing ministry upon my temples, and I replaced Tom in my confidence with an heroic effort, and turned back. A swing hung between two gigantic pines, just under the balustrade, and flinging myself into the cush- ioned seat, I abandoned myself to the musings natural to a person " in my situation." The sentimentalizing promenaders lounged backward and forward above me, and not hearing Tom's drawl among them, I presumed he had returned to the ballroom. A lady and gentle- man, walking in silence, stopped presently, and leaned upon the railing opposite the swing. They stood a moment, looking into the dim shadow of the pine- grove, and then a voice, that I knew better than my own, remarked in a low and silvery tone upon the beauty of the night. She was not answered, and after a moment's pause, as if resuming a conversation that had been interrupted, she turned very earnestly to her companion, and asked, "Are you sure, quite sure, that you could venture to marry without a fortune ?" " Quite, dear Miss Lorimer !" I started from the swing, but before the words of execration that rushed choking from my heart could struggle to my lips, they had mingled with the crowd and vanished. I strode down the garden-walk in a phrensy of pas- sion. Should I call him immediately to account ? Should I rush into the ballroom and accuse him of his treachery to her face ? Should I drown myself in old Barhydt's tarn, or join an Indian tribe, and make war upon the whites ? Or should I — could I — be mag- nanimous — and write him a note immediately, offering to be his groomsman at the wedding ? I stepped into the punch-room, asked for pen, ink, and paper, and indited the following note : — " Dear Tom : If your approaching nuptials are to be sufficiently public to admit of a groomsman, you will make me the happiest of friends by selecting me for that office. " Yours ever truly, " Phil." Having despatched it to his room, I flew to the stable, roused der Teufcl, who had gathered up his legs in the straw for the night, flogged him furiously out of the village, and giving him the rein as he entered the for- est, enjoyed the scenery in the humor of mad old Hie- ronymo in the Spanish tragedy — " the moon dark, the stars extinct, the winds blowing, the owls shrieking, the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock striking twelve !" Early the next day Tom's "tiger" dismounted at Barhydt's door, with an answer to my note, as fol- lows : — " Dear Phil : The devil must have informed you of a secret I supposed safe from all the world. Be as- sured I should have chosen no one but yourself to support me on the occasion ; and however you have discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for your generous consent. I expected no less from your noble nature. " Yours devotedly, " Tom. " P. S. — I shall endeavor to be at Barhydt's, with materials for the fifth act of our comedy, to-morrow morning." " « Comedy !' call you this, Mr. Fane ?" I felt my heart turn black as I threw down the letter. After a thousand plans of revenge formed and abandoned — borrowing old Barhydt's rifles, loading them deliber- ately, and discharging them again into the air — I flung myself exhausted on the bed, and reasoned myself back to my magnanimity. I would be his groomsman ! It was a morning like the burst of a millennium on the world. I felt as if 1 should never forgive the birds for their mocking enjoyment of it. The wild heron swung up fro-m the reeds, the lotuses shook out their dew into the lake as the breeze stirred ihem, and the INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 433 senseless old Dutchman sat fishing in his canoe, sing- ing one of his unintelligible psalms to a quick measure that half maddened me. I threw myself upon the yielding floor of pine-tassels on the edge of the lake, and with the wretched school philosophy, " Si gravis est, brevis est," endeavored to put down the tempest of my feelings. A carriage rattled over the little bridge, mounted the ascent rapidly, and brought up at Barhydt's door. " Phil !" shouted Tom, " Phil !" I gulped down a choking sensation in my throat, and rushed up the bank to him. A stranger was dismount- ing from his horse. " Quick !" said Tom, shaking my hand hurriedly — " there is no time to lose. Out with your inkhorn, Mr. Poppletree, and have your papers signed while I tie up my ponies." " What is this, sir ?" said I, starting back as the stranger deliberately presented me with a paper, in which my own name was written in conspicuous let- ters. The magistrate gazed at me with a look of aston- ishment. " A contract of marriage, I think, between Mr. Philip Slingsby and Miss Katherine Lorimer, spin- ster. Are you the gentleman named in that instrument, sir?" At this moment my sister, leading the blushing girl by the hand, came and threw her arms about my neck, and drawing her within my reach, ran oft" and left us together. There are some pure moments in this life that de- scription would only profane. We were married by the village magistrate in that magnificent sanctuary of the forest, old Barhydt and his lotuses the only indifferent witnesses of vows as passionate as ever trembled upon human lips. I had scarce pressed her to my heart and dashed the tears from my eyes, when Fane, who had looked more at my sister than at the bride during the ceremony, left her suddenly, and thrusting a roll of parchment into my pocket, ran off to bring up his ponies. I was on the way to Saratoga, a married man, and my bride on the seat beside me, before I had recovered from my astonishment. " Pray," said Tom, " if it be not an impertinent question, and you can find breath in your ecstasies, how did you find out that your sister had done me the honor to accept the offer of my hand ?" The resounding woods rung with his unmerciful laughter at the explanation. " And pray," said I, in my turn, " if it is not an im- pertinent question, and you can find a spare breath in your ecstasies, by what magic did you persuade old Frump to trust his ward and her title-deeds in your treacherous keeping ?" " It is a long story, my dear Phil, and I will give you die particulars when you pay me the ' Virginia bloods' you wot of. Suffice it for the present, that Mr. Frump believes Mr. Tom Fane (alias Jacob Phipps, Esq., sleeping partner of a banking-house at Liverpool) to be the accepted suitor of his fair ward. In his extreme delight at seeing her in so fair a way to marry into a bank, he generously made her a present of her own fortune, signed over his right to control it by a docu- ment in your possession, and will undergo as agreeable a surprise in about five minutes as the greatest lover of excitement could desire." The ponies dashed on. The sandy ascent by the Pavilion Spring was surmounted, and in another min- ute we were at the door of Congress Hall. The last straj^lers from the breakfast-table were lounging down the colonnade, and old Frump sat reading the newspa- per under the portico. " Aha ! Mr. Phipps," said he, as Tom drove up — " back so soon, eh ? Why, I thought you and Kitty would be billing it till dinner-time !" 28 " Sir !" said Tom, very gravely, " you have the hon- or of addressing Captain Thomas Fane, of his majesty's — -th Fusileers ; and whenever you have a moment's leisure, I shall be happy to submit to your perusal a certificate of the marriage of Miss Katherine Lorimer to the gentleman I have the pleasure to present to you. Mr. Frump, Mr. Slingsby !" At the mention of my name, the blood in Mr. Frump's ruddy complexion turned suddenly to the color of the Tiber. Poetry alone can express the feeling pictured in his countenance : — " If every atom of a dead man's flesh Should creep, each one with a particular life, Yet all as cold as ever — 'twas just so : Or had it drizzled needle-points of frost, Upon a feverish head made suddenly bald.'' George Washington Jefferson Frump, Esq., left Congress Hall the same evening, and has since ungra- ciously refused an invitation to Captain Fane's wedding — possibly from his having neglected to invite him on a similar occasion at Saratoga. This last, however, I am free to say, is a gratuitous supposition of my own. LARKS IN VACATION. CHAPTER I. DRIVING STANHOPE PRO TEM. In the edge of a June evening in the summer vaca- tion of 1827, I was set down by the coach at the gate of my friend Horace Van Pelt's paternal mansion — a large, old-fashioned, comfortable Dutch house, cling- ing to the side of one of the most romantic dells on the North river. In the absence of his whole family on the summer excursion to the falls and lakes (taken by almost every " well-to-do" citizen of the United States), Horace was emperor of the long-descended, and as progressively enriched domain of one of the earliest Dutch settlers — a brief authority which he ex- ercised more particularly over an extensive stud, and bins number one and two. The west was piled with gold castles, breaking up the horizon with their burnished pinnacles and turrets, the fragrant dampness of the thunder-shower that had followed the heat of noon was in the air, and in a low room, whose floor opened out so exactly upon the shaven sward, that a blind man would not have known when he passed from the heavily-piled carpet to the grass, I found Horace sitting over his olives and claret, having waited dinner for me till five (long beyond the latest American hour), and, in despair of my arrival, having dined without me. The old black cook was too happy to vary her vocation by getting a second dinner ; and when I had appeased my appetite, and overtaken my friend in his claret, we sat with the moonlight breaking across a vine at our feet, and cof- fee worthy of a filagree cup in the Bezestein, and de- bated, amid a true embarras des richesses, our plans for the next week's amusement. The seven days wore on, merrily at first, but each succeeding one growing less merry than the last. By the fifth eve of my sojourn, we had exhausted variety. All sorts of headaches and megrims in the morning, all sorts of birds, beasts, and fishes, for dinner, all sorts of accidents in all sorts of vehicles, left us on the sev- enth day out of sorts altogether. We were two dis- contented Rasselasesin the Happy Valley. Rejoicing as we were in vacation, it would have been a relief to have had a recitation to read up, or a prayer-lull to mark the time. Two idle sophomores in a rambling, 434 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. lonely old mansion, were, we discovered, a very insuf- ficient dramatis persons for the scene. It was Saturday night. A violent clap of thunder had interrupted some daring theory of Van Pelt's on the rising of champagne-bubbles, and there we sat, mum and melancholy, two sated Sybarites, silent an hour by the clock. The mahogany was bare between us. Any number of glasses and bottles stood in their lees about the table ; the thrice-fished juice of an olive-dish and a solitary cigar in a silver case had been thrust aside in a warm argument, and, in his father's sacred gout-chair, buried to the eyes in his loosened cravat, one leg on the table, and one somewhere in the neighborhood of my own, sat Van Pelt, the eidolon of exhausted amusement. " Phil !" said he, starting suddenly to an erect posi- tion, " a thought strikes me !" I dropped the claret-cork, from which I was at the moment trying to efface the " Margaux" brand, and sat in silent expectation. I had thought his brains as well evaporated as the last bottle of champagne. He rested his elbows on the table, and set his chin between his two palms. " I'll resign the keys of this mournful old den to the butler, and we'll go to Saratoga for a week. What say ?" " It would be a reprieve from death by inanition," I answered, " but, as the rhetorical professor would phrase it, amplify your meaning, young gentleman." " Thus : To-morrow is Sunday. We will sleep till Monday morning to purge our brains of these cloudy vapors, and restore the freshness of our complexions. If a fair day, you shall start alone in the stanhope, and on Monday night sleep in classic quarters at Titus's in Troy." " And you !" I' interrupted, rather ■astonished at his arrangement for one. Horace laid his hand on his pocket with a look of embarrassed care. " I will overtake you with the bay colts in the drosky, but I must first go to Albany. The circula- ting medium — " " I understand." II. We met on Monday morning in the breakfast-room in mutual spirits. The sun was two hours high, the birds in the trees were wild with the beauty and elas- ticity of the day, the dew glistened on every bough, and the whole scene, over river and hill, was a heaven of natural delight. As we finished our breakfast, the light spattering of a horse's feet up the avenue, and the airy whirl of quick-following wheels, announced the stanhope. It was in beautiful order, and what would have been termed on any pave in the world a tasteful turn-out. Light cream-colored body, black wheels and shafts, drab lining edged with green, dead- black harness, light as that on the panthers of Bac- chus—it was the last style of thing you would have looked for at the " stoup" of a Dutch homestead. And Tempest ! I think I see him now ! — his small in- quisitive ears, arched neck, eager eye, and fine, thin nostril— his dainty feet flung out with the grace' of a flaunted riband — his true and majestic action and his spirited champ of the bit, nibbling at the tight rein with the exciting pull of a hooked trout — how evenly he drew !— how insensibly the compact stanhope, just touching his iron-gray tail, bowled along on the road after him ! Horace was behind with the drosky and black boy, and with a parting nod at the gate, I turned north- ward, and Tempest took the road in beautiful style. I do not remember to have been ever so elated. I was always of the Cyrenaic philosophy that " happiness is motion," and the bland vitality of the air had refined my senses. The delightful feel of the reins thrilled me to the shoulder. Driving is like any other appetite, dependant for the delicacy of its enjoyment on the system, and a day's temperate abstinence, long sleep, and the glorious perfection of the morning, had put my nerves " in condition." I felt the air as I rushed through. The power of the horse was added to my consciousness of enjoyment, and if you can imagine a centaur with a harness and stanhope added to his liv- ing body, I felt the triple enjoyment of animal exer- cise which would then be his. It is delightful driving on the Hudson. The road is very fair beneath your wheels, the river courses away under the bold shore with the majesty inseparable from its mighty flood, and the constant change of out- line in its banks gives you, as you proceed, a constant variety of pictures, from the loveliest to the most sub- lime. The eagle's nest above you at one moment, a sunny and fertile farm below you at the next — rocks, trees, and waterfalls, wedded and clustered as, it seems to me, they are nowhere else done so pictu- resquely — it is a noble river, the Hudson ! And every few minutes, while you gaze down upon the broad waters spreading from hill to hill like a round lake, a gayly-painted steamer with her fringed and white awn- ings and streaming flag, shoots out as if from a sudden cleft in the rock, and draws across it her track of foam. Well — I bowled along. Ten o'clock brought me to a snug Dutch tavern, where I sponged Tempest's mouth and nostrils, lunched and was stared at by the natives, and continuing my journey, at one I loosed rein and clashed into the pretty village of , Tem- pest in a foam, and himself and his extempore master creating a great sensation in a crowd of people, who stood in the shade of the verandah of the hotel, as if that asylum for the weary traveller had been a shop for the sale of gentlemen in shirt-sleeves. Tempest was taken round to the " barn," and I or- dered rather an elaborate dinner, designing still to go on some ten miles in the cool of the evening, and hav- ing, of course, some mortal hours upon my hands. The cook had probably never heard of more than three dishes in her life, but those three were garnished with all manner of herbs, and sent up in the best china as a warranty for an unusual bill, and what with coffee, a small glass of new rum as an apology for a chasse cafe, and a nap in a straight-backed chair, I killed the enemy to my satisfaction till the shadows of the poplars lengthened across the barnyard. I was awoke by Tempest, prancing round to the door in undiminished spirits ; and as I had begun the day en grand seigneur, I did not object to the bill, which considerably exceeded the outside of my calcu- lation, but giving the landlord a twenty-dollar note, received the change unquestioned, doubled the usual fee to the ostler, and let Tempest off with a bend for- ward which served at the same time for a gracious bow to the spectators. So remarkable a coxcomb had prob- ably not been seen in the village since the passing of Cornwallis's army. The day was still hot, and as I got into the open country, I drew rein and paced quietly up hill and down, picking the road delicately, and in a humor of thoughtful contentment, trying my skill in keeping the edges of the green sod as it leaned in and out from the walls and ditches. With the long whip I now and then touched the wing of a sulphur butterfly hovering over a pool, and now and then I stopped and gathered a violet from the unsunned edge of the wood. I had proceeded three or four miles in this way, when I was overtaken by three stout fellows, gallop- ing at speed, who rode past and faced round with a peremptory order to me to stop. A formidable pitch- fork in the hand of each horseman left me no alterna- tive. I made up my mind immediately to be robbed INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 435 quietly of my own personals, but to show fight, if ne- cessary, for Tempest and the stanhope. " Well, gentlemen," said I, coaxing my impatient horse, who had been rather excited by the clatter of hoofs behind him, " what is the meaning of this ?" Before I could get an answer, one of the fellows had dismounted and given his bridle to another, and coming round to the left side, he sprang suddenly into the stanhope. I received him as he rose with a well- placed thrust of my heel which sent him back into the road, and with a chirrup to Tempest, I dashed through the phalanx and took the road at a top speed. The short lash once waved round the small ears before me, there was no stopping in a hurry, and away sped the gallant gray, and fast behind followed my friends in their short sleeves, all in a lathering gallop. A couple of miles was the work of no time, Tempest laying his legs to it as if the stanhope had been a cobweb at his heels ; but at the end of that distance there came a sharp descent to a mill-stream, and I just remember an unavoidable milestone and a jerk over a wall, and the next minute, it seemed to me, I was in the room where I had dined, with my hands tied, and a hundred people about me. My cool white waistcoat was mat- ted with mud, and my left temple was, by the glass opposite me, both bloody and begrimed. The opening of my eyes was a signal for a closer gathering around me, and between exhaustion and the close air I was half suffocated. I was soon made to understand that I was a prisoner, and that the three white-frocked highwaymen, as I took them to be, were amoiiir the spectators. On a polite application to the landlord, who, I found out, was a justice of the peace as well, I was informed that he had made out my mit- timus as a counterfeiter, and that the spurious note I had passed upon him for my dinner was safe in his possession ! He pointed at the same time to a placard newly stuck against the wall, offering a reward for the apprehension of a notorious practiser of my supposed craft, to the description of whose person I answered, to the satisfaction of all present. Quite too indignant to remonstrate, I seated myself in the chair considerately offered me by the waiter, and listening to the whispers of the persons who were still permitted to throng the room, I discovered, what might have struck me before, that the initials on the panel of the stanhope and the handle of the whip had been compared with the card pasted in the bottom of my hat, and the want of correspondence was taken as decided corroboration. It was remarked also by a by- stander that I was quite too much of a dash for an honest man, and that he had suspected me from first seeing me drive into the village ! I was sufficiently humbled by this time to make an inward vow never again to take airs upon myself if I escaped the county jail. The justice meanwhile had made out my orders, and a horse and cart had been provided to take me to the next town. I endeavored to get speech of his worship as I was marched out of the inn parlor, but the crowd pressed close upon my heels, and the digni- tary-landlord seemed anxious to rid his house of me. j I had no papers, and no proofs of my character, and j assertion went for nothing. Besides, I was muddy, I and my hat was broken in on one side, proofs of vil- | lany which appeal to the commonest understanding, j I begged for a little straw in the bottom of the cart, j and had made myself as comfortable as my two rustic ] constables thought fitting for a culprit, when the vehi- cle was quickly ordered from the door to make away for a carriage coming at a dashing pace up the road. It was Van Pelt in his drosky. Horace was well known on the road, and the stan- hope had already been recognised as his. By this time it was deep in the twilight, and though he was in- stantly known by the landlord, he might be excused for not so readily identifying the person of his friend in the damaged gentleman in the straw. " Ay, ay! I see you don't know him," said the land- lord, while Van Pelt surveyed me rather coldly ; " on with him, constables ! he wouid have us believe you knew him, sir! walk in, Mr. Van Pelt ! Ostler, look to Mr. Van Pelt's horses ! Walk in, sir !" " Stop !" I cried out in a voice of thunder, seeing that Horace really had not looked at me, " Van Pelt ! stop, I say !" The driver of the cart seemed more impressed by the energy of my cries than my friends the constables, and pulled up his horse. Some one in the crowd cried out that I should have a hearing or he would " wallup the comitatus," and the justice, called back by this ex- pression of an opinion from the sovereign people, re- quested his new guest to look at the prisoner. I was preparing to have my hands untied, yet feel- ing so indignant at Van Pelt for not having recognised me that I would not look at him, when, to my surprise, the horse started off once more, and looking back, I saw my friend patting the neck of his near horse, evi- dently not having thought it worth his while to take any notice of the justice's observation. Choking with rage, I flung myself down upon the straw, and jolted on without further remonstrance to the county town. I had been incarcerated an hour when Van Pelt's voice, half angry with the turnkey and half ready to burst into a laugh, resounded outside. He had not heard a word spoken by the officious landlord, till after the cart had been some time gone. Even then, be- lieving it to be a cock-and-bull story, he had quietly dined, and it was only on going into the yard to see after his horses that he recognised the debris of his stanhope. The landlord's apologies, when we returned to the inn, were more amusing to Van Pelt than consolatory to Philip Slingsby. CHAPTER II. SARATOGA SPRINGS. Jt was about seven o'clock of a hot evening when Van Pelt's exhausted horses toiled out from the Pine Forest, and stood, fetlock deep in sand, on the brow of the small hill overlooking the muslnoom village of Saratoga. One or two straggling horsemen were re- turning late from their afternoon ride, and looked at us, as they passed on their fresher hacks, with the cu- riosity which attaches to new-comers in a watering- place ; here and there a genuine invalid, who had come to the waters for life, not for pleasure, took ad- vantage of the coolness of the hour and crept down the foot-path to the Spring ; and as Horace encour- aged his flagging cattle into a trot to bring up gal- lantly at the door of " Congress Hall," the great bell of that vast caravanserai resounded through the dusty air, and by the shuffling of a thousand feet, audible as we approached, we knew that the fashionable world of Saratoga were rushing down, en ?nasse, " to lea." Having driven through a sand-cloud for the prece- ding three hours, and, to say nothing of myself, Van Pelt being a man, who, in his character as the most considerable beau of the University, calculated his first impression, it was not thought advisable to encounter, uncleansed, the tide of fashion at that moment stream- ing through the hall. We drove round to the side- door, and gained our pigeon-hole quarters under cover of the back-staircase. The bachelors' wing of Congress Hall is a long, uti- slightly, wooden barrack, divided into chambers six feet by four, and of an airiness of partition which enables 436 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. the occupant to converse with his neighbor three rooms off, with the ease of clerks calling out entries to the leger across the desks of a counting-house. The clatter of knives and plates came up to our ears in a confused murmur, and V an Pelt having refused to dine at the only inn upon the route, for some reason best known to himself, I commenced the progress of a long toilet with an appetite not rendered patient by the sounds of cheer below. I had washed the dust out of my eyes and mouth, and, overcome with heat and hunger, I knotted a cool cravat loosely round my neck, and sat down in the one chair. " Van Pelt !" I shouted. " Well, Phil !" " Are you dressed ?" " Dressed ! I am as pinguid as a pate foie gras — greased to the eyelids in cold cream !" I took up the sixpenny glass and looked at my own newly-washed physiognomy. From the temples to the chin it was one unmitigated red — burned to a blister with the sun ! I had been obliged to deluge my head like a mop to get out the dust, and not naturally re- markable for my good looks, I could, much worse than Van Pelt, afford these startling additions to my disad- vantages. Hunger is a subtle excuse-finder, however, and, remembering there were five hundred people in this formidable crowd, and all busy with satisfying their appetites, I trusted to escape observation, and deter- mined to " go down to tea." With the just-named number of guests, it will easily be understood why it is impossible to obtain a meal at Congress Hall, out of the stated time and place. In a white roundabout, a checked cravat, my hair plastered over my eyes a la Mawivorm, and a face like the sign of the " Rising Sun," 1 stopped at Van Pelt's door. " The most hideous figure my eyes ever looked upon !" was his first consolatory observation. " Handsome, or hideous," I answered, " I'll not starve! So here goes for some bread and butter!" and leaving him to his "appliances," I descended to the immense hall which serves the comers to Saratoga, for dining, dancing, and breakfasting, and in wet weather, between meals, for shuttlecock and promenading. Two interminable tables extended down the hall, filled by .all the beauty and fashion of the United States. Luckily, I thought, for me, there are distinctions in this republic of dissipation, and the upper end is reserved for those who have servants to turn down the chairs and stand over them. The end of the tables nearest the door, consequently, is occupied by those whose opinion of my appearance is not without appeal, if they trouble their heads about it at all, and I may glide in, in my white roundabout (permitted in this sultry weather), and retrieve exhausted nature in obscurity. An empty chair stood between an old gentleman and a very plain young lady, and seeing no remembered faces opposite, I glided to the place, and was soon lost to apprehension in the abysm of a cold pie. The table was covered with meats, berries, bottles of chalybeate water, tea appurtenances, jams, jellies, and radishes, and, but for the absence of the roast, you might have doubted whether the meal was breakfast or dinner, lunch or supper. Happy country ! in which any one of the four meals may serve a hungry man for all. The pigeon-pie stood, at last, well quarried before me, the debris of the excavation heaped upon my plate ; and, appetite appeased, and made bold by my half hour's obscurity, I leaned forward and perused with curious attention the long line of faces on the opposite side of the table, to some of whom, doubtless, I was to be indebted for the pleasures of the coming fort- night. My eyes were fixed on the features of a talkative woman just above, and I had quite forgotten the fact of my dishabille of complexion and dress, when two persons entered who made considerable stir among the servants, and eventually were seated directly op- posite me. " We loitered too long at Barhydt's," said one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, as she pulled her chair nearer to the table and looked around her with a glance of disapproval. In following her eyes to see who was so happy as to sympathize with such a divine creature even in the loss of a place at table, I met the fixed and astonished gaze of my most intimate friend at the University. ' "Ellerton!" " Slingsby !" Overjoyed at meeting him, I stretched both hands across the narrow table, and had shaken his arm nearly off his shoulders, and asked him a dozen questions, be- fore I became conscious that a pair of large wondering eyes were coldly taking an inventory of my person and features. Van Pelt's unflattering exclamation upon my appearance at his door, flashed across my mind like a thunderstroke, and, coloring through my burned skin to the temples, I bowed and stammered I know not what, as Ellerton introduced me to his sister ! To enter fully into my distress, you should be ap- prized that a correspondence arising from my long and constant intimacy with Tom Ellerton, had been carried on for a year between me and his sister, and that, being constantly in the habit of yielding to me in manners of taste, he had, I well knew, so exaggerated to her my personal qualities, dress, and manners, that she could not in any case fail to be disappointed in seeing me. Believing her to be at that moment two thousand miles off in Alabama, and never having hoped for the pleas- ure of seeing her at all, I had foolishly suffered this good-natured exaggeration to go on, pleased with seeing the reflex of his praises in her letters, and, Heaven knows, little anticipating the disastrous interview upon which my accursed star would precipitate me ! As I went over, mentally, the particulars of my unbecom- ingness, and saw Miss Ellerton's eyes resting inquisi- tively and furtively on the mountain of pigeon bones lifting their well-picked pyramid to my chin, I wished myself an ink-fish at the bottom of the sea. Three minutes after, I burst into Van Pelt's room, tearing my hair and abusing Tom Ellerton's good na- ture, and my friend's headless drosky, in alternate breaths. Without disturbing the subsiding blood in his own face by entering into my violence, Horace coolly asked me what the devil was the matter. I told him. " Lie down here !" said Van Pelt, who was a small Napoleon in such trying extremities; "lie down on the bed, and anoint your phiz with this unguent. I see good luck for you in this accident, and you have only to follow my instructions. Phil Slingsby, sunburnt, in a white roundabout, and Phil Slingsby, pale and well dressed, are as different as this potted cream and a dan- cing cow. You shall see what a little drama I'll work out for you !" I lay down on my back, and Horace kindly anointed me from the trachea to the forelock, and from ear to ear. " Egad," said he, warming with his study of his pro- posed plot as he slid his fore-fingers over the bridge of my nose, "every circumstance tells for us. Tall man as you are, you are as short-bodied as a monkey (no offence, Phil !) and when you sit at table, you are rather an under-sized gentleman. I have been astonished every day these three years, at seeing you rise after dinner in Commons' Hall. A thousand to one, Fanny Ellerton thinks you a stumpy man." "And then, Phil," he continued, with a patronising tone, "you have studied minute philosophy to little purpose if you do not know that the first step in win- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 437 ning a woman to whom you have been overpraised, is to disenchant her at all hazards, on your first inter- view. You will never rise above the ideal she has formed, and to sink below it gradually, or to remain stationary, is not to thrive in your wooing." Leaving me this precocious wisdom to digest, Horace descended to the foot of the garden to take a warm bath, and overcome with fatigue, and the recum- bent posture, I soon fell asleep and dreamed of the great blue eyes of Fanny Ellerton. II. The soaring of the octave flute in " Hail Columbia," with which the band was patriotically opening the ball, woke me from the midst of a long apologetic let- ter to my friend's sister, and I found Van Pelt's black boy Juba waiting patiently at the bed-side with curl- ing-tongs and Cologne-water, ordered to superintend my toilet by his master, who had gone early to the drawing-room to pay his respects to Miss Ellerton. ! With the cold cream disappeared entirely from my ' face the uncomfortable redness to which I had been a martyr, and, thanks to my ebony coijfetir, my straight and plastered locks soon grew as different to their i " umquhile guise" as Hyperion's to a satyr's. Hav- j ing appeared to the eyes of the lady, in whose favor I , hoped to prosper, in red and white (red phiz and white jacket), 1 trusted that in white and black (black suit \ and paleviznomy), I should look quite another person, j Juba was pleased to show his ivory in a complimen- ! tary smile at my transformation, and I descended to | the drawing-room, on the best terms with the coxcomb in my bosom. Horace met me at the door. '■'■Proteus redivivvs /" was his exclamation. " Your new name is Wrongham. You are a gentle senior, instead of a bedeviled sophomore, and your cue is to be poetical. She will never think again of the mon- ster in the white jacket, and I have prepared her for the acquaintance of a new friend, whom I have just described to you. I took his arm, and with the courage of a man in a mask, went through another presentation to Miss El- lerton. Her brother had been let into the secret by j Van Pelt, and received me with great ceremony as his I college superior; and, as there was no other person at ! the Springs who knew Mr. Slingsby, Mr. Wrongham was likely to have an undisturbed reign of it. Miss \ Ellerton looked hard at me for a moment, but the ! gravity with which I was presented and received, dis- | sipated a doubt if one had arisen in her mind, and she took my arm to go to the ball-room, with an undisturbed belief in my assumed name and charac- ter. I commenced the acquaintance of the fair Alaba- mian with great advantages. Received as a perfect stranger, I possessed, from long correspondence with her, the most minute knowledge of the springs, of her character, and of her favorite reading and pursuits, and, with the little knowledge of the world which she had gained on a plantation, she was not likely to pene- trate my game from my playing it too freely. Her confidence was immediately won by the readiness with which I entered into her enthusiasm and antici- pated her thoughts ; and before the first quadrille was well over, she had evidently made up her mind that she had never in her life met one who so well "under- stood her." Oh ! how much women include in that apparently indefinite expression, "He understands me .'" The colonnade of Congress Hall is a long prom- enade laced in with vines and columns, on the same level with the vast ball-room and drawing-room, and (the light of heaven not being taxed at Saratoga) opening at every three steps by a long window into the carpeted**floors. When the rooms within are lit in a summer's night, that cool and airy colonnade is thronged by truants from the dance, and collectively by all who have anything to express that is meant for one ear only. The mineral waters of Saratoga are no less celebrated as a soporific for chaperons than as a tonic for the dyspeptic, and while the female Argus dozes in the drawing-room, the fair Io and her Jupi- ter (represented in this case, we will say, by Miss El- lerton and myself) range at liberty the fertde fields of flirtation. I had easily put Miss Ellerton in surprised good humor with herself and me during the first quadrille, and with a freedom based partly upon my certainty of pleasing her, partly on the peculiar manners of the place, 1 coolly requested that she would continue to dance with me for the rest of the evening. "One unhappy quadrille excepted," she replied, with a look meant to be mournful. "May I ask with whom?" " Oh, he has not asked me yet ; but my brother has bound me over to be civil to him — a spectre, Mr. Wrongham ! a positive spectre." " How denominated ?" I inquired, with a forced in- difference, for I had a presentiment I should hear my own name. "Slingsby— Mr. Philip Slingsby— Tom's fidus Achates, and a proposed lover of my own. But you don't seem surprised!" "Surprised! E-hem! I know the gentleman !" "Then did you ever see such a monster! Tom told me he was another Hyperion. He half admitted it himself, indeed ; for to tell you a secret, I have cor- responded with him a year!" "Giddy Miss Fanny Ellerton! — and never saw him!" " Never till to-night ! He sat at supper in a white jacket and red face, with a pile of bones upon his plate like an Indian tumulus." "And your brother introduced you ?" " Ah, you were at table ! Well, did you ever see in your travels, a man so unpleasantly hideous?" "Fanny!" said her brother, coming up at the mo- ment, " Slingsby presents his apologies to you for not joining your cordon to-night — but he's gone to bed with a head-ache." "Indigestion, I dare say," said the young lady. " Never mind, Tom, I'll break my heart when \ have leisure. And now, Mr. Wrongham, since the spectre walks not forth to-night, I am yours for a cool hour on the colonnade." Vegetation is rapid in Alabama, and love is a weed that thrives in the soil of the tropics. We discoursed of the lost Pleiad and the Berlin bracelets, of the five hundred people about us, and the feasibility of boiling a pot on five hundred a year — the unmatrimonial sum total of my paternal allowance. She had as many ne- groes as I had dollars, I well knew, but it was my cue to seem disinterested. " And where do you mean to live, when you marry, Mr. Wrongham?" asked Miss Ellerton, at the two hundredth turn on the colonnade. "Would you like to live in Italy?" I asked again, as if I had not heard her. " Do you mean that as a scquitur to my question, Mr. Wrongham ?" said she, half stopping in her walk ; and though the sentence was commenced playfully, dropping her voice at the last word, with something, I thought, very like emotion. I drew her off the colonnade to the small garden between the house and the spring, and in a giddy dream of fear and surprise at my own rashness and success, I made, and won from her, a frank avowal of preference. Matches have been made more suddenly. 438 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. hi. Miss Ellerton sat in the music-room the next morn- ing after breakfast, preventing pauses in a rather in- teresting conversation, by a running accompaniment upon the guitar. A single gold thread formed a fillet about her temples, and from beneath it, in clouds of silken ringlets, floated the softest raven hair that ever grew enamored of an ivory shoulder. Hers was a skin that seemed woven of the lily-white, but opaque fibre of the magnolia, yet of that side of its cup turned toward the fading sunset. There is no term in paint- ing, because there is no touch of pencil or color, that could express the vanishing and impalpable breath that assured the healthiness of so pale a cheek. She was slight as all southern women are in America, and of a flexible and luxurious gracefulness equalled by nothing but the movings of a smoke-curl. Without the elastic nerve remarkable in the motions of Taglioni, she appeared, like her, to be born with a lighter spe- cific gravity than her fellow-creatures. If she had floated away upon some chance breeze you would only have been surprised upon reflection. " I am afraid you are too fond of society," said Miss Ellerton, as Juba came in hesitatingly and delivered her a note in the hand- writing of an old correspondent. She turned pale on seeing the superscription, and crushed the note up in her hand, unread. I was not sorry to defer the denouement of my little drama, and taking up the rema.rk which she seemed disposed to forgel, I referred her to a scrap-book of Van Pelt's, which she had brought home with her, containing some verses of my own, copied (by good luck) in that sentimental sophomore's own hand. "Are these yours, really and really?" she asked, looking pryingly into my face, and showing me my own verses, against which she had already run a pen- cil line of approbation. "Peccavi!" I answered. "But will you make me in love with my offspring by reading them in your own voice." They were some lines written in a balcony at day- break, while a ball was still going on within, and con- tained an allusion (which I had quite overlooked) to some one of my ever-changing admirations. As well as I remember they ran thus : — Morn in the east ! How coldly fair It breaks upon my fevered eye ! How chides the calm and dewy air I How chides the pure and pearly sky ! The stars melt in a brighter fire, The dew in sunshine leaves the flowers ; They from their watch, in light retire, While we in sadness pass from ours ! I turn from the rebuking morn. The cold gray sky and fading star, And listen to the harp and horn, And see the waltzers near and far : The lamps and flowers are bright as yet, And lips beneath more bright than they— How can a scene so fair beget The mournful thoughts we bear away. 'Tis something that thou art not here, Sweet lover of my lightest word ! 'Tis something that my mother's tear By these forgetful hours is stirred ? But I have long a loiterer been In haunts where Joy is said to be ; And though with Peace I enter in, The nymph comes never forth with me ! "And who was this • sweet lover,' Mr. Wrongham ? I should know, I think, before I go farther with so ex- peditious a gentleman." " As Shelley says of his ideal mistress — ' I loved — oh, no I I mean not one of ye, Or any earthly one— though ye are fair !' It was but an apostrophe to the presentiment of that which I have found, dear Miss Ellerton ! But will you read that ill-treated billet-doux, and remember that Juba stands with the patience of an ebon statue wait- ing for an answer ?" I knew the contents of the letter, and I watched the expression of her face, as she read it, with no little interest. Her temples flushed, and her delicate lips gradually curled into an expression of anger and scorn, and having finished the perusal of it, she put it into my hand, and asked me if so impertinent a production deserved an answer. I began to fear that the eclaircisscment would not leave me on the sunny side of the lady's favor, and felt the need of the moment's reflection given me while running my eye over the letter. " Mr. Slingsby," said I, with the deliberation of an attorney, " has been some time in correspondence with you ?" " Yes." " And, from his letters and your brother's commen- dations, you had formed a high opinion of his charac- ter, and had expressed as much in your letters ?" " Yes — perhaps I did." " And from this paper intimacy he conceives him- self sufficiently acquainted with you to request leave to pay his addresses ?" A dignified bow put a stop to my catechism. " Dear Miss Ellerton !" I said, " this is scarcely a question upon which I ought to speak, but by putting this letter into my hand, you seemed to ask my opin- ion." " I did — I do," said the lovely girl, taking my hand, and looking appealingly into my face ; " answer it for me ! I have done wrong in encouraging that foolish correspondence, and I owe perhaps to this forward man a kinder reply than my first feeling would have dictated. Decide for me — write for me — relieve me from the first burden that has lain on my heart since " She burst into tears, and my dread of an explanation increased. " Will you follow my advice implicitly ?" I asked. " Yes — oh, yes !" " You promise ?" " Indeed, indeed !" " Well, then, listen to me ! However painful the task, I must tell you that the encouragement you have given Mr. Slingsby, the admiration you have expressed in your letters of his talents and acquirements, and the confidences you have reposed in him respecting your- self, warrant him in claiming as a right, a fair trial of his attractions. You have known and approved Mr. Slingsby's mind for years — you know me but for a tew hours. You saw him under the most unfavorable auspices (for I know him intimately), and I feel bound in justice to assure you that you will like him much better upon acquaintance." Miss Ellerton had gradually drawn herself up du- ring this splendid speech, and sat at last as erect and as cold as Agrippina upon her marble chair. "Will you allow me to send Mr. Slingsby to you," I continued, rising — " and suffer him to plead his own cause ?" " If you will call my brother, Mr. Wrongham, I shall feel obliged to you," said Miss Ellerton. I left the room, and hurrying to my chamber, dipped my head into a basin of water, and plastered my long locks over my eyes, slipped on a white roundabout, and tied around my neck the identical checked cravat in which I had made such an unfavorable impression on the first day of my arrival. Tom Ellerton was soon found, and easily agreed to go before and announce me by my proper name to his sister ; and treading close- ly on his heels, I followed to the door of the music- room. INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 439 " Ah, Ellen !" said he, without giving her time for a scene, " I was looking for you. Slingsby is better, and will pay his respects to you presently. And, I sa y — y u will treat him well, Ellen, and — and, don't flirt with Wrongham the way you did last night ! — Slingby's a devilish sight better fellow. Oh, here he is !" As I stepped over the threshold, Miss Ellerton gave me just enough of a look to assure herself that it was the identical monster she had seen at the tea-table, and not deigning me another glance, immediately com- menced talking violently to her brother on the state of the weather. Tom bore it for a moment or two with remarkable gravity, but at my first attempt to join in the conversation, my voice was lost in an explosion of laughter which would have been the death of a gentle- man with a full habit. Indignant and astonished, Miss Ellerton rose to her full height, and slowly turned to me. 44 Peccari .'" said I, crossing my hands on my bosom, and looking up penitently to her face. She ran to me, and seized my hand, but recovered herself instantly, and the next moment was gone from the room. Whether from wounded pride at having been the subject of a mystification, or whether from that female caprice by which most men suffer at one period or other of their bachelor lives, I know not — but I never could bring Miss Ellerton again to the same interest- ing crisis with which she ended her intimacy with Mr. \Vrongham. She proffered to forgive me, and talked laughingly enough of our old correspondence ; but whenever 1 grew tender, she referred me to the " sweet lover," mentioned in my verses in the balcony, and looked around for Van Pelt. That accomplished beau, on observing my discomfiture, began to find out Miss Ellerton's graces without the aid of his quizzing- glass, and I soon found it necessary to yield the pas altogether. She has since become Mrs. Van Pelt, and when I last heard from her was " as well as could be expected." CHAPTER III. MRS. CAPTAIN THOMPSON. The last of August came sweltering in, hot, dusty, and faint, and the most indefatigable belles of Sarato- ga began to show symptoms of weariness. The stars disappeared gradually from the ballroom; the bar- keeper grew thin under the thickening accounts for lemonades ; the fat fellow in the black band, who " vexed" the bassoon, had blown himself from the girth of Falstaff to an " eagle's talon in the waist ;" papas began to be waylaid in their morning walks by young gentlemen with propositions; and stage-coaches that came in with their baggageless tails in the air, and the driver's weight pressing the foot-board upon the astonished backs of his wheelers, went out with the trim of a Venetian gondola — the driver's up-hoisted figure answering to the curved proboscis of that stern- laden craft. The vocation of tin-tumblers and water-dippers was gone. The fashionable world {brazen in its general habit) had drank its fill of the ferrugineous waters. Mammas thanked Heaven for the conclusion of the chaperon's summer solstice ; and those who came to bet, and those who came to marry, " made up their books," and walked off (if they had won) with their winnings. Having taken a less cordial farewell of Van Pelt than I might have done had not Miss Ellerton been hanging confidingly on his arm, I followed my baggage to the door, where that small epitome of the inherit- ance of the prince of darkness, an American stage- coach, awaited me as its ninth inside passenger. As the last person picked up, I knew very well the seat to which I was destined, and drawing a final cool breath in the breezy colonnade, I summoned resolu- tion and abandoned myself to the tender mercies of the driver. The " ray of contempt" that " will pierce through the shell of the tortoise," is a shaft from the horn of a new moon in comparison with the beating of an American sun through the top of a stage-coach. This " accommodation," as it is sometimes bitterly called, not being intended to carry outside passengers, has a top as thin as your grandmother's umbrella, black, po- rous, and cracked ; and while intended for a protec- tion from the heat, it just suffices to collect the sun's rays with an incredible power and sultriness, and ex- clude the air that makes it sufferable to the beasts of the field. Of the nine places inside this " dilly," the four seats in the corners are so far preferable that the occupant has the outer side of his body exempt from a perspirative application of human flesh (the ther- mometer at 100 degrees of Fahrenheit), while, of the three middle places on the three seats, the man in the centre of the coach, with no support for his back, yet buried to the chin in men, women, and children, is at the ninth and lowest degree of human suffering. I left Saratoga in such a state of happiness as you might suppose for a gentleman, who, besides fulfilling this latter category, had been previously unhappy in his love. I was dressed in a white roundabout and trowsers of the same, a straw hat, thread stockings, and pumps, and was so far a blessing to my, neighbors that 1 looked cool. Directly behind me, occupying the middle of the back seat, sat a young woman with a gratis passen- ger in her lap (who, of course, did not count among the nine), in the shape of a fat and a very hot child of three years of age, whom she called John, Jacky, Johnny, Jocket, Jacket, and the other endearing di- minutives of the namesakes of the great apostle. Like the saint who had been selected for his patron, he was a " voice crying in the wilderness." This little gen- tleman was exceedingly unpopular with his two neigh- bors at the windows, and his incursions upon their legs and shoulders in his occasional forays for fresh air, ended in his being forbidden to look out at either win- dow, and plied largely with gingerbread to content him with the warm lap of his mother. Though I had no eyes in the back of my straw hat, I conceived very well the state in which a compost of soft gingerbread, tears, ai.d perspiration, would soon leave the two un- scrupulous hands behind me ; and as the jolts of the coach frequently threw me back upon the knees of his mother, I could not consistently complain of the familiar use made of my roundabout and shoulders in Master John's constant changes of position. I vowed my jacket to the first river, the moment I could make sure that the soft gingerbread was exhausted — but I kept my temper. How an American Jehu gets his team over ten miles in the hour, through all the variety of sand, ruts, clay-pits, and slump-thickets, is a problem that can only be resolved by riding beside him on the box. In the usual time we arrived at the pretty village of Troy, some thirty miles from Saratoga ; and here, having ex- changed my bedaubed jacket for a clean one, I freely forgave little Pickle his freedoms, for I hoped never to set eyes on him again during his natural life. I was going eastward by another coach. Having eaten a salad for my dinner, and drank a bottle of iced claret, I stepped forth in my » blanched and lavendered" jacket to take my place in the other coach, trusting Providence not to afflict me twice in 440 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. the same day with the evil I had just escaped, and feel- ing, on the whole, reconciled to my troubled dividend of eternity. I got up the steps of the coach with as much alacrity as the state of the thermometer would permit, and was about drawing my legs after me upon the forward seat, when a clammy hand caught me unceremoniously by the shirt-collar, and the voice I was just beginning to forget cried out with a chuckle, "Dada ."' " Madam!" I said, picking off the gingerbread from my shirt as the coach rolled down the street, "I had hoped that your infernal child " I stopped in the middle of the sentence, for a pair of large blue eyes were looking wonderingly into mine, and for the first time I observed that the mother of this familiar nuisance was one of the prettiest women I had seen since I had become susceptible to the charms of the sex. " Are you going to Boston, sir ?" she inquired, with a half-timid smile, as if, in that case, she appealed to me for protection on the road. " Yes, madam !" I answered, taking little Jocket's pasty hand into mine, affectionately, as I returned her hesitating look ; " may I hope for your society so far ?" My fresh white waistcoat was soon embossed with a dingy yellow, where my enterprising fellow-passenger had thrust his sticky fist into the pockets, and my sham shirt-bosom was reduced incontinently to the complex- ion of a painter's rag after doing a sunset in gamboge. I saw everything, however, through the blue eyes of his mother, and was soon on such pleasant terms with Master John, that, at one of the stopping-places, I in- veigled him out of the coach and dropped him acci- dentally into the horse-trough, contriving to scrub him passably clean before he could recover breath enough for an outcry. I had already thrown the residuum of his gingerbread out of the window, so that his fa- miliarities for the rest of the day were, at least, less adhesive. We dropped one or two way-passengers at Lebanon, and I was left in the coach with Mrs. Captain and Master John Thompson, in both whose favors I made a progress that (I may as well depone) considerably restored my spirits — laid flat by my unthrift wooing at Saratoga. If a fly hath but alit on my nose when my self-esteem hath been thus at a discount, I have soothed myself with the fancy that it preferred me — a drowning vanity will so catch at a straw ! As we bowled along through some of the loveliest scenery of Massachusetts, my companion (now become my charge), let me a little into her history, and at the same time, by those shades of insinuation of which women so instinctively know the uses, gave me per- fectly to comprehend that 1 might as well economize my tenderness. The father of the riotous young gen- tleman who had made so free with my Valencia waist- coat and linen roundabouts, had the exclusive copy- hold of her affections. He had been three years at sea (I think I said before), and she was hastening to show him the pledge of their affections — come into the world since the good brig Dolly made her last clearance from Boston bay. I was equally attentive to Mrs. Thompson after this illumination, though I was, perhaps, a shade less en- amored of the interesting freedoms of Master John. One's taste for children depends so much upon one's love for their mothers ! It was twelve o'clock at night when the coach rat- tled in upon the pavements of Boston. Mrs. Thomp- son had expressed so much impatience during the last few miles, and seemed to shrink so sensitively from being left to herself in a strange city, that I offered my services till she should find herself in better hands, and, as a briefer way of disposing of her, had bribed the coachman, who was in a hurry with the mail, to turn a little out of his way, and leave her at her hus- band's hotel. We drew up with a prodigious clatter, accordingly, at the Marlborough hotel, where, no coach being ex- pected, the boots and bar-keeper were not immediately forthcoming. After a rap "to wake the dead,'' I set about assisting the impatient driver in getting off the lady's trunks and boxes, and they stood in a large pyramid on the sidewalk when the door was opened. A man in his shirt, three parts asleep, held a flaring candle over his head, and looked through the half- opened door. " Is Captain Thompson up ?" I asked rather brusque- ly, irritated at the sour visage of the bar-keeper. "Captain Thompson, sir!" "Captain Thompson, sir!!" I repeated my words with a voice that sent him three paces back into the hall. "No, sir," he said at last, slipping one leg into his trowsers, which had hitherto been under his arm. " Then wake him immediately, and tell him Mrs. Thompson is arrived." Here's a husband, thought I, as I heard something between a sob and a complaint issue from the coach-window at the bar-keeper's intel- ligence. To go to bed when he expected his wife and child, and after three years' separation ! She might as well have made a parenthesis in her constancy ! "Have you called the captain?" I asked, as I set Master John upon the steps, and observed the man still standing with the candle in his hand, grinning from ear to ear. " No, sir," said the man. " No !" I thundered, " and what in the devil's name is the reason ?" "Boots!" he cried out in reply, " show this gentle- man ' forty-one.' Them may wake Captain Thompson as likes! /never hearra of no Mrs. Thompson!" Rejecting an ungenerous suspicion that flashed across -my mind, and informing the bar-keeper en pas- sant, that he was a brute and a donkey, I sprang up the staircase after a boy, and quite out of breath, ar- rived at a long gallery of bachelors' rooms on the fifth floor. The boy pointed to a door at the end of the gallery, and retreated to the banisters as if to escape the blowing up of a petard. Rat-a-tat-tat! " Come in !" thundered a voice like a hailing trum- pet. I took the lamp from the boy, and opened the door. On a narrow bed well tucked up, lay a most formidable looking individual, with a face glowing with carbuncles, a pair of deep-set eyes inflamed and fiery, and hair and eyebrows of glaring red, mixed slightly with gray ; while outside the bed lay a hairy arm, with a fist like the end of the club of Hercules. His head tied loosely in a black silk handkerchief, and on the light-stand stood a tumbler of brandy-and-water. " What do you want ?" he thundered again, as I step- ped over a threshold and lifted my hat, struck speech- less for a moment with this unexpected apparition. " Have I the pleasure," I asked, in a hesitating voice, "to address Captain Thompson?" " That's my name !" "Ah! then, captain, I have the pleasure to inform you that Mrs. Thompson and little John are arrived. They are at the door at this moment." A change in the expression of Captain Thompson's face checked my information in the middle, and as I took a step backward, he raised himself on his elbow, and looked at me in a way that did not diminish my embarrassment. "I'll tell you what, Mr. Milk-and-water," said he, with an emphasis on every word like the descent of a sledge-hammer ; "if you're not out of this room in two seconds with your 'Mrs. Thompson and little INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 441 John,' I Ml slam you through that window, or the devil take me !" I reflected as I took another step backward, that if I were thrown down to Mrs. Thompson from a fifth story window I should not he in a state to render her i lie assistance she required; and remarking with an ill-feigned gayety to Captain Thompson that so de- cided a measure would not l)e necessary, I backed expeditiously over the threshold. As I was closing his door, I heard the gulp of his brandy-and-water, and the next instant the empty glass whizzed past my retreating head, and was shattered to pieces on the wall behind me. I gave the " boots" a cuff for an untimely roar of laughter as I reached the 6taircase, and descended, very much discomfited and embarrassed, to Mrs. Thompson. My delay had thrown that lady into a very moving state of unhappiness. Her tears were glistening in the light of the street lamp, and Master I John was pulling away unheeded at her stomacher, and crying as if he would split his diaphragm. What to do ? 1 would have offered to take her to my pater- nal roof till the mystery could be cleared up — but I had been absent two years, and to arrive at midnight with a woman and a young child, and such an im- probable story — I did not think my reputation at home would bear me out. The coachman, too, began to swear and make demonstrations of leaving us in the street, and it was necessary to decide. "Shove the baggage inside the coach," I said at last, "and drive on. Don't be unhappy Mrs. Thomp- son! Jocket, stop crying, you villain! I'll see that you are comfortably disposed of for the night where the coach stops, madam, and to-morrow I'll try a little reason with Captain Thompson. How the devil can she love such a volcanic specimen !" I muttered to myself, dodging instinctively at the bare remem- brance of the glass of brandy-and-water. The coachman made up for lost time, and we rattled over the pavements at a rate that made .locket's hully- baloo quite inaudible. As we passed the door of my own home, 1 wondered what would be the impression of my respectable parent, could he see me whisking by, after midnight, with a rejected woman and her progeny upon my hands ; but smothering the un- worthy doubt that re-arose in my mind, touching the legitimacy of Master John, I inwardly vowed that I would see Mrs. Thompson at all risks fairly out of her imbroglio. We pulled up with a noise like the discharge of a load of paving-stones, and I was about saying some- thing botli affectionate and consolatory to my weeping charge, when a tall handsome fellow, with a face as brown as a berry, sprang to the coach-door, and seized her in his arms! A shower of kisses and tender ep- ithets left me not a moment in doubt. There was another Captain Thompson! He had not been able to get rooms at the Marl- borough, as he had anticipated when he wrote, and presuming that the mail would come first to the post- office, he had waited for her there. As 1 was passing the Marlborough a week or two afterward, I stopped to inquire about Captain Thomp- son. I found that he was an old West India captain, \ who had lived there between his cruises for twenty j years more or less, and had generally been supposed a bachelor. He had suddenly gone to sea, the land- i lord told me, smiling at the same time, as if thereby hung a tale if he chose to tell it. " The fact is," said Boniface, when I pushed him a little on the subject, "he was sheared off." "What scared him?" I asked very innocently. "A wife and child from some foreign port!" he an- swered laughing as if he would burst his waistband, and taking me into the back parlor to tell me the par- ticulars. A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. The American frigate, in which I had cruised as the ward-room guest for more than six months, had sailed for winter quarters at Mahon, and my name was up at the pier of Smyrna, as a passenger in the first ship that should leave the port, whatever her destina- tion. The flags of all nations flew at the crowded peaks of the merchantmen lying offthe Marina, and among them lay two small twin brigs, loading with figs and opium for my native town in America. They were owned by an old schoolfellow of my own, one of the most distin- guished and hospitable of the Smyrniote merchants, and, if nothing more adventurous turned up, he had offered to land me from one of his craft at Malta oi Gibraltar. Time wore on, and I had loitered up and down the narrow street " in melancholy idleness" by day, and smoked the narghile with those " merchant princes" by night, till I knew every paving-stone between the beach and the bazar, and had learned the thrilling events of the Greek persecution with the particularity of a historian. My heart, too, unsusceptible enough when "packed for travel," began to uncoil with ab- sence of adventure, and expose its sluggish pulses to the "Creek fire," still burning in those Asiatic eyes, and I felt sensibly, that if, Telemachus-like, I did not soon throw myself into the sea, I should yield, past praying for, to the cup of some Smyrniote Circe. Darker eyes than are seen on that Marina swim not in delight out of paradise ! I was sitting on an opium-box in the counting-house of my friend L n(the princely and hospitable mer- chant spoken of above), when enter a Yankee "skip- per," whom I would have clapped on the shoulder for a townsman if I had seen him on the top of the minaret of the mosque of Sultan Bajazet. His go-ashore black coat and trowsers, worn only one month in twelve, were of costly cloth, but of the fashion prevailing in the days of his promotion to be second mate of a cod- fisher ; his hat was of the richest beaver, but getting brown with the same paucity of wear, and exposure to the corroding air of the ocean ; and on his hands were stretched (and they had well need to be elastic) a pair of Woodstock gloves that might have descended to him from Paul Jones " the pilot." A bulge just over his lowest rib gave token of the ship's chronometer, and, in obedience to the new fashion of a guard, a fine chain of the softest auburn hair (doubtless his wife's, and, 1 would have wagered my passage-money, as pret- ty a woman as he would see in his v'yage) — a chain, 1 say, braided of silken blond ringlets passed around his neck, and drew its glossy line over his broad-breasted white waistcoat — the dewdrop on the lion's mane not more entitled to be astonished. A face of hard-weather, but with an expression of care equal to the amount of his invoice, yet honest and fearless as the truck of his mainmast; a round sailor's back, that looked as if he would hoist up his deck if you battered him beneath hatches against his will ; and teeth as white as his new foresail, completed the picture of the master of the brig Metamora. Jolly old H 1, 1 shall never feel the grip of an honester hand, nor return one (as far as 1 can with the fist you crip- pled at parting) with a more kindly pressure ! A fair wind on your quarter, my old boy, wherever you may be trading ! "What sort of accommodations have you, captain?" I asked, as my friend introduced me. " Why, none to speak of, sir ! There's a starboard birth that a'n't got much in it— a few boxes of figs, and the new spritsail, and some of the mate's traps— but 1 could stow away a little perhaps, sir." " You sail to-morrow morning ?" " Off with the land-breeze, sir." 442 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. I took leave of the kindest of friends, laid in a few hasty stores, and was on board at midnight. The next morning I awoke with the water rippling beside me, and creeping on deck, I saw a line of foam stretching behind us far up the gulf, and the ruins of the primi- tive church of Smyrna, mingled with the turrets of a Turkish castle, far away in the horizon. The morning was cool and fresh, the sky of an ori- ental purity, and the small low brig sped on like a nautilus. The captain stood by the binnacle, looking off to the westward with a glass, a, tarpaulin hat over his black locks, a pair of sail-cloth pumps on his feet, and trowsers and roundabout of an indefinable tarri- ness and texture. He handed me the glass, and, obey- ing his direction, I saw, stealing from behind a point of land, shaped like a cat's back, the well-known topsails of the two frigates that had sailed before us. We were off Vourla, and the commodore had gone to pay his respects to Sir Pulteney Malcolm, then ly- ing with his fleet in this little bay, and waiting, we supposed, for orders to force the Dardanelles. The frigates soon appeared on the bosom of the gulf, and heading down, neared our larboard bow, and stood for the Archipelago. The Metamora kept her way, but the " United States," the fleetest of our ships, soon left us behind with a strengthening breeze, and, fol- lowing her with the glass till I could no longer distin- guish the cap of the officer of the deck, I breathed a blessing after her, and went below to breakfast. It is strange how the lessening in the distance of a ship in which one has cruised in these southern seas, pulls on the heartstrings ! I sat on deck most of the day, cracking pecan-nuts with the captain, and gossiping about schooldays in jur native town, occasionally looking off over the hills of Asia Minor, and trying to realize (the Ixion labor of the imagination in travel) the history of which these barren lands have been the scene. 1 know not wheth- er it is easy for a native of old countries to people these desolated lands from the past, but for me, accustomed to look on the face of the surrounding earth as mere vegetation, unstoried and unassociated, it is with a con- stant mental effort alone that I can be classic on clas- sic ground — find Plato in the desert wastes of the Academy, or Priam among the Turk-stridden and prostrate columns of Troy. In my recollections of Athens, the Parthenon and the Theseion and the sol- emn and sublime ruins by the Fount of Callirhoe stand forth prominent enough ; but when I was on the spot — a biped to whom three meals a day, a washerwo- man, and a banker, were urgent necessities — I shame to confess that I sat dangling my legs over the classic Pelasgicum, not " fishing for philosophers with gold and figs," but musing on the mundane and proximate matters of daily economy. I could see my six shirts hanging to dry, close by the temple of the Winds, and I knew my dinner was cooking three doors from the crumbling capitals of the Agora. As the sun set over Ephesus, we neared the mouth of the gulf of Smyrna, and the captain stood looking over the leeward-bow rather earnestly. " We shall have a snorter out of the nor'east," he said, taking hold of the tiller, and sending the helms- man forward — " I never was up this sea but once afore, and it's a dirty passage through these islands in any weather, let alone a Levanter." He followed up his soliloquy by jamming his tiller hard a-port, and in ten minutes the little brig was run- ning her nose, as it seemed to me, right upon an in- hospitable rock at the northern headland of the gulf. At the distance of a biscuit-toss from the shore, how- ever, the rock was dropped to leeward, and a small passage appeared, opening with a sharp curve into the miniature but sheltered bay of Fourgas. We dropped anchor off a small hamlet of forty or fifty houses, and lay beyond the reach of Levanters in a circular basin that seemed shut in by a rim of granite from the sea. The captain's judgment of the weather was correct, and, after the sun set, the wind rose gradually to a vi- olence which sent the spray high over the barriers of our protected position. Congratulating ourselves that we were on the right side of the granite wall, we got out our jolly-boat on the following morning, and ran ashore upon the beach half a mile from town, propo- sing to climb first to the peak of the neighboring hill, and then forage for a dinner in the village below. We scrambled up the rocky mountain-side, with some loss of our private stock of wind, and considera- ble increase from the nor'easter, and getting under the lee of a projecting shelf, sat looking over toward Les- bos, and ruminating in silence — I, upon the old ques- tion, " an Sappho publica fuerit," and the captain prob- ably on his wife at Cape Cod, and his pecan-nuts, figs, and opium, in the emerald-green brig below us. I don't know why she should have been painted green, by-the-by (and I never thought to suggest that to the captain), being named after an Indian chief, who was as red as her copper bottom. The sea toward Mitylene looked as wild as an ea- gle's wing ruffling against the wind, and there was that smoke in the sky as if the blast was igniting with its speed — the look of a gale in those seas when unac- companied with rain. The crazy-looking vessels of the Levant were scudding with mere rags of sails for the gulf; and while we sat on the rock, eight or ten of those black and unsightly craft shot into the little bay below us, and dropped anchor — blessing, no doubt, j every saint in the Greek calendar. Having looked toward Lesbos an hour, and come to the conclusion, that, admitting the worst with regard ' to the private character of Sappho, it would have been very pleasant to have known her ; and the captain having washed his feet in a slender tricklet oozing from a cleft in a rock, we descended the hill on the other side, and stole a march on the rear to the town of Fourgas. Four or five Greek women were picking up olives in a grove lying halfway down the hill, and on our coming in sight, they made for us with such speed, that I feared the reverse of the Sabine rape — not yet having seen a man on this desolate shore ; they ran well, but they resembled Atalanta in no other pos- sible particular. We should have taken them for the Furies, but there were five. They wanted snuff and money — making signs easily for the first, but attempt- ing amicably to put their hands in our pockets when we refused to comprehend the Greek for " Give us a para." The captain pulled from his pocket an Amer- ican dollar-note (payable at Nantucket), and offered it to the youngest of the women, who smelt at it and re- turned it to him, evidently unacquainted with the Cape Cod currency. On farther search he found a few of the tinsel paras of the country, which he substituted for his " dollar-bill," a saving of ninety-nine cents to him, if the bank has not broke when he arrives at Mas- sachusetts. Fourgas is surrounded by a very old wall, very much battered. We passed under a high arch containing marks of having once been closed with a heavy gate • and, disputing our passage with cows, and men that seemed less cleanly and civilized, penetrated to the heart of the town in search of the barber's shop, cafe and kibaub shop — three conveniences usually united in a single room and dispensed by a single Figaro in Turkish and Greek towns of this description. The word cafe is universal, and we needed only to pio- nounce it to be led by a low door into a square apart- ment of a ruinous old building, around which, upon a kind of shelf, waist-high, sat as many of the inhabit- ants of the town as could cross their legs conveniently. As soon as we were discerned through the smoke by the omnifarious proprietor of the establishment, two INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 443 of the worst-dressed customers were turned off the shelf unceremoniously to make room for us, the fire beneath the coffeepot was raked open, and the agree- able flavor of the spiced beverage of the east ascended refreshingly to our nostrils. With his baggy frowsers tucked up to his thigh, his silk shirt to his armpits, and his smoke-dried but clean feet wandering at large in a pair of red morocco slippers, our Turkish Gany- mede presented the small cups in their filagree hold- ers, and never was beverage more delicious or more welcome. Thirsty with our ramble, and unaccus- tomed to such small quantities as seem to satisfy the natives of the east, the captain and myself soon became objects of no small amusement to the wondering beards about us. A large tablespoon holds rather more than a Turkish coffee-cup, and one, or, at most, two of these, satisfies the dryest clay in the Orient. To us, a dozen of them was a bagatelle, and we soon ex- hausted the copper pot, and intimated to the aston- ished Gafidji that we should want another. He looked at us a minute to see if we were in earnest, and then laid his hand on his stomach, and rolling up his eyes, made some remark to his other customers which pro- voked a general laugh. It was our last " lark" ashore for some time, however, and spite of this apparent prophecy of a colic, we smoked our narghiles and kept him running with his fairy cups for some time longer. One never gets enough of that fragrant li- quor. The sun broke through the clouds as we sat on the high bench, and, hastily paying our Turk, we hurried to the seaside. The wind seemed to have lulled, and was blowing lightly offshore ; and, impatient of loiter- ing on his voyage, the captain got up his anchor and ran across the bay, and in half an hour was driving through a sea that left not a dry plank on the deck of the Metamora. The other vessels at Fourgas had not stirred, and the sky in the northeast looked to my eye very threat- ening. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the captain crowded sail and sped on like a sea-bird, though I could see by his face when he looked in the quarter of the wind, that he had acted more from im- pulse than judgment in leaving his shelter. The heavy sea kicked us on our course, however, and the smart little brig shot buoyantly over the crests of the waves as she outran them, and it was difficult not to feel that the bounding and obedient fabric beneath our feet was instinct with self-confidence, and rode the waters like their master. I well knew that the passage of the Archipelago was a difficult one in a storm even to an experienced pilot, and with the advantage of daylight ; and I could not but remember with some anxiety that we were enter- ing upon it at nightfall, and with a wind strengthening every moment, while the captain confessedly had made the passage but once before, and then in a calm sea of August. The skipper, however, walked his deck con- fidently, though he began to manage his canvass with a more wary care, and, before dark, we were scudding under a single sail, and pitching onward with the heave of the sea at a rate that, if we were to see Malta at all, promised a speedy arrival. As the night closed in we passed a large frigate lying-to, which we afterward found out was the Superbe, a French eighty-gun ship (wrecked a few hours after on the island of Andros). The two American frigates had run up by Mitylene, and were still behind us : and the fear of being run down in the night, in our small craft, induced the captain to scud on, though he would else have lain-to with the Frenchman, and perhaps have shared his fate. I stayed on deck an hour or two after dark, and be- fore going below satisfied myself that we should owe it to the merest chance if we escaped striking in the night. The storm had become so furious that we ran with bare poles before it ; and though it set us pretty fairly on our way, the course lay through a narrow and most intricate channel, among small and rocky islands, and we had nothing for it but to trust to a providential drift. The captain prepared himself for a night on deck, lashed everything that was loose, and filled the two jugs suspended in the cabin, which, as the sea had been too violent for any hope from the cook, were to sustain us through the storm. We took a biscuit and a glass of Hollands and water, holding on hard by the berths lest we should be pitched through the skylight, and as the captain tied up the dim lantern, I got a look at his face, which would have told me, if I had not known it before, that though resolute and un- moved, he knew himself to be entering on the most imminent hazard of his life. The waves now broke over the brig at every heave, and occasionally the descent of the solid mass of water on the quarter-deck seemed to drive her under like a cork. My own situation was the worst on board, for I was inactive. It required a seaman to keep the deck, and as there was no standing in the cabin without great effort, I disembarrassed myself of all that would impede a swimmer, and got into my berth to await a wreck which I considered almost inevitable. Braced with both hands and feet, I lay and watched the imbroglio in the bottom of the cabin, my own dressing-case among other things emptied of its contents and swim- ming with some of my own clothes and the captain's, and the water rushing down the companion-way with j every wave that broke over us. The last voice I heard : on deck was from the deep throat of the captain cal- ! ling his men aft to assist in lashing the helm, and then, : in the pauses of the gale, came the awful crash upon I deck, more like the descent of a falling house than a body of water, and a swash through the scuppers im- i mediately after, seconded by the smaller sea below, in 1 which my coat and waistcoat were undergoing a re- ; hearsal of the tragedy outside. At midnight the gale increased, and the seas that de- 1 scended on the brig shook her to the very keel. We could feel her struck under by the shock, and reel and quiver as she recovered and rose again ; and, as if to distract my attention, the little epitome of the tempest going on in the bottom of the cabin grew more and more serious. The unoccupied berths were packed with boxes of figs and bags of nuts, which " brought away" one after another, and rolled from side to side with a violence which threatened to drive them through the side of the vessel ; my portmanteau broke its lash- ings and shot heavily backward and forward with the roll of the sea ; and if I was not to be drowned like a dog in a locked cabin, I feared, at least, I should have my legs broken by the leap of a fig-box into my berth. My situation was wholly uncomfortable, yet half ludi- crous. An hour after midnight the captain came down, pale and exhausted, and with no small difficulty managed to get a tumbler of grog. " How does she head ?" I asked. " Side to wind, drifting five knots an hour." "Where are you?" "God only knows. I expect her to strike every minute." He quietly picked up the wick of the lamp as it tossed to and fro, and watching the roll of the vessel, gained the companion-way, and mounted to the deck. The door was locked, and I was once more a prisoner and alone. An hour elapsed— the sea, it appeared to me, strengthening in its heaves beneath us, and the wind howling and hissing in the rigging like a hundred devils. An awful surge then burst down upon the deck, racking the brig in every seam : the hurried tread of feet overhead told me that they were cutting 444 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. the lashings of the helm ; the seas succeeded each other quicker and quicker, and, conjecturing from the shortness of the pitch, that we were nearing a reef, I was half out of my berth when the cabin door was wrenched open, and a deluging sea washed down the companion-way. " On deck for your life !" screamed the hoarse voice of the captain. I sprang up through streaming water, barefoot and bareheaded, but the pitch of the brig was so violent that I dared not leave the ropes of the companion lad- der, and, almost blinded with the spray and wind, I stood waiting for the stroke. " Hard down !" cried the captain in a voice I shall never forget, and as the rudder creaked with the strain, the brig fell slightly off, and rising with a tremendous surge, I saw the sky dimly relieved against the edge of a ragged precipice, and in the next moment, as if with the repulse of a catapult, we were flung back into the trough of the sea by the retreating wave, and surged heavily beyond the rock. The noise of the breakers, and the rapid commands of the captain now drowned the hiss of the wind, and in a few min- utes we were plunging once more through the un- certain darkness, the long and regular heavings of the sea alone assuring us that we were driving from the shore. The wind was cold, and I was wet to the skin. Every third sea broke over the brig and added to the deluge in the cabin, and from the straining of the ; masts I feared they would come down with every sue- j ceeding shock. I crept once more below, and regained j my berth, where wet and aching in every joint, I awaited fate or the daylight. Morning broke, but no abatement of the storm. The captain came below and informed me (what I had already presumed) that we had run upon the southern- most point of Negropont, and had been saved by a miracle from shipwreck. The back wave had taken us ofl", and with the next sea we had shot beyond it. We were now running in the same narrow channel for Cape Colonna, and were surrounded with dangers. The skipper looked beaten out ; his eyes were protru- ding and strained, and his face seemed to me to have emaciated in the night. He swallowed his grog, and flung himself for half an hour into his berth, and then went on deck again to relieve his mate, where tired of my wretched berth, I soon followed him. The deck was a scene of desolation. The bulwarks were carried clean away, the jolly-boat swept off, and the long-boat the only moveable thing remaining. The men were holding on to the shrouds, haggard and sleepy, clinging mechanically to their support as the sea broke down upon them, and, silent at the helm, stood the captain and the second mate keeping the brig stern-on to the sea, and straining their eyes for land through the thick spray before them. The day crept on, and another night, and we passed it like the last. The storm never slacked, and all through the long hours the same succession went on, the brig plunging and rising, struggling beneath the overwhelming and overtaking waves, and recovering herself again, till it seemed to me as if I had never known any other motion. The captain came below for his biscuit and grog and went up again without speaking a word, the mates did the same with the same silence, and at last the bracing and holding on to pre- vent being flung from my berth became mechanical, and I did it while I slept. Cold, wet, hungry, and exhausted, what a blessing from Heaven were five minutes of forgetfulness ! How the third night wore on I scarce remember. The storm continued with unabated fury, and when the dawn of the third morning broke upon us the cap- tain conjectured that we had drifted four hundred miles before the wind. The crew were exhausted with watching, the brig labored more and more heavily, and the storm seemed eternal. At noon of the third day the clouds broke up a little, and the wind, though still violent, slacked somewhat in its fury. The sun struggled down upon the lashed and raging sea, and, taking our bearings, we found our- selves about two hundred miles from Malta. With great exertions, the cook contrived to get up a fire in the binnacle and boil a little rice, and never gourmet sucked the brain of a woodcock with the relish which welcomed that dark mess of pottage. It was still impossible to carry more than a hand's breadth of sail, but we were now in open waters and flew merrily before the driving sea. The pitching and racking motion, and the occasional shipping of a heavy wave, still forbade all thoughts or hopes of comfort, but the dread of shipwreck troubled us no more, and I passed the day in contriving how to stand long enough on my legs to get my wet traps from my floating portmanteau, and go into quarantine like a Christian. The following day, at noon, Malta became visible from the top of an occasional mountain wave; and still driving under a reefed topsail before the hurricane, we rapidly neared it, and I began to hope for the repose of terra firma. The watch towers of the castellated rock soon became distinct through the atmosphere of spray, and at a distance of a mile, we took in sail and waited for a pilot. While tossing in the trough of the sea the following half hour, the captain communicated to me some em- barrassment with respect to my landing which had not occurred to me. It appeared that the agreement to land me at Malta was not mentioned in his policy of insurance, and the underwriters of course were not re- sponsible for any accident that might happen to the brig after a variation from his original plan of passage. This he would not have minded if he could have set me ashore in a half hour, as he had anticipated, but his small boat was lost in the storm, and it was now a question whether the pilot-boat would take ashore a passenger liable to quarantine. To run his brig into harbor would be a great expense and positive loss of insurance, and to get out the long-boat with his broken tackle and exhausted crew was not to be thought of. I knew very well that no passenger from a plague port (such as Smyrna and Constantinople) was permitted to land on any terms at Gibraltar, and if the pilot here should refuse to take me off", the alternative was clear, I must make a voyage against my will to America ! I was not in a very pleasant state of mind during the delay which followed ; for, though I had been three years absent from my country and loved it well, I had laid my plans for still two years of travel on this side the Atlantic, and certain moneys for my " charges" lay waiting my arrival at Malta. Among lesser reasons, I had not a rag of clothes dry or clean, and was heartily out of love with salt water and the smell of figs. As if to aggravate my unhappiness, the sun broke through a rift in the clouds and lit up the white and turreted battlements of Malta like an isle of the blessed — the only bright spot within the limits of the stormy horizon. The mountain waves on which we were tossing were tempestuous and black, the comfortless and battered brig with her weary crew looked more like a wreck than a seaworthy merchantman, and no pilot appearing, the captain looked anxiously seaward, as if he grudged every minute of the strong wind rush- ing by on his course. A small speck at last appeared making toward ua from the shore, and, riding slowly over the tremendous waves, a boat manned by four men came within hailing distance. One moment as high as our topmast, and another in the depths of the gulf a hundred feet below us, it was like conversing from two buckets in a well. INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 445 " Do you want a pilot ?" screamed the Maltese in English, as the American flag blew out to the wind "No!" roared the captain, like a thunder-peal, through his tin-trumpet. The Maltese, without deigning another look, put up his helm with a gesture of disappointment, and bore away. "Boat ahoy!" bellowed the captain. "Ahoy! ahoy!" answered the pilot. " Will you take a passenger ashore ?" "Where from?" " Smyrna !" "No — o — o — o !" There was a sound of doom in the angry prolonga- tion of that detested monosyllable that sunk to the bottom of my heart like lead. " Clear away the mainsail," cried the captain get- ting round once more to the wind. " I knew how it would be, sir," he continued, to me, as I bit my lips in the effort to be reconciled to an involuntary voyage of four thousand miles ; "it wasn't likely he'd put him- self and his boat's crew into twenty days' quarantine to oblige you and me." I could not but own that it was an unreasonable ex- pectation. "Never mind, sir," said the skipper, consolingly, " plenty of salt fish in the locker, and I'll set you on Long Wharf in no time !" "Brig ahoy!" came a voice faintly across the waves. The captain looked over his shoulder without losing a capful of wind from his sail, and sent back the hail impatiently. The pilot was running rapidly down upon us, and had come back to offer to tow me ashore in the brig's jolly-boat for a large sum of money. " We've lost our boat, and you're a bloody shark," answered the skipper, enraged at the attempt at extor- j tion. " Head your course !" he muttered gruffly to the man at the helm, who had let the brig fall off that the pilot might come up. Irritated by this new and gratuitous disappointment, I stamped on the deck in an ungovernable fit of rage, and wished the brig at the devil. The skipper looked at me a moment, and instead of the angry answer I expected, an expression of kind commiseration stole over his rough face. The next moment he seized the helm and put the brig away from the wind, and then making a trumpet of his two immense hands, he once more hailed the returning pilot. " I can't bear to see you take it so much to heart, sir," said the kind sailor, "and I'll do for you what I wouldn't do for another man on the face o' the 'arth. All hands there !" The men came aft, and the captain in brief words stated the case to them, and appealed to their sense of kindness for a fellow-countryman, to undertake a task, which, in the sea then running, and with their exhausted strength, was not a service he could well demand in other terms. It was to get out the long- boat, and wait off while the pilot towed me ashore and returned with her. "Ay, ay! sir," was the immediate response from every lip, and from the chief mate to the black cabin- boy, every man sprang cheerily to the lashings. It was no momentary task, for the boat was as firmly set in her place as the mainmast, and stowed compactly with barrels of pork, extra rigging, and spars — in short, all the furniture and provision of the voyage. In the course of an hour, however, the tackle was rigged on the fore and main yards, and with a desperate effort its immense bulk was heaved over the side, and lay tossing on the tempestuous waters. I shook hands with the men, who refused every remuneration be- yond my thanks, and, following the captain over the side, was soon toiling heavily on the surging waters, thanking Heaven for the generous sympathies of home and country implanted in the human bosom. Those who know the reluctance with which a merchant cap- tain lays-to, even to pick up a man overboard in a fair wind, and those who understand the meaning of a for- feited insurance, will appreciate this instance of dif- ficult generosity. I shook the hard fist of the kind- hearted skipper on the quarantine stairs, and watched his heavy boat as she crept out of the little harbor with the tears in my eyes. I shall travel far before I find again a man I honor more heartily. THE REVENGE OF THE SIGNOR BASIL. PART I. " Un homme capable de faire des dominos av ec les os do son pere."— Pere Gok:ot. It was in the golden month of August, not very long ago, that the steamer which plies between St. Mark's Stairs, at Venice, and the river into which Phaeton turned a somerset with the horses of the sun, started on its course over the lagoon with an unusual God-send of passengers. The moon was rising from the unchaste bed of the Adriatic (wedded every year to Venice, yet every day and night sending the sun and moon from her lovely bosom to the sky), and while the gold of the west was still glowing on the landward side of the Campanile, a silver gleam was brightening momently on the other, and the Arabic domes of St. Mark and the flying Mercury on the Dogana paled to the setting orb and kindled to the rising with the same Talleyrand-esque facility. For the first hour the Mangia-foco sputtered on her way with a silent company ; the poetry of the scene, or the regrets at leaving the delicious city lessening in the distance, affecting all alike with a thoughtful incoinmunicativeness. Gradually, however, the dol- phin hues over the Brenta faded away— the marble ' city sank into the sea, with its turrets and bright spires — the still lagoon became a sheet of polished glass — and the silent groups leaning over the rails found ! tongues and feet, and began to stir and murmur. With the usual unconscious crystallization of so- ciety, the passengers of the Mangia-foco had yielded one side of the dock to a party of some rank, who had left their carriages at Ferrara in coming from Florence to Venice, and were now upon their return to the city of Tasso, stomaching, with what grace they might, the contact of a vulgar conveyance, which saved them the I hundred miles of posting between Ferrara and the i Brenta. In the centre of the aristocratic circle stood ; a lady enveloped in a cashmere, but with her bonnet hung by the string over her arm — one of those women of Italy' upon whom the divinest gifts of loveliness are showered with a profusion which apparently impover- ishes the sex of the whole nation. A beautiful woman in that land is rarely met ; but when she docs appear, she is what Venus would have been after the contest for beauty on Ida, had the weapons of her antagonists, as in the tournaments of chivalry, been added to the palm of victory. The marchesa del Marmore was ap- parently twenty-three, and she might have been an incarnation of the morning-star for pride and bright- er, the other side of the deck stood a group of vouikt men, who, by their careless and rather shabby dress, but pale and intellectual faces, were of that class met in every public conveyance of Italy. I he port- folios under their arms, ready for a sketch, would have removed a doubt of their profession, had one existed ; and with that proud independence for which the class 446 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. is remarkable, they had separated themselves equally from the noble and ignoble — disqualified by inward superiority from association with the one, and by acci- dental poverty from the claims cultivation might give them upon the other. Their glances at the divine face turned toward them from the party I have alluded to, were less constant than those of the vulgar, who could not offend ; but they were evidently occupied more with it than with the fishing-boats lying asleep on the lagoon : and one of them, half-buried in the coil of rone, and looking under the arm of another, had already made a sketch of her that might some day make the world wonder from what seventh heaven of fancy such an angelic vision of a head had descended upon the painter's dream. In the rear of this group, with the air of one who would conceal himself from view, stood a young man who belonged to the party, but who, with less of the paHor of intellectual habits in his face, was much bet- ter dressed than his companions, and had, in spite of the portfolio under his arm, and a hat of the Salvator breadth of rim, the undisguisable air of a person ac- customed to the best society. While maintaining a j straggling conversation with his friends, with whom he | seemed a favorite, Signor Basil employed himself in | looking over the sketch of the lovely marchesa going on at his elbow — occasionally, as if to compare it with the original, stealing a long look from between his hand and his slouched hat at the radiant creature sit- ting so unconsciously for her picture, and in a low voice correcting, as by ihe result of his gaze, the rapid touches of the artist. " Take a finer pencil for the nostril, caro mio !" said he ; "it is as thin as the edge of a violet, and its trans- parent curve " " Cospetto !" said the youth ; " but you see by this faint light better than I : if she would but turn to the moon " The signor Basil suddenly flung his handkerchief into the lagoon, bringing its shadow between the queen of night and the marchesa del Marmore ; and, attract- ed from her revery by the passing object, the lady moved her head quickly to the light, and in that mo- ment the spirited lip and nostril were transferred to the painter's sketch. " Thanks, mio bravo !" enthusiastically exclaimed the looker-on ; " Giorgione would not have beaten thee with the crayon !" — and, with a rudeness which surprised the artist, he seized the paper from beneath his hand, walked away with it to the stern, and lean- ing far over the rails, perused it fixedly by the mellow lustre of the moon. The youth presently followed him, and after a few words exchanged in an under- tone, Signor Basil slipped a piece of gold into his hand, and carefully placed the sketch in his own port- folio. II. It was toward midnight when the Mangia-foco en- tered the Adige, and keeping its steady way between the low banks of the river, made for the grass-grown and flowery canal which connects its waters with the Po. Most of the passengers had yielded to the drowsy influence of the night air, and, of the aristocratic party on the larboard side, the young marchesa alone was waking : her friends had made couches of their cloaks and baggage, and were reclining at her feet, while the artists, all except the signor Basil, were stretched fairly on the deck, their portfolios beneath their heads, and their large hats covering their faces from the powerful rays of the moon. " Miladi does justice to the beauty of the night," said the waking artist, in a low and respectful tone, as he rose from her feet with a cluster of tuberoses she had let fall from her hand. " It is indeed lovely, Signor Pittore," responded the marchesa, glancing at his portfolio, and receiving the flowers with a gracious inclination ; " have you touched Venice from the lagoon to-night ?" The signor Basil opened his portfolio, and replied to the indirect request of the lady by showing her a very indifferent sketch of Venice from the island of St. Lazzaro. As if to escape from the necessity of praising what had evidently disappointed her, she turned the cartoon hastily, and exposed, on the sheet beneath, the spirited and admirable outline of her own matchless features. A slight start alone betrayed the surprise of the highborn lady, and raising the cartoon to examine it more closely, she said with a smile, " You may easier tread on Titian's heels than Canaletti's. Bezzuoli has painted me, and not so well. I will awake the mar- quis, and he shall purchase it of you." " Not for the wealth of the Medici, madam !" said the young man, clasping his portfolio hastily, " pray do not disturb monsignore ! The picture is dear to me !" The marchesa, looking into his face, and with a glance around, which the accomplished courtier be- fore her read better than she dreamed, she drew her shawl over her blanched shoulders, and settled her- self to listen to the conversation of her new acquaint- ance. " You would be less gracious if you were observed, proud beauty," thought Basil ; " but while you think the poor painter may while away the tediousness of a vigil, he may feed his eyes on your beauty as well." The Mangia-foco turned into the canal, threaded its lily-paved waters for a mile or two. and then, put- ting forth upon the broad bosom of the Po, went on her course against the stream, and, with retarded pace, penetrated toward the sun-beloved heart of Italy. And while the later hours performed their procession with the stars, the marchesa del Marmore leaned sleepless and unfatigued against the railing, listening with min- gled curiosity and scorn to the passionate love-murmui of the enamored painter. His hat was thrown aside, his fair and curling locks were flowing in the night air, his form was bent earnestly but respectfully toward her, and on his lip, with all its submissive tenderness, there sat a shadow of something she could not define, but which rebuked, ever and anon, as with the fierce regard of a noble, the condescension she felt toward him as an artist. III. Upon the lofty dome of the altar in the cathedral of Bologna stands poised an angel in marble, not spoken of in the books of travellers, but perhaps the loveliest incarnation of a blessed cherub that ever lay in the veined bosom of Pentelicus. Lost and unobserved on the vast floor of the nave, the group of artists, who had made a day's journey from Ferrara, sat in the wicker chairs hired for a baioch during the vesper, and drew silently from this angel, while the devout people of Bologna murmured their Ave Marias around. Signor Basil alone was content to look over the work of his companions, and the twilight had already begun to brighten the undying lamps at the shrine, when he started from the pillar against which he leaned, and crossed hastily toward a group issuing from a private chapel in the western aisle. A lady walked between two gentlemen of noble mien, and behind her, attend- ed by an equally distinguished company, followed that lady's husband, the marchese del Marmore. They were strangers passing through Bologna, and had been attended to vespers by some noble friends. The companions of the signor Basil looked on with some surprise as their enamored friend stepped confi- dently before the two nobles in attendance upon the INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 447 lady, and arrested her steps with a salutation which, though respectful as became a gentleman, was marked with the easy politeness of one accustomed to a favora- ble reception. " .May I congratulate miladi," he said, rising slowly from his bow, and fixing his ryes with unembarrassed admiration on her own liquid but now frowning orbs, " upon her safe journey over the marches ! Bologna," he continued, glancing at the nobles with a courteous smile, "welcomes her fittingly." The lady listened with a look of surprise, and the Bolognese glanced from the dusty boots of the artist to bis portfolio. •'Has the painter the honor to know lasignora?" asked the cavalier on her right. " Signor, si !" said the painter, fiercely, as a curl arched the lady's lip, and she prepared to answer. The color mounted to the temples of the marchesa, and her husband, who had loitered beneath the ma- donna of Domenichino, coming up at the instant, she bowed coldlv to the signor Basil, and continued down | the aisle. The artist followed to her carriage, and j lifted his hat respectfully as the lumbering equipage | took its way by the famous statue of Neptune, and j then with a confident smile, which seemed to his com- , panions somewhat mistimed, he muttered between his teeth, " Ciascuno son bel' giorno !" and strolled loiter- in"; on with them to the trattoria. IV. The court of the grand-duke of Florence is perhaps the most cosmopolitan and the most easy of access in all Europe- The Austrian-born monarch himself, adopting in some degree the frank and joyous charac- ter of the people over whom he reigns, throws open his parks and palaces, his gardens and galleries, to the strangers passing through ; and in the season of gayety almost any presentable person, resident at Florence, may procure the entree to the court balls, and start j fair with noble dames and gentlemen for grace in | courtly favor. The files at the Palazzo Pitti, albeit not always exempt from a leaven of vulgarity, are al- ways brilliant and amusing, and the exclusives of the court, though they draw the line distinctly enough to their own eye, mix with apparent abandonment in the motley waltz and mazurka, and either from good-na- ture or a haughty conviction of their superiority, never suffer the offensive cordon to be felt, scarce to be sus- pected, by the multitude who divert them. The grand-duke, to common eyes, is a grave and rather timid person, with more of the appearance of the scholar than of the sovereign, courteous in public, and benevolent and earnest in his personal attentions to his guests at the palace. The royal quadrille may be shared without permission of the grand chamberlain, and the royal eye, after the first one or two dances of ceremony, searches for partners by the lamp of beauty, heedless of the diamonds on the brow, or the star of nobility on the shoulder. The grand supper is scarce more exclusive, and on the disappearance of the royal cortege, the delighted crowd take their departure, having seen no class more favored than themselves, and enchanted with the gracious absence of pretension in the nobilita of Tuscany. Built against the side of a steep hill, the Palazzo Pitti encloses its rooms of state within massive and sombre walls in front, while in the rear the higher sto- ries of the palace open forth on a level with the deli- cious gardens of the Boboli, and contain suites of smaller apartments, fitted up with a cost and luxury which would beggar the dream of a Sybarite. Here lives the monarch, in a seclusion rendered deeper and more sacred by the propinquity of the admitted world in the apartments below; and in this sanctuary of roy- alty is enclosed a tide of life as silent and unsuspected by the common inhabitant of Florence as the flow of the ocean-veiled Arethusa by the mariner of the Ionian main. Here the invention of the fiery genius of Italy is exhausted in poetical luxury; here the reserved and silent sovereign throws off his maintein of royal conde- scension, and enters with equal arms into the lists of love and wit ; here burn (as if upon an altar fed with spice-woods and precious gums) the fervent and uncal- culating passions of this glowing clime, in senses re- fined by noble nurture, and hearts prompted by the haughty pulses of noble blood ; and here — to the threshold of this sanctuary of royal pleasure — press all who know its secrets, and who imagine a claim to it in their birth and attractions, while the lascia-passarc is accorded with a difficulty which alone preserves its splendor. Some two or three days after the repulse of the signor Basil in the cathedral of Bologna, the group of travelling artists were on their way from the grand gal- lery at Florence to their noonday meal. Loitering with slow feet through the crowded and narrow Via Calzaiole, they emerged into the sunny Piazza, and looking up with understanding eyes at the slender shaft of the Campanile (than which a fairer figure of reli- gious architecture points not to heaven), they took their way toward the church of Santa Trinita, propo- sing to eat their early dinner at a house named, from its excellence in a certain temperate beverage, La Birra. The traveller should be advised, also, that by paying an extra paul in the bottle, he may have at this renowned eating-house an old wine sunned on the southern shoulder of Fiesole, that hath in its flavor a certain redolence of Boccaccio — scarce remarkable, since it grew in the scene of the Decameron — but of a virtue which, to the Hundred Tales of Love (read drinking), is what the Gracilis ad Parnassum should be to the building of a dithyrambic. The oil of two crazie upon the palm of the fat waiter Giuseppe will assist in calling the vintage to his memory. A thundering rap upon the gate of the adjoining Palazzo arrested the attention of the artists as they were about to enter the Birra, and in the occupant of a dark-green cabriolet, drawn by a pampered horse of the duke's breed, they recognised, elegantly dressed and posed on his seat a la d.Orsay, the signor Basil. His coat was of an undecided cut and color, and his gloves were of primrose purity. The recognition was immediate, and the cordiality of the greeting mutual. They had parted from their companion at the gate of Florence, as travellers part, without question, and they met without reserve to part as questionless again. The artists were surprised at the signor Basil's transformation, but no follower of their refined art would have been so ill-bred as to ex- press it. He wished them the hon appedto, as a tall chasseur came out to say that her ladyship was at home; and with a slacked rein the fiery horse sprang through the gateway, and the marble court of the palace rang with his prancing hoofs. He who was idle and bought flowers at the Cafe of the Colonna at Florence will have remarked, as lie sat in his chair upon the street in the sultry evening the richly ornamented terrace and balustrade of the Pa- lazzo Corsi giving upon the Piazza Trinita. The dark old Ghibelline palace of the Strozzi lets the eye down upon it, as it might pass from a helmeted knight with closed vizor to his unbonneted and laughing page. The crimson curtains of the window opening upon the terrace, at the time of our story, reminded every passing Florentine of the lady who dwelt within —a descendant of one of the haughtiest lines of Eng- lish chivalry— resident in Italy since many years for health, but bearing in her delicate frame and ex- quisitely transparent features, the loftiest type of pa- trician beauty that had ever filled the eye that looked upon her. In the inner heaven of royal exclusiveness 448 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. at the Pitti — in its constellation of rank and wit — the lady Geraldine had long been the worshipped and as- cendant cynosure. Happy in a husband without rank and but of moderate fortune, she maintained the spot- less character of an English wife in this sphere of conventional corruption ; and though the idol of the duke and his nobles, it would have been like a whisper against the purity of the brightest Pleiad, to have linked her name with love. With her feet upon a sofa covered with a gossamer cashmere, her lovely head pillowed on a cushion of silk, and a slight stand within arm's length holding a vase of flowers and the volume from which she had been reading, the lady Geraldine received the count Basil Spiriford, some time attache to the Russian em- bassy at Paris (where he had first sunned his eyes in her beauty), and at present the newly-appointed sec- retary to the minister of the same monarch near the court of Tuscany. Without a bow, but with the hasty step and gesture of a long absent and favored friend, the count Basil ran to the proffered hand, and pressed its alabaster fingers to his lips. Had the more common acquaint- ances of the diplomate seen him at this moment, they would have marvelled how the mask of manhood may drop, and disclose the ingenuous features of the boy. The secretary knew his species, and the lady Geral- dine was one of those women for whom the soul is unwilling to possess a secret. After the first inquiries were over, the lady ques- tioned her recovered favorite of his history since they had parted. "I left you," she said, "swimming the dangerous tide of life at Paris. How have you come to shore?" " Thanks, perhaps, to your friendship, which made life worth the struggle ! For the two extremes, how- ever, you know what I was at Paris — and yesterday I was a wandering artist in velveteen and a sombrero !" Lady Geraldine laughed. "Ah! you look at my curls — but Macassar is at a discount ! It is the only grace I cherished in my in- cognito. A resumer — I got terribly out of love by the end of the year after we parted, and as terribly in debt. My promotion in diplomacy did not arrive, and the extreme hour for my credit did. Pozzo di Borgo kindly procured me conge for a couple of years, and I dived presently under a broad-rimmed hat, got into a vetturino with portfolio and pencils, joined a troop of wandering artists, and with my patrimony at nurse, have been two years looking at life without spectacles at Venice." "And painting?" "Painting!" " Might one see a specimen ?" asked the lady Geral- dine, with an incredulous smile. " I regret that my immortal efforts in oils are in the possession of a certain Venetian, who lets the fifth floor of a tenement washed by the narrowest canal in that fair city. But if your ladyship cares to see a drawing or two — " He rang the bell, and his jocki Anglais presently brought from the pocket of his cabriolet a wayworn and thinly furnished portfolio. The lady Geraldine turned over a half-dozen indifferent views of Venice, but the last cartoon in the portfolio made her start. "La Marchesa del Marmore!" she exclaimed, look- ing at Count Basil with an inquiring and half uneasy eye. "Is it well drawn?" he asked quietly. " Well drawn ? It is a sketch worthy of Raphael. Do you really draw so well as this, or" — she added, after a slight hesitation — "is it a miracle of love?" " It is a divine head," soliloquized the Russian, half closing his eyes, and looking at the drawing from a distance, as if to fill up the imperfect outline from his memory. The lady Geraldine laid her hand on his arm. " My dear Basil," she said seriously, " I should be wretched if I thought your happiness was in the power of this woman. Do you love her?" " The portrait was not drawn by me," he answered, " though I have a reason for wishing her to think so. It was done by a fellow-traveller of mine, whom I wish to make a sketch of yourself, and I have brought it here to interest you in him as an artist. Mais revenons a nos moutons — la marchesa was also a fellow-traveller of mine, and without loving her too violently, 1 owe her a certain debt of courtesy contracted on the way. Will you assist me to pay it?" Relieved of her fears, and not at all suspecting the good faith of the diplomatist in his acknowledgments of gratitude, the lady Geraldine inquired simply how she could serve him. " In the twenty-four hours since my arrival at Flor- ence," he said, "I have put myself, as you will see, au courant of the minor politics of the Pitti. Thanks to my Parisian renown, the duke has enrolled me al- ready under the back-stairs oligarchy, and to-morrow night I shall sup with you in the saloon of Hercules after the ball is over. La marchesa, as you well know, has, with all her rank and beauty, never been able to set foot within those guarded penetralia — soit her ma- licious tongue, soit the interest against her of the men she has played upon her hook too freely. The road to her heart, if there be one, lies over that threshold, and I would take the toll. Do you understand me, most beautiful lady Geraldine?" The count Basil imprinted another kiss upon the fingers of the fair Englishwoman, as she promised to put into his hand the following night the illuminated ticket which was to repay, as she thought, too gener- ously, a debt of gratitude ; and plucking a flower from her vase for his bosom, he took his leave to return at twilight to dinner. Dismissing his cabriolet at the gale, he turned on foot toward the church of San Gaetano, and with an expression of unusual elation in his step and countenance, entered the trattoria, where dined at that moment his companions of the pencil. The green lamps glittering by thousands amid the foliage of the Boboli had attained their full brightness, and the long-lived Italian day had died over the distant mountains of Carrara, leaving its inheritance of light apparently to the stars, who, on their fields of deepen- ing blue, sparkled, each one like the leader of an un- seen host in the depths of heaven, himself the fore- most and the most radiant. The night was balmy and voluptuous. The music of the ducal band swelled forth from the perfumed apartments on the air. A single nightingale, far back in the wilderness of the garden, poured from his melodious heart a chant of the most passionate melancholy. The sentinel of the body-guard stationed at the limit of the spray of the fountain leaned on his halberd and felt his rude senses melt in the united spells of luxury and nature. The ministers of a monarch's pleasure had done their ut- most to prepare a scene of royal delight, and night and summer had flung in their enchantments when in- genuity was exhausted. The dark architectural mass of the Pitti, pouring a blaze of light scarce endurable from its deeply-sunk windows, looked like the side of an enchanted moun- tain laid open for the revels of sorcery. The aigrette and plume passed by ; the tiara and the jewel upon the breast ; the gayly-dressed courtiers and glittering dames; and to that soldier at his dewy post, it seemed like the realized raving of the improvisatore when he is lost in some fable of Araby. Yet within walked malice and hate, and the light and perfume that might have fed an angel's heart with love, but deepened INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 449 in many a beating bosom the consuming fires of envy. With the gold key of office on his cape, the grand chamberlain stood at the feet of the dowager grand dutchess, and by a sign to the musicians, hidden in a latticed gallery behind the Corinthian capital of the hall, retarded or accelerated the soft measure of the waltz. On a raised seat in the rear of the chairs of state, sat the ladies of honor and the noble dames nearest allied to royal blood ; one solitary and privi- leged intruder alone sharing the elevated place — the lady Geraldine. Dressed in white, her hair wound about her head in the simplest form, yet developing its divine shape with the clear outline of statuary, her eyes lambent with purity and sweetness, heavily fring- ed with lashes a shade darker than the light auburn braided on her temples, and the tint of the summer's most glowing rose turned out from the threadlike part- ing of her lips ; she was a vision of loveliness to take into the memory, as the poet enshrines in his soul the impossible shape of his ideal, and consumes youth and age searching in vain for its like. Fair Lady Ger- aldine ! thou wilt read these passionate words from one whose worship of thy intoxicating loveliness has never before found utterance, but if this truly-told tale should betray the hand that has dared to describe thy beauty, in thy next orisons to St. Mary of pity, breathe from those bright lips a prayer that he may forget thee ! By the side of the lady Geraldine, but behind the chair of the grand dutchess, who listened to his con- versation with singular delight, stood a slight young man of uncommon personal beauty, a stranger appa- rently to every other person present. His brilliant uni- form alone betrayed him to be in the Russian diploma- cy ; and the marked distinction shown him, both by the reigning queen of the court, and the more powerful and inaccessible queen of beauty, marked him as an object of keen and universal curiosity. By the time the fifth mazurka had concluded its pendulous refrain, the grand chamberlain had tolerably well circulated the name and rank of Count Basil Spirifort, the re- nowned wit and elegant of Paris, newly appointed to the court of his royal highness of Tuscany. Fair eyes wandered amid his sunny curls, and beating bo- soms hushed their pulses as he passed. Count Basil knew the weight of a first impression. Count Basil knew also the uses of contempt. Upon the first principle he kept his place between the grand dutchess and Lady Geraldine, exerting his deeply- studied art of pleasing, to draw upon himself their ex- clusive attention. Upon the second principle, he was perfectly unconscious of the presence of another hu- man being ; and neither the gliding step of the small- eared princess S in the waltz, nor the stately advance of the last female of the Medici in the mazur- ka, distracted his large blue eyes a moment from their idleness. With one hand on the eagle-hilt of his sword, and his side leaned against the high cushion of red velvet honored by the pressure of the lady Geral- dine, he gazed up into that beaming face, when not bending respectfully to the dutchess, and drank stead- fastly from her beauty, as the lotus-cup drinks light from the sun. The new secretary had calculated well. In the deep recess of the window looking toward San Minia- to, stood a lady nearly hidden from view by the muslin curtains just stirring with the vibration of the music, who gazed on the immediate circle of the grand dutch- ess with an interest that was not attempted to be dis- guised. On her first entrance into the hall, the mar- chess del Marmore had recognised in the new minion of favor her impassioned lover of the lagoon, her slight- ed acquaintance of the cathedral. When the first shock of surprise was over, she looked on the form which she had found beautiful even in the disguise of pover- 20 ty, and, forgetting her insulting repulse when he would have claimed in public the smile she had given him when unobserved, she recalled with delight every syl- lable he had murmured in her ear, and every look she had called forth in the light of a Venetian moon. The man who had burned upon the altar of her vanity the most intoxicating incense — who had broken through the iron rules of convention and ceremony, to throw his homage at her feet — who had portrayed so incom- parably (she believed) with his love-inspired pencil the features imprinted on his heart — this chance-won worshipper, this daring but gifted plebeian, as she had thought him, had suddenly shot into her sphere and become a legitimate object of love ; and, beautified by the splendor of dress, and distinguished by the prefer- ence and favor of those incomparably above her, he seemed tenfold, to her eyes, the perfection of adorable beauty. As she remembered his eloquent devotion to herself, and saw the interest taken in him by a woman whom she hated and had calumniated — a woman who she believed stood between her and all the light of ex- istence — she anticipated the triumph of taking him from her side, of exhibiting him to the world as a fal- con seduced from his first quarry ; and never doubting that so brilliant a favorite would control the talisman of the paradise she had so long wished to enter, she panted for the moment when she should catch his eye and draw him from his lure, and already heard the chamberlain's voice in her ear commanding her pres- ence after the ball in the saloon of Hercules. The marchesa had been well observed from the first by the wily diplomate. A thorough adept in the art (so necessary to his profession) of seeing without ap- pearing to see, he had scarce lost a shade of the vary- ing expressions of her countenance ; and while she fancied him perfectly unconscious of her presence, he read her tell-tale features as if they had given utter- ance to her thoughts. He saw, with secret triumph, j the effect of his brilliant position upon her proud and i vain heart ; watched her while she made use of her throng of despised admirers to create a sensation near him and attract his notice; and when the ball wore on, and he was still in unwearied and exclusive attendance upon the lady Geraldine, he gazed after her with a momentary curl of triumph on his lip, as she took up her concealed position in the embayed window, and abandoned herself to the bitter occupation of watching the happiness of her rival. The lady Geraldine had never been so animated since her first appearance at the court of Tuscany. It w;is past midnight when the grand-duke, flushed and tired with dancing, came to the side of the lady Geraldine. Count Basil gave place, and, remaining a moment in nominal obedience to the sovereign's polite request which he was too politic to construe literally, he looked down the dance with the air of one who has turned his back on all that could interest him, and, passing close to the concealed position of the marche- sa, stepped out upon the balcony. The air was cool, and the fountain played refresh- ingly below. The count Basil was one of those minds which never have so much leisure for digression as when they are most occupied. A love, as deep and profound as the abysses of his soul, was weaving thread for thread with a revenge worthy of a Mohican ; yet, after trying in vain to count eight in the Pleiades, he raised himself upon the marble balustrade, and perfect- ly anticipating the interruption to his solitude which presently occurred, began to speculate aloud on the dead and living at that hour beneath the roof of the Pitti. " A painter's mistress," he said, " immortal in her touch of her paramour's pencil, is worshipped for cen- turies on these walls by the pilgrims of art ; while the warm perfection of all loveliness— the purest and di- vinest of highborn women — will perish utterly with the 450 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. eyes that have seen her ! The Bella of Titian, the Fornarina of Raffaelle — peasant-girls of Italy — have, at this moment, more value in this royal palace than the breathing forms that inhabit it ! The lady Geral- dine herself, to whom the sovereign offers at this mo- ment his most flattering homage, would be less a loss to him than either ! Yet they despise the gods of the pencil who may thus make them immortal ! The dull blood in their noble veins, that never bred a thought beyond the instincts of their kind, would look down, forsooth, on the inventive and celestial ichor that in- flames the brain, and prompts the fiery hand of the painter! How long will this very sovereign live in the memories of men ? The murderous Medici, the am- bitious cardinals, the abandoned women, of an age gone by, hang in imperishable colors on his walls ; while of him, the lord of this land of genius, there is not a bust or a picture that would bring a sequin in the market- place ! They would buy genius in these days like wine, and throw aside the flask in which it ripened. Raffaelle and Buonarotti were companions for a pope and his cardinals : Titian was an honored guest for the doge. The stimul us to immortalize these noble friends was in the love they bore them ; and the secret of their power to do it lay half in the knowledge of their char- acters, gained by daily intimacy. Painters were princes then, as they are beggars now; and the princely art is beggared as well !" The marchesa del Marmore stepped out upon the balcony, leaning on the arm of the grand chamberlain. The soliloquizing secretary had fore- told to himself both her coming and her compan- on. " Monsieur le comte," said the chamberlain, " la marchesa del Marmore wishes for the pleasure of your acquaintance." Count Basil bowed low, and in that low and musical tone of respectful devotion which, real or counterfeit, made him irresistible to a woman who had a soul to be thrilled, he repeated the usual nothings upon the beau- ty of the night ; and when the chamberlain returned to his duties, the marchesa walked forth with her companion to the cool and fragrant alleys of the gar- den, and, under the silent and listening stars, implored forgiveness for her pride ; and, with the sudden aban- donment peculiar to the clime, poured into his ear the passionate and weeping avowal of her sorrow and love. " Those hours of penitence in the embayed win- dow," thought Count Basil, " were healthy for your soul." And as she walked by his side, leaning heavi- ly on his arm, and half-dissolved in a confiding tender- ness, his thoughts reverted to another and a far sweet- er voioe ; and while the caressing words of the marchesa fell on an unlistening ear, his footsteps insensibly turned back to the lighted hall. VI. As the daylight stole softly over Vallombrosa, the luxurious chariot of the marchesadel Marmore stopped at the door of Count Basil. The lady Geraldine's suit had been successful ; and the hitherto excluded Flor- entine had received, from the hand of the man she had once so ignorantly scorned, a privilege for which she would have bartered her salvation : she had supped at his side in the saloon of Hercules. With many faults of character, she was an Italian in feeling, and had a capacity, like all her countrywomen, for a consuming and headlong passion. She had better have been born of marble. " I have lifted you to heaven," said Count Basil, as her chariot-wheels rolled from his door ; " but it is as the eagle soars into the clouds with the serpent. We will see how you will relish the fall !" PART II. The grand-duke's carriages, with their six horses and outriders, had turned down the Borg'ognisanti, and the " City of the Red Lily," waking from her noonday slumber, was alive with the sound of wheels. The sun was sinking over the Apennine which kneels at the gate of Florence ; the streets were cool and shadowy ; the old women, with the bambino, between their knees, braided straw at the doors ; the booted guardsman paced his black charger slowly over the jeweller's bridge ; the picture-dealer brought forward his brightest " master" to the fading light ; and while the famous churches of that fairest city of the earth called to the Ave-Maria with impatient bell, the gal- lantry and beauty of Tuscany sped through the damp- ening air with their swift horses, meeting and passing with gay greetings amid the green alleys of the Cas- cine. The twilight had become gray, when the carriages and horsemen, scattered in hundreds through the in- terlaced roads of this loveliest of parks, turned by com- mon consent toward the spacious square in the centre, and drawing up in thickly-serried ranks, the soiree on wheels, the reunion en plein air, which is one of the most delightful of the peculiar customs of Florence, commenced its healthful gayeties. The showy car- riages of the grand-duke and the ex-king of Wurtem- berg (whose rank would not permit them to share in the familiarities of the hour) disappeared by the avenue skirting the bank of the Arno, and with much delicate and some desperate specimens of skill, the coachmen of the more exclusive nobility threaded the embar- rassed press of vehicles, and laid their wheels together on the southern edge of the piazza. The beaux in the saddle, disembarrassed of ladies and axletrees, enjoyed their usual butterfly privilege of roving, and with light rein and ready spur pushed their impatient horses to the coronetted panels of the loveliest or most power- ful ; the laugh of the giddy was heard here and there over the pawing of restless hoofs ; an occasional scream — half of apprehension, half of admiration— rewarded the daring caracole of some young and bold rider ; and while the first star sprang to its place, and the dew of heaven dropped into the false flowers in the hat of the belle, and into the thirsting lips of the violet in the field (simplicity, like virtue, is its own reward !), the low murmur of calumny and compliment, of love and ligl.Jieartedness, of politeness, politics, puns, and po- etry, arose over that assembly upon wheels : and if it was not a scene and an hour of happiness, it was the fault neither of the fragrant eve nor of the provisions of nature and fortune. The material for happiness was there. A showy caleclie with panels of dusky crimson, the hammer-cloth of the same shade, edged with a broad fringe of white, the wheels slightly picked out with the same colors, and the coachman and footman in corre- sponding liveries, was drawn up near the southern edge of the Piazzi. A narrow alley had been left for horse- men between this equipage and the adjoining ones, closed up at the extremity, however, by a dark-green and very plain chariot, placed with a bold violation of etiquetle directly across the line, and surrounded just now by two or three persons of the highest rank lean- ing from their saddles in earnest conversation with the occupant. Not far from the caleclie, mounted upon an English blood-horse of great beauty, a young man had just drawn rein as if interrupted only for a mo- ment on some pressing errand, and with his hat slight- ly raised, was paying his compliments to the venerable Prince Poniatowski, at that time the Ampbytrion of Florence. From moment to moment, as the pauses occurred in the exchange of courteous phrases, the rider, whose spurred heel was close at his saddle- girths, stole an impatient glance up the avenue of INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 451 carriages to the dark-green chariot, and, excited by the lifted rein and the proximity of the spur, the grace- ful horse fretted on his minion feet, and the bending figures from a hundred vehicles, and the focus of bright eyes radiating from all sides to the spot, would have betrayed, even to a stranger, that the horseman was of no common mark. Around his uncovered tem- ples floated fair and well-cherished locks of the sunni- est auburn ; and if there was beauty in the finely-drawn lines of his lips, there was an inexpressibly fierce spirit as well. II. The count Basil had been a month at Florence. In that time he had contrived to place himself betwflen the duke's ear and all the avenues of favor, and had approached as near, perhaps nearer, to the hearts of the women of his court. A singular and' instinctive knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, per- fected and concealed by conversance with the consum- mate refinement of life at Paris, remarkable personal beauty, and a quality of scornful bitterness for which no one could divine a reason in a character and fate else so happily mingled, but which at the same time added to his fascination, had given Count Basil a com- mand over the varied stops of society, equalled by few players on that difficult and capricious instrument. His worldly ambition went swimmingly on, and the same wind filled the sails of his lighter ventures as well. The love of the marchesa del Marmore, as he had very well anticipated, grew with his influence and renown. A woman's pride, he perfectly knew, is diffi- cult to wake after she has once believed herself adored ; and, satisfied that the portrait taken on the lagoon, and the introduction he had given her to the exclusive pen- etralia of the Pitti, would hold her till his revenge was complete, he left her love for him to find its own food in his successes, and never approached her but to lay to her heart more mordently the serpents of jealousy and despair. For the lady Geraldine the count Basil had con- ceived a love, the deepest of which his nature was ca- pable. Long as he had known her, it was a passion born in Italy, and while it partook of the qualities of the clime, it had for its basis the habitual and well- founded respect of a virtuous and sincere friendship. At their first acquaintance at Paris, the lovely English- woman, newly arrived from the purer moral atmo- sphere of her own country, was moving in the disso- lute, but skilfully disguised society of the Faubourg St. Germain, with the simple unconsciousness of the pure in heart, innocent herself, and naturally unsus- picious of others. The perfect frankness with which she established an intimacy with the clever and accom- plished attache, had soon satisfied that clear-sighted person that there was no passion in her preference, and, giddy with the thousand pleasures of that me- tropolis of delight, he had readily sunk his first startled admiration of her beauty in an affectionate and con- fiding friendship. He had thus shown her the better qualities of his character only, and, charmed with his wit and penetration, and something flattered, perhaps, with the devotion of so acknowledged an autocrat of fashion and talent, she had formed an attachment for him that had all the earnestness of love without its passion. They met at Florence, but the " knowledge of good and evil" had by this time driven the lady Geraldine from her Eden of unconsciousness. Still as irreproachable in conduct, and perhaps as pure in heart as before, an acquaintance with the forms of vice had introduced into her manners those ostensible cau- tions which, while they protect, suggest also what is to be feared. A change had taken place also in Count Basil. He had left the vitreous and mercurial clime of France, with its volatile and superficial occupations, for the voluptuous and indolent air of Italy, and the study of its impassioned deifications of beauty. That which had before been in him an instinct of gay pleasure — a pursuit which palled in the first moment of success, and was second to his ambition or his vanity — had be- come, in those two years of a painter's life, a thirst both of the senses and the imagination, which had usurped the very throne of his soul. Like the Hindoo youth, who finds the gilded plaything of his childhood elevated in his maturer years into a god, he bowed his heart to what he held so lightly, and brought the costly sacrifice of time and thought to its altars. He had fed his eyes upon the divine glories of the pencil, and upon the breathing wonders of love in marble, be- neath the sky and in the dissolving air in which they rose to the hand of inspiration ; and with his eye dis- ciplined, and his blood fused with taste and enthusi- asm, that idolatry of beauty, which had before seemed sensual or unreal, kindled its first fires in his mind, and his senses were intoxicated with the incense. There is a kind of compromise in the effects of the atmosphere and arts of Italy. If the intellect takes a warmer hue in its study of the fair models of an- tiquity, the senses in turn become more refined and intellectual. In other latitudes and lands woman is loved more coldly. After the brief reign of a passion of instinct, she is happy if she can retain her empire by habit, or the qualities of the heart. That divine form, meant to assimilate her to the angels, has never been recognised by the dull eye that should have seen in it a type of her soul. To the love of the painter or the statuary, or to his who has made himself con- versant with their models, is added the imperishable enthusiasm of a captivating and exalted study. The mistress of his heart is the mistress of his mind. She is the breathing realization of that secret ideal which exists in every mind, but which, in men ignorant of the fine arts, takes another form, and becomes a woman's rival and usurper. She is like nothing in ambition — she is like nothing in science or business — nothing in out-of-door pleasures. If politics, or the chase, or the acquisition of wealth, is the form of this ruling passion, she is unassociated with that which is nearest his heart, and he returns to her with an exhausted interest and a flagging fancy. It is her strongest tie upon his affec- tion, even, that she is his refuge when unfit for that i which occupies him most — in his fatigue, his disap- I pointment, his vacuity of head and heart. He thinks j of her only as she receives him in his most worthless J hours; and, as his refreshed intellects awake, she is forgotten with the first thought of his favorite theme — for what has a woman's loveliness to do with that? Count Basil had not concluded his first interview with the lady Geraldine, without marvelling at the new feelings with which he looked upon her. He had never before realized her singular and adorable beauty. ! The exquisitely turned head, the small and pearly i ears, the spiritual nostril, the softly moulded chin, the clear loftiness of expression yet inexpressible delicacy and brightness in the lips, and a throat and bust than which those of Faustina in the delicious marble of the Gallery of Florence might be less envied by the queen of love— his gaze wandered over these, and followed her in the harmony of her motions, and the native and unapproachable grace of every attitude; and the pic- tures he had so passionately studied seemed to fade in his mind, and the statues he had half worshipped seemed to descend from their pedestals depreciated. The lady Geraldine, for the first time, felt his eye. For the first time in their acquaintance, she was of- fended with its regard. Her embarrassment was rend by the quick dipfoniate, and at that moment sprang into being a passion, which perhaps had died but for the conscious acknowledgment of her rebuke. Up to the evening in the Cascine, with which the 452 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. second chapter of this simply true tale commences, but one of the two leading threads in the count Basil's woof had woven well. " The jealous are the damned," and the daily and deadly agony of the marchesa del Marmore was a dark ground from which his love to the lady Geraldine rose to his own eye in heightened relief. His dearest joy forwarded with equal step his dearest revenge ; and while he could watch the work- ing of his slow torture in the fascinated heart of his victim, he was content to suspend a blow to which that of death would be a mercy. " The law," said Count Basil, as he watched her quivering and im- ploring lip, "takes cognizance but of the murder of the body. It has no retribution for the keener dagger of the sowL" III. The conversation between the Russian secretary and the prince Poniatowski ended at last in a graceful bow from the former to his horse's neck; and the quicker rattling of the small hoofs on the ground, as the fine creature felt the movement in the saddle and prepared to bound away, drew all eyes once more upon the handsomest and most idolized gallant of Florence. The narrow lane of carriages, commencing with the showy caleche of the marchesa del Marmore, and closed up by the plain chariot of the lady Geral- dine, was still open, and with a glance at the latter which sufficiently indicated his destination, Count Basil raised his spurred heel, and with a smile of de- light and the quickness of a barb in the desert, gal- loped toward the opening. In the same instant the marchesa del Marmore gave a convulsive spring for- ward, and, in obedience to an imperative order, her coachman violently drew rein and shot the back and forward wheels of the caleche directly across his path. Met in full career by this sudden obstacle, the horse of the Russian reared high in air; but ere the screams of apprehension had arisen from the adjacent carriages, the silken bridle was slacked, and with a low bow to the foiled and beautiful marchesa as he shot past, he brushed the hammer-cloths of the two scarce separa- ted carriages, and at the same instant stood at the chariot window of the lady Geraldine, as calm and respectful as if he had never known danger or emotion. A hundred eyes had seen the expression of his face as he leaped past the unhappy woman, and the drama of which that look was the key was understood in Flor- ence. The lady Geraldine alone, seated far back in her chariot, was unconscious of the risk run for the smile with which she greeted its hero ; and uncon- scious, as well, of the poignant jealousy and open mor- tification she had innocently assisted to inflict, she stretched her fair and transparent hand from the car- riage, and stroked the glossy neck of his horse, and while the marchesa del Marmore drove past with a look of inexpressible anguish and hate, and the dis- persing nobles and dames took their way to the city gates, Count Basil leaned close to the ear of that love- liest of breathing creatures, and forgot, as she forgot in listening to the bewildering music of his voice, that the stars had risen, or that the night was closing around them. The Cascine had long been silent when the chariot of the lady Geraldine took its way to the town, and, with the reins loose upon his horse's neck, Count Basil followed at a slower pace, lost in the revery of a tumultuous passion. The sparkling and unobstructed stars broke through the leafy roof of the avenue whose silence was disturbed by those fine and light-stepping hoofs, and the challenge of the duke's forester, going his rounds ere the gates closed, had its own deep- throated echo for its answer. The Arno rippled among the rushes on its banks, the occasional roll of wheels passing the paved arch of the Ponte Seraglio, came faintly down the river upon the moist wind, the pointed cypresses of the convent of Bello Sguardo laid their slender fingers against the lowest stars in the southern horizon, and with his feet pressed, carelessly, far through his stirrups, and his head dropped on his bosom, the softened diplomaie turned instinctively to the left in the last diverging point of the green al- leys, and his horse's ears were already pricked at the tread, before the gate, of the watchful and idle doganieri. Close under the city wall on this side Florence, the traveller will remember that the trees are more thickly serried, and the stone seats, for the comfort and pleasure of those who would step forth from the hot streets for an hour of fresh air and rest, are mossy with the depth of the perpetual shade. In the midst of this dark avenue, the unguided animal beneath the careless and forgetful rider suddenly stood still, and the next moment starting aside, a female sprang high against his neck, and Count Basil, ere awake from his revery, felt the glance of a dagger-blade across his bo- som. With the slender wrist that had given the blow firmly arrested in his left hand, the count Basil slowly dismounted, and after a steadfast look, by the dim light, into the face of the lovely assassin, he pressed her fingers respectfully, and with well counterfeited emotion, to his lips. " Twice since the Ave-Maria !" he said in atone of reproachful tenderness, " and against a life that is your own !" He could see, even in that faint light, the stern com- pression of those haughty lips, and the flash of the darkest eyes of the Val d'Arno. But leading her gen- tly to a seat, he sat beside her, and with scarce ten brief moments of low-toned and consummate elo- quence, he once more deluded her soul ! " We meet to-morrow," she said, as, after a burst of irrepressible tears, she disengaged herself from his neck, and looked toward the end of the avenue, where Count Basil had already heard the pawing of her im- patient horses. " To-morrow!" he answered ; " but,m?'a carissima!" he continued, opening his breast to stanch the blood of his wound, "you owe me a concession after this rude evidence of your love." She looked into his face as if answer were superflu- ous. " Drive to my palazzo at noon, and remain with me till the Ave-Maria." For but half a moment the impassioned Italian hesi- tated. Though the step he demanded of her was ap- parently without motive or reason — though it was one that sacrificed to a whim her station, her fortune, and her friends — she hesitated but to question her reason if the wretched price of this sacrifice would be paid — if the love, to which she fled from this world and heav- en, was her own. In other countries, the crime of in- fidelity is punished : in Italy it is the appearance only that is criminal. In proportion as the sin is overlook- ed, the violation of the outward proprieties of life is severely visited ; and while a lover is stipulated for iff the marriage-contract, an open visit to that lover'* house is an offence which brands the perpetrator with irremediable shame. The marchesa del Marmore well knew that in going forth from the ancestral pal- ace of her husband on a visit to Count Basil, she took leave of it for ever. The equipage that would bear her to him would never return for her ; the protection, the fortune, the noble relations, the troops of friends, would all drop from her. In the pride of her youth and beauty — from the highest pinnacle of rank — from the shelter of fortune and esteem — she would descend, by a single step, to be a beggar for life and love from the mercy of the heart she fled to ! " I will come," she said, in a firm voice, looking INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 453 close into his face, as if she would read in his dim fea- tures the prophetic answer of his soul. The count Basil strained her to his bosom, and start- in<* back as if with the pain of his wound, he pleaded the necessity of a surgeon, and bade her a hasty good- night. And while she gained her own carriage in se- crecy, he rode round to the other gate, which opens upon the Borg'ognisanti, and dismounting at the Cafe Colonna, where the artists were at this hour usu- ally assembled, he sought out his fellow-traveller, Giannino Speranza, who had sketched the marchesa upon the lagoon, and made an appointment with him for the morrow. IV. While the count Basil's revenge sped thus merrily, the just Fates were preparing for him a retribution in his love. The mortification of the marchesa del Mar- more, at the Cascine, had been made the subject of conversation at the prima sera of the lady Geraldine ; and other details of the same secret drama transpiring at the same time, the whole secret of Count Basil's feelings toward that unfortunate woman flashed clearly and fully upon her. His motives for pretending to have drawn the portrait of the lagoon — for procuring her an admission to the exclusive suppers of the Pitti — for a thousand things which had been unaccounta- ble, or referred to more amiable causes — were at once unveiled. Even yet, with no suspicion of the extent of his revenge, the lady Geraldine felt an indignant pity for the unconscious victim, and a surprised disappro- val of the character thus unmasked to her eye. Upon further reflection, her brow flushed to remember that she herself had been made the most effective tool of his revenge ; and as she recalled circumstance after circumstance in the last month's history, the attention and preference he had shown her, and which had grat- ified her, perhaps, more than she admitted to herself, seemed to her sensitive and resentful mind to have been only the cold instruments of jealousy. Incapable as she was of an unlawful passion, the unequalled fas- cinations of Count Basil had silently found their way to her heart, and if her indignation was kindled by a sense of justice and womanly pity, it was fed and fanned unaware by mortified pride. She rang, and sent an order to the gate that she was to be denied for the future to Count Basil Spirifort. The servant had appeared with his silver tray in his hand, and before leaving her presence to communi- cate the order, he presented her with a letter. Well foreseeing the eclaircissement which must follow the public scene in the Cascine, the count Basil had left the cafe for his own palazzo ; and, in a letter, of which the following is the passage most important to our story, he revealed to the lady he loved a secret, which he hoped would anticipate the common rumor : — ***** "B u t these passionate words will have offended your ear, dearest lady, and 1 must pass to a theme on which I shall be less eloquent. You will hear to-night, perhaps, that which, with all your im- agination, will scarce prepare you for what you will hear to-morrow. The marchesa del Marmore is the victim of a revenge which has only been second in my heart to the love I have for the first time breathed to you. I can never hope that you will either under- stand or forgive the bitterness in which it springs ; yet it is a demon to which I am delivered, soul and body, and no spirit but my own can know its power. When I have called it by its name, and told you of its exas- peration, if you do not pardon, you will pity me. " You know that I am a Russian, and you know the station my talents have won me ; but you do not know that I was born a serf and a slave ! If you could rend open my heart and see the pool of blackness and bit- terness that lies in its bottom — fallen, drop by drop, from this accursed remembrance — there would be lit- tle need to explain to you how this woman has offend- ed me. Had I been honorably born, like yourself, I feel that I could have been, like you, an angel of light : as it is, the contumely of a look has stirred me to a revenge which has in it, I do not need to be told, the darkest elements of murder. " My early history is of no importance, yet I may tell you it was such as to expose to every wind this lacerated nerve. In a foreign land, and holding an official rank, it was seldom breathed upon. I wore, mostly, a gay heart at Paris. In my late exile at Ven- ice I had time to brood upon my dark remembrance, and it was revived and fed by the melancholy of my solitude. The obscurity in which I lived, and the oc- casional comparison between myself and some passing noble in the Piazza, served to remind me, could I have forgotten it. I never dreamed of love in this humble disguise, and so never felt the contempt that had most power to wound me. On receiving the letters of my new appointment, however, this cautious humility did not wait to be put off with my sombrero. I started for Florence, clad in the habiliments of poverty, but with the gay mood of a courtier beneath. The first burst of my newly-released feelings was admiration for a woman of singular beauty, who stood n6ar me on one of the most love-awakening and delicious eves that I ever remember. My heart was overflowing, and she permitted me to breathe my passionate adoration in her ear. The marchesa del Marmore, but for the scorn of the succeeding day, would, I think, have been the mistress of my soul. Strangely enough, I had seen you without loving you. " I have told you, as a bagatelle that might amuse you, my rencontre with del Marmore and his dame in the cathedral of Bologna. The look she gave me there sealed her doom. It was witnessed by the com- panions of my poverty, and the concentrated resent ment of years sprang up at the insult. Had it been a man, I must have struck him dead where he stood : she was a woman, and I swore the downfall of her pride." * * * Thus briefly dismissing the chief topic of his letter, Count Basil returned to the pleading of his love. It was dwelt on more eloquently than his revenge ; but as the lady Geraldine scarce read it to the end, it need not retard the procession of events in our story. The fair Englishwoman sat down beneath the Etruscan lamp, whose soft light illumined a brow cleared, as if by a sweep from the wing of her good angel, of the troubled dream which had overhung it, and in brief and decided, but kind and warning words, replied to the letter of Count Basil. It was noon on the following day, and the Contadini from the hills were settling to their siesta on the steps of the churches, and against the columns of the Piaz- za del Gran' Duca. The artists alone, in the cool gal- lery, and in the tempered halls of the Pitti, shook off the drowsiness of the hour, and strained sight and thought upon the immortal canvass from which they drew ; while the sculptor, in his brightening studio, weary of the mallet, yet excited by the bolder light, leaned on the rough block behind him, and with list- less body but wakeful and fervent eye, studied the last touches upon his marble. Prancing hoofs, and the sharp quick roll peculiar to the wheels of carriages of pleasure, awakened the aris- tocratic sleepers of the Via del Servi, and wnh a lash and jerk of violence, the coachman of the marchesa del Marmore, enraged at the loss of his noonday re- pose, brought up her showy caliche at the door of Count Basil Spirifort. The fair occupant of that luxu- 454 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. rious vehicle was pale, but the brightness of joy and hope burned almost fiercely in her eye. The doors flew open as the marchesa descended, and following a servant in the count's livery, of whom she asked no question, she found herself in a small sa- loon, furnished with the peculiar luxury which marks the apartment of a bachelor, and darkened like a paint- er's room. The light came in from a single tall win- dow, curtained below, and under it stood an easel, at which, on her first entrance, a young man stood sketching the outline of a female head. As she ad- vanced, looking eagerly around for another face, the artist laid down his palette, and with a low reverence presented her with a note from Count Basil. It in- formed her that political news of the highest impor- tance had called him suddenly to the cabinet of his chef, but that he hoped to be with her soon ; and, meantime, he begged of her, as a first favor in his newly-prospered love, to bless him with the possession of her portrait, done by the incomparable artist who would receive her. Disappointment and vexation overwhelmed the heart of the marchesa, and she burst into tears. She read the letter again, and grew calmer; for it was laden with epithets of endearment, and seemed to her written in the most Sudden haste. Never doubting for an instant the truth of his apology, she removed her hat, and with a look at the deeply-shaded mirror, while she shook out from their confinement the masses of her luxuriant hair, she approached the painter's easel, and with a forced cheerfulness inquired in what attitude she should sit to him. " If the signora will amuse herself," he replied, with a bow, " it will be easy to compose the picture, and seize the expression without annoying her with a pose." Relieved thus of any imperative occupation, the un- happy marchesa seated herself by a table of intaglios and prints, and while she apparently occupied herself in the examination of these specimens of art, she was delivered, as her tormentor had well anticipated, to the alternate tortures of impatience and remorse. And while the hours wore on, and her face paled, and her eyes grew bloodshot with doubt and fear, the skilful painter, forgetting everything in the enthusiasm of his art, and forgotten utterly by his unconscious subject, transferred too faithfully to the canvass that picture of agonized expectation. The afternoon, meantime, had worn away, and the gay world of Florence, from the side toward Fiesole, rolled past the Via dei Servi on their circuitous way to the Cascine, and saw, with dumb astonishment, the carriage and liveries of the marchesa del Marmore at the door of Count Basil Spirifort. On they swept by the Via Mercata Nova to the Lung' Arno, and there their astonishment redoubled : for in the window of the Casino dei Nobili, playing with a billiard-cue, and laughing with a group of lounging exquisites, stood Count Basil himself, the most unoccupied and listless of sunset idlers. There was but one deduction to be drawn from this sequence of events ; and when they remembered the demonstration of passionate jealousy on the previous evening in the Cascine, Count Basil, evidently innocent of participation in her passion, was deemed a persecuted man, and the marchesa del Mar- more was lost to herself and the world ! Three days after this well-remembered circumstance in the history of Florence, an order was received from the grand-duke to admit into the exhibition of mod- ern artists a picture by a young Venetian painter, an eleve of Count Basil Spirifort. It was called " The Lady expecting an Inconstant," and had been pro- nounced by a virtuoso, who had seen it on private view, to be a masterpiece of expression and color. It was instantly and indignantly recognised as the por- trait of the unfortunate marchesa, whose late aban- donment of her husband was fresh on the lips of com- mon rumor ; but ere it could be officially removed, the circumstance had been noised abroad, and the picture had been seen by all the curious in Florence. The order for its removal was given ; but the purpose of Count Basil had been effected, and the name of the unhappy marchesa had become a jest on the vulgar tongue. This tale had not been told, had there not been more than a common justice in its sequel. The worst passions of men, in common life, are sometimes in- scrutably prospered. The revenge of Count Basil, however, was betrayed by the last which completed it ; and while the victim of his fiendish resentment finds a peaceful asylum in England under the roof of the compassionate Lady Geraldine, the once gay and admired Russian wanders from city to city, followed by an evil reputation, and stamped unaccountably as a jattatore.* LOVE AND DIPLOMACY. " Pray pardon me, For I am like a boy that hath found money- Afraid I dream still." Ford or Webster. It was on a fine September evening, within my time (and I am not, I trust, too old to be loved), that Count Anatole L , of the impertinent and particularly useless profession of attache, walked up and down be- fore the glass in his rooms at the "Archduke Charles," the first hotel, as you know, if you have travelled, in the green-belted and fair city of Vienna. The brass ring was still swinging on the end of the bell-rope, and, in a respectful attitude at the door, stood the just- summoned Signor Attilio, valet and privy councillor to one of the handsomest coxcombs errant through the world. Signor Attilio was a Tyrolese, and, like his master, was very handsome. Count Anatole had been idling away three golden summer months in the Tyrol, for the sole purpose, as far as mortal eyes could see, of disguising his fine Phidian features in a callow mustache and whiskers. The crines ridentes (as Eneas Sylvius has it) being now in a condition beyond improvement, Signor Attilio had for some days been rather curious to know what course of events would next occupy the diplomatic talents of his master. After a turn or two more, taken in silence, Count Anatole stopped in the middle of the floor, and eying the well-made Tyrolese from head to foot, begged to know if he wore at the present moment his most be- coming breeches, jacket, and beaver. Attilio was never astonished at anything his master did or said. He simply answered, "Si, signore." " Be so kind as to strip immediately, and dress your- self in that travelling suit lying on the sofa." As the green, gold-corded jacket, knee-breeches, buckles, and stockings, were laid aside, Count Anatole threw off his dressing-gown, and commenced encasing his handsome proportions in the cast-off habiliments. He then put on the conical, slouch-rimmed hat, with the tall eagle's-feather stuck jauntily on the side, and the two rich tassels pendant over his left eye ; and, the toilet of the valet being completed at the same moment, they stood looking at one another with perfect gravity — rathertransformed, but each apparently quite at home in his new character. " You look very like a gentleman, Attilio," said the count. " Your excellency has caught to admiration, Varia * A man with an evil eye. INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 455 del paese" complimented back again the sometime Tyrolese. " Attilio!" " Signore?" " Do you remember the lady in the forest of Friuli ?" Attilio began to have a glimmering of things. Some three months before, the count was dashing on at a rapid post-pace through a deep wood in the moun- tains which head in the Adriatic. A sudden pull-up at a turning in the road nearly threw him from his britska ; and looking out at the " anima di porco /" of the postilion, he found his way impeded by an overset carriage, from which three or four servants were en- deavoring to extract the body of an old man, killed by the accident. There was more attractive metal for the traveller, however, in the shape of a young and beautiful woman, j leaning, pale and faint, against a tree, and apparently j about lo sink to the ground, unassisted. To bring a hat full of water from the nearest brook, and receive j her falling head on his shoulder, was the work of a thought. She had fainted quite away, and taking her, like a child, into his arms, he placed her on a bank by j the road-side, bathed her forehead and lips, and chafed her small white hands, till his heart, with all the dis- I tress of the scene, was quite mad with her perfect ! beauty. Animation at last began to return, and as the flush was stealing into her lips, another carriage drove up with servants in the same livery, and Count Anatole, thoroughly bewildered in his new dream, mechanically assisted them in getting their living mistress and dead master into it, and until they were fairly out of sight, it had never occurred to him that he might possibly wish to know the name and condition of the fairest piece of work he had ever seen from the hands of his Maker. An hour before, he had doubled his bono mano to the postilion, and was driving on to Vienna as if to sit at a new congress. Now, he stood leaning against the tree, at the foot of which the grass and wild flowers showed the print of a new-made pressure, and the postilion cracked his whip, and Attilio reminded him of the hour he was losing, in vain. He remounted after a while ; but the order was to go back to the last post-house. Three or four months at a solitary albergo in the neighborhood of this adventure, passed by the count in scouring the country on horseback in every direc- tion, and by his servant in very particular ennui, brings up the story nearly to where the scene opens. " I have seen her!" said the count. Attilio only lilted up his eyebrows. "She is here, in Vienna!" "Felice lei!" murmured Attilio. " She is the princess Leichstenfels, and, by the death of that old man, a widow." " VcramentcV responded the valet, with a rising inflexion ; for he knew his master and French morals too well not to foresee a damper in the possibility of matrimony. " Veramenle .'" gravely echoed the count. "And now listen. The princess lives in close retirement. An old friend or two, and a tried servant, are the only persons who see her. You are to contrive to see this servant to-morrow, corrupt him to leave her, and rec- ommend me in his place, and then you are to take him as your courier to Paris ; whence, if I calculate well, you will return to me before long, with impor- tant despatches. Do you understand me ?" " Signor, si !" In the small boudoir of a masio de plaisancc, be- longing to the noble family of Leichstenfels, sat the widowed mistress of one of the oldest titles and finest estates of Austria. The light from a single long win- dow opening down to the floor and leading out upon a terrace of flowers, was subdued by a heavy crimson curtain, looped partially away, a pastille lamp was sending up from its porphyry pedestal a thin and just perceptible curl of smoke, through which the lady musingly passed backward and forward one of her slender fingers, and, on a table near, lay a sheet of black-edged paper, crossed by a small silver pen, and scrawled over irregularly with devices and discon- nected words, the work evidently of a fit of the most absolute and listless idleness. The door opened, and a servant in mourning livery stood before the lady. " I have thought over your request, Wilhelm," she said. " I had become accustomed to your services, and regret to lose you; but I should regret more to stand in the way of your interest. You have my per- mission." Wilhelm expressed his thanks with an effort that showed he had not obeyed the call of mammon with- out regret, and requested leave to introduce the person he had proposed as his successor. " Of what country is he ?" "Tyrolese, your excellency." "And why does he leave the gentleman with whom he came to Vienna?" "II est amoureux d'une Viennaise, madamc," an swered the ex-valet, resorting to French to express what he considered a delicate circumstance. "Pauvre enfant!" said the princess, with a sigh that partook as much of envy as of pity ; let him come in!" And the count Anatole, as the sweet accents reached his ear, stepped over the threshold, and in the coarse but gay dress of the Tyrol, stood in the presence of her whose dewy temples he had bathed in the forest, whose lips he had almost "pried into for breath," whose snowy hands he had chafed and kissed when the senses had deserted their celestial organs— the angel of his perpetual dream, the lady of his wild and un- controllable, but respectful and honorable love. The princess looked carelessly up as he approached, but her eyes seemed arrested in passing over his fea- tures. It was but momentary. She resumed her occupation of winding her taper fingers in the smoke- curls of the incense-lamp, and with half a sigh, as if she had repelled a pleasing thought, she leaned back in the silken fauteuil, and asked the new-comer his name. "Anatole, your excellency." The voice again seemed to stir something in her memory. She passed her hand over her eyes, and was for a moment lost in thought. "Anatole," she said (oh, how the sound of his own name, murmured in that voice of music thrilled through the fiery veins of the disguised lover!) "Anatole, I receive you into my service. Wilhelm will inform you of your duties, and — I have a fancy for the dress of the Tyrol— you may wear it instead of my livery, if you will." And with one stolen and warm gaze from under his drooping eyelids, and heart and lips on fire, as he thanked her for her condescension, the new retainer took his leave. Month after month passed on— to Count Anatole in a bewildering dream of ever deepening passion. Jt was upon a soft and amorous morning oi April, that a dashing equipage stood at the door of the proud palace of Leichstenfels. The arms of E blazed on the panels, and the insoucianls chasseurs leaned against [he marble columns of the portico, waiting for their master, and speculating on the gayety likely to ensue from the suite he was prosecuting within. How could a prince of E be supposed to sue in vain ? The disguised footman had ushered the gay and handsome nobleman to his mistress' presence. After 456 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. rearranging a family of very well-arranged flower- pots, shutting the window to open it again, changing the folds of the curtains not at all for the better, and looking a stolen and fierce look at the unconscious visiter, he could find no longer an apology for remain- ing in the room. He shut the door after him in a tempest of jealousy. "Did your excellency ring?" said he, opening the door again, after a few minutes of intolerable torture. The prince was on his knees at her feet ! " No, Anatole ; but you may bring me a glass of water." As he entered with a silver tray trembling in his hand, the prince was rising to go. His face expressed delight, hope, triumph — everything that could mad- den the soul of the irritated lover. After waiting on his rival to his carriage, he returned to his mistress, and receiving the glass upon the tray, was about leaving the room in silence, when the princess called to him. In all this lapse of time it is not to be supposed that Count Anatole played merely his footman's part. His respectful and elegant demeanor, the propriety of his language, and that deep devotedness of manner which wins a woman more than all things else, soon gained upon the confidence of the princess; and before a week was passed she found that she was happier when he stood behind her chair, and gave him, with some self-denial, those frequent permissions of absence from the palace which she supposed he asked to prosecute the amour disclosed to her on his introduction to her service. As time flew on, she attributed his earnest- ness and occasional warmth of manner to gratitude; and, without reasoning much on her feelings, gave herself up to the indulgence of a degree of interest in him which would have alarmed a woman more skilled in the knowledge of the heart. Married from a con- vent, however, to an old man who had secluded her from the world, the voice of the passionate count in the forest of Friuli was the first sound of love that had ever entered her ears. She knew not why it was that the tones of her new footman, and now and then a look of his eyes, as he leaned over to assist her at table, troubled her memory like a trace of a long-lost dream. But, oh, what moments had been his in these fleet- ing months! Admitted to her presence in her most unguarded hours — seeing her at morning, at noon, at night, in all her unstudied and surpassing loveliness — for ever near her, and with the world shut out — her rich hair blowing with the lightest breeze across his fingers in his assiduous service — her dark full eyes, unconscious of an observer, filling with unrepressed tears, or glowing with pleasure over some tale of love — her exquisite form flung upon a couch, or bending over flowers, or moving about the room in all its native and untrammelled grace — and her voice, tender, most tender to him, though she knew it not, and her eyes, herself unaware, ever following him in his loitering attendance — and he, the while, losing never a glance nor a motion, but treasuring all up in his heart with the avarice of a miser— what, in common life, though it were the life of fortune's most favored child, could compare with it for bliss? Pale and agitated, the count turned back at the call of his mistress, and stood waiting her pleasure. "Anatole!" "Madame!" The answer was so low and deep it startled even himself. She motioned him to come nearer. She had sunk upon the sofa, and as he stood at her feet she leaned forward, buried her hands and arms in the long curls which, in her retirement, she allowed to float luxuri- antly over her shoulders, and sobbed aloud. Over- come and forgetful of all but the distress of the lovely creature before him, the count dropped upon the cush- ion on which rested the small foot in its mourning slipper, and taking her hand, pressed it suddenly and fervently to his lips. The reality broke upon her! She was beloved — but by whom? A menial ! and the appalling answer drove all the blood of her proud race in a torrent upon her heart, sweeping away all affection as if her nature had never known its name. She sprang to her feet, and laid her hand upon the bell. "Madame!" said Anatole, in a cold proud tone. She stayed her arm to listen. "I leave you for ever." And again, with the quick revulsion of youth and passion, her woman's heart rose within her, and she buried her face in her hands, and dropped her head in utter abandonment on her bosom. It was the birthday of the emperor, and the courtly nobles of Austria were rolling out from the capital to offer their congratulations at the royal palace of Schoenbrunn. In addition to the usual attractions of the scene, the drawing-room was to be graced by the first public appearance of a new ambassador, whose reputed personal beauty, and the talents he had displayed in a late secret negotiation, had set the whole court, from the queen of Hungary to the youngest dame d'honneur, in a flame of curiosity. To the prince E there was another reason for writing the day in red letters. The princess Leich- stenfels, by an express message from the emperess, was to throw aside her widow's weeds, and appear once more to the admiring world. She had yielded \ to the summons, but it was to be her last day of splen- dor. Her heart and hand were plighted to her Ty- rolese minion ; and the brightest and loveliest ornament of the court of Austria, when the ceremonies of the day were over, was to lay aside the costly bauble from her shoulder, and the glistening tiara from her brow, and forget rank and fortune as the wife of his bosom ! The dazzling hours flew on. The plain and kind old emperor welcomed and smiled upon all. The wily Metternich, in the crime of his successful man- hood, cool, polite, handsome, and winning, gathered golden opinions by every word and look ; the young duke of Reichstadt, the mild and gentle son of the struck eagle of St. Helena, surrounded and caressed by a continual cordon of admiring women, seemed for- getful that opportunity and expectation awaited him, like two angels with their wings outspread ; and haugh- ty nobles and their haughtier dames, statesmen, schol- ars, soldiers, and priests, crowded upon each other's heels, and mixed together in that doubtful podrida, which goes by the name of pleasure. I could moralize here had I time ! The princess of Leichstenfelshad gone through the ceremony of presentation, and had heard the murmur of admiration, drawn by her beauty, from all lips. Diz- zy with the scene, and with a bosom full of painful and conflicting emotions, she had accepted the proffered arm of Prince E to breathe a fresher air upon the terrace. They stood near a window, and he was pointing out to his fair but inattentive companion the various characters as they- passed within. " I must contrive," said the prince, " to show you the new envoy. Oh ! you have not heard of him. Beautiful as Narcissus, modest as Pastor Corydon, clever as the prime minister himself, this paragon of diplomatists has been here in disguise these three months, negotiating about — Metternich and the devil knows what — but rewarded at last with an ambassa- dor's star, and — but here he is : Princess Leichsten- fels, permit me to present " She heard no more. A glance from the diamond INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 457 \ star on his breast to the Hephaestion mouth and keen dark eye of Count Anatole, revealed to her the mys- tery of months. And as she leaned against the win- dow for support, the hand that sustained her in the forest of Friuli, and the same thrilling voice, in almost the same never-forgotten cadence, offered his impas- sioned sympathy and aid — and she recognised and re- membered all. I must go back so far as to inform you, that Count Anatole, on the morning of this memorable day, had sacrificed a silky but prurient mustache, and a pair of the very sauciest dark whiskers out of Coventry. Whether the prince E recognised in the new envoy the lady's gentleman who so inopportunely broke in upon his tender avowal, I am not prepared to say. I only know (for I was there) that the princess Leichstenfels was wedded to the new ambassador in the " leafy month of June ;" and the prince E , unfortunately prevented by illness from attending the nuptials, lost a very handsome opportunity of singing with effect — " If she be not fair for me" — supposing it translated into German. Whether the enamored ambassadress prefers her husband in his new character, I am equally uncertain ; though from much knowledge of German courts and a little of human nature, I think she will be happy if at some future day she would not willingly exchange her proud envoy for the devoted Tyrolese, and does not sigh that she can no more bring him to her feet with a pull of a silken string. THE MADHOUSE OF PALERMO, He who has not skimmed over the silvery waters of the Lipari, with a summer breeze right fro* Italy in his topsails, the smoke of Stromboli alone staining the unfathomable-looking blue of the sky, and, as the sun dipped his flaming disk in the sea, put up his helm for the bosom of La Concha cVOro, the Golden Shell, as they beautifully call the bay of Palermo : he who has not thus entered, I say, to the fairest spot on the face of this very fair earth, has a leaf worth the turning in his book of observation. In ten minutes after dropping the anchor, with sky and water still in a glow, the men were all out of the rigging, the spars of the tall frigate were like lines pen- cilled on the sky, the band played inspiringly on the poop, and every boat along the gay Marina was freight- ed with fair Palermitans on its way to the stranger ship. I was standing with the officer-of-the-deck by the capstan, looking at the first star which had just sprung into its place like a thing created with a glance of the eye. " Shall we let the ladies aboard, sir ?" said a smiling middy, coming aft from the gangway. " Yes, sir. And tell the boatswain's mate to clear away for a dance on the quarter-deck." In most of the ports of the Mediterranean, a ship-of- war, on a summer cruise, is as welcome as the breeze from the sea. Bringing with her forty or fifty gay young officers overcharged with life and spirits, a band of music never so well occupied as when playing for a dance, and a deck whiter and smoother than a ball- room floor, the warlike vessel seems made for a scene of pleasure. Whatever her nation, she no sooner drops her anchor, than she is surrounded by boats from the shore ; and when the word is passed for admission, her gangway is crowded with the mirth-loving and warm people of these southern climes, as much at home on board, and as ready to enter into any scheme of amusement, as the maddest-brained midshipman could desire. The companion-hatch was covered with its grating, lest some dizzy waltzer should drop his partner into the steerage, the band got out their music-stand, and the bright buttons were soon whirling round from larboard to starboard, with forms in their clasp, and dark eyes glowing over their shoulders, that might have tempted the devil out of Stromboli. Being only a passenger myself, I was contented with sitting on the slide of a carronade, and with the music in my ear, and the twilight flush deepening in the fine- traced angles of the rigging, abandoning myself to the delicious listlessness with which the very air is pregnant in these climates of paradise. The light feet slid by, and the waltz, the gallopade, and the mazurka, had followed each other till it was broad moonlight on the decks. It was like a night without an atmosphere, the radiant flood poured down with such an invisible and moonlike clearness. " Do you see the lady leaning on that old gentle- man's arm by the hammock-rail ?" said the first lieu- tenant, who sat upon the next gun — like myself, a spectator of the scene. I had remarked her well. She had been in the ship five or ten minutes, and in that time, it seemed to me, I had drunk her beauty, even to intoxication. The frigate was slowly swinging round to the land breeze, and the moon, from drawing the curved line of a gip- sy-shaped capella di jtaglia with bewitching conceal- ment across her features, gradually fell full upon the dark limit of her orbed forehead. Heaven ! what a vision of beauty! Solemn, and full of subdued pain as the countenance seemed, it was radiant with an al- most supernatual light of mind. Thought and feeling seemed steeped into every line. Her mouth was large — the only departure from the severest model of the Greek — and stamped with calmness, as if it had been a legible word upon her lips. But her eyes — what can I say of their unnatural lightning — of the depth, the fulness, the wild and maniac-like passionateness of their every look ? My curiosity was strongly moved. I walked aft to the capstan, and throwing off my habitual reserve with some effort, approached the old gentleman on whose arm she leaned, and begged permission to lead her out for a waltz. " If you wish it, carissima mia /" said he, turning to her with all the tenderness in his tone of which the honeyed language of Italy is capable. But she clung to his arm with startled closeness, and without even looking at me, turned her lips up to his ear, and murmured, " Mai piu .'" At my request the officer on duty paid them the com- pliment of sending them ashore in one of the frigate's boats; and after assisting them down the ladder, I stood upon the broad stair on the level of the water, and watched the phosphoric wake of the swift cutter till the bright sparkles were lost amid the vessels nearer land. The coxswain reported the boat's return ; but all that belonged to the ship had not come back in her. My heart was left behind. The next morning there was the usual bustle in the gunroom preparatory to going ashore. Glittering uni- forms lay about upon the chairs and tables, sprinkled with swords, epaulettes, and cocked hats ; very well- brushed boots were sent to be rebrushed, and very nice coats to be made, if possible, to look nicer ; the ship's barber was cursed for not having the hands of Briareus, and no good was wished to the eyes of the washerwoman of the last port where the frigate had anchored. Cologne-water was in great request, and the purser had an uncommon number of " private in- terviews." Amid all the bustle : .'he question of how to pass th» 458 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. day was busily agitated. Twenty plans were proposed ; but the sequel — a dinner at the Hotel Anglais, and a stroll for a lark" after it — was the only point on which the speakers were quite unanimous. One proposition was to go to Bagaria, and see the palace of Monsters. This is a villa about ten miles from Palermo, which the owner, Count Pallagonia, an eccentric Sicilian noble, has ornamented with some hundreds of statues of the finest workmanship, repre- senting the form of woman in every possible combina- tion, with beasts, fishes, and birds. It looks like the temptation of St. Anthony on a splendid scale, and is certainly one of the most extraordinary spectacles in the world. Near it stands another villa, the property of Prince Butera (the present minister of Naples at the court of France), containing, in the depths of its pleasure- grounds, a large monastery, with wax monks, of the size and appearance of life, scattered about the pas- sages and cells, and engaged in every possible uncleri- cal avocation. It is a whimsical satire on the order, done to the life. Another plan was to go to the Capuchin convent, and see the dried friars — six or eight hundred bearded old men, baked, as they died, in their cowls and beards, and standing against the walls in ghastly rows, in the spacious vaults of the monastery. A more infernal spectacle never was seen by mortal eyes. A drive to Monreale, a nest of a village on the moun- tain above the town — a visit to the gardens of a noble- man who salutes the stranger with a jet tVeau at every turning — and a lounge in the public promenade of Palermo itself — shared the honors of the argument. I had been in Sicily before, and was hesitating which of these various lions was worthy of a second visit, when the surgeon proposed to me to accompany him on a visit to a Sicilian count living in the neighborhood, who had converted his chateau into a lunatic asylum, and devoted his time and a large fortune entirely to this singular hobby. He was the first to try the sys- tem, now, thank God, generally approved, of winning back reason to these most wretched of human suffer- ers by kindness and gentle treatment. We jumped into one of the rattling calesini standing in the handsome corso of Palermo, and fifteen minutes beyond the gates brought us to the Casa dei Pazzi. My friend's uniform and profession were an immediate passport, and we were introduced into a handsome court, surrounded by a colonnade, and cooled by a fountain, in which were walking several well-dressed people, with books, drawing-boards, battledores, and other means of amusement. They all bowed politely as we passed, and at the door of the interior we were met by the count. " Good God !" I exclaimed — " she was insane, then !" It was the old man who was on board the night be- fore! "E ella ?" said I, seizing his arm, before he had concluded his bow, quite sure that he must under- stand me with a word. " Era pazza." He looked at me as he answered, with a scrutiny, as if he half suspected my friend had brought him a subject. The singular character of her beauty was quite ex- plained. Yet what a wreck ! I followed the old count around his establishment in a kind of dream, but I could not avoid being inter- ested at every step. Here were no chains, no whips, no harsh keepers, no cells of stone and straw. The walls of the long corridors were painted in fresco, rep- resenting sunny landscapes, and gay dancing figures. Fountains and shrubs met us at every turn. The people were dressed in their ordinary clothes, and all employed in some light work or amusement. It was like what it might have been in the days of the count's ancestors — a gay chateau, filled with guests and de- pendants, with no more apparent constraint than the ties of hospitality and service. We went first to the kitchen. Here were tsn people, all, but the cook, stark mad ! It was one of the peculiarities of the count's system, that his pa- tients led in his house the lives to which they had pre- viously been accustomed. A stout Sicilian peasant girl was employed in filling a large brasier from the basin of a fountain. While we were watching her task, the fit began to come on her, and after a fierce look or two around the room, she commenced dashing the water about her with great violence. The cook turned, not at all surprised, and patting her on the back, with a loud laugh, cried, " Brava, Pepina! brava /" ringing at the same moment a secret bell. A young girl of sixteen with a sweet, smiling coun- tenance, answered the summons, and immediately comprehending the case, approached the enraged creature, and putting her arms affectionately round her neck, whispered something in her ear. The expres- sion of her face changed immediately to a look of de- light, and dropping the bucket, she followed the young attendant out of the room with peals of laughter. " VeniteV said the count, "you shall see how we manage our furies." We followed across a garden filled with the sweet- est flowers to a small room opening on a lawn. From the centre of the ceiling was suspended a hammock, and Pepina was already in it, swung lightly from side to side by a servant, while the attendant stood by, and, as if in play, threw water upon her face at every ap- proach. It had all the air of a frolic. The violent laughter of the poor maniac grew less and less as the soothing motion and the coolness of the water took effect, and in a few minutes her strained eyes gently closed, the hammock was swung more and more gently, and she fell asleep. " This," said the count, with a gratified smile, " is my substitute for a forced shower-bath and chains; and tbis,'i kissing his little attendant on the forehead, " for the whip and the grim turnkey." I blessed him in my heart. " Come !" said he, as we left the sleeper to her re- pose, "I must show you my grounds." We followed him to an extensive garden, opening from the back of the chateau, laid out originally in the formal style of an Italian villa. The long walks had been broken up, however, by beautiful arbors with grottoes in their depths, in which wooden figures, of the color and size of life, stood or sat in every attitude of gayety or grotesqueness. It was difficult, in the deep shadow of the vines and oleanders, not to believe them real. We walked on through many a winding shrubbery, perfumed with all the scented flowers of the luxuriant climate, continually surprised with little deceptions of perspective, or figures half concealed in the leaves, till we emerged at the entrance of a charm- ing summer theatre, with sodded seats, stage, orches- tra, and scenery, complete. Orange-trees, roses, and clematis, were laced together for a wall in the rear. "Here," said the old man, bounding gayly upon the stage, "here we act plays the summer long." "What! not with your patients?" " Si, signore ! Who else?" And he went on to describe to us the interest they took in it, and the sin- gular power with which the odd idea seized upon their whimsied intellects. We had been accompanied from the first, by a grave, respectable looking man, whom I had taken for an assistant. While we were listening to the description of the first attempt they had made at a play, he started out from the group, and putting himself in an attitude upon the stage, commenced spouting a furious passage in Italian. The count pointed to his forehead, and made a sign to us to listen. The tragedian stopped at the end of INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 459 his sentence, and after a moment's delay, apparently in expectation of a reply, darted suddenly off and dis- appeared behind the scenes. "Poveretto!" said the count, "it is my best actor!" Near the theatre stood a small chapel, with a circu- lar lawn before it, on which the grass had been lately much trodden. It was surrounded partly by a green bank, and here the count seated us, saying with a sig- nificant look at me, that he would tell us a story. I should like to give it you in his own words — still more with his own manner; for never was a tale told with more elegance of language, or a more natural and pleasant simplicity. But a sheet of " wire-wove" is not a Palermitan cavaliere, and the cold English has not the warm eloquence of the Italian. He laid aside his hat, ordered fruit and wine, and proceeded. "Almost a year ago I was called upon by a gen- tleman of a noble physiognomy and address, who in- quired very particularly into my system. I explained it to him at his request, and he did me the honor, as you gentlemen have done, to go over my little establish- ment. He seemed satisfied, and with some hesitation informed me that he had a daughter in a very des- perate state of mental alienation. Would I go and see her? " This is not, you know, gentlemen, a public insti- tution. I am crazy," he said it very gravely, "quite crazy — the first of my family of fools, on this particular theme — and this asylum is my toy. Of course it is only as the whim seizes me that I admit a patient; for there are some diseases of the brain seated in causes with which I wish not to meddle. "However, I went. With the freedom of a physi- cian I questioned the father, upon the road, of the girl's history. He was a Greek, a prince of the Fanar, who had left his degraded people in their dirty and dangerous suburb at Constantinople, to forget oppres- sion and meanness in a voluntary exile. It was just before the breaking out of the last Greek revolution, and so many of his kinsmen and friends had been sac- rificed to the fury of the Turks, that he had renounced all idea of ever returning to his country. "'And your daughter?' "'My dear Katinka, my only child, fell ill upon re- ceiving distressing news from the Fanar, and her health and reason never rallied after. It is now several years, and she has lain in bed till her limbs are with- ered, never having uttered a word, or made a sign which would indicate even consciousness of the pres- ence of those about her.' " I could not get from him that there was any disap- pointment of the heart at the bottom of it. It seemed to be one of those cases of sudden stupefaction, to which nervously sensitive minds are liable after a vio- ent burst of grief; and I began, before I had seen her, lo indulge in bright hopes of starting once more the sealed fountains of thought and feeling. " We entered Palermo, and passing out at the other gate, stopped at a vine-laced casino on the lip of the bay, scarcely a mile from the city wall. It was a pretty, fanciful place, and, on a bed in its inner cham- ber, lay the most poetical-looking creature I had ever seen out of my dreams. Her head was pillowed in an abundance of dark hair, which fell away from her fore- head in masses of glossy curls, relieving with a striking effect, the wan and transparent paleness of a face which the divinest chisel could scarce have copied in alabas- ter. Dio mio ! — how transcendant was the beauty of that poor girl !" The count stopped and fed his memory a moment with closed eyes upon the image. " At the first glance I inwardly put up a prayer to the Virgin, and determined, with her sweet help, to restore reason to the fairest of its earthly temples. I took up her shadow of a hand, and spread out the thin fingers in my palm, ard as she turned her large wan- dering eye toward me, I felt that the blessed Mary had heard my prayer, ' You shall see her well again,' said I confidently. " Quite overcome, the prince Ghika fell on the bed and embraced his daughter's knees in an agony of tears. "You shall not have the seccatura, gentlemen, of listening to the recital of all my tedious experiments for the first month or two. I brought her to my house upon a litter, placed her in a room filled with every luxury of the east, and suffered no one to approach her except two Greek attendants, to whose services she was accustomed. I succeeded in partially re- storing animation to her benumbed limbs by friction, and made her sensible of music, and of the perfumes of the east, which I burned in a pastille-lamp in her chamber. Here, however, my skill was baffled. I could neither amuse nor vex. Her mind was beyond me. After trying every possible experiment, as it seemed to me, my invention was exhausted, and I despaired. "She occupied, however, much of my mind. Walking up and down yonder orange-alley one sweet morning, about two months ago, I started off suddenly to my chamber with a new thought. You would have thought me the maddest of my household, to have seen me, gentlemen. I turned out by the shoul- ders the regazza, who was making my bed, washed and scented myself, as if for a ball, covered my white hairs with a handsome brown wig, a relic of my cox- combical days, rouged faintly, and, with white gloves, and a most youthful appearance altogether, sought the chamber of my patient. "She was lying with her head in the hollow of her thin arm, and", as I entered, her dark eyes rested full upon me. I approached, kissed her hand with a re- spectful gallantry, and in the tenderest tones of which my damaged voice was susceptible, breathed into her ear a succession of delicately-turned compliments to her beauty. "She lay as immovable as marble, but I had not calculated upon the ruling passion of the sex in vain. A thin flush on her cheek, and a flutter in her temple, only perceptible to my practised eye, told me that the words had found their way to her long-lost conscious- ness. "I waited a few moments, and then took up a ring- let that fell negligently over her hand, and asked per- mission to sever it from the glossy mass in which the arm under her head was literally buried. " She clutched her fingers suddenly upon it, and glancing at me with the fury of a roused tigress, ex- claimed in a husky whisper, • Lasciate me, signore ." " I obeyed her, and, as I left the room, 1 thanked the Virgin in my heart. It was the first word she had spoken for years. " The next day, having patched myself up more successfully in my leisure, in a disguise so absolute that not one even of my pets knew me as I passed through the corridor, I bowed myself up once more to her bedside. " She lay with her hands clasped over her eyes, and took no notice of my first salutation. I commenced with a little raillery, and under cover of finding fault with her attitude, contrived to pay an adroit compli- ment to the glorious orbs she was hiding from admira- tion. She lay a moment or two without motion, but the muscles of her slight mouth stirred just percepti- bly, and presently she drew her fingers quickly apart, and looking at me with a most confiding expression in her pale features, a full sweet smile broke like sud- den sunshine through her lips. I could have wept for "I soon acquired all the influence over her I could wish. She made an effort at my request to leave her bed, and in a week or two walked with me in the gar- 460 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. den. Her mind, however, seemed to have capacity but for one thought, and she soon began to grow un- happy, and would weep for hours. I endeavored to draw from her the cause, but she only buried her face in my bosom, and wept more violently, till one day, sobbing out her broken words almost inarticulately, I gathered her meaning. She was grieved that I did not marry her ! " Poor girl !" soliloquized the count, after a brief pause, "she was only true to her woman's nature. In- sanity had but removed the veil of custom and restraint. She would have broken her heart before she had be- trayed such a secret, with her reason. " I was afraid at last she would go melancholy mad, this one thought preyed so perpetually on her brain — and I resolved to delude her into the cheerfulness ne- cessary to her health by a mock ceremony. " The delight with which she received my promise almost alarmed me. I made several delays, with the hope that in the convulsion of her feelings a ray of reason would break through the darkness; but she took every hour to heart, and I found it was inevi- table. " You are sitting, gentlemen, in the very scene of our mad bridal. My poor grass has not yet recovered, you see, from the tread of the dancers. Imagine the spec- tacle. The chapel was splendidly decorated, and at the bottom of the lawn stood three long tables, cov- ered with fruits and flowers, and sprinkled here and there with bottles of colored water (to imitate wine), sherbels, cakes, and other such innocent things as I could allow my crazy ones. They were all invited." " Good God !" said the surgeon, " your lunatics ?" "All — all! And never was such a sensation pro- duced in a household since the world was created. Nothing else was talked of for a week. My worst pa- tients seemed to suspend for the time their fits of vio- lence. I sent to (own for quantities of tricksy stuffs, and allowed the women to deck themselves entirely after their own taste. You can conceive nothing like the business they made of it ! Such apparitions ! — Santa Maria ! shall I ever forget that Babel ? " The morning came. My bride's attendants had dressed her from her Grecian wardrobe ; and with her long braid parted over her forehead, and hanging back from her shoulders to her very heels, her close-fitted jacket, of gorgeous velvet and gold, her costly brace- lets, and the small spangled slippers upon her unstock- inged feet, she was positively an angelic vision of beau- ty. Her countenance was thoughtful, but her step was unusually elastic, and a small red spot, like a rose-leaf under the skin, blushed through the alabaster paleness of her cheek. " My maniacs received her with shouts of admira- tion. The women were kept from her at first with great difficulty, and it was only by drawing their at- tention to their own gaudier apparel, that their anx- iety to touch her was distracted. The men looked at her, as she passed along like a queen of love and beauty, and their wild, gleaming eyes, and quickened breaths, showed the effect of such loveliness upon the unconcealed feelings. I had multiplied my attend- ants, scarce knowing how the excitement of the scene might affect them ; but the interest of the occasion, and the imposing decencies of dress and show, seemed to overcome them effectually. The most sane guests at a bridal could scarce have behaved with more pro- priety. " The ceremony was performed by an elderly friend of mine, the physician to my establishment. Old as I am, gentlemen, I could have wished that ceremony to have been in earnest. As she lifted up her large liquid eyes to heaven, and swore to be true to me till death, I forgot my manhood, and wept. If I had been younger — ma che porcheria ! " After the marriage the women were invited to sa- lute the bride, and then all eyes in my natural party turned at once to the feast. I gave the word. Fruits, cakes, and sherbets, disappeared with the rapidity of magic, and then the music struck up from the shrub- bery, and they danced — as you see by the grass. " I committed the bride to her attendants at sunset, but I could with difficulty tear myself away. On the following day I called at her door, but she refused to see me. The next day and the next I could gain no admittance without exerting my authority. On the fourth morning I was permitted to enter. She had re- sumed her usual dress, and was sad, calm, and gentle. She said little, but seemed lost in thought to which she was unwilling or unable to give utterance. " She has never spoken of it since. Her mind, I think, has nearly recovered its tone, but her memory seems confused. I scarce think she remembers her illness, and its singular events, as more than a troubled dream. On all the common affairs of life she seems quite sane, and I drive out with her daily, and have taken her once or twice to the opera. Last night we were strolling on the Marina when your frigate came into the bay, and she proposed to join the crowd and go off to hear the music. We went on board, as you know ; and now, if you choose to pay your respects to the lady who refused to waltz with you, take an- other sip of your sherbet and wine, and come with me." To say more would be trespassing perhaps on the patience of my readers, but certainly on my own feel- ings. I have described this singular case of madness and its cure, because I think it contains in itself the seeds of much philosophy on the subject. It is only within a very few years that these poor sufferers have been treated otherwise than as the possessors of in- carnate devils, whom it was necessary to scourge out with unsparing cruelty. If this literal statement of a cure in the private madhouse of the eccentric conte of Palermo, induce the friends of a single un- fortunate maniac to adopt a kind and rational system for his restoration, the writer will have been repaid for bringing circumstances before the public which have since had much to do with his own feelings. MINUTE PHILOSOPHIES. " Nature there Was with thee ; she who loved us both, she still Was with thee ; and even so didst thou become A silent poet ; from the solitude Of the vast sea didst bring a watchful heart Still couchant, an inevitable ear, And an eye practised like a blind man's touch." Wordsworth. A summer or two since, I was wasting a college va- cation among the beautiful creeks and falls in the neighborhood of New York. In the course of my wanderings, up-stream and down-stream, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, and never without a book for an excuse to loiter on the mossy banks and beside the edge of running water, I met frequently a young man of a peculiarly still and collected eye, and a forehead more like a broad slab of marble than a hu- man brow. His mouth was small and thinly cut ; his chin had no superfluous flesh upon it; and his whole appearance was that of a man whose intellectual na- ture prevailed over the animal. He was evidently a scholar. We had met so frequently at last, that, on passing each other one delicious morning, we bowed and smiled simultaneously, and, without further intro- duction, entered into conversation. It was a temperate day in August, with a clear but not oppressive sun, and we wandered down a long INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 461 creek together, mineralizing here, botanizing there, and examining the strata of the ravines, with that sort >f instinctive certainty of each other's attainments which scholars always feel, and thrusting in many a .ittle wayside parenthesis, explanatory of each other's \istory and circumstances. I found that he was one of those pure and unambitious men, who, by close application and moderate living while in college, be- come in love with their books ; and, caring little for anything more than the subsistence, which philosophy .ells them is enough to have of this world, settle down for life into a wicker-bottomed chair, more content- edly than if it were the cushion of a throne. We were together three or four days, and when I left him, he gave me his address, and promised to write to me. I shall give below an extract from one of his letters. I had asked him for a history of his daily habits, and any incidents which he might choose to throw in — hinting to him that I was a dabbler in lit- erature, and would be obliged to him if he would do it minutely, and in a form of which I might avail myself in the way of publication. After some particulars, unimportant to the reader, he proceeds : — " I keep a room at a country tavern. It is a quiet, out-of-the-way place, with a whole generation of elms about it ; and the greenest grass up to the very door, and the pleasantest view in the whole country round from my chamber-window. Though it is a public house, and the word 4 hotel' swings in golden capi- tals under a landscape of two hills and a river, painted for a sign by some wandering Tinto, it is so orderly a town, that not a lounger is ever seen about the door ; and the noisiest traveller is changed to a quiet man, as if it were by the very hush of the atmosphere. 44 Here, in my pleasant room, upon the second floor, with my round table covered with choice books, my shutters closed just so much as to admit light enough for a painter, and my walls hung with the pictures which adorned my college chambers, and are there- fore linked with a thousand delightful associations — I can study my twelve hours a day, in a state of mind sufficiently even and philosophical. I do not want for excitement. The animal spirits, thanks to the Crea- tor, are enough at all times, with employment and temperate living, to raise us above the common shad- ows of life ; and after a day of studious confinement, when my mind is unbound, and I go out and give it up to reckless association, and lay myself open unre- servedly to the influences of nature — at such a time, there comes mysteriously upon me a degree of pure joy, unmingled and unaccountable, which is worth years of artificial excitement. The common air seems to have grown rarer; my step is strangely elastic ; my sense of motion full of unwonted dignity ; my thoughts elevated ; my perceptions of beauty acuter and more pleasurable ; and my better nature predominant and sublime. There is nothing in the future which looks difficult, nothing in my ambition unattainable, nothing in the past which can not be reconciled with good : I am a purer and a better man; and though I am ele- vated in my own thoughts, it will not lead to vanity, for my ideas of God, and of my fellow-men, have been enlarged also. This excitement ceases soon ; but it ceases like the bubbling of a fountain, which leaves the waters purer for the influence which has passed through them — not like the mirth of the world, which ebbs like an unnatural tide, and leaves loathsomeness and disgust. " Let no one say that such a mode of life is adapted to peculiar constitutions, and can be relished by those only. Give me the veriest worldling — the most de- voted, and the happiest of fashionable ephemera, and it he has material for a thought, and can take pride in the improvement of his nature, I will so order his daily round, that, with temperance and exercise, he shall be happier in one hour spent within himself, than in ten wasted on folly. " Few know the treasures in their own bosoms — very few the elasticity and capacity of a well-regulated mind for enjoyment. The whole world of philoso- phers, and historians, and poets, seem, to the secluded student, but to have labored for his pleasure ; and as he comes to one new truth and beautiful thought after another, there answers a chord of joy, richer than music, in his heart — which spoils him for the coarser pleasures of the world. I have seen my college chum — a man, who, from a life of mingled business and pleasure, became suddenly a student — lean back in his chair, at the triumph of an argument, or the discovery of a philosophical truth, and give himself up for a few moments to the enjoyment of sensations, which, he assured me, surpassed exceedingly the most vivid pleasures of his life. The mind is like the appetite — when healthy and well-toned, receiving pleasure from the commonest food ; but becoming a disease, when pampered and neglected. Give it time to turn in upon itself, satisfy its restless thirst for knowledge, and it will give birth to health, to animal spirits, to every- thing which invigorates the body, while it is advan- cing by every step the capacities of the soul. Oh ! if the runners after pleasure would stoop down by the wayside, they might drink waters better even than those which they see only in their dreams. They will not be told that they have in their possession the gold- en key which they covet ; they will not know that the music they look to enchant them, is sleeping in their own untouched instruments ; that the lamp which they vainly ask from the enchanter, is burning in their own bosoms ! " When I first came here, my host's eldest daughter was about twelve years of age. She was, without be- ing beautiful, an engaging child, rather disposed to be contemplative, and, like all children, at that age, very inquisitive and curious. She was shy at first, but soon became acquainted with me ; and would come into my room in her idle hours, and look at my pictures and read. She never disturbed me, because her nat- ural politeness forbade it ; and I pursued my thoughts or my studies just as if she were not there, till, by-and- by, I grew fond of her quiet company, and was hap- pier when she was moving stealthily around, and look- ing into a book here and there in her quiet way. "She had been my companion thus for some time, when it occurred to me that I might be of use to her in leading her to cultivate a love for study. I seized the idea enthusiastically. Now, thought I, I will see the process of a human mind. I have studied its phi- losophy from books, and now I will take a single original, and compare them, step by step. I have seen the bud, and the flower full blown, and I am told that the change was gradual, and effected thus — leaf after leaf. Now I will watch the expansion, and while I water it and let in the sunshine to its bosom, detect the secret springs which move to such beautiful re- sults. The idea delighted me. "I was aware that there was great drudgery in the first steps, and I determined to avoid it, and connect the idea of my own instruction with all that was de- lightful and interesting to her mind. For this pur- pose I persuaded her father to send her to a better school than she had been accustomed to attend, and, by a little conversation, stimulated her to enter upon her studies with alacrity. » She was now grown to a girl, and had begun to assume the naive, womanly airs which girls do at her age. Her figure had rounded into a flowing sym- metry, and her face, whether from associating princi- pally with an older person, or for what other reason I know not, had assumed a thoughtful cast, and she was really a girl of most interesting and striking per- sonal appearance. 462 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. " I did not expect much from the first year of my experiment. I calculated justly on its being irksome and common-place. Still I was amused and interested. I could hear her light step on the stair, always at the same early hour of the evening, and it was a pleasure to me to say ' Come in,' to her timid rap, and set her a chair by my own, that I might look over her book, or talk in a low tone to her. I then asked her about her lessons, and found out what had most attracted her notice, and I could always find some interesting fact connected with it, or strike off into some pleasant as- sociation, till she acquired a habit of selection in her reading, and looked at me earnestly to know what I would say upon it. You would have smiled to see her leaning forward, with her soft blue eye fixed on me, and her lips half parted with attention, waiting for my ideas upon some bare fact in geography or his- tory ; and it would have convinced you that the nat- ural, unstimulated mind, takes pleasure in the simplest addition to its knowledge. " All this time I kept out of her way everything that would have a tendency to destroy a taste for mere knowledge, and had the pleasure to see that she passed with keen relish from her text books to my ob- servations, which were as dry as they, though recom- mended by kindness of tone and an interested manner. She acquired gradually, by this process, a habit of reasoning upon everything which admitted it, which was afterward of great use in fixing and retaining the leading features of her attainments. " I proceeded in this way till she was fifteen. Her mind had now become inured to regular habits of in- quiry, and she began to ask difficult questions and wonder at common things. Her thoughts assumed a graver complexion, and she asked for books upon sub- jects of which she felt the want of information. She was ready to receive and appreciate truth and instruc- tion, and here was to begin my pleasure. " She came up one evening with an air of embar- rassment approaching to distress. She took her usual seat, and told me that she had been thinking all day that it was useless to study any more. There were so many mysterious things — so much, even that she could see, which she could not account for, and, with all her efforts, she got on so slowly, that she was discouraged. It was better, she said, to be happy in ignorance, than to be constantly tormented with the sight of knowledge to which she could not attain, and which she only knew enough to value. Poor child ! she did not know that she was making the same complaint with Newton, and Locke, and Bacon, and that the wisest of men were only ' gatherers of pebbles on the shore of an illimita- ble sea !' I began to talk to her of the mind. I spoke of its grandeur, and its capacities, and its destiny. I told her instances of high attainment and wonderful discovery— sketched the sublime philosophies of the soul— the possibility that this life was but a link in a chain of existences, and the glorious power, if it were true, of entering upon another world, with a loftier ca- pacity than your fellow-beings for the comprehension of its mysteries. I then touched upon the duty of self- cultivation — the pride of a high consciousness of im- proved time, and the delicious feelings of self-respect and true appreciation. " She listened to me in silence, and wept. It was one of those periods which occur to all delicate minds, of distrust and fear; and when it passed by, and her ambition stirred again, she gave vent to her feelings with a woman's beautiful privilege. I had no more trouble to urge her on. She began the next day with the philosophy of the mind, and I was never happier than while following her from step to step in this de- lightful study. " I have always thought that the most triumphant intellectual feeling we ever experience, is felt upon the lirst opening of philosophy. It is like the interpreta- tion of a dream of a lifetime. Every topic seems to you like a phantom of your own mind, from which a mist has suddenly melted. Every feature has a kind of half-familiarity, and you remember musing upon it for hours, till you gave it up with an impatient dissat- isfaction. Without a definite shape, this or that very idea has floated in your mind continually. It was a phe- nomenon without a name — a something which you could not describe to your friend, and which, by-and- by, you came to believe was peculiar to yourself, and would never be brought out or unravelled. You read on, and the blood rushes to your face in a tumultu- ous consciousness — you have had feelings in pecu- liar situations which you could not define, and here are their very features — and you know, now, that it was jealousy, or ambition, or love. There have been mo- ments when your faculties seemed blinded or reversed. You could not express yourself at all when you felt you should be eloquent. You could not fix your mind upon the subject, of which, before, you had been passionately fond. You felt an aversion for your very partialities, or a strange warming in your heart toward people or pursuits that you had disliked ; and when the beauty of the natural world has burst upon you, as it sometimes will, with an exceeding glory, you have turned away from it with a deadly sickness of heart, and a wish that you might die. " These are mysteries which are not all soluble even by philosophy. But you can see enough of the ma- chinery of thought to know its tendencies, and like the listener to mysterious music, it is enough to have seen the instrument, without knowing the cunning craft of the player. " I remembered my school-day feelings, and lived them over again with my beautiful pupil. I entered with as much enthusiasm as she, into the strength and sublimity which I had wondered at before ; and I be- lieve that, even as she sat reading by herself, my blood thrilled, and my pulses quickened, as vividly as her own, when I saw, by the deepening color of her cheek, or the marked passages of my book, that she had found a noble thought or a daring hypothesis. " She proceeded with her course of philosophy rap- idly and eagerly. Her mind was well prepared for its relish. She said she felt as if a new sense had been given her — an inner eye which she could turn in upon herself, and by which she could, as it were, stand aside while the process of thought went on. She began to respect and to rely upon her own mind, and the eleva- tion of countenance and manner, which so certainly and so beautifully accompanies inward refinement, stole over her daily. I began to feel respectful in her presence, and when, with the peculiar elegance of a woman's mind, she discovered a delicate shade of ' meaning which I had not seen, or traced an associa- tion which could spring only from an unsullied heart, I experienced a sensation like the consciousness of an unseen presence — elevating, without alarming me. " It was probably well that with all this change in her mind and manner, her person still retained its childish grace and flexibility. She had not grown tall, and she wore her hair yet as she used to do — fall- ing with a luxuriant fulness upon her shoulders. Hence she was still a child, when, had she been taller or more womanly, the demands upon her attention, and the attractiveness of mature society, might have divided that engrossing interest which is necessary to successful study. " I have often wished I was a painter; but never so much as when looking on this beautiful being as she sat absorbed in her studies, or turned to gaze up a moment to my face, with that delicious expression of inquiry and affection. Every one knows the elevation given to the countenance of a man by contemplative habits. Perhaps the natural delicacy of feminine fea- tures has combined with its rarity, to make this ex- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 463 pression less observable in woman ; but, to one famil- iar with the study of the human face, there is, in the look of a truly intellectual woman, a keen subtlety of refinement, a separation from everything gross and material, which comes up to our highest dream of the angelic. For myself, I care not to analyze it. I leave it to philosophy to find out its secret. It is enough for me that I can see and feel it in every pulse of my being. It is not a peculiar susceptibility. Every man who approaches such a woman feels it. He may not define it ; he may be totally unconscious what it is that awes him ; but he feels as if a mysterious and in- visible veil were about her, and every dark thought is quenched suddenly in his heart, as if he had come into the atmosphere of a spirit. I would have every woman know this. I would tell every mother who prays nightly for the peculiar watchfulness of good spirits over the purity of her child, that she may weave round her a defence stronger than steel — that she may place in her heart a living amulet whose virtue is like a circle of fire to pollution. I am not ' stringing pearls.' I have seen, and I know, that an empty mind is not a strong citadel; and in the melancholy chronicle of female ruin, the instances are rare of victims distin- guished for mental cultivation. I would my pen were the 'point of a diamond,' and I were writing on living hearts ! for when I think how the daughters of a house are its grace and honor — and when I think how the father and mother that loved her, and the brother that made her his pride, and the sister in whose bosom she slept, are all crushed, utterly, by a daughter's degra- dation, I feel, that if every word were a burning coal, my language could not be extravagant ! "My pupil, had, as yet, read no poetry. I was un- certain how to enter upon it. Her taste for the beau- tiful in prose had become so decided, that I feared for the first impression of my poetical world. I wished it to burst upon her brilliantly — like the entrance to an inner and more magnificent temple of knowledge. I hoped to dazzle her with a high and unimagined beauty, which should exceed far the massive but plain splendors of philosophy. We had often conversed on the probability of a previous existence, and, one eve- ning, I opened Wordsworth, and read his sublime 'Ode upon Intimations of Immortality.' She did not interrupt me, but 1 looked up at the conclusion, and she was in tears. I made no remark, but took Byron, and read some of the finest passages in Childe Harold, and Manfred, and Cain— and, from that time, poetry has been her world ! " It would not have been so earlier. It needs the simple and strong nutriment of truth to fit us to relish and feel poetry. The mind must have strength and cultivated taste, and then it is like a language from Heaven. We are astonished at its power and mag- nificence. We have been familiar with knowledge as with a person of plain garment and a homely presence — and he comes to us in poetry, with the state of a king, glorious in purple and gold. We have known him as an unassuming friend who talked with us by the wayside, and kept us company on our familiar paths — and we see him coming with a stately step, and a glittering diadem on his brow; and we wonder that we did not see that his plain garment honored him not, and his bearing were fitter for a king! "Poetry entered to the very soul of Caroline Grey. It was touching an unreached string, and she felt as if the whole compass of her heart were given out. I used to read to her for hours, and it was beautiful to see her eye kindle, and her cheek burn with excite- ment. The sublimed mysticism and spirituality of Wordsworth were her delight, and she feasted upon the deep philosophy and half-hidden tenderness of Coleridge. " I had observed, with some satisfaction, that, in the rapid development of her mental powers, she had not found time to study nature. She knew little of the character of the material creation, and I now com- menced walking constantly abroad with her at sunset, and at all the delicious seasons of moonlight and star- light and dawn. It came in well with her poetry. I can not describe the effect. She became, like all who are, for the first time, made sensible of the glories around them, a worshipper of the external world. " There is a time when nature first loses its famil- iarity, and seems suddenly to have become beautiful. This is true even of those who have been taught early habits of observation. The mind of a child is too feeble to comprehend, and does not soon learn, the scale of sublimity and beauty. He would not be sur- prised if the sun were brighter, or if the stars were sown thicker in the sky. He sees that the flower is beautiful, and he feels admiration at the rainbow ; but he would not wonder if the dyes of the flower were deeper, or if the sky were laced to the four corners with the colors of a prism. He grows up with these splendid phenomena at work about him, till they have become common, and, in their most wonderful forms, cease to attract his attention. Then his senses are suddenly, as by an invisible influence, unsealed, and, like the proselyte of the Egyptian pyramids, he finds himself in a magnificent temple, and hears exquisite music, and is dazzled by surpassing glory. He never recovers his indifference. The perpetual changes of nature keep alive his enthusiasm, and if his taste is not dulled by subsequent debasement, the pleasure he re- ceives from it flows on like a stream — wearing deeper and calmer. " Caroline became now my constant companion. The changes of the natural world have always been my chief source of happiness, and I was curious to know whether my different sensations, under different circumstances, were peculiar to myself. I left her, therefore, to lead the conversation, without any ex- pression of my feelings, and, to my surprise and de- light, she invariably struck their tone, and pursued the same vein of reflection. It convinced me of what I had long thought might be true— that there was, in the varieties of natural beauty, a hidden meaning, and a delightful purpose of good ; and, if I am not de- ceived, it is a new and beautiful evidence of the pro- portion and extent of God's benevolent wisdom. Thus, you may remember the peculiar effect of the early dawn — the deep, unruffled serenity, and the per- fect collectedness of your senses. You may remem- ber the remarkable purity that pervades the stealing in of color, and the vanishing of the cold shadows of gray — the heavenly quiet that seems infused, like a visible spirit, into the pearly depths of the east, as the light violet tints become deeper in the upper sky, and the morning mist rises up like a veil of silvery film, and softens away its intensity ; and then you will re- member how the very beatings of your heart grew quiet, and you felt an irresistible impulse to pray! There was no irregular delight, no indefinite sensa- tion, no ecstacy. It was deep, unbroken repose, and your pulses were free from the fever of life, and your reason was lying awake in its chamber. "There is a hush also at noon; but it is not like the morning. You have been mingling in the business of the world, and you turn aside, weary and distracted, for rest. There is a far depth, in the intense blue of the sky which takes in the spirit, and you are content to lie down and sleep in the cool shadow, and forgec even your existence. How different from the cool wakefulness of the morning, and yet how fitted for the necessity of the hour! "The day wears on and comes to the sunsetting. The strong light passes off from the hills, and the leaves are mingled in golden masses, and the tips of the long grass, and the blades of maize, and the luxuriant graiii, are all sleeping in a rich glow, as if the daylight 464 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. had melted into gold and descended upon every living thing like dew. The sun goes down, and there is a tissue of indescribable- glory floating upon the clouds, and the almost imperceptible blending of the sunset color with the blue sky, is far up toward the zenith. Presently the pomp of the early sunset passes away ; and the clouds are all clad in purple, with edges of metallic lustre; and very far in the west, as if they were sailing away into another world, are seen spots of intense brightness, and the tall trees on the hilly edge of the horizon seem piercing the sky, on fire with its consuming heat. There is a tumultuous joy in the contemplation of this hour which is peculiar to itself. You feel as if you should have had wings; for there is a strange stirring in your heart to follow on — and your imagination bursts away into that beautiful world, and revels among the unsubstantial clouds till they become cold. It is a triumphant and extravagant hour. Its joyousness is an intoxication, and its pleas- ure dies with the day. H The night, starry and beautiful, comes on. The sky has a blue, intense almost to blackness, and the stars are set in it like gems. They are of different glory, and there are some that burn, and some that have a twinkling lustre, and some are just visible and faint. You know their nature, and their motion ; and there is something awful in so many worlds moving on through the firmament so silently and in order. You feel an indescribable awe stealing upon you, and your imagination trembles as it goes up among them. You gaze on, and on, and the superstitions of olden time, and the wild visions of astrology, steal over your mem- ory, till, by-and-by, you hear the music which they ' give out as they go,' and drink in the mysteries of their hidden meaning, and believe that your destiny is woven by their burning spheres. There comes on you a delirious joy, and a kind of terrible fellowship with their sublime nature, and you feel as if you could go up to a starry place and course the heavens in com- pany. There is a spirituality in this hour, a separa- tion from material things, which is of a fine order of happiness. The purity of the morning, and the noon- tide quietness, and the rapture of the glorious sunset, are all human and comprehensible feelings ; but this has the mystery and the lofty energy of a higher world, and you return to your human nature with a refreshed spirit and an elevated purpose : see now the wisdom of God ! — the collected intellect for the morning pray- er and our daily duty — the delicious repose for our noontide weariness — and the rapt fervor to purify us by night from our worldliness, and keep wakeful the eye of immortality ! They are all suited to our need ; and it is pleasant to think, when we go out at this or that season, that its peculiar beauty is fitted to our pe- culiar wants, and that it is not a chance harmony of our hearts with nature. "The world had become to Caroline a new place. No change in the season was indifferent to her— noth- ing was common or familiar. She found beauty in things you would pass by, and a lesson for her mind or her heart in the minutest workmanship of nature. Her character assumed a cheerful dignity, and an elevation above ordinary amusements or annoyances. She was equable and calm, because her feelings were never reached by ordinary irritations ; and, if there were no other benefit in cultivation, this were almost argument enough to induce it. " It is now five years since I commenced my tutor- ship. I have given you the history of two of them. In the remaining three there has been much that has in- terested my mind — probably little that would interest yours. We have read together, and, as far as possible, 9tudied together. She has walked with me, and shared all my leisure, and known every thought. She is now a woman of eighteen. Her childish graces are matured, and her blue eye would send a thrill through you. You might object to her want of fashionable tournure, and find fault with her unfashionable impulses. I do not. She is a high-minded, noble, impassioned being, with an enthusiasm that is not without reason, and a com- mon sense that is not a regard to self-interest. Her motion was not learned at schools, but it is unembar- rassed and free ; and her tone has not been educated to a refined whisper, but it expresses the meaning of her heart, as if its very pulse had become articulate. The many might not admire her — I know she would be idolized by the few. " Our intercourse is as intimate still ; and it could not change without being less so — for we are constant- ly together. There is — to be sure — lately — a slight degree of embarrassment — and — somehow — we read more poetry than we used to do — but it is nothing at all — nothing." My friend was married to his pupil 'a few months after writing the foregoing. He has written to me since, and I will show you the letter if you will call, any time. It will not do to print it, because there are some domestic details not proper for the general eye ; but, to me, who am a bachelor, bent upon matrimony, it is interesting to the last degree. He lives the same quiet, retired life, that he did before he was married. His room is arranged with the same taste, and with reference to the same habits as before. The light comes in as timidly through the half-closed window, and his pictures look as shadowy and dim, and the rustle of the turned leaf adds as mysteriously to the silence. He is the fondest of husbands, but his affec- tion does not encroach on the habits of his mind. Now and then he looks up from his book, and, resting his head upon his hand, lets his eye wander over the pale cheek and drooping lid of the beautiful being who sits reading beside him ; but he soon returns to his half- forgotten page, and the smile of affection which had stolen over his features fades gradually away into the habitual soberness of thought. There sits his wife, hour after hour, in the same chair which she occupied when she first came, a curious loiterer to his room; and though she does not study so much, because other cares have a claim upon her now, she still keeps pace with him in the pleasanter branches of knowledge, and they talk as often and as earnestly as before on the thousand topics of a scholar's contemplation. Her cares may and will multiply ; but she understands the economy of time, and I have no doubt that, with every attention to her daily duties, she will find ample time for her mind, and be always as well fitted as now for the companionship of an intellectual being. I have, like all bachelors, speculated a great deal upon matrimony. I have seen young and beautiful women, the pride of gay circles, married — as the world said — well ! Some have moved into costly houses, and their friends have all come and looked at their fine furniture and their splendid arrangements for happi- ness, and they have gone away and committed them to their sunny hopes, cheerfully, and without fear. It is natural to be sanguine for the young, and, at such times, I am carried away by similar feelings. I love to get unobserved into a corner, and watch the bride in her white attire, and with her smiling face and her soft eyes moving before me in their pride of life, weave a waking dream of her future happiness, and persuade myself that it will be true. I think how they will sit upon that luxurious sofa as the twilight falls, and build gay hopes, and murmur in low tones the now unfor- bidden tenderness, and how thrillingly the allowed kiss and the beautiful endearments of wedded life, will make even their parting joyous, and how gladly they will come back from the crowd and the empty mirth of the gay, to each other's quiet company. I picture to myself that young creature, who blushes, even now, at his hesitating caress, listening eagerly for his foot- INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 465 steps as the night steals on, and wishing that he would come ; and when he enters at last, and, with an affec- tion as undying as his pulse, folds her to his bosom, I can feel the very tide that goes flowing through his heart, and gaze with him on her graceful form as she moves about him for the kind offices of affec- tion, soothing all his unquiet cares, and making him forget even himself, in her young and unshadowed beauty. I go forward for years, and see her luxuriant hair put soberly away from her brow, and her girlish graces ripened into dignity, and her bright loveliness chast- ened with the gentle meekness of maternal affection. Her husband looks on her with a proud eye, and shows the same fervent love and delicate attention which first won her, and fair children are growing up about them, and they go on, full of honor and untroubled years, and are remembered when they die! I say I love to dream thus when I go to give the young bride joy. It is the natural tendency of feel- ings touched by loveliness that fears nothing for itself, and, if I ever yield to darker feelings, it is because the light of the picture is changed. I am not fond of dwelling on such changes, and I will not, minutely, now. 1 allude to it only because I trust that my sim- ple page will be read by some of the young and beau- tiful beings who move daily across my path, and I would whisper to them as they glide by, joyously and confidingly, the secret of an unclouded future. The picture I have drawn above is not peculiar. It is colored like the fancies of the bride ; and many — oh many an hour will she sit, with her rich jewels lying loose in her fingers, and dream such dreams as these. She believes them, too — and she goes on, for a while, undeceived. The evening is not too long while they talk of their plans for happiness, and the quiet meal is still pleasant with the delightful novelty of mutual re- liance and attention. There comes soon, however, a time when personal topics become bare and wearisome, and slight attentions will not alone keep up the social excitement. There are long intervals of silence, and detected symptoms of weariness, and the husband, first in his impatient manhood, breaks in upon the hours they were to spend together. I can not follow it cir- cumstantially. There come long hours of unhappy listlessness, and terrible misgivings of each other's worth and affection, till, by-and-by, they can conceal their uneasiness no longer, and go out separately to seek relief, and lean upon a hollow world for the support which one who was their "lover and friend" could not give them ! Heed this, ye who are winning, by your innocent beauty, the affections of highminded and thinking beings ! Remember that he will give up the brother of his heart with whom he has had, ever, a fellowship of mind — the society of his contemporary runners in the race of fame, who have held with him a stern companionship — and frequently, in his passionate love, he will break away from the arena of his burning am- bition, to come and listen to the "voice of the charm- er." It will bewilder him at first, but it will not long ; and then, think you that an idle blandishment will chain the mind that has been used, for years, to an equal communion ? Think you he will give up, for a weak dalliance, the animating themes of men, and the search into the fine mysteries of knowledge ? — Oh no, lady ! — believe me — no ! Trust not your influence to such light fetters ! Credit not the old-fashioned ab- surdity that woman's is a secondary lot — ministering to the necessities of her lord and master ! It is a higher destiny I would award you. If your immor- tality is as complete, and your gift of mind as capable as ours of increase and elevation, I would put no wis- dom of mine against God's evident allotment. I would charge you to water the undying bud, and give it healthy culture, and open its beauty to the sun — and then you may hope, that when your life is bound up with another, you will go on equally, and in a fellowship that shall pervade every earthly interest ' END OF INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 30 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL LADY RAVELGOLD. CHAPTER I. " What wouid it pleasure me to have my throat cut With diamonds ? or to be smothered quick With cassia, or be shot to death with pearls V Dutchess of Malfy. " I've been i' the Indies twice, and seen strange things— But two honest women '.—One, I read of once !" Rule a Wife. It was what is called by people on the continent a " London day." A thin, gray mist drizzled down through the smoke which darkened the long cavern of Fleet street ; the sidewalks were slippery and clam- my ; the drays slid from side to side on the greasy pavement, creating a perpetual clamor among the lighter carriages with which they came in contact ; the porters wondered that "gemmen" would carry their umbrellas up when there was no rain, and the gentlemen wondered that porters should be permitted on the sidewalks ; there were passengers in box-coats, though it was the first of May, and beggars with bare breasts, though it was chilly as November ; the boys were looking wistfully into the hosier's windows who were generally at the pastry-cook's ; and there were persons who wished to know the time, trying in vain to see the dial of St. Paul's through the gamboge at- mosphere. It was twelve o'clock, and a plain chariot with a simple crest on the panels, slowly picked its way through the choked and disputed thoroughfare east of Temple Bar. The smart glazed hat of the coach- man, the well-fitted drab greatcoat and gaiters of the footman, and the sort of half-submissive, half-con- temptuous look on both their faces (implying that they were bound to drive to the devil if it were miladi's or- ders, but that the rabble of Fleet street was a leetle too vulgar for their contact), expressed very plainly that the lady within was a denizen of a more privileged quarter, but had chosen a rainy day for some compul- sory visit to " the city." At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the well- groomed night-horses (a pair of smart, hardy, twelve- mile cabs, all bottom, but little style, kept for night- work and forced journeys) had threaded the tortuous entrails of London, and had arrived at the arch of a dark court in Throgmorton street. The coachman put his wheels snug against the edge of the sidewalk, to avoid being crushed by the passing drays, and set- tled his many-caped benjamin about him ; while the footman spread his umbrella, and making a balustrade of his arm for his mistress's assistance, a closely-veiled lady descended and disappeared up the wet and ill- paved avenue. The green-baize door of Firkins and Co. opened on its silent hinges and admitted the mysterious visiter, who, inquiring of the nearest clerk if the junior part- ner were in, was shown to a small inner room contain- ing a desk, two chairs, a coal fire, and a young gentle- man. The last article of furniture rose on the lady's entrance, and as she threw off her veil he made a low bow, with the air of a gentleman, who is neither sur- prised nor embarrassed, and pushing aside the door- check, they were left alone. There was that forced complaisance in the lady's manner on her first entrance, which produced the slightest possible elevation in a very scornful lip owned by the junior partner, but the lady was only forty-five, highborn, and very handsome, and as she looked at the fine specimen of nature's nobility, who met her with a look as proud and yet as gentle as her own, the smoke of Fleet street passed away from her memory, and she became natural and even gracious. The effect upon the junior partner was simply that of re- moving from his breast the shade of her first impres- sion. " I have brought you," said his visiter, drawing a card from her reticule, " an invitation to the dutchess of Hautaigle's ball. She sent me half a dozen to fill up for what she calls ' ornamentals' — and I am sure I shall scarce find another who comes so decidedly under her grace's category." The fair speaker had delivered this pretty speech in the sweetest and best-bred tone of St. James's, looking the while at the toe of the small brodequin which she held up to the fire— perhaps thinking only of drying it. As she concluded her sentence, she turned to her companion for an answer, and was sur- prised at the impassive politeness of his bow of ac- knowledgment. " I regret that I shall not be able to avail myself of vour ladyship's kindness," said the junior partner, in the same well-enunciated tone of courtesy. " Then," replied the lady with a smile, " Lord Au- gustus Fitz-Moi, who looks at himself all dinner-time in a spoon, will be the Apollo of the hour. What a pity such a handsome creature should be so vain ! — By-the-way, Mr. Firkins, you live without a looking- glass, I see." " Your ladyship reminds me that this is merely a place of business. May I ask at once what errand has procured me the honor of a visit on so unpleasant a day ?" A slight flush brightened the cheek and forehead of the beautiful woman, as she compressed her lips, and forced herself to say with affected ease, " The want of five hundred pounds." The junior partner paused an instant, while the lady tapped with her boot upon the fender in ill-dissembled anxiety, and then, turning to his desk, he filled up the LADY RAVELGOLD. 467 check without remark, presented it, and took his hat to wait on her to her carriage. A gleam of relief and pleasure shot over her countenance as she closed her small jewelled hand over it, followed immediately by a look of embarrassed inquiry into the face of the un- questioning banker. " I am in your debt already." " Thirty thousand pounds, madam !" "And for this you think the securities on the estate of Rockland — " "Are worth nothing, madam ! But it rains. I re- gret that your ladyship's carriage can not come to the door. In the old-fashioned days of sedan-chairs, now, the dark courts of Lothbury must have been more at- tractive. By-the-way, talking of Lothbury, there is Lady Roseberry's fete champetre next week. If you should chance to have a spare card " " Twenty, if you like — I am too happy — really, Mr. Firkins " " It's on the fifteenth ; I shall have the honor of seeing your ladyship there ! Good-morning ! Home, coachman !" " Does this man love me ?" was Lady Ravelgold's first thought, as she sank back in her returning char- iot. " Yet no ! he was even rude in his haste to be rid of me. And I would willingly have stayed too, for there is something about him of a mark that I like. Ay, and he must have seen it — a lighter encourage- ment has been interpreted more readily. Five hun- dred pounds ! — really five hundred pounds ! And thir- ty thousand at the back of it ! What does he mean ? Heavens ! if he should be deeper than I thought ! If he should wish to involve me first !" And spite of the horror with which the thought was met in the mind of Lavy Ravelgold, the blush over her forehead died away into a half smile and a bright- er tint in her lips ; and as the carriage wound slowly on through the confused press of Fleet street and the Strand, the image of the handsome and haughty young banker shut her eyes from all sounds without, and she was at her own door in Grosvenor square before she had changed position or wandered half a moment from the subject of those busy dreams. CHAPTER II. The morning of the fifteenth of May seemed to have been appointed by all the flowers as a jubilee of perfume and bloom. The birds had been invited, and sang in the summer with a welcome as full-throated as a prima donna singing down the tenor in a duet ; the most laggard buds turned out their hearts to the sunshine, and promised leaves on the morrow ; and that portion of London that had been invited to Lady Roseberry's fete, thought it a very fine day ! That portion which was not, wondered how people would go sweltering about in such a glare for a cold dinner ! At about half past two, a very elegant dark-green cab without a crest, and with a servant in whose slight figure and plain blue livery there was not a fault, whirled out at the gate of the Regent's Park, and took its way up the well-watered road leading to Hamp- stead. The gentlemen whom it passed or met turned to admire the performance of the dark-gray horse, and the ladies looked after the cab as if they could see the handsome occupant once more through its leather back. Whether by conspiracy among the coach- makers, or by an aristocracy of taste, the degree of elegance in a turn-out attained by the cab just de- scribed, is usually confined to the acquaintances of Lady — ; that list being understood to enumerate all " the nice young men" of the West End, beside the guardsmen. (The ton of the latter, in all matters hat affect the style of the regiment, is looked after by the club and the colonel.) The junior Firkins seemed an exception to this exclusive rule. No " nice man" could come from Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady ; but his horse was faultless, and when he turned into the gate of Rose-Eden, the policeman at the porter's lodge, though he did not know him, thought it unnecessary to ask for his name. Away he spat- tered up the hilly avenue, and giving the reins to his groom at the end of a green arbor leading to the re- ception-lawn, he walked in and made his bow to Lady Roseberry, who remarked, " How very handsome ! Who can he be ?" — and the junior partner walked on and disappeared down an avenue of laburnums. Ah ! but Rose-Eden looked a paradise that day ! Hundreds had passed across the close-shaven lawn, with a bow to the lady-mistress of this fair abode. Yet the grounds were still private enough for Milton's pair, so lost were they in the green labyrinths of hill and dale. Some had descended through heavily-shaded paths to a fancy dairy, built over a fountain in the bot- tom of a cool dell ; and here, amid her milk-pans of old and costly china, the prettiest maid in the country round pattered about upon a floor of Dutch tiles, and served her visiters with creams and ices — already, as it were, adapted to fashionable comprehension. Some had strayed to the ornamental cottages in the skirts of the flower-garden — poetical abodes, built from a picturesque drawing, with imitation roughness ; thatch, lattice-window, and low paling, all complete; and in- habited by superannuated dependants of Lord Rose- berry, whose only duties were to look like patriarchs, and give tea and new cream-cheese to visiters on fete- days. Some had gone to see the silver and gold pheas- ants in their wire-houses, stately aristocrats of the game tribe, who carry their finely-pencilled feathers like " Marmalet Madarus," strutting in hoop and farthin- gale. Some had gone to the kennels, to see setters and pointers, hounds and terriers, lodged like gentle- men, each breed in its own apartment — the puppies, as elsewhere, treated with most attention. Some were in the flower-garden, some in the greenhouses, some in the graperies, aviaries, and grottoes ; and at the side of a bright sparkling fountain, in the recesses of a fir- grove, with her foot upon its marble lip, and one hand on the shoulder of a small Cupid who archly made a drinking-cup of his wing, and caught the bright water as it fell, stood Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the loveliest girl of nineteen that prayed night and morning within the parish of May Fair, listening to very passionate language from the young banker of Lothbury. A bugle on the lawn rang a recall. From every alley, and by every path, poured in the gay multitude, and the smooth sward looked like a plateau of ani- mated flowers, waked by magic from a broidery on green velvet. Ah ! the beautiful demi-toilcttcs ! — so difficult to attain, yet, when attained, the dress most modest, most captivating, most worthy the divine grace of woman. Those airy hats, sheltering from the sun, yet not enviously concealing a feature or a ringlet that a painter would draw for his exhibition-picture ! Those summery and shapeless robes, covering the person more to show its outline better, and provoke more the worship, which, like all worship, is made more adoring by mystery ! Those complexions which but betray their transparency in the sun ; lips in which the blood is translucent when between you and the light ; cheeks finer-grained than alabaster, yet as cool in their virgin purity as a tint in the dark corner of a Ruysdael : the human race was at less perfection in Athens in the days of Lais— in Egypt in the days of Cleopatra— than that day on the lawn of Rose- Eden. Cart-loads of ribands, of every gay color, had been laced through the trees in all directions: and amid every variety of foliage, and every shade of green, the tulip-iints shone vivid and brilliant, like an American forest after the first frost. From the left edge of the 468 LADY RAVELGOLD. lawn, the ground suddenly sunk into a dell, shaped like an amphitheatre, with a level platform at its bot- tom, and all around, above and below, thickened a shady wood. The music of a delicious band stole up from the recesses of a grove, draped as an orchestra and green-room on the lower side, and while the audience disposed themselves in the shade of the up- per grove, a company of players and dancing-girls commenced their theatricals. — Imogen Ravelgold, who was separated, by a pine tree only, from the junior partner, could scarce tell you, when it was finished, what was the plot of the play. The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band wound away from the lawn, playing a gay march. Followed Lady Roseberry and her suite of gentlemen, followed dames and their daughters, followed all who wished to see the flight of my lord's falcons. By a narrow path and a wicket-gate, the long music-guided train stole out upon an open hill-side, looking down on a verdant and spreading meadow. The band play- ed at a short distance behind the gay groups of spec- tators, and it was a pretty picture to look down upon the splendidly-dressed falconer and his men, holding their fierce birds upon their wrists, in their hoods and jesses, a foreground of old chivalry and romance ; while far beyond extended, like a sea over the horizon, the smoke-clad pinnacles of busy and every-day Lon- don. There are such contrasts of the eyes of the rich ! The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest falcon, and a dove, confined, at first, with a string, was thrown up, and brought back, to excite his alten- tion. As he fixed his eye upon him, the frightened victim was let loose, and the falcon flung off; away skimmed the dove in a low flight over the meadow, and up to the very zenith, in circles of amazing swift- ness and power, sped the exulting falcon, apparently forgetful of his prey, and bound for the eye of the sun with his strong wings and his liberty. The falconer's whistle and cry were heard ; the dove circled round the edge of the meadow in his wavy flight ; and down, with the speed of lightning, shot the falcon, striking his prey dead to the earth before the eye could settle on his form. As the proud bird stood upon his victim, looking around with a lifted crest and fierce eye, Lady Imogen Ravengold heard, in a voice of which her heart knew the music, " They who soar highest strike surest ; the dove lies in the falcon's bosom." CHAPTER III. The afternoon had, meantime, been wearing on, and at six the " breakfast" was announced. The tents beneath which the tables were spread were in different parts of the grounds, and the guests had made up their own parties. Each sped to his ren- dezvous, and as the last loiterers disappeared from the lawn, a gentleman in a claret coat and a brown study, found himself stopping to let a lady pass who had obeying the summons as tardily as himself. In a white chip hat, Hairbault's last, a few lilies of the valley laid among her raven curls beneath, a simple white robe, the chef-d'muvre of Victotine in style and tournure, Lady Ravelgold would have been the belle of the fete, but for her daughter. "Well emerged from Lothbury !" she said, court- esying, with a slight flush over her features, but im- mediately taking his arm ; " I have lost my party, and meeting you is opportune. Where shall we breakfast?" There was a small tent standing invitingly open on the opposite side of the lawn, and by the fainter rattle of soup-spoons from that quarter, it promised to be less crowded than the others. The junior partner would willingly have declined the proffered honor, but he saw at a glance that there was no escape, and sub- mitted with a grace. "You know very few people here," said his fair creditor, taking the bread from her napkin. "Your ladyship and one other." " Ah, we shall have dancing by-and-by, and I must introduce you to my daughter. By the way, have you no name from your mother's side ? ' Firkins' sounds so very odd. Give me some prettier word to drink in this champagne." " What do you think of Tremlet?" " Too effeminate for your severe style of beauty — but it will do. Mr. Tremlet, your health ! Will you give me a little of the pate, before you? Pray, if it is not indiscreet, how comes that classic profile, and more surprising still, that distinguished look of yours, to have found no gayer destiny than the signing of ' Firkins and Co.' to notes of hand ? Though I thought you became your den in Lothbury, upon my honoryou look more at home here." And Lady Ravengold fixed her superb eyes upon the beautiful features of her companion, wondering partly why he did not speak, and partly why she had not observed before that he was incomparably the handsomest creature she had ever seen. " I can regret no vocation," he answered after a moment, " which procures me an acquaintance with your ladyship's family." " There is an arriere penste in that formal speech, Mr. Tremlet. You are insincere. I am the only one in my family whom you know, and what pleas- ure have you taken in my acquaintance ? And, now I think of it, there is a mystery about you, which, but for the noble truth written so legibly on your features, I should be afraid to fathom. Why have you suffered me to over-draw my credit so enormously, and without a shadow of a protest ?" When Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her heart of this direct question, she turned half round and looked her companion in the face with an intense interest, which produced upon her own features an expression of earnestness very uncommon upon their pale and impassive lines. She was one of those per- sons of little thought, who care nothing for causes or consequences, so that the present difficulty is removed, or the present hour provided with its wings ; but the repeated relief she had received from the young banker, when total ruin would have been the consequence of his refusal, and his marked coldness in his manner to her, had stimulated the utmost curiosity of which she was capable. Her vanity, founded upon her high rank and great renown as a beauty, would have agreed that he might be willing to get her into his power at that price, had he been less agreeable in his own person, or more eager in his manner. But she had wanted money sufficiently to know, that thirty thousand pounds are not a bagatelle, and her brain was busy till she dis- covered the equivalent he sought for it. Meantime her fear that he would turn out to be a lover, grew rapidly into a fear that he would not. Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dissolute earl, who had died, leaving his estate inextricably in- volved. With no male heir to the title or property, and no very near relation, the beautiful widow shut her eyes to the difficulties by which she was sur- rounded, and at the first decent moment after the death of her lord, she had re-entered the gay society of which she had been the bright and particular star, and never dreamed either of diminishing her establish- ment, or of calculating her possible income. The first heavy draft she had made upon the house of Firkins and Co., her husband's bankers, had been re- turned with a statement of the Ravelgold debt and credit on their books, by which it appeared that Lord Ravelgold had overdrawn four or five thousand pounds before his death, and that from some legal difficulties, LADY RAVELGOLD. 469 nothing could be realized from the securities given on his estates. This bad news arrived on the morning of a fete to be given by the Russian ambassador, at which her only child. Lady Imogen, was to make her debut in society. With the facility of disposition which was peculiar to her, Lady Ravelgold thrust the papers into her drawer, and determining to visit her banker on the following morning, threw the matter entirely from her mind and made preparations for the ball. With the Russian government the house of Firkins and Co. had long carried on very extensive fiscal transactions, and in obedience to instructions from the emperor, regular invitations for the embassy fetes were sent to the bankers, accepted occasionally by the junior partner only, who was generally sup- posed to be a natural son of old Firkins. Out of the banking-house he was known as Mr. Tremlet, and it was by this name, which was presumed to be his mother's, that he was casually introduced to Lady Imogen on the night of the fete, while she was separa- ted from her mother in the dancing-room. The con- sequence was a sudden, deep, ineffaceable passion in the bosom of the young banker, checked and silenced, but never lessened or chilled by the recollection of the obstacle of his birth. The impression of his sub- dued manner, his worshipping, yet most respectful tones, and the bright soul that breathed through his handsome features with his unusual excitement, was, to say the least, favorable upon Lady Imogen, and they parted on the night»of the fete, mutually aware of each other's preference. On the following morning Lady Ravelgold made her proposed visit to the city ; and inquiring for Mr. Firkins, was shown in as usual to the junior partner, to whom the colloquial business of the concern had long been intrusted. To her surprise she found no difficulty in obtaining the sum of money which had been refused her on the preceding day — a result which she attributed to her powers of persuasion, or to some new turn in the affairs of the estate ; and for two years these visits had been repeated at intervals of three or four months, with the same success, though not with the same delusion as to the cause. She had discover- ed that the estate was worse than nothing, and the junior partner cared little to prolong his tetes-d-teles with her, and, up to the visit with which this tale opened, she had looked to every succeeding one with iucreased fear and doubt. During these two years, Tremlet had seen Lady Imogen occasionally at balls and public places, and every look they exchanged wove more strongly be- tween them the subtle threads of love. Once or twice she had endeavored to interest her mother in conver- sation on the subject, with the intention of making •a confidence of her feelings ; but Lady Ravengold, when not anxious, was giddy with her own success, and the unfamiliar name never rested a moment on her ear. With this explanation to render the tale in- telligible, " let us," as the French say, " return to our muttons." Of the conversation between Tremlet and her moth- er, Lady Imogen was an unobserved and astonished witness. The tent which they had entered was large, with a buffet in the centre, and a circular table waited on by servants within the ring ; and, just concealed by the drapery around the pole, sat Lady Imogen with a party of her friends, discussing very seriously the threatened fashion of tight sleeves. She had half risen, when her mother entered, to offer her a seat by her side, but the sight of Tremlet, who immediately followed, had checked the words upon her lip, and to her surprise they seated themselves on the side that was wholly unoccupied, and conversed in a tone in- audible to all but themselves. Not aware that her lover knew Lady Ravelgold, she supposed that they might have been casually introduced, till the earnest- ness of her mother's manner, and a certain ease be- tween them in the little courtesies of the table, assured her that this could not be their first interview. Trem- let's face was turned from her, and she could not judge whether he was equally interested ; but she had been so accustomed to consider her mother as irresistible when she chose to please, that she supposed it of course ; and very soon the heightened color of Lady Ravelgold, and the unwavering look of mingled admiration and curiosity which she bent upon the handsome face of her companion, left no doubt in her mind that her reserved and exclusive lover was in the dangerous toils of a rival whose power she knew. From the mortal pangs of a first jealousy, Heaven send thee deliverance, fair Lady Imogen ! " We shall find our account in the advances on your ladyship's credit ;" said Tremlet, in reply to the direct question that was put to him. " Meantime permit me to admire the courage with which you look so disagreeable a subject in the face." " For ' disagreeable subject,' read ' Mr. Tremlet.' I show my temerity more in that. Apropos of faces, yours would become the new fashion of cravat. The ! men at Crockford's slip the ends through a ring of ■ their lady-love's, if they chance to have one — thus !" j and untying the loose knot of his black satin cravat, Lady Ravelgold slipped over the ends a diamond of small value, conspicuously set in pearls. M The men at Crockford's," said Tremlet, hesita- ting to commit the rudeness of removing the ring, " are not of my school of manners. If I had been so fortunate as to inspire a lady with a preference for me, I should not advertise it on my cravat." " But suppose the lady were proud of her preference as dames were of the devotion of their knights in the days of chivalry — would you not wear her favor as conspicuously as they ?" A flush of mingled embarrassment and surprise shot over the forehead of Tremlet, and he was turning the ring with his fingers, when Lady Imogen, at- tempting to pass out of the tent, was stopped by her mother. "Imogen, my daughter! this is Mr. Tremlet. La- dy Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet!" The cold and scarce perceptible bow which the wounded girl gave to her lover, betrayed no previous acquaintance to the careless Lady Ravelgold. With- out giving a second thought to her daughter, she held her glass for some champagne to a passing servant, and as Lady Imogen and her friends crossed the lawn to the dancing-tent, she resumed the conversation which they had interrupt3d; while Tremlet, with his heart brooding on the altered look he had received, listened and replied almost unconsciously ; yet from this very circumstance, in a manner which was in- terpreted by his companion as the embarrassment of a timid and long-repressed passion for herself. While Lady Ravelgold and the junior partner were thus playing at cross purposes over their champagne and bons-bons, Grisi and Lablanche were singing a duet from / Puritani, to a full audience in the saloon ; the drinking young men sat over their wine at the nearly-deserted tables ; Lady Imogen and her friends waltzed to Collinet's band, and the artisans were busy below the lawn, erecting the machinery for the fire- works. Meantime every alley and avenue, grot and labyrinth, had been dimly illuminated with colored lamps, showing like vari-colored glow-worms amid the foliage and shells; and if the bright scenery of Rose-Eden had been lovely by day, it was fay-land and witchery by night. Fatal impulse of our nature, that these approaches to paradise in the "delight of the eye," stir only in our bosoms the passions upon which law and holy writ have put ban and bridle ! "Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson lamps?" said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the lawn from the tent 470 LADY RAVELGOLD. where their coffee had been brought to them, and put- ting her slender arm far into that of her now pale and silent companion. A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance of that crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his passionate ad- mirer disappeared beneath the closing lines of the long perspective, and, remaining a moment gazing through the unbroken twinkle of the confusing lamps, she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, drew up her form as if struggling with some irrepressible feeling, and in another moment was whirling in the waltz with Lord Ernest Fitzantelope, whose mother wrote a complimentary paragraph about their per- formance for the next Saturday's Court Journal. The bugle sounded, and the band played a march upon the lawn. From the breakfast tents, from the coffee-rooms, from the dance, from the card-tables, poured all who wished to witness the marvels that lie in saltpetre. Gentlemen who stood in a tender attitude in the darkness, held themselves ready to lean the other way when the rockets blazed up, and mammas who were encouraging flirtations with eligibles, whis- pered a caution on the same subject to their less ex- perienced daughters. Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, fair burned the pagodas, swift flew the fire-doves off and back again on their wires, and softly floated down through the dewy atmosphere of that May night the lambent and many-colored stars, flung burning from the exploded rockets. Device followed device, and Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child's delight at the spectacle, that she had taken into her bosom a green serpent, whose folds were closing like suffoca- tion about her heart. The finale was to consist of a new light, invented by the pyrotechnist, promised to Lady Roseberry to be several degrees brighter than the sun — compara- tively with the quantity of matter. Before this last flourish came a pause ; and while all the world were murmuring love and applause around her, Lady Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite point in the darkness, took advantage of the cessation of light to feed her serpent with thoughts of passionate and uncontrollable pain. A French attache., Phillipiste to the very tips of his mustache, addressed to her ear, meantime, the compliments he had found most effect- ive in the Cfiaussee d 1 Antin. The light burst suddenly from a hundred blazing points, clear, dazzling, intense — illuminating, as by the instantaneous burst of day, the farthest corner of Rose-Eden. And Monsieur Mangepoire, with a French contempt for English fireworks, took advan- tage of the first ray to look into Lady Imogen's eyes. "Mais, Miladi!" was his immediate exclamation, after following their direction with a glance, "ce nest qu'un tableau vivant,cela! Help, gentlemen! Elle s'evanomt. Some salts! Misericorde ! Mon Dicu! Mon Dieu /" And Lady Imogen Ravelgold was car- ried fainting to Lady Roseberry's chamber. In a small opening at the end of a long avenue of hlacs, extended from the lawn in the direction of Lady Imogen's fixed and unconscious gaze, was pre- sented, by the unexpected illumination, the tableau vivant, seen by her ladyship and Monsieur Mange- poire at the same instant — a gentleman drawn up to his fullest height, with his arms folded, and a lady kneeling on the ground at his feet with her arms stretched up to his bosom. CHAPTER IV. A little after two o'clock on the following Wednesday, Tremlet's cabriolet stopped near the perron of Willis's rooms in King street, and while he sent up his card to the lady patronesses for his ticket to that night's Almack's, he busied himself in looking into the crowd of carriages about him, and reading on the faces of their fair occupants the hope and anxiety to which they were a prey till John the footman brought them tickets or despair. Drawn up on the opposite side of the street, stood a family- carriage of the old style, covered with half the arms of the herald's office, and containing a fat dowager and three very over- dressed daughters. Watching them, to see the effect of their application, stood upon the sidewalk three or four young men from the neighboring club-house, and at the moment Tremlet was observing these circum- stances, a foreign britscka, containing a beautiful wo- man of a reputation better understood than expressed in the conclave above stairs, flew round the corner of St. James's street, and very nearly drove into the open mouth of the junior partner's cabriolet. "I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this fine bay of yours," said the Russian secretary of legation, ad- vancing from the group of dandies to Tremlet, "that miladi, yonder, with all the best blood of England in her own and her daughters' red faces, gets no tickets this morning." "I'll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly extinguished me, if you like," answered Tremlet, gazing with admiration at the calm, delicate, child- like looking creature, who sat before him in the britscka. " No !" said the secretary, " for Almack's is a re- public of beauty, and she'll be voted in without either blood or virtue. Par exemple, Lady Ravelgold's voucher is good here, though she does study tableaux in Lothbury — eh, Tremlet?" Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by the fireworks at Lady Roseberry's fete, Tremlet colored and was inclined to take the insinuation as an affront; but a laugh from the dandies drew off his companion's attention, and he observed the dowager's footman standing at her coach window with his empty hands held up in most expressive negation, while the three young ladies within sat aghast, in all the agonies of disappointed hopes. The lumbering carriage got into motion — its ineffective blazonry paled by the mortified blush of its occupants — and, as the junior partner drove away, philosophizing on the arbitrary opinions and unprovoked insults of polite society, the britscka shot by, showing him, as he leaned forward, a lovely woman who bent on him the most dangerous eyes in London, and an Almack's ticket lying on the unoccu- pied cushion beside her. The white relievo upon the pale blue wall of Al- mack's showed every crack in its stucco flowers, and the faded chaperons who had defects of a similar de- scription to conceal, took warning of the walls, and retreated to the friendlier dimness of the tea-room. Collinet was beginning the second set of quadrilles, and among the fairest of the surpassingly beautiful women who were moving to his heavenly music, was Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier to-night for the first heavy sadness that had ever dimmed the roses in her cheek. Her lady-mother divided her thoughts between what this could mean, and whether Mr. Tremlet would come to the ball; and when, presently after, in the dos-a-dos, she forgot to look at her daugh- ter, on seeing that gentleman enter, she lost a very good opportunity for a guess at the cause of Lady Imogen's paleness. To the pure and true eye that appreciates the divinity of the form after which woman is made, it would have been a glorious feast to have seen the per- fection of shape, color, motion, and countenance, shown that night on the bright floor of Almack's. For the young and beautiful girls whose envied destiny is to commence their woman's history in this exclusive LADY RAVELGOLD. 471 hall, there exists aids to beauty known to no other class or nation. Perpetual vigilance over every limb from the cradle up ; physical education of a perfec- tion, discipline, and judgment, pursued only at great expense and under great responsibility ; moral educa- tion of the highest kind, habitual consciousness of rank, exclusive contact with elegance and luxury, and a freedom of intellectual culture which breathes a soul through the face before passion has touched it with a line or a shade — these are some of the circumstances which make Almack's the cynosure of the world for adorable and radiant beauty. There were three ladies who had come to Almack's with a definite object that night, each of whom was destined to be surprised and foiled : Lady Ravelgold, who feared she had been abrupt with the inexperienced banker, but trusted to find him softened by a day or two's reflection; Mrs. St. Leger, the lady of the britscka, who had ordered supper for two on her ar- rival at home from her morning's drive, and intended to have the company of the handsome creature she had nearly run over in King street; and Lady Imogen Ravelgold as will appear in the sequel. Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea-room a moment, gathering courage to walk alone into such a dazzling scene, and then, having caught a glimpse of the glossy lines of Lady Imogen's head at the farthest end of the room, he was advancing toward her, when he was addressed by a lady who leaned against one of the slender columns of the orchestra. After a sweetly- phrased apology for having nearly knocked out his brains that morning with her horses' fore feet, Mrs. St. Leger took his arm, and walking deliberately two or three times up and down the room, took possession, at last, of a banquette on the highest range, so far from any other person, that it would have been a marked rude- ness to have left her alone. Tremlet took his seat by her with this instinctive feeling, trusting that some of her acquaintances would soon approach, and give him a fair excuse to leave her; but he soon became amused with her piquant style of conversation, and, not aware of being observed, fell into the attitude of a pleased and earnest listener. Lady Ravelgold's feelings during this petit entre- tlen, were of a very positive description. She had an instinctive knowledge, and consequently a jealous dislike of Mrs. St. Leger's character; and, still under the delusion that the young banker's liberality was prompted by a secret passion for herself, she saw her credit in the city and her hold upon the affections of Tremlet (for whom she had really conceived a violent affection), melting away in every smile of the dangerous woman who engrossed him. As she looked around for a friend, to whose ear she might communicate some of the suffocating poison in her own heart, Lady Imogen returned to her from a galopade ; and, like a second dagger into the heart of the pure-minded girl, went this second proof of her lover's corrupt principle and conduct. Unwilling to believe even her own eyes on the night of Lady Roseberry's fete, she had sum- moned resolution on the road home to ask an explana- tion of her mother. Embarrassed by the abrupt ques- tion, Lady Ravelgold felt obliged to make a partial confidence of the state of her pecuniary affairs ; and to clear herself, she represented Tremlet as having taken advantage of her obligations to him, to push a dishonorable suit. The scene disclosed by the sud- den blaze of the fireworks being thus simply explain- ed, Lady Imogen determined at once to give up Tremlet's acquaintance altogether; a resolution which his open flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger's character served to confirm. She had, however, one errand with him, prompted by her filial feelings and favored by an accidental circumstance which will ap- pear. "Do you believe in animal magnetism?" asked Mrs. St. Leger, "for by the fixedness of Lady Ravel- gold's eyes in this quarter, something is going to happen to one of us." The next moment the Russian secretary approach- ed and took his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, and with diplomatic address contrived to convey to Tremlet's ear that Lady Ravelgold wished to speak with him. The banker rose, but the quick wit of his companion comprehended the manoeuvre. " Ah ! I see how it is," she said, " but stay — you'll sup with me to-night ? Promise me — parole iVhon- neur /" " Parole /" answered Tremlet, making his way out between the seats, half pleased and half embar- " As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire," said Mrs. St. Leger, "you have forfeited my favor, and may sup elsewhere. How dare you conspire against me ?" While the Russian was making his peace, Trem- let crossed over to Lady Ravelgold ; but, astonished at the change in Lady Imogen, he soon broke in abruptly upon her mother's conversation, to ask her to dance. She accepted his hand for a quadrille; but as they walked down the room in search of a vis- a-i'is, she complained of heat, and asked timidly if he would take her to the tea-room. " Mr. Tremlet," she said, fixing her eyes upon the cup of tea which he had given her, and which she found some difficulty in holding, " I have come here to-night to communicate to you some important in- formation, to ask a favor, and to break off an acquaint- ance which has lasted too long." Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had fled from her lips, and she was compelled to ask his arm for a support. She drew herself up to her fullest height the next moment, looked at Tremlet, who stood in speechless astonishment, and with a strong effort, com- menced again in a low, firm tone — " I have been acquainted with you some time, sir, and have never inquired, nor knew more than your name, up to this day. I suffered myself to be pleased too blindly — " " Dear Lady Imogen !" "Stay a moment, sir ! I will proceed directly to my business. I received this morning a letter from the senior partner of a mercantile house in the city, with which you are connected. It is written on the supposition that I have some interest in you, and in- forms me that you are not, as you yourself suppose, the son of the gentleman who writes the letter." " Madam !" "That gentleman, sir, as you know, never was married. He informs me that in the course of many financial visits to St. Petersburgh, he formed a friend- ship with Count Manteuffel, then minister of finance to the emperor, whose tragical end, in consequence of his extensive defalcations, is well known. In brief, sir, you were his child, and were taken by this English banker, and carefully educated as his own, in happy ignorance, as he imagined, of your father's mis- fortunes and mournful death." Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to reply to this astounding intelligence, and Lady Imogen went on. "Your title and estates have been restored to you at the request of your kind benefactor, and you are now the heir to a princely foitune, and a count of the Russian empire. Here is the letter, sir, which is of no value to me now. Mr. Tremlet ! one word more, sir." Lady Imogen grasped for breath. " In return, sir, for much interest given you here- tofore — in return, sir, for this information — " " Speak, dear Lady Imogen !" " Spare my mother !" " Mrs. St. Leger's carriage stops the way !" shout- 472 LADY RAVELGOLD. ed a servant at that moment, at the top of the stairs ; and as if there were a spell in the sound to nerve her resolution anew, Lady Imogen Ravelgold shook the tears from her eyes, bowed coldly to Tremlet, and passed out into the dressing-room. "If you please, sir," said a servant, approaching the amazed banker, " Mrs. St. Leger waits for you in her carriage." " Will you come home and sup with us ?" said Lady Ravelgold at the same instant, joining him in the tea-room. " I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravelgold." The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger continued to " stop the way," spite of policemen and infuriated footmen, for some fifteen minutes. At the end of that time Mr. Tremlet appeared, handing down Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who walked to their chariot, which was a few steps behind ; and very much to Mrs. St. Leger's astonishment, the handsome banker sprang past her horses' heads a minute after, jumped into his cabriolet, which stood on the opposite side of the street, and drove after the vanishing chariot as if his life depended on over- taking it. Still Mrs. St. Leger's carriage " stopped the way." But, in a few minutes after, the same footman who had summoned Tremlet in vain, re- turned with the Russian secretary, doomed in blessed unconsciousness to play the pis ailer at her tete-a-tete supper in Spring Gardens. CHAPTER V. If Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the un- compromising light and in the ornamented hall of Almack's, she was radiant as she came through the mirror door of her own loved-contrived and beauty- breathing boudoir. Tremlet had been showed into this recess of luxury and elegance on his arrival, and Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who preceded her by a minute or two, had gone to their chambers, the first to make some slight changes in her toilet, and the latter (entirely ignorant of her lover's presence in the house), to be alone with a heart never before in such painful need of self-abandonment and solitude. Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted room in which he found himself alone, and, spite of the prepossessed agitation of his feelings, the voluptuous beauty of every object had the effect to divert and tranquillize him. The light was profuse, but it came softened through the thinnest alabaster; and while every object in the room was distinctly and minutely visible, the effect of moonlight was not more soft and dreamy. The general form of the boudoir was an oval, but within the pilasters of folded silk with their cornices of gold, lay crypts containing copies exquisite- ly done in marble of the most graceful statues of an- tiquity, one of which seemed, by the curtain drawn quite aside and a small antique lamp burning near it, to be the divinity of the place — the Greek Antinous, with his drooped head and full, smooth limbs, the most passionate and life-like representation of voluptu- ous beauty that intoxicates the slumberous air of Italy. Opposite this, another niche contained a few books, whose retreating shelves swung on a secret door, and as it stood half open, the nodding head of a snowy magnolia leaned through, as if pouring from the lips of its broad chalice the mingled odors of the unseen conservatory it betrayed. The first sketch in crayons of a portrait of Lady Ravelgold by young Lawrence, stood against the wall, with the frame half buried in a satin ottoman ; and, as Tremlet stood be- fore it, admiring the clear, classic outline of the head and bust, and wondering in what chamber of his brain the gifted artist had found the beautiful drapery in which he had drawn her, the dim light glanced faintly on the left, and the broad mirror by which he had entered swung again on its silver hinges, and admitted the very presentment of what he gazed on. Lady Ravelgold had removed the jewels from her hair, and the robe of wrought lace, which she had worn that night over a boddice of white satin laced loosely below the bosom. In the place of this she had thrown upon her shoulders a flowing wrapper of purple velvet, made open after the Persian fashion, with a short and large sleeve, and embroidered richly with gold upon the skirts. Her admirable figure, gracefully defined by the satin petticoat and boddice, showed against the gorgeous purple as it flowed back in her advancing motion, with a relief which would have waked the very soul of Titian ; her complexion was dazzling and faultless in the flattering light of her own rooms ; and there are those who will read this who know how the circumstances which surround a woman — luxury, elegance, taste, or the opposite of these — enhance or dim, beyond help or calculation, even the highest order of woman's beauty. Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand as she came in. " In my own house," she said, holding the glitter- ing jewel to Tremlet, " 1 have a fancy for the style antique. Tasseline, my maid, has gone to bed, and you must do the devoir of a knight, or an abigail, and loop up this Tyrian sleeve. Stay — look first at the model — that small statue of Cytheris, yonder ! Not the shoulder — for you are to swear mine is prettier — but the clasp. Fasten it like that. So! Now take me for a Grecian nymph the rest of the evening." " Lady Ravelgold!" " Hermione or Aglae, if you please ! But let us ring for supper !" As the bell sounded, a superb South American trulian darted in from the conservatory, and, spread- ing his gorgeous black and gold wings a moment over the alabaster shoulder of Lady Ravelgold, as if he took a pleasure in prolonging the first touch as he alighted, turned his large liquid eye fiercely on Tremlet. " Thus it is," said Lady Ravelgold, " we forget our old favorites in our new. See how jealous he is !" " Supper is served, miladi !" said a servant entering. " A hand to each, then, for the present," she said, putting one into Tremlet's, and holding up the trulian with the other. " He who behaves best shall drink first with me." " I beg your ladyship's pardon," said Tremlet, drawing back, and looked at the servant, who im- mediately left the room. " Let us understand each other! Does Lady Imogen sup with us to-night ?" " Lady Imogen has retired," said her mother, in some surprise. " Then, madam, will you be seated one moment and listen to me ?" Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest ottoman, with the air of a person too high bred to be taken by surprise, but the color deepened to crimson in the centre of her cheek, and the bird on her hand be- trayed by one of his gurgling notes that he was held more tightly than pleased him. With a calm and de- cisive tone, Tremlet went through the explanation given in the previous parts of this narration. He de- clared his love for Lady Imogen, his hopes (while he had doubts of his birth) that Lady Ravelgold's increas- ing obligations and embarrassments and his own wealth might weigh against his disadvantages ; and now, his honorable descent being established, and his rank en- titling him to propose for her hand, he called upon Lady Ravelgold to redeem her obligations to him by an immediate explanation to her daughter of his con- duct toward herself, and by lending her whole influ- i ence to the success of his suit. LADY RAVELGOLD. 473 Five minutes are brief time to change a lover into a son-in-law ; and Lady Ravelgold, as we have seen in the course of this story, was no philosopher. She buried her face in her hands, and sat silent for a while after Tremlet had concluded : but the case was a very clear one. Ruin and mortification were in one scale, mortification and prosperity in the other. She rose, pale but decided, and requesting Monsieur le conte Manteuffel to await her a few minutes, ascended to her daughter's chamber. " If you please, sir," said a servant, entering in about half an hour, " miladi and Lady Imogen beg that you will join them in the supper-room." CHAPTER VI. The spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such artificial at- mospheres as Belgrave square, might have been pleased to sit invisibly on the vacant side of Lady Ravelgold's table. Tremlet had been shown in by the servant to a small apartment, built like a belvidere over the garden, half boudoir in its character, yet intended as a supper- room, and at the long window (opening forth upon descending terraces laden with flowers, and just now flooded with the light of a glorious moon) stood Lady Imogen, with her glossy head laid against the case- ment, and the palm of her left hand pressed close upon her heart. If those two lights — the moon faintly shed off from the divine curve of her temple, and the stained rose-lamp pouring its mellow tint full on the heavenly shape and whiteness of hershoulder and neck — if those two lights, I say, could have been skilfully managed, Mr. Lawrence ! what a picture you might have made of Lady Imogen Ravelgold ! " Imogen, my daughter ! Mr. Tremlet !" said her mother as he entered. Without changing her position, she gave him the hand she had been pressing on her heart. " Mr. Tremlet !" said Lady Ravelgold, evidently entering into her daughter's embarrassment, " trouble yourself to come to the table and give me a bit of this pheasant. Imogen, George waits to give you some champagne." " Can you forgive me ?" said the beautiful girl, be- fore turning to betray her blushing cheek and suffused eyes to her mother. Tremlet stopped as if to pluck a leaf from the ver- bena at her feet, and passed his lips over the slight fin- gers he held. " Pretty trulian !" murmured Lady Ravelgold to her bird, as he stood on the edge of her champagne-glass, and curving his superb neck nearly double, contrived to drink from the sparkling brim — " pretty trulian ! you will be merry after this ! What ancient Sybarite, think you, Mr. Tremlet, inhabits the body of this bright bird ? Look up, mignon, and tell us if you were Hylas or Alcibiades ! Is the pheasant good, Mr. Trem- let ?" " Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is it true thai you have your table supplied from Crockford's ?" " Tout bonnement ! I make it a principle to avoid all great anxieties, and I can trust nobody but Ude. He sends my dinners quite hot, and if there is a particular dish of game, he drives round at the hour and gives it the last turn in my own kitchen. I should die, to be responsible for my dinners. I don't know how people get on that have no grand artiste. Pray, Mr. Trem- let (I beg pardon — Monsieur le conte, perhaps I should say ?") " No, no, I implore you ! ' Tremlet' has been spoken too musically to be so soon forgotten. Tremlet or Charles, which you will !" Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and looked from his face to her daughter's with a smile, which as- sured him that she had obtained a victory over herself. Shrinking immediately, however, from anything like sentiment (with the nervous dread of pathos so pecu- liar to the English), she threw off her trulian, that made a circle and alighted on the emerald bracelet of Lady Imogen, and rang the bell for coffee. "I flatter myself, Mr. Tremlet," she said, "that I, have made a new application of the homoeopathic phi- losophy. Hahnemann, they say, cures fevers by ag- gravating the disease ; and when I can not sleep, I drink coffee. J' en suis passablement Jiere ! You did not know I was a philosopher ?" " No, indeed !" " Well, take some of this spiced mocha. I got it of the Turkish ambassador, to whom I made beaux yeux on purpose. Stop ! you shall have it in the little tin- sel cups he sent me. George, bring those filagree things ! Now, Mr. Tremlet, imagine yourself in the serail du Bosphore — Imogen and I two lovely Circas- sians, par exemple! Is it not delicious ? Talking of the Bosphorus, nobody was classical enough to under- stand the device in my coiffure to-night." "What was it?" asked Tremlet, absently, gazing while he spoke, with eyes of envy at the trulian, who was whetting his bill backward and forward on the clear bright lips of Lady Imogen. " Do you think my profile Grecian ?" asked Lady Ravelgold. " Perfectly !" " And my hair is coiffed a la Grec ?" " Most becomingly." " But still you won't see my golden grasshopper ! Do you happen to know, sir, that to wear the golden grasshopper was the birthright of an Athenian ? I saw it in a book. Well ! I had to explain it to everybody. By-the-way, what did that gambler, George Heriot, mean, by telling me that its legs should be black ? — 'All Greeks have black legs,' said he, yawning in his stupid way. What did he mean, Mr. Tremlet ?" " ' Greeks' and blacklegs are convertible terms. He thought you were more aufait of the slang dictionary. Will you permit me to coax my beautiful rival from your hand, Lady Imogen ?" She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with a bend of its slender and alabaster lines which would have drawn a sigh from Praxiteles. The trulian glanced his fiery eyes from his mistress's face to Tremlet's, and as the strange hand was put out to take him from his emerald perch, he flew with the quickness of light- ning into the face of her lover, and buried the sharp beak in his lip. The blood followed copiously, and Lady Imogen, startled from her timidity, sprang from her chair and pressed her hands one after the other upon the wound, in passionate and girlish abandon- ment. Lady Ravelgold hurried to her dressing-room for something to stanch the wound, and, left alone with the divine creature who hung over him, Tremlet drew her to his bosom and pressed his cheek long and closely to hers, while to his lips, as if to keep in life, clung her own crimsoned and trembling fingers. " Imogen !" said Lady Ravelgold, entering, " take him to the fountain in the garden and wash the wound ; then put on this bit of gold-beater's skin. I will come to you when I have locked up the trulian. Is it pain- ful, Mr. Tremlet ?" Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer, but with his arm still around Lady Imogen, he descended by the terrace of flowers to the fountain. They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, and the moonlight striking through the jet of the fountain, descended upon them like a rain of silver. Lady Imo- gen had recovered from her fright, and buried her face in her hands, remembering into what her feelings had betrayed her; and Tremlet, sometimes listening to the clear bell-like music of the descending water, some times uttering the broken sentences which are most 474 PALETTO'S BRIDE. eloquent in love, sat out the hours till the stars began to pale, undisturbed by Lady Ravelgold, who, on the upper stair of the terrace, read by a small lamp, which, in the calm of that heavenly summer night, burned unflickeringly in the open air. It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot, saun- tered slowly past Hyde Park corner on his way to the Albany. The lamps were still struggling with the brightening approach to sunrise, the cabmen and their horses slept on the stand by the Green Park, and with cheerful faces the laborers went to their work, and with haggard faces the night-birds of dissipation crept wea- rily home. The well-ground dust lay in confused heel- marks on the sidewalk, a little dampened by the night- dew ; the atmosphere in the street was clear, as it never is after the stir of day commences ; a dandy, stealing out from Crockford's, crossed Piccadilly, lifting up his head to draw in long breaths of the cool air, after the closeness of over-lighted rooms and excitement ; and Tremlet, marking none of these things, was making his way through a line of carriages slowly drawing up to take off their wearied masters from a prolonged fete at Devonshire house, when a rude hand clapped him on the shoulder. " Monsieur Tremlet !" "Ah, Baron! bien bonjour!" " Bien rencontre, Monsieur ! You have insulted a lady to-night, who has confided her cause to my hands. Madam St. Leger, sir, is without a natural protector, and you have taken advantage of her position to insult her — grossly, Mr. Tremlet, grossly!" Tremlet looked at the Russian during this extraor- dinary address, and saw that he was evidently highly excited with wine. He drew him aside into Berkeley street, and in the calmest manner attempted to explain what was not very clear to himself. He had totally forgotten Mrs. St. Leger. The diplomate, though quite beyond himself with his excitement, had suffi- cient perception left to see the weak point of his state- ment ; and infuriated with the placid manner in which he attempted to excuse himself, suddenly struck his glove into his face, and turned upon his heel. They had been observed by a policeman, and at the moment that Tremlet, recovering from his astonishment, sprang forward to resent the blow, the gray-coated guardian of the place laid his hand upon his collar and detained him till the baron had disappeared. More than once on his way to the Albany, Tremlet surprised himself forgetting both the baron and the in- sult, and feeding his heart in delicious abandonment with the dreams of his new happiness. He reached his rooms and threw himself on the bed, forcing from his mind, with a strong effort, the presence of Lady Imogen, and trying to look calmly on the unpleasant circumstance before him. A quarrel which, the day before, he would have looked upon merely as an in- convenience, or which, under the insult of a blow, he would have eagerly sought, became now an almost in- supportable evil. When he reflected on the subject of the dispute — a contention about a woman of doubt- ful reputation taking place in the same hour with a first avowal from the delicate and pure Lady Imogen — when he remembered the change in his fortunes, which he had as yet scarcely found time to realize — on the consequences to her who was so newly dear to him, and on all he might lose, now that life had be- come invaluable — his thoughts were almost too painful to bear. How seldom do men play with an equal stake in the game of taking life, and how strange it is that equality of weapons is the only comparison made ne- cessary by the laws of honor ! Tremlet was not a man to be long undecided. He rose, after an hour's reflection, and wrote as fol- lows : — " Baron : Before taking the usual notice of the oc- currence of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our position is false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master of estates and title as a count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdisse- ment of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetful ness of the lady, in whose cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any rate, I am so newly in love with life, that I am willing to suppose for an hour that had you known these cir- cumstances, you would have taken a different view of the offence in question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my honor. Yours, etc., " Tremlet." There was a bridal on the following Monday at St. George's church, and the Russian secretary stood be- hind the bridegroom. Lady Ravelgold had never been seen so pale, but her face was clear of all painful feel- ing ; and it was observed by one who knew her well, that her beauty had acquired, during the brief engage- ment of her daughter, a singular and undefinable ele- vation. As the carriages with their white favors turned into Bond street, on their way back to Belgrave square, the cortege was checked by the press of vehicles, and the Russian, who accompanied Lady Ravelgold in her chariot, found himself opposite the open britscka of a lady who fixed her glass full upon him without recog- nising a feature of his face. " I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. Leger, baron !" said Lady Ravelgold. " Or I should not have been here !" said the Rus- sian ; and as they drove up Piccadilly, he had just time between Bond street and Milton Crescent to tell her ladyship the foregone chapter of this story. The trulian, on that day, was fed with wedding-cake, and the wound on Mr. Tremlet's lip was not cured by letting alone. PALETTO'S BRIDE. CHAPTER I. " As a fish will sometimes gather force, and, with a longing, per- haps, for the brightness of upper air, leap from its prescribed ele- ment, and glitter a moment among the birds, so will there be found men whose souls revolt against destiny, and make a fiery pluck at things above them. But, like the fish, who drops, panting, with dry scales, backward, the aspiring man oftenest regrets the native element he has left ; and, with the failure of his unnatural effort, drops back, content, to obscurity."— Jeremy Taylor. " Mr daughter!" said the count Spinola. The lady so addressed threw off a slight mantle and turned her fair features inquiringly to her father. Heed- less of the attention he had arrested, the abstracted count paced up and down the marble pavement of his hall, and when, a moment after, Francesca came to him for his good-night kiss, he imprinted it silently on her forehead, and stepped out on the balcony to pursue, under the aiding light of the stars, thoughts that were more imperative than sleep. There had been a fete of great splendor in the ducal gardens of the Boboli, and Francesca Spinola had shown there, as usual, the most radiant and worship- ped daughter of the nobilita of Florence. The mel- ancholy duke himself (this was in the days of his first marriage) had seemed even gay in presenting her with flowers which he had gathered at her side, with the dew on them (in an alley glittering with the diamonds on noble bosoms, and dewdrops on roses that would slum- ber, though it was the birth-night of a princess), and PALETTO'S BRIDE. 475 marked as was the royal attention to the envied beauty, it was more easily forgiven her than her usual tri- umphs — for it cost no one a lover. True to his con- jugal vows, the sad-featured monarch paid to beauty onfy the homage exacted alike by every most admira- ble work of nature. The grand-duke Leopold had not been the only ad- mirer whose attentions to Francesca Spinola had been remarked. A stranger, dressed with a magnificence that seemed more fitted for a masquerade than a court- ball, and yet of a mieu that promised danger to the too inquisitive, had entered alone, and, marking out the daughter of the haughty count from the first, had procured an introduction, no one knew how, and sought every opportunity which the intervals of the dance afforded, to place himself at her side. Occu- pied with the courtly devoirs of his rank, the count was, for a while, unaware of what struck almost every one else, and it was only when the stranger's name was inquired of him by the duke, that his dark and jealous eye fell upon a face whose language of kindling and undisguised admiration a child would have inter- preted aright. It was one of those faces that are of no degree — that may belong to a barbaric king, or to a Greek slave — that no refinement would improve, and no servile habits degrade; faces which lake their changes from an indomitable and powerful soul, and are beyond the trifling impression of the common usages of life. Spinola was offended with the daring and passionate freedom of the stranger's gaze upon his daughter; but he hesitated to interrupt their conver- sation too rudely. He stayed to exchange a compli- ment with some fair obstruction in his way across the crowded saloon, and, in the next moment, Francesca stood alone. " Who left you this moment, my Francesca?" asked the count, with affected unconcern. "I think, a Venetian," she answered. "And his name?" " I know not, my father !" The count's face flashed. "Who presented him to my darling?" he asked, again forcing himself to composure. Francesca colored ; and, with downcast eyes, an- swered : — "No one, my father! He seemed to know me, and I thought I might have forgotten him." Spinola turned on his heel, and, after a few vain in- quiries, and as vain a search for the stranger, ordered his attendants, and drove silently home. It was close upon the gray of the morning, and the count still leaned over the stone-railing of his balcony. Francesca had been gone an hour to her chamber. A guitar-string sounded from the street below, and, a moment after, a manly and mellow voice broke into a Venetian barcarole, and sang with a skill and tender- ness which a vestal could scarce have listened to un- moved. Spinola stepped back and laid his hand upon his sword ; but, changing his thought, he took a lamp from the wall within, and crept noiselessly to his I daughter's chamber. She lay within her silken cur- tains, with her hands crossed on her bosom, and from her parted lips came the low breath of innocent and untroubled sleep. Reassured, the count closed her window and extinguished his lamp; and, when the guitar was no longer heard echoing from the old palace walls, and the rich voice of the serenader had died away with his footsteps, the lord of the Palazzo Spinola betook himself to sleep with a heart somewhat relieved of its burden. On the following day, the count pleaded the early- coming heats of summer; and, with slight prepara- tion, left Florence for his summer-palace in the Ap- ennines. When Francesca joined him cheerfully, and even gayly, in his sudden plan, he threw aside the jealous fears that had haunted his breast, and forgot the stranger and his barcarole. The old trees of his maison tie plaisance were heavy with the leaves of the Italian May; the statues stood cool in the shade; the mountain rivulets forgot their birth in the rocky brooks, and ran over channels of marble, and played up through cactus-leaves and sea-shells, and nereids' horns, all carved by the contemporaries of Donatello. " And here," thought the proud noble, " I am a Vecart of the designs of adventurers, and the temptations and dangers of gayety, and the child of my hopes will re- fresh her beauty and her innocence, under the watchful eye, ever present, of my love. Francesca Spinola was one of those Italian natures of which it is difficult for the inhabitants of other climes to conceive. She had no feelings. She had passions. She could love — but it sprang in an instant to its fullest power — and maidenly reserve and hesita- tion were incompatible with its existence. She had listened, unmoved, to all the adulation of the duke's court, and had been amused with the devotion of all around her — but never touched. The voice of the stranger at the fete of the Boboli — the daring words he had addressed to her — had arrested her attention ; and it needed scarce the hour — which flew like a mo- ment at his side — to send a new sensation, like a tem- pest, through her heart. She reasoned upon nothing — asked nothing ; but, while she gave up her soul wholly to a passion hitherto unfelt, the deep dissimula tion which seems a natural part of the love of that burning clime, prompted her, by an unquestioned im pulse, to conceal it entirely from her father. She had counterfeited sleep when nearly surprised in listening to the barcarole, and she had little need to counterfeit joy at her departure for the mountains. The long valley of the Arno lay marked out upon the landscape by a wreath of vapor, stealing up as if enamored of the fading color of the clouds ; and far away, like a silver bar on the rim of the horizon, shone the long line of the Mediterranean. The mountain sides lay bathed in azure; and, echoing from the nearest, came the vesper-bells of Vallombrosa. Peace and purity were stamped upon the hour. "My child," said the softened count, drawing Fran- cesca to his bosom, as they stood looking off upon this scene from the flowery terrace beneath the por- tico ; "does my child love me?" Francesca placed her hands upon his shoulders and kissed him for reply. "I feel impelled," he continued, "to talk to you while this beautiful hour is around us, of an affection that resembles it." " Resembles the sunset, my father ?" " Yes ! Shall I tell you how ? By affecting with its soft influence every object under the bend of the sky ! My Francesca ! there are parents who love their children, and love them well, and yet find feel- ings for other attachments, and devotion for every other interest in life. Not so mine! My love for my child is a whole existence poured into hers. Look at me, Francesca! I am not old. I am capa- ble, perhaps, of other love than a parent's. There are among the young and beautiful who have looked on me with favoring eyes. My blood runs warm yet, and my step is as full of manhood — perhaps my heart as prompt to be gay— as ever. I mean to say that I am not too old for a lover. Hoes my daughter think so ?" " I have been long vain of your beauty, dear fa- ther," said Francesca, threading her hand in his dark curls. . , . "There are other things that might share your empire in my heart— politics, play, the arts— a hun- dred passions which possess themselves of men whose fortune or position gives them means and leisure. Now listen, my daughter! You have supplanted all these! You have filled my heart with yourself. 476 PALETTO'S BRIDE. T. am tempted to love — my heart is my daughter's. I am asked to play — my thoughts are with my child. I have neither time for politics, nor attention for the arts — my being breathes through my child. I am incapable of all else. Do you hear me, Francesca ?" "I do, dear father !" "Then, one moment more ! I can not conceal my thoughts from you, and you will pardon love like mine for ungrounded fears. I liked not the stranger at the duke's palace." Francesca stole a quick look at her father, and, with the rapidity of light, her dark eye resumed its tranquillity. " I say I liked him not ! No one knew him ! He is gone, no one knows whither! I trust he will never be seen more in Florence. But I will not disguise from you that I thought you — pleased with him !" "Father!" " Forgive me if I wrong you — but, without pursu- ing the subject, let your father implore you, on his knees, for the confidence of your heart. Will you tell me your thoughts, Francesca ? Will you love me with but the thousandth part of my adoration, my devotion, for my child?" "Father! I will !" The count rose from the knee on which he had fallen, gave his daughter a long embrace, and led her in. And that night she fled over the Tuscan border, into neighboring Romagna, and, with the stranger at her side, sped away, under the cover of night, toward the shores of the Brenta. Like a city of secrets, sleeps silent Venice. Her sea-washed foundations are buried under the smooth glass of the tide. Her palace-entrances are dark cav- erns, impenetrable to the eye. Her veiled dames are unseen in their floating chambers, as they go from street to street ; and mysteriously and silently glide to and fro those swift gondolas, black as night, yet carry- ing sadness and mirth, innocence and guilt, alike swiftly, mysteriously, and silently. Water, that be- trays no footstep, and covers all with the same mantle of light, fills her streets. Silence, that is the seal of secrecy, reigns day and night over her thousand palaces. For an hour the smooth mirror of the broad canal that sweeps under the Rialto, had not been divided by the steel prow of a gondola. Francesca Spinola stood at the window of a chamber in a palace of gorgeous magnificence, watching that still water for the coming of her husband. The silver lines of the moon stole back imperceptibly, as her full orb sailed up the heavens, and the turrets of the old architecture of Venice, drawn clearly on the unruffled bosom of the canal, seemed retiring before a consuming sheet of silver. The silence seemed painful. To the ear of the beautiful Florentine, the want of the sound of a footstep, of the echo of some distant wheel, the utter death of all sound common to even the stillest hour of a paved city, seemed oppressive and awful. Behind her burned lamps of alabaster, and perfumes filled the chamber, and on a cushion of costly velvet lay a mean and unornamented guitar. Its presence in so costly a palace was a secret yet withheld. She wished to touch its strings, if only to disperse the horror of si- lence. But she raised her fingers, and again, without touching it, leaned out and watched the dark arch of the Rialto. A gondola, with a single oar, sped swiftly from its black shadow. It could not be Paletto. He had gone with his two faithful servants to St. Mark's. The oar ceased — the bark headed in — the water splashed on the marble stair — and the gondolier step- ped on shore. Ah, who but Paletto had such a form as stood there in the moonlight? " Are we to be married again," said Francesca, as her husband entered the chamber, " that you have once more disguised yourself as a fisherman ?" Paletto turned from the light, and took up the mysterious guitar. " It is no night to be in-doors, my Francesca! Come with me to the lagoon, and I will tell you the story of this despised instrument. Will you come ?" he pursued, as she stood looking at him in wonder at his strange dress and disturbed look. " Will you come, my wife?" " But you have returned without your gondoliers!" she said, advancing a step to take his hand. "I have rowed a gondola ere now," he answered; and, without further explanation, he led her down the lofty staircase, and seating her in the stern of the bark which he had brought with him, stepped upon the platform, and, with masterly skill and power, drove it like a shadow under the Rialto. He who has watched the horn of a quarter-moon gliding past the towers, pinnacles and palaces of the drifting clouds, and in his youthful and restless brain, fancied such must be the smooth delight and chang- ing vision of a traveller in strange lands — one who has thus dreamed in his boyhood will scarce shoot though Venice for the first time in a gondola, without a sense of familiarity with the scene and motion. The architecture of the clouds is again drifting past, and himself seems borne onward by the silver shallop of the moon. Francesca sat on the low cushion of the gondola, watching and wondering. How should her luxurious Paletto have acquired the exquisite skill with which he drove the noiseless boat like a lance-fly over the water. Another gondola approached or was left be- hind, the corner of a palace was to be rounded, or the black arch of a bridge to be shot under, and the peculiar warning-cry of the gondoliers, giving notice of their unheard approach, fell from his lips so me- chanically, that the hireling oarsmen of the city, mar- velling at his speed, but never doubting that it was a comrade of the Piazza, added the "fratello mio" to their passing salutation. She saw by every broad beam of light, which, between the palaces, came down across them, a brow clouded and a mind far from the oar he turned so skilfully. She looked at the gondola in which she sat. It was old and mean. In the prow lay a fisher's net, and the shabby guitar, thrown upon it, seemed now, at least, not out of place. She looked up at Paletto once more, and, in his bare throat and bosom, his loose cap and neglected hair, she could with difficulty recognise the haughty stranger of the Boboli. She spoke to him. It was necessary to break the low-born spell that seemed closing around her. Paletto started at her voice, and suspending his oar, while the gondola still kept way as if with its own irresistible volition, he passed his hand over his eyes, and seemed waking from some painful dream. The gondola was now far out in the lagoon. — Around them floated an almost impalpable vapor, just making the moonlight visible, and the soft click of the water beneath the rising and dropping prow was the only sound between them and the cloudless heaven. In that silence Paletto strung his guitar and sang to his bride with a strange energy. She listened and played with his tangled locks, but there seemed a spell upon her tongue when she would ask the meaning of this mystery. "Francesca!" he said at last, raising his head from her lap. "What says my fisherman?" she replied, holding up his rough cap with a smile. Paletto started, but recovering his composure, in- stantly took the cap from her jewelled fingers and threw it carelessly upon his head. " Francesca ! who is your husband ?" "Paletto?" PALETTO'S BRIDE. 477 " And who is Paletto ?" " I would have asked sometimes, but your kisses have interrupted me. Yet I know enough." " What know you?" " That he is a rich and noble seignior of Venice !" " Do I look one to-night ?" " Nay — for a masquerade, I have never seen a better! Where learned you to look so like a fisher- man and row so like a gondolier ?" Paletto frowned. " Francesca !" said he folding his arms across his bosom, " I am the son of a fisherman, and 1 was bred to row the gondola beneath you !" The sternness of his tone checked the smile upon her beautiful lip, and when she spoke it was with a look almost as stern as his own. "You mock me too gravely, Paletto ! But come! I will question you in your own humor. Who educa- ted the fisherman's son?" " The fisherman." " And his palace and his wealth — whence came they, Signor Pescatore?" The scornful smile of incredulity with which this question was asked, speedily fled from her lip as Pal- etto answered it. " Listen ! Three months since I had never known other condition than a fisherman of the lagoon, nor worn other dress than this in whichyou see me. The first property I ever possessed beyond my day's earn- ings, was this gondola. It was my father's, Giannotto the fisherman. When it became mine by his death, I suddenly wearied of my tame life, sold boat and nets, and with thoughts which you can not understand, but which have brought you here, took my way to the Piazza. A night of chance, begun with the whole of my inheritance staked upon a throw, left me mas- ter of wealth I had never dreamed of. I became a gay signore. It seemed to me that my soul had gone out of me, and a new spirit, demoniac if you will, had taken possession. I no longer recognised myself. I passed for an equal with the best-born, my language altered, my gait, my humor. One strong feeling alone predominated — an insane hatred to the rank in which you were born, Francesca ! It was strange, too, that I tried to ape its manners. I bought the palace you have just left, and filled it with costly luxuries. And then there grew upon me the desire to humiliate that rank — to pluck down to myself some one of its proud and cherished daughters — such as you !" Francesca muttered something between her teeth, and folded her small arms over her bosom. Paletto went on. " I crossed to Florence with this sole intention. Unknown and uninvited, I entered the palace at the fete of the Boboli, and looked around for a victim. You were the proudest and most beautiful. I chose you and you are here." Paletto looked at her with a smile, and never sun- beam was more unmixed with shadow than the smile which answered it on the lips of Spinola's daughter. " My Paletto !" she said, " you have the soul of a noble, and the look of one, and I am your bride. Let us return to the palace !" " I have no palace but this !" he said, striking his hand like a bar of iron upon the side of the gondola. " You have not heard out my tale." Francesca sat with a face unmoved as marble. "This night, at play, I lost all. My servants are dismissed, my palace belongs to another, and with this bark which I had repurchased, I am once more Paletto the fisherman!" A slight heave of the bosom of the fair Florentine was her only response to this astounding announce- ment. Her eyes turned slowly from the face of the fisherman, and fixing apparently on some point far out in the Adriatic, she sat silent, motionless, and cold- " I am a man, Francesca !" said Paletto after a pause which, in the utter stillness of the lagoon around them, seemed like a suspension of the breathing of nature, and "I have not gone through this insane dream with- out some turning aside of the heart. Spite of my- self, I loved you : and I could not dishonor you. We are married, Francesca !" The small dark brows of the Florentine lowered till the silken lashes they overhung seemed starting from beneath her forehead. Her eyes flashed fire below. " Bene .'" said Paletto, rising to his feet ; " one word more while we have silence around us and are alone. You are free to leave me, and I will so far re- pair the wrong I have done you, as to point out the way. It will be daylight in an hour. Fly to the governor's palace, announce your birth, declare that you were forced from your father by brigands, and claim his protection. The world will believe you, and the consequences to myself I will suffer in silence." With a sudden, convulsive motion, Francesca thrust out her arm, and pointed a single finger toward Venice. Paletto bent to his oar, and quivering in every seam beneath its blade, the gondola sped on his way. The steel prow struck fire on the granite steps of the Piazza, the superb daughter of Spinola stepped over the trembling side, and with a half-wave of her hand, strode past the Lion of St. Mark, and approached the sentinel at the palace-gate. And as her figure was lost among the arabesque columns shaded from the moon,Paletto's lonely gondola shot once more silently and slowly from the shore. CHAPTER II. The smooth, flat pavement of the Borg'ognisanti had been covered since morning with earth, and the windows and balconies on either side were flaunting with draperies of the most gorgeous colors. The ' riderless horse-races, which conclude the carnival in Florence, were to be honored by the presence of the j court. At the far extremity of the street, close by the I gate of the Cascine, an open veranda, painted in fresco, i stood glittering with the preparations for the royal party, and near it the costlier hangings of here and there a window or balustrade, showed the embroidered crests of the different nobles of Tuscany. It was the people's place and hour, and beneath the damask and cloth of gold, the rough stone windows were worn smooth by the touch of peasant hands, and the smutched occu- ! pants, looking down from the balconies above, upon the usupers of their week-day habitations, formed, to the stranger's eye, not the least interesting feature of the scene. As evening approached, the balconies began to show their burden of rank and beauty, and the street below filled with the press of the gay contadini. The ducal cortege, in open carriages, drove down the length of the course to their veranda at the gate, but no other vehicle was permitted to enter the ser- ried crowd; and, on foot like the peasant -girl, the noble's daughter followed the servants of her house, who slowly opened for her a passage to the balcony she sought. The sun-light began to grow golden. The convent-bell across the Arno rang the first peal of vespers, and the horses were led in. It was a puzzle to any but an Italian how that race was to be run. The entire population of Florence was crowded into a single narrow street — men, women, and children, struggling only for a foothold. The sig- nal was about to be given for the start, yet no attempt was made to clear a passage. Twenty high-spirited horses fretted behind the rope, each with a dozen spurs hung to his surcingales, which, at the least mo- 478 PALETTO'S BRIDE. tion, must drive him onward like the steed of Mazep- pa. Gay ribands were braided in their manes, and the bets ran high. All sounded and looked merry, yet it would seem as if the loosing of the start-rope must be like the letting in of destruction upon the crowd. In a projecting gallery of a house on the side next the Arno, was a party that attracted attention, some- what from their rank and splendid attire, but more from the remarkable beauty of a female, who seemed their star and idol. She was something above the middle height of the women of Italy, and of the style of face seen in the famous Judith of the Pitti — dark, and of melancholy so unfathomable as almost to af- fray the beholder. She looked a brooding prophet- ess ; yet through the sad expression of her features there was a gleam of fierceness, that to the more criti- cal eye betrayed a more earthly gleam of human pas- sion and suffering. As if to belie the maturity of years of which such an expression should be the work, an ungloved hand and arm of almost childlike softness and roundness lay on the drapery of the railed gallery ; and stealing from that to her just-perfected form, the gazer made a new judgment of her years, while he wondered whal strange fires had forced outward the riper lineaments of her character. The count Fazelli, the husband of this fair dame, stood within reach of her hand, for it was pressed on his arm with no gentle touch, yet his face was turned from her. He was a slight youth, little older, appa- rently, than herself, of an effeminate and yet wilful cast of countenance, and would have been pronounced by women (what a man would scarce allow him to be) eminently handsome. Effeminate coxcomb as he was, he had power over the stronger nature beside him, and of such stuff, in courts and cities, are made sometimes the heroes whose success makes worthier men almost forswear the worship due to women. There were two other persons in the balconies of the Corso, who were actors in the drama of which this was a scene. The first was the prima donna of the Cocomero, to whose rather mature charms the capri- cious Fazelli had been for a month paying a too open homage ; and the second was a captain in the duke's guard, whose personal daring in the extermination of a troop of brigands, had won for him some celebrity and his present commission. What thread of sympa- thy rested between so humble an individual and the haughty countess Fazelli, will be shown in the sequel. Enough for the present, that, as he stood leaning against the pillar of an opposite gallery, looking care- lessly on the preparations for the course, that proud dame saw and remembered him. A blast from a bugle drew all eyes to the starting- post, and in another minute the rope was dropped, and the fiery horses loosed upon their career. Right into the crowd, as if the bodies of the good citizens of Florence were made of air, sprang the goaded troop, and the impossible thing was done, for the suffocating throngs divided like waves before the prow, and united again as scathless and as soon. The spurs played merrily upon the flanks of the affrighted animals, and in an instant they had swept through the Borg'ogni- eanti, and disappeared into the narrow lane leading to the Trinita. It was more a scramble than a race, yet there must be a winner, and all eyes were now occu- pied in gazing after the first glimpse of his ribands as he was led back in triumph. Uncompelled by danger, the suffocating crowd made way with more difficulty for the one winning horse than they had done for the score that had contended with him. Yet, champing the bit, and tossing his ribands into the air, he came slowly back, and after passing in front of the royal veranda, where a small flag was thrown down to be set into the rosette of his bridle, he returned a few steps, and was checked by the groom under the balcony of the prima donna. A moment after, the winning flag was waving from the rails above, and as the sign that she was the owner of the victorious horse was seen by the people, a shout arose which thrilled the veins of the fair singer more than all the plaudits of the Cocomero. It is thought to be pleasant to succeed in that for which we have most struggled — that for which our ambition and our efforts are known to the world — to be eminent, in short, in our metier, our vocation. I am inclined to think it natural to most men, however, and to all pos- sessors of genius, to undervalue that for which the world is most willing to praise them, and to delight more in excelling in that which seems foreign to their usual pursuits, even if it be a trifle. It is delightful to disappoint the world by success in anything. Detrac- tion, that follows genius to the grave, sometimes ad- mits its triumph, but never without the " back-water" that it could do no more. The fine actress had won a shout from assembled Florence, yet off the scene. She laid one hand upon her heart, and the other, in the rash exultation of the moment, ventured to wave a kiss of gratitude to the count Fazelli. As that favored signor crossed to offer his congratu- lations, his place beside the countess was filled by a young noble, who gave her the explanatory informa- tion — that the horse was Fazelli's gift. Calmly, almost without a sign of interest or emotion, she turned her eyes upon the opposite balcony. A less searching and interested glance would have discovered, that if the young count had hitherto shared the favor of the ad- mired singer with his rivals, he had no rival now. There was in the demeanor of both an undisguised tenderness that the young countess had little need to watch long, and retiring from the balcony, she accept- ed the attendance of her communicative companion, and was soon whirling in her chariot over the Ponte St. Angelo, on her way to the princely palace that would soon cease to call her its mistress. Like square ingots of silver, the moonlight came through the battlements of the royal abode of the Medici. It was an hour before day. The heavy heel of the sentry was the only sound near the walls of the Pitti, save, when he passed to turn, the ripple of the Arno beneath the arches of the jeweller's bridge broke faintly on the ear. The captain of the guard had strolled from the deep shadow of the palace into the open moonlight, and leaned against a small stone shrine of the Virgin set into the opposite wall, watching mu- singly the companionable and thought-stirring em- peress of the night. " Paletto !" suddenly uttered a voice near him. The guardsman started, but instantly recovered his position, and stood looking over his epaulet at the intruder, with folded arms. " Paletto !" she said again, in a lower and more ap- pealing tone — " will you listen to me ?" " Say on, Countess Fazelli !" " Countess Fazelli no longer, but Paletto's wife !" " Ha ! ha !" laughed the guardsman bitterly, " that story is old, for so false a one." " Scorn me not ! I am changed." The dark eyes of Francesca Cappone lifted up, moist and full, into the moonlight, and fixing them steadfastly on the sol- dier's, she seemed to demand that he should read her soul in them. For an instant, as he did so, a troubled emotion was visible in his own features, but a new thought seemed to succeed the feeling, and turning away with a cold gesture, he said, " I knew you false, but till now I thought you pure. Tempt me not to despise as well as hate you !" " I have deserved much at your hand, "she answered, with a deeper tone, " but not this. You are my hus- band, Paletto !" " One of them !" he replied, with a sneer. Francesca clasped her hands in agony. " I have come to you," she said, "trusting the generous nature VIOLANTA CESARINI. 479 which I have proved so well. I can not live unloved. I deserted you, for I was ignorant of myself. I have tried splendor and the love of my own rank, but one is hollow and the last is selfish. Oh, Paletto ! what love is generous like yours?" The guardsman's bosom heaved, but he did not turn to her. She laid her hand upon his arm : " I have come to implore you to take me back, Paletto. False as I was to you, you have been true to me. I would be your wife again. I would share your poverty, if you were once more a fisherman on the lagoon. Are you inexorable, Paletto ?" Her hand stole up to his shoulder : she crept closer to him, and buried her head, unrepelled, in his bosom. Paletto laid his hand upon the mass of raven hair whose touch had once been to him so familiar, and while the moon drew their shadows as one on the shrine of the Virgin, the vows of early love were re- peated with a fervor unknown hitherto to the lips of Cappone's daughter, and Paletto replied, not like a courtly noble, but like that which was more eloquent — his own love-prompted and fiery spirit. The next day there was a brief but fierce rencontre between Count Fazelli and the guardsman Paletto, at the door of the church of Santa Trinita. Francesca had gone openly with her husband to vespers, attend- ed by a monk. When attacked by the young count as the daring abducer of his wife, he had placed her under that monk's protection till the quarrel should be over, and, with the same holy man to plead his cause, he boldly claimed his wife at the duke's hands, and bore her triumphantly from Florence. I heard this story in Venice. The gondolier Pa- letto, they say, still rows his boat on the lagoon : and sometimes his wife is with him, and sometimes a daugh- ter, whose exquisite beauty, though she is still a child, is the wonder of the Rialto as he passes under. I never chanced to see him, but many a stranger has hired the best oar of the Piazza, to pull out toward the Adriatic in the hope of finding Paletto's boat and get- ting a glimpse of his proud and still most beautiful wife — a wife, it is said, than whom a happier or more contented one with her lot lives not in the " city of ;he sea." VIOLANTA CESARINI. CHAPTER I. " When every feather sticks in its own wing, Lord Timon will be left a naked gull." It was an eve fit for an angel's birthnight (and we know angels are born in this loving world), and while the moon, as if shining only for artists' eyes, drew the outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret and sere- naded belvidere, with her silver pencil on the street, two grave seniors, guardians in their own veins of the blood of two lofty names known long to Roman story, leaned together over a balcony of fretted stone, jutting out upon the Corso, and affianced a fair and noble maid of seventeen summers to a gentleman whose character you shall learn, if we come safe to the se- quel. " The cardinal has offered me a thousand scudi for my Giorgione, said the old count Malaspina, at last, changing his attitude and the subject at the same time. " Anima diporco .'" exclaimed the other, " what stirs the curtain ? The wind is changing, Malaspina. Let us in ! So, he offers but a thousand ! I shall feel my Bui a thou- rheumatism to-morrow with this change, sand ! — ha ! ha ! Let us in, let us in !" " Let us out, say I!" murmured two lips that were never made of cherries, though a bird would have pecked at them ; and stealing from behind the curtain, whose agitation had persuaded her father that the wind was rising, Violanta Cesarini, countess in her own right, and beautiful by Heaven's rare grace, stepped forth into the moonlight. She drew a long breath as she looked down into the Corso. The carriages were creeping up and down at a foot-pace, and the luxurious dames, thrown back on their soft cushions, nodded to the passers-by, as they recognised friends and acquaintances where the moon- light broke through; crowds of slowpromenaders loi- tered indolently on, now turning to look at the berry- brown back of a contadini, with her stride like a tra- gedy-queen, and her eyes like wells of jet, and now leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering harp- girl sung better for a baiocco than noble ladies for the praise of a cardinal; at one corner stood an artist with his tablet, catching some chance effect perhaps in the drapery of a marble saint, perhaps in the softer dra- pery of a sinner; the cafes, far up and dawn, looked like festas out of doors, with their groups of gayly- dressed idlers, eating sherbets and buying flowers ; a gray friar passed now with his low-toned benedicite ; and again a black cowl with a face that reddened the very moonbeam that peeped under; hunchbacks con- tended testily for the wall, and tall fellows (by their lone hair and fine symmetry, professed models for sculptors and painters) yielded to them with a gibe. And this is Rome when the moon shines well, and on this care-cheating scene looked down the countess Violanta, with her heart as full of perplexity as her silk boddice-lace would bear without breaking. I dare say you did not observe, if you were in Rome that night, and strolling, as you would have been in the Corso (this was three years ago last May, and if you were in the habit of reading the Diario di Roma, the story will not be new to you) ; you did not observe, I am sure, that a thread ran across from the balcony I speak of, in the Palazzo Cesarim, to a high window in an old palace opposite, inhabited, as are many palaces in Rome, by a decayed family and several ar- tists. On the two sides of this thread, pressed, while she mused, the slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini; and, as if it descended from the stars at every pull which the light May-breeze gave it in passing, she turned her soft blue eyes upward, and her face grew radiant with hope— not such as is fed with star-gazing ! Like a white dove shooting with slant wings down- ward a folded slip of paper flew across on this invisible thread, and, by heaven's unflickering lamp, Violanta read some characters traced with a rough crayon, but in most sweet Italian. A look upward, and a nod, as if she were answering the stars that peeped over her, and the fair form had gone with its snowy robes from the balcony, and across the high window from which the messenger had come, dropped the thick and im- penetrable folds of the gray curtain of an artist. It was a large upper room, such as is found in the vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of its two windows one was roughly boarded up to ex- clude the light, while a coarse gray cloth did nearly the same service at the other, shutting out all but an artist's modicum of day. The walls of rough plaster were covered with grotesque drawings, done apparently with bits of coal, varied here and there with scraps of unframed canvass, nailed carelessly up, and covered with the study of some head, by a famous master. A large table on one side of the room was burdened with a confused heap of brushes pa.nt-bags, and discolored cloths, surmounted with a clean palette ; and not far off stood an easel, covered with thumb-marks of all 480 VIOLANTA CESARINI. dyes, and supporting a new canvass, on which was outlined the figure of a nymph, with the head finished in a style that would have stirred the warm blood of Raphael himself with emulous admiration. A low flock bed, and a chair without a bottom, but with a large cloak hung over its back, a pair of foils and a rapier, completed so much of the furniture of the room as belonged to a gay student of Corregio's art, who wrote himself Biondo Amieri. By the light of the same antique lamp, hung on a rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very good effect on the face of an unfinished group in marble, of which the model, in plaster, stood a little behind, representing a youth with a dagger at his heart, ar- rested in the act of self-murder by a female whose softened resemblance to him proclaimed her at the first glauce his sister. A mallet, chisels, and other im- plements used in sculpture, lay on the rough base of the unfinished group, and half-disclosed, half-con- cealed, by a screen covered with prints by some curi- ous female hand, stood a bed with white curtains, and an oratory of carved oak at its head, supporting a clasped missal. A chair or two, whose seats of worked satin had figured one day in more luxurious neighbor- hood, a table covered with a few books and several drawings from the antique, and a carefully-locked escritoire, served, with other appearances, to distin- guish this side of the room as belonging to a separate occupant, of gentler taste or nurture. While the adventurous Violanta is preparing her- self to take advantage of the information received by her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear reader, to put you up to a little of the family history of the Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding of the story, than to the heroine's character for dis- cretion. On the latter point, I would suggest to you, you may as well suspend your opinion. It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that, for four successive generations, the marquises of Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the pope for marrying beautiful peasant-girls from the neighbor- hood of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the holy see to such an unprecedented introduction of vulgar blood into the veins of the nobility, and the remarkable female beauty of the race (heightened by the addition of nature's aristocracy to its own), contributed to main- tain good will at a court, devoted above all others to the cultivation of the fine arts, of which woman is the Eidolon and the soul. The last marquis, educated like his fathers, in their wild domain among the moun- tains, selected, like them, the fairest wild-flower that sprung at his feet, and after the birth of one son, ap- plied for the tardy dispensation. From some un- known cause (possibly a diminished bribe, as the mar- quis was less lavish in his disposition than his prede- cessors), the pope sanctioned the marriage, but re- fused to legitimatize the son, unless the next born should be a daughter. The marchioness soon after retired (from mortification it is supposed) to her home in the mountains, and after two years of close seclu- sion, returned to Rome, bringing with her an infant daughter, then three months of age, destined to be the heroine of our story. No other child appearing, the young Cesarini was legitimatized, and with his infant sister passed most of his youth at Rome. Some three or four years before the time when our tale com- mences, this youth, who had betrayed always, a coarse and brutal temper, administered his stiletto to a gen- tleman on the Corso, and flying from Rome, became a brigand in the Abruzzi. His violence and atrocity in this congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of pardon, and on his outlawry by the pope, Violanta be- came the heiress of the estates of Cesarini. The marchioness had died w'hen Violanta was be- tween seven and eight years of age, leaving her, by a death-bed injunction, in the charge of her own con- stant attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno, sup- posed to be distant kinswoman to her mistress. "With this tried dependant, the young countess was permit- ted to go where she pleased, at all hours when not at- tended by her masters, and seeing her tractable and lovely, the old marquis, whose pride in the beauty ot his family was the passion next to love of money in his heart, gave himself little trouble, and thought him- self consoled for the loss of his son in the growing at- tractions and filial virtues of his daughter. On a bright morning in early spring, six years before the date of our lale, the young countess and her at- tendant were gathering wild flowers near the fountain of Egeria (of all spots of earth, that on which the wild flowers are most profuse and sweetest), when a de- formed youth, who seemed to be no stranger to Donna Bettina, addressed Violanta in a tone of voice so mu- sical, and with a look so kindly and winning, that the frank child took his hand, and led him oft' in search of cardinals and blue-bells, with the familiarity of an es- tablished playfellow. After this day, the little countess never came home pleased from a morning drive and ramble in which she had not seen her friend Signor Giulio; and the romantic baths of Caracalla, and the many delicious haunts among the ruins about Rome, had borne witness to the growth of a friendship, all fondness and impulse on the part of Violanta, all ten- derness and delicacy on that of the deformed youth. By what wonderful instinct they happened always to meet, the delighted child never found time or thought to inquire. Two or three years passed on thus, and the old marquis had grown to listen with amused familiarity to his daughter's prattle about the deformed youth, and no incident had varied the pleasant tenor of their lives and rambles, except that, Giulio once falling ill, Bettina had taken the young countess to his home, where she discovered that, young as he was, he made some progress in moulding in clay, and was destined for a sculptor. This visit to the apartment of an obscure youth, however, the marquis had seen fit to object to ; and though, at his daughter's request, he sent the young sculptor an order for his first statue, he per- emptorily forbade all further intercourse between him and Violanta. In the paroxysm of her grief at the first disgrace she had ever fallen into with her master, Bettina disclosed to her young mistress, by way of justification, a secret she had been bound by the most solemn oaths to conceal, and of which she now was the sole living depository — that this deformed youth was born in the castle of the Cesarini, in Ro- magna, of no less obscure parentage than the castle's lord and lady, and being the first child after the dis- pensation of marriage, and a son, he was consequently the rightful heir to the marquisate and estates of Cesa- rini; and the elder son, by the terms of that dispen- sation, was illegitimate. This was astounding intelligence to Violanti, who, nevertheless, child as she was, felt its truth in the yearnings of her heart to Giulio ; but it was with no little pains and difficulty on Bettina's part, that she was persuaded to preserve the secret from her father. The Romagnese knew her master's weakness ; and as tht birth of the child had occurred during his long ab- sence from the castle, and the marchioness, proud of her eldest-born, had determined from the first that he alone should enjoy the name and honors of his father, it was not very probable that upon the simple word of a domestic, he would believe a deformed hunchback to be his son and heir. The intermediate history of Giulio, Bettina knew little about, simply informing her mistress, that dis- gusted with his deformity, the unnatural mother had sent him to nurse in a far-off village of Romagna, and that the interest of a small sum which the marquis VIOLANTA CESAR1NL 481 supposed had been expended on masses for the souls of his ancestors, was still paid to his foster-parents for his use. From the time of this disclosure, Violanta's life had been but too happy. Feeling justified in contriving secret interviews with her brother; and possessing the efficient connivance of Bettina, who grew, like her- self, almost to worship the pure-minded and the gentle Giulio, her heart and her time were blissfully crowded with interest. So far, the love that had welled from her heart had been all joyous and untroubled. It was during the absence of the marquis and his daughter from Rome, and in an unhealthy season, that Giulio, always delicate in health and liable to ex- cessive fits of depression, had fallen ill in his solitary room, and, but for the friendly care of a young artist whom he had long known, must have died of want and neglect. As he began to recover, he accepted the offer of Amieri, his friend, to share with him a lodging in the more elevated air of the Corso, and, the more readily, that this room chanced to overlook the palace of Cesarina. Here Violanta found him on her return, and though displeased that he was no longer alone, she still continued, when Amieri was absent, to see him sometimes in his room, and their old haunts without the walls were frequented as often as his health and strength would permit. A chance meeting of Violanta and Amieri in his own studio, however, made it necessary that he should be admitted to their secret, and the consequence'of that interview, and others which Violanta found it impossible to avoid, was a passion in the heart of the enthusiastic painter, which consumed, as it well might, every faculty of his soul. We are thus brought to an evening of balmy May, when Giulio found himself alone. Biondo had been painting all day on the face of his nymph, endeavoring in vain to give it any other features than those of the lady of his intense worship, and having gone out to ramble for fresh air and relaxation in the Corso, Giulio thought he might venture to throw across his ball of thread and send a missive to his sister, promising her an uninterrupted hour of his society. With these preliminaries, our story will now run smoothly on. CHAPTER II. " Come in, carissima .'"' said the low, silver-toned voice of the deformed sculptor, as a female figure, in the hood and cloak of an old woman, crossed the threshold of his chamber. " Dear Giulio !" And she leaned slightly over the diminutive form of her brother, and first kissing his pale forehead, while she unfastened the clasp of Bettina's cloak of black silk, threw her arms about him as the disguise fell oft', and multiplied, between her caresses, the endearing terms in which the lan- guage of that soft clime is so prodigal. They sat down at the foot of his group in marble, and each told the little history of the hours they had spent apart. They grew alike as they conversed ; for theirs was that resemblance of the soul, to which the features answer only when the soul is breathing through. Unless seen together, and not only together, but gazing on each other in complete abandonment of heart, the friends that knew them best would have said they were unlike. Yet Amieri's nymph on the canvass was like both, for Amieri drewfromthe picture burnt on his own heart by love, and the soul of Violanta lay breathing beneath every lineament. "You have not touched the marble to-day!" said the countess, taking the lamp from its nail, and shed- ding the light aslant on the back of the statue. 31 " No ! I have lifted the hammer twenty times to break it in pieces." " Ah ! dearest Giulio ! talk not thus ! Think it is my image you would destroy !" " If it were, and truly done, I would sooner strike the blessed crucifix. But, Violanta! there is a link wanting in this deformed frame of mine ! The sense of beauty, or the power to body it forth, wants room in me. I feel it — I feel it !" Violanta ran to him and pressed the long curls that fell over his pallid temples to her bosom. There was a tone of conviction in his voice that she knew not how to answer. He continued, as if he were musing aloud : — " I have tried to stifle this belief in my bosom, and have never spoken of it till now — but it is true. 1 Look at that statue ! Parts of it are like nature— but it wants uniformity — it wants grace — it want9 what i" want — proportion! I never shall give it that, because I want the sense, the consciousness, the emo- tion, of complete godlike movement. It is only the well formed who feci this. Sculptors may imitate gods ! for they are made in God's image. But oh, Violanta ! / am not !" " My poor brother !" " Our blessed Savior was not more beautiful than the Apollo," he passionately continued, " but could j feel like the Apollo! Can /stand before the clay and straighten myself to his attitude, and fancy, by the most delirious effort of imagination, that I realize in this frame, and could ever have conceived and moulded his indignant and lofty beauty ? No — no — no !" "Dear — dear Giulio." He dropped his head again and she felt his tears penetrate to her bosom. " Leave this melancholy theme," she said, in an imploring tone, " and let us talk of other things, I have something to tell you, Giulio !" " Raphael was beautiful," he said, raising himself up, unconscious of the interruption, " and Giorgione, and Titian, both nobly formed, and Michael Angelo had the port of an archangel ! Yes, the soul inhabits the whole body, and the sentiment of beauty moves and quickens through it all. My tenement is cramp- ed ! — Violanta !" " Well, dear brother !" "Tell me your feelings when you first breathe the air in a bright morning in spring. Do you feci grace- ful ? Js there a sensation of beauty? Do you lilt yourself and feel swan-like and lofty, and worthy of the divine image in which you breathe. Tell me truly, Violanta." " Yes, brother!" " I knew it ! I have a faint dream of such a feel- ing — a sensation that is confined to my brain somehow which I struggle to express in motion — but if I lilt my finger, it is gone. I watch Amieri sometimes, when he draws. He pierces my very soul by as- suming, always, the attitude on his canvass. Violanta! how can / stand like a statue that would please the eye ?" " Giulio ! Giulio !" "Well, I will not burden you with my sadness. Let us look at Biondo's nymph. Pray the Virgin, he come not in the while — for painting, by lamp-light, shows less fairly than marble." He took the lamp, and while Violanta shook the tears from her eyes, he drew out the pegs of the easel, and lowered the picture to the light. " Are you sure Amieri will not come in, Giulio ?" inquired his sister, looking back timidly at the door while she advanced. "I think he will not. The Corso is gay to night, and his handsome face and frank carriage, win greet- ings, as the diamond draws light. Look at his pic- ture, Violanta! With what triumph he paints! How different from my hesitating hand ! The thought that 482 VIOLANTA CESAR1NI. is born in his fancy, collects instant fire in his veins and comes prompt and proportionate to his hand. It looks like a thing born, not wrought ! How beautiful you are, my Violanta ! He has done well — brave Biondo !" " It is like me, yet fairer." " I wish it were done! There is a look on the lips that is like a sensation 1 feel sometimes on my own I almost feel as if I should straighten and grow fair as it advances. Would it not be a blessed thing, Violanta ?'* " I love you as you are, dear Giulio !" "But I thirst to be loved like other men ! I would pass in the street and not read pity in all eyes. I would go out like Biondo, and be greeted in the street with t Mio bravo !' « Mio bello !' I would be beloved by some one that is not my sister, Violanta! I would have my share — only my share — of human joy and re- gard. I were better dead than be a hunchback. I would die, but for you — to-night — yes, to night." With a convulsive hand he pulled aside the curtain, and sent a long, earnest look up to the stars. Violanta had never before heard him give words to his melan- choly thoughts, and she felt appalled and silenced by the inexpressible poignancy of his tones, and the fever- ish, tearless, broken-heartedness of his whole manner. As she took his hand, there was a noise in the street below, and presently after, a hurried step was heard on the stair, and Amieri rushed in, seized the rapier which hung over his bed and without observing Vio- lanta, was flying again from the apartment. " Biondo !" cried a voice which would have stayed him were next breath to have been drawn in heaven. " Contessa Violanta !" "What is it, Amieri? Where go you now?" asked Giulio, gliding between him and the door. Biondo's cheek and brow had flushed when first ar- rested by the voice of the countess, but now he stood silent and with his eyes on the floor, pale as the statue before him. " A quarrel, Giulio !" he said at length. "Biondo!" The countess sprang to his side with the simple utterance of his name, and laid her small hand on his arm. " You shall not go! You are dear to us — dear to Guilio, Signor Amieri! If you love us — if you care for Giulio — nay, I will say it — if you care for me, dear Biondo, put not your life in peril." " Lady !" said the painter, bowing his head to his wrist, and kissing lightly the small white fingers that pressed it, " if I were to lose my life this hour, I should bless with my dying lips the occasion which had drawn from you the blessed words I hear. But the more life is valuable to me by your regard, the more need you should not delay me. I am waited for. Fare- well!" Disengaging himself from Violanta's grasp, quickly but gently, Amieri darted through the door, and was gone. CHAPTER IIT. Biondo had readily found a second in the first artist he met on the Corso, and after a rapid walk they turned on the lonely and lofty wall of the Pala- tine, to look back on the ruins of the Forum. — At a fountain side, not far beyond, he had agreed to find his antagonist; but spite of the pressing business of the hour, the wonderful and solemn beauty of the ruins that lay steeped in moonlight at his feet, awoke, for an instant, all of the painter in his soul. " Is it not glorious, Lenzoni ?" he said, pointing with his rapier to the softened and tall columns that carried their capitals among the stars. " We have not come out to sketch, Amieri !" was the reply. "True, caro! but my fingers work as if the pencil was in them, and I forget revenge while 1 see what I shall never sketch again!" Lenzoni struck Ins hand heavily on Amieri's shoul- der, as if to wake him from a dream, and looked close into his face. "If you fight in this spirit, Biondo " "I shall fight with heart and soul, Lenzoni; fear me not! But when I saw, just now, the beVeffelto of the sharp-drawn shadows under the arch of Constan- tine, and felt instinctively for my pencil, something told me, at my heart's ear — you will never trace line again, Amieri!" "Take heart, caro amico!" My heart is ready, but my thoughts come fast! What were my blood, I can not but reflect, added to the ashes of Rome? We fight in the grave of an empire! But you will not philosophize, dull Len- zoni! Come on to the fountain!" The moon shone soft on the greensward rim of the neglected fountain that once sparkled through the "gold palace" of Nero. The white edges of half- buried marble peeped here and there from the grass, I and beneath the shadow of an ivy-covered and totter- ! ing arch, sang a nightingale, the triumphant posses- sor of life amid the forgotton ashes of the Caesars. Amieri listened to his song. "You are prompt, signor!" said a gay-voiced gen- tleman, turning the corner of the ruined wall, as Biondo, still listening to the nightingale, fed his heart with the last sweet words of Violanta. "' Sempre pronto,' is a good device," answered Len- zoni, springing to his feet. " Will you fight, side to the moon, signors, or shall we pull straws for the choice of light?" Amieri's antagonist was a strongly-made man of thirty, costly in his dress, and of that class of features eminently handsome, yet eminently displeasing. The origin of the quarrel was an insulting observation, coupled with the name of the young countess Cesa- rini, which Biondo, who was standing in the shadow of a wall, watching her window from the Corso, acci- dentally overheard. A blow on the mouth was the first warning the stranger received of a listener's neighborhood, and after a momentary struggle they exchanged cards, and separated to meet in an hour, with swords, at the fountain, on the Palatine. Amieri was accounted the best foil in the ateliers of Rome, but his antagonist, the count Lamba Malas- pina had just returned from a long residence in France, and had the reputation of an accomplished swordsman. Amieri was slighter in person, but well-made, and agile as a leopard; but when Lenzoni looked into the cool eye of Malaspina, the spirit and fire which he would have relied upon to ensure his friend success in an ordinary contest, made him tremble now. Count Lamba bowed, and they crossed swords. Amieri had read his antagonist's character, like his friend, and, at the instant their blades parted, he broke down his guard with the quickness of lightning, and wounded him in the face. Malaspina smiled as he crossed his rapier again, and in the next moment Amieri's sword flew high above his head, and the count's was at his breast. "Ask for your life, mio bravo!" he said, as calmly as if they had met by chance in the Corso. "A'morte! villain and slanderer!" cried Amieri, and striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a blow at Malaspina, which by a backward movement, was received on the point of the blade. Transfixed through the wrist, Amieri struggled in vain against the supe- rior strength and coolness of his antagonist, and falling on his knee, waited in silence for his death-blow. Malaspina drew his sword gently as possible from the wound, and recommending a tourniquet to Lenzoni till a surgeon could be procured, washed the blood VIOLANTA CESARINI. 483 from bis face in the fountain, and descended into the Forum, humming the air of a new song. Faint with loss of blood, and with his left arm around Lenzoni's neck, Biondo arrived at the sur- geon's door. " Can you save his hand ?" was the first eager ques- tion. Amieri held up his bleeding wrist with difficulty, and the surgeon shook his head as he laid the help- less fingers in his palm. The tendon was entirely parted. " I may save the hand." he said, " but he will never use it more .'" Amieri gave his friend a look full of anguish, and fell back insensible. "Poor Biondo!" said Lenzoni, as he raised his pallid head from the surgeon's pillow. " Death were less misfortune than the loss of a hand like thine. The foreboding was too true, alas! that thou never wouldst use pencil more!' 1 '' CHAPTER IV. Thk frowning battlements of St. Angelo were brightened with the glare of lamps across the Tiber, and the dark breast of the river was laced with bars of gold like the coat of a captain of dragoons. Here and there lay a boat in mid-stream, and while the drift of the current was counteracted by an occasional stroke at the oar, the boatman listened to the heavenly strains of a waltz, dying and triumphing in alternate cadences upon the breath of night and the pope's band. A platform was built out over the river, forming a con- tinuation of the stage; the pit was floored over, and all draped like a Persian harem ; and thus began a masquerade at the Teatro della Pergola at Rome, which stands, if you will take the trouble to remem- ber, close by the bridge and castle of St. Angelo upon the bank of the "yellow Tiber." The entrance of the crowd to the theatre was like a procession intended to represent the things of which we are commanded not to make graven images, nor to bow down and worship them. There was the like- ness of everything in heaven above and on the earth ' beneath, and in the waters under the eaith. There were angels, devils, serpents, birds, beasts, fishes, and j fair women — of which none except the last occasioned much transgression of the commandment. Oddly j enough, the fishes waltzed — and so did the beasts and fair women, the serpents and birds — pairing off as they j came within sound of the music, with a defiance of j natural antipathies which would have driven a natural- ist out of his senses. A chariot drove up with the crest of the Cesarini on the panne], and out of it stepped rather a stiff figure dressed as a wandering palmer, with serge and scallop- shells, followed by a masked hunchback whose cos- tume, even to the threadbare spot on the ridge of his deformity, was approved, by the loungers at the door, in a general "bravissimo." They entered the dress- ing-room, and the cloak-keeper was not surprised when the lump was withdrawn in the shape of a pad of wool, and by the aid of a hood and petticoat of black silk, the deformed was transformed into a slender domino, undistinguished but for the grace and elas- j ticity of her movements. The attendant was sur- j prised, however, when having stepped aside to deposite J the pad given in charge to her, she turned and saw the ! domino flitting from the room, but the hunchback with his threadbare hump still leaning on the palmer's arm! "Santissima Vergine!" she exclaimed, pulling out her cross and holding it between herself and Oiulio, i "the fiend— the unholy fiend!" Donna Bettina laughed under her palmer's cowl, and drawing Giulio's arm within her own, they min- gled in the masquerade. The old count Cesarini arrived a few minutes after in one of the equipages of the Malaspina, accompanied by a red-cross knight in a magnificent armor, his sword-hilt sparkling with diamonds, and the bars of his visor half-drawn, yet showing a beard of jetty and curling black, and a mouth of the most regular, yet unpleasant beauty. The upper part of his face was quite concealed, yet the sneer on his lips promised a cold and unfeeling eye. "As a hunchback, did you say. count?" " It was her whim," answered Cesarini. " She has given alms to a poor sculptor with that deformity till her brain is filled with it. Pray the saints to affect not your offspring, Lamba!" Malaspina surveyed himself in the long mirror at the entrance of the saloon, and smiled back incredu- lously with his white teeth. " I gave Bettina strict orders not to leave her side," said Cesarini. " You will find the old donna by her palmer's dress. The saints speed your suite, Lamba ! I will await you in the card-room when the dance wearies you !" It was not for some time after the two old nobles had affianced their children, that Cesarini had found a fitting opportunity to break the subject to his daugh- ter. When he did so, somewhat to his embarrass- ment, Violanta listened to it without surprise; and after hearing all he had to say upon the honorable de- scent, large fortune, and courtly accomplishments of the young count Lamba, she only permitted her fa- ther to entertain any future hope on the subject, upon the condition, that, till she was of age, her proposed husband should not even be presented to her. For this victory over the most cherished ambition of the old count, Violanta was indebted partly to the holy see, and partly to some qualities in her own character, of which her father knew the force. He was aware with what readiness the cardinal would seize upon the slightest wish she might express to take the veil and bring her possessions into the church, and he was sufficiently acquainted with the qualities of a Cesa- rini, not to drive one of their daughters to extremity. With some embarrassment the old count made a clean breast to Malaspina and his son, and was ex- hausting language in regrets, when he was relieved by an assurance from Lamba that the difficulty increased his zest for the match, and that, with Cesarini's per- mission, he would find opportunities to encounter her in her walks as a stranger, and make his way after the romantic taste which he supposed was alone at the bot- tom of her refusal For success in this, Count Lamba relied on his personal beauty and on that address in the arts of adventure which is acquired by a residence in France. Since his duel, Amieri had been confined to his bed with a violent fever, dangerously aggravated by the peculiar nature of his calamity. The love of the pencil was the breath of his soul, and in all his thoughts of Violanta, it was only as a rival of the lofty fame of painters who had made themselves the companions of kings, that he could imagine himself a claimant for her love. It seemed to him that his nerveless hand had shut out heaven's entire light. Giulio had watched by his friend with the faithful fondness of a woman, and had gathered from his mo- ments of delirium, what Biondo had from delicacy to Violanta never revealed to his second, Lenzoni— the cause of his quarrel with Malaspina. Touched with this chivalric tenderness toward his sister, the kind Giulio hung over him with renewed affection, and when, in subsequent ravings, the maimed youth be- trayed the real sting of his misfortune — the death of bis hopes of her love — the unambitious brother re- 484 V10LANTA CESARINI. solved in his heart that if he could aid him by service or sacrifice, by influence with Violanta, or by making the almost desperate attempt to establish his own claims to the name and fortunes of Cesarini, he would devote himself to his service heart and soul. During the confinement of Amieri to his room, the young countess had of course been unable to visit her brother, and as he scarce left the patient's side for a moment, their intercourse for two or three weeks had been entirely interrupted. On the first day the con- valescent youth could walk out, she had stolen to the studio, and heard from Giulio the whole history of the duel and its consequences. When he had finished his narrative, Violanta sat, for a few minutes, lost in thought. " Giulio !" she said at last, with a gayety of tone j which startled him. " Violanta !" " Did you ever remark that our voices are very much alike?" "Biondo often says so." "And you have a foot almost as small as mine." " I have not the proportions of a man, Violanta !" " Nay, brother, but I mean that — that — we might pass for each other, if we were masked. Our height is the same. Stand up, Giulio '" " You would not mock me !" said the melancholy youth with a faint smile, as he rose and set his bent back beside the straight and lithe form of his sister. "Listen to me, amaio-bene /" she replied, sitting down and drawing him upon her knee, after satisfying himself that there was no perceptible difference in their height. "Put your arm about my neck, and ■ ove me while 1 tell you of my little plot." Giulio impressed a kiss upon the clear, alabaster forehead of the beautiful girl, and looked into her face inquiringly. " There is to be a masquerade at La Pergola," she said — "a superb masquerade given to some prince! And I am to go, Giulio mio .'" "Well," answered the listener, sadly. "But do you not seem surprised that I am permitted to go! Shall I tell you the reason why papa gave me permission ?" "If you will, Violanta!" " A little bird told me that Malaspina means to be there !" " And you will go to meet him ?" " You shall go to meet him, and I " she hesi- tated and cast down the long dark fringes of her eyes; "I will meet Biondo !" Giulio clasped her passionately to his heart. " I see ! — I see!" he cried, springing upon his feet, as he anticipated the remaining circumstances of the plot. " We shall be two hunchbacks — they will little think that we are two Cesarini. Dear, noble Violanta ! you will speak kindly to Biondo. Send Bettina for the clothes, carina mia! You will get twin masks in the Corso. And, Violanta?" " What, Giulio ?" " Tell Bettina to breathe no word of our project to Amieri! I will persuade him to go but to see you dance ! Poor Amieri ' Dear, dear sister ! Farewell now ! He will be returning, and you must be gone. The Holy Virgin guard you, my Violanta!" CHAPTER V. The reader will long since have been reminded, by the trouble we have to whip in and flog up the lagging and straggling members of our story, of a flock of sheep driven unwillingly to market. Indeed, to stop at the confessional (as you will see many a shepherd of the Campagna, on his way to Rome), this tale of many tails should have been a novel. You have, in brief, what should have been well elaborated, embar- rassed with difficulties, relieved by digressions, tipped with a moral, and bound in two volumes, with a portrait of the author. We are sacrificed to the spirit of the age. The eighteenth century will be known in hieroglyphics by a pair of shears. But, " to return to our muttons." The masquerade went merrily on, or, if there were more than one heavy heart among those light heels, it was not known, as the newspapers say, " to our re- porter." One, there certainly was — heavy as Etna on the breast of Enceladus. Biondo Amieri sat in a cor- ner of the gallery, with his swathed hand laid before him, pale as a new statue, and with a melancholy in his soft dark eyes, which would have touched the exe- cutioners of St. Agatha. Beside him sat Lenzoni, who was content to forego the waltz for a while, and keep company for pity with a friend who was too busy with his own thoughts to give him word or look, but still keeping sharp watch on the scene below, and betraying by unconscious ejaculations how great a penance he had put on himself for love and charity. " Ah, la bella musica, Biondo!" he exclaimed drumming on the banquette, while his friend held up his wounded hand to escape the jar, " listen to that waltz, that might set fire to the heels of St. Peter. Corpo di Bacco ! look at the dragon! — a dragon making love to a nun, Amieri! Ah! San Pietro ! what a foot ! Wait till I come, sweet goblin ! That a goblin's tail should follow such ankles, Biondo ! Eh ! bellissimo ! the knight ! Look at the red-cross knight, Amieri! and — what? — il gobbo, by St. An- thony ! and the red-cross takes him for a woman ! It is Giulio, for there never were two hunchbacks so wondrous like ! Ecco, Biondo !" But there was little need to cry "look" to Amieri, now. A hunchback, closely masked, and leaning on a palmer's arm, made his way slowly through the crowd, and a red-cross knight, a figure gallant enough to have made a monarch jealous, whispered with courte- ous and courtly deference in his ear. " Cielo ! it is she!" said Biondo, with mournful earnestness, not heeding his companion, and laying his hand upon his wounded wrist, as if the sight he looked on gave it a fresher pang. '■'She?" answered Lenzoni, with a laugh. " If it is not he — not gobbo Giulio — I'll eat that cross-hilted rapier ! What '■she'' should it be, caro Biondo !" " I tell thee," said Amieri, " Giulio is asleep at the foot of his marred statue ! I left him but now, he is too ill with his late vigils to be here — but his clothes, I may tell thee, are borrowed by one who wears them as you see. Look at the foot, Lenzoni!" " A woman, true enough, if the shoe were all ! But I'll have a close look! Stay for me, dear Amieri! I will return ere you have looked twice at them '" And happy, with all his kind sympathy, to find a fair apology to be free, Lenzoni leaped over the benches and mingled in the crowd below. Left alone, Biondo devoured with his eyes, every movement of the group in which he was so deeply interested, and the wound in his hand seemed burn- ing with a throb of fire, while he tried in vain to de- tect, in the manner of the hunchback, that coyness which might show, even through a mask, dislike or indifference. There was even, he thought (and he delivered his soul over to Apollyon in the usual phrase for thinking such ill of such an angel) ; there was even in her manner a levity and freedom of gesture for which the mask she wore should be no apology. He was about to curse Malaspina for having spared his life at the fountain, when some one jumped lightly over the seat, and took a place beside him. It was a female in a black domino, closely masked, and through the pasteboard mouth protruded the bit of VIOLANTA CESARINI. 485 ivory, commonly held in the teeth by maskers, to dis- guise the voice. " Good evening to you. fair signor !" " Good even to you, lady ."' " I am come to share youf melancholy, signor !" " I have none to give away unless you will take all ; and just now, my fair one. it is rather anger than sad- ness. If it please you. leave me '" " What if I am more pleased to stay "' "Briefly, I would be alone . I am not of the festa. I but look on, here !" And Biondo turned his shoulder to the mask, and fixed his eyes again on the hunch- back, who having taken the knight's arm, was talking and promenading most gayly between him and the palmer. " You have a wounded hand, signor !" resumed his importunate neighbor. "A useless one, lady. Would it were well!" " Signor Melancholy, repine not against providence. I that am no witch, tell thee that thou wilt yet bless Heaven that this hand is disabled." Biondo turned and looked at the bold prophetess, but her disguise was impenetrable. " You are a masker, lady, and talk at random !" " No ! I will tell you the thought uppermost in your bosom!" "What is it?" " A longing for a pluck at the red-cross, yonder!" " True, by St. Mary !" said Biondo, starting ener- getically : " but you read it in my eyes !" " I have told you your first thought, signor, and I will give you a hint of the second Is there a likeness between a nymph on canvass, and a gobbo in a mask !" j " Giulio !" exclaimed Amieri, turning suddenly round; but the straight back of the domino met his | eye, and totally bewildered, he resumed his seat, and slowly perused the stranger from head to foot. " Talk to me as if my mask were the mirror of your soul, Amieri," said the soft but disguised voice. " You need sympathy in this mood, and I am your good angel. Is your wrist painful to-night ?" " I can not talk to you," he said, turning to resume his observation on the scene below. " If you know the face beneath the gobbo's mask, you know the heaven from which I am shut out. But I must gaze on it still." " Is it a woman ?" "No ! an angel." " And encourages the devil in the shape of Ma- laspina ? You miscall her, Amieri !" The answer was interrupted by Lenzoni, who ran into the gallery, but seeing his friend beset by a mask, he gave him joy of his good luck, and refusing to in- terrupt the tete-a-tete, disappeared with a laugh. " Brave, kind Lenzoni !" said the stranger. " Are you his good angel, too ?" asked Amieri, surprised again at the knowledge so mysteriously dis- played. " No ! Little as you know of me you would not be willing to share me with another ! Say, Amieri! love you the gobbo on the knight's arm ?" " You have read me riddles less clear, my fair in- cognita ! I would die at rnorn but to say farewell to her at midnight!" " Do you despair of her love ?" " Do I despair of excelling Raphael with these unstrung fingers ? I never hoped — but in my dreams, lady!" " Then hope, waking ! For as there is truth in heaven, Violanta Cesarini loves you, Biondo !" Laying his left hand sternly on the arm of the stranger, Biondo raised his helpless wrist and pointed toward the hunchback, who, seated by the red-cross knight, played with the diamond cross of his sword- hilt, while the palmer turned his back, as if to give two lovers an opportunity. With a heart overwhelmed with bitterness, he then turned to the mocking incognito. Violanta sat be- side him ! Holding her mask between her and the crowd be- low, the maiden blush mounted to her temples, and the long sweeping lashes dropped over her eyes their veiling and silken fringes. And while the red-cross knight still made eloquent love to Giulio in the saloon of the masquerade, Amieri and Violanta, in their un- observed retreat, exchanged vows, faint and choked with emotion on his part, but all hope, encouragement, and assurance, on hers CHAPTER VI. " Will you waltz ?" said a merry-voiced domino to the red-cross knight, a few minutes after tapping him smartly on the corslet with her black fan, and pointing, for the first step, a foot that would have tempted St. Anthony. "By the mass !" answered Malaspina, "I should pay an ill compliment to the sweetest voice that ever enchanted human ear" (and he bowed low to Guilio), " did 1 refuse invitation so sweetly toned. Yet my Milan armor is not light !" "I have been refusing his entreaties this hour," said Giulio, as the knight whirled away with Violanta, " for though I can chatter like a woman, I should dance like myself. He is not unwilling to show his grace to 'his lady-mistress!' Ha! ha! It is worth while to sham the petticoat for once to see what fools men are when they would please a woman ! But, close mask ! Here comes the count Cesarini !" "How fares my child?" said the old noble, leaning over the masked Giulio, and touching with his lips the glossy curl which concealed his temple. Are you amused, idolo mioV A sudden tremor shot through the frame of poor Giulio at the first endearment ever addressed to his ear by the voice of a parent. The tears coursed down under his mask, and for all answer to the question, he could only lay his small soft hand in his father's and return his pressure with irresistible strength and emo- tion. " You are not well, my child !" he said, surprised at not receiving an answer, "this ugly hump oppresses you ! Come to the air! So — lean on'me, caro tesoro! We will remove the hump presently. A Cesarini with a hump indeed ! Straighten yourself, my life, my child, and you will breathe more freely !" Thus entered, at one wound, daggers and balm into the heart of the deformed youth; and while Bettina, trembling in every limb, grew giddy with fear as they made their way through the crowd, Giulio, relieved by his tears, nerved himself with a strong effort and prepared to play out his difficult part with calmness. They threaded slowly the crowded maze of waltzers, and, emerging from the close saloons, stood at last in the gallery overhanging the river. The moon was rising, and touched with a pale light the dark face of the Tiber; the music came faintly out to the night air, and a fresh west wind, cool and balmy from the verdant campagna, breathed softly through the lat- tices. Refusing a chair, Giuho leaned over the balustrade, and the count stood by his side and encircled his waist with his arm. " I can not bear this deformity, my Violanta !" he said, " you look so unlike my child with it ; I need this little hand to reassure me." " Should you know that was my hand, father?" said Giulio. " Should I not ! I have told you a thousand times that the nails of a Cesarini were marked — let me see 486 PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. you again — by the arch of this rosy line! See, my little Gobbo ! They are like four pink fairy shells of India laid over rolled leaves of roses. What was the poet's name who said that of the old countess Giulia Cesarini — la bella Giulia?" " Should you have known my voice, father ?" asked Giulio, evading the question. " Yes, my darling, why ask me?" "But, father! — if I had been stolen by brigands from the cradle — or you had not seen me for many, many years — and I had met you to-night as a #0660 and had spoken to you — only in sport — and had called you 'father, dear father ." should you have known my voice? would you have owned me for a Cesarini?" " Instantly, my child !" "But suppose my back had been broken — suppose 1 were a gobbo — a deformed hunchback indeed, in- deed — but had still nails with a rosy arch, and the same voice with which I speak to you now — and pressed your hand thus — and loved you — would you disown me, father?" Giulio had raised himself while he spoke, and taken his hand from his father's with a feeling that life or death would be in his answer to that question. Cesa- rini was disturbed, and did not reply for a moment. " My child !" said he at last, " there is that in your voice that would convince me you are mine, against all the evidence in the universe. I can not imagine the dreadful image you have conjured up, for the Cesarini are beautiful and straight by long inheritance. But if a monster spoke to me thus, I should love him ! Come to my bosom, my blessed child ! and dispel those wild dreams ! Come, Violanta !" Giulio attempted to raise his arms to his father's neck, but the strength that had sustained him so well, began to ebb from him. He uttered some indistinct words, lifted his hand to his mask as if to remove it for breath, and sunk slowly to the floor. "It is your son, my lord!" cried Bettina. "Lift him, Count Cesarini ! Lift your child to the air be- fore he dies !" She tore off his mask and disclosed to the thunder- stricken count the face of the stranger ! As he stood pale and aghast, too much confounded for utterance or action, the black domino tripped into the gallery, follow- ed by the red-cross knight, panting under his armor. " Giulio ! my own Giulio !" cried Violanta, throw- ing herself on her knees beside her pale and insensible brother, and covering his forehead and lips with kisses. "Is he hurt? Is he dead? Water! for the love of Heaven ! Will no one bring water?" And tear- ing away her own mask, she lifted him from the ground, and, totally regardless of the astonished group who looked on in petrified silence, fanned and caressed him into life and consciousness. " Come away, Violanta !" said her father at last, in a hoarse voice. "Never, my father ! he is our own blood! How feel you now, Giulio?" " Better, sweet ! where is Biondo ?" "Near by! But you shall go home with me. Signor Malaspina, as you hope for my favor, lend my brother an arm. Bettina, call up the chariot. Nay, father ! he goes home with me, or I with him, we never part more !" The red-cross knight gave Giulio an arm, and lean- ing on him and Violanta, the poor youth made his way to the carriage. Amieri sat at the door, and re- ceived only a look as she passed, and helping Giulio tenderly in, she gave the order to drive swiftly home, and in a few minutes they entered together the palace of their common inheritance. It would be superfluous to dwell on the incidents of the sequel, which were detailed in the Diario di Roma, and are known to all the world. The hunch- back Count Cesarini has succeeded his father in his title and estates, and is beloved of all Rome. The next heir to the title is a son (now two years of age) of the countess Amieri, who is to take the name of Cesarini on coming to his majority. They live to- gether in the old palazzo, and all strangers go to see their gallery of pictures, of which none are bad, except some well intended but not very felicitously executed compositions by one Lenzoni. Count Lamba Malaspina is at present in exile, having been convicted of drawing a sword on a disabled gentle- man, on his way from a masquerade at La Pergola. His seclusion is rendered the more tolerable by the loss of his teeth, which were rudely thrust down his throat by this same Lenzoni (fated to have a finger in every pie) in defence of the attacked party on that oc- casion. You will hear Lenzoni's address (should you wish to purchase a picture of his painting) at the Caffe del Gioco, opposite the trattoria of La Bella Donna in the Corso. PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE, CHAPTER I. Giannino Pasquali was a smart tailor some five years ago, occupying a cool shop on one of the smaller canals of Venice. Four pairs of suspenders, a print of the fashions, and a motley row of the gay-colored trousers worn by the gondoliers, ornamented the win- dow looking on the dark alley in the rear, and, attach- ed to the post of the water-gate on the canal side. floated a small black gondola, the possession of which afforded the same proof of prosperity of the Venetian tailor which is expressed by a horse and buggy at the door of a snip in London. The place-seeking travel- ler, who, nez en iair, threaded the tangled labyrinth of alleys and bridges between the Rialto and St. Mark's, would scarce have observed the humble shop- window of Pasquali, yet he had a consequence on the Piazza, and the lagoon had seen his triumphs as an amateur gondolier. Giannino was some thirty years of age, and his wife Fiametta, whom he had married for her zecchini, was on the shady side of fifty. If the truth must be told, Pasquali had discovered that, even with a bag of sequins for eye-water, Fi- ametta was not always the most lovely woman in Venice. Just across the canal lived old Donna Bentoccata, the nurse, whose daughter Tutturilla was like the blonde in Titian's picture of the Marys ; and to the charms of Turturilla, even seen through the leaden light of poverty, tlie unhappy Pasquali was far from insensible. The festa of San Antonio arrived after a damp week of November, and though you would suppose the at- mosphere of Venice not liable to any very sensible in- crease of moisture, Fiametta, like people who live on land, and who have the rheumatism as a punishment for their age and ugliness, was usually confined to her brazero of hot coals till it was dry enough on the Lido for the peacocks to walk abroad. On this festa, how- ever, San Antonio being, as every one knows, the patron saint of Padua, the Padovese were to come down the Brenta, as was their custom, and cross over the sea to Venice to assist in the celebration ; and Fiametta once more thought Pasquali loved her for herself alone when he swore by his rosary that unless she accompanied him to the festa in her wedding dress, he would not turn an oar in the race, nor unfasten his gondola from the door-post. Alas ! Fiametta was PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 487 married in the summer solstice, and her dress was permeable to the wind as a cobweb or gossamer. Is it possible you could have remembered that, oh, wick- ed Pasquali ? It was a day to puzzle a barometer; now bright, now rainy ; now gusty as a corridor in a novel, and now calm as a lady after a fit of tears. Pasquali was up early and waked Fiametta with a kiss, and, by way of unusual tenderness, or by way of ensuring: the wed- ding dress, he chose to play dressing maid, and ar- ranged with his own hands hereupon and fezzoletta. She emerged from her chamber looking like a slice of orange-peel in a flower-bed, but smiling and nod- I ding, and vowing the day warm as April, and the sky [ without a cloud. The widening circles of an occa- sional drop of rain in the canal were nothing but the j bubbles bursting after a passing oar, or perhaps the last | flies ofsummer. Pasquali swore it was weather to win j down a peri. As Fiametta stepped into the gondola, she glanced her eyes overlhe way and saw Turturilla, with a face ] as sorrowful as the first day in Lent, seated at her window. Her lap was full of work, and it was quite evident that she had not thought of being at the festa. j Fiametta's heart was already warm, and it melted quite at the view of the poor girl's loneliness. " Pasquali mio !" she said, in a deprecating tone, as if she were uncertain how the proposition would be received, " I think we could make room for poor Turturilla !" A gleam of pleasure, unobserved by the confiding sposa, tinted faintly the smooth olive cheek of Pasquali. ] " Eh ! diavolo /" he replied, so loud that the sor- | rowful seamstress heard, and hung down her head | still lower; "must you take pity on every cheese- | paring of a regezza who happens to have no lover! I Have reason ! have reason ! The gondola is narrower j than your brave heart my fine Fiametta !" And away \ he pushed from the water-steps. Turturilla rose from her work and stepped out upon ' the rusty gratings of the balcony to see them depart. ; Pasquali stopped to grease the notch of his oar, and between that and some other embarrassments, the gondola was suffered to float directly under her window. The compliment to the generous nature , of Fiametta, was, meantime, working, and as she was compelled to exchange a word or two with Turturilla while her husband was getting his oar into the socket, it resulted (as he thought it very probable it would), in the good wife's renewing her proposition, and ma- [ king a point of sending the deserted girl for her holy- ; day bonnet. Pasquali swore through all the saints and angels by the time she had made herself ready, though she was but five minutes gone from the window, and telling Fiametta in her ear that she must consider ; it as the purest obligation, he backed up to the steps of old Donna Jientoccata, helped in her daughter with a better grace than could have been expected, and with one or two short and deep strokes, put forth into the grand canal with the velocity of a lance-fly. A gleam of sunshine lay along the bosom of the broad silver sheet, and it was beautiful to see the gondolas with- their gay colored freights all hastening in one direction, and with swift track to the festa. Far up and down they rippled the smooth water, here gliding out from below a palace-arch, there from a nar- row and unseen canal, the steel beaks curved and flash- ing, the water glancing on the oar-blades, the curtains moving, and the fair women of Venice leaning out and touching hands as they Beared neighbor or acquaint- ance in the close-pressing gondolas. It was a beauti- ful sight, indeed, and three of the happiest hearts in that swift gliding company were in Pasquali's gondola, though the bliss of Fiametta, I am compelled to say, was entirely owing to the bandage with which love is so significantly painted. Ah ! poor Fiametta! From the Lido, from Fusina, from under the Bridge of Sighs, from all quarters of the lagoon, and from all points of the floating city of Venice, streamed the fly- ing gondolas to the Giudecca. The narrow walk along the edge of the long and close-built island was thronged with booths and promenaders, and the black barks by hundreds bumped their steel noses against the pier as the agitated water rose and fell beneath them. The gondolas intended for the face pulled slowly up and down, close to the shore, exhibifrag their fairy-like forms and their sinewy and gayly dress- ed gondoliers to the crowds on land and water ; the bands of music, attached to different parties, played here and there a strain ; the criers of holy pictures and gingerbread made the air vocal with their lisping and soft Venetian ; and all over the scene, as if it was the light of the sky or some other light as blessed but less common, shone glowing black eyes, black as night, and sparkling as the stars on night's darkest bosom. He who thinks lightly of Italian beauty should have seen the women of Venice on St. An- tonio's day '32, or on any or at any hour when their pulses are beating high and theireyes alight — for they are neither one nor the other always. The women of that fair clime, to borrow the simile of Moore, are like lava-streams, only bright when the volcano kindles. Their long lashes cover lustreless eyes, and their blood shows dully through the cheek in common and listless hours. The calm, the passive tranquillity in which the delicate graces of colder climes find their element are to them a torpor of the heart when the blood scarce seems to flow. They are wakeful only to the ener- getic, the passionate, the joyous movements of the soul. Pasquali stood erect in the prow of his gondola, and stole furtive glances at Turturilla while he pointed away with his finger to call off the sharp eyes of Fi- ametta ; but Fiametta was happy and unsuspicious. Only when now and then the wind came up chilly from the Adriatic, the poor wife shivered and sat closer to Turturilla, who in her plainer but thicker dress, to say nothing of younger blood, sat more com- fortably on the black cushion and thought less about the weather. An occasional drop of rain fell on the nose of poor Fiametta, but if she did not believe it was the spray from Pasquali's oar, she at least did her best to believe so ; and the perfidious tailor swore by St. Anthony that the clouds were as dry as her eyelashes. 1 never was very certain that Turturilla was not in the secret of this day's treacheries. The broad centre of the Giudecca was cleared, and the boats took their places for the race. Pasquali ranged his gondola with those of the other spectators, and telling Fiametta in her ear that he should sit on the other side of Turturilla as a punishment for their malapropos invitation, he placed himself on the small remainder of the deep cushion on the farthest side from his now penitent spouse, and while he complain- ed almost rudely of the narrowness of his seat, he made free to hold on by Turturilla's waist which no doubt made the poor girl's mind more easy on the subject of her intrusion. Who won and who lost the race, what was the device of each flag, and what bets and bright eyes changed owners by the result, no personage of this tale knew or cared, save Fiametta. She looked on eagerly. Pasquali and Turturilla, as the French say, trouvaient autress chats a /roller. After the decision of the grand race, St. Antonio being the protector, more particularly of the humble (" patron of pigs" in the saints' calendar), the seignoria and the grand people generally, pulled away for St. Mark's, leaving the crowded Giudecca to the people. Pasquali, as was said before, had some renown as a gondolier. Something what would be called in other countries a scrub race, followed the departure of the 488 PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. winning boat, and several gondolas, holding each one person only, took their places for the start. The tailor laid his hand on his bosom, and, with the smile that had first stirred the heart and the sequins of Fiametta, begged her to gratify his love by acting as his make-weight while he turned an oar for the pig of St. Antonio. The prize roasted to an appetizing crisp, stood high on a platter in front of one of the booths on shore, and Fiametta smacked her lips, ovfrcame her tears with an effort, and told him, in accents as little as possible like the creak of a dry oar in the socket, that he might set Turturilla on shore. A word in her ear, as he handed her over the gun- wale, reconciled Bonna Bentoccata's fair daughter to this conjugal partiality, and stripping his manly figure of its upper disguises, Pasquali straightened out his fine limbs, and drove his bark to the line in a style that drew applause from even his competitors. As a mark of their approbation, they offered him an outside place where his fair dame would be less likely to be spatter- ed with the contending oars ; but he was too generous to take advantage of this considerate offer, and crying out as he took the middle, " ben pronto, signori V gave Fiametta a confident look and stood like a hound in the leash. Off they went at the tap of the drum, poor Fiametta holding her breath and clinging to the sides of the gondola, and Pasquali developing skill and muscle — not for Fiametta's eyes only. It was a short, sharp race, without jockeying or management, all fair play and main strength, and the tailor shot past the end of the Giudecca a boat's length ahead. Much more ap- plauded than a king at a coronation or a lord-mayor taking water at London stairs, he slowly made his way back to Turturilla, and it was only when that demure damsel rather shrunk from sitting down in two inches of water, that he discovered how the disturbed element had quite filled up the hollow of the leather cushion and made a peninsula of the uncomplaining Fiametta. She was as well watered, as a favorite plant in a flower- garden. " Pasquali mio /" she said in an imploring tone, holding up the skirt of her dress with the tips of her thumb and finger, " could you just take me home while I change my dress." " One moment, Fiametta cara ! they are bringing the pig !" The crisp and succulent trophy was salemnly placed in the prow of the victor's gondola, and preparation was made to convoy him home with a triumphant procession. A half hour before it was in order to move — an hour in first making the circuit of the grand canal, and an hour more in drinking a glass and ex- changing good wishes at the stairs of the Rialto, and Donna Fiametta had sat too long by two hours and a half with scarce a dry thread on her body. What afterward befell will be seen in the more melancholy sequel. CHAPTER II. The hospital of St. Girolamo is attached to the convent of that name, standing on one of the canals which put forth on the seaward side of Venice. It is a long building, with its low windows and latticed doors opening almost on the level of the sea, and the wards for the sick are large and well aired ; but, ex- cept when the breeze is stirring, impregnated with a saline dampness from the canal, which, as Pasquali remarked, was good for the rheumatism. It was not so good for the patient. The loving wife Fiametta grew worse and worse after the fatal festa, and the fit of rheumatism brought on by the slightness of her dress and the spattering he had given her in the race, had increased by the end of the week, to a rheumatic fever. Fiametta was old and tough, however, and struggled manfully (woman as she was) with the disease, but being one night a little out of her head, her loving husband took occa- sion to shudder at the responsibility of taking care of her, and jumping into his gondola, he pulled across to St. Girolamo and bespoke a dry bed and a sister of charity, and brought back the pious father Gasparo and a comfortable litter. Fiametta was dozing when they arrived, and the kind-hearted tailor willing to spare her the pain of knowing that she was on her way to the hospital for the poor, set out some meat and wine for the monk, and sending over for Turturilla and the nurse to mix the salad, they sat and ate away the hours till the poor dame's brain should be wander- ing again. Toward night the monk and Dame Bentoccata were comfortably dozing with each other's support (having fallen asleep at table), and Pasquali with a kiss from Turturilla, stole softly up stairs. Fiametta was mut- turingunquietly, and working her fingers in the palms of her hands, and on feeling her pulse he found the fever was at its height. She took him, besides, for the prize pig of the festa, for he knew her wits were fairly abroad. He crept down stairs, gave the monk a strong cup of coffee to get him well awake, and, between the four of them, they got poor Fiametta into the litter, drew the curtains tenderly around and deposited her safely in the bottom of the gondola. Lightly and smoothly the winner of the pig pulled away with his loving burden, and gliding around the slimy corners of the palaces, and hushing his voice as he cried out "right!" or "left!" to guard the coming gondoliers of his vicinity, he arrived, like a thought of love to a maid's mind in sleep, at the door of St. Girolamo. The abbess looked out and said, " Benedicite .'" and the monk stood firm on his brown sandals to receive the precious burden from the arms of Pasquali. Believing firmly that it was equivalent to committing her to the hand of St. Peter, and of course abandoning all hope of seeing her again in this world, the soft-hearted tailor wiped his eye as she was lifted in, and receiving a promise from Father Gasparo that he would communicate faithfully the state of her soul in the last agony, he pulled, with lightened gondola and heart, back to his widower's home and Turturilla. For many good reasons, and apparent as good, it is a rule in the hospital of St. Girolamo, that the sick under its holy charge shall receive the visit of neither friend nor relative. If they recover, they return to their abodes to earn candles for the altar of the restor- ing saint. If they die, their clothes are sent to their surviving friends, and this affecting memorial, besides communicating the melancholy news, affords all the particulars and all the consolation they are supposed to require upon the subject of their loss. Waiting patiently for Father Gasparo and his bundle, Pasquali and Turturilla gave themselves up to hopes, which on the tailor's part (we fear it must be admitted), augured a quicker recovery from grief than might be credited to an elastic constitution. The fortune of poor Fiametta was sufficient to warrant Pasquali in neglecting his shop to celebrate every festa that the church acknowledged, and for ten days subsequent to the committal of his wife to the tender mercies of St. Girolamo, five days out of seven was the proportion of merry holydays with his new betrothed. They were sitting one evening in the open piazza of St. Mark, in front of the most thronged cafe of that matchless square. The moon was resting her silver disk on the point of the Campanile, and the shadows of thousands of gay Venetians fell on the immense pavement below, clear and sharply drawn as a black cartoon. The four extending sides of the THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 489 square lay half in shades half in light, wiih their innumerable columns and balconies and sculptured work, and, frowning down on all, in broken light and shadow, stood the arabesque structure of St. Mark's itself dizzying the eyes with its mosaics and confused devices, and thrusting forth the heads of her four golden-collared steeds into the moonbeams, till they looked on that black relief, like the horses of Pluto issuing from the gates of Hades. In the centre of the square stood a tall woman, singing, in rich con- tralto, an old song of the better days of Venice ; and against one of the pillars, Polichinello had backed his wooden stage, and beat about his puppets with an energy worthy of old Dandolo and his helmeted galley-men. To those who wore not the spectacles of grief or discontent, the square of St. Mark's that night was like some cozening tableau. I never saw anything so gay. Everybody who has " swam in a gondola," knows how the cafes of Venice thrust out their checkered awnings over a portion of the square, and filled the shaded space below with chairs and marble tables. In a corner of the shadow thus afforded, with ice and coffee on a small round slab between them, and the flat pavement of the public promenade under their feet, sat our two lovers. With neither hoof nor wheel to drown or interrupt their voices (as in cities whose streets are stones, not water), they murmured their hopes and wishes in the softest language under the sun, and with the sotto voce acquired by all the inhabi- tants of this noiseless city. Turturilla had taken ice to cool her and coffee to take off the chill of her ice, and a bicchiere del pcrfetto amme to reconcile these two antagonists in her digestion, when the slippers of a monk glided by, and in a moment the recognised Father Gasparo made a third in the shadowy corner. The expected bundle was under his arm, and he was on his way to Pasquali's dwelling. Having assured the disconsolate tailor that she had unction and wafer as became the wife of a citizen of Venice like himself, he took heart and grew contenithat she was in heaven. It was a better place, and Turturilla for so little as a gold ring, would supply her place in his bosom. The moon was but a brief week older when Pas- quali and Turturilla stood in the church of our lady of grief, and Father Gasparo within the palings of the altar. She was as fair a maid as ever bloomed in the garden of beauty beloved of Titian, and the tailor was nearer worth nine men to look at, than the fraction of a man considered usually the exponent of his profes- sion. Away mumbled the good father upon the mat- rimonial service, thinking of the old wine and rich pastries that were holding their sweetness under cork and crust only till he had done his ceremony, and quicker by some seconds than had ever been achieved before by priest or bishop, he arrived at the putting on of the ring. His hand was tremulous, and (oh un- lucky omen !) he dropped it within the gilden fence of the chancel. The choristers were called, and Father Gasparo dropped on his knees to look for it — but if the devil had not spirited it away, there was no other reason why that search was in vain. Short of an errand to the goldsmith on the Rialto, it was at last determined the wedding could not proceed. Fa- ther Gasparo went to hide his impatience within the restiary, and Turturilla knelt down to pray against the arts of Sathanas. Before they had settled severally to their pious occupations, Pasquali was half way to the Rialto. Half an hour elapsed, and then instead of the light grazing of a swift-sped gondola along the church stairs, the splash of a sullen oar was heard, and Pas- quali stepped on shore. They had hastened to the door to receive him — monk, choristers and bride — and to their surprise and bewilderment, he waited to hand out a woman in a strange dress, who seemed dis- posed, bridegroom as he was, to make him wait her leisure. Her clothes fitted her ill, and she carried in her hand a pair of shoes, it was easy to see were never made for her. She rose at last, and as her face be- came visible, down dropped Turturilla and the pious father, and motionless and aghast stood the simple Pasquali. Fiametta stepped on shore ! In broken words Pasquali explained. He had landed at the stairs near the fish market, and with two leaps reaching the top, sped off past the buttress in the direction of the goldsmith, when his course was arrested by encountering at full speed, the person of an old woman. Hastily raising her up, he recognised his wife, who, fully recovered, but without a gondola, was threading the zig-zag alleys on foot, on her way to her own domicil. After the first astonishment was over, her dress explained the error of the good father and the extent of his own misfortune. The clothes had been hung between the bed of Fiametta and that of a smaller woman who had been long languishing of a consumption. She died, and Fiametta's clothes, brought to the door by mistake, were recognised by Father Gasparo and taken to Pasquali. The holy monk, chop-fallen and sad, took his soli- tary way to the convent, but with the first step he felt something slide into the heel of his sandal. He sat down on the church stairs and absolved the devil from theft — it was the lost ring, which had fallen upon his foot and saved Pasquali the tailor from the pains of bigamy. THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. I " Affection is a fire which kindleth as well in the bramble as in I the oak, and catcheth hold where it first lighteth, not where it may best burn. Larks that mount in the air build their nests below in the earth ; and women that cast their eyes upon kings, may place their hearts upon vassals." — Marlowe. " Vagrement est arbitraire : la beaute est quclque chose de plus reel 1 et de plus independent du gout et de I 'opinion ."—La. Bruyere. Fast and rebukingly rang the matins from the : towers of St. Etienne, and, though unused to wake, i much less to pray, at that sunrise hour, I felt a com- punctious visiting as my postillion cracked his whip and flew past the sacred threshold, over which trip- ped, as if every stroke would be the last, the tardy yV. light-footed mass-goers of Vienna. It was my firsv entrance into this Paris of Germany, and I stretched my head from the window to look back with delight upon the fretted gothic pile, so cumbered with orna- ment, yet so light and airy — so vast in the area it covered, yet so crusted in every part with delicate de- j vice and sculpture. On sped the merciless postillion, and the next moment we rattled into the court-yard of the hotel. I gave my keys to the most faithful and intelligent of valets— an English boy of sixteen, promoted from white top-boots and a cabriolet in London, to a plain coat and almost his master's friendship upon the con- tinent—and leaving him to find rooms to my taste, make them habitable and get breakfast, I retraced my way to ramble a half hour through the aisles of St. Etienne. . . , The lingering bell was still beating its quick and monotonous call, and just before me, followed closely by a female domestic, a veiled and slightly-formed lady stepped over the threshold of the cathedral, and took her way by the least-frequented aisle to the a tar. I gave a passing glance of admiration at the small ankle and dainty chaussure betrayed by her hurried step; k..» w^oinhArim/ with a slight effort that I had sought but remembering with a slight 490 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. the church with at least some feeble intentions of re- ligious worship, I crossed the broad nave to the oppo- site side, and was soon leaning against a pillar, and listening to the heavenly-breathed music of the volun- tary, with a confused, but I trust, not altogether un- profitable feeling of devotion. The peasants, with their baskets standing beside them on the tesselated floor, counted their beads upon their knees ; the murmur, low-toned and universal, rose through the vibrations of the anthem with an ac- companiment upon which I have always thought the great composers calculated, no less than upon the echoing arches, and atmosphere thickened with in- cense ; and the deep-throated priest muttered his Latin prayer, more edifying to me that it left my thoughts to their own impulses of worship, unde- meaned by the irresistible littleness of criticism, and unchecked by the narrow bounds of another's com- prehension of the Divinity. Without being in any leaning of opinion a son of the church of Rome, I confess my soul gets nearer to heaven ; and my re- I ligious tendencies, dulled and diverted from improve- i menf by a life of travel and excitement, are more ! gratefully ministered to, in the indistinct worship of I the catholics. It seems to me that no man can pray ! well through the hesitating lips of another. The i inflated style or rhetorical efforts of many, addres- j sing Heaven with difficult grammar and embarrass- ed logic — and the weary monotony of others, re- peating without interest and apparently without thought, the most solemn appeals to the mercy of the Almighty — are imperfect vehicles, at least to me, for a fresh and apprehensive spirit of worship. The religious architecture of the catholics favors the solitary prayer of the heart. The vast floor of the cathedral, the far receding aisles with their solemn light, to which penetrate only the indistinct murmur of priest and penitent, and the affecting wail or tri- umphant hallelujah of the choir; the touching atti- tudes and utter abandonment of all around to their unarticulated devotions; the freedom to enter and de- part, unquestioned and unnoticed, and the wonderful impressiveness of the lofty architecture, clustered with mementoes of death, and presenting through every sense, some unobtrusive persuasion to the duties of the spot— all these, I can not but think, are aids, not unimportant to devout feeling, nor to the most careless keeper of his creed and conscience, entirely without salutary use. My eye had been resting unconsciously on the drapery of a statue, upon which the light of a painted oriel window threw the mingled dyes of a peacock. It was the figure of an apostle ; and curious at last to see whence the colors came which turned the saintly garb into a mantle of shot silk, I strayed toward the eastern window, and was studying the gorgeous dyes and grotesque drawing of an art lost to the world, when I discovered that I was in the neighborhood of the pretty figure that had tripped into church so lightly before me. She knelt near the altar, a little forward from one of the heavy gothic pillars, with her maid beside her, and, close behind knelt a gentleman, who I observed at a second glance, was paying his devo- tions exclusively to the small foot that peeped from the edge of a snowy peignoir, the dishabille of which was covered and betrayed by a lace-veil and mantle. As I stood thinking what a graceful study her figure would make for a sculptor, and what an irreligious im- pertinence was visible in the air of the gentleman be- hind, he leaned forward as if to prostrate his face upon the pavement, and pressed his lips upon the slender sole of (I have no doubt) the prettiest shoe in Vienna. The natural aversion which all men have for each other as strangers, was quickened in my bosom by a feeling much more vivid, and said to be quite as natu- ral — resentment at any demonstration by another of preference for the woman one has admired. If I have not mistaken human nature, there is a sort of imagina- ry property which every man feels in a woman he has looked upon with even the most transient regard, which is violated malgre lui, by a similar feeling on the part of any other individual. Not sure that the gentleman, who had so suddenly become my enemy, had any warrant in the lady's con- nivance for his attentions, I retreated to the shelter of the pillar, and was presently satisfied that he was as much a stranger to her as myself, and was decidedly annoying her. A slight advance in her position to escape his contact gave me the opportunity I wished, j and stepping upon the small space between the skirt of her dress and the outpost of his ebony cane, I began to study the architecture of the roof with great serious- ness. The gothic order, it is said, sprang from the first attempts at constructing roofs from the branches of trees, and is more perfect as it imitates more closely the natural wilderness with its tall tree-shafts and in- terlacing limbs. With my eyes half shut I endeavor- ed to transport myself to an American forest, and con- vert the beams and angles of this vast gothic structure into a primitive temple of pines, with the sunshine coming brokingly through; but the delusion, other- wise easy enough, was destroyed by the cherubs roost- ing on the cornices, and the apostles and saints perch- ed as it were in the branches; and, spite of myself, I thought it represented best Shylock's "wilderness of monkeys." " S'iL vous plait, monsieur /" said the gentleman, pulling me by the pantaloons as I was losing myself in these ill-timed speculations. I looked down. " Vous me genez, monsieur .'" "J'en suis Men sure, monsieur /" — and I resumed my study of the roof, turning gradually round till my heels were against his knees, and backing peu-d-peu. It has often occurred to me as a defect in the system of civil justice, that the time of the day at which a crime is committed is never taken into account by judge or jury. The humors of an empty stomach act so ener- getically on the judgment and temper of a man, and the same act appears so differently to him, fasting and full, that I presume an inquiry into the subject would prove that few offences against law and human pity were ever perpetrated by villains who had dined. In the adventure before us, the best-disposed reader will condemn my interference in a stranger's gallantries as I impertinent and quixotic. Later in the day, I should as soon have thought of ordering water-cresses for the j gentleman's dindon aux. trvffes. j . I was calling myself to account something after the j above fashion, the gentleman in question standing near i me, drumming on his boot with his ebony cane, when I the lady rose, threw her rosary over her neck, and | turning'to me with a graceful smile, courtesied slight- ly and disappeared. 1 was struck so exceedingly with ! the intense melancholy in the expression of the face — an expression so totally at variance with the elasticity of the step, and the promise of the slight and riante figure and air — that I quite forgot I had drawn a j quarrel on myself, and was loitering slowly toward the door of the church, when the gentleman I had offend- ed touched me on the arm, and in the politest manner possible requested my address. We exchanged cards, and I hastened home to breakfast, musing on the facility with which the current of our daily life may be thickened. I fancied I had a new love on my hands, and I was tolerably sure of a quarrel — yet I had been in Vienna but fifty-four minutes by Breguet. My breakfast was waiting, and Percie had found time to turn a comb through his brown curls, and get the dust off his gaiters. He was tall for his age, and (unaware to himself, poor boy !) every word and action reflected upon the handsome seamstress in Cianbourne THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 491 Alley, whom he called his mother— for he showed blood. His father was a gentleman, or there is no truth in thorough-breeding. As I looked at him, a difficulty vanished from my mind. « Percie!" "Get into your best suit of plain clothes, and if a foreigner calls on me this morning, come in and forget that you are a valet. I have occasion to use you for a gentleman." m Yes, sir !" " My pistols are clean, I presume ?" "Yes, sir!" I wrote a letter or two, read a volume of " Ni jamais, ni toujours" and about noon a captain of dragoons was announced, bringing me the expected cartel. Percie came in, treading gingerly in a pair of tight French boots, but behaving exceedingly like a gentleman, and after a little conversation, managed on his part strictly according to my instructions, he took his cane and walked off with his friend of the steel scabbard to become acquainted with the ground. The gray of a heavenly summer morning was brightening above the chimneys of the fair city of j i Vienna as I stepped into a caliche, followed by Per- cie. With aspecial passport (procured by the polite- nessof my antagonist) we made our sortie at that early bour from the gates, and crossing the glacis, took the road to the banks of the Danube. It was but a mile from the city, and the mist lay low on the face of the troubled current of the river, while the towers and j pinnacles of the silent capital cut the sky in clear and ' sharp lines — as if tranquillity and purity, those im- maculate hand-maidens of nature, had tired of inno- cence and their mistress — and slept in town ! I had taken some coffee and broiled chicken before starting, and (removed thus from the category of the savage unbreakfasted) I was in one of those moods of universal benevolence, said (erroneously) to be pro- duced only by a clean breast and milk diet. I could have wept, with Wordsworth, over a violet. My opponent was there with his dragoon, and Per- cie, cool and gentlemanlike, like a man who " had served," looked on at the loading of the pistols, and gave me mine with a very firm hand, but with a mois- ture and anxiety in his eye which I have remembered j since. We were to fire any time after the counting of three, and having no malice against my friend, j whose impertinence to a lady was (really!) no business ' of mine, I intended, of course, to throw away my fire. The first word was given and I looked at my an- [ tagonist, who, I saw at a glance, had no such gentle intentions. He was taking deliberate aim, and in the four seconds that elapsed between the remaining two words, I changed my mind (one thinks so fast when his leisure is limited !) at least twenty times whether I should fire at him or no. " Trois .'" pronounced the dragoon, from a throat like a trombone, and with the last thought, up flew my hand, and as my pistol discharged in the air, my friend's shot struck upon a large turquoise which I wore on my third finger, and drew a slight pencil-line across my left organ of causality. It was well aimed for my temple, but the ring had saved me. Friend of those days, regretted and unforgotten ! days of the deepest sadness and heart-heaviness, yet somehow dearer in remembrance than all the joys I can recall — there was a talisman in thy parting gift thou didst not think would be, one day, my angel ! " You will be able to wear your hair over the scar, sir!" said Percie, coming up and putting his finger on the wound. "Monsieur!" said the dragoon, advancing to Per- cie after a short conference with his principal, and looking twice as fierce as before. " Monsieur !" said Percie, wheeling short updn him. " My friend is not satisfied. He presumes that monsieur V Anglais wishes to trifle with him." " Then let your friend take care of himself," said I, roused by the unprovoked murderousness of the feel- ing. Load the pistols, Percie ! In my country," I continued, turning to the dragoon, " a man isdisgraced who fires twice upon an antagonist who has spared him ! Your friend is a ruffian, and the consequences be on his own hand !" We took our places and the first word was given, when a man dashed between us on horseback at top- speed. The violence with which he drew rein brought his horse upon his haunches, and he was on his feet in half a breath. The idea that he was an officer of the police was immediately dissipated by his step and air. Of the finest athletic form I had ever seen, agile, graceful, and dressed pointedly well, there was still an inde- finable something about him, either above or below a gentleman — which, it was difficult to say. His features were slight, fair, and, except a brow too heavy for them and a lip of singular and (I thought) habitual defiance, almost feminine. His hair grew long and had been soigne, probably by more cares- sing fingers than his own, and his rather silken mus- tache was glossy with some odorent oil. As he approached me and took my hand, with a clasp like a smith's vice, I observed these circumstances, and could have drawn his portrait without ever seeing him again — so marked a man was he, in every point and feature. His business was soon explained. He was the husband of the lady my opponent had insulted, and that pleasant gentleman could, of course, make no ob- jection to his taking my place. I officiated as tbnoin, and, as they took their position, 1 anticipated for the dragoon and myself the trouble of carrying them toth off the field. 1 had a practical assurance of my friend's pistol, and the stranger was not the looking man to miss a hair's breadth of his aim. The word was not fairly off my lips when both pistols cracked like one discharge, and high into the air sprang my revengeful opponent, and dropped like a clod upon the grass. The stranger opened his waistcoat, thrust his fore-finger into a wound in his left breast, and slightly closing his teeth, pushed a bullet through, which had been checked by the bone and lodged in the flesh near the skin. The surgeon who had accompanied my unfortunate antagonist, left the body, which he had found beyond his art, and readily gave his assistance to stanch the blood of my preserver; and jumping with the latter into my caliche, I put Percie upon the stranger's horse, and we drove back to Vienna. The market people were crowding in at the gate, the merry peasant girls glanced at us with their blue, German eyes, the shopmen laid out their gay wares I to- the street, and the tide of life ran on as busily and ! as gayly, though a drop had been extracted, within ! scarce ten minutes, from its quickest vein. I felt a ! revulsion at my heart, and grew faint and sick. Is a human life — is my life worth anything, even a thought, I to my fellow-creatures ? was the bitter question forced | upon my soul. How icily and keenly the unconscious ! indifference of the world penetrates to the nerve and ! marrow of him who suddenly realizes it. We dashed through the kohl-market, and driving into the porte-cochere of a dark-looking house in one of the cross streets of that quarter, were ushered into apartments of extraordinary magnificence. CHAPTER II. " What do you want, Percie ?" He was walking into the room with all the deli- berate politeness of a " gold-stick-in-waiting." 492 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. " I beg pardon, sir, but I was asked to walk up, and I was nol sure whether I was still a gentleman." It instantly struck me that it might seem rather infra dig to the chevalier (my new friend had thus announced himself) to have had a valet for a second, and as he immediately after entered the room, having step- ped below to give orders about his horse, I presented Percie as a gentleman and my friend, and resumed my observation of the singular apartment in which I found myself. The effect on coming first in at the door, was that of a small and lofty chapel, where the light struggled in from an unseen aperture above the altar. There were two windows at the farther extremity, but cur- tained so heavily, and set so deeply into the wall, that I did not at first observe the six richly-carpeted steps which led up to them, nor the luxuriously cushioned seats on either side of the casement, within the niche, for those who would mount thither for fresh air. The walls were tapestried, but very ragged and dusty, and the floor, though there were several thicknesses of the heavy-piled, small, Turkey carpets laid loosely over it, was irregular and sunken. The corners were heaped with various articles I could not at first distinguish. My host fortunately gave me an opportunity to gratify my curiosity by frequent absences under the house- keeper's apology (odd I thought for a chevalier) of expediting breakfast ; and with the aid of Percie, I tumbled his chattels about with all necessary freedom. " That," said the chevalier, entering, as I turned out the face of a fresh colored picture to the light, " is a capo d'opera of a French artist, who painted it, as you may say, by the gleam of the dagger." " A cool light, as a painter would say !" " He was a cool fellow, sir, and would have handled a broa'dsword better than a pencil." Percie stepped up while I was examining the ex- quisite finish of the picture, and asked very respect- fully if the chevalier would give him the particulars of the story. It was a full-length portrait of a young and excessively beautiful girl, of apparently scarce fifteen, entirely nude, and lying upon a black velvet couch, with one foot laid on a broken diadem, and her right hand pressing a wild rose to her heart. " It was the fancy, sir," continued the chevalier, " of a bold outlaw, who loved the only daughter of a noble of Hungary." " Is this the lady, sir?" asked Percie, in his politest valet French. The chevalier hesitated a moment and looked over his shoulder as if he might be overheard. |* This is she — copied to the minutest shadow of a hair ! He was a bold outlaw, gentlemen, and had plueked the lady from her father's castle with his own hand." "Against her will?" interrupted Percie, rather energetically. " No !" scowled the chevalier, as if his lowering brows had articulated the word, " by her own will and connivance; for she loved him." Percie drew a long breath, and looked more close- ly at the taper limbs and the exquisitely-chiselled features of the face, which was turned" over the shoulder with a look of timid shame inimitably true to nature. " She loved him," continued our fierce narrator, who, I almost began to suspect was the outlaw him- self, by the energy with which he enforced the tale, '• and after a moonlight ramble or two with him in the forest of her father's domain, she fled and became his wife. You are admiring the hair, sir ! It is as luxuriant and glossy now !" " If you please, sir, it is the villain himself!" said Percie in an undertone. "Bref," continued the chevalier, either not under- standing English or not heeding the interruption, "an adventurous painter, one day hunting the picturesque in the neighborhood of the outlaw's retreat, surprised this fair creature bathing in one of the loneliest moun- tain-streams in Hungary. His art appeared to be his first passion, for he hid himself in the trees and drew her as she stood dallying on the margin of the small pool in which the brook loitered; and so busy was he with his own work, or so soft was the mountain moss under its master's tread, that the outlaw looked, un- perceived the while, over his shoulder, and fell in love anew with the admirable counterfeit. She looked like a naiad, sir, new-born of a dew-drop and a violet." I nodded an assent to Percie. "The sketch, excellent as it seemed, was still un- finished when the painter, enamored as he might well be, of these sweet limbs, glossy with the shining water, flung down his book and sprang toward her The outlaw " " Struck him to the heart ? Oh Heaven !" said Percie, covering his eyes as if he could see the murder. " No ! he was a student of the human soul, and de- ferred his vengeance." Percie looked up and listened, like a man whose wits were perfectly abroad. " He was not unwilling since her person had been seen irretrievably, to know how his shrinking Iminild (this was her name of melody) would have escaped, had she been found alone." " The painter" — prompted Percie, impatient for the sequel. " The painter flew over rock and brake, and sprang into the pool in which she was half immersed ; and my brave girl " He hesitated, for he had betrayed himself. " Ay — she is mine, gentlemen ; and I am Yvain, the outlaw — my brave wife, I say with a single bound, leaped to the rock where her dress was concealed, seized a short spear which she used as a staff in her climbing rambles, and struck it through his shoulder as he pursued !" " Bravely done !" I thought aloud. " Was it not ? I came up the next moment, but the spear stuck in his shoulder, and I could not fall upon a wounded man. We carried him to our ruined castle in the mountains, and while my Iminild cured her own wound, I sent for his paints, and let him finish his bold beginning with a difference of my own. You see the picture." " Was the painter's love cured with his wound !" I asked with a smile. "No, by St. Stephen! He grew ten times more enamored as he drew. He was as fierce as a welk hawk, and as willing to quarrel for his prey. I could have driven my dagger to his heart a hundred times for the mutter of his lips and the flash of his dark eyes as he fed his gaze upon her ; but he finished the pic- ture, and I gave him a fair field. He chose the broad- sword, and hacked away at me like a man." "And the result" — 1 asked. " I am here !" replied the outlaw significantly. Percie leaped upon the carpeted steps, and pushed back the window for fresh air; and, for myself, 1 scarce knew how to act under the roof of a man, who, though he confessed himself an outlaw and almost an assassin, was bound to me by the ties of our own critical ad- venture, and had confided his condition to me with so ready a reliance on my honor. In the midst of my dilemma, while I was pretending to occupy myself with examining a silver mounted and peaked saddle, which I foundbehind the picture in the corner, a deep and unpleasant voice announced breakfast. "Wolfen is rather a grim chamberlain," said the chevalier, bowing with the grace and smile of the softest courtier, " but he will usher you to breakfast and I am sure you stand in need of it. For myself, THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 493 I could eat worse meat than my grandfather with this appetite." . . . ■, Percie gave me a look of inquiry and uneasiness when he found we were to follow the rough domestic through the dark corridors of the old house, and through his underbred politeness of insisting on fol- lowing his host, I could see that he was unwilling to trust "the outlaw with the rear ; but a massive and broad door, flung open at the end of the passage, let in upon us presently the cool and fresh air from a northern exposure, and, stepping forward quickly to the threshold, we beheld a picture which changed the current and color of our thoughts. In the bottom of an excavated area, which, as well as I could judge, must be forty feet below the level of the court, lay a small and antique garden, brilliant with the most costly flowers, and cooled by a fountain gushing from under the foot of a nymph in marble. The spreading tops of six alleys of lindens reaching to the level of the street, formed a living roof to the grot-like depths of the garden, and con- cealed it from all view but that of persons descend- ing like ourselves from the house ; while, instead of walls to shut in this paradise in the heart of a city, sharply inclined slopes of green-sward leaned in under the branches of the lindens, and completed the fairy-like enclosure of shade and verdure. As we descended the rose-laden steps and terraces, I ob- served, that, of the immense profusion of flowers in the area below, nearly all were costly exotics, whose pots were set in the earth, and probably brought away from the sunshine only when in high bloom; and as we rounded the spreading basin of the foun- tain which broke the perspective of the alley, a table, which had been concealed by the marble nymph, and a skilfully-disposed array of rhododendrons lay just beneath our feet, while a lady, whose features 1 could not fail to remember, smiled up from her couch of crimson cushions and gave us a graceful welcome. The same taste for depth which had been shown in the room sunk below the windows, and the garden below the street, was continued in the kind of mar- ble divan in which we were to breakfast. Four steps descending from the pavement of the alley introduc- ed us into a circular excavation, whose marble seats, covered with cushions of crimson silk, surrounded a table laden with the substantial viands which are common to a morning meal in Vienna, and smoking with coffee, whose aroma (Percie agreed with me) exceeded even the tube roses in grateful sweetness. Between the cushions at our backs and the pave- ments just above the level of our heads, were piled cir- cles of thickly-flowering geraniums, which enclosed us in rings of perfume, and, pouring from the cup of a sculptured flower, held in the hand of the nymph, a smooth stream like a silver rod supplied a channel grooved around the centre of the marble table, through which the bright water, with the impulse of its descent, made a swift revolution and disappeared. It was a scene to give memory the lie if it could have recalled the bloodshed of the morning. The green light flecked down through the lofty roof upon the glittering and singing water ; a nightingale in a recess of the garden, gurgled through his wires as if intoxicated with the congenial twilight of his prison ; the heavy-cupped flowers of the tropics nodded with the rain of the fountain spray; the distant roll of wheels in the neighboring streets came with an assurance of reality to this dream-land, yet softened by the unreverberating roof and an air crowded with flowers and trembling with the pulsations of falling water; the lowering forehead of the outlaw cleared u]) like a sky of June after a thunder-shower, and his • voice grew gentle and caressing ; and the delicate mistress of all (by birth, Countess Iininilrl), a crea- ture as slight as Psyche, and as white as the lotus, whose flexile stem served her for a bracelet, wel- comed us with her soft voice and humid eyes, and saddened by the event of the morning, looked on her husband with a tenderness that would have assoiled her of her sins against delicacy, I thought even in the mind of an angel. " We live, like truth, here, in the bottom of a well," said the countess to Percie, as she gave him his cof- fee ; " how do you like my whimsical abode, sir?" " I should like any place where you were, Miladi !" he answered, blushing and stealing his eyes across at me, either in doubt how far he might presume upon his new character, or suspecting that I should smile at his gallantry. The outlaw glanced his eyes over the curling head of the boy, with one of those just perceptible smiles which developed, occasionally, in great beauty, the gentle spirit in his bosom ; and Iminild, pleased with the compliment or the blush, threw off her pensive mood, and assumed in an instant, the coquettish air which had attracted my notice as she stepped before me into the church of St. Etienne. "You had hard work," she said, "to keep up with your long-legged dragoon yesterday, Monsieur Percie !" " Miladi ?" he answered, with a look of inquiry. " Oh, I was behind you, and my legs are not much longer than yours. How he strided away with his long spurs, to be sure ! Do you remember a smart young gentleman with a blue cap that walked past you on the glacis occasionally." " Ah, with laced boots, like a Hungarian ?" " I see I am ever to be known by my foot," said she, putting it out upon the cushion, and turning it about with naive admiration ; " that poor captain of the imperial guard paid dearly for kissing it, holy virgin !" and she crossed herself and was silent for a moment. « If I might take the freedom, chevalier," I said, " pray how came I indebted to your assistance in this affair ?" "Iminild has partly explained," he answered. " She knew, of course, that a challenge would follow your interference, and it was very easy to know that an officer of some sort would take a message in the course of the morning to Le Prince Charles, the only hotel frequented by the English d'un certain gens. I bowed to the compliment. " Arriving in Vienna late last night, I found Iminild (who had followed this gentleman and the dragoon unperceived) in possession of all the circumstances ; and, but for oversleeping myself this morning, I should have saved your turquoise, man seigneur /" " Have you lived here long, Miladi ?" asked Per- cie, looking up into her eyes with an unconscious passionateness which made the countess Iminild color slightly, and bite her lips to retain an expression of pleasure. » I have not lived long, anywhere, sir!" she answer- ed half archly, "but I played in this garden when not much older than you !" Percie looked confused and pulled up his cravat. " This house said the chevalier, willing apparently to spare the countess a painful narration, " is the property of the old count Ildefert, my wile's lather. He has long ceased to visit Vienna, and has lelt it, he supposes, to a stranger. When Iminild tires of the forest, she comes here, and I join her if I can find time. I must to the saddle to-morrow, by St. Jacques. The word had scarce died on his lips when the door by which we had entered the garden was flung open, and the measured tread of gens-cParmes resounded in the corridor. The first man who stood out upon the upper terrace was the dragoon who had been second to mv opponent. 494 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. " Trailer and villain !" muttered the outlaw between his teeth, " I thought I remembered you ! It is that false comrade Berthold, Iminild !" Yvain had risen from the table as if but to stretch his legs ; and drawing a pistol from his bosom he cocked it as he quietly stepped up into the garden. I saw at a glance that there was no chance for his escape, and laid my hand on his arm. " Chevalier !" I said, " surrender and trust to op- portunity. It is madness to resist here." " Yvain !" said Iminild, in a low voice, flying to his side as she comprehended his intention, " leave me that vengeance, and try the parapet. I'll kill him be- fore he sleeps! Quick ! Ah, Heavens !" The dragoon had turned at that instant to fly, and with suddenness of thought the pistol flashed, and the traitor dropped heavily on the terrace. Spring- ing like a cut up the slope of green sward, Yvain stood an instant on the summit of the wall, hesitating where to jump beyond, and in the next moment rolled heavily back, stabbed through and through with a bayonet from the opposite side. The blood left the lips and cheek of Iminild ; but without a word or a sign of terror, she sprang to the side of the fallen outlaw and lifted him up against her knee. The gens-d' armes rushed to the spot, but the subaltern who commanded them yielded instantly to my wish that they should retire to the skirts of the garden ; and, sending Percie to the fountain for water, we bathed the lips and forehead of the dying man and set him against the sloping parapet. With one hand grasping the dress of Iminild and the other clasped in mine, he struggled to speak. " The cross !" he gasped, " the cross !" Iminild drew a silver crucifix from her bosom. "Swear on this," he said, putting it to my lips and speaking with terrible energy, " swear that you will protect her while you live !" " I swear!" He shut our hands together convulsively, gasped slightly as if he would speak again, and, in another instant sunk, relaxed and lifeless, on the shoulder of Iminild. CHAPTER III. The fate and history of Yvain, the outlaw, became, on the following day, the talk of Vienna. He had been long known as the daring horse-stealer of Hun- gary ; and, though it was not doubted that his sway was exercised over plunderers of every description, even pirates upon the high seas, his own courage and address were principally applied to robbery of the well- guarded steeds of the emperor and his nobles. It was said that there was not a horse in the dominions of Austria whose qualities and breeding were not known to him, nor one he cared to have which was not in his concealed stables in the forest. The most incredible stories were told of his horsemanship. He would so disguise the animal on which he rode, either by forcing him into new paces or by other arts only known to him- self, that he would make the tour of the Glacis on the emperor's best horse, newly stolen, unsuspected even by the royal grooms. The roadsters of his own troop were the best steeds bred on the banks of the Danube; but, though always in the highest condition, they would never have been suspected to be worth a florin till put upon their mettle. The extraordinary escapes of his band from the vigilant and well-mounted gens- cVarmes were thus accounted for ; and, in most of the villages in Austria, the people, on some market-day or other, had seen a body of apparently ill-mounted peasants suddenly start off with the speed of lightning at the appearance of gens-d'armes, and, flying over fence and wall, draw a straight course for the mount- ains, distancing their pursuers with the ease of swal- lows on the wing. After the death of Yvain in the garden, I had been forced with Percie into a carriage, standing in the court, and accompanied by a guard, driven to my hotel, where I was given to understand that I was to remain under arrest till further orders. A sentinel at the door forbade all ingress or egress except to the people of the house : a circumstance which was only distressing to me, as it precluded my inquiries after the countress Iminild, of whom common rumor, the servants informed me, made not the slightest mention. Four days after this, on the relief of the guard at noon, a subaltern, entered my room and informed me that I was at liberty. I instantly made preparations to go out, and was drawing on my boots, when Percie, who had not yet recovered from the shock of his arrest, entered in some alarm, and informed me that one of the royal grooins was in the court with a letter, which he would deliver only into my own hands. He had orders beside, he said, not to leave his saddle. Wondering what new leaf of my destiny was to turn over, I went below and received a letter, with apparent- ly the imperial seal, from a well-dressed groom in the livery of the emperor's brother, the king of Hungary. He was mounted on a compact, yet fine-limbed horse, and both horse and rider were as still as if cut in marble. I returned to my room and broke the seal. It was a letter from Iminild, and the bold bearer was an out- law disguised ! She had heard that I was to be re- leased that morning, and desired me to ride out on the road to Gratz. In a postscript she begged I would request Monsieur Percie to accompany me. I sent for horses, and, wishing to be left to my own thoughts, ordered Percie to fall behind, and rode slowly out of the southern gate. If the countess Iminild were safe, I had enough of the adventure for my taste. My oath bound me to protect this wild and unsexed woman, but farther intercourse with a band of outlaws, or farther peril of my head for no reason that either a court of gallantry orof justice would rec- ognise, was beyond my usual programme of pleasant events. The road was a gentle ascent, and with, the bridle on the neck of my hack I paced thoughtfully on, till, at a slight turn, we stood at a fair height above | Vienna. " It is a beautiful city, sir," said Percie, riding up. " How the deuce could she have escaped ?" said I, thinking aloud. " Has she escaped, sir ? Ah, thank Heaven !" ex- claimed the passionate boy, the tears rushing to his eyes. " Why, Percie !" I said with a tone of surprise which called a blush into his face, " have you really found leisure to fall in love amid all this imbroglio ?'' " I beg pardon, my dear master !" he replied in a confused voice, "I scarce know what it is to fall in love ; but I would die for Miladi Iminild." " Not at all an impossible sequel, my poor boy ! But wheel about and touch your hat, for here comes some one of the royal family !" A horseman was approaching at an easy canter, over the broad and unfenced plain of table-land which overlooks Vienna on the south, attended by six mount- ed servants in the white kerseymere frocks, braided with the two-headed black eagle, which distinguish the members of the imperial household. The carriages on the road stopped while he passed, the foot-passengers touched their caps, and, as he came near, I perceived that he was slight and young, but rode with a confidence and a grace not often attained. His horse had the subdued, half-fiery action of an A.rab, and Percie nearly dropped from his saddle when the young horseman suddenly drove in his spurs, THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 495 and with almost a single vault stood motionless be- fore us. " Monsieur /" " Madame la Contesse .'" I was uncertain how to receive her, and took refuge in civility. Whether she would be overwhelmed with the recollection of Yvain's death, or had put away the thought altogether with her masculine firmness, was a dilemma for which the eccentric contradictions of her character left me no probable solution. Motion- ing with her hand after saluting me, two of the party rode back and forward in different directions, as if patrolling; and giving a look between a tear and a smile at Percie, she placed her hand in mine, and shook off her sadness with a strong effort. " You did not expect so large a suite with your protegee" she said, rather gayly, after a moment. 41 Do I understand that you come now to put your- self under my protection?" I asked in reply. " Soon, but not now, nor here. I have a hundred men at the foot of Mount Semering, whose future fate, in some important respects, none can decide but myself. Yva'm was always prepared for this, and everything is en train. I come now but to appoint a place of meeting. Quick ! my patrole comes in, and some one approaches whom we must fly. Can you await me at Gratz ?"' " I can and will !" She put her slight hand to my lips, waved a kiss at Percie, and away with the speed of wind, flew her swift Arab over the plain, followed by the six horse- men, every one of whom seemed part of the animal that carried him — he rode so admirably- The slight figure of Iminild in the close fitting dress of a Hungarian page, her jacket open and her beauti- ful limbs perfectly defined, silver fringes at her ankles and waist, and a row of silver buttons gallonne down to the instep, her bright, flashing eyes, her short curls escaping from her cap and tangled over her left temple, with the gold tassel, dirk and pistol at her belt and spurs upon her heels — it was an apparition I had scarce time to realize, but it seemed painted on my eyes. The cloud of dust which followed their rapid flight faded away as f watched it, but I saw her still. " Shall I ride back and order post-horses, sir !" asked Percie standing up in his stirrups. "No ; but you may order dinner at six. And Per- cie !" he was riding away with a gloomy air ; " you may go to the police and get our passports for Venice." " By the way of Gratz, sir!" " Yes, simpleton !" There is a difference between sixteen and twenty- six, I thought to myself, as the handsome boy flogged his horse into a gallop. The time is gone when I could love without reason. Yet 1 remember when a feather, stuck jauntily into a bonnet, would have made any woman a princess; and in those days. Heaven help tis ! I should have loved this woman more for her galliardize than ten times a prettier one with all the virtues of Dorcas. For which of my sins am I made guardian to a robber's wife, I wonder ! The heavy German postillions, with their cocked hats and yellow coats, got us over the ground after a manner, and toward the sunset of a summer's evening the tall castle of Gratz, perched on a pinnacle of rock in the centre of a vast plain, stood up boldly against the reddening sky. The rich fields of Styria were ripening to an early harvest, the people sat at their doors with the look of household happiness for which the inhabitants of these "despotic countries" are so remarkable ; and now and then on the road the rattling of steel scabbards drew my attention from a book or a revery, and the mounted troops, so perpetually seen on the broad roads of Austria, lingered slowly past with their dust and baggage-trains. It had been a long summer's day, and, contrary to my usual practice, I had not mounted, even for half a post, to Percie's side in the rumble. Out of humor with fate for having drawn me into very embarrassing circumstances — out of humor with myself for the quixotic step which had first brought it on me — and a little of out humor with Percie (perhaps from an un- acknowledged jealousy of Iminild's marked preference for the varlet), I left him to toast alone in the sun, while I tried to forget him and myself in " Le Marquis de Pontangos." What a very clever book it is, by the way ! The pompous sergeant of the guard performed his office upon my passport at the gate — giving me at least a kreutzer worth of his majesty's black sand in exchange for my florin and my English curse (I said before I was out of temper, and he was half an hour writing his abominable name), and leaving my carriage and Percie to find their way together to the hotel, I dismounted at the foot of a steep street and made my way to the battlements of the castle, in search of scene- ry and equanimity. Ah ! what a glorious landscape ! The precipitous rock on which the old fortress is built seems dropped by the Titans in the midst of a plain, extending miles i in every direction, with scarce another pebble. Close at its base run the populous streets, coiling about it like serpents around a pyramid, and away from the walls of the city spread the broad fields, laden, as far as the eye can see, with tribute for the emperor! The tall castle, with its armed crest, looks down among the reapers. " You have not lost your friend and lover, yet you are melancholy !" said a voice behind me, that I was scarce startled to hear. "Is it you, Iminild ?" " Scarce the same — forlmiuild was never before so sad. It is something in the sunset. Come away while the woman keeps down in me, and let us stroll through the Plaza, where the band is playing. Do you love ; military music ?" I looked at the costume and figure of the extra ordinary creature before I ventured with her on s public promenade. She was dressed like one of thf travelling apprentices of Germany, with cap and bleuzcr. and had assumed the air of the craft with a succes? absolutely beyond detection. I gave her my arm and we sauntered through the crowd, listening to the thrilling music of one of the finest bands in Germany. i The privileged character and free manners of the wandering craftsmen whose dress she had adopted, i I was well aware, reconciled, in the eyes of the in- 1 habitants, the marked contrast between our conditions in life. They would simply have said, if they had made a remark at all, that the Englishman was bon enfant and the craftsman bon camarade. " You had better look at me, messieurs !" said the dusty apprentice, as two officers of the regiment passed and gave me the usual strangers' stare ; "lam better worth your while by exactly five thousand florins." " And pray how ?" I asked. " That price is set on my head !" "Heavens! and you walk here !" " They kept you longer than usual with your pass j port, I presume ?" "At the gate? yes." " I came in with my pack at the time. They have orders to examine all travellers and passports with ! unusual care, these sharp officials! But I shall get j out as easily as I got in !" " My dear countess!" I said, in a tone of serious | remonstrance, "do not trifle with the vigilance of the I best police in Europe ! I am your guardian, and you owe my advice some respect. Come away from the I square and let us talk of it in earnest." ' -Wise seignior! suffer me to remind you how 496 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. deftly I slipped through the fingers of these gentry after our tragedy in Vienna, and pay my opinion some respect! It was my vanity that brought me, with my lackeys, to meet you a la prince royale so near Vienna ; and hence this alarm in the police, for 1 was seen and suspected. I have shown myself to you in my favorite character, however, and have done with such measures. You shall see me on the road to-morrow, safe as the heart in your bosom. Where is Monsieur Percie !" " At the hotel. But stay ! can I trust you with yourself?" " Yes, and dull company, too ! A revoir .'" And whistling the popular air of the craft she had assumed, the countess Iminild struck her long staff on the pavement, and with the gait of a tired and habitual pedestrian, disappeared by a narrow street leading under the precipitory battlements of the castle. Percie made his appearance with a cup of coffee the following morning, and, with the intention of post- ing a couple of leagues to breakfast, I hurried through my toilet and was in my carriage an hour after sun- rise. The postillion was in his saddle and only waited for Percie, who, upon inquiry, was nowhere to be found. I sat fifteen minutes, and just as I was be- ginning to be alarmed he ran into the large court of the hotel, and, crying out to the postillions that all was right, jumped into his place with an agility, it struck me, very unlike his usual gentlemanlike deliberation. Determining to take advantage of the first up-hill to catechize him upon his matutinal ram- bles, I read the signs along the street till we pulled up at the gate. Iminild's communication had prepared me for un- usual delay with my passport, and I was not surprised when the officer, in returning it to me, requested me as a matter of form, to declare, upon my honor, that the servant behind my carriage was an Englishman, and the person mentioned in my passport. " Foi d'honneur, monsieur," I said, placing my hand politely on my heart, and off trotted the postillion, while the captain of the guard, flattered with my civili- ty, touched his foraging-cap, and sent me a German blessing through his mustache. It was a divine morning, and the fresh and dewy air took me back many a year, to the days when 1 was more familiar with the hour. We had a long Irajet across the plain, and unlooping an antivibration tablet, for the invention of which my ingenuity took great credit to itself (suspended on caoutchouc cords from the roof of the carriage — and deserving of a patent I trust you will allow !) I let off my poetical vein in the following beginning to what might have turned out, but for the interruption, a very edifying copy of verses : — ' Ye are not what ye were to me, Oh waning night and morning star ! Though silent still your watches flee Though hang yon lamp in heaven as far— Though live the thoughts ye fed of yore I'm thine, oh starry dawn, no more ! Yet to that dew-pearled hour alone I was not folly's blindest child ; It came when wearied mirth had flown, And sleep was on the gay and wild ; And wakeful with repentant pain, I lay amid its lap of flowers, And with a truant's earnest brain Turned back the leaves of wasted hours. The angels that by day would flee, Returned, oh morning star ! with thee ! Yet now again * * * * A foot thrust into my carriage-window rudely broke the thread of these delicate musings. The postillion was on a walk, and before I could get my wits back from their wool-gathering, the countess Iminild, in Percie's clothes, sat laughing on the cushion beside me. "On what bird's back has your ladyship descended from the clouds?" I asked with unfeigned astonish- ment. " The same bird has brought us both down — c'est a dire, if you are not still en /'air," she added, looking from my scrawled tablets to my perplexed face. "Are you really and really the countess Iminild ?" I asked with a smile, looking down at the trowsered feet and loose-fitting boots of the pseudo-valet. " Yes, indeed ! but I leave it to you to swear, l foi d'honneur,'' that a born countess is an English valet !" And she laughed so long and merrily that the postillion looked over his yellow epaulets in as- tonishment. " Kind, generous Percie !'* she said, changing her tone presently to one of great feeling, " I would scarce believe him last night when he informed me, as as in- ! ducement to leave him behind, that he was only a ser- vant ! You never told me this. But he is a gentle- J man, in every feeling as well as in every feature, and, | by Heavens! he shall be a menial no longer!" This speech, begun with much tenderness, rose, toward the close, to the violence of passion ; and folding her arms with an air of defiance, the lady- outlaw threw herself back in the carriage. " I have no objection," I said, after a short silence, " that Percie should set up for a gentleman. Nature has certainly done her part to make him one ; but till you can give him means and education, the coat which you wear, with such a grace, is his safest shell. 'Ants live safely till they have gotten wings,' says the old proverb." The blowing of the postillion's horn interrupted the argument, and, a moment after, we were rolled up, with German leisure, to the door of the small inn where I had designed to breakfast. Thinking it probable that the people of the house, in so small a village, would be too simple to make any dangerous comments upon our appearance, I politely handed the countess out of the carriage, and ordered plates for two. " It is scarce worth while," she said, as she heard the order, "for I shall remain at the door on the look out. The eil-waggen, for Trieste, which was to leave Gratz an hour after us, will be soon here, and (if my friends have served me well), Percie in it. St. Mary speed him safely!" She strode away to a small hillock to look out for the lumbering diligence, with a gait that was no stranger to, "doublet and hose." It soon came on with its usual tempest of whip-cracking and bugle-blasts, and nearly overturning a fat burgher, who would have proffered the assistance of his hand, out jumped a petticoat, which I saw, at a glance, gave a very em- barrassed motion to gentleman Percie. " This young lady," said the countess, dragging the striding and unwilling damsel into the little parlor where I was breakfasting " travels under the charge of a deaf old brazier, who has been requested to protect her modesty as far as Laybach. Make a courtesy, child !" "I beg pardon, sir!" began Percie. " Hush, hush! no English .' Walls have ears, and your voice is rather gruffish, mademoiselle. Show me your passport? Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, eighteen years of age, blue eyes, nose and chin mid- dling, etc ! Thereis the conductor's horn ! Allez vite ! We meet at Laybach. Adieu, charwante femme! Adieu!" And with the sort of caricatured elegance which women always assume in their imitations of our sex, Countess Iminild, in frock-coat and trowsers, helped into the diligence, in hood and petticoat, my " tiger' from Cranbourne-alley ! THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 497 CHAPTER IV. Spite of remonstrance on my part, the imperative countess, who had asserted her authority more than once on our way to Laybach, insisted on the com- pany of Miss Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, in an evening walk around the town. Fearing that Per- cie's masculine stride would betray him, and object- in" to lend myself to a farce with my valet, I opposed the freak as long as it was courteous — but it was not the first time I had learned that a spoiled woman would have her own way, and too vexed to laugh, I soberly promenaded the broad avenue of the capital of Styria, with a valet en demoiselle, and a dame en valet. It was but a few hours hence to Planina, and Iminild, who seemed to fear no risk out of a walled city, waited on Percie to the carriage the following morning, and in a few hours we drove up to the rural inn of this small town of Littorale. I had been too much out of humor to ask the countess, a second time, what errand she could have in so rustic a neighborhood. She had made a mystery of it, merely requiring of me that I should defer all arrangements for the future, as far as she was concern- ed, tiil we had visited a spot in Littorale, upon which her fate in many respects depended. After twenty fruitless conjectures, 1 abandoned myself to the course of circumstances, reserving ODly the determination, if it should prove a haunt of Yvain's troop, to separate at once from her company and await her at Trieste. Our dinner was preparing at the inn, and tired of the embarrassment Percie exhibited in my presence, I walked out and seated myself under an immense linden, that every traveller will remember, standing in the centre of the motley and indescribable clusters of buildings, which serve the innkeeper and black- smith of Planina for barns, forge, dwelling, and out- houses. The tree seems the father of the village. It was a hot afternoon, and I was compelled to dis- pute the shade with a congregation of cows and double- jointed posthorses ; but finding a seat high up on the root, at last I busied myself with gazing down the road, and conjecturing what a cloud of dust might con- tain, which, in an opposite direction from that which we had come, was slowly creeping onward to the inn. Four roughly-harnessed horses at length, appeared, with their traces tied over their backs — one of them ridden by a man in a farmer's frock. They struck me at first as fine specimens of the German breed of draught-horses, with their shaggy fetlocks and long manes ; but while they drank at the trough which stood in the shade of the linden, the low tone in which the man checked their greedy thirst, and the instant obedience of the well-trained animals, awakened at once my suspicions that we were to become better acquainted. A more narrow examination convinced me that, covered with dust and disguised with coarse harness as they were, they were four horses of such bone and condition, as were never seen in a farmer's stables. The rider dismounted at the inn door, and very much to the embarrassment of my suppositions, the landlord, a stupid and heavy Boniface, greeted him with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, and in an- swer, apparently to an inquiry, pointed to my carriage, and led him into the house. " Monsieur Tyrell," said Iminild, coming out to me a moment after, " a servant whom I had expected has arrived with my horses, and with your consent, they shall be put to your carriage immediately." " To take us where?" " To our place of destination." " Too indefinite, by half, countess ! Listen to me! I have very sufficient reason to fancy that, in leaving the post-road to Trieste, I shall leave the society of honest men. You and your l minions of the moon' 32 may be very pleasant, but you are not very safe com- panions ; and having really a wish to die quietly in my bed — " The countess burst into a laugh. " If you will have the character of the gentleman you are about to visit from the landlord here — " " Who is one of your ruffians himself, I'll be sworn !" " No, on my honor ! A more innocent old beer- guzzler lives not on the road. But I will tell you thus much, and it ought to content you. Ten miles to the west of this dwells a country gentleman, who, the landlord will certify, is as honest a subject of his gracious majesty as is to be found in Littorale. He lives freely on his means, and entertains strangers occasionally from all countries, for he has been a traveller in his time. You are invited to pass a day or two with this Mynheer Krakenpate (who, by the way, has no objection to pass for father of the young lady you have so kindly brought from Laybach), and he has sent you his horses, like a generous host, to bring you to his door. More seriously, this was a retreat of Yvain's, where he would live quietly and play bon citoyen, and you have nothing earthly to fear in accompanying me thither. And now will you wait and eat the greasy meal you have ordered, or will you save your appetite for la fortune de pot at Mynheer Krakenpate's, and get presently on the road !" I yielded rather to the seducing smile and capti- vating beauty of my pleasing ward, than to any con- fidence in the honesty of Mynheer Krakenpate ; and Percie being once more ceremoniously handed in, we left the village at the sober trot becoming the fat steeds of a landholder. A quarter of a mile of this was quite sufficient for Iminild, and a word to the postillion changed, like a metamorphosis, both horse and rider. From a heavy unelastic figure, he rose into a gallant and withy horseman, and, with one of his low-spoken words, away flew the four compact animals, treading lightly as cats, and. with the greatest apparent ease, putting us over the ground at the rate of fourteen miles in the hour. The dust was distanced, a pleasant breeze was created by the motion, and when at last we turned from the main road, and sped off to the right at the same exhilarating pace, I returned Iminild's arch look of remonstrance with my best-humored smile and an affectionate je me fie a vous! Miss Krakenpate, I observed, echoed the sentiment by a slight pressure of the countess's arm, looking very innocently out of the window all the while. A couple of miles, soon done, brought us round the face of a craggy precipice, forming the brow of a hill, and with a continuation of the turn, we drew up at the gate of a substantial-looking building, something be- tween a villa and a farm-house, built against the rock, as if for the purpose of shelter from the north winds. Two beautiful Angora hounds sprang out at the noise, and recognised Iminild through all her disguise, and presently, with a look offorced courtesy, as if not quite sure whether he might throw oft' the mask, a stout man of about fifty, hardly a gentleman, yet above a common peasant in his manners, stepped forward from the garden to give Miss Krakenpate his assistance in alighting. "Dinner in half an hour!" was Iminild's brief greeting, and, stepping between her bowing dependant and Percie, she led the way into the house. I was shown into a chamber, furnished scarce above the common style of a German inn, where I made a hungry man's despatch in my toilet, and descended at once to the parlor. The doors were all open upon the ground floor, and, finding myself quite alone, I sauntered from room to room, wondering at the scanti- ness of the furniture and general air of discomfort, and scarce able to believe that the same mistress presided over this and the singular paradise in which I had 498 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. first found her at Vienna. After visiting every corner of the ground floor with a freedom which I assumed in my character as guardian, it occurred to me that I had not yet found the dining-room, and I was making a new search, when Iminild entered. I have said she was a beautiful woman. She was dressed now in the Albanian costume, with the addi- tional gorgeousness of gold embroidery, which might distinguish the favorite child of a chief of Suli. It was tlie male attire, with a snowy white juktanilla reaching to the knee, a short jacket of crimson velvet, and a close-buttoned vest of silver cloth, fitting ad- mirably to her girlish bust, and leaving her slender and pearly neck to rise bare and swan-like into the masses of her clustering hair. Her slight waist was defined by the girdle of fine linen edged with fringe of gold, which was tied coquettishly over her left side and fell to her ankle, and below the embroidered leggin appear- ed the fairy foot, which had drawn upon me all this long train of adventure, thrust into a Turkish slipper with a sparkling emerald on its instep. A. feroniere of the yellowest gold sequins bound her hair back from her temples, and this was the only confinement to the dark brown meshes which, in wavy lines and in the richest profusion, fell almost to her feet. The only blemish to this vision of loveliness was a flush about her eyes. The place had recalled Yvain to her memory. " I am about to disclose to you secrets," said she, laying her hand on my arm, " which have never been revealed but to the most trusty of Yvain's confederates. To satisfy those whom you will meet you must swear to me on the same cross which he pressed to your lips when dying, that you will never violate, while I live, the trust we repose in you." " I will take no oath," I said ; " for you are leading me blindfolded. If you are not satisfied with the assurance that I can betray no confidence which honor would preserve, hungry as I am, I will yet dine in Planina." " Then I will trust to the faith of an Englishman. And now I have a favor, not to beg, but to insist upon — that from this moment you consider Percie as dis- missed from your service, and treat him, while here at least, as my equal and friend." " Willingly!" I said; and as the word left my lips, enter Percie in the counterpart dress of Iminild, with a silver-sheathed ataghan at his side, and the bluish muzzles of a pair of Egg's hair-triggers peeping from below his girdle. To do the rascal justice, he was as handsome in his new toggery as his mistress, and carried it as gallantly. They would have made the prettiest tableau as Juan and Haidee. " Is there any chance that these ' persuaders' may be necessary," I asked, pointing to his pistols which awoke in my mind a momentary suspicion. " No— none that I can foresee— but they are loaded. A favorite, among men whose passions are profession- ally wild," she continued with a meaning glance at Percie ; " should be ready to lay his hand on them, even if stirred in his sleep !" I had been so accustomed to surprises of late, that I scarce started to observe, while Iminild was speak- ing, that an old-fashioned clock, which stood in a niche in the wall, was slowly swinging out upon hinges. A narrow aperture of sufficient breadth to admit one person at a time, was disclosed when it had made its entire revolution, and in it stood, with a lighted torch, the stout landlord Von Krakenpate. Iminild looked at me an instant as if to enjoy my surprise. " Will you lead me in to dinner, Mr. Tyrell?" she said at last, with a laugh. " If we are to follow Mynheer Von Krakenpate," I replied, " give me hold of the skirt of your juktanilla, rather, and let me follow ! Do we dine in the cellar ?" I stepped before Percie, who was inclined to take advantage of my hesitation to precede me, and fol- lowed the countess into the opening, which, from the position of the house, I saw must lead directly into the face of the rock. Two or three descending steps convinced me that it was a natural opening en- larged by art ; and after one or two sharp turns, and a descent of perhaps fifty feet, we came to a door which, suddenly flung open by our torch-bearer, deluged the dark passage with a blaze of light which the eyesight almost refused to bear. Recovering from my amazement, I stepped over the threshold of the door, and stood upon a carpet in a gallery of sparkling stalactites, the dazzling reflection of innu- merable lamps flooding the air around, and a long snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect stretching downward before me. Two ridges of the calcareous strata running almost parallel over our heads, formed the cornices of the descending corridor, and from these, with a regularity that seemed like design, the sparkling pillars, white as alabaster, and shaped like inverted cones, dropped nearly to the floor, their transparent points resting on the peaks of the corresponding stalagmites, which, of a darker hue and coarser grain, seemed designed as bases to a new order of architectural columns. The reflection from the pure crystalline rock gave to this singular gallery a splendor which only the palace of Aladdin could have equalled. The lamps were hung between in irregular but effective ranges, and in our descent, like Thalaba, who refreshed his dazzled eyes in the desert of snow by looking on the green wings of the spirit bird, I was compelled to bend my eyes per- petually for relief upon the soft, dark masses of hair which floated upon the lovely shoulders of Iminild. At the extremity of the gallery we turned short to the right, and followed an irregular passage, some- times so low that we could scarce stand upright, but all lighted with the same intense brilliancy, and formed of the same glittering and snow-white substance. We had been rambling on thus far perhaps ten minutes, when suddenly the air, which I had felt uncomfort- ably chili, grew warm and soft, and the low reverbera- tion of running water fell delightfully on our ears. Far ahead we could see two sparry columns standing close together, and apparently closing up the way. " Courage! my venerable guardian !" cried Iminild, laughing over her shoulder ; " you will see your dinner presently. Are you hungry, Percie ?" " Not while you look back, Madame la Comtesse !" answered the callow gentleman, with an instinctive tact at his new vocation. We stood at the two pillars which formed the ex- tremity of the passage, and looked down upon a scene of which all description must be faint and imperfect. A hundred feet below ran a broad subterraneous river, whose waters sparkling in the blaze of a thousand torches, sprang into light from the deepest darkness, crossed with foaming rapidity the bosom of the vast illuminated cavern, and disappeared again in the same inscrutable gloom. Whence it came or whither it fled was a mystery beyond the reach of the eye. The deep recesses of the cavern seemed darker for the in- tense light gathered about the centre. After the first few minutes of bewilderment, I en- deavored to realize in detail the wondrous scene be- fore me. The cavern was of an irregular shape, but all studded above with the same sparry incrustation, thousands upon thousands of pendent stalactites glit- tering on the roof, and showering back light upon the clusters of blazing torches fastened everywhere upon the shelvy sides. Here and there vast columns, alabaster white, with bases of gold color, fell from the roof to the floor, like pillars left standing in the ruined aisle of a cathedral, and from corner to corner ran their curtains of the same brilliant calcareous spar. THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 499 shaped like the sharp edge of a snow-drift, and almost while. It was like laying bare the palace of some king-wizard of the mine to gaze down upon it. '• What think you of Mynheer Krakenpate's taste in a dining-room, Monsieur Tyrell I" asked the count- ess, who stood between Percie and myself, with a '. hand on the shoulder of each. I had scarce found time, as yet, to scrutinize the I artificial portion of the marvellous scene, but, at the i question of Iminild, I bent my gaze on a broad plat- form, rising high above the river on its opposite bank, the rear of which was closed in by perhaps forty ir- regular columns, leaving between them and the sharp precipice on the river-side, an area, in height and ex- ! tent of about the capacity of a ball-room. A rude bridge, of very light construction, rose in a single arch across the river, forming the only possible access j to the platform from the side where we stood, and, j following the path back with my eye, I observed a narrow and spiral staircase, partly of wood and partly j cut in the rock, ascending from the bridge to the galle- j ry we had followed hither. The platform was carpet- I ed richly, and flooded with intense light, and in its centre stood a gorgeous array of smoking dishes, j served after the Turkish fashion, with a cloth upon the floor, and surrounded with cushions and ottomans of every shape and color. A troop of black slaves, j whose silver anklets, glittered as they moved, were busy bringing wines and completing the arrangements : for the meal. " Allons, mignon /"cried Iminild, getting impatient and seizing Percie's arm, " let us get over the river, and perhaps Mr. Tyrell will look down upon us with his grands yeux while we dine. Oh, you will come with us ! Suivcz done!" An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed, let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and [ Mynheer Von Krakenpate carefully turned the key j behind us. We crept slowly down the narrow stair- i case and reached the edge of the river, where the warm air from the open sunshine came pouring through the cavern with the current, bringing with it a smell of green fields and flowers, and removing entirely the chill of the cavernous and confined atmosphere I had found so uncomfortable above. We crossed the bridge, and stepping upon the elastic carpets piled thickly on the platform, arranged ourselves about the smoking repast, Mynheer Von Krakenpate sitting down after permission from Iminild, and Percie by order of the same imperative dictatress, throwing his graceful length at her feet. CHAPTER V. " Take a lesson in flattery from Percie, Mr. Tyrell, and be satisfied with your bliss in my society without asking for explanations. I would fain have the use of my tongue (to swallow) for ten minutes, and I see you making up your mouth for a question. Try this pilau ! It is made by a Greek cook, who fries, boils, and stews, in a kitchen with a river for a chimney." •' Precisely what I was going to ask you. 1 was wondering how you cook without smoking your snow- white roof." " Yes, the river is a good slave, and steals wood as well. We have only to cut it by moonlight and com- mit it to the current." " The kitchen is down stream, then ?" "Down stream; and down stream lives jolly Per- dicaris the cook, who having lost his nose in a sea- fiiht, is reconciled to forswear sunshine and mankind, and cook rice for pirates." " Is it true then that Yvain held command on the "No, not Yvain, but Tranchcoeur — his equal in command over this honest confederacy. By the way, he is your countryman, Mr. Tyrell, though he fights under a nom de guerre. You are very iikely to see him, too, for his bark is at Trieste, and he is the only human being besides myself (and my company here) who can come and go at will in this robber's paradise. He is a lover of mine, parbleu ! and since Yvain's death, Heaven knows what fancy he may bring hith- er in his hot brain! I have armed Percie for the hazard?" The thin nostrils of my friend from Cranbourne- alley dilated with prophetic dislike of a rival thus abruptly alluded to, and there was that in his face which would have proved, against all the nurses' oaths in Christendom, that the spirit of a gentleman's blood ran warm through his heart. Signor Tranch- coeur must be gentle in his suit, I said to myself, or he will find what virtue lies in a hair-trigger! Percie had forgot to eat since the mention of the pirate's name, and sat with folded arms and his right hand on his pistol. A black slave brought in an omelette soufflee, as light and delicate as the chef-d'eeuvre of an artiste in the Palais Royal. Iminild spoke to him in Greek, as he knelt and placed it before her. "I have a presentiment," she said, looking at me as the slave disappeared, " that Tranchcoeur will be here presently. I have ordered another omelette on the strength of the feeling, for he is fond of it, and may be soothed by the attention." "You fear him, then ?" " Not if I were alone, for he is as gentle as a woman when he has no rival near him — but I doubt his relish of Percie. Have you dined ?" " Quite." " Then come and look at my garden, and have a peep at old Perdicaris. Stay here, Percie, and finish your grapes, mon-mignon ! I have a word to say to Mr. Tyrell." We walked across the platform, and passing be- tween two of the sparry columns forming its bound- ary, entered upon a low passage which led to a large opening, resembling singularly a garden of low shrubs turned by some magic to sparkling marble. Two or three hundred of these stalagmite cones, formed by the dripping of calcareous water from the roof (as those on the roof were formed by the same fluid which hardened and pondered), stood about in the spacious area, every shrub having an answering cone on the roof, like the reflection of the same mar- ble garden in a mirror. One side of this singular apartment was used as a treasury for the spoils of the band, and on the points of the white cones hung pitchers and altar lamps of silver, gold drinking-cups. and chains, and plate and jewellery of every age and description. Farther on were piled, in unthrifty con- fusion, heaps of velvets and silks, fine broadcloths, French gloves, shoes, and slippers, brocades of Genoa, pieces of English linen, damask curtains still fasten- ed to their cornices, a harp and mandolin, cases of damaged bons-bons, two or three richly-bound books, and (last and most valuable in my eyes), a miniature bureau, evidently the plunder of some antiquary's treasure, containing in its little drawers antique gold coins of India, carefully dated and arranged, with a list of its contents half torn from the lid. "You should hear Tranchcoeur's sermons on these pretty texts," said the countess, trying to thrust open a bale of Brusa silk with her Turkish slipper. "He will beat oft" the top of a stalagmite with his sabre-hilt, and sit down and talk over his spoils and the adventures they recall, till morning dawns." " And how is that discovered in this sunless cave ?" " By the perfume. The river brings news of it, and fills the cavern with the sun's first kisses. Those 500 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. violets ' kiss and tell,' Mr. Tyrell ! Apropos des bottes, let us look into the kitchen." We turned to the right, keeping on the same level, and a few steps brought us to the brow of a consider- able descent forming the lower edge of the carpeted platform, but separated from it by a wall of close stalactites. At the bottom of the descent ran the river, but just along the brink, forming a considerable crescent, extended a flat rock, occupied by all the varied implements of a kitchen, and lighted by the glare of two or three different fires blazing against the perpendicular limit of the cave. The smoke of these followed the inclination of the wall, and was swept entirely down with the current of the river. At the nearest fire stood Perdicaris, a fat, long-haired and sinister-looking rascal, his noseless face glowing with the heat, and at his side waited, with a silver dish, the Nubian slave who had been sent for Tranch- coeur's omelette. " One of the most bloody fights of my friend the rover," said Iminild, " was with an armed slaver, from whom he took these six pages of mine. They have reason enough to comprehended an order, but too little to dream of liberty. They are as contented as tortoises, za-6as." " Is there no egress hence but by the iron door ?" " None that I know of, unless one could swim up this swift river like a salmon. You may have sur- mised by this time, that we monopolize an unexplored part of the great cave of Adelsberg. Common report says it extends ten miles under ground, but common report has never burrowed as far as this, and I doubt whether there is any communication. Father Kraken- pate's clock conceals an entrance, discovered first by robbers, and handed down by tradition, Heaven knows how long. But — hark ! Tranchcceur, by Heaven! my heart foreboded it !" I sprang after the countess, who, with her last ex- clamation, darted between twoof the glitteringcolumns separating us from the platform, and my first glance convinced me that her fullest anticipations of the pirate's jealousy were more than realized. Percie stood with his back to a tall pillar on the farther side, with his pistol levelled, calm and immoveable as a stalactite; and, with his sabre drawn and his eyes flashing fire, a tall powerfully-built man in a sailors dress, was arrested by Iminild in the act of rushing on him. "Stop! or you die, Tranchcceur!" said the countess, in a tone of trifling command. " He is my guest!" " He is my prisoner, madame !" was the answer, as the pirate changed his position to one of perfect repose and shot his sabre into his sheath, as if a brief delay could make little difference. " We shall see that," said the countess, once inore, with as soft a voice as was ever heard in a lady's boudoir; and stepping to the edge of the platform, she touched with her slipper a suspended gong, which sent through the cavern a shrill reverberation heard clearly over the rushing music of the river. In an instant the click of forty muskets from the other side fell on our ears ; and, at a wave of her hand, the butts rattled on the rocks, and all was still again. " I have not trusted myself within your reach, Monsieur Tranchcceur," said Iminild, flinging herself carelessly on an ottoman, and motioning to Percie to keep his stand, " without a score or two of my free- riders from Mount Semering to regulate your con- science. I am mistress here, sir! You may sit down !" Tranchcceur had assumed an air of the most gen- tlemanly tranquillity, and motioning to one of the slaves for his pipe, he politely begged pardon for smoking in the countess's presence, and filled the enamelled bowl with Shiraz tobacco. "You heard of Yvain's death ?" she remarked after a moment passing her hand over her eyes. " Yes, at Venice." " With his dying words, he gave me and mine in charge to this Englishman. Mr. Tyrell, Monsieur Tranchcceur." The pirate bowed. " Have you been long from England ?" he askea with an accent and voice that even in that brief question, savored of the nonchalant English of the west end. " Two years 1" I answered. " I should have supposed much longer from your chivalry in St.Etienne, Mr. Tyrell. My countrymen generally are less hasty. Your valet there," he con- tinued, looking sneeringly at Percie, "seems as quick on the trigger as his master." Percie turned on his heel, and walked to the edge of the platform as if uneasy at the remark, and Iminild rose to her feet. "Look you, Tranchcceur! I'll have none of your sneers. That youth is as well-born and better bred than yourself, and with his consent, shall have the authority of the holy church ere long to protect my property and me. Will you aid me in this, Mr. Tyrell ?" " Willingly, countess !" " Then, Tranchcceur, farewell ! I have withdrawn from the common stock Yvain's gold and jewels, and I trust to your sense of honor to render me at Venice whatever else of his private property may be concealed in the island." " Iminild !" cried the pirate, springing to his feet. "I did not think to show a weakness before this stranger, but I implore you to delay !" His bosom heaved with strong emotion as he spoke, and the color fled from his bronzed features as if he were struck with a mortal sickness. " I can not lose you, Iminild ! I have loved you too long. You must " She motioned to Percie to pass on. " By Heaven, you shall !" he cried, in a voice sud- denly become hoarse with passion ; and reckless of consequences, he leaped across the heaps of cushion, and, seizing Percie by the throat, flung him with terrible and headlong violence into the river.' A scream from Iminild, and the report of a musket from the other side, rang at the same instant through the cavern, and as I rushed forward to seize the pistol which he had struck from Percie's hand, his half- drawn sabre slid back powerless into the sheath, and Tranchcceur dropped heavily on his knee. " I am peppered, Mr. Tyrell !" he said, waving me off with difficult effort to smile, " look after the boy, if you care for him ! A curse on her German wolves !" Percie met me on the bridge, supporting Iminild, who hung on his neck, smothering him with kisses. " Where is that dog of a pirate ?" she cried, sud- denly snatching herataghan from the sheath and flying across the platform. " Tranchcceur !" Her hand was arrested by the deadly pallor and helpless attitude of the wounded man, and the weapon dropped as she stood over him. "I think it is not mortal," he said, groaning as he pressed his hand to his side, " but take your boy out of my sight ! Iminild !" " Well, Tranchcceur !" " I have not done well — but you know my nature — and my love ! Forgive me, and farewell ! Send Bertram to stanch this blood — I get faint! A little wine, Iminild !" He took the massive flagon from her hand, and drank a long draught, and then drawing to him a cloak which lay near, he covered his head and dropped on his side as if to sleep. Iminild knelt beside him and tore open the shirt OONDER-HOOFDEN. 501 beneath his jacket, and while she busied herself in stanching the blood, Perdicaris, apparently well pre- pared for such accidents, arrived with a surgeon's probe, and, on examination of the wound, assured Iminild that she might safely leave him. Washing her hands in the flagon of wine, she threw a cloak over the wet and shivering Percie, and, silent with horror at the scene behind us, we made our way over the bridge, and in a short time, to my infinite relief, stood in the broad moonlight on the portico of Mynheer Krakenpate. My carriage was soon loaded with the baggage and treasure of the countess, and with the same swift horses that had brought us from Planina, we regained the post-road, and sped on toward Venice by the Friuli. We arrived on the following night at the fair city so beloved of romance, and with what haste I might, I procured a priest and married the Countess Iminild to gentleman Percie. As she possessed now a natural guardian, and a sufficient means of life, I felt released from my death vow to Yvain, and bidding farewell to the •' happy couple," I resumed my quiet habit of travel, and three days after my arrival at Venice, was on the road to Padua by the Brenta. OONDER-HOOFDEN, OR THE UNDERCLIFF. A TALE OF THE VOYAGE OF HENDRICK HUDSON. CHAPTER I. •• It is but an arm of the sea, as I told thee, skip- per," said John Fleming, the mate of the " Halve- Mane," standing ready to jam down the tiller and bring- to, if his master should agree with him in opinion. Hudson stood by his steersman, with folded arms, now looking at the high-water mark on the rocks, which betrayed a falling tide, now turning his ear slightly forward to catch the cry of the man who stood heaving the lead from the larboard bow. The wind drew lightly across the starboard quarter, and, with a counter-tide, the little vessel stole on scarce percepti- bly, though her mainsail was kept full — the slowly passing forest trees on the shore giving the lie to the merry and gurgling ripple at the prow. The noble river, or creek, which they had followed in admiring astonishment for fifty miles, had hitherto opened fairly and broadly before them, though, once or twice, its widening and mountain-girt bosom had deceived the bold navigator into the belief, that he was entering upon some inland lake. The wind still blew kindly and steadily from the southeast, and the sunset of the second day — a spectacle of tumultuous and gorgeous glory which Hudson attributed justly to the more violet atmospheric laws of an unsettled continent — had found them apparently closed in by impenetrable mountains, and running immediately on the head shore of an extended arm of the sea. " She'll strike before she can follow her helm," cried the young sailor in an impatient tone, yet still with habitual obedience keeping her duly on her course. " Port a little !" answered the skipper, a moment after, as if he had not heard the querulous comment of his mate. Fleming's attention was withdrawn an instant by a low guttural sound of satisfaction, which reached his ear as the head of the vessel went round, and, casting his eye amidships, he observed the three Indians who had come off to the Half-Moon in a canoe, and had been received on board by the master, standing together in the chains, and looking forward to the rocks they were approaching with countenances of the most eager interest. •« Master Hendrick !" he vociferated in the tone of a man who can contain his anger no longer, "will you look at these grinning red-devils, who are rejoicing to see you run so blindly ashore?" The adventurous little bark was by this time within a biscuit toss of a rocky point that jutted forth into the river with the grace of a lady's foot dallying with the water in her bath ; and, beyond the sedgy bank disappeared in an apparent inlet, barely deep enough, it seemed to the irritated steersman, to shelter a canoe. As the Half-Moon obeyed her last order, and headed a point more to the west, Hudson strode forward to the bow, and sprang upon the windlass, stretching his gaze eagerly into the bosom of the hills that were now darkening with the heavy shadows of twilight, though the sky was still gorgeously purple overhead. The crew had by this time gathered with uncon- scious apprehension at the halyards, ready to let go at the slightest gesture of the master, but, in the slow progress of the little bark, the minute or two which she took to advance beyond the point on which his eye was fixed, seemed an age of suspense. The Half-Moon seemed now almost immoveable, for the current, which convinced Hudson there was a passage beyond, set her back from the point with increasing force, and the wind lulled a little with the sunset. Tnch by inch, however, she crept on, till at last the silent skipper sprang from the windlass upon the bowsprit, and running out with the agility of a boy, gave a single glance ahead, and the next mo- ment had the tiller in his hand, and cried out with a voice of thunder, " Stand by the halyards! helm's- a-lee !" In a moment, as if his words had been lightning, the blocks rattled, the heavy boom swung round like a willow spray, and the white canvass, after fluttering an instant in the wind, filled and drew steadily on the other lack. Looks of satisfaction were exchanged between the crew, who expected the next instant an order to take in the sail and drop anchor ; but the master was at the helm, and to their utter consternation, he kept her steadily to the wind, and drove straight on, while a gorge, that, in the increasing darkness, seemed the entrance to a cavern, opened its rocky # sides as they advanced. The apprehensions of the crew were half lost in their astonishment at the grandeur of the scene. The cliffs seemed to close up behind them; a mountain, that reached apparently to the now colorless clouds, rose up gigantic, in the increasing twilight, over the prow ; on the right, where the water seemed to bend, a craggy precipice extended its threatening wall ; and in the midst of this round bay, which seemed to them to be an enclosed lake in the bottom of an abyss, the wind suddenly took them aback, the Halve-Mane lost her headway, and threatened to go on the rocks with the current, and audible curses at his folly reached the ears of the determined master. More to divert their attention than with a prognos- tic of the direction of the wind, Hudson gave the order to tack, and, more slowly this time, but still with sufficient expedition, the movement was execu- ted, and the flapping sails swung round. The hal- yards were not belayed before the breeze, rush- ing down a steep valley on the left, struck full on the larboard quarter, and, running sharp past the face of the precipice over the starboard bow, Hudson pointed out, exultingly, to his astonished men, the broad waters of the mighty river, extending far through the gorge beyond — the dim purple of the lingering 502 OONDER-HOOFDEN. day, which had been long lost to the cavernous and overshadowed pass they bad penetrated, tinting its far bosom like the last faint hue of the expiring dolphin. The exulting glow of triumph suffused the face of the skipper, and relinquishing the tiller once more to the mortified Fleming, he walked forward to look out for an anchorage. The Indians, who still stood in the chains together, and who had continued to express their satisfaction as the vessel made her way through the pass, now pointed eagerly to a little bay on the left, across which a canoe was shooting like the reflection of a lance in the air, and, the wind dying momently away, Hudson gave the order to rouud to, and dropped his anchor for the night. In obedience to the politic orders of Hudson the men were endeavoring, by presents and signs, to induce the Indians to leave the vessel, and the mas- ter himself stood on the poop with his mate, gazing back on the wonderful scene they had passed through. " This passage," said Hudson, musingly, "has been rent open by an earthquake, and the rocks look still as if they felt the agony of the throe." "It is a pity the earthquake did its job so raggedly, then !"' answered his sulky companion, who had not yet forgiven the mountains for the shame their zig-zag precipices had put upon his sagacity. At that instant a sound, like that of a heavy body sliding into the water, struck the ear of Fleming, and looking quickly over the stern, he saw one of the Indians swimming from the vessel with a pillow in his hand, which he had evidently stolen from the cabin window. To seize a musket, which lay ready for attack on the quarter-deck, and fire upon the poor savage,, was the sudden thought and action of a man on the watch, for a vent to incensed feelings. The Indian gave a yell which mingled wildly with the echoes of the report from the reverberating hills, and springing waist-high out of the water, the gurgling eddy closed suddenly over his head. The canoe in which the other savages were already embarked shot away, like an arrow, to the shore, and Hudson, grieved and alarmed inexpressibly at the fool- hardy rashness of his mate, ordered all hands to arms, and established a double watch for the night. Hour after hour, the master and the non-repent- ant Fleming paced fore and aft, each in his own quarter of the vessel, watching the shore and the dark face of the water with straining eyes: but no sound came from the low cliff round which the fly- ing canoe had vanished, and the stars seemed to wink almost audibly in the dread stillness of nature. The men alarmed at the evident agitation of Hudson, who, in these pent-up waters, anticipated a most ef- fective and speedy revenge from the surrounding tribes, drowsed not upon their watch, and the gray light of the morning began to show faintly over the mountains before the anxious master withdrew his aching eyes from the still and star waters. CHAPTER II. Like a web woven of gold by the lightning, the sun's rays ran in swift threads from summit to sum- mit of the dark green mountains, and the soft mist that slept on the breast of the river began to lift like the slumberous lid from the eye of woman, when her dream is broken at dawn. Not so poetically were these daily glories regarded, however, by the morning watch of the Half- Moon, who, between the desire to drop asleep with their heads on the capstan, and the necessity of keeping sharper watch lest the Indians should come off through the rising mist, bore the double pains of Tantalus and Sysiphus — ungratified desire at their lips and threatening ruin over their heads. After dividing the watch at the break of day, Hud- son, with the relieved part of his crew, had gone be- low, and might have been asleep an hour, when Flem- ing suddenly entered the cabin and laid his hand upon his shoulder. The skipper sprang from his berth with the habitual readiness of a seaman, and followed his mate upon deck, where he found his men standing to their arms, and watching an object that, to his first glance, seemed like a canoe sailing down upon them through the air. The rash homicide drew close to Hendrick as he regarded it, and the chatter of his teeth betrayed that, during the long and anxious watches of the night, his conscience had not justified him for the hasty death he had awarded to a fellow- creature. " She but looms through the mist !" said the skip- per, after regarding the advancing object for a moment. " It is a single canoe, and can scarce harm us. Let her come alongside!" The natural explanation of the phenomenon at once satisfied the crew, who had taken their superstitious fears rather from Fleming's evident alarm than from their own want of reflection ; but the guilty man him- self still gazed on the advancing phantom, and when a slight stir of the breeze raised the mist like the cor- ner of a curtain, and dropped the canoe plain upon the surface of the river, he turned gloomily on his heel, and muttered in an undertone to Hudson, " It brings no good, Skipper Hendrick !" Meanwhile the canoe advanced slowly. The single paddle which propelled her paused before every turn, and as the mist lifted quite up and showed a long green line of shore between its shadowy fringe and the water, an Indian, highly-painted, and more orna- mented than any they had hitherto seen, appeared gazing earnestly at the vessel, and evidently approach- ing with fear and caution. The Half-Moon was heading up the river with the rising tide, and Hudson walked forward to the bows to look at the savage more closely. By the eagle and bear, so richly embroidered in the gay- colored quills of the porcupine on his belt of wam- pum, he presumed him to be a chief; and glancing his eye into the canoe, he saw the pillow which had occasioned the death of the plunderer the night before, and on it lay two ears of corn, and two broken arrows. Pausing a moment as he drew near, the Indian pointed to these signs of peace, and Hudson, in reply, spread out his open hands and beckoned him to come on board. In an instant the slight canoe shot under the starboard bow, and with a noble confidence which the skipper remarked upon with admiration, the tall savage sprang upon the deck and laid the hand of the com- mander to his breast. The noon arrived, hot and sultry, and there was no likelihood of a wind till sunset. The chief had been feasted on board, and had shown, in his delight, the most unequivocal evidence of good feeling; and even Fleming, at last, who had drank more freely than usual during "the morning, abandoned his suspicion, and joined in amusing the superb savage who was their guest. In the course of the forenoon, another canoe came off, paddled by a single young woman, whom Fleming, recoguised as having accompanied the plun- derers the night before, but in his half-intoxicated state, it seemed to recall none of his previous bodings, and to his own surprise, and that of the crew, she evidently regarded him with particular favor, and by pertinacious and ingenious signs, endeavored to in- duce him to go ashore with her in the canoe. Tho particular character of her face and form would have given the mate a clue to her probable motives, had he been less reckless from his excitement. She was taller than is common for females of the savage tribes, and her polished limbs, as gracefully moulded in their OONDER-HOOFDEN. 503 dark hues as those of the mercury of the fountain, combined, with their slightness, a nerve and steadi- ness of action which betrayed strength and resolution of heart and frame. Her face was highly beautiful, but the voluptuous fulness of the lips was contradicted by a fierce fire in her night-dark eyes, and a quickness of the brow to descend, which told of angry passions habitually on the alert. It was remarked by Hans Christaern, one of the crew, that when Fleming left her for an instant, she abstracted herself from the other joyous groups, and, with folded arms and looks of brooding thoughtfulness, stood looking over the stern; but immediately on his reappearance, her j i snowy teeth became visible between her relaxing lips, and she resumed her patient gaze upon his counten- ance, and her occasional efforts to draw him into the canoe. Quite regardless of the presence of the woman, the chief sat apart with Hudson, communicating his ideas by intelligent signs, and after a while, the skipper called his mate, and informed him that, as far as he could understand, the chief wished to give them a feast on shore. "Arm yourselves well," said he, L " though I look for no treachery from this noble pagan ; j and if chance should put us in danger, we shall be more than a match for the whole tribe. Come with me, Fleming," he continued, after a pause, "you are too rash with your firearms to be left in command. | Man the watch, four of you, and the rest get into the long-boat. We'll while away these sluggish hours, though danger is in it " The men sprang gayly below for their arms, and were soon equipped and ready, and the chief, with an expression of delight, put off in his canoe, followed j! more slowly by the heavy long-boat, into which Hud- j son, having given particular orders to the watch to let DO savages on board during his absence, was the last to embark. The woman, whom the chief had called to him before his departure by the name of Kihyalee, ■ped oft* before in her swift canoe to another point of the shore, and when Fleming cried out from the bow of the boat, impatiently motioning her to follow, she smiled in a manner that sent a momentary shudder- through the veins of the skipper who chanced to ob- serve the action, and by a circular movement of her arm conveyed to him that she should meet him from the other side of the hill. As they followed the chief, j; they discovered the wigwams of an Indian village be- | hind the rocky point for which she was making, and understood that the chief had sent her thither on some errand connected with his proposed hospitality. A large square rock, which had the look of having been hurled with some avalanche from the mountain, lay in the curve of a small beach of sand, surrounded by the shallow water, and, on the left of this, the chief pointed out to the skipper a deeper channel, hollowed by the entrance of a mountain-torrent into the river, through which he might bring his boat to land. At the edge of this torrent's bed, the scene of the first act of hospitality to our race upon the Hudson, stands at this day the gate to the most hospitable mansion on the river, as if the spirit of the spot had consecrated it to its first association with the white man. The chief led the way when the crew had disem- barked, by a path skirting the deep-worn bed of the torrent, and after an ascent of a few minutes, through a grove of tall firs, a short turn to the left brought them upon an open table of land, a hundred and fifty feet above the river shut in by a circle of forest-trees, and frowned over on the east by a tall and bald cliff, which shot up in a perpendicular line to the height of three hundred feet. From a cleft in the face of •his precipice a natural spring oozed forth, drawing a darker line down the sun-parched rock, and feeding a small stream that found its way to the river on the northern side of the platform just mentioned, creating between itself and the deeper torrent to the south, a sort of highland peninsula, now constituting the estate of the hospitable gentleman above alluded to. Hudson looked around him with delight and sur- prise when he stood on the highest part of the broad natural table selected by the chief for his entertain- ment. The view north showed a cleft through the hills, with the river coiled like a lake in its widening bed, while a blue and wavy line of mountains form- ed the far horizon at its back ; south, the bold eminen- ces, between which he had found his adventurous way, closed in like the hollowed sides of a bright- green vase, with glimpses of the river lying in its bottom like crystal; below him descended a sharp and wooded bank, with the river at its foot, and directly opposite rose a hill in a magnificent cone to the very sky, sending its shadow down through the mirrored water, as if it entered to some inner world. The excessive lavishness of the foliage clothed these bold natural features with a grace and richness al- together captivating to the senses, and Hudson long stood, gazing around him, believing that the tales of brighter and happier lands were truer than he had deemed, and that it was his lucky destiny to have been the discoverer of a future Utopia. A little later, several groups of Indians were seen advancing from the village, bearing the materials for a feast, which they deposited under a large tree, indi- cated by the chief. It was soon arranged, and Hud- son with his men surrounded the dishes of shell and wood, one of which, placed in the centre, contained a roasted dog, half buried in Indian-corn. While the chief and several of his warriors sat down in company with the whites, the young men danced the calumet- dance to the sound of a rude drum, formed by drawing a skin tightly over a wooden bowl, and near them, in groups, stood the women and children of the village, glancing with looks of curiosity from the feats of the young men to the unaccustomed faces of the strangers. Among the women stood Kihyalee, who kept her large bright eyes fixed almost fiercely upon Fleming, yet when he looked toward her, she smiled and turned as if she would beckon him away — a bidding which he tried in vain to obey, under the vigilant watch of his master. The feast went on, and the Indians having produced gourds, filled with a slight intoxicating liquor made from the corn, Hudson offered to the chief, some spirits from a bottle which he had intrusted to one of the men to wash down the expected roughness of the savage viands. The bottle passed in turn to the mate, who was observed to drink freely, and, a few minutes after, Hudson rising to see more nearly a trial of skill with the bow and arrow, Fleming found the desired opportunity, and followed the tempting Kihyalee into the forest. The sun began to throw the shadows of the tall pines in gigantic pinnacles along the ground, and the youths of the friendly tribe, who had entertained the great navigator, ceased from their dances and feats of skill, and clustered around the feast-tree. Intend- ing to get under weigh with the evening breeze and proceed still farther up the river, Hudson rose to col- lect his men, and bid the chief farewell. Taking the hand of the majestic savage and putting it to his breast, to express in his own manner the kind feel- ings he entertained for him, he turned toward the path by which he came, and was glancing round at his men, when Hans Christaern inquired if he had sent the mate back to the vessel. " Der teufel, no !" answered the skipper, missing him for the first time; "has he been long gone ?" " A full hour !" said one of the men. Hudson put his hand to his head, and remembered the deep wrong Fleming had done to the tribe. Re- 504 THE PICKER AND PILER. tribution, he feared, had over-taken him — but how was it done so silently? How had the guilty man been induced to "leave his comrades, and accelerate his doom by his own voluntary act ? The next instant resolved the question. A distant and prolonged scream, as of a man in mortal agony, drew all eyes to the summit of the beetling cliff, which overhung them. On its extremest verge, outlined distinctly against the sky, stood the tall figure of Kih- yalee, holding from her, yet poised over the precipice, the writhing form of her victim, while in the other hand, flashing in the rays of the sun, glittered the bright hatchet she had plucked from his girdle. In- furiated at the sight, and suspecting collision on the part of the chief, Hudson drew his cutlass and gave the order to stand to arms, but as he turned, the gigan- tic savage had drawn an arrow to its head with incredi- ble force, and though it fell far short of its mark, there was that in the action and in his look which, in the passing of a thought, changed the mind of the skipper. In another instant, the hesitating arm of the widowed Kihyalee descended, and loosening her hold upon the relaxed body of her victim, the doomed mate fell heavily down the face of the precipice. The chief turned to Hudson, who stood trembling and aghast at the awful scene, and plucked the re- maining arrows from his quiver, he broke them and threw himself on the ground. The tribe gathered around, their chief, Hudson moved his hand to them in token of forgiveness, and in a melancholy silence the crew took their way after him to the shore. THE PICKER AND PILER. The nature of the strange incident I have to relate forbids me to record either place or time. On one of the wildest nights in which I had ever been abroad, I drove my panting horses through a snowdrift breast high, to the door of a small tavern in the western country. The host turned out unwilling- ly at the knock of my whip handle on the outer door, and, wading before the tired animals to the barn, which was nearly inaccessible from the banks of snow, he assisted me in getting off their frozen harnesses, and bestowing them safely for the night. The " bar-room" fire burnt brightly, and never was fire more welcome. Room was made for me by four or five rough men who sat silent around it, and with a keen comprehension of »• pleasure after pain," I took off my furs and moccasins, and stretched my cold con- tracted limbs to the blaze. When, a few minutes after, a plate of cold salt beef was brought me, with a corn cake and a mug of " flip" hissing from the poker, it certainly would have been hard to convince me that I would have put on my coats and moccasins again to have ridden a mile to paradise. The faces of my new companions, which I had not found time to inspect very closely while my supper lasted, were fully revealed by the light of a pitch-pine knot, thrown on the hearth by the landlord, and their grim reserve and ferocity put me in mind, for the first time since I had entered the room, of my errand in that quarter of the country. The timber-tracts which lie convenient to the rivers of the west, offer to the refugee and desperado of every description, a resource from want and (in their own opinion) from crime, which is seized upon by all at least who are willing to labor. The owners of the ex- tensive forests, destined to become so valuable, are mostly men of large speculation, living in cities, who, satisfied with the constant advance in the price of lumber, consider their pine-trees as liable to nothing but the laws of nature, and leave them unfenced and unprotected, to increase in size and value till the land beneath them is wanted for culture. It is natural enough that solitary settlers, living in the neighbor- hood of miles of apparently unclaimed land, should think seldom of the owner, and in time grow to the opinion of the Indian, that the Great Spirit gave the land, the air, and the water, to all his children, and they are free to all alike. Furnishing the requisite teams and implements, therefore, the inhabitants of these tracts collect a number of the stragglers through the country, and forming what is called a " bee," go into the nearest woods, and for a month or more, work laboriously at selecting, and felling the tallest and straightest pines. In their rude shanty at night they have bread, pork, and whiskey, which hard labor makes sufficiently palatable, and the time is passed merrily till the snow is right for sledding. The logs are then drawn to the water sides, rafts are formed, and the valuable lumber, for which they paid nothing but their labor is run to the cities for their common advantage. The only enemies of this class of men are the agents who are sometimes sent out in the winter to defect them in the act of felling or drawing off timber, and in the dark countenances around the fire, I read this as the interpretation of my own visit to the woods. They soon brightened and grew talkative when they discovered that I was in search of hands to fell and burn, and make clearing for a farm; and after a talk of an hour or two, I was told in answer to my inquiries, that all the " men people" in the country were busy " lumbering for themselves," unless it were the " Picker and Piler." As the words were pronounced, a shrill neigh outside the door pronounced the arrival of a new-comer. "Talk of the devil" — said the man in a lower tone, and without finishing the proverb he rose with a respect which he had not accorded to me, to make room for the Picker and Piler. A man of rather low stature entered, and turned to drive back his horse, who had followed him nearly in. I observed that the animal had neithersaddle nor bridle. Shutting the door upon him without violence, he ex- changed nods with one or two of the men, and giving the landlord a small keg which he had brought, he pleaded haste for refusing the offered chair, and stood silent by the fire. His features were blackened with smoke, but I could see that they were small and regu- lar, and his voice, though it conveyed in its deliberate accents an indefinable resolution, was almost feminine- ly soft and winning. " That stranger yonder has got a job for you," said the landlord, as he gave him back the keg and received the money. Turning quickly upon me, he detected me in a very eager scrutiny of himself, and for a moment I was thrown too much off my guard to address him. " Is it you, sir ?" he asked, after waiting a moment. " Yes, — I have some work to be done hereabouts, but — you seem in a hurry. Could you call here to- morrow." "I may not be here again in a week." " Do you live far from here ?" He smiled. " I scarce know where I live, but I am burning a piece of wood a mile or two up the run, and if you would like a warmer bed than the landlord will give you — " That personage decided the question for me by telling me in so many words that I had better go. His beds were all taken up, and my horses should be taken care of till my return. I saw that my presence had interrupted something, probably the formation of a " bee," and more willingly than I would have be- lieved possible an hour before, I resumed my furs and wrappers, and declared that I was ready. The Picker THE PICKER AND PILER. 505 and Piler had inspired me, and I knew not why, with an involuntary respect and liking. •• It is a rough night, sir," said he, as he shouldered a rifle he had left outside, and slung the keg by a leather strap over the neck of his horse, " but I will soon show you a better climate. Come, sir, jump on !" " And you ?" I said inquisitively, as he held his horse by the mane for me to mount. It was a Cana- dian pony, scarce larger than a Newfoundland dog. " I am more used^to the road, sir, and will walk. Come ?" It was no time to stand upon etiquette, even if it had been possible to resist the strange tone of authori- ty with which he spoke. So without more ado, I sprang upon the animal's back, and holding on by the j long tuft upon his withers, suffered him passively to plunge through the drift after his master. Wondering at the readiness with which I had en- j tered upon this equivocal adventure, but never for an | instant losing confidence in my guide, I shut my eyes l to the blinding cold, and accommodated my limbs as well as I could to the bare back and scrambling paces of the Canadian. The Picker and Piler strode on before, the pony following like a spaniel at his heels, ! and after a half hour's tramp, during which I had merely observed that we were rounding the base of a considerable hill, we turned short to the right, and were met by a column of smoke, which, lifting, the moment after, disclosed the two slopes of a consider- able valley enveloped in one sea of fire. A red, lurid cloud, overhung it at the tops of the tallest trees, and far and wide, above that, spread a covering of black smoke, heaving upward in vast and billowy masses, and rolling away on every side into the darkness. We approached a pine of gigantic height, on fire J to the very peak, not a branch left on the trunk, and : its pitchy knots distributed likethe eyes of the lamprey, burning pure and steady amid the irregular flame. I had once or twice, with an instinctive wish to draw rein, pulled hard upon the tangled tuft in my hand, but master and horse kept on. This burning tree, however, was the first of a thousand, and as the pony j turned his eyes away from the intense heat to pass be- ( tween it and a bare rock, I glanced into the glowing labyrinth beyond, and my faith gave way. I jumped from his back and hailed the Picker and Piler, with a | halloo scarcely audible amid the tumult of the crack- j ling branches. My voice did not evidently reach his j ear, but the pony, relieved from my weight, galloped to his side, and rubbed his muzzle against the unoc- j cupied hand of his master. He turned back immediately. " I beg pardon," he said, "I have that to think of just now which makes me forgetful. I am not surprised at your hesitation, but mount again and trust the pony." The animal turned rather unwillingly at his mas- ter's bidding, and a little ashamed of having shown fear, while a horse would follow, I jumped again on his back. " If you find the heat inconvenient, cover your face." And with this laconic advice, the Picker and Piler turned on his heel, and once more strode away be- fore us. Sheltering the sides of my face by holding up the corners of my wrapper with both hands, I abandoned myself to the horse. He overtook his master with a shuffling canter, and putting his nose as close to the ground as he could carry it without stumbling, fol- lowed closely at his heels. I observed, by the green logs lying immediately along our path, that we were following an avenue of prostrate timber which had been felled before the wood was fired ; but descending presently to the left, we struck at once into the deep bed of a brook, and by the lifted head and slower gait of the pony, as well as my own easier respiration, I found that the hollow through which it ran, contained a body of pure air unreached by the swaying curtains of smoke or the excessive heat of the fiery currents above. The pony now picked his way leisurely along the brookside, and while my lungs expanded with the relief of breathing a more temperate atmosphere, I raised myself from my stooping posture in a profuse perspiration, and one by one disembarrassed myself from my protectives against the cold. I had lost sight for several minutes of the Picker and Piler, and presumed by the pony's desultory movements that lie was near the end of his journey, when, rounding a shelvy point of rock, we stood sud- denly upon the brink of a slight waterfall, where the brook leaped four or five feet into a shrunken dell, and after describing a half circle on a rocky platform, re- sumed its onward course in the same direction as be- fore. This curve of the brook and the platform it enclosed lay lower than the general level of the forest, and the air around and within it, it seemed to me, was as clear and genial as the summer noon. Over one side, from the rocky wall, a rude and temporary roof of pine slabs drooped upon a barricade of logs, forming a low hut, and before the entrance of this, at the mo- ment of my appearance, stood a woman and a showily- dressed young man, both evidently confused at the sudden apparition of the Picker and Piler. My eyes had scarce rested on the latter, when, from standing ! at his fullest height with his rifle raised as if to beat I the other to the earth, he suddenly resumed his stoop- ing and quiet mien, set his rifle against the rock, and came forward to give me his hand. " My daughter!" he said, more in the way of ex- planation than introduction, and without taking fur- ther notice of the young man whose presence seemed so unwelcome, he poured me a draught from the keg he had brought, pointed to the water falling close at my hand, and threw himself at his length upon the I ground. The face and general appearance of the young man, now seated directly opposite me, offered no temptation i for more than a single glance, and my whole attention | was soon absorbed by the daughter of my singular host, who, crossing from the platform to the hut, i divided her attention between a haunch of venison roasting before a burning log of hickory, and the ar- rangement of a few most primitive implements for our coming supper. She was slight, like her father, in form, and as far as 1 had been able to distinguish his blackened features, resembled him in the general out- line. But in the place of his thin and determined mouth, her lips were round and voluptuous, and though her eye looked as if it might wake, it ex- pressed, even in the presence of her moody father, a drowsy and soft indolence, common enough to the Asiatics, but seldom seen in America. Herdress was coarse and careless, but she was beautiful with every possible disadvantage, and, whether married or not, evidently soon to become a mother. The venison was placed before us on the rock, and the young man, uninvited, and with rather an. air of bravado, cut himself a steak from the haunch and broiled it on the hickory coals, while the daughter kept as near him as her attention to her father's wants would permit, but neither joined us in eating, nor encouraged my attempts at conversation. The Picker and Piler ate in silence, leaving me to be my own carver, and finishing his repast by a deep draught from the keg which had been the means of our acquaintance, he sprang upon his feet and disappeared. " The wind has changed," said the daughter, look- ing up at the smoke, » and he has gone to the western edge to start a new fire. It's a full half mile, and he 11 be gone an hour." This was said with a look at me which was any- thing but equivocal. I was de trop. 1 took up the rifle of the Picker and Piler, forgetting that there wa. 506 THE PICKER AND PILER. probably nothing to shoot in a burning wood, and re- marking that I would have a look for a deer, jumped up the water-fall side, and was immediately hidden by the rocks. I had no conception of the scene that lay around me. The natural cave or hollow of rock in which the hut lay embosomed, was the centre of an area of per- haps an acre, which had been felled in the heart of the wood before it was set on fire. The forest encircled it with blazing columns, whose capitals were ap- parently lost in the sky, and curtains of smoke and flame, which flew as if lashed into ribands by a whirl- wind. The grandeur, the violence, the intense bright- ness of the spectacle, outran all imagination. The pines, on fire to the peak, and straight as arrows, seemed to resemble, at one moment the conflagration of an eastern city, with innumerable minarets aban- doned to the devouring element. At the next moment, the wind, changing its direction, swept out every vestige of smoke, and extinguished every tongue of flame, and the tall trees, in clear and flameless igni- tion, standing parallel in thousands, resembled some blinding temple of the genii, whose columns of miraculous rubies, sparkling audibly, outshone the day. By single glances, my eye penetrated into aisles of blazing pillars, extending far into the forest, and the next instant, like a tremendous surge alive with ser- pents of fire, the smoke and flame swept through it, and it seemed to me as if some glorious structure had been consumed in the passing of a thought. For a minute, again, all would be still except the crackling of the fibres of the wood, and with the first stir of the wind, like a shower of flashing gems, the bright coals rained down through the forest, and for a moment the earth glowed under the trees as if its whole crust were alive with one bright ignition. With the pungency of the smoke and heat, and the variety and bewilderment of the spectacle, I found my eyes and brain growing giddy. The brook ran cool below, and the heat had dried the leaves in the small clearing, and with the abandonment of a man overcome with the sultriness of summer, I lay down on the rivulet's bank, and dipped my head and bathed my eyes in the running water. Close to its surface there was not a particle of smoke in the air, and, exceeding- ly refreshed with its temperate coolness, 1 lay for some- time in luxurious ease, trying in vain to fancy the winter that howled without. Frost and cold were never more difficult to realize in midsummer, though within a hundred rods, probably, a sleeping man would freeze to death in an hour. " I have a better bed for you in the shanty," said the Picker and Piler, who had approached unheard in the noise of the fires, and suddenly stood over me. He took up his rifle, which I had laid against a prostrate log, and looked anxiously toward the descent to the hut. " I am little inclined for sleep," I answered, " and perhaps you will give me an hour of conversation here. The scene is new to me" — " I have another guest to dispose of," he answered, " and we shall be more out of the smoke near the shanty." I was not surprised, as I jumped upon the platform, to find him angrily separating his daughter and the stranger. The girl entered the hut, and with a de- cisive gesture, he pointed the young man to a "shake- down" of straw in the remotest corner of the rocky enclosure. "With your leave, old gentleman," said the in- truder, after glancing at his intended place of repose, ' I'll find a crib for myself." And springing up the craggy rock opposite the door of the shanty he gather- ed a slight heap of brush, and threw it into a hollow left in the earth by a tree, which, though full grown and green, had been borne to the earth and partly uprooted by the falling across it of an overblown and gigantic pine. The earth and stones had followed the uptorn mass, forming a solid upright wall, from which, like struggling fingers, stretching back in agony to the ground from which they had parted, a few rent and naked roots pointed into the cavity. The sequel will show why I am so particular in this description. " When peace was declared between England and this country," said the Picker and Piler (after an hour's conversation, which had led insensibly to his own history), I was in command of a privateer. Not choosing to become a pirate, by continuing the cruise, I was set ashore in the West Indies by a crew in open mutiny. My property was all on board, and I was left a beggar. I had one child, a daughter, whose mother died in giving her birth. " Having left a sufficient sum for her education in the hands of a brother of my own, under whose roof she had passed the first years of her life, I determined to retrieve my fortunes before she or my friends should be made acquainted with my disaster. " Ten years passed over, and I was still a wanderer and a beggar. " I determined to see my child, and came back like one from the dead, to my brother's door. He had forgotten me, and abused his trust. My daughter, then seventeen, and such as you see her here, was the drudge in the family of a stranger — ignorant and friend- less. My heart turned against mankind with this last drop in a bitter cup, and, unfitted for quiet life, I look- ed around for some channel of desperate adventure. But my daughter was the perpetual obstacle. What to do with her ? She had neither the manners nor the education of a lady, and to leave her a servant was impossible. I started with her for the west, with the vague design of joining some tribe of Indians, and chance and want have thrown me into the only mode of life on earth that could now be palatable to me." " Is it not lonely," I asked, " after your stirring ad- ventures ?" " Lonely ! If you knew the delight with which I live in the wilderness, with a circle of fire to shut out the world ! The labor is hard it is true, but I need it, to sleep and forget. There is no way else in which I could seclude my daughter. Till lately, she has been contented, too. We live a month together in one place — the centre like this of a burning wood. I can bear hardship, but I love a high temperature — the climate of the tropics — and I have it here. For weeks I forget that it is winter, tending my fires and living on the game I have stored up. There is a hollow or a brook — a bed or a cave, in every wood, where the cool air, as here, sinks to the bottom, and there I can put up my shanty, secure from all intrusion — but such as I bring upon myself." The look he gave to the uprooted ash and the sleeper beneath it, made an apology for this last clause unnecessary. He thought not of me. " Some months since," continued the Picker and Piler, in a voice husky with suppressed feeling, " I met the villain who sleeps yonder, accidentally, as I met you. He is the owner of this land. After engaging to clear and burn it, I invited him, as I did yourself, from a momentary fever for company which sometimes comes over the solitary, to go with me to the fallow I was clearing. He loitered in the neighborhood awhile, under pretext of hunting, and twice on my return from the village, I found that my daughter had seen him. Time has betrayed the wrong he inflicted on me. The voice of the agitated father sank almost to a whisper as he pronounced the last few words, and, rising from the rock on which we were sitting, he paced for a few minutes up and down the platform in silence. The reader must fill up from his own imagination KATE CREDIFORD. 507 the drama of which this is but the outline, for the Picker and Piler was not a man to be questioned, and lean tell but what I saw and heard. In the narration of his story he seemed but recapitulating the promi- nent events for his own self-converse, rather than at- tempting to tell a tale to me, and it was hurried over as brokenly and briefly as I have put it down. I sat in a listening attitude after he concluded, but he seemed to have unburthened his bosom sufficiently, and his lips were closed with stern compression. " You forget," he said, after pacing awhile, "that I offered you a place to sleep. The night wears late. Stretch yourself on that straw, with your cloak over you. Good night!" I lay down and looked up at the smoke rolling heavily into the sky till I slept. I awoke, feeling chilled, for the rock sheltered me from the rays of the fire. I stepped out from the hollow. The fires were pale with the gray of the morning, and the sky was visible through the smoke. I I looked around for a place to warm myself. The j hickory log had smouldered out, but a fire had been kindled under the overblown pine, and its pitchy heart was now flowing with the steady brilliancy of a torch. I took up one of its broken branches, cracked it on my knee, and stirring up the coals below, soon sent up a : merry blaze, which enveloped the whole trunk. Turning my back to the increasing heat, I started, for, creeping toward me, with a look of eagerness for which I was at a loss to account, came the Picker and Piler. " Twice doomed !" he muttered between his teeth, " but not by me !" He threw down a handful of pitch pine knots, laid \ his axe against a burning tree, and with a branch of ! hemlock, swept off the flame from the spot where the Ire was eating through, as if to see how nearly it was ! divided. I began to think him insane, for I could get no answer to my questions, and when he spoke, it was j half audible, and with his eyes turned from me fixedly. : I looked in the same direction, but could see nothing ! remarkable. The seducer slept soundly beneath his matted wall, and the rude door of the shanty was be- hind us. Leaving him to see phantoms in the air, as j I thought, I turned my eyes to the drips of the water- fall, and was absorbed in memories of my own, when I saw the girl steal from the shanty, and with one j bound overleap the rocky barrier of the platform. 1 laid my hand on the shoulder of my host, and pointed after her, as with stealthy pace looking back occa- sionally to the hut, where she evidently thought her father slept, she crept round toward her lover. "He dies!" cried the infuriated man: but as he, jumped from me to seize his axe, the girl crouched ; out of sight, and my own first thought was to awake the sleeper. I made two bounds and looked back, for | I heard no footstep. "Stand clear!" shouted a voice of almost super- i natural shrillness! and as I caught sight of the Picker and Piler standing enveloped in smoke upon the burn- , ing tree, with his axe high in the air, the truth flash- ed on me. Down came the axe into the very heart of the pitchy flame, and trembling with the tremendous smoke, the trunk slowly bent upward from the fire. The Picker and Piler sprang clear, the overborne ash creaked and heaved, and with a sick giddiness in my eyes, I look at the unwarned sleeper. One half of the dissevered pine fell to the earth, "md the shock startled him from his sleep. A whole age seemed to me elapsing while the other rose with the slow lift of the ash. \s it slid heavily away, the vigorous tree righted, like a giant springing to his feet. I saw the root pin the hand of the seducer to the earth — a struggle — a contortion and the leafless and waving top of the recovered and upright tree rocked with its effort, and a long, sharp cry had gone out echoing through the woods, and was still. I felt my brain reel. Blanched to a livid paleness, the girl moved about in the sickly daylight, when I recovered ; but the Picker and Piler, with a clearer brow than I had yet seen him wear, was kindling fires beneath the remnants of the pine. KATE CREDIFORD. I found myself looking with some interest at the back of a lady's head. The theatre was crowded, and I had come' in late, and the object of my curiosity, whoever she might be, was listening very attentively to the play. — She did not move. I had time to build a life-time romance about her before Thad seen a feature of her face. But her ears were small and of an ex- quisite oval, and she had that rarest beauty of woman — the hair arched and joined to the white neck with the same finish as on the temples. Nature often slights this part of her masterpiece. The curtain dropped, and I stretched eagerly for- ward to catch a glimse of the profile. — But no ! she sat next one of the slender pilasters, and with her head leaned against it, remained immovable. I left the box, and with some difficulty made my way into the crowded pit. Elbowing, apologizing, persevering, I at last gained a point where I knew I could see my incognita at the most advantage. I turned — pshaw ! — how was it possible I had not recog- nised her? Kate Crediford ! There was no getting out again, for a while at least, without giving offence to the crowd I had jostled so unceremoniously. I sat down — vexed — and commen- ced a desperate study of the figure of Shakspere on the drop-curtain. Of course I had been a lover of Miss Crediford's, or I could not have turned with indifference from the handsomest woman in the theatre. She was very beautiful — there was no disputing. But we love wo- men a little for what we do know of them, and a great deal more for what we do not. I had love-read Kate Crediford to the last leaf. We parted as easily as a reader and a book. Flirtation is a circulating library, in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume, and I gave up Kate to the next reader, feeling no property even in the marks I had made in her perusal. A little quarrel sufficed as an excuse for the closing of the book, and both of us studiously avoided a recon- ciliation. As I sat in the pit, I remembered suddenly a mole on her left cheek, and I turned toward her with the simple curiosity to knew whether it was visible at that distance. Kate looked sad. She still leaned immove- able against the slight column, and her dark eyes, it struck me, were moist. Her mouth, with this pecu- liar expression upon her countenance, was certainly inexpressibly sweet— the turned-down corners ending in dimples, which in that particular place, I have al- ways observed, are like wells of unfathomable melan- choly. Poor Kate ! what was the matter with her ? As I turned back to my dull study of the curtain a little pettish with myself for the interest with which 1 had looked at an old flame, I detected half a sigh under my white waistcoat ; but instantly persuading myself that it was a disposition to cough, coughed, and began to hum "suoni la tromba." The curiam rose and the play went on. 508 KATE CREDIFORD. It was odd that I never had seen Kate in that humor before. I did not think she could be sad. Kate Crediford sad ! Why, she was the most volatile, light- hearted, care-for-nothing coquette that ever held up her fingers to be kissed. I wonder, has any one really annoyed you, my poor Kate ! thought I. Could I, by chance, be of any service to you — for, after all, I owe you something! I looked at her again. Strange that I had ever looked at that face without emotion ! The vigils of an ever-wakeful, ever-passion- ate, yet ever-tearful and melancholy spirit, seemed set, and kept under those heavy and motionless eyelids. And she, as I saw her now, was the very model and semblance of the character that I had all my life been vainly seeking ! This was the creature I had sighed for when turning away from the too mirthful tender- ness of Kate Crediford ! There was something new, or something for the moment miswritten. in that familiar countenance. I made my way out of the pit with some difficulty, and returned to sit near her. After a few minutes, a gentleman in the next box rose and left the seat vacant on the other side of the pilaster against which she leaned. I went around while the orchestra were play- ing a loud march, and, without being observed by the thoughtful beauty, seated myself in the vacant place. ! Why did my eyes flush and moisten, as I looked upon the small white hand lying on the cushioned J barrier between us ! I knew every vein of it, like the i strings of my own heart. — I had held it spread out in j my own, and followed its delicate blue traceries with a rose-stem, for hours and hours, while imploring, and reproaching, and reasoning over love's lights and shadows. I knew the feel of every one of those ex- quisite fingers — those rolled up rose-leaves, with nails like pieces cut from the lip of a shell ! Oh, the promises I had kissed into oaths on that little chef- d'ceuvre of nature's tinted alabaster! the psalms and sermons I had sat out holding it, in her father's pew ! the moons I had tired out of the sky, making of it a bridge for our hearts passing backward and forward ! And how could that little wretch of a hand, that knew me better than its own other hand (for we had been more together), lie there, so unconscious of my pres- ence ? How could she — Kate Crediford — sit next to me as she was doing, with only a stuffed partition be- tween us, and her head leaning on one side of a pilaster, and mine on the other, and never start, nor recognise, nor be at all aware of my neighborhood ? She was not playing a part, it was easy to see. Oh, I knew those little relaxed fingers too well ! Sadness, indolent and luxurious sadness, was expressed in her counten- ance, and her abstraction was unfeigned and contem- plative. Could she have so utterly forgotten me — magnetically, that is to say?— Could the atmosphere about her, that would once have trembled betrayingly at my approach, like the fanning of an angel's invisi- ble wing, have lost the sense of my presence ? I tried to magnetize her hand. I fixed my eyes on that little open palm, and with all the intensity I could summon, kissed it mentally in its rosy centre. I re- proached the ungrateful little thing for its dulness and forgetfulness, and brought to bear upon it a focus of old memories of pressures and caresses, to which a stone would scarce have the heart to be insensible. But I belie myself in writing this with a smile. I watched those unmoving fingers with a heart. I could not see the face, nor read the thought, of the woman who had once loved me, and who sat near me, now, so unconsciously — but if a memory had stirred, if a pulse had quickened its beat, those finely-strung fingers I well know would have trembled responsively. Had she forgotten me altogether? Is that possible ? Can a woman close the leaves of her heart over a once-loved and deeply-written name, like the waves over a vessel's track — like the air over the division of a bird's flight ? I had intended to speak presently to Miss Crediford, but every moment the restraint became greater. I felt no more privileged to speak to her than the stranger who had left the seat I occupied. I drew back, for fear of encroaching on her room, or disturbing the folds of her shawl. I dared not speak to her. And, while I was arguing the matter to myself, the party who were with her, apparently tired of the play, arose and left the theatre, Kate following last, but unspoken to, and unconscious altogether of having been near any one whom she knew. I went home and wrote to her all night, for there was no sleeping till I had given vent to this new fever at my heart. And in the morning, I took the leading thoughts from my heap in incoherent scribblings, and embodied them more coolly in a letter : — " You will think, when you look at the signature, that this is to be the old story. And you will be as much mistaken as you are in believing that I was ever your lover, till a few hours ago. I have declared love to you, it is true. I have been happy with you, and wretched without you ; I have thought of you, dream- ed of you, haunted you, sworn to you, and devoted to you all and more than you exacted, of time and out- ward service and adoration ; but I love you now for | the first time in my life. Shall I be so happy as to ! make you comprehend this startling contradiction ? " There are many chambers in the heart, Kate ; and the spirits of some of us dwell, most fondly and secret- ly, in the chamber of tears — avowedly, however, in the outer and ever-open chamber of mirth. Over the sacred threshold, guarded by sadness, much that we select, and smile upon, and follow with adulation in the common walks of life, never passes. We admire the gay. They make our melancholy sweeter by con- trast, when we retire within ourselves. We pursue them. We take them to our hearts — to the outer vestibules of our hearts — and if they are gay only, they are content with the unconsecrated tribute which we pay them there. But the chamber within is, mean- time, lonely. It aches with its desolation. The echo of the mirthful admiration without jars upon its mournful silence. — It longs for love, but love toned with its own sadness — love that can penetrate deeper than smiles ever came — love that, having once entered, can be locked in with its key of melancholy, and brooded over with the long dream of a life-time. But that deep-hidden and unseen chamber of the heart may be long untenanted. And, meantime, the spirit becomes weary of mirth, and impatiently quenches the fire even upon its outer altar, and in the complete loneliness of a heart that has no inmate or idol, gay or tearful, lives mechanically on. " Do you guess at my meaning, Kate ? — Do you remember the merriment of our first meeting ? Do you remember in what a frolic of thoughtlessness you first permitted me to raise to my lips those restless fingers ? Do you remember the mock condescension, the merry haughtinsss, the rallying and feigned in- credulity, with which you first received my successive steps of vowing and love-making — the arch look when it was begun, the laugh when it was over, the untiring follies we kept up, after vows plighted, and the future planned and sworn to ? That you were in earnest, as much as you were capable of being, I fully believe. You would not else have been so prodigal of the sweet bestowings of a maiden's tenderness. But how often have I left you with the feeling, that in the hours I had passed with you, my spirit had been alone ! How often have I wondered if there were depths in my heart, which love can never reach ! How often mourned that in the procession of love there was no place allot- ted for its sweetest and dearest followers — tears and silence ! Oh, Kate ! sweet as was that sun-gleam of early passion, I did not love you .' I tired of your FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING. 509 smiles, waiting in vain for your sadness. I left you, and thought of you no more ? "But now (and you will be surprised to know that I have been so near to you unperceived)— I have drank an intoxication from one glance into your eyes, which throws open to you every door of my heart, subdues to your control every nerve and feeling of my exis- tence. Last night, 1 sat an hour, tracing again the transparent and well-remembered veins upon your hand, and oh! how the language written in those branching and mystic lines had changed in meaning and power. — You were sad. I saw you from a dis- tance, and, with amazement at an expression upon your face which I had never before seen. I came and sat near you. It was the look I had longed for when I knew you, and when tired of your mirth. It was the look I had searched the world for, combined with such beauty as yours. It was a look of tender and passionate melancholy, which revealed to me an un- suspected chamber in your heart — a chamber of tears. Ah, why were you never sad before ? Why have we lost— why have I lost the eternity's worth of sweet hours when you love me with that concealed treasure in your bosom ? — Alas ! that angels must walk the world, unrecognised, till too late ! Alas, that I have held in my arms and pressed to my lips, and loosed again with trifling and weariness, the creature whom it was my life's errand, the thirst and passionate long- ing of my nature, to find and worship ! " Oh, Heaven ! with what new value do I now number over your adorable graces of person ! How spiritualized is every familiar feature, once so deplor- ably misappreciated ! — How compulsive of respectful adoration is that flexible waist, that step of aerial light- ness, that swan-like motion, which I once dared to praise triflingly and half-mockingly, like the tints of a flower or the chance beauty of a bird ! And those bright lips ! How did I ever look on them, and not know that within their rosy portal slept voiceless, for a while, the controlling spell of my destiny — the tear- ful spirit followed and "called in my dreams, with per- petual longing ? Strange value given to features and outward loveliness by qualities within ! Strange witchery of sadness in a woman! Oh, there is, in mirth and folly, dear Kate, no air for love's breathing, still less of food for constancy, or of holiness to con- secrate and heighten beauty of person. » What can I say else, except implore to be per- mitted to approach you — to offer my life to you — to begin, thus late, after being known so long, the wor- ■hip which till death is your due ? Pardon me if I have written abruptly and wildly. I shall await your answer in an agony of expectation. I do not willingly breathe till 1 see you — till I weep at your feet over my blindness and forgetfulness. Adieu ! but let it not be for long I pray you !" I despatched this letter, and it would be difficult to embody in language the agony I suffered in waiting for a reply. I walked my room, that endless morning, with a death-pang in every step — so fearful was I — so prophetically fearful — that I had forfeited for ever the heart I had once flung from me. It was noon when a letter arrived. It was in a hand- writing new to me. But it was on the subject which possessed my existence, and it was of final import. It follows : — " Dear Sir : My wife wishes me to write to you, and inform you of her marriage, which took place a week or two since, and of which she presumes you are not aware. She remarked to me, that you thought her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced to see her at the play. As she seemed to regret not being able to answer your note herself, I may perhaps convey the proper apology by taking upon myself to mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an im- prudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before go- ing to the theatre, and was obliged to leave early. To day she seems seriously indisposed. I trust she will be well enough to see you in a day or two — and remain, " Yours, truly, " Samuel Smithers." But I never called on Mrs. Samuel Smithers. FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING. " The only heart that I have known of late, has been an easy, excitable sort of gentleman, quickly roused and quickly calmed— sensitive enough to confer a great deal of pleasure, and not sensi- tive enough to give a moment's pain. The heart of other days was a very different person indeed." — Bulwer. I was moping one day in solitary confinement in quarantine at Malta, when, in a turn between my stone window and the back wall I saw the yards of a vessel suddently cross the light, and heard the next moment the rattle of a chain let go, and all the bustle of a merchantman coming to anchor. 1 had the privilege of promenading between two ring-bolts on the wharf below the lazaretto, and with the attraction of a new- comer to the sleepy company of vessels under the yellow flag, I lost no time in descending the stone stairs, and was immediately joined by my vigilant sen- tinel, the guardiano, whose business it was to prevent my contact with the other visiters to the wharf. The tricolor flew at the peak of the stranger, and we easily made out that she was a merchantman from Marseilles, subject therefore to a week's quarantine on ac- count of the cholera. I had myself come from a i plague port, Smyrna, and was subjected to twenty j days' quarantine, six of which had passed ; so that the Frenchman, though but beginning his imprisonment, i was in a position comparatively enviable. I had watched for an hour the getting of the vessel | into mooring trim, and was beginning to conclude that she had come without passengers, when a gentle- ; man made his appearance on deck, and the jolly-boat ! was immediately lowered and manned. A traveller's I baggage was handed over the side, the gentleman took leave of the captain, and, in obedience to directions | from the quarantine officer on the quarterdeck, the ! boat was pulled directly to the wharf on which I stood. ; The guardiano gave me a caution to retire a little, as the stranger was coming to take possession of the next apartment to my own, and must land at the stairs near by; but, before I had taken two steps backward, I began to recognise features familar to me, and with a turn of the head as he sprang on the wharf the identity was established completely. Tom Berryman, by all that was wonderful ! I had not seen him since we were suspended from college together ten years before. Forgetting lazaretto and guardiano, and all the salt water between New Haven and Malta, I rushed up to Tom with the cordiality of other days (a little sharpen- ■ ed by abstinence from society), and we still had hold ! of hands with a firm grip, when the quarantine master 1 gravely accosted us, and informed my friend that he had incurred an additional week by touching me— in short, that he must partake of the remainder of my ' quarantine. Aghast and chap-fallen as Berryman was at the con- sequences of our rencontre (for he had fully calculated on getting into Malta in time for the carnival), he was soniewhat reconciled to his lot by being permitted to share my room and table instead of living his week in solitude ; and, by enriching our supplies a little from 510 FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING. town, sleeping much, and chatting through the day in the rich sunshine of that climate of Paradise, we con- trived to shove off the fortnight without any very in- tolerable tedium. My friend and I had begun our travels differently — he taken England first, which I proposed visiting last. It is of course the bonne bouche of travel to everybody, and I was very curious to know Tom's experiences ; and, as I was soon bound thitherward, anxious to pick out of his descriptions some chart of the rocks and shoals in the " British channel" of society. I should say, before quoting my friend, that he was a Kentuckian. with the manner (to ladies) of mingled devotion and nonchalance so popular with the sex, and a chivalric quality of man altogether. His father's political influence had obtained for him personal letters of introduction from the president, and, with this ad- vantage, and his natural air of fashion, he had found no obstacle to choosing his society in England ; choosing the first, of course, like a true republican ! We were sitting on the water-steps with our feet immersed up to the ankles (in January too), and in reply to some question of mine as to the approacha- bility of noble ladies by such plebeian lovers as him- self, Tom told me the story which follows. I take the names at random, of course, but, in all else, I shall try to " tell the tale as 'twas told to me." Why, circumstances, as you know, sometimes put people in the attitude of lovers whether they will or no; and it is but civil in such a case, to do what fate ex- pects of you. I knew too much of the difference be- tween crockery and porcelain to enter English society with the remotest idea of making love within the red book of the peerage, and though I've a story to tell, I swear I never put a foot forward till I thought it was knightly devoir; inevitable, though ever so ridiculous. Still, I must say, with a beautiful and unreserved woman beside one, very much like other beautiful and unreserved woman, a republican might be pardoned for forgetting the invisible wall. " Right honorable" love- liness has as much attraction about it, let me tell you, and is quite as difficult to resist, as loveliness that is honored, right or wrong, and a man must be brought up to it, as Englishmen are, to see the heraldric dragons and griffins in the air when a charming girl is talking to him. 11 Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like (her) grandsire cut in alabaster ?" Eh ? But to begin with the " Tityre tu patulaa." I had been passing a fortnight at the hunting lodge of that wild devil, Lord , in the Scotch Highlands, and what with being freely wet outside every day, and freely wet inside every night, I had given my principle of life rather a disgust to its lodgings, and there were some symptoms of preparation for leave-taking. Un- willing to be ill in a bachelor's den, with no solace tenderer than a dandy lord's tiger, I made a twilight flit to the nearest post-town, and tightening my life- screws a little with the aid of the village apothecary, started southward the next morning with four posters. I expected to be obliged to pull up at Edinboro', but the doctor's opiates, and abstinence, and quiet did more for me than I had hoped, and I went on very comfortably to Carlisle. I arrived at this place after nightfall, and found the taverns overflowing with the crowds of a fair, and no bed to be had unless I could make one in a quartette of snoring graziers. At the same time there was a great political meeting at Edinboro', and every leg of a poster had gone north — those I had brought with me having been trans- hitched to a return chaise, and gone off while I was looking for accommodations. Regularly stranded, I sat down by the tap-room fire, and was mourning my disaster, when the horn of the night-coach reached my ear, and in the minute of its rattling up to the door, I hastily resolved that it was the least of two evils, and booked myself accord- ingly. There was but one vacant place, an outsider ! With hardly time enough to resolve, and none to re- pent, I was presently rolling over the dark road, chilled to the bone in the first five minutes, and wet through with a " Scotch mist" in the next half hour. Some- where about daybreak we rolled into the little town of , five miles from the seat of the earl of Trese- then, to whose hospitalities I stood invited, and I went to bed in a most comfortable inn and slept till noon. Before going to bed I had written a note to be des- patched to Tresethen castle, and the earl's carriage was waiting for me when I awoke. I found myself better than I had expected, and dressing at once for dinner, managed to reach the castle just in time to hand in Lady Tresethen. Of that dinner 1 but re- member that I was the only guest, and that the earl regretted his daughter's absence from table, Lady Caroline having been thrown that morning from her horse. I fainted somewhere about the second remove, and recovered my wits some days after, on the safe side of the crisis of a fever. I shall never forget that first half hour of conscious curiosity. An exquisite sense of bodily repose mingled with a vague notion of recent relief from pain, made me afraid to speak lest I should awoke from a dream, yet, if not a dream, what a delicious reality ! A lady of most noble presence, in a half-mourning dress, sat by the sideof a cheerful fire, turning her large dark eyes on me, in the pauses of a conversation with a gray- headed servant. My bed was of the most sumptuous luxury; the chamber .was hung with pictures and draped with spotless white ; the table covered with the costliest elegancies of the toilet ; and in the gentle and deferential manner of the old liveried menial, and the subdued tones of inquiry by the lady, there was a refinement and tenderness which, with the keen sus- ceptibility of my senses, "lapt me in Elysium." I was long in remembering where 1 was. The lady glided from the room, the old servant resumed his seat by my bedside, other servants in the same livery came softly in on errands of service, and, at the striking of the half hour by a clock on the mantelpiece, the lady returned, and I was raised to receive something from her hand. As she came nearer, I remembered the Countess Tresethen. Three days after this I was permitted to take the air of a conservatory which opened from the countess's boudoir. My old attendant assisted me to dress, and, with another servant, took me down in a fauteuil. I was in slippers and robe-de-chambre, and presumed that I should see no one except the kind and noble Lady Tresethen, but I had scarce taken one turn up the long alley of flowering plants, when the countess came toward me from the glass door beyond, and on her arm a girl leaned for support, whose beauty (Here Tom dabbled his feet for some minutes in the water in silence.) God bless me ! I can never give you an idea of it! It was a new revelation of woman to me; the opening of an eighth seal. In the minute occupied by her approach, my imagination (accelerated, as that faculty always is, by the clairvoyance of sickness), had gone through a whole drama of love — fear, adoration, des- peration, and rejection — and so complete was it, that in after moments when these phases of passion came round in the proper lapse of days and weeks, it seemed to me that I had been through with them before ; that it was all familiar; that I had met and loved in some other world, this same glorious creature, with the same looks, words, and heart-ache ; in the same con- servatory of bright flowers, and faith, myself in the same pattern of a brocade dressing-gown ! Heavens! what a beautiful girl was that Lady Caro- line ! Her eyes were of a light gray, the rim of the FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING. 511 lids perfectly inky with the darkness of the long sweep- ing lashes, and in her brown h;iir there was a gold lustre that seemed somehow to illuminate the curves of her small head like a halo. Her mouth had too much character for a perfectly agreeable first impres- sion. It was nobility and sweetness educated oyer native high spirit andscornfulness — the nature shining through °the transparent blood, like a flaw through enamel. She would have been, in other circumstan- ces, a maid of Saragossa or a Gertrude Von Wart ; a heroine ; perhaps a devil. But her fascination was resistless ! "My daughter," said Lady Tresethen (and in that beginning was all the introduction she thought neces- sary), " is, like yourself, an invalid just escaped from the doctor ; you must congratulate each other. Are you strong enough to lend her an arm, Mr. Berry- man ?" The countess left us, and with the composure of a sister who had seen me every day of my life, Lady Caroline took my arm and strolled slowly to and fro, questioning me of my shooting at the lodge, and talk- ing to me of her late accident, her eyes sometimes fixed upon her little embroidered slippers, as they peeped from her snowy morning dress, and sometimes indolently raised and brought to bear on my flushed cheek and trembling lips; her singular serenity opera- ting on me as anything but a sedative ! I was taken up stairs again, after an hour's conversation, in a fair way for a relapse, and the doctor put me under em- bargo again for another week, which, spite of all the renewed care and tenderness of Lady Tresethen, seemed to me an eternity ! I'll not bother you with what I felt and thought all that time ! It was a brilliant autumnal day when I got leave to make my second exodus, and with the doctor's per- mission I prepared for a short walk in the park. I declined the convoy of the old servant, for I had heard Lady Caroline's horse gallop away down the avenue, and I wished to watch her return unobserved. I had just lost sight of the castle in the first bend of the path, when I saw her quietly walking her horse under the trees at a short distance, and the moment after she observed and came toward me at an easy canter. I had schooled myself to a little more self-possession, but I was not prepared for such an apparition of splen- did beauty as that woman on horseback. She rode an Arabian bay of the finest blood; a lofty, fiery, match- less creature, with an expression of eye and nostril which I could not but think a proper pendant to her own, limbed as I had seldom seen a horse, and his arched neck, and forehead, altogether, proud as a steed for Lucifer. She sat on him as if it were a throne she was born to, and the flow of her riding-dress seemed as much a part of him as his mane, lie ap- peared ready to bound into the air, like Pegasus, but one hand calmly stroked his mane, and her face was as tranquil as marble. " Well met !" she said ; " I was just wishing for a cavalier. What sort of a horse would you like, Mr. Berryman? Ellis!" (speaking to her groom), "is old Curtal taken up from grass ?" " Yes, miladi!" " Curtal is our invalid horse, and as you are not trery strong, perhaps his easy pace will be best for you. Bring him out directly, Ellis. We'll just walk along the road a little way ; for I must show you my Ara- ] bian ; and we'll not go back to ask mamma's permis- sion, for we shouldn't get it ! You won't mind riding a little way, will you?" Of course I would have bestrided a hippogriff at her bidding, and when the groom came out, leading a thorough-bred hunter, with apparently a very elastic and gentle action, I forgot the doctor and mounted with great alacrity. We walked our horses slowly down the avenue and out at the castle gate, followed by the groom, and after trying a little quicker pace on the public road, I pronounced old Curtal worthy of her ladyship's eulogium, and her own Saladin worthy, if horse could be worthy, of his burthen. We had ridden perhaps a mile, and Lady Caroline was giving me a slight history of the wonderful feats of the old veteran under me, when the sound of a horn made both horses prick up their ears, and on rising a little acclivity, we caught sight of a pack of hounds coming across the fields directly toward us, followed by some twenty red-coated horsemen. Old Curtal trembled and showed a disposition to fret, and I ob- served that Lady Caroline dexterously lengthened her own stirrup and loosened the belt of her riding- dress, and the next minute the hounds were over the hedge, and the horsemen, leap after leap, after them, and with every successive jump, my own steed reared and plunged unmanageably. " Indeed, I can not stand this !" cried Lady Caro- line, gathering up her reins, " Ellis ! see Mr. Berry- man home !" and away went the flying Arabian over the hedge with a vault that left me breathless with astonishment. One minute I made the vain effort to control my own horse and turn his head in the other direction, but my strength was gone. I had never leaped a fence in my life on horseback, though a tolerable rider on the road ; but before I could think how it was to be done, or gather myself together for the leap, Curtal was over the hedge with me, and flying across a ploughed field like the wind — Saladin not far before him. With a glance ahead I saw the red coats rising into the air and disappearing over another green hedge, and though the field was crossed iu twenty leaps, I had time to feel my blood run cold with the prospect of describing another parabola in the air, and to speculate on the best attitude for a projectile on horseback. Over went Saladin like a greyhound, but his mistress's riding-cap caught the wind at the highest point of the curve, and flew back into my face as Curtal rose on his haunches, and over I went again, blinded and giddy, and, with the cap held flat against my bosom by the pressure of the air, flew once more at a tremendous pace onward. My feet were now plunged to the instep in the stirrups, and my back, too weak to support me erect, let me down to my horse's mane, and one by one, along the skirt of a rising woodland, I could see the red coats dropping slowly behind. Right before me like a meieor, however, streamed back the loosened tresses of Lady Caroline, and Curtal kept close on the track of Saladin, neither losing nor gaining an inch apparent- ly, and nearer and nearer sounded the baying of the hounds, and clearer became my view of the steady and slight waist riding so fearlessly onward. Of my horse I had neither guidance nor control. He needed none. The hounds had crossed a morass, and we were round- ing a half-circle on an acclivity to come up with them, and Curtal went at it too confidently to be in error. Evenly as a hand-gallop on a green sward his tremen- dous pace told off, and if his was the ease of muscular power, the graceful speed of the beautiful creature moving before me seemed the aerial buoyancy of a bird. Obstructions seemed nothing. That flowing dress and streaming hair sailed over rocks and ditches, and over them, like their inseparable shadow, glided I, and, except one horseman who still kept his dis- tance ahead, we seemed alone in the field. 1 he clatter of hoofs, and the exclamations of excitement had ceased behind me, and though I was capable of no exertion beyond that of keeping my seat, I no longer feared the leap nor the pace, and began to an- ticipate a safe termination to my perilous adventure. A slight exclamation from Lady Caroline reached my ear and I looked forward. A small river was before us, and, from the opposite bank, of steep clay, the rider who had preceded us was falling back, his horsed 512 THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. forefeet high in the air, and his arms already in the water. I tried to pull my reins. I shouted to my horse in desperation. And with the exertion, my heart seemed to give way within me. Giddy and faint 1 abandoned myself to my fate. I just saw the flying heels of Saladin planted on the opposite bank and the streaming hair still flying onward, when, with a bound that, it seemed to me, must rend every fibre of the creature beneath me, I saw the water gleam under my feet, and still I kept on. We flew over a fence into a stubble field, the hounds just before us, and over a gate into the public highway, which we followed for a dozen bounds, and then, with a pace slightly mode- rated, we successively cleared a low wall and brought up, on our horses' haunches, in the midst of an uproar of dogs, cows, and scattering poultry — the fox having been run down at last in the enclosure of a barn. I had just strength to extricate my feet from the stirrups, take Lady Caroline's cap, which had kept its place between my elbows and knees, and present it to her as she sat in her saddle, and my legs gave way under me. I was taken into the farmhouse, and, at the close of a temporary ellipse, I was sent back to Tresethen Castle in a post-chaise, and once more handed over to the doctor ! Well, my third siege of illness was more tolerable, for I received daily, now, some message of inquiry or some token of interest from Lady Caroline, though I learned from the countess that she was in sad disgrace for her inveiglement of my trusting innocence. I also received the cards of the members of the hunt, with many inquiries complimentary to what they were pleased to consider American horsemanship, and I found that my seizure of the flying cap of Lady Caro- line and presentation of it to her ladyship at "the death," was thought to be worthy, in chivalry of Bayard, and in dexterity of Ducrow. Indeed, when let out again to the convalescent walk in the conser- vatory, I found that 1 was counted a hero even by the stately earl. There slipped a compliment, too, here and there, through the matronly disapprobation of Lady Tresethen — and all this was too pleasant to put aside with a disclaimer — so I bid truth and modesty hold their peace, and took the honor the gods chose to provide ! But now came dangers more perilous than my ride on Curtal. Lady Caroline was called upon to be kind to me ! Daily as the old servant left me in the alley of japonicas, she appeared from the glass door of her mother's boudoir and devoted herself to my comfort — walking with me, while I could walk, in those fragrant and balmy avenues of flowers, and then bringing me into her mother's luxurious apartment, where books, and music, and conversation as frank and untrammelled as man in love could ask, wiled away the day. Wiled it away ? — winged it — shod it with velvet and silence, for I never knew how it passed ! Lady Caroline had a mind of the superiority stamped so consciously on her lip. She anticipated no consequences from her kindness, therefore she was playful and unembarrassed. She sang to me, and I read to her. Her rides were given up, and Saladin daily went past the window to his exercise, and with my most zealous scrutiny I could detect in her face neither impatience of con- finement nor regret at the loss of weathar fitter for pleasures out of doors. Spite of every caution with which hope could be chained down, I was flattered. You smile — (Tom said, though he was looking straight into the water, and had not seen my face for half an hour) — but, without the remotest hope of taking Lady Caroline to Kentucky, or of becoming English on the splendid dowry of the heiress of Trese- then, I still felt it impossible to escape from my lover's attitude — impossible to avoid hoarding up symptoms, encouragements, flatteries, and all the moonshine of am- atory anxiety. I was in love — and who reasons in love? One morning, after I had become an honorary patient — an invalid only by sufferance — and was slow- ly admitting the unwelcome conviction that it was time for me to be shaping my adieux — the conversa- tion took rather a philosophical turn. The starting point was a quotation in a magazine from Richter : " Is not a man's unirerse within his head, whether a king's diadem or a torn scullcap be without ?" — and I had insisted rather strenuously on the levelling privilege we enjoyed in the existence of a second world around us — the world of revery and dream — wherein the tyran- ny, and check, and the arbitrary distinctions of the world of fact, were never felt — and where he, though he might be a peasant, who had the consciousness in his soul that he was a worthy object of love to a prin- cess, could fancy himself beloved and revel in imagin- ary possession. " Why," said I. turning with a sudden flush of self- confidence to Lady Caroline, " Why should not the passions of such a world, the loving and returning of love infancy, have the privilege of language ? Why should not matches be made, love confessed, vows ex- changed, and fidelity sworn, valid within the realm of dream-land only ? Why should I not say to you, for example, I adore you, dear lady, and in my world of thought you shall, if you so condescend, be my bride and mistress ; and why, if you responded to this and listened to my vows of fancy, should your bridegroom of the world of fact feel his rights invaded ?" " In fancy let it be then !" said Lady Caroline, with a blush and a covert smile, and she rang the bell for luncheon. Well, I still lingered a couple of days, and on the last day of my stay at Tresethen, I became sufficiently emboldened to take Lady Caroline's hand behind the fountain of the conservatory, and to press it to my lips with a daring wish that its warm pulses belonged to the world of fancy. She withdrew it very kindly, and (1 thought) sadly, aud begged me to go to the boudoir and bring her a volume of Byron that lay onher work-table. I brought it, and she turned over the leaves a mo- ment, and, with her pencil, marked two lines and gave me the book, bidding me an abrupt good morning. I stood a few minutes with my heart beating and my brain faint, but finally summoned courage to read ■ — " I can not lose a world for thee — But would not lose thee for the world !" I left Tresethen the next morning, and "Hold on, Tom !" cried I — " there comes the boat with our dinner from Valletta, and we'll have your sorrows over our Burgundy." " Sorrows !" exclaimed Tom, " I was going to tell you of the fun I had at her wedding !" " Lord preserve us !" "Bigamy — wasn't it? — after our little nuptials in dream-land ! She told her husband all about it at the wedding breakfast, and his lordship (she married the Marquis of ) begged to know the extent of my prerogatives. I was sorry to confess that they did not interfere very particularly with his .'" THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. The moon shone like glorified and floating dew on the bosom of the tranquil Pei-ho, and the heart of the young poet Le-pih was like a cup running over with wine. It was no abatement of his exulting fulness that he was as yet the sole possessor of the secret of his own genius. Conscious of exquisite susceptibility to beauty, fragrance and music (the three graces of THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. 513 the Chinese), he was more intent upon enjoying his gilts than upon the awakening of envy for their posses- sion the latter being the second leaf in the book of genius, and only turned over by the finger of satiety. Thoughtless of the acquisition of fame as the youth- ful poet may be, however, he is always ready to an- ticipate its fruits, and Le-pih committed but the poet's error, when, having the gem in his bosom which could buy the favor of the world, he took the favor for granted without producing the gem. Kwonfootse had returned a conqueror, from the wars with the Hwong-kin, and this night, on which the moon shone so gloriously, was the hour of his triumph, for the Emperor Tang had condescended to honor with his presence, a gala given by the victorious gene- ral at his gardens on the Pei-ho. Softened by his exulting feelings (for though a brave soldier, he was as haughty as Lnykong the thunder-god, or Hwuyloo the monarch of fire), the warlike mandarin threw open his gardens on this joyful night, not only to those who wore in their caps the gold ball significant of patrician birth, but to all whose dress and mien warranted their appearance in the presence of the emperor. Like the realms of the blest shone the gardens of Kwonfootse. Occupying the whole valley of the Pei-ho, at a spot where it curved like the twisted cavity of a shell, the sky seemed to shut in the grounds like the cover of a vase, and the stars seemed but the garden-lights overhead. From one edge of the vase to the other — from hill-top to hill-top — extended a broad avenue, a pagoda at either extremity glittering with gold and scarlet, the sides flaming with colored lamps and flaunting with gay streamers of barbarian stuffs, and the moonlit river cutting it in the centre, the whole vista, at the first glance, resembling a girdle of precious stones with a fastening of opal. Off from this central division radiated in all directions alleys of camphor and cinnamon trees, lighted with amorous dimness, and leading away to bowers upon the hill- side, and from every quarter resounded music, and in every nook was seen feasting and merriment. In disguise, the emperor and imperial family mingled in the crowd, and no one save the host and his daugh- ters knew what part of the gardens was honored with their presence. There was, however, a retreat in the grounds, sacred to the privileged few, and here, when fatigued or desirous of refreshment, the royal person- ages laid aside disguise and were surrounded with the deferential honors of the court. It was so con- trived that the access was unobserved by the people, and there was, therefore, no feeling of exclusion to qualify the hilarity of the entertainment, Kwonfootse, with all his pride, looking carefully to his popularity. At the foot of each descent, upon the matted banks of the river, floated gilded boats with lamps burning in their prows, and gayly-dressed boatmen offering con- veyance across to all who required it; but there were also, unobserved by the crowd, boats unlighted and undecorated holding oft' from the shore, which, at a sign given by the initiated, silently approached a mar- ble stair without the line of the blazing avenue, and tak- ing their freight on board, swiftly pulled up the moonlit river, to a landing concealed by the shoulder of the hill. No path led from the gardens hither, and from no point of view could be overlooked the more brilliant scene of imperial revel. It was verging toward midnight when the unknown poet, with brain floating in a celestial giddiness of delight, stood on the brink of the gleaming river. The boats plied to and fro with their freights of fair damsels and gayly-dressed youths, the many-colored lamps throw- ing a rainbow profusion of tints on the water, and many a voice addressed him with merry invitation, for Le-pih's beauty, so famous now in history, was of no forbidding stateliness, and his motions, like his coun- tenance, were as franklv joyous as the gambols of a 33 young leopard. Not inclined to boisterous gayety at the moment, Le-pih stepped between the lamp-bearing trees of the avenue, and folding his arms in his silken vest, stood gazing in revery on the dancing waters. After a few moments, one of the dark boats on which he had unconsciously fixed his gaze drew silently toward him, and as the cushioned stern was brought round to the bank, the boatman made a reverence to his knees and sat waiting the poet's pleasure. Like all men born to good fortune, Le-pih was prompt to follow the first beckoningsof adventure, and asking no questions, he quietly embarked, and with a quick dip of the oars the boat shot from the shore and took the descending current. Almost in the next in- stant she neared again to the curving and willow-fringed margin of the stream, and lights glimmered through the branches, and sweet, low music became audible, and by rapid degrees, a scene burst on his eye, which the first glimpse into the gate of paradise (a subsequent agreeable surprise, let us presume) could scarcely have exceeded. Without an exchange of a syllable between the boatman and his freight, the stern was set against a carpeted stair at the edge of the river, and Le-pih dis- embarked with a bound, and stood upon a spacious area lying in a lap of the hill, the entire surface carpeted smoothly with Persian stuffs, and dotted here and there with striped tents piched with poles of silver. Gar- lands of flowers hung in festoons against the brilliant- colored cloths, and in the centre of each tent stood a low tablet surrounded with couches and laden with meats and wine. The guests, for whom this portion of the entertainment was provided, were apparently assembled at a spot farther on, from which proceeded the delicious music heard by the poet in approaching ; and, first entering one of the abandoned tents for a goblet of wine, Le-pih followed to the scene of attrac- tion. Under a canopy of gold cloth held by six bearers, stood the imperial chair upon a raised platform — not occupied, however, the august Tang reclining more at ' his ease, a little out of the circle, upon cushions canopied by the moonlight. Around upon the steps of the platform and near by, were grouped the noble ladies of the court and the royal princesses (Tang living much in the female apartments and his daugh- ters numbering several score), and all, at the moment of Le-pih's joining the assemblage, turning to observe a damsel with a lute, to whose performance the low sweet music of the band had been a prelude. The first touch of the strings betrayed a trembling hand, and the poet's sympathies were stirred, though from her bent posture and her distant position he had not yet seen the features of the player. As the tremulous notes grew firmer, and the lute began to give out a flowing harmony, Le-pih approached, and at the same time, the listening groups of ladies began to whisper and move away, and of those who remained, none seemed to listen with pleasure except Kwonfootse and the emperor. The latter, indeed, rivalled the intruding bard in his interest, rolling over upon the cushions and resting on the other imperial elbow in close at- tention. Gaining confidence evidently from the neglect of her auditory, or, as is natural to women, less afraid of the judgment of the other sex, who were her only listeners, the fair Taya (the youngest daughter of Kwonfootse), now joined her voice to her instrument, and sang with a sweetness that dropped like a plum- met to the soul of Le-pih. He fell to his knee upon a heap of cushions and leaned eagerly forward. As she became afterward one of his most passionate themes, we are enabled to reconjure the features that were presented to his admiring wonder. The envy of the princesses was sufficient proof that Taya was of rare beauty; she had that wonderful perfection of 514 THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. feature to which envy pays its bitterest tribute, which is apologized for if not found in the poet's ideal, which we thirst after in pictures and marble, of which loveli- ness and expression are but lesser degrees — fainter shadowings. She was adorably beautiful. The outer corners of her long almond-shaped eyes, the dipping crescent of her forehead, the pencil of her eyebrow and the indented corners of her mouth — all these turned downward ; and this peculiarity which, in faces of a less elevated character, indicates a temper morose and repulsive, in Taya's expressed the very soul of gentle and lofty melancholy. There was something infantine about her mouth, the teeth were so small and regular, and their dazzling whiteness, shining be- tween lips of the brilliant color of a cherry freshly torn apart, was in startling contrast with the dark lustre of her eyes. Le-pilrs poetry makes constant allusion to those small and snowy teeth, and the turn- ed-down corners of the lips and eyes of his incompar- able mistress. Taya's song was a fragment of that celebrated Chinese romance from which Moore has borrowed so ! largely in his loves of the angels, and it chanced to be particularly appropriate to her deserted position | (she was alone now with her three listeners), dwelling as j it did upon the loneliness of a disguised Peri, wander- j ing in exile upon earth. The lute fell from her hands | when she ceased, and while the emperor applauded, j and Kwonfootse looked on her with paternal pride, j Le-pih modestly advanced to the fallen instrument, j and with a low obeisance to the emperor and a hesita- j ting apology to Taya, struck a prelude in the same J air, and broke forth into an impulsive expression of his feelings in verse. It would be quite impossible to give a translation of this famous effusion with its I oriental load of imagery, but in modifying it to the spirit of our language (giving little more than its thread , of thought), the reader may see glimpses of the ma- terial from which the great Irish lyrist spun his woof of sweet fable. Fixing his keen eyes upon the bright i lips just closed, Le-pih sang : — " When first from heaven's immortal throngs The earth-doomed angels downward came, And mourning their enraptured songs, Walked sadly in our mortal frame ; To those, whose lyres of loftier string Had taught the myriad lips of heaven, The song that they tor ever sing, A wondrous lyre, 'tis said, was given. ' And go,' the seraph warder said, As from the diamond gates they flew, ' And wake the songs ye here have led In earthly numbers, pure and new ! And yours shall be the hallowed power To win the lost to heaven again. And when earth's clouds shall darkest lower Your lyre shall breathe its holiest strain ! Yet, chastened by this inward fire, Your lot shall be to walk alone, I Save when, perchance, with echoing lyre, You touch a spirit like your own ; And whatsoe'er the guise your wear, To him, 'tis given to know you there.' " The song over, Le-pih sat with his hands folded across the instrument and his eyes cast down, and Taya gazed on him with wondering looks, yet slowly, and as if unconsciously, she took from her breast a rose, and with a half-stolen glance at her father, threw it upon the lute. But frowningly Kwonfootse rose from his seat and approached the poet. "Who are you?" he demanded angrily, as the bard placed the rose reverently in his bosom. " Le-pih !" With another obeisance to the emperor, and a deeper one to the fair Taya, he turned, after this concise an- swer, upon his heel, lifting his cap to his head, which, to the, rage of Kwonfootse, bore not even the gold ball of aristocracy. " Bind him for the bastinado !" cried the infuriated mandarin to the bearers of the canopy. The six soldiers dropped their poles to the ground, but the emperor's voice arrested them. " He shall have no violence but from you, fair Taya," said the softened monarch ; " call to him by the name he has just pronounced, for I would hear that lute again !" " Le-pih ! Le-pih !" cried instantly the musical voice of the fair girl. The poet turned and listened, incredulous of his own ears. " Le-pih! Le-pih!" she repeated, in a soft tone. Half-hesitating, half-bounding, as if still scarce be- lieving he had heard aright, Le-pih flew to her feet, and dropped to one knee upon the cushion before her, his breast heaving and his eyes flashing with eager wonder. Taya's courage was at an end, and she sat with her eyes upon the ground. " Give him the lute, Kwonfootse !" said the em- peror, swinging himself on the raised chair with an abandonment of the imperial avoirdupois, which set ringing violently the hundred bells suspended in the golden fringes. " Let not the crow venture again into the nest of the eagle," muttered the mandarin between his teeth as he handed the instrument to the poet. The sound of the bells brought in the women and courtiers from every quarter of the privileged area, and, preluding upon the strings to gather his scattered senses, while they were seating themselves around him, Le-pih at last fixed his gaze upon the lips of Taya, and commenced his song to an irregular harmo- ny well adapted to extempore verse. We have tried in vain to put this celebrated song of compliment into English stanzas. It commenced with a description of Taya's beauty, and an enumeration of things she resembled, dwelling most upon the blue lily, which seems to have been Le-pilrs favorite flower. The burthen of the conclusion, however, is the new value everything assumed in her presence. "Of the light in this garden," he says, "there is one beam worth all the glory of the moon, for it sleeps on the eye of Taya. Of the air about me there is one breath which my soul drinks like wine— it is from the lips of Taya. Taya looks on a flower, and that flower seems to me, with its pure eye, to gaze after her for ever. Taya's jacket of blue silk is my passion. If angels visit me in my dreams, let them be dressed like Taya. I love the broken spangle in her slipper better than the first star of evening. Bring me, till I die, inner leaves from the water-lily, since white and fragrant like them are the teeth of Taya. Call me, should I sleep, when rises the crescent moon, for the blue sky in its bend curves like the drooped eye of Taya," &c, &c. "By the immortal Fo !" cried the emperor, raising himself bolt upright in his chair, as the poet ceased, "you shall be the bard of Tang ! Those are my sen- timents better expressed ! The lute, in your hands, is my heart turned inside out ! Lend me your gold chain, Kwonfootse, and, Taya ! come hither and put it on his neck !" Taya glided to the emperor, but Le-pih rose to his feet, with a slight flush on his forehead, and stood erect and motionless. " Let it please your imperial majesty," he said, after a moment's pause, "to bestow upon me some gift less binding than a chain." "Carbuncle of Budha! What would theyouth have!" exclaimed Tang in astonishment. " Is not the gold chain of a mandarin good enough for his acceptance ?" "My poor song," replied Le-pih, modestly casting down his eyes, " is sufficiently repaid by your majesty's praises. The chain of the mandarin would gall the neck of the poet. Yet — if I might have a" reward more valuable — " THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. 515 " In Fo's name what is it ?*' said the embarrassed emperor. Kwonfootse laid his hand on his cimeter, and his daughter blushed and trembled. " The broken spangle on the slipper of Taya !" said Le-pih, turning half indifferently away. Loud laughed the ladies of the court, and Kwon- footse walked from the bard with a look of contempt, but the emperor read more truly the proud and deli- cate spirit that dictated the reply : and in that moment probably commenced the friendship with which, to the end of his peaceful reign, Tang distinguished the most gifted poet of his time. The lovely daughter of the mandarin was not behind the emperor in her interpretation of the character of Le-pih, and as she stepped forward to put the detach- ed spangle into his hand, she bent on him a look full of earnest curiosity and admiration. " What others give me," he murmured in a low voice, pressing the worthless trifle to his lips, " makes me their slave; but what Taya gives me is a link that draws her to my bosom." Kwonfootse probably thought that Le-pih's audi- ence had lasted long enough, for at this moment the sky seemed bursting into flame with a sudden tumult of fireworks, and in the confusion that immediately succeeded, the poet made his way unquestioned to the bank of the river, and was reconveyed to the spot of his first embarkation, in the same silent manner with which he had approached the privileged area. During the following month, Le-pih seemed much in request at the imperial palace, but, to the surprise of his friends, the keeping of "worshipful society" was not followed by any change in his merry manners, nor apparently by any improvement in his worldly condition. His mother still sold mats in the public market, and Le-pih still rode, every few days, to the marsh, for his panniers of rushes, and to all comers, among his old acquaintances, his lute and song were as ready and gratuitous as ever. All this time, however, the fair Taya was consuming with a passionate melancholy which made startling ravages in her health, and the proud mandarin, whose affection for his children was equal to his pride, in vain shut his eyes to the cause, and eat up his heart with mortification. When thefull moon came round again, reminding him of the scenes the last moon had shone upon, Kwonfootse seemed suddenly lightened of his care, and his superb gardens on the Pei-ho were sud- denly alive with preparations for another festival. Kept in close confinement, poor Taya fed on her sorrow, indifferent to the rumors of marriage which could concern only her sisters ; and the other demoiselles Kwonfootse tried in vain, with fluttering hearts, to pry into their father's secret. A marriage it certainly was to be, for the lanterns were painted of the color of peach-blossoms — but whose marriage ? It was an intoxicating summer's morning, and the sun was busy calling the dew back to heaven, and the birds wild with entreating it to stay (so Le-pih de- scribes it), when down the narrow street in which the poet's mother piled her vocation, there came a gay procession of mounted servants with a led horse richly caparisoned, in the centre. The one who rode before held on his pommel a velvet cushion, and upon it lay the cap of a noble, with its gold ball shining in the sun. Out flew the neighbors as the clattering hoofs came on, and roused by the cries and the barking of dogs, forth came the mother of Le-pih, followed by the poet himself, but leading his horse by the bridle, for he had just thrown on his panniers, and was bound out of the city to cut his bundle of rushes. The poet gazed on the pageant with the amused curiosity of others, wondering what it could mean, abroad at so early an hour; but, holding back his sorry beast to let the prancing horsemen have all the room they re- quired, he was startled by a reverential salute from the bearer of the velvet cushion, who, drawing up his followers in front of the poet's house, dismounted and requested to speak with him in private. Tying his horse to the door-post, Le-pih led the way into the small room, where sat his mother braid- ing her mats to a cheerful song of her son's making, and here the messenger informed the bard, with much circumstance and ceremony, that in consequence of the pressing suit of Kwonfootse, the emperor had been pleased to grant to the gifted Le-pih, the rank ex- pressed by the cap borne upon the velvet cushion, and that as a noble of the celestial empire, he was now a match for the incomparable Taya. Fnthermore the condescending Kwonfootse had secretly arranged the ceremonial for the bridal, and Le-pih was commanded to mount the led horse and come up with his cap and gold ball to be made forthwith supremely happy. An indefinable expression stole over the features of the poet as he took up the cap, and placing it on his head, stood gayly before his mother. The old dame looked at him a moment, and the tears started to her eyes. Instantly Le-pih plucked it off and flung it on ' the waste heap at her side, throwing himself on his knees before her in the same breath, and begging her forgiveness for his silly jest. " Take back your bauble to Kwonfootse !" he said, rising proudly to his feet, "and tell him that the em- peror, to whom I know how to excuse myself, can easily make a poet into a noble, but he can not make a noble into a poet. The male bird does not borrow its brighter plumage from its mate, and she who mar- ries Le-pih will braid rushes for his mother!" Astonished, indeed, were the neighbors, who had learned the errand of the messenger from his attendants without, to see the crest-fallen man come forth again with his cap and cushion. Astonished much more were they, ere the gay cavalcade were well out of sight, to see Le-pih appear with his merry countenance and plebeian cap, and, mounting his old horse, trot briskly away, sickle in hand, to the marshes. The day passed in wondering and gossip, interrupted by the entrance of one person to the house while the old dame was gone with her mats to the market, but she returned duly before sunset, and went in as usual to prepare supper for her son. The last beams of day were on the tops of the pagodas when Le-pih returned, walking beside his heavy-laden beast, and singing a merry song. He threw off his rushes at the door and entered, but his song was abruptly checked, for a female sat on a low seat by his mother, stooping over a half-braided mat, and the next moment, the blushing Taya lifted up her brimming eyes and gazed at him with silent but plead- ing love. Now, at last, the proud merriment and self respect- ing confidence of Le-pih were overcome. His eyes I grew flushed and his lips trembled without utterance. j With both his hands pressed on his beating heart, he stood gazing on the lovely Taya. " Ah !" cried the old dame, who sat with folded hands and smiling face, looking on at a scene she did not quite understand, though it gave her pleasure, " Ah ! this is a wife for my boy, sent from heaven ! i No haughty mandarin's daughter she ! no proud minx, j to fall in love with the son and despise the mother. [I Let them keep their smart caps and gift-horses (or ' those who can be bought at such prices ! My son is a noble by the gift of his Maker— better than an em- peror's gold ball ! Come to your supper, Le-pih . Come, my sweet daughter !" Taya placed her finger on her lip, and Le-pih agreed that the moment was not yet come to enlighten his mother as to the quality of her guest. She was not long in ignorance, however, for before they could seat themselves at table, there was a loud knocking at 516 MEENA DIMITY. the door, and before the old dame could bless herself, an officer entered and arrested the daughter of Kvvon- footse by name, and Le-pih and his mother at the same time, and there was no dismissing the messenger now. Oft' they marched, amid the silent consterna- tion and pity of the neighbors — not toward the palace of justice, however, but to the palace of the emperor, where his majesty, to save all chances of mistake, chose to see the poet wedded, and sit, himself, at the bridal feast. Tang had a romantic heart, fat and voluptuous as he was, and the end of his favor to Le- pih and Taya was the end of his life. MEENA DIMITY; OR, WHY MR. BROWN CRASH TOOK THE TOUR. Fashion is arbitrary, we all know. What it was that originally gave Sassafras street the right to de- spise Pepperidge street, the oldest inhabitant of the village of Slimford could not positively say. The courthouse and jail were in Sassafras street; but the orthodox church and female seminary were in Pep- peridge street. Two directors of the Slimford bank lived in Sassafras street — two in Pepperidge street. The Dyaper family lived in Sassafras street — the Dimity family in Pepperidge street ; and the fathers of the Dyaper girls and the Dimity girls were worth about the same money, and had both made it in the lumber line. There was no difference to speak of in their respective mode of living — none in the educa- tion of the girls — none in the family gravestones or church-pews. Yet, deny it who liked, the Dyapers were the aristocracy of Slimford. It may be a prejudice, but I am inclined to think there is always something in a nose. (I am about to mention a trifle, but trifles are the beginning of most things, and I would account for the pride paramount of the Dyapers, if it is any way possible.) The most stylish of the Miss Dyapers — Harriet Dyaper — had a nose like his grace the Duke of Wellington. Nei- ther her father nor mother had such a feature ; but there was a foreign umbrella in the family with ex- actly the same shaped nose on the ivory handle. Old Dyaper had once kept a tavern, and he had taken this umbrella from a stranger for a night's lodging. But that is neither here nor there. To the nose of Har- riet Dyaper, resistlessly and instinctively, the Dimity girls had knocked under at school. There was au- thority in it ; for the American eagle had such a nose, and the Duke of Wellington had such a nose; and when, to these two warlike instances, was added the nose of Harriet Dyaper, the tripod stood firm. Am I visionary in believing that the authority introduced into that village by a foreigner's umbrella (so unac- countable is fate) gave the dynasty to the Dyapers? I have mentioned but two families— one in each of the two principal streets of Slimford. Having a little story to tell, I can not afford to distract my narrative with unnecessary "asides;" and I must not only omit all description of the other Sassafrasers and Pepperidgers, but I must leave to your imagination several Miss Dyapers and several Miss Dimitys — Har- riet Dyaper and Meena Dimity being the two exclu- sive objects of my hero's Sunday and evening atten- tions. For eleven months in the year, the loves of the ladies of Slimford were presided over by indigenous Cupids. Brown Crash and the other boys of the vil- lage had the Dyapers and the Dimitys for that respect- ive period to themselves. The remaining month, when their sun of favor was eclipsed, was during the falling of the leaf, when the " drummers" came up to dun. The townish clerks of the drygoods merchants were too much for the provincials. Brown Crash knocked under and sulked, owing, as he said, to the melancholy depression accompanying the fall of the deciduous vegetation. But I have not yet introduced you to my hero. Brown Crash was the Slimford stage-agent. He was the son of a retired watch-maker, and had been laughed at in his boyhood for what they called his "airs." He loved, even as a lad, to be at the tavern when the stage came in, and help out the ladies. With instinctive leisureliness he pulled off his cap as soon after the " whoa-hup" as was necessary (and no sooner), and asked the ladies if they would "alight and take dinner," with a seductive smile which began, as the landlord said, " to pay." Hence his promotion. At sixteen he was nominated stage-agent, and thence- forward was the most conspicuous man in the village; for " man" he was, if speech and gait go for any- thing. But we must minister a moment to the reader's inner sense ; for we do not write altogether for Slim- ford comprehension. Brown Crash had something in his composition "above the vulgar." If men's qualities were mixed like salads, and I were giving a " recipe for Brown Crashes," in Mrs. Glass's style, 1 should say his two principal ingredients were a dic- tionary and a dunghill cock — for his language was as ornate as his style of ambulation was deliberate and imposing. What Brown Crash would have been, born Right Honorable, I leave (with the smaller Dy- apers and Dimitys) to the reader's fancy. My object is to show what he was, minus patrician nurture and valuation. Words, with Brown Crash, were suscep- tible of being dirtied by use. He liked a clean tow- el — he preferred an unused phrase. But here stopped his peculiarities. Below the epidermis he was like other men, subject to like tastes and passions. And if he expressed his loves and hates with grandiloquent imagery, they were the honest loves and hates of a week-day world — no finer nor flimsier for their be- decked plumage. To use his own phrase, Brown frequented but two ladies in Slimford — Miss Harriet Dyaper and Miss Meena Dimity. The first we have described in describing her nose, for her remainder was compara- tively inconsiderable. The latter was "a love," and of course had nothing peculiar about her. She was a lamp — nothing till lighted. She was a mantle — nothing, except as worn by the owner. She was a mirror — blank and unconscious till something came to be reflected. She was anything, loved — unloved, nothing! And this (it is our opinion after half a life) is the most delicious and adorable variety of woman that has been spared to us from the museum of specimen angels. (A remark of Brown Crash's, by the way, of which he may as well have the credit.) Now Mr. Crash had an ambitious weakness for the best society, and he liked to appear intimate with the Dyapers. But in Meena Dimity there was a secret charm which made him wish she was an ever-to-be- handed-out lady-stage-passenger. He could have given her a hand, and brought in her umbrella and bandbox, all day long. In his hours of pride he thought of the Dyapers — in his hours of affection of Meena Dimity. But the Dyapers looked down upon the Dimitys; and to play his card delicately between Harriet and Meena, took all the diplomacy of Brown Crash. The unconscious Meena would walk up Sassafras street when she had his arm, and the scorn- ful Harriet would be there with her nose over the front gate to sneer at them. He managed as well as he could. He went on light evenings to the Dya- pers — on dark evenings to the Dimitys. He took town-walks with the Dyapers — country-walks with MEENA DIMITY. 517 the Dimitys. But his acquaintance with the Dyapers hung by the eyelids. Harriet liked him ; for he was the only beau in Slimford whose manners were not belittled beside her nose. But her acquaintance with him was a condescension, and he well knew that he could not "hold her by the nose" if she were offend- ed. Oh no! Though their respective progenitors were of no very unequal rank — though a horologist and a " boss lumberman" might abstractly be equals — the Dyapers had the power! Yes — they could lift him to themselves, or dash him down to the Dimitys; and all Slimford would agree in the latter case that he was a "slab" and a "small potato !" But a change came o'er the spirit of Brown Crash's dream ! The drummers were lording it in Slimford, and Brown, reduced to Meena Dimity (for he was too proud to play second fiddle to a town dandy), was walking with her on a dark night past the Dyapers. The Dyapers were hanging over the gate unluckily, and their Pearl-street admirers sitting on the top rail of the fence. "Who is it ?" said a strange voice. The reply, sent upward from a scornfully pro- jecting under lip, rebounded in echoes from the tense nose of Miss Dyaper. "A Mr. Crash, and a girl from the back street !" It was enough. A hot spot on his cheek, a warm rim round his eyes, a pimply pricking in his skin, and it was all over ! His vow was made. He coldly bid Meena good night at her father's door, and went home and counted his money. And from that hour, without regard to sex, he secretly accepted shillings from gratified travellers, and "stood treat" no more. ******* Saratoga was crowded with the dispersed nuclei of the metropolises. Fashion, wealth, and beauty, were there. Brown Crash was there, on his return from a tour to Niagara and the lakes. " Brown Crash, Esq.," was one of the notabilities of Congress Hall. Here and there a dandy " could not quite make him out;" but there was evidently something uncommon about him. The ladies thought him " of the old school of politeness," and the pol- iticians thought he had the air of one used to influ- ence in his county. His language was certainly very choice and peculiar, and his gait was conscious dig- nity itself. He must have been carefully educated ; yet his manners were popular, and he was particularly courteous on a first introduction. The elegance and ease with which he helped the ladies out of their carriages were particularly remarked, and a shrewd observer said of him, that " that point of high breed- ing was only acquired by daily habit. He must have been brought up where there were carriages and la- dies." A member of congress, who expected to run for governor, inquired his county, and took wine with him. His name was mentioned by the letter- writers from the springs. Brown Crash was in his perihelion! The season leaned to its close, and the following paragraph appeared in the New York American : — " Fashionable Intelligence. — The company at the Springs is breaking up. We understand that the Vice-President and Brown Crash, Esq., have already left for their respective residences. The latter gen- tleman, it is understood, has formed a matrimonial engagement with a family of wealth and distinction from the south. We trust that these interesting bonds, binding together the leading families of the far-divided extremities of our country, may tend to strengthen the tenacity of the great American Union !" It was not surprising that the class in Slimford who knew everything — the milliners, to-wit — moralized somewhat bitterly on Mr. Crash's devotion to the Dyapers after his return, and his consequent slight to Meena Dimity. " If that was the effect of fashion and distinction on the heart, Mr. Crash was welcome to his honors! Let him marry Miss Dyaper, and they wished him much joy of her nose; but they would never believe that he had not ruthlessly broken the heart of Meena Dimity, and he ought to be ashamed of himself, if there was any shame in such a dandy." But the milliners, though powerful people in their way, could little affect the momentum of Brown Crash's glories. The paragraph from the "Ameri- can" had been copied into the " Slimford Advertiser," and the eyes of Sassafras street and Pepperidge street were alike opened. They had undervalued their in- digenous "prophet." They had misinterpreted and misread the stamp of his superiority. He had been obliged to go from them to be recognised. But he was returned. He was there to have reparation made — justice done. And now, what office would he like, from Assessor to Pathmaster, and would he be good enough to name it before the next town-meet- ing. Brown Crash was king of Slimford ! And Harriet Dyaper ! The scorn from her lip had gone, like the blue from a radish ! Notes for " B. Crash, Esq.," showered from Sassafras street — bouquets from old Dyaper's front yard glided to him, per black boy — no end to the endearing attentions, undisguised and unequivocal. Brown Crash and Harriet Dyaper were engaged, if having the front parlor entirely given up to them of an evening meant anything — if his being expected every night to tea meant anything — if his devoted (though she thought rather cold) at- tentions meant anything. They did n't mean anything ! They all did n't mean anything ! What does the orthodox minister do, the third Sunday after Brown Crash's return, but read the banns of matrimony between that faithless man and Meena Dimity ! But this was not to be endured. Harriet Dyaper had a cousin who was a " strapper." He was boss of a sawmill in the next county, and he must be sent for. He was sent for. ******* The fight was over. Boss Dyaper had undertaken to flog Brown Crash, but it was a drawn battle — for the combatants had been pulled apart by their coat- tails. They stepped into the barroom and stood re- covering their breath. The people of Slimford crowded in, and wanted to have the matter talked over. Boss Dyaper bolted out his grievance. "Gentlemen !" said Brown Crash, with one of his irresistible come-to-dinner smiles, " I am culpable, perhaps, in the minutiae of this business— justifiable, I trust you will say, in the general scope and tendency. You, all of you, probably, had mothers, and some of you have wives and sis'ters; and your 'silver cord' naturally sympathizes with a worsted woman. But, gentlemen, you are republicans ! You, all of you, are the rulers of a country very large indeed ; and you are not limited in your views to one woman, nor to a thousand women— to one mile, nor to a thousand miles. You generalize ! you go for magnificent prin- ciples, gentlemen ! You scorn high-and-mightmess, and supercilious aristocracy !" " Hurra for Mr. Crash !" cried a stagednver from the outside. „ , , T , "Well, gentleman ! In what I have done, I have deserved well of a republican country ! True— it has been my misfortune to roll my Juggernaut of prin- ciple over the sensibilities of that gentleman s re- spectable female relative. But, gentlernen, she of- fended, remedilessly and grossly, one ol the sovereign neonle ' She scorned one of earth's fairest daughters, who lives in a back street ! Gentlemen, you know that pride tripped up Lucifer ! Shall a tiptop angel fall for it, and a young woman who is nothing particular 518 THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK. be left scornfully standing? Shall Miss Dyaper have more privileges than Lucifer ? I appreciate your in- dignant negative ! " But, gentlemen, I am free to confess, I had also my republican private end. You know my early his- tory. You have witnessed my struggles to be respect- ed by my honorable contemporaries. If it be my weakness to be sensitive to the finger of scorn, be it so. You will know how to pardon me. But I will be brief. At a particular crisis of my acquaintance with Miss Dyaper, I found it expedient to transfer my untrammelled tendernesses to Pepperidge street. My heart had long been in Pepperidge street. But, gentlemen, to have done it without removing from before my eyes the contumelious finger of the scorn of Sassafras street, was beyond my capabilities of en- durance. Injustice to my present ' future,' gentle- men, I felt that I must remove ' sour grapes' from my escutcheon — that I must soar to a point, whence, swooping proudly to Meena Dimity, I should pass the Dyapers in descending ! (Cheers and murmurs.) " Gentlemen and friends ! This world is all a fleet- ing show. The bell has rung, and 1 keep you from your suppers. Briefly. I found the means to travel and test the ring of my metal among unprejudiced strangers. I wished to achieve distinction and return to my birthplace; but for what? Do me justice, gentlemen. Not to lord it in Sassafras street. Not to carry off a Dyaper with triumphant elation! Not to pounce on your aristocratic No. 1, and link my destiny with the disdainful Dyapers! No! But to choose where I liked, and have the credit of liking it ! To have Slimford believe that if I preferred their No. 2, it was because I liked it bet- ter than No. 1. Gentlemen, I am a republican! I may find my congenial spirit among the wealthy — I may find it among the humble. But I want the lib- erty to choose. And I have achieved it, I trust you will permit me to say. Having been honored by the dignitaries of a metropolis — having consorted with a candidate for gubernatorial distinction — having been recorded in a public journal as a companion of the Vice-President of this free and happy country — you will believe me when I declare that I prefer Pepper- idge street to Sassafras — you will credit my sincerity, when, having been approved by the Dyapers' betters, 1 give them the go-by for the Dimitys ! Gentlemen, I have done." The reader will not be surprised to learn that Mr. Brown Crash is now a prominent member of the legislature, and an excessive aristocrat — Pepperidge street and very democratic speeches to the contrary notwithstanding. THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK." CHAPTER I. 1 HAD a sort of candle-light acquaintance with Mr. Philip McRueit when we were in college. I mean to say that I had a daylight repugnance to him, and never walked with him, or talked with him, or rode with him, or sat with him; and, indeed, seldom saw him — expect as one of a club oyster-party of six. He was a short, sharp, satirical man (nicknamed " my cruet," by his cronies — rather descriptively!) but as plausible and as vindictive as Mephistopheles before and after the ruin of a soul. In some other state of existence I had probably known and suffered by Phil. McRueit — for I knew him like the sleeve of an old coal, the first day I laid eyes on him ; though other people seemed to have no such instinct. Oh, we were not new acquaintances — from whatever star he had been transported, for his sins, to this planet of dirt. I think he was of the same opinion, himself. He chose be- tween open warfare and conciliation in the first five minutes — after seeing me as a stranger — chose the latter. Six or seven years after leaving college, I was fol- lowing my candle up to bed rather musingly, one night at the Astor, and on turning a corner, I was obliged to walk round a short gentleman who stood at the head of the stairs in an attitude of fixed contemplation. As I weathered the top of his hat rather closely, I caught the direction of his eye, and saw that he was regard- ing, very fixedly, a pair of rather dusty kid slippers, which had been set outside the door, probably for cleaning, by the occupant of the chamber opposite. As the gentleman did not move, I turned on the half landing of the next flight of stairs, and looked back, breaking in, by my sudden pause, upon his fit of ab- straction. It was McRueit, and on recognising me, he immediately beckoned me to his side. "Does it strike you," said he, " that there is any- thing peculiar in that pair of shoes ?" " No — except that they certify to two very small feet on the other side of the door." "Not merely 'small,' my dear fellow! Do you see where the pressure has been in those slender shoes, how straight the inside line, how arched the instep, how confidingly flat the pressure downward of the little great toe ! It's a woman of sweet and relying character who wore that shoe to-day, and I must know her. More, sir, I must marry her ! Ah, you laugb — but I will .' There's a magnetism in that pair of shoes addressed to me only. Beg your pardon — good night — I'll go down stairs and find out her number— '74!' I'll be well acquainted with '74' by this time to-morrow !" For the unconscious young lady asleep in that room, I lay awake half the night, troubled with foreboding pity. I knew the man so well, I was so certain that he would leave nothing possible undone to carry out this whimsical purpose! I knew that from that mo- ment was levelled, point-blank, at the lady, whoever she might be (if single) a battery of devilish and per- tinacious ingenuity, which would carry most any small fort of a heart, most any way barricaded and defended. He was well off; he was well-looking enough; he was deep and crafty. But if he did win her, she was gone! gone, I knew, from happiness, like a stone from a sling. He was a tyrant — subtle in his cruelties to all people dependant on him— and her life would be one of refined torture, neglect, be- trayal, and tears. A fit of intermittent disgust for strangers, to which all persons living in hotels are more or less liable, confined my travels, for some days after this rencontre, to the silence-and-slop thorough-fare of the back stairs, " Coming to my feed" of society one rainy morning, I went into the drawing-room after breakfast, and was not surprised to see McRueit in a posture of absorbed attention beside a lady. His stick stood on the floor, and with his left cheek rested on the gold head, he was gazing into her face, and evidently keep- ing her perfectly at her ease as to the wants and gaps of conversation, as he knew how to do — for he was the readiest man with his brick and mortar whom I ever had encountered. " Who is that lady ?" I asked of an omni-acquainted old bachelor friend of mine. " Miss Jonthee Twitt — and what can be the secret of that rather exclusive gentleman's attention to her. I can not fancy." THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK." 519 I pulled a newspaper from my pocket, and seating myself in one of the deep windows, commenced rather a compassionate study of Miss Twitt— intending fully, if I should find her interesting, to save her from the clutches of my detestable classmate. She was a slight, hollow-chested, consumptive- looking girl, with a cast of features that any casual observer would be certain to describe as "interesting." With the first two minutes' gaze upon her, my sym- pathies were active enough for a crusade against a whole army of connubial tyrants. I suddenly paused, however. Something McRueit said made a change in the lady's countenance. She sat just as still ; she did not move her head from its negligent posture; her eyebrows did not contract; her lips did not stir; but the dull, sickly-colored lids descended calmly and fixedly till they hid from sight the upper edges of the pupils ! and by this slight but infallible sign 1 knew — but the story will tell what I knew. Napoleon was nearly, but not quite right, when he said that there was no reliance to be placed on peculiarities of feature or expression. CHAPTER II. In August of that same year, I followed the world to Saratoga. In my first reconnoitre of the drawing- j room of Congress Hall, I caught the eye of Mr. Mc- Rueit, and received from him a cordial salutation. | As I put my head right, upon its pivot, after an easy j nod to my familiar aversion, my eyes fell upon Miss j Jonthee Twitt — that was — for I had seen, in the newspapers of two months before, that the resolve I (born of the dusty slipper outside her door), had been brought about, and she was now on the irrevocable side of a honeymoon sixty days old. Her eyelid was down upon the pupil — motionless, concentrated, and vigilant as a couched panther — and from beneath the hem of her dress curved out the high arched instep of a foot pointed with desperate tension to the carpet ; the little great toe (whose rely- ing pressure on the soiled slipper Mr. McRueit had been captivated by),-riow rigid with as strong a pur- pose as spiritual homeopathy could concentrate in so small a tenement. 1 thought I would make Mr. and Mrs. McRueit the subject of quiet study while I re- mained at Saratoga. But I have not mentioned the immediate cause of Mrs. McRueit's resentment. Her bridegroom was walking up and down the room with a certain Mrs. Wanmaker, a widow, who was a better woman than she looked to be, as I chanced to know, but as nobody could know without the intimate acquaintance with Mrs. Wanmaker upon which I base this remark. With beauty of the most voluptuous cast, and a passion for admiration which induced her to throw out every possible lure to men any way worth her time as victims, Mrs. Wanmaker's blood was as " cold as the flow of Iser," and her propriety, in fact, wholly impregnable. I had been myself "tried on" by the widow Wanmaker, and twenty caravan-marches might have been made across the Desert of Sahara, while the conviction I have just stated was " getting through my hair." It was not wonderful, therefore, that both the bride and her (usually) most penetratious bridegroom, had sailed over the widow's shallows, un- conscious of soundings. She was a "deep" woman, too — but in the love line. I thought McRueit singularly off his guard, if it were only for " appearances." He monopolized the widow effectually, and she thought it worth her while to let the world think him (a bridegroom and a rising young politician), mad for her, and, truth to say, they carried on the war strenuously. Perfectly certain as I was that " the whirligig of time" would " bring about the revenges" of Mrs. McRueit, I began to feel a meantime pity for her, and had myself presented duly by McRueit the next morning after breakfast. It was a tepid, flaccid, revery-colored August morn- ing, and the sole thought of the universe seemed to be to sit down. The devotees to gayety and mineral water dawdled out to the porticoes, and some sat on chairs under the trees, and the dandies lay on the grass, and the old ladies on the steps and the settees, and here and there, a man on the balustrade, and, in the large swing, vis-a-vis, sat McRueit and the widow Wanmaker, chattering in an undertone quite inaudi- ble. Mrs. McRueit sat on a bench, with her back against one of the high-shouldered pine trees in the court-yard, and I had called McRueit out of his swing to present me. But he returned immediately to the widow. I thought it would be alieviative and good-natured to give Mrs. McRueit an insight to the harmlessness of Mrs. Wanmaker, and I had done so very nearly to my satisfaction, when I discovered that the slighted wife did not care sixpence about the fact, and that, unlike Hamlet, she only knew seems. The more I developed the innocent object of the widow's outlay of smiles and confidentialities, the more Mrs. McRueit placed herself in a posture to be remarked by the loungers in the court-yard and the dawdlers on the portico, and the more she deepened a certain look — you must imagine it for the present, dear reader. It would take a razor's edge of analysis, and a Flemish paint-pot and patience, to carve that injured look into language, or paint it truthfully to the eye ! Juries would hang husbands, and recording angels "ruthless- ly overcharge," upon the unsupported evidence of such a look. She looked as if her heart must have suffocated with forbearance long before she began to look so. She looked as if she had forgiven and wept, and was ready to forgive and weep again. She looked as if she would give her life if she could conceal "her feelings," and as if she was nerving soul, and heart, and eyelids, and lachrymatory glands— all to agony— to prevent bursting into tears with her unutterable anguish ! It was the most unresisting, unresentful, patient, sweet miserableness! A lamb's willingness to "furnish forth another meal" of chops and sweet- bread, was testy to such meek endurance ! She was evidently a martyr, a victim, a crushed flower, a "poor thing !" But she did, now and then— unseen by any- body but me— give a glance from that truncated orb of a pupil of hers, over the top of her handkerchief, that, if incarnated, would have made a hole in the hide of a rhinoceros ! It was triumph, venom, implacabili- ty — such as I had never before seen expressed in hu- man glances. There are many persons with but one idea, and that a good one. Mrs. McRueit, I presume, was inca- pable of appreciating my interest in her. At any rate she played the same game with me as with other people, and managed her affairs altogether with per- fect unity. It was in vain that I endeavored to hear from her tongue what I read in the lowering pupil of her eye. She spoke of McRueit with evident re- luctance, but always with discretion— never blaming him, nor leaving any opening that should betray re- sentment, or turn the current of sympathy from her- self. The result was immediate. The women in the house began to look black upon McRueit. 'sent him to Coventry" more unwillingly, for lie was amusing and popular- but "to Coventry he went! to Coventry' AnTatlast'the widow Wanmaker became aware that she was wasting her time on a man whose attentions were not wanted elsewhere— and she (the unkmdest cut of all) found reasons fi^looking another way when he approached her. He had became aware, during 520 THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK. this process, what was " in the wind," but he knew too much to stay in the public eye when it was in- flamed. With his brows lowering, and his face gloomy with feelings I could easily interpret, he took the early coach on the third morning after my intro- duction to Mrs. McRueit, and departed, probably for a discipline trip, to some place where sympathy with his wife would be less dangerous. CHAPTER III. I think, that within the next two or three years, I heard McRueit's name mentioned several times, or saw it in the papers, connected with strong political movements. I had no very definite idea of where he was residing, however. Business called me to a western county, and on the road I fell into the com- pany of a great political schemer and partisan — one of those joints (of the feline political body), the next remove from the " cat's paw." Finding that I cared not a straw for politics, and that we were going to the same town, he undertook the blandishment of an over- flow of confidence upon me, probably with the remote possibility that he might have occasion to use me. I gave in to it so far as courteously to receive all his secrets, and we arrived at our destination excellent friends. . The town was in a ferment with the coming election of a member for the legislature, and the hotel being very crowded, Mr. Develin (my fellow-traveller) and myself were put into a double-bedded room. Busy with my own affairs, I saw but little of him, and he seemed quite too much occupied for conversation, till the third night after our arrival. Lying in bed with the moonlight streaming into the room, he began to give me some account of the campaign, preparing for, around us, and presently mentioned the name of McRueit — (the name, by the way, that I had seen upon the placards, without caring particularly to in- quire whether or not it was " mine aucient" aversion). " They are not aware," said Mr. Develin, after talking on the subject awhile, "that this petty election, is, in fact, the grain of sand that is to turn the presi- dential scale. If McRueit should be elected (as 1 am sorry to say there seems every chance he will be), Van Buren's doom is sealed. I have come a little too late here. I should have had time to know some- thing more of this man McRueit — " " Perhaps I can give you some idea of him," inter- rupted I, " for he has chanced to be more in my way than I would have bargained for. But what do you wish to know particularly?" (1 spoke, as the reader will see, in the unsuspecting innocence of my heart.) " Oh—anything— anything ! Tell me all you know of him !" Mr. Develin"s vividness rather surprised me, for he raised himself on his elbow in bed — but I went on and narrated very much what I have put down for the reader in the two preceding chapters. "How do you spell Mrs. Wanmaker's name?" asked my imbedded vis-d-vis, as I stopped and turned over to go to sleep. I spelt it for him. He jumped out of bed, dressed himself and left the room. Will the reader permit me to follow him, like Asmodeus, giving with Asmodean brevity the knowl- edge I afterward gained of his use of my involuntary revelation? Mr. Develin roused the active member of the Van Buren committee from his slumber, and in an hour had the printers of their party paper at work upon a placard. A large meeting was to be held the next day in the town-hall, during which both candidates, it was supposed, would address the people. Lacries were to occupy the galleries. The hour came round. Mrs. McRueit's carriage drove into the village a few minutes before eleven, and as she stopped at a shop for a moment, a letter was handed her by a boy. She sat still and read it. She was alone. Her face turned livid with paleness alter its first flush, and forgetting her errand at the shop, she drove on to the town-hall. She took her seat in a prominent part of the gallery. The preliminaries were gone through with, and her husband rose to speak. He was a plausible orator, an eloquent man. But there was a sentiment circula- ting in the audience — something whispered from man to man — that strangely took off' the attention of the audience. He could not, as he had never before found difficulty in doing, keep their eyes upon his lips. Every one was gazing on his wife ! And there she sat — with her injured look ! — pale, sad, apparently striving to listen and conceal her mental suffering. It was as convincing to the audience of the truth of the insinuation that was passing from mouth to mouth — as convincing as would have been a revelation from Heaven. McRueit followed the many upturned eyes at last, and saw that they were bent on his wife, and that — once more — after years of conciliation, she wore that injurkd look ! His heart failed him. He evidently comprehended that the spirit that had driven him from Saratoga, years before — -popular sympathy with women — had overtaken him and was plotting against him once more. His speech began to lose its concentration. He talked wide. The increasing noise overpowered him, and he descended at last from the platform in the midst of a universal hiss. The other candidate rose and spoke; and at the close of his speech the meeting broke up, and as they dis- persed, their eyes were met at every corner with a large placard, in which " injured wife." "unfaithful husband," "widow W — n — k — r," were the words in prominent capitals. The election came on the next day, and Mr. McRueit being signally defeated, Mr. Van Buren's election to the Presidency (if Mr. Develin knew anything) was made certain — brought about by a woman's injured look. My business in the county was the purchase of land, and for a year or two afterward, I was a great deal there. Feeling that I had unintentionally furnished a weapon to his enemies, I did penance by cultivating McRueit. I went often to his house. He was at first a good deal broken up by the sudden check to his ambition, but he rallied with a change in his character for which I was not prepared. He gave up all antagonism toward his wife. He assumed a new manner to her. She had been skilfully managed be- fore — but he took her now confidingly behind his shield. He felt overmastered by the key she had to popular sympathy, and he determined wisely to make it turn in his favor. By assiduity, by tenderness, childlikeness, he succeeded in completely convincing her that he had but one out-of-doors wish — that of embellishing her existence by his success. The effort on her was marvellous. She recovered her health, gradually changed to a joyous and earnest promoter of her husband's interests, and they were soon a mark- ed model in the county for conjugal devotion. The popular impression soon gained ground that Mr. Mc- Rueit had been shamefully wronged by the previous prejudice against his character as a husband. The tide that had already turned, soon swelled to a flood, and Mr. McRueit now — but Mr. McRueit is too power- ful a person in the present government to follow any farther. Suffice it to say that he might return to Mrs. Wanmaker and his old courses if he liked — for his wife's injured look is entirely fattened out of possi- bility by her happiness. She weighs two hundred, and couid no more look injured than Sir John Falstaff. BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING. 521 BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING. The birds that flew over County Surrey on the twelfth of June, 1835, looked down upon a scene of which manv a "lord of creation," travelling only by the roads, might well have envied them the seeing. For, ever so merry let it be within the lordly parks of England, the trees that look over the ring fence upon the world without, keep their countenance — aristocrats that they are! Round and round Beckton Park you might have travelled that sunny day, and often within arrow-shot of its hidden and fairy lawn, and never suspected, but by the magnetic tremor in your veins, that beautiful women were dancing near by, and " mar- vellous proper men," more or less enamored, looking on — every pink and blue girdle a noose for a heart, of course, and every gay waistcoat a victim venturing near the trap (though this last is mentioned entirely on my own responsibility). But what have we to do with the unhappy exiles without this pretty paradise ! You are an invited guest, dear reader. Pray walk in ! Did you ask about the Becktons? The Becktons are people blessed with money and a very charming acquaintance. That is enough to know about them. Yet stay ! Sir Thomas was knighted for his behavior at some great crisis in India (for he made his fortune in India) — and Lady Beckton is no great beauty, but she has the mania of getting handsome people together, and making them happier than belongs properly to handsome people's destiny. And this, I think, must suffice for a first introduction. The lawn, as you see, has the long portico of the house on one side of it, a bend of the river on two other sides, and a thick shrubbery on the fourth. The dancing-floor is in the centre, inlaid at the level of the smooth sward, and it is just now vibrating to the measured step of the mazurka — beautifully danced, we must say ! And now let me point out to you the persons most concerned in this gossip of mine. First, the ladies. Miss Blakeney — (and she was never called anything but Miss Blakeney — never Kate, or Kitty, or Kathleen, I mean, though her name was Catherine) — Miss Blakeney is that very stylish, very striking, very magnificent girl, I think I may say, with the white chip hat and black feather. Nobody but Miss Blake- ney could venture to wear just the dress she is sport- ing, but she must dash, though she is in half-mourn- ing, and, faith ! there is nothing out of keeping, artisti- cally speaking, after all. A white dress embroidered with black flowers, dazzling white shoulders turned over with black lace, white neck and forehead (brilliant- ly white), waved over and kissed by luxuriant black ringlets (brilliantly black). And very white temples with very black eyes, and very white eyelids with long black lashes, and, since those dazzling white teeth were without a contrast, there hung upon her neck a black cross of ebony — and now we have put her in black and white, where she will " stay put." Scripta verba manent, saith the cautionary proverb. Here and there, you observe, there is a small Per- sian carpet spread on the sward for those who like to lounge and look at the dancers, and though a score of people, at least, are availing themselves of this oriental luxury, no one looks so modestly pretty, half-couched on the richly-colored woof, as that simply dressed blonde, with a straw hat in her lap, and her light auburn curls taking their saucy will of her blue-veined neck and shoulders. That lady's plain name is Mabel Brown, and, like yourself, many persons have wished to change it for her. She is half-married, indeed, to several persons here present, for there \sone consenting party. Mais Vautrc nc veut pas, as a French novelist laments, it stating a similar dilemma. Meantime, Miss Brown is the adopted sister of the black and white Miss Blakeney. One more exercise of my function of cicerone ! Lying upon the bank of the river, with his shoulder against that fine oak, and apparently deeply absorbed in the fate of the acorn-cups which he throws into the current, you may survey the elegant person of Mr. Lindsay Maud — a gentleman whom I wish you to take for rather more than his outer seeming, since he will show you at the first turn of his head, that he cares nothing for your opinion, though entitled, as the diplomatists phrase it, to your " high consideration." Mr. Maud is twenty-five, more or less — six feet, or thereabouts. He has the sanguineous tint, rather odd for so phlegmatic a person as he seems. His nose is un petit pen retrousse, his lips full, and his smile easy and ready. His eyes are like the surface of a very deep well. Curling brown hair, broad and calm forehead, merry chin with a dimple in it, and i mouth expressive of great good humor, and quite | enough of fastidiousness. If this is not your beau ideal, I am very sorry — but experience went to show that Lindsay Maud was a very agreeable man, and j pleased generally where he undertook it. And now, if you please, having done the honors, I will take up the story en simple conteur. The sky was beginning to blush about the sun's going to bed, and the dancers and archers were pair- ing off, couple by couple, to stroll and cool in the dim shrubberies of Beckton Park. It was an hour to breakfast, so called, for breakfast was to be served in the darker edge of the twilight. With the afore- named oak-tree between him and the gay company, Mr. Lindsay Maud beguiled his hunger (for hungry he was), by reading a volume of that very clever novel, " Le Pere Goriot," and, chapter by chapter, he " cocked up his ear," as the story-books say, hoping to hear the cheerful bell of the tower announce the serving of the soup and champagne. "Well, Sir Knight Faineant !" said Lady Beckton, stepping in suddenly between his feet and the river brink, " since when have you turned woman-hater, and enrolled among the unavailables ? Here have you lain all day in the shade, with scores of nice girls dancing on the other side of your hermit tree, and not a sign of life — not a look even to see whether my party, got up with so much pains, flourished or lan- guished ! I'll cross you out of my little book, recreant!" Maud was by this time on his feet, and he penitent- ly and respectfully kissed the fingers threateningly held up to him — for the unpardonable sin in a single man is to appear unamused, let alone failing to amuse others — at a party sworn to be agreeable. " 1 have but half an apology," he said, " that of knowing that your parties go swimmingly off, whether I pull an oar or no ; but I deserve not the less to be crossed out of your book. Something ails me. lam growing old, or my curiosity has burnt out, or I am touched with some fatal lethargy. Upon my word 1 would as lief listen to a Latin sermon as chat for the next half hour with the prettiest girl at Beckton ! There's no inducement, my dear Lady Beckton ! I'm not a marrying man, you know, and flirtation — flirtation is such tiresome repetition — endless reading of prefaces, and never coming to the agreeable first chapter. Hut I'll obey orders. Which is the destitute woman ? You shall see how I will redeem my dam- aged reputation !" But Lady Beckton, who seldom refused an offer from a beau to make himself useful at her parties, seemed hardly to listen to Maud's justification. She placed her arm in his, and led him across the bridge which spanned the river a little above, and they were presently out of hearing in one of the cool and shaded avenues of the park. 522 BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING. "A penny for your thought!" said Mauri, after walking at her side a few minutes in silence. " It is a thought, certainly, in which pennies are concerned," replied Lady Beckton, " and that is why I find any trouble in giving expression to it. It is difficult enough to talk with gentlemen about love, but that is easy to talking about money." "Yet they make a pretty tandem, money on the lead!" "Oh! are you there ?" exclaimed Lady Beckton, with a laugh ; " I was beginning too far back, al- together ! My dear Lindsay, see how much better I thought of you than you deserved! I was turning over in my mind with great trepidation and embarrass- ment how'lshould venture to talk to you about amoney- and-love match!" " Indeed ! for what happy man ?" u Toi mime, man ami.'" " Heavens! you quite take away my breath! Spare yourself the overture, my dear Lady Beckton! I agree ! I am quite ready — sold from this hour if you can produce a purchaser, and possession given im- mediately !" " Now you go too fast ; for 1 ha^e not time to banter, and I wish to see my way in earnest before I leave you. Listen to me. I was talking you over with Beckton this morning. I'll not trouble you with the discus- sion — it would make you vain, perhaps. But we ar- rived at this : Miss Blakeney would be a very good match for you, and if you are inclined to make a dem- onstration that way, why, we will do what we can to make it plain sailing. Stay with us a week, for in- stance, and we will keep the Blakeneys. It's a sweet month for pairing, and you are an expeditious love- maker, I know. Is it agreed ?" " You are quite serious!" "Quite!" " I'll go back with you to the bridge, kindest of friends, and return and ramble here till the bell rings, by myself. I'll find you at table, by-and-by, and ex- press my gratitude at least. Will that be time enough for an answer ?" " Yes — but no ceremony with me ! Stay and ponder where you are ! Au revoir ! I must see after my breakfast !" And away tripped the kind-hearted Lady Beckton. Maud resumed his walk. He was rather taken aback. He knew Miss Blakeney but as a waltzing partner, yet that should be but little matter; for he had long ago made up his mind that, if he did not marry rich, he could not marry at all. Maud was poor — that is to say, he had all that -an angel would suppose necessary in this hungry and cold world — assurance of food and clothing — in other words, three hundred a year. He had had his unripe time like other youths, in which he was ready to marry for love and no money ; but his timid advances at that soft period had not been responsibly met by his first course of sweethearts, and he had congratulated him- self and put a price on his heart accordingly. Mean- time, he thought, the world is a very entertaining place, and the belonging to nobody in particular, has its little advantages. And very gayly sped on the second epoch of Mr. Lindsay Maud's history. He lived in a country where, to shine in a profession, requires the " audace, patience et volonte de quoi renverser le mondc" and having turn- ed his ambition well about, like a strange coin that might perhaps have passed current in other times, he laid it away with romance and chivalry, and other things suited only to the cabinets of the curious. He was well born. He was well bred. He was a fair candidate for the honors of a "gay man about town" — that untaxed exempt — that guest by privilege — that irresponsible denizen of high life, possessed of every luxury on earth except matrimony and the pleasures of payment. And, for a year or two, this was very delightful. He had a half dozen of those charming female friendships which, like other ephemera in this changing world, must die or turn into something else at the close of a season, and, if this makes the feelings very hard, it makes the manners very soft ; and Maud was content with the compensation. If he felt, now and then, that he was idling life away, he looked about him and found countenance at least ; for all his friends were as idle, and there was an analogy to his condi- tion in nature (if need were to find one),' for the but- terfly had his destiny like the bee, and was neither pitied nor reproached that he was not a honey-maker. But Maud was now in a third lustrum of his exist- ence, and it was tinted somewhat differently from the rose-colored epochs precedent. The twilight of | satisfied curiosity had fallen imperceptibly around j him. The inner veils of society had one by one lifted, and there could be nothing new for his eye in the world to which he belonged. A gay party, which was once to him as full of un- ; attained objects as the festal mysteries of Eleusinia to | a rustic worshipper of Ceres, was now as readable at I a glance as the stripes of a backgammon-board. He knew every man's pretensions and chances, every wo- ; man's expectations and defences. Not a damsel whose | defects he had not discovered, whose mind he had not sounded, whose dowry he did not know. Not a beauty, married or single, whose nightly game in society he could not perfectly foretell ; not an affection unoccupied of which he could not put you down the cost of en- gaging it in your favor, the chances of constancy, the dangers of following or abandoning. He had no stake in society, meantime, yet society itself was all his world. He had no ambitions to further by its aid. And until now, he had looked on matrimony as a closed door — for he had neither property, nor profes- sion likely to secure it, and circumstances like these, in the rank in which he moved, are comprehended among the " any impediments." To have his own way, Maud would have accepted no invitations except to dine with the beaux esprits, and he would have con- centrated the remainder of his leisure and attentions upon one agreeable woman (at a time) — two selfish- nesses very attractive to a blase, but not permitted to any member of society short of a duke or a Croesus. And now, with a new leaf turning over in his dull book of life — a morning of a new day breaking on his increasing night — Lindsay Maud tightly screwed his arms across his breast, and paced the darkening avenue of Beckton Park. The difference between figuring as a fortune-hunter, and having a fortune hunted for him by others, he perfectly understood. In old and aristocratic societies, where wealth is at the same time so much more coveted and so much more difficult to win, the eyes of " envy, malice, and all uncharitableness," are alike an omnipresent argus, in their watch over the avenues to its acquisition. No step, the slightest, the least suspicious, is ever taken toward the hand of an heiress, or the attainment of an inheritance, without awakening and counter-work- ing of these busy monsters ; and, for a society-man, better to be a gambler or seducer, better to have all the fashionable vices ticketed on his name, than to stand qffiched as a fortune-hunter. If to have a for- tune cleverly put within reach by a powerful friend, however, be a proportionate beatitude, blessed was Maud. So thought he, at least, as the merry bell of Beckton tower sent its summons through the woods, and his revery gave place to thoughts of something more substantial. And thus far, oh adorable reader ! (for I see what unfathomable eyes are looking over my shoulder) thus far, like an artist making a sketch, of which one part is to be finished, I have dwelt a little on the touches of my pencil. But, by those same unfathomable eyes BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING. 523 I know (for in those depths dwell imagination), that if the remainder be done ever so lightly in outline, even then there will be more than was needed for the comprehension of the story. Thy ready and bound- less faucy, sweet lady, would supply it all. Given, the characters and scene, what fair creature who has loved, could fail to picture forth the sequel and its more minute surroundings, with rapidity and truth daguerreotypical ? Sketchily, then, touch we the unfinished denouement of our story. The long saloon was already in glittering progress wken Maud entered. The servants in their blue and white liveries were gliding rapidly about with the ter- restrial nutriment for eyes celestial — to-wit, wines and oysters. Half blinded with the glare of the numberless lights, he stood a moment at the door. " Lady Beckton's compliments, and she has re- served a seat for you!" said a footman approaching him. He glanced at the head of the table. The vacant chair was near Lady Beckton and opposite Miss Blake- ney. "Is a vis-a-vis better for love-making than a seat at the lady's ear ?" thought Maud. But Lady Beckton's tactics were to spare his ear and dazzle his eye, without reference especially to the corresponding impressions on the eyes and ear of the lady. And she had the secondary object of avoiding any betrayal of her designs till they were too far matured to be de- feated by publicity. " Can you tell me, Mr. Maud," said the sweet voice of Mabel Brown as he drew his chair to the table, "what is the secret of Lady Beckton's putting you next me so pertinaciously ?" " A greater regard for my happiness than yours, probably," said Maud; "but why 'pertinaciously?' Has there been a skirmish for this particular chair ?" " No skirmish, but three attempts at seizure by three of my admirers." " If they admire you more than I, they are fitter companions for a tete-a-tete than a crowded party," said Maud. " I am as near a lover as I can be, and be agreeable !" To this Maud expected the gay retort due to a bag- atelle of gallantry ; but the pretty Mabel was silent. The soup disappeared and the entremets were served. Maud was hungry, and he had sent a cutlet and a glass of Johannisberg to the clamorous quarter be- fore he ventured to look toward his hostess. He felt her eye upon him. A covert smile stole through her lips as they exchanged glances. "Yes ?" she asked, with a meaning look. "Yes!" And in that dialogue of two monosyllables Lady Beckton presumed that the hand and five thousand a year of Miss Catherine Blakeney, were virtually made over to Mr. Lindsay Maud. And her diplomacy made play to that end without farther deliberation. Very unconscious indeed that she was under the eye of the man who had entered into a conspiracy to become her husband, Miss Blakeney sat between a guardsman and a diplomatist, carrying on the war in her usual trenchant and triumphant fashion. She looked exceedingly handsome — that Maud could not but admit. With no intention of becoming respon- sible for her manners, he would even have admired, as he often had done, her skilful coquetries and adroit displays of the beauty with which nature had en- dowed her. She succeeded, Maud thought, in giving both of her admirers the apparent preference (appa- rent to themselves, that is to say), and considering her vis-a-vis worth a chance shaft at least, she honored that very attentive gentleman with such occasional notice, as, under other circumstances, would have been far from disagreeable. It might have worn a better grace, however, coming from simple Miss Blakeney. From the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud, he could have wished those pretty inveiglements very much reduced and modified. At his side, the while, sweet Mabel Brown carried on with him a conversation, which to the high tone of merriment opposite, was like the intermitted mur- mur of a brook heard in the pauses of merry instru- ments. At the same time that nothing brilliant or gay seemed to escape her notice, she toned her own voice and flow of thought so winningly below the ex- citement around her, that Maud, who was sensible of every indication of superiority, could not but pay her a silent tribute of admiration. " If this were but the heiress !" he ejaculated inwardly. But Mabel Brown was a dependant. Coffee was served. The door at the end of the long saloon was sud- denly thrown open, and as every eye turned to gaze into the blazing ballroom, a march with the full power of the band burst upon the ear. The diplomatist who had been sitting at the side | of Miss Blakeney was a German, and a waltzer comme \\ily en a peu. At the bidding of Lady Beckton, he | put his arm around the waist of the heiress, and bore ||her away to the delicious music of Strauss, and, by ! general consent, the entire floor was left to this pair i: for a dozen circles. Miss Blakeney was passionately i; fond of waltzing, and built for it, like a Baltimore clipper for running close to the wind. If she had a fault that her friends were afraid to jog her memory about, it was the wearing her dresses a flounce too short. Her feet and ankles were Fenella's own, while her figure and breezy motion would have stolen En- dymion from Diana. She waltzed too well for a lady — all but well enough for a premiere danseuse de Vopera. Lady Beckton was a shrewd woman, but she made a mistake in crying " encore /" when this single couple stopped from their admired pas de deux. She thought Maud was just the man to be captivated by that display. But the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud must not have ankles for general admiration. Oh, no ! Maud wished to efface the feeling this exhibition had caused by sharing in the excitement. " Miss Brown," he said, as two or three couples went off, "permit me the happiness of one turn!" and, scarce waiting for an answer, he raised his arm to encircle her waist. Mabel took his hands, and playfully laid them across each other on his own breast in an attitude of resignation. " I never waltz," she said. "But don't think me a prude ! I don't consider it wrong in those who think it right." "But with this music tugging at your heels!" said Maud, who did not care to express how much he ad- mired the delicacy of her distinction. "Ah, with a husband or a brother, I should think one could scarce resist bounding away; but I can not — " " Can not what ? — can not take me for either ?" in- terrupted Maud, with an air of affected malice that covered a very strong desire to ask the question in earnest. She turned her eyes suddenly upon him with a rapid look of inquiry, and, slightly coloring, fixed her at- tention silently on the waltzers. Lady Beckton came, making her way through the crowd/ She touched Maud on the arm. •"Hold hook and line!'— is it not?" she said, in a whisper. After an instant's hesitation, Maud answered> "Yes!" — but pages, often, would not suffice to ex- press all that passes through the mind in "an instant's hesitation." All Lindsay Maud's prospects and cir- i cumstances were reviewed in that moment ; all his 524 THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. many steps by which he had arrived at the conclusion that marriage with him must be a matter of convenance merely ; all his put-down impulses and built-up reso- lutions ; all his regrets, consolations, and offsets; all his better and worser feelings ; all his former loves (and in that connexion, strangely enough, Mabel Brown) ; all his schemes, in short, for smothering his pain in the sacrifice of his heart, and making the most of the gain to his pocket, passed before him in that half minute's review. But he said " Yes !" The Blakeney carriage was dismissed that night, with orders to bring certain dressing-maids and cer- tain sequents of that useful race, on the following morning to Beckton Park, and the three persons who composed the Blakeney party, an old aunt, Miss Blakeney, and Mabel Brown, went quietly to bed un- der the hospitable roof of Lady Beckton. How describe (and what need of it, indeed !) a week at an English country-house, with all its age of chances for loving and hating, its eternity of oppor- tunities for all that hearts can have to regulate in this shorthand life of ours? Let us come at once to the closing day of this visit. Maud lay late abed on the day that the Blakeneys were to leave Beckton Park. Fixed from morning till night in the firm resolution at which he had ar- rived with so much trouble and self-control, he was dreaming from night till morning of a felicity in which Miss Blakeney had little share. He wished the marriage could be all achieved in the signing of a bond. He found that he had miscalculated his phi- losophy in supposing that he could venture to loose thought and revery upon the long-forbidden subject of marriage. In all the scenes eternally being con- jured up to his fancy — scenes of domestic life — the bringing of Miss Blakeney into the picture was an after effort. Mabel Brown stole into it, spite of him- self — the sweetest and dearest feature of that enchant- ing picture, in its first warm coloring by the heart. But, day by day, he took the place assigned him by Lady Beckton at the side of Miss Blakeney, riding, driving, dining, strolling, with reference to being near her only, and still scarce an hour could pass in which, spite of all effort to the contrary, he did not betray his passionate interest in Mabel Brown. He arose and breakfasted. Lady Beckton and the young ladies were bonneted and ready for a stroll in the park woods, and her ladyship came and whispered in Maud's ear, as he leaned over his coffee, that he must join them presently, and that she had prepared Miss Blakeney for an interview with him, which she would arrange as they rambled. " Take no refusal !" were her parting words as she stepped out upon the verandah. Maud strolled leisurely toward the rendezvous in- dicated by Lady Beckton. He required all the time he could get to confirm his resolutions and recover his usual maintien of repose. With his mind made up at last, and a face in which few would have read the heart in fetters beneath, he jumped a wicker- fence, and, by a cross path, brought the ladies in view. They were walking separately, but as his foot- steps were heard, Lady Beckton slipped her arm into Miss Brown's, and commenced apparently a very ear- nest undertone of conversation. Miss Blakeney turned. Her face glowed with exercise, and Maud confessed to himself that he rarely had seen so beau- tiful a woman. "You are come in time, Mr. Maud," she said, "for something is going on between my companions from which I am excluded." "En revanche, suppose we have our little exclusive secret!" said Maud, offering his arm. Miss Blakeney colored slightly, and consented to obey the slight resistance of his arm by which they fell behind. A silence of a few moments followed, for if the proposed secret were a proposal of mar- riage, it had been too bluntly approached. Maud felt that he must once more return to indifferent topics, and lead on the delicate subject at his lips with more tact and preparation. They rose a slight elevation in the walk which over- looked the wilder confines of the park. A slight smoke rose from a clump of trees, indicating an in- trusion of gipsies within, and the next instant, a deep- mouthed bark rang out before them, and the two la- dies came rushing back in violent terror, assailed at every step of their flight by a powerful and infuriated mastiff. Maud ran forward immediately, and suc- ceeded in driving the dog back to the tents; but on his return he found only the terrified Mabel, who, lean- ing against a tree, and partly recovered from her breathless flight, was quietly awaiting him. " Here is a change of partners as my heart would have it !" thought Maud, as he drew her slight arm within his own. " The transfer looks to me like the interposition of my good angel, and I accept the warning!" And in words that needed no management to bring them skilfully on — with the eloquence of a heart re- leased from fetters all but intolerable, and from a threatened slavery for life — Lindsay Maud poured out the fervent passion of his heart to Mabel Brown. The crust of a selfish and artificial life broke up in the tumult of that declaration, and he found himself once more natural and true to the instincts and better impulses of his character. He was met with the trembling response that such pure love looks for when it finds utterance, and without a thought of worldly calculation, or a shadow of a scheme for their means and manner of life, they exchanged promises to which the subsequent ceremony of marriage was but the formal seal. And at the announcement of this termination to her matrimonial schemes, Lady Beckton seemed much more troubled than Miss Blakeney. But Lady Beckton's disappointment was somewhat modified when she discovered that Miss Blakeney had long before secretly endowed her adopted sister Ma- bel with the half of her fortune. THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. The Emperor Yuentsoong, of the dynasty Chow, was the most magnificent of the long-descended suc- cession of Chinese sovereigns. On his first accession to the throne, his character was so little understood, that a conspiracy was set on foot among the yellow- caps, or eunuchs, to put out his eyes, and place upon the throne the rebel Szema, in whose warlike hands, they asserted, the empire would more properly main- tain its ancient glory. The gravity and reserve which these myrmidons of the palace had construed into stupidity and fear, soon assumed another complexion, however. The eunuchs silently disappeared ; the mandarins and princes whom they had seduced from their allegiance, were made loyal subjects by a gen- erous pardon ; and in a few days after the period fixed upon for the consummation of the plot, Yuentsoong set forth in complete armor at the head of his troops to give battle to the rebel in the mountains. In Chinese annals this first enterprise of the youth- ful Yuentsoong is recorded with great pomp and par- ticularity. Szema was a Tartar prince of uncommon ability, young like the emperor, and, during the few last imbecile years of the old sovereign, he had gath- ered strength in his rebellion, till now he was at the head of ninety thousand men, all soldiers of repute THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 525 and tried valor. The historian has unfortunately dimmed the emperor's fame to European eyes, by at- tributing his wonderful achievements in this expe- dition to his superiority in arts of magic. As this ac- count of his exploits is only prefatory to our tale, we will simply give the reader an idea of the style of the historian, by translating literally a passage or two of his description of the battle : — "Szema now took refuge within a cleft of the mountain, and Yuentsoong, upon his swift steed, out- stripping the body-guard in his ardor, dashed amid the paralyzed troops with poised spear, his eyes fixed only on the rebel. There was a silence of an instant, broken only by the rattling hoofs of the intruder, and then, with dishevelled hair and waving sword, Szema uttered a fearful imprecation. In a moment the wind rushed, the air blackened, and with the suddenness of a fallen rock, a large cloud enveloped the rebel, and innumerable men and horses issued out of it. Wings flapped against the eyes of the emperor's horse, hel- lish noises screamed in his ears, and, completely be- yond control, the animal turned and fled back through the narrow pass, bearing his imperial master safe into the heart of his army. "Yuentsoong, that night, commanded some of his most expert soldiers to scale the beetling heights of the ravine, bearing upon their backs the blood of Bwine, sheep, and dogs, with other impure things, and these they were ordered to shower upon the combat- ants at the sound of the imperial clarion. On the fol- lowing morning, Szema came forth again to offer bat- tie, with flags displayed, drums beating, and shouts of triumph and defiance. As on the day previous, the bold emperor divided, in his impatience, rank after rank of his own soldiery, and, followed closely by his body-guard, drove the rebel army once more into their fastness. Szema sat upon his warhorse as before, in- trenched amid his officers and ranks of the tallest Tar- tar spearmen, and as the emperor contended hand to hand with one of the opposing rebels, the magic im- precation was again uttered, the air again filled with cloudy horsemen and chariots, and the mountain sha- ken with discordant thunder. Backing his willing steed, the emperor blew a long sharp note upon his silver clarion, and in an instant the sun broke through \he darkness, and the air seemed filled with paper men, Oorses of straw, and phantoms dissolving into smoke. Yuentsoong and Szema now stood face to face, with only mortal aid and weapons." The historian goes on to record that the two armies suspended hostilities at the command of their leaders, and that the emperor and his rebel subject having en- gaged in single combat, Yuentsoong was victorious, and returned to his capital with the formidable enemy, whose life he had spared, riding beside him like a brother. The conqueror's career, for several years after this, seems to have been a series of exploits of personal valor, and the Tartar prince shared in all his dangers and pleasures, his inseparable friend. It was during this period of romantic friendship that the events occurred which have made Yuentsoong one of the idols of Chinese poetry. By the side of a lake in a distant province of the empire, stood one of the imperial palaces of pleasure, seldom visited, and almost in ruins. Hither, in one of his moody periods of repose from war, came the conqueror Yuentsoong, for the first time in years sep- arated from his faithful Szema. In disguise, and with only one or two attendants, he established him- self in the long silent halls of his ancestor Tsinche- mong, and with his boat upon the lake, and his spear in the forest, seemed to find all the amusement of which his melancholy was susceptible. On a certain day in the latter part of April, the emperor had set his sail to a fragrant south wind, and reclining on the cushions of his bark, watched the shore as it softly and silently glided past, and, the lake being entirely encircled by the imperial forest, he felt immersed in what he believed to be the solitude of a deserted par- adise. After skirting the fringed sheet of water in this manner for several hours, he suddenly observed that he had shot through a streak of peach-blossoms floating from the shore, and at the same moment he became conscious that his boat was slightly headed off by a current setting outward. Putting up his helm, he returned to the spot, and beneath the droop- ing branches of some luxuriant willows, thus early in leaf, he discovered the mouth of an inlet, which, but for the floating blossoms it brought to the lake, would have escaped the notice of the closest observer. The emperor now lowered his sail, unshipped the slender mast, and betook him to the ours, and as the current was gentle, and the inlet wider within the mouth, he sped rapidly on, through what appeared to be but a lovely and luxuriant vale of the forest. Still, those blushing betrayers of some flowering spot beyond, extended like a rosy clue before him, and with im- pulse of muscles swelled and indurated in warlike ex- ercise, the swift keel divided the besprent mirror wind- ing temptingly onward, and, for a long hour, the royal oarsman untiringly threaded this sweet vein of the wilderness. Resting a moment on his oars while the slender bark still kept her way, he turned his head toward what seemed to be an opening in the forest on the left, and in the same instant the boat ran, head on, to the shore, the inlet at this point almost doubling on its course. Beyond, by the humming of bees, and the singing of birds, there should be a spot more open than the tangled wilderness he had passed, and disen- gaging his prow from the alders, he shoved the boat again into the stream, and pulled round a high rock, by which the inlet seemed to have been compelled to curve its channel. The edge of a bright green mead- ow now stole into the perspective, and, still widening with his approach, disclosed a slightly rising terrace clustered with shrubs, and studded here and there with vases ; and farther on, upon the same side of the stream, a skirting edge of peach-trees, loaded with the gay blossoms which had guided him hither. Astonished at these signs of habitation in what was well understood to be a privileged wilderness, Yuent- soong kept his boat in mid-stream, and with his eyes vigilantly on the alert, slowly made headway against the current. A few strokes with his oars, however, traced another curve of the inlet, and brought into view a grove of ancient trees scattered over a gently ascending lawn, beyond which, hidden by the river till now by the projecting shoulder of a mound, lay a small pavilion with gilded pillars, glittering like fairy work in the sun. The emperor fastened his boat to a tree leaning over the water, and with his short spear in his hand, bounded upon the shore, and took his way toward the shining structure, his heart beating with a feeling of wonder and interest altogether new. On a nearer approach, the bases of the pillars seemed decayed by time, and the gilding weather-stained and tarnished, but the trellised porticoes on the southern aspect were laden with flowering shrubs, in vases of porcelain, and caged birds sang between the pointed arches, and there were manifest signs of luxurious taste, elegance, and care. A moment, with an indefinable timidity, the em- peror paused before stepping from the green sward upon the marble floor of the pavilion, and in that moment a curtain was withdrawn from the door, and a female, with step suddenly arrested by the sight of the stranger, stood motionless before him. Ravished with her extraordinary beauty, and awe-struck with the suddenness of the apparition and the novelty of the adventure, the emperor's tongue cleaved to his mouth, and ere he could summon resolution, even 526 THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. for a gesture of courtesy, the fair creature had fled within, and the curtain closed the entrance as before. Wishing to recover his composure, so strangely troubled, and taking it for granted that some other in- mate of the house would soon appear, Yuentsoong turned his steps aside to the grove, and with his head bowed, and his spear in the hollow of his arm, tried to recall more vividly the features of the vision he had seen. He had walked but a few paces, when there came toward him from the upper skirt of the grove, a man of unusual stature and erectness, with white hair, unbraided on his shoulders, and every sign of age except infirmity of step and mien. The em- peror's habitual dignity had now rallied, and on his first salutation, the countenance of the old man soft- ened, and he quickened his pace to meet and give him welcome. "You are noble?" he said, with confident inquiry. Yuentsoong colored slightly. " I am," he replied, " Lew-melin, a prince of the empire." "And by what accident here ?" Yuentsoong explained the clue of the peach-blos- soms, and represented himself as exiled for a time to the deserted palace upon the lakes. " I have a daughter," said the old man, abruptly, "who has never looked on human face, save mine." " Pardon me !" replied his visiter ; " I have thought- lessly intruded on her sight, and a face more heavenly fair — " The emperor hesitated, but the old man smiled en- couragingly. "It is time," he said, "that I should provide a younger defender for my bright Teh-leen, and Heaven has sent you in the season of peach-blossoms, with provident kindness.* You have frankly revealed to me your name and rank. Before I offer you the hos- pitality of my roof, I must tell you mine. I am Choo-tseen, the outlaw, once of your own rank, and the general of the Celestial army." The emperor started, remembering that this cele- brated rebel was the terror of his father's throne. " You have heard my history," the old man con- tinued. " I had been, before my rebellion, in charge of the imperial palace on the lake. Anticipating an evil day, I secretly prepared this retreat for my fami- ly ; and when my soldiers deserted me at the battle of Ke-chow, and a price was set upon my head, hither I fled with my women and children ; and the last alive is my beautiful Teh-leen. With this brief outline of my life, you are at liberty to leave me as you came, or to enter my house, on the condition that you be- come the protector of my child." The emperor eagerly turned toward the pavilion, and, with a step as light as his own, the erect and stately outlaw hastened to lift the curtain before him. Leaving his guest for a moment in the outer apart- ment, he entered to an inner chamber in search of his daughter, whom he brought, panting with fear, and blushing with surprise and delight, to her future lover and protector. A portion of an historical tale so deli- cate as the description of the heroine is not work for imitators, however, and we must copy strictly the por- trait of the matchless Teh-leen, as drawn by Le-pih, the Anacreon of Chinese poetry, and the contempo- rary and favorite of Yuentsoong. " Teh-leen was born while the morning star shone upon the bosom of her mother. Her eye was like the unblemished blue lily, and its light like the white gem unfractured. The plum-blossom is most fra- grant when the cold has penetrated its stem, and the mother of Teh-leen had known sorrow. The head of her child drooped in thought, like a violet over- laden with dew. Bewildering was Teh-leen. Her * The season of peach-blossoms was the only season of marriage in ancient China. mouth's corners were dimpled, yet pensive. The arch of her brows was like the vein in the tulip's heart, and the lashes shaded the blushes on her cheek. With the delicacy of a pale rose, her complexion put to shame the floating light of day. Her waist, like a thread in fineness, seemed ready to break ; yet was it straight and erect, and feared not the fanning breeze ; j and her shadowy grace was as difficult to delineate, as the form of the white bird rising from the ground by moonlight. The natural gloss of her hair resembled j the uncertain sheen of calm water, yet without the false aid of unguents. The native intelligence of her mind seemed to have gained strength by retirement, i and he who beheld her, thought not of her as human. Of rare beauty, of rarer intellect was Teh-leen, and her heart responded to the poet's lute." We have not sp<ice, nor could we, without copying directly from the admired Le-pih, venture to describe the bringing of Teh-leen to court, and her surprise at finding herself the favorite of the emperor. It is a romantic circumstance, besides, which has had its parallels in other countries. But the sad sequel to the loves of poor Teh-leen is but recorded in the cold page of history; and if the poet, who wound up the climax of her perfections, with her susceptibility to his lute, embalmed her sorrows in verse, he was prob- ably too politic to bring it ever to light. Pass we to« these neglected and unadorned passages of her history. Yuentsoong's nature was passionately devoted and confiding; and, like two brothers with one favorite sister, lived together Teh-leen, Szema, and the emper- or. The Tartar prince, if his heart knew a mistress before the arrival of Teh-leen at the palace, owned afterward no other than her; and fearless of check or suspicion from the noble confidence and generous | friendship of Yuentsoong, he seemed to live but for her service, and to have neither energies nor ambition except for the winning of her smiles. Szema was of great personal beauty, frank when it did not serve him to be wily, bold in his pleasures, and of manners al- most femininely soft and voluptuous. He was re- nowned as a soldier, and, for Teh-leen, he became a poet and master of the lute ; and, like all men formed for ensnaring the heart of women, he seemed to forget himself in the absorbing devotion of his idolatry. His friend, the emperor, was of another mould. Yuent- soong's heart had three chambers — love, friendship, and glory. Teh-leen was but a third in his existence, yet he loved her — the sequel will show how well! In person he was less beautiful than majestic, of large stature, and with a brow and lip naturally stern and lofty. He seldom smiled, even upon Teh-leen, whom he would watch for hours in pensive and absorbed de- light ; but his smile, when it did awake, broke over his sad countenance like morning. All men loved and honored Yuentsoong, and all men, except only the emperor, looked on Szema with antipathy. To such natures as the former, women give all honor and ap- probation ; but for such as the latter, they reserve their weakness ! Wrapt up in his friend and mistress, and reserved in his intercourse with his counsellors, Yuentsoong knew not that, throughout the imperial city, Szema was called " the liieu" or robber-bird, and his fair Teh-leen openly charged with dishonor. Going out alone to hunt as was his custom, and having left his signet with Szema, to pass and repass through the private apartments at his pleasure, his horse fell with him unaccountably in the open field. Somewhat superstitious, and remembering that good spirits some- times " knit the grass," when other obstacles fail to bar our way into danger, the emperor drew rein and returned to his palace. It was an hour after noon, and having dismissed his attendants at the city gate, he entered by a postern to the imperial garden, and bethought himself of the concealed couch in a cool THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 527 grot by a fountain (a favorite retreat, sacred to him- self and Teh-leen), where he fancied it would be re- freshing to sleep away the sultriness of the remaining hours till evening. Sitting down by the side of the murmuring fount, he bathed his feet, and left his slip- pers on the lip of the basin to be unencumbered in his repose within, and so with unechoing step entered the resounding grotto. Alas! there slumbered the faithless friend with the guilty Teh-leen upon his bosom ! Grief struck through the noble heart of the em- peror like a sword in cold blood. With a word he could consign to torture and death the robber of his honor, but there was agony in his bosom deeper than revenge. He turned silently away, recalled his horse and huntsmen, and, outstripping all, plunged on through the forest till night gathered around him. Yuentsoong had been absent many days from his capitol, and his subjects were murmuring their fears for his safety, when a messenger arrived to the coun- sellors informing them of the appointment of the captive Tartar prince to the government of the pro- vince of Szechuen, the second honor of the Celestial empire. A private order accompanied the announce- ment, commanding the immediate departure of Szema for the scene of his new authority. Inexplicable as was this riddle to the multitude, there were those who read it truly by their knowledge of the magnanimous soul of the emperor; and among these was the crafty object of his generosity. Losing no time, he set for- ward with great pomp for Szechuen, and in their joy to see him no more in the palace, the slighted princes of the empire forgave his unmerited advancement. Yuentsoong returned to his capitol ; but to the terror of his counsellors and people, his hair was blanched white as the head of an old man ! He was pale as well, but he was cheerful and kind beyond his wont, and to Teh-leen untiring in pensive and humble at- tentions. He pleaded only impaired health and rest- less slumbers as an apology for nights of solitude. Once, Teh-leen penetrated to his lonely chamber, but by the dim night lamp she saw that the scroll over her window* was changed, and instead of the stimulus to glory which formerly hung in golden letters before his eyes, there was a sentence written tremblingly in black :— u The close wing of love covers the death-throb of honor." Six months from this period the capitol was thrown into a tumult with the intelligence that the province of Szechuen was in rebellion, and Szema at the head of a numerous army on his way to seize the throne of Yuentsoong. This last sting betrayed the serpent even to the forgiving emperor, and tearing the reptile at last from his heart, he entered with the spirit of other times into the warlike preparations. The im- perial army was in a few days on its march, and at Keo-yang the opposing forces met and prepared for encounter. With a dread of the popular feeling toward Teh- leen, Yuentsoong had commanded for her a close litter, and she was borne after the imperial standard in the centre of the army. On the eve before the battle, ere the watch-fires were lit, the emperor came to her tent, set apart from his own, and with the delicate care and kind gentleness from which he never varied, inquired how her wants were supplied, and bade her, thus early, farewell for the night ; his own custom of •The most common decorations of rooms, halls, and tem- ples, in China, arc ornamental scrolls or labels of colored paper, or wood, painted and gilded, and hunsr over doors or windows, and inscribed with a line or couplet conveying some allusion to the circumstances of the inhabitant, or some pious or phi- losophical axiom. For instance, a poetical one recorded by Dr. .Morrison : — " From the pine forest the azute dragon awrnds to the milky way," typical of the prosperous man arising to wealth and honors. passing among his soldiers on the evening previous to an engagement, promising to interfere with what was usually his last duty before retiring to his couch. Teh-leen on this occasion seemed moved by some irrepressible emotion, and as he rose to depart, she fell forward upon her face, and bathed his feet with her tears. Attributing it to one of those excesses of feel- ing to which all, but especially hearts ill at ease, are j liable, the noble monarch gently raised her, and, wiih repeated efforts at reassurance, committed her to the j hands of her women. His own heart beat far from I tranquilly, for, in the excess of his pity for her grief he had unguardedly called her by one of the sweet names of their early days of love — strange word now upon his lip — and it brought back, spite of memory and truth, happiness that would not be forgotten ! It was past midnight, and the moon was riding high j in heaven, when the emperor, returning between the j lengthening watch-fires, sought the small lamp which, i suspended like a star above his own tent, guided him l back from the irregular mazes of the camp. Paled i by the intense radiance of the moonlight, the small globe of alabaster at length became apparent to his weary eye, and with one glance at the peaceful beauty of the heavens, he parted the curtained door beneath it, and stood within. The Chinese historian asserts that a bird, from whose wing Teh-leen had once plucked an arrow, restoring it to liberty and life, and in grateful attachment to her destiny, removed the lamp from the imperial tent, and suspended it over hers. The emperor stood beside her couch. Startled j at his inadvertent error, he turned to retire ; but the lifted curtain let in a flood of moonlight upon the sleeping features of Teh-leen, and like dew-drops, the | undried tears glistened in her silken lashes. A lamp j burned faintly in the inner apartment of the tent, and her attendants slept soundly. His soft heart gave way. Taking up the lamp, he held it over his beau- tiful mistress, and once more gazed passionately and unrestrainedly on her unparalleled beauty. The past — the early past — was alone before him. He for- ! gave her — there, as she slept, unconscious of the throbbing of his injured, but noble heart, so close beside her — he forgave her in the long silent abysses of his soul ! Unwilling to wake her from her tran- quil slumber, but promising to himself, from that hour, such sweets of confiding love as had well nigh been lost to him for ever, he imprinted one kiss upon the parted lips of Teh-leen, and sought his couch for slumber. Ere daybreak the emperor was aroused by one of his attendants with news too important for delay. Szema, the rebel, had been arrested in the imperial camp, disguised, and on his way back to his own forces, and like wildfire, the information had spread among the soldiery, who, in a state of mutinous excitement, were with difficulty restrained from rush- ing upon the tent of Teh-leen. At the door of his tent, Yuentsoong found messengers from the alarmed princes and officers of the different commands, implo- ring immediate aid and the imperial presence to allay the excitement, and while the emperor prepared to mount his horse, the guard arrived with the Tartar prince, ignominiously tied, and bearing marks of rough usage from his indignant captors. " Loose him !" cried the emperor, in a voice of thunder. The cords were severed, and with a glance whose ferocity expressed no thanks, Szema reared himself up to his fullest height, and looked scornfully around him. Daylight had now broke, and as the group stood upon an eminence in sight of the whole army, shouts began to ascend, and the armed multitude, breaking through all restraint, rolled in toward the centre. Attracted by the commotion, Yuentsoong turned to give some orders to those near him, when 528 THE BELLE OF THE BELFRY. Szema suddenly sprang upon an officer of the guard, wrenched his drawn sword from his grasp, and in an instant was lost to sight in the tent of Teh-leen. A sharp scream, a second of thought, and forth again rushed the desperate murderer, with his sword flinging drops of drops of blood, and ere a foot stirred in the paralyzed group, the avenging cimeter of Yuentsoong had cleft him to the chin. A hush, as if the whole army was struck dumb by a bolt from heaven, followed this rapid tragedy. Dropping the polluted sword from his hand, the emperor, with uncertain step, and the pallor of death upon his countenance, entered the fatal tent. He came no more forth that day. The army was marshalled by the princes, and the rebels were routed with great slaughter; but Yuentsoong never more wielded sword. " He pined to death," says the histo- rian, " with the wane of the same moon that shone upon the forgiveness of Teh-leen." THE BELLE OF THE BELFRY; OR, THE DARING LOVER. A grisette is something else beside a "mean girl" or a "gray gown," the French dictionary to the contra- ry notwithstanding. Bless me ! you should see the griset'es of Rochepot ! And if you wished to take a lesson in political compacts, you should understand the grisette confederacy of Rochepot ! They were working-girls, it is true — dressmakers, milliners, shoe- binders, tailoresses, flowermakers, embroideresses — and they never expected to be anything more aristo- cratic. And in that content lay their power. The grisettes of Rochepot were a good fourth of the female population. They had their jealousies, and little scandals, and heart-burnings, and plottings, and counterplottings (for they were women) among themselves. But they made common cause against the enemy. They would bear no disparagement. They knew exactly what was due to them, and what was due to their superiors, and they paid and gave credit in the coin of good manners, as can not be done in countries of "liberty and equality." Still there were little shades of difference in the attention shown them by their employers, and they worked twice as much in a day when sewing for Madame Durozel, who took her dinner with them, sans f aeon in the work-room, as for old Madame Chiquette, who dined all alone in her grand saloon, and left them to eat by themselves among their shreds and scissors. But these were not slights which they seriously resented. Wo only to the incautious dame who dared to scan- dalize one of their number, or dispute her dues, or encroach upon her privileges ! They would make Rochepot as uncomfortable for her, parhleu ! as a kettle to a slow-boiled lobster. But the prettiest grisette of Rochepot was not often permitted to join her companions in their self-chap- eroned excursions on the holydays. Old Dame Pomponney was the sexton's widow, and she had the care of the great clock of St. Roch, and of one only daughter; and excellent care she took of both her charges. They lived all three in the belfry — dame, clock, and daughter — and it was a bright day for Thenais when she got out of hearing of that " lick, tick, tick," and of the thumping of her mother's cane on the long staircase, which always kept time with it. Not that old Dame Pomponney had any objection to have her daughter -convenably married. She had been deceived in her youth (or so it was whispered) by a lover above her condition, and she vowed, by thi cross on her cane, that her daughter should have no sweetheart above a journeyman mechanic. Now tht romance of the grisettes (parlons bas .') was to have one charming little flirtation with a gentleman before they married the leather-apron — just to show that, had they by chance been born ladies, they could have played their part to the taste of their lords. But it was at this game that Dame Pomponney had burnt her fingers, and she had this one subject for the exercise of her powers of mortal aversion. When I have added that, four miles from Roche pot, stood the chateau de Brevanne, and that the old Count de Brevanne was a proud aristocrat of the an cien regime, with one son, the young Count Felix, whom he had educated at Paris, I think I have pre- pared you tolerably for the little romance I have to tell you. It was a fine Sunday morning that a mounted hus- sar appeared in the street of Rochepot. The grisettes were all abroad in their holyday parure, and the gay soldier soon made an acquaintance with one of them at the door of the inn, and informed her that he had been sent on to prepare the old barracks for his troop. The hussars were to be quartered a month at Roche- pot. Ah ! what a joyous bit of news ! And six offi- cers beside the colonel! And the trumpeters were miracles at playing quadrilles and waltzes ! And not a plain man in the regiment — except always the speaker. And none, except the old colonel, had ever been in love in his life. But as this last fact required to be sworn to, of course he was ready to kiss the book — or, in the absence of the book, the next most sacred object of his adoration. " Finissez done, Monsieur .'" exclaimed his pretty listener, and away she ran to spread the welcome in- telligence with its delightful particulars. The next day the troop rode into Rochepot, and formed in the great square in front of St. Roch; and by the time the trumpeters had played themselves red in the face, the hussars were all appropriated, to a man — for the grisettes knew enough of a marching regiment to lose no time. They all found leisure to pity poor Thenais, however, for there she stood in one of the high windows of the belfry, looking down on the gay crowd below, and they knew very well that old Dame Pomponney had declared all soldiers to be gay deceivers, and forbidden her daughter to stir into the street while they were quartered at Rochepot. Of course the grisettes managed to agree as to each other's selection of a sweetheart from the troop, and of course each hussar thankfully accepted the pair of eyes that fell to him. For, aside from the limited duration of their stay, soldiers are philosophers, and know that "life is short," and it is better to " take the goods the gods provide." But " after everybody was helped," as they say at a feast, there appeared another short jacket and foraging cap, very much to the re- lief of red-headed Susette, the shoebinder, who had been left out in the previous allotment. And Susette made the amiable accordingly, but to no purpose, for the lad seemed an idiot with but one idea — looking for ever at St. Roch's clock to know the time of day ! The grisettes laughed and asked their sweethearts his name, but they significantly pointed to their foreheads and whispered something about poorRobertin's being a privileged follower of the regiment and a protege of the colonel. Well, the grisettes flirted, and the old clock of St. Roch ticked on, and Susette and Thenais, the plain- est and the prettiest girl in the village, seemed the only two who were left out in the extra dispensation of lovers. And poor Robertin still persisted in oc- cupying most of his leisure with watching the time of day. THE BELLE OF THE BELFRY. 529 It was on the Sunday morning after the arrival of the troop that old Dame Pomponney went up, as usual, to do her Sunday's duty in winding up the clock. She had previously locked the belfry door to be sure that no one entered below while she was above ; but— the Virgin help us ! — on the top stair, gazing into the machinery of the clock with absorbed attention, sat one of those devils of hussars ! " Thief," " vagabond," and " house-breaker," were the most moderate epithets with which Dame Pomponney ac- companied the enraged beating of her stick on the resounding platform. She was almost beside herself with rage. And Thenais had been up to dust the wheels of the clock ! And how did she know that that scclerat of a trooper was not there all the time! But the intruder, whose face had been concealed till now, turned suddenly round and began to gibber and grin like a possessed monkey. He pointed at the clock, imitated the "tick, tick, tick," laughed till the big bell gave out an echo like a groan, and then sud- denly jumped over the old dame's stick and ran down stairs. "Eh, Sainte Viei ge .'" exclaimed the old dame, " it's a poor idiot after all ! And he has stolen up to see what made the clock tick ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Well ! — well ! I can not come up these weary stairs twice a day, and I must witid up the clock before I go down to let him out. • Tick, tick, tick!' — poor lad ! poor ad! They must have dressed him up to make fun of him — those vicious troopers ! Well ! — well !" And with pity in her heart, Dame Pomponney hob- bled down, stair after stair, to her chamber in the square turret of the belfry, and there she found the poor idiot on his knees before Thenais, and Thenais was just preparing to put a skein of thread over his thumbs, for she thought she might make him useful and amuse him with the winding of it till her mother came down. But as the thread got vexatiously en- tangled, and the poor lad sat as patiently as a wooden reel, and it was time to go below to mass, the dame thought she might as well leave him there till she came back, and down she stumped, locking the door very safely behind her. Poor Thenais was very lonely in the belfry, and Dame Pomponney, who had a tender heart where her duty was not involved, rather rejoiced when she re- turned, to find an unusual glow of delight on her daughter's cheek ; and if Thenais could find so much pleasure in the society of a poor idiot lad, it was a sign, too, that her heart was not gone altogether after those abominable troopers. It was time to send the innocent youth about his business, however, so she gave him a holyday cake and led him down stairs and dismissed him with a pat on his back and a strict in- junction never to venture again up to the " tick, tick, tick." But as she had had a lesson as to the acces- sibility of her bird's nest, she determined thenceforth to lock the door invariably and carry the key in her pocket. ' While poor Robertin was occupied with his re- searches into the " tick, tick, tick," never absent a day from the neighborhood of the tower, the more fortunate hussars were planning to give the grisettes a fete champetre. One of the saints' days was coining round, and, the weather permitting, all the vehicles of the village were to be levied, and, with the troop- horses in harness, they were to drive to a small wood- ed valley in the neighborhood of the chateau de Brevanne, where seclusion and a mossy carpet of grass were combined in a little paradise for such en- joyment. The morning of this merry day dawned, at last, and the grisettes and their admirers were stirring be- times, for they were to breakfast sur Vherbe, and they were not the people to turn breakfast into dinner. The sky was clear, and the dew was not verv heavy on the 34 grass, and merrily the vehicles rattled about the town, picking up their fair freights from its obscurest cor- ners. But poor Thenais looked out, a sad prisoner, from her high window in the belfry. It was a half hour after sunrise and Dame Pompon- ney was creeping up stairs after her matins, thanking Heaven that she had been firm in her refusals — at least twenty of the grisettes having gathered about her, and pleaded for a day's freedom for her imprison- ed daughter. She rested on the last landing but one to take a little breath — but hark ! — a man's voice talk- ing in the belfry ! She listened again, and quietly slipped her feet out of her high-heeled shoes. The voice was again audible — yet how could it be ! She knew that no one could have passed up the stair, for the key had been kept in her pocket more carefully than usual, and, save by the wings of one of her own pigeons, the belfry window was inaccessible, she was sure. Still the voice went on in a kind of pleading murmur, and the dame stole softly up in her stock- ings, and noiselessly opened the door. There stood Thenais at the window, but she was alone in the room. I At the same instant the voice was heard again, and j sure now that one of those desperate hussars had climbed the tower, and unable to control her rage at ! the audacity of the attempt, Dame Pomponney clutch- It ed her cane and rushed forward to aim a blow at the military cap now visible at the sill of the window. But at the same instant the head of the intruder was | thrown back, and the gibbering and idiotic smile of poor Robertin checked her blow in its descent, and turned all her anger into pity. Poor, silly lad ! he had contrived to draw up the garden ladder and place it upon the roof of the stone porch below, to climb and offer a flower to Thenais ! Not unwilling to have her daughter's mind occupied with some other thought than the forbidden excursion, the dame offered her hand to Robertin and drew him gently in at the win- dow. And as it was now market-time she bid The- nais be kind to the poor boy, and locking the door behind her, trudged contentedly off with her stick and basket. I am sorry to be obliged to record an act of filial disobedience in the heroine of my story. An hour after, Thenais was welcomed with acclamations as she suddenly appeared with Robertin in the midst of the merry party of grisettes. With Robertin — not as he had hitherto been seen, his cap on the back of his head and his under lip hanging loose like an idiot's — but with Robertin, gallant, spirited, and gay, the hand- somest of hussars, and the most joyous of companions. And Thenais, spite of her hasty toilet and the cloud of conscious disobedience which now and then shaded her sweet smile, was, by many degrees, the belle of the hour; and the palm of beauty, for once in the world at least, was yielded without envy. The gri- settes dearly love a bit of romance, too, and the cir- cumventing of old Dame Pomponney by his ruse of idiocy, and the safe extrication of the prettiest girl of the village from that gloomy old tower, was quite enough to make Robertin a hero, and his sweetheart Thenais more interesting than a persecuted princess. And, seated on the ground while their glittering cavaliers served them with breakfast, the light-hearted grisettes of Rochepot were happy enough to be en- vied by their betters. But suddenly the sky darkened, and a slight gust murmuring among the trees, an- nounced the coming up of a summer storm. Sauve qui peut ! The soldiers were used to emergencies, and they had packed up and reloaded their cars and were under way for shelter almost as soon as the grisettes, and away they all fled toward the nearest grange— one of the dependancies of the chateau de Brevanne. But Robertin, now, had suddenly become the di- rector and ruling spirit of the festivities. The soldiers 530 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. treated him with instinctive deference, the old farmer of the grange hurried out with his keys and unlocked the great storehouse, and disposed of the horses un- der shelter ; and by the time the big drops began to fall, the party were dancing gayly and securely on the dry and smooth thrashing-floor, and the merry har- mony of the martial trumpets and horns rang out far and wide through the gathering tempest. The rain began to come down very heavily, and the clatter of a horse's feet in a rapid gallop was heard in one of the pauses in the waltz. Some one seeking shelter, no doubt. On went the bewitching music again, and at this moment two or three couples ceased waltzing, and the floor was left to Robertin and The- nais, whose graceful motions drew all eyes upon them in admiration. Smiling in each other's faces, and wholly unconscious of any other presence than their own, they whirled blissfully around — but there was now another spectator. The horseman who had been heard to approach, had silently joined the party, and making a courteous gesture to signify that the dan- cing was not to be interrupted, he smiled back the courtesies of the pretty grisettes — for, aristocratic as he was, he was a polite man to the sex, was the Count de Brevanne. "Felix !" he suddenly cried out, in a tone of sur- prise and anger. The music stopped at that imperative call, and Robertin turned his eyes, astonished, in the direction from which it came. The name was repeated from lip to lip among the grisettes, " Felix !" " Count Felix de Brevanne !" But without deigning another word, the old man pointed with his riding-whip to the farm-house. The disguised count respectfully bowed his head, but held Thenais by the hand and drew her gently with him. "Leave her! disobedient boy!" exclaimed the father. But as Count Felix tightened his hold upon the small hand he held, and Thenais tried to shrink back from the advancing old man, old Dame Pomponney, streaming with rain, broke in unexpectedly upon the scene. " Disgrace not your blood," said the Count de Bre- vanne at that moment. The offending couple stood alone in the centre of the floor, and the dame comprehended that her daugh- ter was disparaged. "And who is disgraced by dancing with my daugh- ter?" she screamed with furious gesticulation. The old noble made no answer, but the grisettes, in an under tone, murmured the name of Count Felix ! " Is it he — the changeling ! the son of a poor gar- dener, that is disgraced by the touch of my daughter ?" A dead silence followed this astounding exclama- tion. The old dame had forgotten herself in her rage, and she looked about with a terrified bewilderment— but the mischief was done. The old man stood aghast. Count Felix clung still closer to Thenais, but his face expressed the most eager inquisitiveness. The grisettes gathered around Dame Pomponney, and the old count, left standing and alone, suddenly drew his cloak about him and stepped forth into the rain ; and in another moment his horse's feet were heard clat- tering away in the direction of the chateau de Bre- vanne. We have but to tell the sequel. The incautious revelation of the old dame turned out to be true. The dying infant daughter of the Marchioness de Brevanne had been changed for the healthy son of the count's gardener, to secure an heir to the name and estates of the nearly extinct family of Brevanne. Dame Pomponney had assisted in this secret, and but for her heart full of rage at the moment, to which the old count's taunt was but the last drop, the secret would probably have never been revealed. Count Felix, who had played truant from bis college at Paris, to come and hunt up some of his childish playfellows, in disguise, had remembered and disclosed himself to the little Thenais, who was not sorry to recognise him, while he played the idiot in the belfry. But of course there was now no obstacle to their union, and united they were. The old count pardoned him, and gave the new couple a portion of his estate, and they named their first child Robertin, as was natural enough. PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. KEPT ON A LATE VISIT TO ENGLAND. Ship Gladiator, off the Isle of Wight, Evening of June 9th, 1839. The bullet which preserves the perpendicular of my cabin-lamp is at last still, 1 congratulate myself; and with it my optic nerve resumes its proper and steady function. The vagrant tumblers, the peripatet- ic teeth-brushes, the dancing stools, the sidling wash- basins and et-ceteras, have returned to a quiet life. The creaking bulk-heads cry no more. I sit on a trunk which will not run away with me, and pen and paper look up into my face with their natural sobriety and attention. I have no apology for not writing to you, except want of event since we parted. There is not a milestone in the three thousand four hundred miles I have travelled. " Travelled !" said I. I am as unconscious of having moved from the wave on which you left me at Staten Island as the prisoner in the hulk. I have pitched forward and backward, and rolled from my left cheek to my right ; but as to any feeling of having gone onward I am as unconscious of it as a lobster backing after the ebb. The sea is a dreary vacuity, in which he, perhaps, who was ever well upon it, can find material for thought. But for one, I will sell, at sixpence a month, all copyhold upon so much of my life as is destined "to the deep, the blue, the black" (and whatever else he calls it) of my friend the song-writer. Yet there are some moments recorded, first with a sigh, which we find afterward copied into memory with a smile. Here and there a thought has come to me from the wave, snatched listlessly from the elements — here and there a word has been said which on shore should have been wit or good feeling — here and there a good morning, responded to with an effort, has, from its courtesy or heartiness, left an impression which will make to-morrow's parting phrases more earnest than 1 had anticipated. — With this green isle to windward, and the smell of earth and flowers com- ing to my nostrils once more, I begin to feel an in- terest in several who have sailed with me. Humanity, killed in me invariably by salt water, revives, I think, with this breath of hawthorn. The pilot tells us that the Montreal, which sailed ten days before us, has not yet passed up the channel, and that we have brought with us the first west wind they have had in many weeks. The sailors do not know what to say to this, for we had four parsons on board, and, by all sea-canons, they are invariable Jonahs. One of these gentlemen, by the way, is an abolitionist, on a begging crusade for a school devoted to the amalgam of color, and very much to the amuse- ment of the passengers he met the steward's usual demand for a fee with an application for a contribu- tion to the funds of his society ! His expectations PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 531 from British sympathy are large, for he is accom- panied by a lay brother " used to keeping accounts," whose sole errand is to record the golden results of his friend's eloquence. Bul"eigbl bells" warn me to bed ; so when I have recorded the good qualities of the Gladiator, which are many, and those of her captain, which are more, I will put out my sea-lamp for the last time, and get into my premonitory " six feet by two." The George Inn, Portsmouth. — This is a morning in which (under my circumstances) it would be diffi- cult not to be pleased with the entire world. A fair day in June, newly from sea, and with a journey of seventy miles before me on a swift coach, through rural England, is what I call a programme of a pleas- ant day/ Determined not to put myself in the way of a disappointment, I accepted, without the slightest hesitation, on landing at the wharf, the services of an elderly gentleman in shabby black, who proposed to stand between me and all" my annoyances of the morning. He was to get my baggage through the customs, submit for me to all the inevitable imposi- tions of tide-waiters, secure my place in the coach, bespeak me a fried sole and green peas, and sum up his services, all in one short phrase of I. s. d. So putting my temper into my pocket, and making up my mind to let roguery take the wall of me for one i day unchallenged, I mounted to the grassy ramparts , of the town to walk off the small remainder of sea-air from iny stomach, and admire everything that came in my way. I would recommend to all newly-landed passengers from the packets to step up and accept of | the sympathy of the oaks of the " king's bastion" in j their disgust for the sea. Those sensible trees, ! leaning toward the earth, and throwing out their boughs as usual to the landward, present to the sea- ward exposure a turned-up and gnarled look of nausea and disgust, which is as expressive to the commonest ; observer as a sick man's first look at his bolus. I ] have great affinity with trees, and I believe implicitly that what is disagreeable to the tree can not be pleas- mt to the man. The salt air is not so corrosive here as in the Mediterranean, where the leaves of the olive are eaten off entirely on the side toward the sea; but it is quite enough to make a sensible tree turn up its nose, and in that attitude stands most expressively every oak on the " king's bastion." The first few miles out of Portsmouth form one long alley of ornamented cottages — wood-bine creep- ing and roses flowering over them all. If there were but two between Portsmouth and London — two even of the meanest we saw — a traveller from any other land would think it worth his while to describe them minutely. As there are two thousand (more or less), they must pass with a bare mention. Yet I became conscious of a new feeling in seeing these rural para- dises ; and I record it as the first point in which 1 find myself worse for having become a " dweller in the shade." I was envious. Formerly, in passing a tasteful retreat, or a fine manor, I could say, " What a bright lawn ! What a trim and fragrant hedge ! What luxuriant creepers ! I congratulate their fortunate owner!" Now it is, "How I wish I had that hedge at Glenmary ! How I envy these people their shrubs, trellices, and flowers!" I wonder not a little how the English emigrant can make a home among our unsightly stumps that can ever breed a forgetfulness of all these refined ruralities. After the first few miles, I discovered that the two windows of the coach were very limited frames for the rapid succession of pictures presented to my eye, and changing places with William, who was on the top of the coach, I found myself between two tory politicians, setting forth to each other most eloquently the maladministrations of the whigs, and the queen's mismanagement. As I was two months behind the English news, 1 listened with some interest. They made out to their own satisfaction that the queen was a silly gill ; that she had been caught in a decided fib about Sir Robert Peel's exactions with respect to the household ; and one of the Jeremiahs, who seem- ed to be a sturdy grazier, said that " in 'igh life the queen-dowager's 'ealth was now received uniwersally with three times three, while Victoria's was drank in solemn silence." Her majesty received no better treatment at the hands of a whig on the other end of the seat ; and as we whirled under the long park fence of Claremont, the country palace of Leopold and the Princess Charlotte, he took the pension of the Belgian king for the burden of his lamentation, and, between whig and tory, England certainly seemed to be in a bad way. This Claremont, it will be remembered by the readers of D'Israeli's novels, is the original of the picture of the luxurious maison de plaisance, drawn in the young duke. We got glimpses of the old palace at Esher, of Hampton court, of Pitt's country seat at Putney, and of Jane Porter's cottage at Esher, and in the seventh hour from leaving Portsmouth (seventy-four miles) we found the vehicles thickening, the omnibuses passing, the blue-coated policemen occurring at short intervals, and the roads delightfully watered— symp- toms of suburban London. We skirted the privileged paling of Hyde Park ; and I could see, over the rails, the flying and gay-colored equipages, the dandy horse- men, the pedestrian ladies followed by footmen with their gold sticks, the fashionable throng, in short, which, separated by an iron barrier from all contact withunsightliness and vulgarity, struts its hour in this green cage of aristocracy. Around the triumphal arch opposite the duke of Wellington's was assembled a large crowd of carriages and horsemen. The queen was coming from Buck- ingham palace through the Green park, and they were waiting for a glimpse of her majesty on horse- back. The regulator whirled mercilessly on; but far down, through the long avenues of trees, I could see a movement of scarlet liveries, and a party coming rapidly toward us on horseback. We missed the queen by a couple of minutes. It was just the hour when all London is abroad, and Piccadilly was one long cavalcade of splendid equipages on their way to the park. I remembered many a face, and many a crest ; but either the faces had beautified in my memory, or three years had done time's pitiless work on them all. Near Devon shire house I saw, fretting behind the slow-moving press of vehicles, a pair of magnificent and fiery blood horses, drawing a coach, which, though quite new, was of a color and picked out with a peculiar stripe thai was familiar to my eye. The next glance con- vinced me that the livery was that of Lady B. ; but, for the light chariot in which she used to drive, here was a stately coach — for the one tall footman, two — for the plain but elegant harness, a sumptuous and superb caparison — the whole turn-out on a scale of splendor unequalled by anything around us. Another moment decided the doubt— for as we came against the carriage, following, ourselves, an embarrassed press of vehicles, her ladyship appeared, leaning back in the corner with her wrists crossed, the same in the grace of her attitude and the elegance of her toilet, but stouter, more energetic, and graver m the expres- sion of her face, than I ever remembered to have seen her. From the top of the stage-coach 1 looked, unseen, directly down upon her, and probably got, by chance, a davlight and more correct view of her countenance than 1 should obtain to a year of opera and drawing-room observation. Tired and dusty, we were turned from hotel to ho- 532 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. tel, all full and overflowing ; and finding at last a cor- ner at Raggett's, in Dover street, we dressed, dined, and posted to Woolwich. Unexpected and mournful news closed our first day in England with tears. ****** I drove up to London the second day after our ar- rival, and having a little " Grub-street" business, made my way to the purlieus of publishers in Paternoster row. If you could imagine a paper mine, with a very deep-cut shaft laid open to the surface of the earth, you might get some idea of Ivy lane. One walks along through its dim subterranean light, with no idea of breathing the proper atmosphere of day and open air. A strong smell of new books in the nostrils, and one long stripe of blue sky much farther off than usu- al, are the predominant impressions. From the dens of the publishers, I wormed my way through the crowds of Cheapside and the Strand, tow- ard that part of London which, as Horace Smith says, is "open at the top." Something in the way of a ship's fender, to save the hips and elbows, would sell well I should think to pedestrians in London. What crowds, to be sure ! On a Sunday in New York, when all the churches are pouring forth their congre- gations at the same moment, you have seen a faint image of the Strand. The style of the hack cabriolets is very much changed since I was in London. The passenger sits about as high up from the ground as he would in a common chair — the body of the vehicle suspended from the axle instead of being placed upon it, and the wheels very high. The driver's seat would suit a sailor, for it answers to the ship's tiller, well astern. He whips over the passenger's head. I saw one or two private vehicles built on this principle, certainly one of safety, though they have something the beauty of a prize hog. The new National Gallery in Trafalgar square, not finished when I left England, opened upon me as I entered Charing Cross, with what I could not but feel was a very fine effect, though critically, its " pepper- boxity" is not very creditable to the architect. Fine old Northumberland house, with its stern lion atop on one side, the beautiful Club house on the other, St. Martin's noble church and the Gallery — with such a fine opening in the very cor cordium of London, could not fail of producing a noble metropolitan view. The street in front of the gallery was crowded with carriages, showing a throng of visiters within ; and mounting the imposing steps (the loftiness of the ves- tibule dropping plump as I paid my shilling entrance), I found myself in a hall whose extending lines of pil- lars ran through the entire length of the building, offering to the eye a truly noble perspective. Off from this hall, to the right and left, lay the galleries of antique and modern paintings, and the latter were crowded with the fair and fashionable mistresses of the equipages without. You will not care to be bothered with criticisms on pictures, and mine was a cursory glance — but a delicious, full-length portrait of a noble lady by Grant, whose talent is now making some noise in London, a glorious painting of Van Amburgh among his lions by Edwin Landseer, and a portrait of Miss Pardoe in a Turkish costume, with her pretty feet coiled under her on a Persian carpet, by Pickers- gill, are among those I remember. I found a great many acquaintances in the gallery ; and I was sitting up- on a bench with a lady, who pointed out to me a portrait of 'Lord Lyndhurst in his chancellor's wig and robes — a very fine picture of a man of sixty or thereabouts. Directly between me and it, as I looked, sidled a per- son with his back to me, cutting oft' my view very pro- vokingly. " When this dandy gets out of the way with his eyeglass," said I, "I shall be able to see the pic- ture." My friend smiled. " Who do you take the dandy to be ?" It was a well-formed man, dressed in the top of the fashion, with a very straight back, curl- ing brown hair, and the look of perhaps thirty years of age. As he passed on and I caught his profile, I saw it was Lord Lyndhurst himself. ****** I had not seen Taglioni since the first representa- tion of the Sylphide, eight or nine years ago at Paris Last night I was at the opera, and saw her in La Gitana ; and except that her limbs are the least in the world rounder and fuller, she is, in person, absolutely unchanged. I can appreciate now, better than I could then (when opera dancing was new to me), what it is that gives this divine woman the right to her proud title of La Deesse de la Dame. It is easy for the Ellslers, and Augusta, and others, who are said to be only second to her, to copy her flying steps, and even to produce, by elasticity of limb, the beautiful effect of touching the earth, like a thing afloat, without be- ing indebted to it for the rebound. But Taglioni alone finishes the step, or the pirouette, or the arrowy bound over the scene, as calmly, as accurately, as faultlessly, as she begins it. She floats out of a pirouette as if, instead of being made giddy, she had been lulled by it into a smiling and child-like dream, and instead of trying herself and a plonib (as is seen in all other dan- cers, by their effort to recover composure), it had been the moment when she had rallied and been refreshed. The smile, so expressive of enjoyment in her own grace, which steals over Taglioni's lips when she closes a difficult step, seems communicated, in an indefina- ble languor, to her limbs. You can not fancy her fa- tigued when, with her peculiar softness of motion, she courtesies to the applause of the enchanted audience, and walks lightly away. You are never apprehensive that she has undertaken too much. You never de- tect, as you do in all other dancers, defects slurred over adroitly, and movements that, from their antici- pating the music of the ballet, are known by the criti cal eye to cover some flaw in the step, from giddiness or loss of balance. But oh what a new relation bears the music to the dance, when this spirit of grace re- places her companions in the ballet ! Whether the motion seems born of the music, or the music floats out of her dreamy motion, the enchanted gazer might be almost embarrassed to know. In the new ballet of La Gitana, the music is based upon the Mazurka. The story is the old one of the child of a grandee of Spain, stolen by gipsies, and re- covered by chance in Russia. The gradual stealing over her of a recollection of music she had heard in her childhood was the finest piece of pantomimic act- ing I ever saw. But there is one dance, the Cachucha, introduced at the close of the ballet, in which Taglioni has enchanted the world anew. It could only be done by herself; for there is a succession of flying move- ments expressive of alarm, in the midst of which she alights and stands poised upon the points of her feet, with a look over her shoulder of ficrte and animation possible to no other face, I think, in the world. It was like a deer standing with expanded nostril and neck uplifted to its loftiest height, at the first scent of his pursuers in the breeze. It was the very soul of swiftness embodied in a look ! How can I describe it to you ? ****** My last eight hours have been spent between Bed- lam and the opera — one of those antipodal contrasts of which London life affords so many. Thanks to God, and to the Howards who have arisen in our time, a madhouse is no longer the heart-rending scene that it used to be; and Bedlam, though a place of melan- choly imprisonment, is as cheering a spectacle to the humane as imprisonment can be made by care and kindness. Of the three hundred persons who are in- mates of its wards, the greater part seemed quiet and content, some playing at ball in the spacious court- yards, some lying on the grass, and some working vol- PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 533 untarily at a kind of wheel arranged for raising water to their rooms. On the end of a bench in one of the courts, quite apart from the other patients, sat the youth who came up two hundred miles from the country to marry the queen ! You will remember the story of his forcing himself into Buckingham palace. He was a stout, sandy-haired, sad-looking young man, of perhaps twenty-four; and with his arms crossed, and his eyes on the ground, he sat like a statue, never moving even an eyelash while we were there. There was a very gentlemanlike man working at the watervvheel, or rather walking round, with his hand on the bar, in a gait that would have suited the most finished exquis- ite of a drawing-room — Mr. Davis, who shot (I think) at Lord Londonderry. Then in an upper room we saw the Captain Brown who shook his fist in the queen's face when she went to the city — really a most officer-like and handsome fellow ; and in the next room, poor old Hatfield, who shot at George the Third, and has been in Bedlam for forty years — quite sane! He was a gallant dragoon, and his face is seamed with scars got in battle before his crime. He employs him- self with writing poetry on the death of his birds and cats whom he has outlived in prison — all the society he has had in this long and weary imprisonment. He received us very courteously, and called our attention to his favorite canary showed us his poetry, and all with a sad, mild, subdued resignation, that quite moved me. In the female wards I saw nothing very striking, ex- cept one very noble-looking woman who was standing at her grated window, entirely absorbed in reading the Bible. Her face expressed the most heart-rending melancholy I had ever witnessed. She has been for years under the terrible belief that she has committed 14 the unpardonable sin," and though quiet all the day, her agony at night becomes horrible. What a com- ment on a much-practised mode of preaching the mild and forgiving religion of our Savior ! As I was leaving one of the wards, a young woman of nineteen or twenty came up to me with a very po- lite courtesy, and said, " Will you be so kind as to have me released from this dreadful place ?" "I am afraid I can not," said I. " Then," she replied, lay- ing her hand on my arm, with a most appealing ear- nestness, " perhaps you will on Monday — you know I've nothing to pack !" The matron here interposed, and led her away, but she kept her eyes on us till the | door closed. She was confined there for the murder of her child. We visited the kitchens, wash-houses, bakery, &c, &c. — all clean, orderly, and admirable, and left our names on the visiters' book, quite of the opinion of a Frenchman who was there just before us, and who had written under his own name this expressive praise : — 44 J'ai visite certains palais moins beaux et moins bien entretenus que cette maison de la folie." Two hours after, I was listening to the overture of La Cenerentola, and watching the entrance to the op- era of the gay, the celebrated, and the noble. In the house I had left, night had brought with it (as it does always to the insane) a maddening and terrific exalta- tion of brain and spirit — but how different from that exaltation of brain and spirit sought at the same hour, by creatures of the same human family, at the opera ! It was difficult not to wonder at the distribution of allotments to mankind. In a box on the left of me sat the queen, keeping time with a fan to the delicious singing of Pauline Garcia, her favorite minister stand- ing behind her chair, and her maids of honor around — herself the smiling, youthful, and admired sovereign of the most powerful nation on earth ! I thought of the poor girl in her miserable cell at Bedlam imploring release. The queen's face has thinned and grown more oval since I saw her at a drawing-room, four years ago, as Princess Victoria. She has been compelled to think since then, and such exigencies, in all stations of life, work out the expression of the face. She has now what I should pronounce a decidedly intellectual countenance, a little petulant withal when she turns to speak, but, on the whole, quite beautiful enough for a virgin queen. No particular attention seemed paid to her by the audience. She was dressed less gayly than many others around her. Her box was at the left side of the house/undistinguished by any mark of royalty, and a stranger would never have suspected her presence. Pauline Garcia sang better than I thought it possi- ble for any one to sing after Malibran was dead. She has her sister's look about the forehead and eyes, and all her sister's soul and passionateness in her style of singing. Her face is otherwise very plain, but, plain as it is, and young as she is, the opera-going pubiic prefer her already to the beautiful and more powerful Grisi. The latter long triumphant prima donna is said to be very unhappy at her eclipse by this new fa- vorite ; and it is curious enough to hear the hundred and one faults found in the declining songstress by those who once would not admit that she could be transcended on earth. A very celebrated person, whom I remembered, when in London before, giving Grisi the most unqualified eulogy, assured the gay admirers in her box last night that she had always said that Grisi had nothing but lungs and fine eyes. She was a great healthy Italian girl, and could sing in tune; but soul or sentiment she never had ! Poor Grisi ! Hers is the lot of all who are so unhappy as to have been much admired. " Le monde ne hdit rien aulant que ses idoles quand Us sont a terrc" said the wise La Bruyere. # * * * * * Some of the most delightful events in one's travels ; are those which afford the least materiel for descrip- I tion, and such is our sejour of a few days at the vicar- : age of B It was a venerable old house with pointed gables, elaborate and pointed windows, with panes of glass of the size of the palm of the hand, \ low doors, narrow staircases, all sorts of unsuspected i rooms, and creepers outside, trellised and trained to ' every corner and angle. Then there was the modern j wing, with library and dining-room, large windows, ■ marble fireplaces, and French paper; and in going , from your bedroom to breakfast, you might fancy yourself stepping from Queen Elizabeth's time to Queen Victoria's. A high hedge of holly divided the smoothly-shaven lawn from the churchyard, and in the midst of the moss-grown headstones stood a gray old church with four venerable towers, one of the most picturesque and beautiful specimens of the old Eng- lish architecture that I have ever seen. The whole group, church, vicarage, and a small hamlet of vine- covered and embowered stone cottages, lay in the lap of a gently rising sweep of hills, and all around were spread landscapes of the finished and serene character peculiar to England— rich fields framed in flowering hedges, clumps of forest trees, glimpses of distant parks, country seats, and village spires, and on the horizon a line of mist-clad hills, scarce ever more dis- tinct than the banks of low-lying clouds ret.-rmg alter a thunderstorm in America. , , Earlv on Sunday morning we were awakened by the melody of the bells in the old triers; and with brief pauses between the tunes, the; were played upon most musically, till the hour for *1e morning services We have little idea in Amen* ° 4 he perfect,™ to which the chiming of bells fs carried in England. In the towers of this small raral church are hung eight bells of different tone, and the tunes played on them by the more accomplished ringers of the neighboring hamlet are varied endlessly. 1 lay and listened to the 534 PASSAGES FROxM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. simple airs as they died away over the valley, with a pleasure I can scarcely express. The morning was serene and bright, the perfume of the clematis and jasmine flowers at the window penetrated to the cur- tains of my bed, and Sunday seemed to have dawned with the audible worship and palpable incense of na- ture. We were told at breakfast that the chimes had been unusually merry, and were a compliment to our- selves, the villagers always expressing thus their con- gratulations on the arrival of guests at the vicarage. The compliment was repeated between services, and a very long peal rang in the twilight — our near relation- ship to the vicar's family authorizing a very special rejoicing. The interior of the church was very ancient look- ing and rough, the pews of unpainted oak, and the massive stone walls simply whitewashed. The con- gregation was small, perhaps fifty persons, and the men were (with two exceptions) dressed in russet carters' frocks, and most of them in leather leggins. The children sat on low benches placed in the centre of the one aisle, and the boys, like their fathers, were in smock frocks of homespun, their heavy shoes shod with iron like horses' hoofs, and their little legs button- ed up in the impenetrable gaiters of coarse leather. They looked, men and boys, as if they were intended to wear but one suit in this world. I was struck with the solemnity of the service, and the decorous attention of men, women, and children, to the responses. It was a beautiful specimen of simple and pastoral worship. Each family had the name of their farm or place of residence printed on the back of the pew, with the number of seats to which they were entitled, probably in proportion to their tithes. The " living" is worth, if I remember right, not much over a hundred pounds — an insuffi- cient sum to support so luxurious a vicarage as is appended to it ; but, happily for the people, the vicar chances to be a man of fortune, and he unites in his excellent character the exemplary pastor with the physician and lord of the manor. I left B with the conviction that if peace, contentment, and happi- ness, inhabit one spot more than all others in a world whose allotments are so difficult to estimate, it is the vicarage'in the bosom of that rural upland. ****** We left B at twelve in the Brighton "Age" — the "swell coach" of England. We were to dine thirty miles nearer London, at Park, and we did the distance in exactly three hours, including a stop of fifteen minutes to dine. We are abused by all travellers for our alacrity in dining on the road ; but what stage-coach in the United States ever limited its dining time to fifteen minutes, and what American dinner of roast, pastry, and cheese, was ever despatch- ed so briefly ? Yet the travellers to Brighton are of the better class ; and whose who were my fellow- passengers the day I refer to were particularly well dressed and gentlemanly— yet all of them achieved a substantial dinner of beef, pudding, and cheese, paid their bills, and drained their glass of porter, within the quarter of an hour. John Bull's blindness to the beam in his own eye is perhaps owing to the fact that this lusty meal is sometimes called a " lunch !" The tvjo places beside our own in the inside were occupied '»y a lady and her maid and two children — an interpretation of the number two to which I would not have agree&if I could have helped it. We can not always tell at fint sight what will be most amusing, however ; and the ohild of two years, who sprawled oyer my rheumatic k^ees with her mother's permis- sion, thereby oceasionihg on my part a most fixed look out of the window, furnished me after a while with a curious bit of observation. At one of the commons we passed, the children running out from a gipsy encampment flung buoches of heath flowers i into the coach, which the little girl appropriated, and j commenced presenting rather graciously to her mother, the maid, and Mrs. W., all of whom received them | with smiles and thanks. Having rather a sulky face I of my own when not particularly called on to be pleased, the child omitted me for a long time in he> i distributions. At last, after collecting and re-distribu j ting the flowers for about an hour, she grew suddenly j grave, laid the heath all out upon her lap, selected the j largest and brightest flowers, and made them into a nosegay. My attention was attracted by the serious- ness of the child's occupation ; and I was watching her without thinking my notice observed, when she raised her eyes to me very timidly, turned her new ; bouquet over and over, and at last, with a blush, deeper than I ever saw before upon a child, placed j the flowers in my hand and hid her face in her mother's bosom. My sulkiness gave way, of course, and the little coquette's pleasure in her victory was excessive. j For the remainder of the journey, those who had given her their smiles too readily were entirely neg- ! lected, and all her attentions were showered upon the only one she had found it difficult to please. I thought it as pretty a specimen of the ruling passion strong in baby-hood as I ever saw. It was a piece of finished i coquetry in a child not old enough to speak plain. The coachman of " the age" was a young man of j perhaps thirty, who is understood to have run through j a considerable fortune, and drives for a living — but he j was not at all the sort of looking person you would fancy for a "swell whip." He drove beautifully, and helped the passengers out and in, lifted their baggage, &c, very handily, but evidently shunned notice, and had no desire to chat with the " outsides." The ex- cessive difficulty in England of finding any clean way of making a living after the initiatory age is passed — a difficulty which reduced gentlemen feel most keen- ly — probably forced this person as it has others to take up a vocation for which the world fortunately finds an excuse in eccentricity. He touches his hat for the half crown or shilling, although probably if it were offered to him when the whip was out of his hand he would knock the giver down for his imperti- nence. I may as well record here, by the way, for the benefit of those who may wish to know a compari- son between the expense of travelling here and at i home, that for two inside places for thirty miles the I coach fare was two pounds, and the coachman's fee j five shillings, or half-a-crown each inside. To get from the post town to Park (two miles) cost me five-and-sixpence for a " fly," so that for thirty-two | miles travel I paid 21. 10s. 6d., a little more than twelve dollars. And speaking of vocations, it would be a useful lesson to some of our ambitious youths to try a be- ginning at getting a living in England. I was never at all aware of the difficulty of finding even bread and salt for a young man, till I had occasion lately to en- deavor to better the condition of a servant of my own — a lad who has been with me four or five years, and whose singular intelligence, good principles, and high self-improvement, fitted him, I thought, for any con- fidential trust or place whatever. His own ideas, too (I thought, not unreasonably), had become somewhat sublimated in America, and he was unwilling to con- tinue longer as a servant. He went home to his mother, a working-woman of London, and I did my utmost, the month I was in town, inquiring among all classes of my friends, advertising, &c, to find him any possible livelihood above menial service. I was met everywhere with the same answer : " There are hundreds of gentlemen's sons wearing out their youth in looking for the same thing." I was told daily that it was quite in vain — that apprenticeships were as much sought as clerkships, and that every avenue to the making of a sixpence was overcrammed and inac- PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 535 cessible. My boy and his mother at last came to their senses ; and, consenting to apply once more for a servant's place, he was fortunate enough to engage as valet to a bachelor, and is now gone with his new master on a tour to France. As Harding the painter said to me, when he returned after his foreign trip, "England is a great place to take the nonsense out of P eo Pj e -" * When London shall have become the Rome or Athens of a fallen empire (qu. will it ever ?) the ter- mini of the railways will be among its finest ruins. That of the Birmingham and Liverpool track is al- most as magnificent as that flower of sumptuousness, the royal palace of Caserta, near Naples. It is really an impressive scene simply to embark for " Brum- magem ;" and there is that utility in all this showy expenditure for arch, gateway, and pillar, that no one is admitted but the passenger, and you are refreshing- ly permitted to manage your baggage, &c, without the assistance of a hundred blackguards at a shilling each. Then there are " ladies' waiting-rooms," and "gentlemen's waiting-rooms," and attached to them every possible convenience, studiously clean and order- ly. I wish the president and directors of the Utica and other American railroads would step over and The Adelphi is the Astor house of Liverpool, a very large and showy hotel near the terminus of the railway. We were shown into rather a magnificent parlor on our arrival ; and very hungry with rail-road- ing since six in the morning, we ordered dinner at their earliest convenience. It came after a full hour, and we sat down to four superb silver covers, anticipa- ting a meal corresponding to the stout person and pompous manners of the fattest waiter I have seen in my travels. The grand cover was removed with a flourish and disclosed— divers small bits of second-hand beef- steak, toasted brown and warped at the corners by a second fire, and on the removal of the other three silver pagodas, our eyes were gratified by a dish of peas that had been once used for green soup, three similarly toasted and warped mutton chops, and three potatoes. Quite incredulous of the cook's intentions, I ventured to suggest to the waiter that he bad proba- bly mistaken the tray and brought us the dinner of some sportsman's respectable brace of pointers; but on being assured that there were no dogs in the cellar, I sent word to the master of the house that we had rather a preference for a dinner new and hot, and would wait till he could provide it. Half an hour more brought up the landlord's apologies and a fresh and hot beef-steak, followed by a tough-crusted apple- pie, custard, and cheese— and with a bottle of Moselle, which teas good, we finished our dinner at one of the The <e a sumptuary hint. The cars are divided into stalls, t. e. each passenger cushioned off by a stuffed partition from his neigh- most expensive and showy hotels in England. Ih r's shoulder, an/sleeps without offence or encroach- manners and fare at the American hotels being ■ .Iway bor's shoulder, and sleep ment. When they are crowded, that is an admirable arrangement ; but I have found it very comfortable in long journeys in America to take advantage of an j empty car, and stretch myself to sleep along the vacant seat. Here, full or empty, you can occupy but your upright place. In every car are suspended lamps to give light during the long passages through the subterranean tunnels. We rolled from under the Brobdignag roof of the terminus, as the church of Mary-le-bone (Cockney for Marie-la-bonne, but so carved on the frieze) struck six. Our speed was increased presently to thirty miles in the hour ; and with the exception of the slower rate in passing the tunnels, and the slackening and getting under way at the different stations, this rate was kept up throughout. We arrived at Liver- i pool (205 miles or upward) at three o'clock, our stoppages having exceeded an hour altogether. I thought, toward the end, that all this might be very pleasant with a consignment of buttons, or an errand to Gretna Green. But for the pleasure of the thing, I would as lief sit in an arm-chair and see bales of striped green silk unfolded for eight hours, as travel the same length of time by the railroad. (I have de- scribed in this simile exactly the appearance of the fields as you see them in flying past.) The old wo- men and cabbages gain by it, perhaps, for you can not tell whether they are not girls and roses. The washer- woman at her tub follows the lady on the lawn so quickly that you confound the two irresistibly — the thatched cottages look like browsing donkeys, and the browsing donkeys like thatched cottages— you ask the name of a town, and by the time you get up your finger, your point at a spot three miles off — in short, the salmon well packed in straw on the top of the coach, and called fresh-fish after a journey of 200 miles, sees quite as much of the country as his most intellectual fellow-passenger. I foresee in all this a new distinction in phraseology. " Have you travel- led in England?" will soon be a question having no reference to railroads.- The winding turnpike and cross-roads, the coaches and post-carriages, will be resumed by all those who consider the sense of sight | as useful in travel, and the bagmen and letter-bags will have almost undisputed possession of the rail- cars. described as exponents of civilization by English travellers, I shall be excused for giving a counter- picture of one of the most boasted of their own. Regretting exceedingly that the recent mourning of my two companions must prevent their presence at the gay festivities of Eglinton, I put them on board the steamer, bound on a visit to relatives in Dublin, and returned to the Adelphi to wait en garcon for the Glasgow steamer of Monday. My chamber is a large and well-furnished room, with windows looking out on the area shut in by the wings of the house ; and I must make you still more contented at the A.stor, by describing what is going on below at this moment. It is half-past eight, and a Sunday morning. All the bells of the house, it seems to me, are ringing, most of them very impatiently, and in the area before the kitchen windows are six or eight idle waiters, and four or five female scullions, playing, quarrelling, scolding, and screaming; the language of both men and women more profane and indecent than anything I have ever before chanced to hear, and every word audible in every room in this quarter of the hotel. This has been going on since six this morning; and I seriously declare I do not think I ever heard as much indecent conversation in my life as for three mortal hours must have " murdered sleep" for every lady and gentleman lodged on the rear side of the " crack hotel" of Liver- pool. Sick of the scene described above, I went out just now to take a turn or two in my slippers in the long entry. Up and down, giving me a most appealing stare whenever we met, dawdled also the fat waiter who served up the cold victuals of yesterday. He evidently had some errand with me, but what 1 did not immediately fathom. At last he approached— " You — a — got your things, sir ?" " What things?" . . . . "The stick and umbrella, I carried to your bed- room, sir." , ,, " Yes, thank you," and I resumed my walk. The waiter resumed his, and presently approached ag l 'you— a— Jon't intend to use the parlor again, sir ?" " No ■ I have explained to the master of the house that I shall breakfast in the coffee-room " And agam I walked on. 536 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. My friend began again at the next turn. "You — a — pay for those ladies' dinner yourself, sir?" "Yes." I walked on once more. Once more approaches my fat incubus, and with a twirl of the towel in his hand looks as if he would fain be delivered of something. " Why the d — 1 am I badgered in this way ?" I stormed out at last, losing patience at his stammering hesitation, and making a move to get round the fat obstruction and pursue my walk. "Will you — a — remember the waiter, if you please, sir 7" " Oh ! I was not aware that I was to pay the waiter at every meal. I generally do it when I leave the house. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to let me finish my walk, and trust me till to-morrow morning?" P. S. Evening in the coffee-room. — They say the best beginning in love is a decided aversion, and badly as I began at Liverpool, I shall always have a tender recollection of it for the admirable and unequalled luxury of its balks. A long and beautiful Grecian building crests the head of George's pier, built by the corporation of Liverpool, and devoted exclusively to salt-water baths. I walked down in the twilight to enjoy this refreshing luxury, and it being Sunday evening, I was shown into the ladies' end of the building. The room where I waited till the bath was prepared was a lofty and finely proportioned apartment, elegantly furnished, and lined with superb- ly bound books and pictures, the tables covered with engravings, and the whole thing looked like a central apartment in a nobleman's residence. A boy showed me presently into a small drawing-room, to which was attached a bath closet, the two rooms lined, boudoir fashion, with chintz, a clock over the bath, a nice carpet and stove, in short, every luxury possible to such an establishment. I asked the boy if the gentle- men's baths were as elegant as these. " Oh yes," he said: "there are two splendid pictures of Niagara Falls and Catskill." "Who painted them ?" "Mr. Wall." " And whose are they?" " They belong to our father, sir !" I made up my mind that " our father" was a man of taste and a credit to Liverpool. ******* I have just returned from the dinner given to Mac- ready at the Freemason's tavern. The hall, so cele- brated for public " feeds," is a beautiful room of a very showy style of architecture, with three galleries, and a raised floor at the end usually occupied by the cross table. It accommodated on this occasion four hundred persons. From the peculiar object of the meeting to do honor to an actor for his intellectual qualities, and for his efforts to spiritualise and elevate the stage, there probably never was collected together in one room so much talent and accomplishment. Artists, authors, critics, publishers, and amateurs of the stage — a large body in London — made up the company. My atten- tion was called by one of my neighbors to the singu- larly superior character of the heads about us, and I had already observed the striking difference, both in head and physiognomy, between this and a common assemblage of men. Most of the persons connected with the press, it was said, were present; and perhaps it would have been a worthy service to the world had some shorn Samson, among the authors, pulled the temple upon the heads of the Philistines. The cry of " make way !" introduced the duke of Sussex, the chairman of the meeting — a stout, mild- looking, dignified old man, wearing a close black scull- cap and the star and riband. He was followed by Lord Conyngham, who, as grand chamberlain, had done much to promote the interests of the drama; by Lord Nugent (whom I had last seen sailing a scampavia in the bay of Corfu), by Sir Lytton Bulwer, Mr. Sheil, Sir Martin Shee, Young, the actor, Mr. Milnes, the poet, and other distinguished men. I should have said, by the way Mr. Macready followed next his royal highness. The cheering and huzzas, as this procession walked up the room, were completely deafening. Macready looked deadly pale and rather overcome ; and amid the waving of handkerchiefs and the stunning uproat of four hundred " gentlemen and scholars," the duke placed the tragedian at his right hand, and took his seat before the turbot. The dinner was an uncommonly bad one; but of this I had been forewarned, and so had taken a provi- sory chop at the club. I had leisure, therefore, to look about me, and truly there was work enough for the eyes. M 's head interested me more than any one's else, for it was the personification of his lofty, liberal, and poetic genius. His hair, which was long and profuse, curled in tendrils over the loftiest forehead ; but about the lower part of the face lay all the characteristics which go to make up a voluptuous yet generous, an enthusiastic and fiery, yet self-possessed and well directed character. He was excessively handsome ; yet it was the beauty of Masaniello, or Salvator Rosa, with more of intellect than both together. All in all, I never saw a finer face for an artist; and judging from his looks and from his works (he is perhaps twenty-four), I would stake my sagacity on a bold prophecy of his greatness. On the same side were the L s, very quiet-look- ing men, and S the portrait-painter, a merry- looking grenadier, and L B the poet, with a face like a poet. Near me was L , the painter, poet, novelist, song and music writer, dramatist, and good fellow — seven characters of which his friends scarce know in which he is most excellent — and he has a round Irish face, with a bright twinkle in his eye, and a plump little body which carries off all his gifts as if they were no load at all. — And on my left was S , the glorious painter of Venice, of the battle of Trafalgar, the unequalled painter of the sea in all its belongings; and you would take him for a gallant lieutenant of the navy, with the fire of a score of battles asleep in his eye, and the roughening of a hundred tempests in his cheek. A franker and more manly face would not cross your eye in a year's travel. Mr. J was just beyond, a tall, sagacious-look- ing, good humored person of forty-five. He was a man of very kind manners, and was treated with great marks of liking and respect by all about him. But directly opposite to me sat so exact a picture of Paul Pry as he is represented on the stage, particularly of my friend Finn in that character, that it was difficult not to smile in looking at him. To my surprise, I heard some one behind me point him out, soon after, as the well-known original in that character — the gentleman, whose peculiarities of person, as well as manners, were copied in the farce of Mr. Poole. — " That's my name — what's yours ?" said he the mo- ment after he had seated himself, thrusting his card close to the nose of the gentleman next him. I took it of course for a piece of fun between two very old friends, but to my astonishment the gentlemen next him was as much astonished as I. The few servants scaltered up and down were deaf to everything but calls for champagne (furnished only at an extra charge when called for — a very mean system for a public dinner, by the way), and the wines on the table seemed selected to drive one to champagne or the doctor. Each person had four plates, and when used, they were to be put under the bench, or on the top of your head, or to be sat upon, or what you would, except to be taken away, and the soup and fish, and the roast and boiled and all, having been put on together, was all removed at one fell swoop — the entire operation of dinner having lasted PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 537 just twenty-five minutes. Keep this fact till we are re- corded by some new English traveller as the most ex- peditious eaters in Christendom. Here end my croakings, however, for the speeches commenced directly, and admirable they were. To the undoing of much prejudice got by hearsay, I listened to Bulwer. He is, beyond all comparison, the most graceful and effective speaker I ever heard in England. All the world tells you that he makes signal failures in oratory — yet he rose, when his health was drank, and, in self-possessed, graceful, unhesita- ting language, playful, yet dignified, warm, yet not extravagant, he replied to the compliments of his royal highness, and brought forward his plan (as you have seen it reported in the papers) for the erection of a new theatre for the legitimate drama and Mac- ready. I remember once hearing that Bulwer had a belief in his future eminence as an orator — and I would warrant his warmest anticipations in that career of ambition. He is a better speaker than Sheil, who follow- ed him, and Sheil is renowned as an orator. Really there is nothing like one's own eyes and ears in this world of envy and misrepresentation. D sat near Sheil, at the cross table, very silent, as is his custom and that of most keen observers. The courtly Sir M S was near B , look- ing like some fine old picture of a wit of Charles the second's time, and he and Y the actor made two very opposite and gentlemanlike speeches. 1 believe I have told you nearly all that struck me, except what was reported in the gazettes, and that you have no need to read over again. I got away at eleven, and reached the opera in time to hear the last act of the Puritani, and see the Elsslers dance in the ballet, and with a look-in at a ball, I concluded one of those ex- hausting, exciting, overdone London days, which are pleasanter to remember than to enjoy, and pleasanter to read about than either. ♦ **###* One of the most elegant and agreeable persons I ever saw was Miss P , and I think her conversa- tion more delightful to remember than any person's I ever knew. A distinguished artist told me that he remembered her when she was his beau-ideal of female beauty; but in those days she was more "fancy-rapt," and gave in less to the current and spirit of society. Age has made her, if it may be so expressed, less selfish in her use of thought, and she pours it forth, like Pactolus — that gold which is sand from others. She is still what I should call a handsome woman, or, if that be not allowed, she is the wreck of more than a common allotment of beauty, and looks it. Her person is remarkably erect, her eyes and eyelids (in this latter resembling Scott) very heavily moulded, and her smile is beautiful. It strikes me that it always is so — where it ever was. The smile seems to be the work of the soul. I have passed months underthe same roof with .Miss P , and nothing gave me more pleasure than to find the company in that hospitable house dwindled to a "fit audience though few," and gathered around the figure in deep mourning which occupied the warmest corner of the sofa. In any vein, and a-propos to the gravest and the gayest subject, her well-stored mind and memory flowed forth in the same rich cur- rent of mingled story and reflection, and I never saw an impatient listener beside her. I recollect, one even- ing a lady's singing "Auld Robin Gray," and some one remarking (rather unsentimentally), at the close, " By-the-by, what is Lady (the authoress of the ballad) doing with so many carpenters. Berkeley square is quite deafened with their hammering !" "A-propos of carpenters and Lady ," said Miss P- , " this same charming ballad-writer owes some- thin S [° the craft. She was better-born than provided with the gifts of fortune, and in her younger days was once on a visit to a noble house, when to her dismay a large and fashionable company arrived, who brought with them a mania for private theatricals. Her ward- robe was very slender, barely sufficient for the ordinary events of a week-day, and her purse contained one solitary shilling. To leave the house was out of the question, to feign illness as much so, and to decline taking a part was impossible, for hor talent and spright- liness were the hope of the theatre. A part was cast for her, and, in despair, she excused herself from the gay party bound to the country town to make purcha- ses of silk and satin, and shut herself up, a prey to mortified low spirits. The character required a smart village dress, and it certainly did not seem that it could come out of a shilling. She sat at her window, biting her lips, and turning over in her mind whether she could borrow of some one, when her attention was at- tracted to a carpenter, who was employed in the con- struction of a stage in the large hall, and who, in the court below, was turning off from his plane broad and long shavings of a peculiarly striped wood. It struck her that it was like riband. The next moment she was below, and begged of the man to give her half-a- dozen lengths as smooth as he could shave them. He performed his task well, and depositing them in her apartment, she set off alone on horseback to the vil- I lage, and with her single shilling succeeded in pur- chasing a chip hat of frhe coarsest fabric. She carried it home, exultingly, trimmed it with her pine shavings, and on the evening of the performance appeared with a white dress, and hat and belt-ribands which were the envy of the audience. The success of her inven- tion gave her spirits and assurance, and she played to admiration. The sequel will justify my first remark. She made a conquest on that night of one of her titled auditors, whom she afterward married. You will al- low that Lady may afford to be tolerant of car- penters." An eminent clergyman one evening became the sub- ject of conversation, and a wonder was expressed that he had never married. "That wonder," said Miss P , " was once expressed to the reverend gentle- man himself in my hearing, and he told a story in an- swer which 1 will tell you — and perhaps, slight as it may seem, it is the history of other hearts as sensitive and delicate as his own. Soon after his ordination, he preached once every Sabbath, for a clergyman in a small village not twenty miles from London. Among his auditors, from Sunday to Sunday, he observed a young lady, who always occupied a certain seat, and whose close attention began insensibly to grow to him an object of thought and pleasure. She left the church as soon as service was over, and it so chanced that he went on for a year without knowing her name; but his sermon was never written without many a thought how she would approve it, nor preached with satisfaction unless he read approbation in her face. Gradually he came to think of her at other times than when writing sermons, and to wish to see her on other days than Sundays ; but the weeks slipped on, and though he fancied she grew paler and thinner, he never brought himself to the resolution either to ask her name or to seek to speak with her. By these silent steps, however, love had worked into his heart, and he had made up his mind to seek her acquaint- ance and marry her, if possible, when one day he was sent for to minister at a funeral. The face of the corpse was the same that had looked up to him Sun- day after Sunday, till he had learned to make it a part of his religion and his life. He was unable to perform the service, and another clergyman present officiated ; and after she was buried, her father took him aside and begged his pardon for giving him pain — but he could not resist the impulse to tell him that his daughter had mentioned his name with her last breath, and he was afraid that a concealed affection for him had hur 538 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. ried her to the grave. Since that, said the clergyman in question, my heart has been dead within me, and I Iooa forward only. I shall speak to her in heaven." London is wonderfully embellished within the last three years — not so much by new buildings, public or private, but by the almost insane rivalry that exists among the tradesmen to outsbow each other in the ex- pensive magnificence of their shops. When I was in England before, there were two or three of these pal- aces of columns and plate-glass — a couple of shawl- shops, and a glass warehouse or two, but now the west end and the city have each their scores of estab- lishments of which you would think the plate-glass alone would ruin anybody but Aladdin. After an ab- sence of a month from town lately, I gave myself the always delightful treat of an after-dinner ramble among the illuminated palaces of Regent street and its neigh- borhood, and to my surprise, found four new wonders of this description — a shawl-house in the upper Re- gent Circus, a silk-mercer's in Oxford street, a whip- maker's in Regent street, and a fancy stationer's in the Quadrant — either of which establishments fifty years ago would have been the talk of all Europe. The first-mentioned warehouse lines one of the quarters of the Regent Circus, and turns the corner of Oxford street with what seems but one window — a series of glass plates, only divided by brass rods, reaching from the ground to the roof — window-panes twelve feet high, and four or five feet broad! The opportunity which this immense transparency of front gives for the dis- play of goods is proportionately improved ; and in the mixture of colors and fabrics to attract attention there is evidently no small degree of art — so harmonious are the colors and yet so gorgeous the show. I see that several more renovations are taking pkice in different parts of both " city" and " town ;" and London prom- ises, somewhere in the next decimals, to complete its emergence from the chrysalis with a glory to which eastern tales will be very gingerbread matters indeed. If I may judge by my own experience and by what I can see in the streets, all this night-splendor out of doors empties the play-houses — for I would rather walk Regent street of an evening than see ninety-nine plays in a hundred ; and so think, apparently, multi- tudes of people, who stroll up and down the clean and broad London sidewalks, gazing in at the gorgeous succession of shop-windows, and by the day-bright glare of the illumination exchanging nods and smiles — the street, indeed, becoming gradually a fashionable evening promenade, as cheap as it is amusing and de- lightful. There are large classes of society, who find the evenings long in their dingy and inconvenient homes, and who must go somewhere ; and while the streets were dark, and poorly paved and lighted, the play-house was the only resort where they could be- guile their cares with splendor and amusement, and in those days theatricals flourished, as in these days ' of improved thoroughfares and gay shops they evi- dently languish. I will lend a hint to the next essay- ist on the " Decline of the Drama." The increased attractiveness of London, from thus disclosing the secrets of its wondrous wealth, compen- sates in a degree for what increases as rapidly on me — the distastefulness of the country, from the forbid- ding and repulsive exclusiveness of high garden-walls, impermeable shrubberies, and every sort of contrivance for confining the traveller to the road, and nothing but the road. What should we say in America to travel- ling miles between two brick walls, with no prospect but the branches of overhanging trees from the invis- ible park lands on either side, and the alley of cloudy sky overhead ? How tantalizing to pass daily by a noble estate with a fine specimen of architecture in its centre, and see no more of it than a rustic lodge and some miles of the tops of trees over a paling ! All this to me is oppressive — I feel abridged of breathing- room and eyesight — deprived of my liberty — robbed of my horizon Much as I admire high preservation and cultivation, I would compromise for a " snake- fence" all over England. On a visit to a friend a week or two since in the neighborhood of London, I chanced, during a long walk, to get a glimpse over the wall of a nicely-grav- elled and secluded path, which commanded what the proprietor's fence enviously shut from the road — a noble view of London and the Thames. Accustomed to see people traversing my own lawn and fields in America without question, as suits their purpose, and tired of the bricks, hedges and placards of blacking and pills, I jumped the fence, and with feelings of great relief and expansion aired my eyes and my im- agination in the beautiful grounds of my friend's op- ulent neighbor. The Thames with its innumerable steamers, men-of-war, yachts, wherries, and ships — a vein of commercial and maritime life lying between the soft green meadows of Kent and Essex — formed a de- licious picture of contrast and meaning beauty, which I gazed upon with great delight for — some ten minutes. ! In about that time I was perceived by Mr. B 's gardener, who, with a very pokerish-looking stick in i his hand, came running toward me, evidently, by his ; pace, prepared for a vigorous pursuit of the audacious ; intruder. He came up to where I stood, quite out of breath, and demanded, with a tight grasp of his stick, what business I had there. I was not very well pre- f pared with an answer, and short of beating the man for his impudence (which in several ways might have ; been a losing job), I did not see my way very clearly j out of Mr. B 's grounds. My first intention, to j call on the proprietor and apologise for my intrusion while I complained of the man's insolence, was defeat- ed by the information, evidently correct, that Mr. B was not resident at the place, and so I was walk- J ed out of the lodge-gate with a vagabond's warning — • j never to let him " catch me there again !" So much | for my liberal translation of a park-fence! This spirit of exclusion makes itself even more dis- agreeably felt where a gentleman's paling chances to include any natural curiosity. One of the wildest, as well as most exquisitely beautiful spots on earth, is the Dargle, in the county Wicklow, in Ireland. It is interesting, besides, as belonging to the estate of the orator and patriot Grattan. To get to it, we were let through a gate by an old man, who received a douceur ; we crossed a newly-reaped field, and came to another gate; another person opened this, and we paid another shilling. We walked on toward the glen, and in the middle of the path, without any ob- ject apparently but the loll, there was another locked gate, and another porter to pay ; and when we made our exit from the opposite extremity of the grounds, after seeing the Dargle, there was a fourth gate and a fourth porter. The first field and fee belonged, if I remember rightly, to a Captain Somebody, but the other three gates belong to the present Mr. Grattan, who is very welcome to my three shillings, either as a tribute to his father's memory, or to the beauty of Tinnehinch and the Dargle. But on whichever ground he pockets it, the mode of assessment is, to say the least, ungracious. Without subjecting myself to the charge of a mercenary feeling, I think 1 may say that the enthusiasm for natural scenery is very much clipped and belittled by seeing it at a shilling the perch — paying the money and taking the look. I should think no sum lost which was expended in bringing me to so romantic a glen as the Dargle ; but it should be levied somewhere else than within sound of its wild waterfall — somewhere else than midway between the waterfall and the fine mansion of Tin- nehinch. PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 539 The fish most "out of water" in the world is cer- tainly a Frenchman in England without acquaint- ances. The illness of a friend has lately occasioned me one or two hasty visits to Brighton; and being abandoned on the first evening to the solitary mercies of the coffee-room of the hotel, I amused myself not a little with watching the ennui of one of these unfor- tunate foreigners, who was evidently there simply to qualify himself to say that he had been at Brighton in the season. I arrived late, and was dining by my- self at one of the small tables, when, without looking up, I became aware that some one at the other end of the room was watching me very steadily. The place was as silent as coffee-rooms usually are after the dinner-hour, the rustling of newspapers the only sound that disturbed the digestion of the eight or ten per- sons present, when the unmistakeable call of" Vaitare !" informed me that if I looked up 1 should encounter the eyes of a Frenchman. The waiter entered at the call, and after a considerable parley with my opposite neighbor, came over to me and said in rather an apologetic tone, " Beg pardon, sir, but the shevaleer wishes to know if your name is Coopair. ,f Not very much inclined, fatigued as I was, for a conversation in French, which I saw would be the result of a polite answer to his question, I merely shook my head, and took up the newspaper. The Frenchman drew a long sigh, poured out his last glass of claret, and crossing his thumbs on the edge of the table, fell into a pro- found study of the grain of the mahogany. What with dawdling over coffee and tea and reading half-a-dozen newspapers, I whiled away the time till ten o'clock, pitying occasionally the unhappy chevalier, who exhibited every symptom of a person bored to the last extremity. One person after another called for a bed-room candle, and exit finally the French- man himself, making me, however, a most courteous bow as he passed out. There were two gentlemen left in the room, one a tall and thin old man of seventy, the other a short portly gentleman of fifty or there- abouts, both quite bald. They rose together and came to the fire near which I was sitting. "That last man who went out calls himself a cheva- lier," said the thin gentleman. "Yes," said his stout friend — "he took me for a Mr. Cooper he had travelled with." " The deuce he did," said the other — " why he took me for a Mr. Cooper, too, and we are not very much alike." " I beg pardon, gentlemen," said I — "he took me for this Mr. Cooper too." The Frenchman's ruse was discovered. It was in- stead of a snuff-box — a way he had of making ac- quaintance. We had a good laugh at our triple re- semblance (three men more unlike it would be diffi- cult to find), and bidding the two Messrs. Cooper good night, I followed the ingenious chevalier up stairs. The next morning I came down rather late to break- fast, and found my friend chipping his egg-shells to pieces at the table next to the one I had occupied the night before. He rose immediately with a look of radiant relief in his countenance, made a most elabo- rate apology for having taken me for Mr. Cooper (whom I was so like, cependant, that we should be mistaken for each other by our nearest friends), and in a few minutes, Mr. Cooper himself, if he had en- tered by chance, would have returned the compliment, and taken me for the chevalier's most intimate friend and fellow-traveller. 1 remained three or four days at Brighton, and never discovered in that time that the chevalier's ruse succeeded with any other person. I was his only successful resemblance to " Monsieur Coopair." He always waited breakfast for me in the coffee-room, and when I called for my bill on the last morning, he dropped his knife and asked if I was going to London — and at what hour — and if I would be so obliging as to take a place for him in the same coach. It was a remarkably fine day ; and with my friend j by my side outside of " the Age," we sped on toward London, the sun getting; dimmer and dimmer, and the fog thicker and more chilly at every mile farther from i the sea. It was a trying atmosphere for the best of ; spirits — let alone the ever-depressed bosom of a stran- ger in England. The coach stopped at the Elephant and Castle, and I ordered down my baggage, and in- formed my friend, for the first time, that I was bound j to a country-house six miles from town. I scarce know how I had escaped telling him of it before, but ;j his "impossible mon ami!" was said in a tone and accompanied with a look of the most complete sur- i prise and despair. I was evidently his only hope in : London. I went up to town a day or two after ; and in ma- king my way to Paternoster Row, I saw my friend on the opposite side of the strand, with his hands thrust up to the wrists in the pockets of his "Taglioni," and his hat jammed down over his eyes, looking into the shop windows without much distinction between the trunkmaker's and the printsellers — evidently miser- able beyond being amused at anything. I was too much in a hurry to cross over and resume my office of escape-valve to his ennui, and I soon outwalked his slow pace, and lost sight of him. Whatever title he I had to the "chevalier" (and he was decidedly too deficient in address to belong to the order "d'in- i dustrie"), he had no letter of recommendation in his ; personal appearance, and as little the air of even a ! Frenchman of "quality" as any man I ever saw in i the station of a gentleman. He is, in short, the per- I son who would first occur to me if I were to see a paragraph in the times headed "suicide by a for- jj eigner." Revenons un peu. Brighton at this season (Novem- j! ber) enjoys a climate, which, as a change from the heavy air in the neighborhood of London, is extremely exhilarating and agreeable. Though the first day of my arrival was rainy, a walk up the west cliff gave me a feeling of elasticity and lightness of spirits, of which I was beginning to forget the very existence, in the eternal fogs of the six months I had passed inland. I do not wonder at the passion of the English for Brighton. It is, in addition to the excellence of the air, both a magnificent city and the most advantageous ground for the discomfiture of the common enemy, " winter and rough weather." The miles of broad gravel-walk just out of reach of the surf of the sea, so hard and so smoothly rolled that they are dry in five minutes after the rain has ceased to fall, are alone no small item in the comfort of a town of professed idlers and invalids. I was never tired of sauntering along this smooth promenade so close to the sea. The beautiful children, who throng the walks in almost all weathers (and what children on earth are half as beautiful as English children?) were to me a constant source of pleasure and amusement. Tire of this, and II by crossing the street you meet a transfer of the gay throngs of Regent street and Hyde Park, with splen- did shops and all the features of a metropolis, while midway between the sea and this crowded sidewalk pours a tide of handsome equipages, parties on horse- back, and vehicles of every description, all subservient to exercise and pleasure. My first visit to Brighton was made in a very cold day in summer, and I saw it through most unfavorable spectacles. But 1 should think that along the cliffs, where there are no trees or vendure to be seen, there is very little apparent difference between summer and winter; and coming here with the additional clothing of a severer season, the temperature of the elastic and saline air is not even chilly. The most delicate chil- 540 PASSAGES FROxM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. dren play upon the Beach in days when there is no sunshine; and invalids, wheeled out in these conve- nient bath chairs, sit for hours by the seaside, watch- ing the coming and retreating oi" the waves, apparently without any sensation of cold — and this in December. In America (in the same latitudes with Leghorn and Venice), an invalid sitting out of doors at this season would freeze to death in half an hour. Yet it was as cold in August, in England, as it has been in Novem- ber, and it is this temperate evenness of the weather throughout ihe year which makes English climate, on the whole, perhaps the healthiest in the world. In the few days I was at Brighton, I became very | fond of the perpetual ioud beat of the sea upon the shore. Whether, like the " music of the spheres," i it becomes at last " too constant to be heard," I did [ not ask — but I never lost the consciousness of it ex- , cept when engaged in conversation, and I found it company to my thoughts when I dined or walked alone, and a most agreeable lullaby at night. This j majestic monotone is audible all over Brighton, in- doors and out, and nothing overpowers it but the wind in a storm ; it is even then only by fits, and the alternation of the hissing and moaning of the blast with the broken and heavy plash of the waters, is so ' like the sound of a tempest at sea (the whistling in the rigging, and the burst of the waves), that those who j have beeD at Brighton in rough weather have realized all of a storm at sea but the motion and the sea-sick- ness — rather a large but not an undesirable diminution , of experience. Calling on a friend at Brighton, I was introduced casually to a Mr. Smith. The name, of course, did not awaken any immediate curiosity, but a second look at the gentleman did — for I thought 1 had never j seen a more intellectual or finer head. A fifteen j minutes' conversation, which touched upon nothing that could give me a clue to his profession, still satis- fied me that so distinguished an address, and so keen an eye, could belong to no nameless person, and I was ! scarcely surprised when I read upon his card at part- ing — Horace Smith. I need not say it was a very great pleasure to meet him. I was delighted, too, that the author of books we love as much as " Zillah," and " Brambletye-House," looks unlike other men. It gratifies somehow a personal feeling — as if those j who had won so much admiration from us should, for j our pride's sake, wear the undeniable stamp of supe- I riority — as if we had acquired a property in him by I loving him. How natural it is, when we have talked i and thought a great deal about an author, to call him ! "ours." "What Smith? Why our Smith — Horace Smith" — is as common a dialogue between persons who never saw him as it is among his personal friends. These two ren.arkable brothers, James and Horace Smith, are both gifted with exteriors such as are not often possessed with genius — yet only James is so fortunate as to have stumbled upon a good painter. Lonsdale's portrait of James Smith, engraved by Cousens, is both the author and the man — as fine a picture of him, with his mind seen through his features, as was ever done. But there is an engraved picture extant of the author of Zillah, that, though it is no likeness of the author, is a detestable caricature of the man. Really this is a point about which distinguish- ed men, in justice to themselves, should take some little care. Sir Thomas Lawrence's portraits, and Sir Joshua Reynolds's, are a sort of biography of the eminent men they painted. The most enduring history, it has been said, is written in coins. Certain- ly the most effective biography is expressed in por- traits. Long after the book and your impressions of the character of which it treats have become dim in your memory your impression of the features and mien of a hero or a poet, as received from a picture, remains indelible. How often does the face belie the biography — making us think better or worse of the man, after forming an opinion from a portrait in words, that was either partial or malicious ! I am persuaded the world would think better of Shelley, if there were a correct and adequate portrait of his face, as it has been described to me by one or two who knew him. How much of the Byronic idolatry is born and fed from the idealized pictures of him treasured in every portfolio ! Sir Thomas Lawrence, Chalon, and Par- ris, have composed between them a biography of Lady Blessington, that have made her quite independent of the " memoirs" of the next century. And who, I may safely ask, even in America, has seen the nice, cheerful, sensible, and motherly face which prefaces the new edition of " The Manners of the American Domestics" (I beg pardon for giving the title from my Kentucky copy), without liking Mrs. Trollope a great deal better, and at once dismissing all idea of "the bazar" as a libel on that most lady-like countenance ? * * * * * * * 1 think Lady S had more talent and distinction crowded into her pretty rooms, last night, than I ever before saw in such small compass. It is a bijou of a house, full of gems of statuary and painting, but all its capacity for company lies in a small drawing-room, a smaller reception-room, and a very small, but very exquisite boudoir — yet to tell you who were there would read like Colburn's list of authors, added to a paragraph of noble diners-out from the Morning Post. The largest lion of the evening certainly was the new Persian ambassador, a man six feet in his slippers; a height which, with his peaked calpack, of a foot and a half, superadded, keeps him very much among the chandeliers. The principal article of his dress does not diminish the effect of his eminence — a long white shawl worn like a cloak, and completely enveloping him from beard to toe. From the twisted shawl around his waist glitters a dagger's hilt, lumped with diamonds — and diamonds, in most dazzling profu- sion, almost cover his breast. 1 never saw so many together except in a cabinet of regalia. Close behind this steeple of shawl and gem, keeps, like a short shadow when the sun is high, his excellency's secre- tary, a dwarfishly small man, dressed also in cashmere and calpack, and of a most ill-favored and bow-stringish countenance and mien. The master and man seem chosen for contrast, the countenance of the ambassa- dor expressing nothing but serene good nature. The ambassador talks, too, and the secretary is dumb. T H stood bolt upright against a mirror- door, looking like two T H s trying to see which was taller. The one with his face to me looked like the incarnation of the John Bull newspaper, for which expression he was indebted to a very hearty face, and a very round subject for a buttoned-up coat; while the H with his back to me looked like an author, for which he was indebted to an exclusive view of his cranium. I dare say Mr. H would agree with me that he was seen, on the whole, at a most en- viable advantage. It is so seldom we look, beyond the ■man, at the author. I have rarely seen a greater contrast in person and expression than between H and B , who stood near him. Both were talking to ladies — one bald, burly, upright, and with a face of immovable gravity, the other slight, with a profusion of curling hair, rest- less in his movements, and of a countenance which lights up with a sudden inward illumination. H— — 's partner in the conversation looked into his face with a ready-prepared smile for what he was going to say, B 's listened with an interest complete, but without effort. H was suffering from what I think is the common curse of a reputation for wit — the expectation of the listener had outrun the performance. H B , whose diplomatic promotion goes on much faster than can be pleasing to " Lady Qievdty" PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 541 has just received his appointment to Paris— the object of his first wishes. He stood near his brother, talking to a very beautiful and celebrated woman, and I thought, spite of her ladyship's unflattering descrip- tion, I had seldom seen a more intellectual face, or a more gentlemanly and elegant exterior. Late in the evening came in his royal highness the duke of C -, and I wondered, as I had done many times before, when in company with one of these royal brothers, at the uncomfortable etiquette so laboriously observed toward them. Wherever he moved in the crowded rooms, everybody rose and stood silent, and by giving way much more than for any one else, left a perpetual circular space around him, in which, of course, his conversation had the effect of a lecture to a listeukig audience. A more embarrassed manner and a more hesitating mode of speech than the duke's, I can not conceive. He is evidently gene to the last degree with this burdensome deference; and one would think that in the society of highly-cultivated and aristocratic persons, such as were present, he would be delighted to put his highness into his pocket when the footman leaves him at the door, and hear no more of it till he goes again to his carriage. There was great curiosity to know whether the duke would think it etiquetical to speak to the Persian, as in con- sequence of the difference between the .shah and the British envoy the tall minister is not received at the court of St. James. Lady S— — introduced them, however, and then the duke again must have felt his rank nothing less than a nuisance. It is awkward enough, at any time, to converse with a foreigner who has not forty English words in his vocabulary, but what with the duke's hesitating and difficult utterance, the silence and attention of the listening guests, and the Persian's deference and complete inability to com- prehend a syllable, the scene was quite painful. There was some of the most exquisite amateur sing- ing I ever heard after the company thinned oft* a little, and the fashionable song of the day was sung by a most beautiful woman in a way to move half the com- pany to tears. It is called "Ruth," and is a kind of recitative of the passage in Scripture, " Where thou goest I will go," Sec. ****** I have driven in the park several days, admiring the queen on horseback, and observing the changes in the fashions of driving, equipages, &c, &c. Her majesty seems to me to ride very securely and fearlessly, though it is no wonder that in a country where every- body rides, there should be bolder and better horse- women. Miss Quentin, one of the maids of honor, said to be the best female equestrian in England, •« takes the courage out" of the queen's horse every morning before the ride — so she is secured against one class of accidents. I met the royal party yesterday in full gallop near the centre of Rotten Row, and the two grooms who ride ahead had brief time to do their work of making the crowd of carriages give way. On came the queen upon a dun-colored, highly-groomed horse, with her prime minister on one side of her and Lord Byron upon the other, her cortege of maids of honor and ladies and lords in waiting checking their more spirited horses, and preserving always a slight distance between themselves and her majesty. Victoria's round and plump figure looks extremely well in her dark- green riding-dress, but I thought the man's hat un- becoming. Her profile is not sufficiently good for that trying style, and the cloth riding-cap is so much prettier, that I wonder she does not remember that " nice customs courtesy to great queens," and wear what suits her. She ro'de with her mouth open, and looked exhilarated with the exercise. Lord Melbourne, it struck me, was the only person in her party whose face had not the constrained look of consciousness of observation. I observe that the " crack men" ride without mar- tingals, and that the best turnouts are driven without a check-rein. The outstretched neck which is the consequence, has a sort of Arab or blood look, proba- ; bly the object of the change; but the drooping head when the horse is walking or standing seems to me ugly and out of taste. All the new carriages are built | near the ground. The low park-phaeton, light, as a j child's plaything, and drawn by a pair of ponies, is the j fashionable equipage. I saw the prettiest thing con- ! ceivable of this kind yesterday in the park — a lady driving a pair of small cream-colored horses of great beauty, with her two children in the phaeton, and two grooms behind mounted on cream-colored saddle- horses, all four of the animals of the finest shape and action. The new street cabs (precisely the old-fash- ioned sedan-chair suspended between four wheels, a foot from the ground) are imitated by private carriages, and driven with two horses — ugly enough. The cab- phaeton, is in great fashion, with either one or two horses. The race of ponies is greatly improved since I was in England. They are as well-shaped as the [ large horse, with very fine coats and great spirit. The ' children of the nobility go scampering through the ! park upon them, looking like horsemen and horse- women seen through a reversed opera-glass. They ; are scarce larger than a Newfoundland dog, but they patter along with great speed. There is one fine lad of about eight years, whose parents seem to have very little care for his neck, and who, upon a fleet, milk- white, long-tailed pony, is seen daily riding at a rate : of twelve miles an hour through the most crowded streets, with a servant on a tall horse plying whip and spur to keep up with him. The whole system has the droll effect of a mixture of Lilliput and Brobdignag. We met the king of Oude a few days since at a party, and were honored by an invitation to dine with his majesty at his house in the Regent's park. Yester- day was the appointed day ; and with the pleasant an- ticipation of an oriental feast, we drove up at seven, and were received by his turbaned ayahs, who took shawl and hat with a reverential salaam, and introduced us to the large drawing-room overlooking the park. The king was not yet down; but in the corner sat three parsees or fire-worshippers, guests like ourselves, who in their long white linen robes, bronze faces, and high caps, looked like anything but " diners-out" iu London. To our surprise they addressed us in ex- I cellent English, and we were told afterward that they I were all learned men — facts not put down to the credit of the Ghebirs in Lalla Rookh. We were called out upon the balcony to look at a i balloon that was hovering over the park, and on step- ! ping back into the drawing-room, we found the com- pany all assembled, and our royal host alone wanting. There were sixteen English ladies present, and five white gentlemen beside myself. The Orient, how- ! ever, was well represented. In a corner, leaning si- lently against a table, stood Prince Hussein Mirza, the king's cousin, and a more romantic and captivating specimen of Hindoo beauty could scarcely be im- agined. He was slender, tall, and of the clearest olive complexion, his night-black hair falling over his shoulders in profusion, and his large antelope eyes fixed with calm and lustrous surprise upon the half- denuded forms sitting in a circle before him. We heard afterward that he has conceived a most uncon- trollable and unhappy passion for a high-born and I beautiful English girl whom he met in society, and j that it is with difficulty he is persuaded to come out of his room. His dress was of shawls most gracefully draped about him, and a cap of gold cloth was thrown carelessly on the side of his head. Altogether he was like a picture of the imagination. A middle-aged stout man, ashy black, with Grecian 542 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. features, and a most determined and dignified expres- sion of mouth, sat between Lady and Miss Por- ter, and this was the waked or ambassador of the prince of Sutara, by name Afzul Ali. He is in Eng- land on business for his master, and if he does not suc- ceed it will be no fault of his under lip. His secretary, Keeram Ali, stood behind him — the wakeel dressed in shawls of bright scarlet, with a white cashmere turban, j and the scribe in darker stuffs of the same fashion. Then there was the king's physician, a short, wiry, merry-looking, quick-eyed Hindoo, with a sort of quiz- zical angle in the pose of his turban: the high-priest, also a most merry-looking Oriental, and Ali Acbar, a Persian attache. I think these were all the Asiatics. The king entered in a few minutes, and made the circuit of the room, shaking hands most cordially with all his guests. He is a very royal-looking person in- deed. Perhaps you might call him too corpulent, if his fine height (a little over six feet), and very fine proportions, did not give his large size a character of j majesty. His chest is full and round, and his walk | erect and full of dignity. He has the Italian olive j complexion, with straight hair, and my own remark at first seeing him was that of many others, "How like a bronze cast of Napoleon !" The subsequent study of his features remove this impression, however, for he is a most " merry monarch," and is seldom seen without a smile. His dress was a mixture of oriental and English fashions — a pair of baggy blue pantaloons, bound around the waist with a rich shawl, a splendid scarlet waistcoat buttoned close over his spacious chest, and a robe of very fine snuff-colored cloth some- thing like a loose dressing-gown without a collar. A cap of silver cloth, and a brilliant blue satin cravat completed his costume, unless in his covering should be reckoned an enormous turquoise ring, which al- most entirely concealed one of his fingers. Ekbal-ood-Doivlah, Nawaub of Oude (his name and title), is at present appealing to the English against his uncle, who usurps his throne by the aid and counte- nance of the East India company. The Mohamme- dan law, as I understand, empowers a king to choose his successor from his children without reference to primogeniture, and the usurper, though an elder brother, having been imbecile from his youth, Ekbal's father was selected by the then king of Oude to suc- ceed him. The question having been referred to Lord AYellesley, however, then governor of India, he decided that the English law of primogeniture should prevail, or in other words (as the king's friends say) preferred to have for the king of a subject province an imbecile who would give him no trouble. So slipped from the Nawaub's hands a pretty kingdom of six millions of faithful Mohammedans ! I believe this is the "short" of the story. I wonder (we are reproach- ed so very often by the English for our treatment of the Indians) whether a counter-chapter of " expedient wrong" might not be made out from the history of the Indians under British government in the east ? Dinner was announced with a Hindostanee salaam, and the king gave his arm to Lady . The rest of us "stood not upon the order of our going," and I found myself seated at table between my wife and a Polish countess, some half dozen removes from the Nawaub's right hand. His highnesscommenced help- ing those about him most plentifully from a large pillau, talking all the while most merrily in broken English, or resorting to Hindostanee and his inter- preter whenever his tongue got into trouble. With the exception of one or two English joints, all the dishes were prepared with rice or saffron, and (wine being forbidden by the Mahommedan law) iced water was served round from Indian coolers freely. For one, I would have compounded for a bottle of wine by taking the sin of the entire party on my soul, for, what with the*exhaustion of a long London day, and the cloying quality of the Nawaub's rich dishes, I began to be sorry I had not brought a flask in my pocket. His majesty's spirits seemed to require no aid from wine. He talked constantly, and shrewdly, and well. He impresses every one wifrh a high estimate of his talents, though a more complete and undisguised child of nature I never saw. Good sense, with good humor, frankness, and simplicity, seem to be his leading qualities. We were obliged to take our leave early after din- ner, having other engagements for the evening, but while coffee was serving, the Hindostanee cook, a funny little old man, came in to receive the compli- ments of the company upon his dinner, and to play and dance for his majesty's amusement. He had at his back a long Indian drum, which he called his "turn turn," and playing himself an accompaniment upon this, he sang two or three comic songs in his own language to a sort of wild yet merry air, very much to the delight of all the orientals. Singer, dancer, musician, and cook, the king certainly has a jewel of a servant in him. One moment bowing ourselves out from the pres- ence of a Hindoo king, and the next beset by an Irish- man with " Heaven bless your honor for the sixpence you mean to give me !" what contrasts strike the travel- ler in this great heart of the world ! Paddy lighted us to our carriage with his lantern, implored the coach- man to " dhrive carefully," and then stood with his head bent to catch the sound upon the pavement of another sixpence for his tenderness. Wherever there is a party in the fashionable quarters of London, these Tantaluses flit about with their lanterns — for ever at the door of pleasure, yet shivering and starving for ever in their rags. What a life ! ****** One of the most rational and agreeable of the fashion- able resorts in London is Kensington Gardens, on the days when the royal band plays from five to seven near the bridge of the Serpentine. Some twenty of the best instrumental musicians of London station themselves under the trees in this superb park (for though called " gardens," it is but a park with old trees and greensward), and up and down the fine silky carpet stroll hundreds of the fashionables of " May fair and Belgrave square," listening a little perhaps, and chattering a great deal certainly. It is a good opportunity to see what celebrated beauties look like by daylight; and, truth to say, one comes to the con- clusion there, that candle-light is your true kalydor. It is very ingeniously contrived by the grand chamber- lain that this public music should be played in a far away corner of the park, inaccessible except by those who have carriages. The plebeians, for whose use and pleasure it seems at first sight graciously con- trived, are pretty well sifted by the two miles walk, and a very aristocratic and well-dressed assembly in- deed is that of Kensington gardens. Near the usual stand of the musicians runs a bridle- path for horsemen, separated from the greensward by a sunk fence, and as I was standing by the edge of the ditch yesterday, the queen rode by, pulling up to listen to the music, and smile right and left to the crowd of cavaliers drawn up in the road. I pulled off my hat and stood uncovered instinctively, but looking around to see how the promenades received her, I found to my surprise that with the exception of a bald-headed nobleman whem I chanced to know, the Yankee stood alone in his homage to her. I thought before I left America that I should find the stamp of the new reign on manners, usages, con- versation, and all the outer form and pressure of socie- ty. One can not fancy England under Elizabeth to have struck a stranger as did England under James. We think of Shakspere, Leicester, and Raleigh, and conclude that under a female sovereign chivalry at MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 543 least shines brighter, and poetry should. A good deal to my disappointment, 1 have looked in vain for even a symptom of the queen's influence on anything. She is as completely isolated in England, as entirely above and out of the reach of the sympathies and common thoughts of society, as the gilt grasshopper on the steeple. At the opera and play, half the audience do not even know she is there ; in the park, she rides among the throng with scarcely a head turned to look after her; she is unthought of, and almost unmentioned at balls, routes, and soirees ; in short, the throne seems to stand on glass — with no one conductor to connect it with the electric chain of hu- man hearts and sympathies. MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. That Irish Channel has, as the English say, " a nasty way with it." I embarked at noon on the 2Gth, in a magnificent steamer, the Royal Sovereign, which had been engaged by Lord Eglinton (as per advertise- ment) to set down at Ardrossan all passengers bound to the tournament. This was a seventeen hours' job, including a very cold, blowy, and rough night ; and of the two hundred passengers on board, one half were so blest as to have berths or settees — the others were unbtest, indeed. I found on board several Americans ; and by the time I had looked at the shape of the Liverpool har- bor, and seen one or two vessels run in before a slap- ping breeze, the premonitory symptom (which had : already sent many to their berths) sent me to mine. The boat was pitching backward and forward with a sort of handsaw action that was not endurable. By : foregoing my dinner and preserving a horizontal posi- tion, I escaped all sickness, and landed at Ardrossan at six the next morning, with a thirty-six hours' fast upon me, which I trusted my incipient gout would re- member as a per contra to the feast in the promised " banquet." Ardrossan, built chiefly, I believe, by Lord Eglin- ton's family, and about eight miles from the castle, is a small but very clean and thrifty-looking hamlet on that part of the western coast of Scotland which lies opposite the Isle of Arran. Ailsa Rock, famous in song, slumbers like a cloud in the southwestern hori- zon. The long breakers of the channel lay their lines of foam almost upon the street, and the harbor is formed by a pier jutting out from a little promontory on the northern extremity of the town. The one thoroughfare of Ardrossan is kept clean by the broom of every wind that sweeps the Irish sea. A cleaner or bleaker spot I never saw. A Gael, who did not comprehend a syllable of such English as a Yankee delivers, shouldered my port- manteau without direction or request, and travelled away to the inn, where he deposited it and held out his hand in silence. There was certainly quite enough said between us ; and remembering the boisterous ac- companiment with which the claims of porters are usually pushed upon one's notice, I could well wish that Gaelic tide-waiters were more common. " Any room, landlord ?" was the first question — " Not a cupboard, sir," was the answer. — " Can you give me some breakfast?" asked fifty others in a breath. — " Breakfast will be put upon all the tables presently, gentlemen," said the dismayed Boniface, glancing at the crowds who were pouring in, and, Scotchmanlike, making no promises to individuals. — " Landlord !" vociferated a gentleman from the other side of the hall — "what the devil does this mean? Here's the room I engaged a fortnight ago occupied by a dozen people shaving and dressing !" — " I canna help it, sir ! Ye're welcome to turn 'em a' out — if ye can .'" said the poor man, lifting up his hands in despair, and re- treating to the kitchen. The hint was a good one, and taking up my own portmanteau, I opened a door in one of the passages. It led into a small apartment, which in more roomy times might have been a pantry, but was now occupied by three beds and a great varie- ty of baggage. There was a twopenny glass on the mantel-piece, and a drop or two of water in a pitcher, and where there were sheets I could make shift for a towel. I found presently, by the way, that I had had a narrow escape of surprising some one in bed, for the sheet which did duty as a napkin was still warm with the pressure of the newly-fled occupant. Three or four smart-looking damsels in caps looked in while I was engaged in my toilet, and this, with one or two slight observations made in the apartment, con- vinced me that I had intruded on the dormitory of the ladies' maids belonging to the various parties in the house. A hurried " God bless us!" as they retreated, however, was all either of reproach or remonstrance that I was troubled with; and I emerged with a smooth chin in time for breakfast, very much to the envy and surprise of my less-enterprising compan- ions. There was a great scramble for the tea and toast ; but, uniting forces with a distinguished literary man whose acquaintance I had been fortunate enough to make on board the steamer, we managed to get places at one of the tables, and achieved our breakfasts in tolerable comfort. We were still eight miles from Eglinton, however, and a lodging was the next matter of moment. My friend thought he was provided for nearer the castle, and I went into the street, which I found crowded with distressed-looking people, flying from door to door, with ladies on their arms and wheel- barrows of baggage at their heels, the townspeople standing at the doors and corners staring at the novel spectacle in open-mouthed wonder. Quite in a di- lemma whether or not to go on to Irvine (which, being within two miles of the castle, was probably much more over-run than Ardrossan), I was standing at the corner of the street, when a Liverpool gentleman, whose kindness I must record as well as my pleasure in his society for the two or three days we were to- gether, came up and offered me a part of a lodging he had that moment taken- The bed was what we call in America a bunk, or a kind of berth sunk into the wall, and there were two in the same garret, but the sheets were clean ; and there was a large bible on the table — the latter a warrant for civility, neatness, and honesty, which, after many years of travel, I have never found deceptive. I closed immediately with my friend ; and whether it was from a smack of au- thorship or no, I must say I took to my garret very kindly. It was but nine o'clock, and the day was on my hands. Just beneath the window ran a railroad, built to bring coal to the seaside, and extending to within la mile of the castle; and with some thirty or forty | others, I embarked in a horse-car for Eglinton to see the preparations for the following day's tournament. We were landed near the park gate, after an hour s drive through a flat country blackened with coal-pits; and it was with no little relief to the eye that I en- tered upon a smooth and gravelled avenue eading by a mile of shaded windings to the castle. 1 he day was heavenly; the sun-flecks lay bright as "patines of gold" on the close-shaven grass beneath the trees ; and I thought that nature had consented for once to remove her eternal mist-veil from Scotland, and let pleasure and sunshine have a holydav together. The sky looked hard and deep; and I had no more appre- 544 MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. hension of rain for the morrow than I should have had under a July sun in Asia. Crossing a bright little river (the Lugton, 1 think it is called), whose sloping banks, as far as I could see up and down, were shaven to the rich smoothness of " velvet of three-pile," I came in sight of the castle towers. Another bridge over a winding of the same river lay to the left, a Gothic structure of the most rich and airy mould, and from either end of this ex- tended the enclosed passage for the procession to the lists. The castle stood high upon a mound beyond. Its round towers were half concealed by some of the finest trees I ever saw ; and though less antique and of a less frowning and rude aspect than I had expected, it was a very perfect specimen of modern castellated archi- tecture. On ascending to the lawn in front of the castle, I found that it was built less upon a mound than upon the brow of a broad plateau of table-land, turned sharply by the Lugton, close under the castle walls — a natural sight of singular beauty. Two Sara- cenic-looking tents of the gayest colors were pitched upon the bright-green lawn at a short distance, and off to the left, by several glimpses through the trees, I traced along the banks of the river the winding en- closures for the procession. The large hall was crowded with servants ; but pre- suming that a knight who was to do his devoir so con- spicuously on the morrow would not be stirring at so early Ml hour, I took merely a glance of the armor upon the walls in passing, and deferring the honor of paying my respects, crossed the lawn and passed over the Lugton by a rustic foot-bridge in search of the lists. A cross-path (leading by a small temple en- closed with wire netting, once an aviary, perhaps, but now hung around in glorious profusion with game, venison, a boar's head, and other comestibles), brought me in two or three minutes to a hill-side overlooking the chivahic arena. It was a beautiful sight of itself without plume or armor. In the centre of a verdant plain, shut in by hills of an easy slope, wooded richly, appeared an oblong enclosure glittering at either end with a cluster of tents, striped with the gayest colors of the rainbow. Between them, on the farther side, stood three galleries, of which the centre was covered with a Gothic roof highly ornamented, the four front pillars draped with blue damask, and supporting a can- opy over the throne intended for the queen of beauty. A strongly-built barrier extended through the lists; and heaps of lances, gay flags, and the heraldic orna- ments, still to be added to the tents, lay around on the bright grass in a picture of no little richness. I was glad afterward that I had seen thus much with the advantage of an unclouded sun. In returning, I passed in the rear of the castle, and looked into the temporary pavilions erected for the banquet and ball. They were covered exteriorly with rough board and sails, and communicated by an en- closed gallery with one of the larger apartments of the castle. The workmen were still nailing up the drapery, and arranging lamps and flowers; but with all this dis- advantage, the effect of the two immense halls, lined as they were with crimson and white in broad alternate stripes, resembling in shape and fashion two gigantic tents, was exceedingly imposing. Had the magnificent design of Lord Eglinton been successfully carried out, it would have been a scene, with the splendor of the costumes, the lights, music, and revelry, unsurpassed, probably, by anything short of enchantment. PRINCIPAL DAY. I was awakened at an early hour the morning after my arrival at Ardrossan by a band of music in the street. My first feeling was delight at seeing a bit of blue sky of the size of my garret skylight, and a daz- zling sunshine on the floor. " Skirling" above all the other instruments of the band, the Highland bagpipe made the air reel with " A' the blue bonnets are over the border," and, hoisting the window above my head, I strained over the house-leads to get a look at the performer. A band of a dozen men in kilt and bonnet were marching up and down, led by a piper, something in the face like the heathen representations of Boreas; and on a long line of roughly-constructed rail-cars were piled, two or three deep, a crowd resembling, at first sight, a crushed bed of tulips. Bonnets of every cut and color, from the courtier's green velvet to the shepherd's homely gray, struggled at the top ; and over the sides hung red legs and yellow legs, cross- barred stockings and buff boots, bare feet and pilgrim's sandals. The masqueraders scolded and laughed, the boys halloed, the quiet people of Ardrossan stared in grave astonishment, and, with the assistance of some brawny shoulders, applied to the sides of the over- laden vehicles, the one unhappy horse got his whim- sical load under way for the tournament. Train followed train, packed with the same motley array ; and at ten o'clock, after a clean and comforta- ble Scotch breakfast in our host's little parlor, we sal- lied forth to try our luck in the scramble for places. ! After a considerable fight we were seated, each with a | man in his lap, when we were ordered down by the . conductor, who informed us that the chief of the Campbells had taken the car for his party, and that, with his band in the succeeding one, he was to go in state (upon a railroad!) to Eglinton. Up swore half- a-dozen Glasgow people, usurpers like ourselves, that they would give way for no Campbell in the world ; and finding a stout hand laid on my leg to prevent my yielding to the order to quit, I gave in to what might be called as pretty a bit of rebellious republicanism as you would find on the Mississippi. The conductor stormed, but the Scotch bodies sat firm; and as Scot met Scot in the fight, I was content to sit in silence and take advantage of the victory. I learned after- ward that the Campbell chieftain was a Glasgow man- ufacturer; and though he undoubtedly had a right to gather his clan, and take piper and eagle's plume, there might, possibly, be some jealous disapprobation at the bottom of his townsmen's rudeness. Campbell and his party presently appeared, and a dozen or twenty very fine looking men they were. One of the ladies, as well as I could see through the black lace veil thrown over her cap and plumes, was a re- markably handsome woman ; and I was very glad when the matter was compromised, and the Campbells were distributed among our company. We jogged on at a slow pace toward the tournament, passing thousands of pedestrians, the men all shod, and the women all barefoot, with their shoes in their hands, and nearly every one, in accordance with Lord Eglinton's printed request, showing some touch of fancy in his dress. A plaid over the shoulder, or a Glengary bonnet, or, per- haps, a goose-feather stuck jauntily in the cap, was enough to show the feeling of the wearer, and quite enough to give the crowd, all in all, a most festal and joyous aspect. The secluded bit of road between the rail-track and the castle lodge, probably never before disturbed by more than two vehicles at a time, was thronged with a press of wheels, as closely jammed as Fleet street at noon. Countrymen's carts piled with women and children like loads of market-baskets in Kent; post- chaises with exhausted horses and occupants straining their eyes forward for a sight of the castle ; carriages of the neighboring gentry with " bodkins" and over- packed dickeys, all in costume ; stout farmers on horseback, with plaid and bonnet; gingerbread and ale-carts, pony-carts, and coal-carts; wheelbarrows with baggage, and porters with carpet-bags and hat- MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT 545 boxes, were mixed up in merry confusion with the most motley throng of pedestiians it has ever been my fortune to join. The van-colored tide poured in at the open gate of the castle; and if [ had seen no other procession, the Jong-extended mass of caps, bonnets, and plumes, winding through that shaded and beautiful avenue, would have repaid me for no small proportion of my subsequent discomfort. I remarked, by the way, that I did not see a hat in the entire mile between the porter's lodge and the castle. The stables, which lay on the left of the approach (a large square structure with turret and clock, very like four methodist churches, dos-d-dos), presented another busy and picturesque scene — horses half- caparisoned, men-at-arms in buff and steel, and the gay liveries of the nineteenth century paled by the re- vived glories of the servitude of more knightly times. And this part of the scene, loo, had its crowd of laugh- ing and wondeiing spectators. On reaching the Gothic bridge over the Lugton, we came upon a cordon of police who encircled the ; castle, turning the crowd off by the bridge in the di- i rection of the lists. Sorry to leave my merry and motley fellow-pedestrians, 1 presented my card of in- | vitation and passed on alone to the castle. The sun was at this time shining with occasional cloudings- over ; and the sward and road, after the two or three fine days we had had, were in the best condition for every purpose of the tournament. Two or three noble trees with their foliage nearly to the ground stood between me and the front of the castle, as I ascended the slope above the river ; and the lifting of a stage curtain could scarce be more sudden, or the scene of a drama more effectively com- posed, than the picture disclosed by the last step upon the terrace. Any just description of it, indeed, must read like a passage from the " prompter's book." I stood for a moment, exactly where you would have placed an audience. On my left rose a noble castle with four round towers, the entrance thronged with men-at-arms, and busy comers and goers in every variety of costume. On the greensward in front of the castle lounged three or four gentlemen archers in suits of green silk and velvet. A cluster of grooms under an immense tree on the right were fitting two or three superb horses with theirarmorand caparisons, while one beautiful blood palfrey, whose fine limbs and delicately veined head and neck were alone visible | under his embroidered saddle and gorgeous trappings of silk, was held by two " tigers" at a short distance. Still farther on the right, stood a cluster of gayly dec- orated tents; and in and out of the looped-up curtain of the farthest passed constantly the slight forms of lady archers in caps with snowy plumes, kirtles of green velvet, and petticoats of white satin, quivers at their backs and bows in their hands — one tall and stately girl (an Ayrshire lady of very uncommon beauty, whose name I took some pains to inquire), conspicuous by her grace and dignity above all. The back-ground was equally well composed — the farther side of the lawn making a sharp descent to the small river which bends around the castle, the opposite shore thronged with thousands of spectators watching the scene 1 have described ; and in the distance be- hind them, the winding avenue, railed in for the pro- cession, hidden and disclosed by turns among the noble trees of the park, and alive throughout its whole extent with the multitudes crowding to the lists. There was a chivalric splendor in the whole scene, which I thought at the time would repay one for a long pilgrimage to see it — even should the clouds, which by this time were coming up very threatening- ly from the horizon, put a stop to the tournament al- together. On entering the castle hall, a lofty room hung round with arms, trophies of the chase, ancient 35 shields, and armor of every description, I found my- self in a crowd of a very merry and rather a motley character— knights half armed, esquires in buff', pal- mers, halberdiers, archers, and servants in modern livery, here and there a lady, and here and there a spectator like myself, and in a corner by one of the Gothic windows — what think you? — a minstrel? — a gray-haired harper? — a jester? Guess again — a re- porter for the Times! With a "walking dictionary" at his elbow, in the person of the fat butler of the castle, he was inquiring out the various characters in the crowd, and the rapidity of his stenographic jot- tings-down (with their lucid apparition in print two days after in London) would-, in the times represented by the costumes about him, have burnt him at the stake for a wizard with the consent of every knight in Christendom. I was received by the knight-marshal of the lists, who did the honors of hospitality for Lord Eglinton during his preparation for the " passage of arms ;" and finding an old friend under the gray beard and scallop shell of a venerable palmer, whose sandal and bare toes I chanced to stumble over, we passed in together to the large dining-room of the castle. " Lunch" was on the long table, and some two hun- dred of the earl's out-lodging guests were busy at knife and fork, while here and there were visible some of those anachronisms which, to me, made the zest of the tournament — pilgrims eating Perigord pics, esquires dressing after the manner of the thirteenth century diving most scientifically into the richer veins of pates defoie-gras, dames in ruff and farthingale dis- cussing blue blanc-mange, and a knight with an over- night headache calling out for a cup of tea ! On returning to the hall of the castle, which was the principal place of assemblage, I saw with no little regret that ladies were coming from their carriages under umbrellas. The fair archers tripped in doors from their crowded tent, the knight of the dragon, who had been out to look after his charger, was being wiped dry by a friendly pocket handerckief, and all countenances had fallen with the barometer. It was time for the procession to start, however, and the knights appeared, one by one, armed cap-a-pie, all save the helmet, till at last the hall was crowded with steel-clad and chivalric forms ; and they waited only for the advent of the queen of beauty. After admiring not a little the manly bearing and powerful " thewes and sinews" displayed by the array of modern English nobility in the trying costumes and harness of olden time, I stepped out upon the lawn with some curiosity to see how so much heavy metal was to be got into a demipique saddle. After one or two ineffectual at- tempts, foiled partly by the restlessness of his horse, the first knight called ingloriously for a chair. Another scrambled over with great difficulty ; and I fancy, though Lord Waterford and Lord Eglinton, and one other whom I noticed, mounted very gallantly and gracefully, the getting to saddle was possibly the most difficult feat of the day. The ancient achievement of leaping on the steed's back from the ground in complete armor would certainly have broken the spine of any horse present, and was probably never | done but in story. Once in the saddle, however, English horsemanship told well ; and one of the finest : sights of the day I thought was the breaking away of a powerful horse from the grooms, before his rider had gathered up his reins, and a career at furious speed through the open park, during which the steel-encum- bered horseman rode as safely as a fox-hunter, and subdued the affrighted animal, and brought him back in a style worthy of a wr-ath from the queen of beautv. Driven in by the rain, I v is standing at the upper side of the hall, when a movement in the crowd and an unusual " making-way" announced the coming of 546 MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. the "cynosure of all eyes." She enteied from the interior of the castle with her train held up by two beautiful pages of ten or twelve years of age, and at- tended by two fair and very young maids of honor. Her jacket of ermine, her drapery of violet and blue velvet, the collars of superb jewels which embraced her throat and bosom, and her sparkling crown, were on her (what they seldom are. but should be only) mere accessaries to her own predominating and radiant beauty. Lady Seymour's features are as nearly fault- less as is consistent with expression ; her figure and face are rounded to the complete fulness of the mould for a Juno ; her walk is queenly, and peculiarly un- studied and graceful, yet (I could not but think then and since) she was not well chosen for the queen of a tournament. The character of her beauty, uncom- mon and perfect as it is, is that of delicacy and loveli- ness — the lily rather than the rose — the modest pearl, not the imperial diamond. The eyes to flash over a crowd at a tournament, to be admired from a distance, to beam down upon a knight kneeling for a public award of honor, should be full of command, dark, lustrous, and fiery. Hers are of the sweetest and most tranquil blue that ever reflected the serene heaven of a happy hearth — eyes to love, not wonder at, to adore and rely upon, not admire and tremble for. At the distance at which most of the spectators of the tournament saw Lady Seymour, Fanny Kemble's stormy orbs would have shown much finer, and the forced and imperative action of a stage-taught head and figure would have been more applauded than the quiet, nameless, and indescribable grace lost to all but those immediately round her. J had seen the Queen of Beauty in a small society, dressed in simple white, without an ornament, when she was far more becom- ingly dressed and more beautiful than here, and I have never seen, since, the engravings and prints of Lady Seymour which fill every window in the London shops, without feeling that it was a profanation of a style of loveliness that would be "prodigal enough If it unveiled its beauty to the moon." The day wore on, and the knight-marshal of the lists (Sir Charles Lamb, the stepfather of Lord Eglinton, by far the most knightly looking person at the tournament), appeared in his rich surcoat and embossed armor, and with a despairing look at the in- creasing torrents of rain, gave the order to get to horse. At the first blast of the trumpet, the thick- leaved trees around the castle gave out each a dozen or two of gay colored horsemen who had stood almost unseen under the low-hanging branches — mounted musicians in silk and gay trappings, mounted men-at- arms in demi-suits of armor, deputy marshals and halberdiers; and around the western tower, where their caparisons had been arranged and their horse- armor carefully looked to, rode the glittering and noble company of knights, Lord Eglinton in his armor of inlaid gold, and Lord Alford, with his athletic frame and very handsome features, conspicuous above all. The rain, meantime, spared neither the rich tabard of the pursuivant, nor the embroidered saddle- cloths of the queen's impatient palfrey ; and after a half-dozen of dripping detachments had formed and led on, as the head of the procession, the lady-archers (who were to go on foot) were called by the marshal i with a smile and a glance upward which might have ' been construed into a tacit advice to stay in doors. I Gracefully and majestically, however, with quiver at her back, and bow in hand, the tall and fair archer of whose uncommon beauty I have already spoken, stepped from the castle loor ; and, regardless of the rain which fell in drops ; s large as pearls on her un- protected forehead and suowy shoulders, she took her place in the procession with her silken-booted troop picking their way very gingerly over the pools behind her. Slight as the circumstance may seem, there was in the manner of the lady, and her calm disregard of self in the cause she had undertaken, which would leave me in no doubt where to look for a heroine were the days of Wallace (whose compatriot she is) to come over again. The knight-marshal put spurs to his horse, and re-ordered the little troop to the castle ; and regretting that I had not the honor of the lady's acquaintance for my authority, I performed my only chivalric achievement for the day, the sending a halberdier whom I had chanced to remember as the servant of an old friend, on a crusade into the castle for a lady's maid and a pair of dry stockings! Whether they were found, and the fair archer wore them, or where she and her silk-shod company have the tourna- ment consumption, rheumatism, or cough, at this hour, I am sorry I can not say. The judge of peace, Lord Saltoun, with his wand, and retainers on foot bearing heavy battle-axes, was one of the best figures in the procession ; though, as he was slightly gray, and his ruby velvet cap and sat- urated ruff were poor substitutes for a warm cravat and hat-brim, I could not but associate his fine horse- manship with a sore throat, and his retainers and their battle-axes with relays of nurses and hot flannels. The flower of the tournament, in the representing and keeping up of the assumed character, however, was its king, Lord Londonderry. He, too, is a man, I should think, on the shady side of fifty, but of just the high preservation and embonpoint necessary for a royal pres- ence. His robe of red velvet and ermine swept the ground as he sat in his saddle; and he managed to keep its immense folds free of his horse's legs, and yet to preserve its flow in his prancing motion, with a grace and ease, I must say, which seemed truly im- perial. His palfrey was like a fiery Arabian, all ac- tion, nerve, and fire; and every step was a rearing prance, which, but for the tranquil self-possession and easy control of the king, would have given the specta- tors some fears for his royal safety. Lord Londc derry's whole performance of his part was without a fault, and chiefly admirable, I thought, from his s taining it with that unconsciousness and entire freedom from mauvaise honte which the English seldom can command in new or conspicuous situations. The queen of beauty was called, and her horse led to the door; but the water ran from the blue saddle- cloth and housings like rain from a roof, and the storm seemed to have increased with the sound of her name. She came to the door, and gave a deprecating look upward which would have mollified anything but a Scotch sky, and, by the command of the knight mar- shal, retired again to wait for a less chivalric but drier conveyance. Her example was followed by the other ladies, and their horses were led riderless in the pro- cession. The knights were but half called when I accepted a friend's kind offer of a seat in his carriage to the lists. The entire park, as we drove along, was one vast ex- panse of umbrellas ; and it looked from the carriage- window, like an army of animated and gigantic mush- rooms, shouldering each other in a march. I had no idea till then of the immense crowd the occasion had drawn together. The circuitous route railed in for the procession was lined with spectators six or seven deep, on either side, throughout its whole extent of a mile ; the most distant recesses of the park were crowded with men, horses, and vehicles, all pressing onward ; and as we approached the lists we found the multitude full a quarter of a mile deep, standing on all the eminences which looked down upon the enclosure, as closely serried almost as the pit of the opera, and all eyes bent in one direction, anxiously watching the guarded entrance. I heard the number of persons present variously estimated during the day, the esti MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 547 mates ranging from fifty to seventy-five thousand, but I should think the latter was nearer the mark. We presented our tickets at the private door, in the rear of the principal gallery, and found ourselves intro- duced to a very dry place among the supports and rafters of the privileged structure. The look-out was excellent in front, and here I proposed to remain, de- clining the wet honor of a place above stairs. The gentleman-usher, however, was very urgent for our promotion ; but as we found him afterward chatting very familiarly with a party who occupied the seats we had selected, we were compelled to relinquish the flattering unction that he was actuated by an intuitive sense of our deservings. On ascending to the covered gallery, I saw, to my surprise, that some of the best seats in front were left vacant, and here and there, along the different tiers of benches, ladies were crowd- ing excessively close together, while before or behind them there seemed plenty of unoccupied room. A second look showed me small streams of water coming through the roof, and I found that a dry seat was totally unattainable. The gallery held about a thou- sand persons (the number Lord Eglinton had invited to the banquet and ball), and the greater part of these were ladies, most of them in fancy dresses, and the re- mainder in very slight demi-toilette — everybody having dressed apparently with a full reliance on the morn- ing's promise of fair weather. Less fortunate than the multitude outside, the earl's guests seemed not to have numbered umbrellas among the necessities of a tournament; and the demand for this despised inven- tion was sufficient (if merit were ever rewaided) to elevate it for ever after to a rank among chivalric ap- pointments. Substitutes and imitations of it were made of swords and cashmeres ; and the lenders of veritable umbrellas received smiles which should in- duce them, one would think, to carry half-a-dozen to all future tournaments in Scotland. It was pitiable to see the wreck going on among the perishable ele- | gancies of Victorine and Herbault — chip hats of the most faultless lournure collapsing with the wet ; starched ruffs quite flat ; dresses passing helplessly from " Lesbia's" style to "Nora Creina's;" shawls, tied by anxious mammas over chapeau and coiffure, crushing pitilessly the delicate fabric of months of in- vention ; and, more lamentable still, the fair brows and shoulders of many a lovely woman proving with rain- bow clearness that the colors of the silk or velvet com- posing her head-dress were by no means " fast." The Irvine aichers, by the way, who, as the queen's body- guard, were compelled to expose themselves to the rain on the grand staircase, resembled a troop of Nevv- Zealanders with their faces tattooed of a delicate green ; though, as their Lincoln bonnets were all made of the same faithless velvet, they were fortunately streaked so nearly alike as to preserve their uniform. After a brief consultation between the rheumatisms in my different limbs, it was decided (since it was vain to hope for shelter for the entire person) that my cloth- cap would be the best recipient for the inevitable wet; and selecting the best of the vacated places, I seated myself so as to receive one of the small streams as ; nearly as possible on my organ of firmness. Here I was undisturbed, except that once I was asked (my seat supposed to be a dry one) to give place to a lady newly arrived, who, receiving my appropriated rivulet in her neck, immediately restored it to me with many acknowledgments, and passed on. Jn point of posi- tion, my seat, which was very near the pavilion of the queen of beauty, was one of the best at the tourna- MU'iit; and diverting my aqueduct, by a little manage- ment, over my left shoulder, I contrived to be more comfortable, probably, than most of my shivering and melancholy neighbors. A great agitation in the crowd, and a dampish sound i)f coming trumpets, announced the approach of the procession. As it came in sight, and wound along the curved passage to the lists, its long and serpentine line of helmets and glittering armor, gonfalons, spear- points, and plumes, just surging above the moving sea of umbrellas, had the effect of some gorgeous and bright-scaled dragon swimming in troubled waters. The leaders of the long cavalcade pranced into the arena at last, and a tremendous shout from the multi- tude announced their admiration of the spectacle. On they came toward the canopy of the queen of beauty, men-at-arms, trumpeters, heralds, and halberdiers, and soon after them the king of the tournament, with his long scarlet robe flying to the tempest, and his rearing palfrey straining every nerve to 6how his pride and beauty. The first shout from the principal gallery was given in approbation of this display of horseman- ship, as Lord Londonderry rode past ; and consider- ing the damp state of the enthusiasm which prompted it, it should have been considered rather flattering. Lord Eglinton came on presently, distinguished above all others no less by the magnificence of his appoint- ments than by the ease and dignity with which he rode, and his knightly bearing and stature. His golden armor sat on him as if he had been used to wear it ; and he managed his beautiful charger, and bowed in reply to the reiterated shouts of the multitude and his friends, with a grace and chivalric courtesy which drew murmurs of applause from the spectators long after the cheering had subsided. The jester rode into the lists upon a <rray steed, shaking his bells over his head, and dressed in an odd costume of blue and yellow, with a broad-flapped hat, asses' ears, &c. His character was not at first under- stood by the crowd, but he soon began to excile mer- riment by his jokes, and no little admiration by his capital riding. He was a professional person, I think it was said, from Astley's, but as he spoke with a most excellent Scotch "burr," he easily passed for an in- digenous " fool." He rode from side to side of the lists during the whole of the tournament, borrowing umbrellas, quizzing the knights, A:c. One of the most striking features of the procession was the turn-out of the knight of the Gael, Lord Glenlyon, with seventy of his clansmen at his back in plaid and philibeg, and a finer exhibition of calves (without a joke) could scarce be desired. They fol- lowed their chieftain on foot, and when the procession separated, took up their places in line along the palisade, serving as a guard to the lists. After the procession had twice made the circuit of the enclosure, doing obeisance to the queen of beauty, the jester had possession of the field while the knights retired to don their helmets (hitherto carried by their esquires), and to await the challenge to combat. All eyes were now bent upon the gorgeous clusters of tents at either extremity of the oblong area ; and in a very few minutes the herald's trumpet sounded, and the knight of the swan rode forth, having sent his de- fiance to the knight of the golden lion. At another blast of the trumpet they set their lances in rest, se- lected opposite sides of the long fence or barrier run- ning lengthwise through the lists, and rode furiously past each other, the fence of course preventing any contact except that of their lances. This part of the tournament (the essential part, one would think) was, from the necessity of the case, the least satisfactory of all. The knights, though they rode admirably, were so oppressed by the weight of their armor, and so em- barrassed in their motions by the ill-adjusted joints, that they were like men of wood, unable apparently even to raise the lance from the thigh on which it rested. I presume no one of them either saw where he should strike his opponent, or had any power of directing the weapon. As they rode close to the fence, however, and a ten-foot pole sawed nearly off in two or three places was laid crosswise on the legs 548 MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. of each, it would be odd if they did not come in con- tact; and the least shock of course splintered the lance — in other words, finished what was begun by the car- penter's saw. The great difficulty was to ride at all under such a tremendous weight, and manage a horse of spirit, totally unused both to the weight and the clatter of his own and his rider's armor. I am sure that Lord Eglinton's horse, for one, would have bothered Ivanhoe himself to "bring to the scratch ;" and Lord Waterford's was the only one that, for all the fright he showed, might have been selected (as they all should have been) for the virtue of having peddled tin-ware. These two knights, by the way, ran the best career, Lord Eglinton, malgrc his bolter, coming off the vicior. The rain, meantime, had increased to a deluge, the queen of beauty sat shivering under an umbrella, the jester's long ears were water-logged, and lay fiat on his shoulders, and everybody in my neighborhood had expressed a wish for a dry seat and a glass of sherry. The word "banquet" occurred frequently right and left; hopes for " mulled wine or something hot be- fore dinner" stole from the lips of a mamma on the seat behind ; and there seemed to be but one chance for the salvation of health predominant in the minds of all, and that was drinking rather more freely than usual at the approaching banquet. Judge what must have been the astonishment, vexation, dread, and de- spair, of the one thousand wet, shivering, and hungry candidates for the feast, when Lord Eglinton rode up to the gallery unhelmeted, and delivered himself as follows: — " Ladies and gentlemen, I had hoped to have given you all a good dinner; but to my extreme mortifica- tion and regret, I am just informed that the rain has penetrated the banqueting pavilions, and that, in con- sequence, I shall only be able to entertain so many of my friends as can meet around my ordinary table." About as uncomfortable a piece of intelligence, to some nine hundred and sixty of his audience, as they could have received, short of a sentence for their im- mediate execution. To comprehend fully the disastrous extent of the disappointment in the principal gallery, it must be taken into consideration that the domicils-, fixed or temporary, of the rejected sufferers, were from five to twenty miles distant — a long ride at best, if begun on the point of famishing, and in very thin and well- saturated fancy dresses. Grievance the first, however, was nothing to grievance the second; viz., that from the tremendous run upon post-horses and horses of all descriptions, during the three or four previous days, the getting to the tournament was the utmost that many parties could achieve. The nearest baiting- place was several miles off; and in compassion to the poor beasts, and with the weather promising fair on their arrival, most persons had consented to take their chance for the quarter of a mile from the lists to the castle, and had dismissed their carriages with orders to return at the close of the banquet and ball — daylight the next morning ! The castle, everybody knew, was crammed, from " donjon-keep to turret- top," with the relatives and intimate friends of the noble earl, and his private table could accommodate no more than these. To get home was the inevitable alternative. The rain poured in a deluge. The entire park was trodden into a slough, or standing in pools of water — carts, carriages, and horsemen, with fifty thousand flying pedestrians, crowding every road and avenue. How to get home with a carriage ! How the deuce to get home without one ! A gentleman, who had been sent out on the errand of Noah's dove by a lady whose carriage and horses were ordered at four the following morning, came back w ; th the mud up to his knees, and reported that there was not a wheel-barrow to be had for love or money. After threading the crowd in every direction, he had offered a large sum, in vain, for a one-horse cart ! Night was coming on, meantime, very fast ; but absorbed by the distresses of the shivering groups around me, I had scarce remembered that my own in- vitation was but to the banquet and ball — and my dinner, consequently, nine miles off, at Ardrossan. Thanking Heaven, that, at least, I had no ladies to share my evening's pilgrimage, I followed the queen of beauty down the muddy and slippery staircase, and, when her majesty had stepped into her carriage, I stepped over ankles in mud and water, and began my luade toward the castle. Six hours of rain, and the trampling of such an im- mense multitude of men and horses, had converted the soft and moist sod and soil of the park into a deep and most adhesive quagmire. Glancing through the labyrinth of vehicles on every side, and seeing men and horses with their feet completely sunk below the surface, I saw that there was no possibility of shying the matter, and that wade was the word. I thought, at first, that I had a claim for a little sympathy on the score of being rather slenderly shod (the impalpable sole of a pattern leather-boot being all that separated me from the subsoil of the estate of Eglinton); but overtaking, presently, a party of four ladies who had lost several shoes in the mire, and were positively wading on in silk stockings, I took patience to myself from my advantage in the comparison, and thanked fate for the thinnest sole with leather to keep it on. The ladies I speak of were under the charge of a most despairing-looking gentleman, but had neither cloak nor umbrella, and had evidently made no calculations for a walk. We differed in our choice of the two sides of a slough, presently, and they were lost in the crowd ; but I could not help smiling, with all my pity of their woes, to think what a turning up of prunella shoes there will be, should Lord Eglinton ever plough the chivalric field of the Tournament. As I reached the castle, I got upon the Macadamised road, which had the advantage of a bottom somewhere, though it was covered with a liquid mud, of which every passing foot gave you a spatter tp the hips. My exterior was by this time equally divided between water and dirt, and I trudged on in comfortable fellow- ship with farmers, coal-miners, and Scotch lasses — ■ envying very much the last, for they carried their shoes in their hands, and held their petticoats, to say the least, clear of the mud. Many a good joke they seemed to have among them, but as they spoke in Gaelic, it was lost on my Sassenach ears. I had looked forward with a faint hope to a ginger- bread and ale-cart, which I remembered having seen in the morning established near the terminus of the railroad, trusting to refresh my strength and patience with a glass of anything that goes under the generic appellation of " summat ;" but though the cart was there, the gingerbread shelf was occupied by a row of Scotch lasses, crouching together under cover from the rain, and the pedlar assured me that "there wasna a drap o' speerit to be got within ten mileo' the castle." One glance at the railroad, where a car with a single horse was beset by some thousands of shoving and fighting applicants, convinced me that I had a walk of eight miles to finish my " purgation by" tourna- ment ; and as it was getting too dark to trust to any picking of the way, I took the middle of the rail-track, and set forward. " Oh. but a weary wight was he When he reached the foot of the dogwood tree." Eight miles in a heavy rain, with boots of the con- sistence of brown paper, and a road of alternate deep mud and broken stone, should entitle one to the green SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 549 turban. I will make the pilgrimage of a Hadji from the " farthest inn" with half the endurance. I found my Liverpool friends over a mutton-chop in the snug parlor of our host, and with a strong brew of hot toddy, and many a laugh at the day's adventures by land and water, we got comfortably to bed " some- where in the small hours." And so ended the great day of the tournament. After witnessing the disasters of the first day, the demolition of costumes, and the perils by water, of masqueraders and spectators, it was natural to fancy that the tournament was over. So did not seem to think several thousands of newly-arrived persons, pouring from steamer after steamer upon the pier of Ardrossan, and in every variety of costume, from the shepherd's maud to the courtier's satin, crowding to the rail-cars for Eglinton. It appeared from the chance remarks of one or two who came to our lodg- ings to deposite their carpet-bags, that it had rained very little in the places from which the steamers had come, and that they had calculated on the second as the great day of the joust. No dissuasion had the least effect upon them, and away they went, bedecked and merry, the sufferers of the day before looking out upon them, from comfortable hotel and lodging, with prophetic pity. At noon the sky brightened ; and as the cars were running by this time with diminished loads, I parted from my agreeable friends, and bade adieu to my garret at Ardrossan. I was bound to Ireland, and my road lay by Eglinton to Irvine and Ayr. Fellow- passengers with me were twenty or thirty men in Glengary bonnets, plaids, &c. ; and I came in for my share of the jeers and jokes showered upon them by the passengers in the return-cars, as men bound on a fruitless errand. As we neared the castle, the crowds of people with disconsolate faces waiting for convey- ances, or standing by the reopened gingerbread carts in listless idleness, convinced my companions, at last that there was nothing to be seen, for that day at least, at Eglinton. I left them sitting in the cars, undecided whether to go on or return without losing their places ; and seeing a coach marked " Irvine" standing in the road, 1 jumped in without question or ceremony. It belonged to a private party of gentlemen, who were to visit the castle and tilting-ground on their way to Irvine ; and as ihey very kindly insisted on my re- maining after I had apologised for the intrusion, I found myself "booked" for a glimpse of the second day's attractions. The avenue to the castle was as crowded as on the day before ; but it was curious to remark how the general aspect of the multitude was changed by the substitution of disappointment for expectation. The lagging gait and surly silence, instead of the elastic step and merry joke, seemed to have darkened the scene more than the withdrawal of the sun, and I was glad to wrap myself in my cloak, and remember that I was on the wing. The banner flying at the castle tower was the only sign of motion I could see in its immediate vicinity ; the sail-cloth coverings of the pavilion were dark with wet; the fine sward was every- where disfigured with traces of mud, and the whole scene was dismal and uncomfortable. We kept on to the lists, and found them, as one of my companions expressed it, more like a cattle-pen after a fair than a scene of pleasure — trodden, wet, miry, and deserted. The crowd, content to view them from a distance, were assembled around the large booths on the ascent of the rising ground toward the castle, where a band was playing some merry reels, and the gingerbread and ale venders plied a busy vocation. A look was enough; and we shaped our course for Irvine, sympa- thizing deeply with the disappointment of the high- spirited and generous lord of the Tourney. I heard at Irvine, and farther on, that the tilting would be re- newed, and the banquet and ball given on the succeed- ing days ; but after the wreck of dresses and peril of health I had witnessed, I was persuaded that the best that could be done would be but a slender patching up of the original glories, as well as a halting rally of the original spirits of the tournament. So I kept on my way. SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. CHAPTER I. There is an inborn and inbred distrust of "foreign- ers" in England — continental foreigners, I should say — which keeps the current of French and Italian so- ciety as distinct amid the sea of London, as the blue Rhone in Lake Leman. The word " foreigner," in England, conveys exclusively the idea of a dark-com- plexioned and whiskered individual, in a frogged coat 1 and distressed circumstances; and to introduce a srnooth-cheeked, plainly-dressed, ^wje^-looking person | by that name, would strike any circle of ladies and ; gentlemen as a palpable misnomer. The violent and | unhappy contrast between the Parisian's mode of life i in London and in Paris, makes it very certain that few ! of those bien nes et convert ablement riches will live in I London for pleasure; and then the flood of political |i emigres, for the last half century, has monopolised hair-dressing, &c., &c, to such a degree, that the word Frenchman is synonymous in English ears with | barber and dancing-master. If a dark gentleman, ; wearing either whisker or mustache, chance to of- j fend John Bull in the street, the first opprobrious lan- ! guage he hears — the strongest that occurs to the fel- j low's mind — is, " Get out, you Frenchman !" All this, malgre the rage for foreign lions in London ; society. A well-introduced foreigner gets easily into this, and while he keeps his cabriolet and confines himself to frequentingsoir&* and accepting invitations to dine, he will never suspect that he is not on an equal footing with any "milor" in London. If he wishes to be disenchanted, he has only to change his lodgings from Long's to Great Russell street, or (bit- ' terer and readier trial) to propose marriage to the honorable Augusta or Lady Fanny. Everybody who knows the society of Paris, knows something of a handsome and very elegant young baron of the Faubourg St. Germain, who, with small fortune, very great taste, and greater credit, contrived to go on very swimmingly as an adorable roue and vaurien till he was hard upon twenty-five. At the first crisis in his affairs, the ladies, who hold all the politics in their laps, got him appointed consul to Algiers, or minister to Venezuela, and with this pretty pretext for selling his horses and dressing-gowns, these cherished articles brought twice their original value, saved his loyaute, and set him up in fans and monkeys at his place of exile. A year of this was enough for the darling of Paris, and not more than a day before his desolate loves would have ceased to mourn for hi« ae galloped into his hotel with a new fashion of whiskers, a black female slave, and the most delicious histories of his adventures during the ages he had been exiled. Down to the earth and their previous obscurity dropped the rivals who were just beginning to usurp his glories. A new stud, an indescribable vehicle, a suite of rooms d VAfncaine, and a mystery, preserved at some expense, about his negress, kept all Paris, including his new creditors, in admiring aston- 550 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. ishment for a year. Among the crowd of his worship- pers, not the last or least fervent, were the fair-haired and glowing beauties who assemble at the levees of their ambassador in the Rue St. Honore, and upon whom le beau Adolphe had looked as pretty savages, whose frightful toilets and horrid French accent might be tolerated one evening in the week — vu le souper ! Eclipses will arrive as calculated by insignificant astronomers, however, and debts will become due as presumed by vulgar tradesmen. Le beau Adolphe began to see another crisis, and betook himself to his old advisers, who were dcsoles to the last degree; but there was a new government, and the blood of the Faubourg was at a discount. No embassies were to be had for nothing. With a deep sigh, and a gentle tone, to spare his feelings as much as possible, his friend ventures to suggest to him that it will be neces- sary to sacrifice himself. " Ahi ! mais comment/" " Marry one of these betes Anglaises, who drink you up with their great blue eyes, and are made of gold !" Adolphe buried his face in his gold-fringed oriental pocket-handkerchief; but when the first agony was passed, his resolution was taken, and he determined to go to England. The first beautiful creature he should see, whose funds were enormous and well-invested, should bear away from all the love, rank, and poverty of France, the perfumed hand he looked upon. A flourishing letter, written in a small, cramped hand, but with a seal on whose breadth of wax and dazon all the united heraldry of France was inter- woven, arrived, through the ambassador's despatch box, to the address of Miladi , Belgrave square, announcing, in full, that le beau Adolphe was coming to London to marry the richest heiress in good socie- ty ; and as Paris could not spare him more thau a week, he wished those who had daughters to marry, answering the description, to be Men prevenus of his visit and errand. With the letter came a compend of his genealogy, from the man who spoke French in the confusion of Babel to le dit Baron Adolphe. To London came the valet of le beau baron, two days before his master, bringing his slippers and dres- sing-gown to be aired after their sea-voyage across the channel. To London followed the irresistible youth, cursing, in the politest French, the necessity which subtracted a week from a life measured with such "diamond sparks" as his own in Paris. He sat him- self down in his hotel, sent his man Porphyre with his card to every noble and rich house, whose barbarian tenants he had ever seen in the Champs Elysees, and waited the result. Invitations from fair ladies, who remembered him as the man the French belles were mad about, and from literary ladies, who wanted his whiskers and black eyes to give their soirees the neces- sary foreign complexion, flowed in on all sides, and Monsieur Adolphe selected his most mignon cane and his happiest design in a stocking, and " rendered him- self" through the rain like a martyr. No offers of marriage the first evening ! None the second ! ! None the third! ! ! Le beau Adolphe began to think either that English papas did not propose their daughters to people as in France ; or, perhaps, that the lady whom he had com- missioned to circulate his wishes had not sufficiently advertised him. She had, however. He took advice, and found it would be necessary to take the first step himself. This was disagreeable, and he said to himself, "Le jeu ne vaut pas le chan- delle ;" but his youth was passing, and his English fortune was at interest. He went to Almack's and proposed to the first authenticated fortune that accepted his hand for a waltz. The young lady first laughed, and then told her mother, who told her son, who thought it an in- sult, and called out le beau Adolphe, very much to the astonishment of himself and Porphyre. The thing was explained, and the baron looked about the next day for one pas si bete. Found a young lady with half a million sterling, proposed in a morning call, and was obliged to ring for assistance, his intended having gone into convulsions with laughing at him. The story by this time had got pretty well distributed through the different strata of London society ; and when le beau Adolphe convinced that he would not succeed with the noble heiresses of Belgrave square, condescended, in his extremity, to send his heart by his valet to a rich little vulgarian, who " never had a grandfather," and lived in Harley street, he narrowly escaped being prosecuted for a nuisance, and, Paris being now in the possession of the enemy, he buried his sorrows in Belgium. After a short exile his friends procured him a vice-consulate in some port in the north sea, and there probably at this moment he sor- rowfully vegetates. This is not a story founded upon fact, but literally true. Many of the circumstances came under my own observation ; and the whole thus affords a laughable example of the esteem in which what an English fox- hunter would call a " trashy Frenchman" is held in England, as well as of the travestie produced by trans- planting the usages of one country to another. Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of English and French ideas and persons seems to be in London, the foreign society of itself in that capital is exceedingly spiritual and agreeable. The various European em- bassies and their attaches, with their distinguished travellers, from their several countries, accidentally belonging to each ; the French and Italians, married to English noblemen and gentry, and living in Lon- don, and the English themselves, who have become cosmopolite by residence in other countries, form a very large, society in which mix, on perfectly equal terms, the first singers of the opera, and foreign musi- cians and artists generally. This last circumstance gives a peculiar charm to these reunions, though it imparts a pride and haughty bearing to the prima donna and her fraternity, which is, at least, sometimes very inconvenient to themselves. The remark recalls to my mind a scene I once witnessed in London, which will illustrate the feeling better than an essay upon it. I was at one of those private concerts given at an enormous expense during the opera season, at which " assisted" Julia Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, and Ivanhoff. Grisi came in the carriage of a foreign lady of rank, who had dined with her, and she walked into the room looking like an empress. She was dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy hair put smooth from her brow, and a single white japonica dropped over one of her temples. The lady who brought her chaperoned her during the evening, as if she had been her daughter, and under the excitement of her own table and the kindness of her friends, she sung with a rapture and a freshet of glory (if one may borrow a word from the Mississippi) which set all hearts on fire. She surpassed her most applauded hour on the stage — for it was worth her while. The audience was composed, almost exclusively, of those who are not only cultivated judges, but who some- times repay delight with a present of diamonds. Lablache shook the house to its foundations in his turn ; Rubini ran through his miraculous compass with the ease, truth, and melody, for which his singing is unsurpassed ; Tamburini poured his rich and even fulness on the ear, and Russian Ivanhoff, the one southern singing-bird who has come out of the north, wire-drew his fine and spiritual notes, till they who had been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the others SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 551 had sang, drowned his voice in the poorer applause of exclamation and surprise. The concert was over by twelve, the gold and silver paper bills of the performance were turned into fans, and every one was waiting till supper should be announced — the prima donna still sitting by her friend, but sur- rounded by foreign attaches, and in the highest elation at her own success. The doors of an inner suite of rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi's cordon of admirers prepared to follow her in and wait on her at supper. At this moment, one of the powdered menials of the house stepped up and informed her very respect- fully that supper icas prepared in a separate room for the sinners ! Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood so absolutely the picture of hate as did Grisi for a single instant, in the centre of that aristocratic crowd. Her chest swelled and rose, her lips closed over her snowy teeth, and compressed till the blood left them, and, for myself, I looked unconsciously to see where she would strike. I knew, then, that there was more than fancy there was nature and capability of the real — in the imaginary passions she plays so powerfully. A laugh of extreme amusement at the scene from the high- born woman who had accompanied her, suddenly- turned her humor, and she stopped in the midst of a muttering of Italian, in which I could distinguish only the terminations, and, with a sort of theatrical quickness of transition, joined heartily in her mirth. It was immediately proposed by this lady, however, that herself and their particular circle should join the insulted prima donna at the lower table, and they suc- ceeded by this manoeuvre in retaining Rubini and the others, who were leaving the house in a most un- equivocal Italian fury. I had been fortunate enough to be included in the invitation, and, with one or two foreign diplomatic men, 1 followed Grisi and her amused friend to a small room on a lower floor, that seemed to be the housekeeper's parlor. Here supper was set for six (including the man who had played the piano), and on the side-table stood every variety of wine and fruit, and there was nothing in the supper, at least, to make us regret the table we had left. With a most im- perative gesture and rather an amusing attempt at English, Grisi ordered the servants out of the room, and locked the door, and from that moment the con- versation commenced and continued in their own musical, passionate, and energetic Italian. My long residence in that country had made me at home in it ; every one present spoke it fluently ; and I had an opportunity I might never have again, of seeing with what abandonment these children of the sun throw aside rank and distinction (yet without forgetting it). and join with those who are their superiors in every circumstance of life, in the gayeties of a chance hour. Out of their own country these singers would prob- ably acknowledge no higher lank than that of the kind and gifted lady who was their guest ; yet, with the briefest apology at finding the room too cold after the heat of the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable to them than to others) ; and as most of the cloaks were the worse for travel, and the hats opera-hats with two corners, the grotesque contrast with the diamonds of one lady, and the radiant beauty of the other, may easily be imagined. Singing should be hungry work, by the knife and fork they played ; and between the excavations of truffle pies, and the bumpers of champagne and bur- gundy, the words were few. Lablache appeared to be an established droll, and every syllable he found time to utter was received with the most unbounded laughter. Rubini could not recover from the slight he conceived put upon him and his profession by the separate table; and he continually reminded Grisi, who by this time had quite recovered her good humor, that, the night before, supping at Devonshire house, the duke of Wellington had held her gloves on one side, while his grace, their host attended to her on the other. " E vero /" said Ivanhoff, with a look of modest ad- miration at the prima donna. "E vero, e bravo.'" cried Tamburini, with his sepul- chral-talking tone, much deeper than his singing. " Si, si, si, bravo /" echoed all the company; and j the haughty and happy actress nodded all round with i a radiant smile, and repeated, in her silver tones, | " Grazit ! cari amid ! grazie /" As the servants had been turned out, the removal of the first course was managed in jnc-nic fashion ; and when the fruit and fresh bottles of wine were set upon the table by the attaches, and younger gentle- men, the health of the princess who honored them by | her presence was proposed in that language, which, it seems to me, is more capable than all others of ex- pressing affectionate and respectful devotion. All un- covered and stood up, and Grisi, with tears in her eyes, kissed the hand of her benefactress and friend, and j drank her health in silence. It is a polite and common accomplishment in Italy to improvise in verse, and the lady I speak of is well , known among her immediate friends for a singular facility in this beautiful art. She reflected a moment i or two with the moisture in her eyes, and then com- menced, low and soft, a poem, of which it would be I difficult, nay impossible, to convey, in English, an idea of its music and beauty. It took us back to Italy, to its heavenly climate, its glorious arts, its beauty and its ruins, and concluded with a line of which 1 remem- ' ber the sentiment to have been, " out of Italy every \ land is exile .'" The glasses were raised as she ceased, and every one repeated after her, " Fuori d' Italia tutto e esilio .'" " Ma .'" cried out the fat Lablache, holding up his glass of champagne, and looking through it with one I eye, " siamo ben esiliali qua .'" and, with a word of drollery, the party recovered its gayer tone, and the humor and wit flowed on brilliantly as before. The house had long been still, and the last carriage belonging to the company above stairs had rolled from the door, when Grisi suddenly remembered a bird that she had latelv bought, of which she proceeded to give ' us a description, that probably penetrated to every corner of the silent mansion. It was a mocking-bird, that had been kept two years in the opera-house, and between rehearsal and performance had learned parts of everything it had overheard. It was the property of the woman who took care of the wardrobes. Grisi ' had accidentally seen it, and immediately purchased i it for two guineas. How much of embellishment there ' was in her imitations of her treasure I do not know; ! but certainly the whole power of her wondrous voice, j passion, and knowledge of music, seemed drunk up at ! once in the wild, various, difficult, and rapid mixture of the capricious melody she undertook. First came, without the passage which it usually terminates, the long, throat-down, gurgling, water-toned trill, in which ! Rubini (but for the bird and its mistress, it seemed to 1 me) would have been inimitable : then, right upon it, j as if it were the beginning of a bar, and in the most unbreathing continuity, followed a brilliant passage from the Barber of Seville, run into the passionate prayer of Anna Bolena in her madness, and lollowed by the air of » Suoni la tromba intrepida," the tremen- dous duet in the Puritani, between Tamburini and Lablache. Up to the sky, and down to the -earth again— away with a note of the wildest gladness, and back upon a note of the most touching melancholy— if the bird but half equals the imitation ot his mistress, he were worth the jewel in a sultan's turban. "Giulia"' "Giulietta!" "Giuliettina!" cried out one and another, as she ceased, expressing in their 552 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. Italian diminutives, the love and delight she had in- spired by her incomparable execution. The stillness of the house in the occasional pauses of conversation reminded the gay party, at last, that it was wearing late. The door was unlocked, and the half-dozen sleepy footmen hanging about the hall were despatched for the cloaks and carriages; the drowsy porter was roused from his deep leathern dormeuse, and opened the door — and broad upon the street lay the cold gray light of a summer's morning. I declined an offer to be set down by a friend's cab, and strolled off to Hyde Park to surprise myself with a sunrise ; balancing the silent rebuke in the fresh and healthy countenances of early laborers going to their toil, against the effervescence of a champagne hour, which, since such come so rarely, may come, for me, with what untimeliness they please. CHAPTER II. THE STREETS OF LONDON. It has been said, that "few men know how to take a walk." In London it requires some experience to know where to take a walk. The taste of the peram- bulator, the hour of the day, and the season of the year, would each affect materially the decision of the question. If you are up early — I mean early for London — say ten o'clock — we would start from your hotel in Bond street, and hastening through Regent street and the Quadrant (deserts at that hour), strike into the zigzag of thronged alleys, cutting traversely from Coventry street to Covent Garden. The horses on the cab- stand in the Haymarket "are at this hour asleep." The late supper-eaters at Dubourg's and the Cafe de l' Europe were the last infliction upon their galled withers, and while dissipation slumbers they may find an hour to hang their heads upon the bit, and forget gall and spavin in the sunshiny drowse of morning. The cabman, too, nods on his perch outside, careless of the custom of " them as pays only their fare," and quite sure not to get "a gemman to drive" at that un- seasonable hour. The "waterman" (called a " loater- man," as he will tell you, "because he gives hay to the 'orses") leans against the gas-lamp at the corner, looking with a vacant indifference of habit at the splendid coach with its four blood bays just starting from the Brighton coach-office in the Crescent. The side- walk of Coventry street, usually radiant with the flaunting dresses of the fail and vicious, is now sober with the dull habiliments of the early-stirring and the poor. The town (for this is town, not city) beats its more honest pulse. Industry alone is abroad. Rupert street on the left is the haunt of shabby- genteel poverty. To its low-doored chop-houses steal the more needy loungers of Regent street, and in con- fined and greasy, but separate and exclusive boxes, they eat their mutton-chop and potato, unseen of their gayer acquaintances. Here comes the half-pay of- ficer, whose half-pay is halved or quartered with wife and children, to drink his solitary half-pint of sherry and over a niggardly portion of soup and vegetables] recall, as well as he may in imagination, the gay din- ners at mess, and the companions now grown cold in death or worldliness! Here comes the sharper out of luck, the debtor newly out of prison. And here comes many a "gay fellow about town," who will dine to-morrow, or may have dined yesterday, at a table of unsparing luxury, but who now turns up Rupert street at seven, cursing the mischance that draws upon his own slender pocket for the dinner of to-day. Here are found the watchful host and the suspicious waiter — the closely-measured wine, and the more closely- measured attention — the silent and shrinking compa- ny, the close-drawn curtain, the suppressed call for the bill, the lingering at the table of those who value the retreat and the shelter to recover from the embar- rassing recognition and the objectless saunter through the streets. The ruin, the distress, the despair, that wait so closely upon the heels of fashion, pass hero with their victims. It is the last step within tho bounds of respectability. They still live " at the West end," while they dine in Rupert street. They may still linger in the park, or stroll in Bond street, till their better-fledged friends flit to dinner at the club's, and within a stone's throw of the luxurious tables and the gay mirth they so bitterly remember, sit down to an ill-dressed meal, and satisfy the calls of hunger in silence. Ah, the outskirts of the bright places in life are darker for the light that shines so near them! How much sweeter is the coarsest meal shared with the savage in the wilderness, than the comparative comfort of cooked meats and wine in a neighborhood like this! Come through this narrow lane into Leicester square. You cross here the first limit of the fashion- able quarter. The Sabloniere hotel is in this square; but you may not give it as your address unless you are a foreigner. This is the home of that most mis- erable fish out of water — a Frenchman in London. A bad French hotel, and two or three execrable French restaurants, make this spot of the metropolis the most habitable to the exiled habitue of the Palais Royal. Here he gets a mocking imitation of what, iu any possible degree, is better than the nacre biflek, or the half-raw mutton-chop and barbarous boiled potato! Here he comes forth, if the sunshine perchance for one hour at noon, and paces up and down on the side- walk, trying to get. the better of his bile and his bad breakfast. Here waits for him at three, the shabby, but most expensive remise cab, hired by the day for as much as would support him a month in Paris. Leicester square is the place for conjurors, bird- fanciers, showmen, and generally for every foreign novelty in the line of nostrums and marvels. If there is a dwarf in London, or a child with two heads, or a learned pig, you will see one or all in that building, so radiant with placards, and so thronged with beggars. Come on through Cranbourne alley. Old clothes, second-hand stays, idem shawls, capes, collars, and ladies' articles of ornamental wear generally : cheap straw-bonnets, old books, gingerbread, and stationery ! Look at this once-expensive and finely-worked muslin cape ! What fair shoulders did it adorn when these dingy flowers were new — when this fine lace-edging bounded some heaving bosom, perhaps, like frost-work on the edge of a snow-drift. It has been the property of some minion of elegance and wealth, vicious or vir- tuous, and by what hard necessity came it here ? Ten to one, could it speak, its history would keep us stand- ing at this shop window, indifferent alike to the curi- ous glances of these passing damsels and the gentle eloquence of the Jew on the other side, who pays us the unflattering compliment of suggesting an improve- ment in our toilet by the purchase of the half-worn habiliments he exposes. I like Cranbourne alley, because it reminds me of Venice. The half-daylight between the high and overhanging roofs, the just audible hum of voices and occupation from the different shops, the shuffling of hasty feet over the smooth flags, and particularly the absence of horses and wheels, make it (in all but the damp air and the softer speech) a fair resemblance to those close passages in the rear of the canals between St. Mark's and the Rialto. Then I like studying a pawnbroker's window, and I like ferreting in the old book-stalls that abound here. It is a good lesson in humility for an author to see what he can be bought for in Cranbourne alley. Some "gentle reader," who SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 553 has paid a guinea and a half for you, has resold you for two-and-sixpence. For three shillings you may have the three volumes, " as good as new," and the shopman, by his civility, pleased to be rid of it on the terms. If you would console yourself, however, buy Milton for one-and-sixpence, and credit your vanity with the eighteen-pence of the remainder. The labyrinth of alleys between this and Covent Garden, are redolent of poverty and pot-houses. In crossing St. Martin's lane, life appears to have be- come suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent and dirty women are everywhere visible through the open windows; the half-naked children at the doors look already care-worn and incapable of a smile ; and the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and re- pulsive. Hurry through this leprous spot in the vast body of London, and let us emerge in the Strand. You would think London Strand the main artery j of the world. I suppose there is no thoroughfare on the face of the earth where the stream of human life runs with a tide so overwhelming. In any other street in the world you catch the eye of the passer-by. j In the Strand, no man sees another except as a solid bodv, whose contact is to be avoided. You are safe nowhere on the pavement without all the vigilance of your senses. Omnibuses and cabs, drays, carriages, wheelbarrows, and porters, beset the street. News- paper-hawkers, pickpockets, shop-boys, coal-heavers, and a perpetual and selfish crowd dispute the sidewalk. ■ If you venture to look at a print in a shop-window, you arrest the tide of passengers, who immediately walk over you; and, if you stop to speak with a friend, who by chance has run his nose against yours rather than another man's, you impede the way, and are made to understand it by the force of jostling. If you would get into an omnibus you are quarrelled for by half-a-dozen who catch your eye at once, and after j using all your physical strength and most of your dis- j crimination, you are most probably embarked in the t wrong one, and are going at ten miles the hour to [ Blackwell, when you are bound to Islington. A Londoner passes his life in learning the most adroit mode of threading a crowd, and escaping compulsory journeys in cabs and omnibuses; and dine with any man in that metropolis from twenty-five to sixty years of age, and he will entertain you, from the soup to the Cura^oa, with his hair-breadth escapes and difficulties with cads and coach-drivers. CHAPTER III. A Londoner, if met abroad, answers very vaguely any questions you may be rash enough to put to him about "the city." Talk to him of "town," and he would rather miss seeing St. Peter's, than appear ig- norant of any person, thing, custom, or fashion, con- cerning whom or which you might have a curiosity. It is understood all over the world that the "city" of London is that crowded, smoky, jostling, omnibus and cab-haunted portion of the metropolis of England which lies east of Temple Bar. A kind of debatable country, consisting of the Strand, Covent Garden, and Tottenham Court road, then intervenes, and west of these lies what is called "the town." A transit from one to the other by an inhabitant of either is a matter of some forethought and provision. If milord, in Carlton Terrace, for example, finds it necessary to visit his banker in Lombard street, he orders — not the blood bay and the cane tilbury which he is wont to (hive in the morning — but the crop roadster in the cab, with the night harness, and Poppet his tiger in plain hat and gaiters. If the banker in Lombard street, on the contrary, emerges from the twilight of his counting-house to make a morning call on the wife of some foreign correspondent, lodging at the Clarendon, he steps into a Piccadilly omnibus, not in the salt-and-pepper creations of his Cheapside tailor, but (for he has an account with Stultz also for the west-end business) in a claret-colored frock of the last fashion at Crockford's, a fresh hat from New Bond street, and (if he is young) a pair of cherished boots from the Rue St. Honore. He sits very clear of his neighbors on the way, and, getting out at the crossing at Farrance's, the pastry cook, steps in and indulges in a soup, and then walks slowly past the clubs to his rendezvous, at a pace that would ruin his credit irre- vocably if practised a mile to the eastward. The dif- ference between the two migrations is, simply, that though the nobleman affects the plainness of the city, he would not for the world be taken for a citizen; while the junior partner of the house of Firkins and Co. would feel unpleasantly surprised if he were not supposed to be a member of the clubs, lounging to a late breakfast. There is a " town" manner, too, and a " city" man- ner, practised with great nicety by all who frequent both extremities of London. Nothing could be in more violent contrast, for example, than the manner of your banker when you dine with him at his coun- try-house, and the same person when you meet him on the narrow sidewalk in Throgmorton street. If you had seen him first in his suburban retreat, you would wonder how the deuce such a cordial, joyous, spare- nothing sort of good fellow could ever reduce himself to the cautious proportions of Change alley. If you met him first in Change alley, on the contrary, you would wonder, with quite as much embarrassment, how such a cold, two-fingered, pucker-browed slave of mammon could ever, by any license of interpreta- tion, be called a gentleman. And when you have seen him in both places, and know him well, if he is a favorable specimen of his class, you will be aston- ished still more to see how completely he will sustain both characters — giving you the cold shoulder, in a way that half insults you, at twelve in the morning, and putting his home, horses, cellar, and servants, completely at your disposal at four in the afternoon. Two souls inhabit the banker"s body, and each is ap- parently sole tenant in turn. As the Hampstead early coach turns the corner by St. Giles's, on its way to the bank, the spirit of gain enters into the bosom of the junior Firkins, ejecting, till the coach passes the same spot at three in the afternoon, the more gentle- manly inhabitants. Between those hours, look to Firkins for no larger sentiment than may be written upon the blank lines of a note of hand, and expect no courtesy that would occupy the head or hands of the junior partner longer than one second by St. Paul's. With the broad beam of sunshine that inundates the returning omnibus emerging from Holborn into Tot- tenham Court road, the angel of port wine and green fields passes his finger across Firkins's brow, and presto! the man is changed. The sight of a long and narrow strip of paper, sticking from his neighbor's pocket, depreciates that person in his estimation, he criticises the livery and riding of the jiroom trotting past, says some very true things of the architecture of the new cottage on the roadside, and is landed at the end of his own shrubbery, as pleasant and joyous- looking a fellow as you would meet on that side of London. You have ridden out to dine with him, and as he meets you on the lawn, there is still an hour to dinner, and a blood horse spatters round from the sta- bles, which you are welcome to drive to the devil if you like, accompanied either by Mrs. Firkins or him- self; or, if you like it better, there are Mrs. Firkins's two ponies, and the chaise holds two and the tiger. Ten to one Mrs. Firkins is a pretty woman, and has 554 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. her whims, and when you are fairly on the road, she proposes to leave the soup and champagne at home to equalize their extremes of temperature, drive to Whitehall Stairs, take boat and dine, extempore, at Richmond. And Firkins, to whom it will be at least twenty pounds out of pocket, claps his hands and says — " By Jove, it's a bright thought ! touch up the near pony, Mrs. Firkins." And away you go, Firkins amusing himself the whole way from Hampstead to Richmond, imagining the consternation of his cook and butler when nobody comes to dine. There is an aristocracy in the city, of course, and Firkins will do business with twenty persons in a day whom he could never introduce to Mrs. Firkins. The situation of that lady with respect to her society is (she will tell you in confidence) rather embarrassing. There are many very worthy persons, she will say, who represent large sums of money or great interests in trade, whom it is necessary to ask to the Lodge, but who are far from being ornamental to her new blue satin boudoir. She has often proposed to Fir- kins to have them labelled in tens and thousands ac- cording to their fortunes ; that if, by any unpleasant accident, Lord Augustus should meet them there, he might respect them like = in algebra, for what they stand for. But as it is, she is really never safe in cal- culating on a societe choisie to dine or sup. When Hook or Smith is just beginning lo melt out, or Lady Priscilla is in the middle of a charade, in walks Mr. Snooks, of the foreign house of Snooks, Son, and j Co. — " unexpectedly arrived from Lisbon, and run down without ceremony to call on his respectable cor- respondent." " Isn't it tiresome ?" "Very, my dear madam ! But then you have the happiness of knowing that you promote very essen- tially your husband's interests, and when he has made a plum " " Yes, very true ; and then, to be sure, Firkins has had to build papa a villa, and buy my brother Wilfred a commission, and settle an annuity on my aunt, and fit out my youngest brother Bob to India ; and when I think of what he does for my family, why I don't mind making now and then a sacrifice ; but, after all, it's a great evil not to be able to cultivate one's own class of society." And so murmurs Mrs. Firkins, who is the prettiest and sweetest creature in the world, and really loves the husband she married for his fortune ; but as the prosperity of Haman was nothing while Mordecai sat at the gate, it is nothing to Mrs. Firkins that her fa- ther lives in luxury, that her brothers are portioned oft', and that she herself can have blue boudoirs and pony-chaises ad libitum, while Snooks, Son, and Co., may at any moment break in upon the charade of Lady Priscilla ! There is a class of business people in London, mostly bachelors, who have wisely declared themselves independent of the West End, and live in a style of their own in the dark courts and alleys about the Ex- change, but with a luxury not exceeded even in the silken recesses of May Fair. You will sometimes meet at the opera a young man of decided style, un- exceptionable in his toilet, and quiet and gentleman- like in his address, who contents himself with the side alley of the pit, and looks at the bright circles of beau- ty and fashion about him with an indifference it is dif- ficult to explain. Make his acquaintance by chance, and he takes you home to supper in a plain chariot on the best springs Long Acre can turn out ; and while you are speculating where, in the name of the prince of darkness, these narrow streets will bring you to, you are introduced through a small door into saloons, perfect in taste and luxury, where, ten to one, you sup with the prima donna, or la premiere danseuse, but certainly with the most polished persons of your own sex, not one of whom, though you may have passed a life in London, you ever met in society before. There are, I doubt not, in that vast metropolis, hundreds of small circles of society, composed thus of persons refined by travel and luxury, whose very existence is unsuspected by the fine gentleman at the West End, but who, in the science of living agreeably, are almost as well entitled to rank among the cognoscenti as Lord Sefton or the " member for Finsbury." CHAPTER IV. You return from your ramble in "the city" by two o'clock. A bright day " toward," and the season in its palmy time. The old veterans are just creeping out upon the portico of the United Service club, hav- ing crammed "The Times" over their late breakfast, and thus prepared their politics against surprise for the day ; the broad steps of the Athenaeum are as yet unthronged by the shuffling feet of the literati, whose morning is longer and more secluded than that of idler men, but who will be seen in swarms, at four, entering that superb edifice in company with the employes and politicians who affect their society. Not a cab stands yet at the "Travellers," whose members, noble or fashionable, are probably at this hour in their dres- sing-gowns of brocade or shawl of the orient, smoking a hookah over Balzac's last romance, or pursuing at this (to them) desert time of day some adventure which waited upon their love and leisure. It is early yet for the park; but the equipages you will see by-and-by "in the ring" are standing now at Howell and James's, and while the high-bred horses are fretting at the door, and the liveried footmen lean on their gold- headed sticks on the pavement, the fair creature whose slightest nod these trained minions and their fine- limbed animals live to obey, sits upon a three-legged stool within, and in the voice which is a spell upon al< hearts, and with eyes to which rank and genius turn like Persians to the sun, discusses with a pert clerk the quality of stockings ! Look at these equipages and their appointments ! Mark the exquisite balanceof that claret-bodied chariot upon its springs — the fine sway of its sumptuous ham- mer-cloth in which the un-smiling coachman sits buried to the middle — the exact fit of the saddles, set- ting into the curve of the horses' backs so as not break, to the most careless eye, the fine lines which exhibit action and grace! See how they stand together, alert, fiery, yet obedient to the weight of a silken thread ; and as the coachman sees you studying his turn-out, observe the imperceptible feel of the reins and the just-visible motion of his lips, conveying to the quick ears of his horses the premonitory, and, to us, inaudible sound, to which, without drawing a hair's breadth upon the traces, they paw their fine hoofs, and expand their nostrils impatiently ! Come nearer, and find a speck or a raised hair, if you can, on these glossy coats ! Observe the nice fitness of the dead-black harness, the modest crest upon the panel, the delicate picking out of white in the wheels, and, if you will venture upon a freedom in manners, look in through the window of rose-teinled glass, and see the splendid cushions and the costly and perfect adaptation of the interior. The twinmated footmen fly to the carriage-door, and the pomatumed clerk who has enjoyed a tete-a-tete for which a prince-royal might sigh, and an ambassador negotiate in vain, hands in his parcel. The small foot presses on the carpeted step, the airy vehicle yields lightly and recovers from the slight weight of the descending form, the coach- man inclines his ear for the half-suppressed order SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 555 from the footman, and oft' whirls the admirable struc- ture, compact, true, steady, but magically free and ( asl as if horses, footmen, and chariot were but the parts of some complicated centaur — some swift-moving monster upon legs and wheels ! Walk on a little farther to the Quadrant. Here commences the most thronged promenade in London. These crescent colonnades are the haunt of foreigners on the lookout for amusement, and of strangers in the metropolis generally. You will seldom find a town- bred man there, for he prefers haunting his clubs; or, if he is not a member of them, he avoids lounging much in the Quadrant, lest he should apj>ear to have no other resort. You will observe a town dandy getting fidgety after his second turn in the Quadrant, while you will meet* the same Frenchman there from noon till dusk, bounding his walk by those columns as if they were the bars of a cage. The western side toward Piccadilly is the thoroughfare of the honest passer-by ; but under the long portico opposite, you will meet vice in every degree, and perhaps more beauty than on any other pave in the world. It is given up to the vicious and their followers by general consent. To frequent it, or to be seen loitering there at all, is to make but one impression on the mind of those who may observe you. The two sides of Regent street continue to partake of this distinction to the end. Go up on the left, and you meet the sober citizen perambulating with his wife, the lady followed by her footman, the grave and the respectable of all classes. Go up on the other, and in color and mien it is the difference between a grass-walk and a bed of tulips. What proof is here that beauty is dangerous to its possessor ! It is said commonly of Regent street, that it shows more beauty in an hour than could be found in all the capitals of the continent. It is the beauty, however, of brilliant health — of complexion and freshness, more than of sentiment or classic correctness. The English features, at least in the middle and lower ranks, are seldom good, though the round cheek, the sparkling lip, the soft blue eyes and hair of dark auburn, common as health and youth, produce the effect of high and al- most universal beauty on the eye of the stranger. The larest thing in these classes is a finely-turned limb, and to the clumsiness of their feet and ankles must be attributed the want of grace usually remarked in their movements. Regent street has appeared to me the greatest and most oppressive solitude in the world. In a crowd of business men, or in the thronged and mixed gardens of the continent, the pre-occupation of others is less attractive, or at least, more within our reach, if we would share in it. Here, it is wealth beyond com- petition, exclusiveness and indifference perfectly un- approachable. In the cold and stern mien of the practised Londoner, it is difficult for a stranger not to read distrust, and very difficult for a depressed mind not to feel a marked repulsion. There is no solitude, after all, like the solitude of cities. " O dear, dear London" (says the companion of Asmodeus on his return from France), "dear even in October ! Regent street, I saluteyou ! Bond street, my good fellow, how are you ? And you, oh, beloved Oxford street, whom the opium-eater called ' stony- hearted,' and whom I, eating no opium, and speaking as I find, shall ever consider the most kindly and ma- ternal of all streets — the street of the middle classes — busy without uproar, wealthy without ostentation. Ah, the pretty ankles that trip along thy pavement ! Ah ! the odd country-cousin bonnets that peer into thy windows, which are lined with cheap yellow shawls, price one pound four shillings, marked in the corner ! Ah ! the brisk young lawyers flocking from their quar- ters at the back of Holborn ! Ah ! the quiet old ladies, living in Duchess street, and visiting thee with their eldest daughters in the hope of a bargain ! Ah, the bumpkins from Norfolk just disgorged by the Bull and Month — the soldiers — the milliners — the Frenchmen — the swindlers — the porters with four-post beds on their backs, who add the excitement of danger to that of amusement! The various shifting, motley group that belong to Oxford street, and Oxford street alone ! What thoroughfares equal thee in the variety of human i specimens ! in the choice of objects for remark, satire, admiration ! Besides, the other streets seem chalked out for a sect — narrow-minded and devoted to ^coterie. Thou alone art catholic — all-receiving. Regent street belongs to foreigners, cigars, and ladies in red silk, I whose characters are above scandal. Bond street be- j longs to dandies and picture-dealers. St. James's I street to club loungers and young men in the guards, | with mustaches properly blackened by the cire of j Mr. Delcroix; but thou, Oxford street, what class can ; especially claim thee as its own ? Thou mockest at | oligarchies ; thou knowest nothing of select orders ! I Thou art liberal as air — a chartered libertine; accept- j ing the homage of all, and retaining the stamp of 'none. And to call thee 'storfy-hearted !' — certainly j thou art so to beggars — to people who have not the | wherewithal. But thou wouldst not be so respect- ' able if thou wert not capable of a certain reserve to paupers. Thou art civil enough, in all conscience, to those who have a shilling in their pocket — those who have not, why do they live at all ?" CHAPTER V. It is near four o'clock, and in Bond street you might almost walk on the heads of livery-servants — ■ at every stride stepping over the heads of two ladies and a dandy exclusive. Thoroughfare it is none, for the carriages are creeping on, inch by inch, the blood- horses " marking time," the coachman watchful for his panels and whippletrees, and the lady within her silken chariot, lounging back, with her eyes upon the passing line, neither impatient nor surprised at the delay, for she came there on purpose. Between the swaying bodies of the carriages, hesitating past, she receives the smiles and recognitions of all her male acquaintances ; while occasionally a female ally (for allies against the rest of the sex are as necessary in society to women, as in war to monarchs) — occasion- ally, I say, a female ally announced by the crest upon the blinker of an advancing horse, arrives opposite her window, and, with only the necessary delay in passing, they exchange, perhaps, inquiries for health, but, cer- tainly, programmes, comprehensive though brief, for the prosecution of each other's loves or hates. Occa- sionally a hack cab, seduced into attempting Bond street by some momentary opening, finds itself closed in, forty deep, by chariots, butckas, landaus, and fam- ily coaches ; and amid the imperturbable and unan- swering whips of the hammercloth, with a passenger who is losing the coach by the delay, he must wait, will-he-nill-he, till some "pottering" dowager has purchased the old lord his winter flannels, or till the countess of Loiter has said all she has to say to the guardsman whom she has met accidentally at Pluck- rose, the perfumer's. The three tall fellows, with gold sticks, would see the entire plebeian population of London thrice-sodden in vitriol, before they would advance miladi's carriage a step, or appear to possess eyes or ears for the infuriated cabman. Bond street, at this hour, is a study for such ob- servers, as, having gone through an apprenticeship of criticism upon all the other races and grades of men and gentlemen in the world, are now prepared to study 556 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. their species in its highest fashionable phase — that of "nice persons" at the West End. The Oxford-street "swell," and the Regent-street dandy, if seen here, are out of place. The expressive word "quiet" (with its present London signification), defines the dress, manner, bow, and even physiognomy, of every true denizen of St. James's and Bond street. The great principle among men of the clubs, in all these partic- ulars, is to subdue — to deprive their coats, hats, and manners, of everything sufficiently marked to be cari- catured by the satirical or imitated by the vulgar. The triumph of style seems to be that the lines which define it shall be imperceptible to the common eye — that it shall require the difficult education which cre- ates it to know its form and limit. Hence an almost universal error with regard to English gentlemen — that they are repulsive and cold. With a thousand times the heart and real politeness of the Frenchman, they meet you with the simple and unaffected address which would probably be that of shades in Elysium, between whom (we may suppose) there is no longer etiquette or concealment. The only exceptions to I this rule in London, are, first and alone, Count , | whose extraordinary and original style, marked as it is, is inimitable by any man of less brilliant talents ' and less beauty of person, and the king's guardsmen, | who are dandies by prescriptive right, or, as it were, j professionally. All other men who are members of i Brooks's and the Traveller's, and frequent Bond street in the flush of the afternoon, are what would be called in America, plain, unornamental, and, perhaps, ill- dressed individuals, who would strike you more by the j absence than the possession of all the peculiarities ! which we generally suppose marks a " picked man of countries." In America, particularly, we are liable to error on this point, as, of the great number of our travellers for improvement, scarce one in a thousand remains longer in London than to visit the tower and the Thames tunnel. The nine hundred and ninety- nine reside principally, and acquire all they get of for- eign manner and style, at Paris — the very most artifi- cial, corrupt, and affected school for gentlemen in the polite world. Prejudice against any one country is an illiberal feeling, which common reflection should, and which enlightened travel usually does, entirely remove. There is a vulgar prejudice against the English in almost all countries, but more particularly in ours, which blinds its entertainers to much that is admira- ble, and deprives them of the good drawn from the best models. The troop of scurrilous critics, the class of English bagmen, and errant vulgarians of all kinds, and the industriously-blown coals of old hostilities, are barriers which an educated mind may well over- look, and barriers beyond which lie, no doubt, the best examples of true civilization and refinement the world ever saw. But we are getting into an essay when we should be turning down Bruton street, on our way to the park, with all the fashion of Bond street and Mav Fair. J May Fair ! what a name for the core of dissipated and exclusive London ! A name that brings with it only the scent of crushed flowers in a green field, of a pole wreathed with rose, booths crowded with dancing peasant-girls, and nature in its holyday! This to express the costly, the courtlike, the so-called " heart- less" precinct of fashion and art, in their most authen- tic and envied perfection. Mais, les extremes se tou- chent, and, perhaps, there is more nature in May Fair than in Rose Cottage or Honeysuckle Lodge. We stroll on through Berkeley square, by Chester- field and Curzon streets to the park gate. What an aristocratic quiet reigns here ! How plain are the ex- teriors of these houses : how unexpressive these doors, without a name, of the luxury and high-born pride within ! At the open window of the hall sit the butler and footman, reading the morning paper, while they wait to dispense the "not at home" to callers not dis- appointed. The rooks are noisy in the old trees of Chesterfield house. The painted window-screens of the probably still-slumbering Count , in his bach- elor's den, are closely drawn, and, as we pass Seymour place, a crowd of gay cabs and diplomatic chariots, drawn up before the dark-green door at the farther ex- tremity, announce to you the residence of one whose morning and evening levees are alike thronged by dis- tinction and talent — the beautiful Lady . This short turn brings us to the park, which is rap- idly filling with vehicles of every fashion and color, and with pedestrians and horsemen innumerable. No hackney-coach, street-cab, cart, or pauper, is allowed to pass the porters at the several # gates : the road is macadamized and watered, and the grass within the ring is fresh and verdant. The sun here triumphs partially over the skirt of London smoke, which sways backward and forward over the chimneys of Park lane, and, as far as it is possible so near the dingy halo of the metropolis, the gay occupants of these varied con- veyances " take the air." Let us stand by the railing a moment, and see what comes by. This is the field of display for the coach- man, who sits upon his sumptuous hamrnercloth, and takes more pride in his horses than their owner, and considers them, if not like his own honor and blood, very like his own property. Watch the delicate handling of his ribands, the affected nonchalance of his air, and see how perfectly, how admirably, how beautifully, move his blood horses, and how steadily and well follows the compact carriage ! Within (it is a dark-green caliche, and the liveries are drab, with red edgings) sits the oriental form and bright spiritual face of a banker's wife, the daughter of a noble race, who might have been, but was not, sacrificed in " mar- rying into the finance," and who soars up into the sky of happiness, like the unconscious bird that has es- caped the silent arrow of the savage, as if her destiny could not but have been thus fulfilled. Who follows? D'Israeli, alone in his cab; thoughtful, melancholy, disappointed in his political schemes, and undervaluing his literary success, and expressing, in his scholar-like and beautiful profile, as he passes us, both the thirst at his heart and the satiety at his lips. The livery of his " tiger" is neglected, and he drives like a man who has to choose between running and being run against, and takes that which leaves him the most leisure for re- flection. Poor D'Israeli ! With a kind and generous heart, talents of the most brilliant order, an ambition which consumes his soul, and a father who expects everything from his son ; lost for the want of a tact common to understandings fathoms deep below his own, and likely to drive in Hyde Park forty years hence, if he die not of the corrosion of disappointment, no more distinguished than now, and a thousand times more melancholy. An open barouche follows, drawn by a pair of dark bays, the coachman and footman in suits of plain gray, and no crest on the panels. A lady, of remarkable small person, sits, with the fairest foot ever seen, just peeping from under a cashmere, on the forward cush- ion, and from under her peculiarly plain and small bonnet burn, in liquid fire, the most lambent and spiritual eyes that night and sleep ever hid from the world. She is a niece of Napoleon, married to an English nobleman ; and beside her sits her father, who refused the throne of Tuscany, a noble-looking man, with an expression of calm and tranquil resigna- tion in his face, unusually plain in his exterior, and less alive than most of the gay promenaders to the bright scene passing about him. " He will play in the charade at his daughter's soiree in the evening, how- ever, and forget his exile and his misfortunes ; for he is a fond father and a true philosopher. SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 557 CHAPTER VI. If you dine with all the world at seven, you have still an hour or more for Hyde Park, and " Rotten Row;" this half mile between Oxford street and Pic- cadilly, to which the fashion of London confines itself, as if the remainder of the bright green park were for- bidden ground, is now fuller than ever. There is the advantage in this condensed drive, that you are sure to see your friends here, earlier or later, in every day — (for wherever you are to go with horses, the conclu- sion of the order to the coachman is, " home by the park") — and then if there is anything new in the way of an arrival, a pretty foreigner, or a fresh face from the country, some dandy's tiger leaves his master at the gate, and brings him at his club, over his coffee, all possible particulars of her name, residence, con- dition, and whatever other circumstances fall in his way. By dropping in at Lady 's soiree in the evening, if you were interested in the face, you may i inform yourself of more than you would have drawn in a year's acquaintance from the subject of your cu- | riosity. Malapropos to my remark, here comes a turn-out, concerning which and its occupant I have made many inquiries in vain — the pale-colored chariot, j with a pair of grays, dashing toward us from the Sey- | mour gate. As it comes by you will see, sitting quite ■ in the corner, and in a very languid and elegant atti- \ tude, a slight woman of perhaps twenty-four, dressed ; in the simplest white cottage-bonnet that could be ! made, and, with her head down, looking up through heavy black eyelashes, as if she but waited till she had j passed a particular object, to resume some engrossing ! revery. Her features are Italian, and her attitude, always the same indolent one, has also a redolence of ! that land of repose ; but there has been an English taste, and no ordinary one, in the arrangement of that ] equipage and its dependants ; and by the expression, never mistaken in London, of the well-appointed me- ; nials, you may be certain that both master and mis- J tress (if master there be), exact no common deference. J She is always alone, and not often seen in the park ; \ and whenever I have inquired of those likely to know, I found that she had been observed, but could get no I satisfactory information. She disappears by the side j toward the Regent's park, and when once out of the gate, her horses are let off at a speed that distances j all pursuit that would not attract observation. There is a look of " Who the deuce can it be ?" in the faces ; of all the mounted dandies, wherever she passes, for it is a face which once seen is not easily thought of with indifference, or forgotten. Immense as London is, a woman of anything like extraordinary beauty would find it difficult to live there incognito a week ; and how this fair incomprehensible has contrived to elude the curiosity of Hyde-park admiration, for nearly two years, is rather a marvel. There she goes, how- ever, and without danger of being arrested for a flying highwayman you could scarcely follow. It is getting late, and, as we turn down toward the clubs, we shall meet the last and most fashionable comers to the park. Here is a horseman, surrounded with half a dozen of the first young noblemen of Eng- land. He rides a light bay horse with dark legs, whose delicate veins are like the tracery of silken threads beneath the gloss of his limbs, and whose small, animated head seems to express the very es- sence of speed and fire. He is the most beautiful park horse in England ; and behind follows a high- bred milk-white pony, ridden by a small, faultlessly- dressed groom, who sits the spirited and fretting crea- ture as if he anticipated every movement before the fine hoof rose from the ground. He rides admirably, but his master is more of a study. A luxuriance of black curls escapes from the broad rim of a peculiar hat, and forms a relief to the small and sculpture-like profile of a face as perfect, by every rule of beauty, as the Greek Antinous. It would be too feminine but for the muscular neck and broad chest from which the head rises, and the indications of great personal strength in the Herculean shoulders. His loose coat would disguise the proportions of a less admirable figure ; but, au reste, his dress is without fold or wrinkle, and no figurante of the ballet ever showed finer or more skilfully developed limbs. He is one of the most daring in this country of bold riders ; but modifies the stiff English school of equestrianism, with the ease and grace of that of his own country. His manner, though he is rather Angtomane, is in striking contrast to the grave and quiet air of his com- panions; and between his recognitions, right and left, to the passing promenaders, he laughs and amuses himself with the joyous and thoughtless gayety of a child. Acknowledged by all his acquaintances to pos- sess splendid talents, this " observed of all observers" is a singular instance of a modern Sybarite — content to sacrifice time, opportunity, and the highest advan- tages of mind and body, to the pleasure of the moment. He seems exempt from all the usual penalties of such a career. Nothing seems to do its usual work on him — care, nor exhaustion, nor recklessness, nor the dis- approbation of the heavy-handed opinion of the world. Always gay, always brilliant, ready to embark at any moment, or at any hazard, in anything that will amuse an hour, one wonders how and where such an un- wonted meteor will disappear. But here comes a carriage without hammercloth or liveries; one of those shabby-genteel conveyances, hired by the week, containing three or four persons in the highest spirits, all talking and gesticulating at once. As the carriage passes the " beau-knot" (as , and his inseparable troop are sometimes called), one or two of the dandies spur up, and resting their hands on the windows, offer the compliments of the day to the only lady within, with the most earnest looks of ad- miration. The gentlemen in her company become silent : and answer to the slight bows of the cavaliers with foreign monosyllables, and presently the coach- man whips up once more, the horsemen drop off, and the excessive gayety of the party resumes its tone. You must have been struck, as the carriage passed, with the brilliant whiteness and regularity of the lady's teeth, and still more with the remarkable play of her lips, which move as if the blood in them were im- prisoned lightning. (The figure is strong, but nothing else conveys to my own mind what 1 am trying to de- scribe.) Energy, grace, fire, rapidity, and a capabili- ty of utter abandoment to passion and expression, live visibly on those lips. Her eyes are magnificent. Her nose is regular, with nostrils rimmed round with an expansive nerve, that gives them constantly the kind of animation visible in the head of a fiery Arab. Her complexion is one of those which, dark and wanting in brilliance by day, light up at night with an alabaster fairness ; and when the glossy black hair, which is now put away so plainly under her simple bonnet, falls over her shoulders in heavy masses, the contrast is radiant. The gentlemen in that carriage are Rubini, Lablache, and a gentleman who passes for the lady'* uncle ; and the lady is Julia Grisi. The smoke over the heart of the city begins to thicken into darkness, the gas-lamps are shooting up, bright and star-like, along the Kensington road, and the last promenaders disappear. And now the world of London, the rich and gay portion of it at least, that which compensates them tor the absence enjoy ... of the bright nights and skies ot Italy — a climate within doors, of comfort and luxury, unknown under brighter heavens. 558 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. CHAPTER VII. ISLE OF WIGHT RYDE. "Instead of parboiling you with a soiree or a din- ner," said a sensible and kind friend, who called on us at Ryde, " I shall make a pic-nic to Netley." And on a bright, breezy morning of June, a merry party of some twenty of the inhabitants of the green Isle of Wight shot away from the long pier, in one of the swift boats of those waters, with a fair wind for South- ampton. Ryde is the most American-looking town I have seen abroad; a cluster of white houses and summery villas on the side of a hill, leaning up from the sea. Geneva, on the Seneca lake, resembles it. It is a place of baths, boarding-houses, and people of damaged constitutions, with very select society, and quiet and rather primitive habits. The climate is de- liciously soft, and the sun seems always to shine there. As we got out into the open channel, I was assisting the skipper to tighten his bowline, when a beautiful ship, in the distance, putting about on a fresh track, caught the sun full on her snowy sails, and seemed to start like an apparition from the sea. "She's a Liner, sir!'' said the bronzed boatman, sus- pending his haul to give her a look of involuntary ad- miration. "An American packet, you mean?" "They're the prettiest ships afloat, sir," he contin- ued, " and the smartest handled. They're out to New York, and back again, before you can look round, a'most. Ah, I see her flag now — stars and stripes. Can you see it, sir?" "Are the captains Englishmen, principally?" I asked. "No, sir! all ' calculators ;' sharp as a needle!" " Thank you," said I ; " I am a calculator too !" The conversation ceased, and I thought from the boatman's look, that he had more respect than love for us. The cloud of snowy sail traversed the breadth of the channel with the speed of a bird, wheeled again upon her opposite tack, and soon disappeared from view, taking with her the dove of my imagination to return with an olive-branch from home. It must be a cold American heart whose strings are not swept by that bright flag in a foreign land, like a harp with the impassioned prelude of the master. Cowes was soon upon our lee, with her fairy fleet of yachts lying at anchor— Lord Yarborough's frigate- looking craft asleep amid its dependant brood, with all its fine tracery of rigging drawn on a cloudless sky, the picture of what it is, and what all vessels seem to me a thing for pleasure only. Dinting about like a swal- low on the wing, a small, gayly-painted sloop-yacht, as graceful and slender as the first bow of the new moon, played off the roadstead for the sole pleasure of motion, careless whither ; and meantime the low- fringed shoves of the Southampton side grew more and more distinct, and before we had well settled upon our cushions, the old tower of the abbey lay sharp over the bow. We enjoyed the first ramble through the ruins the better, that to see them was a secondary object. The first was to select a grassy spot for our table. Thread- ing the old unroofed vaults with this errand, the pause of involuntary homage exacted by a sudden burst upon an arch or a fretted window, was natural and true; and for those who are disturbed by the formal and trite enthusiasm of companions who admire by a prompter, this stalking-horse of another pursuit was not an in- different advantage. The great roof over the principal nave of the abbey has fallen in, and lies in rugged and picturesque masses within the Gothic shell — windows, arches, secret stair- cases, and gray walls, all breaking up the blue sky around, but leaving above, for a smooth and eternal roof, an oblong and ivy-fringed segment of the blue plane of heaven. It seems to rest on those crumbling corners as you stand within. We selected a rising ba-nk under the shoulder of a rock, grown over with moss and ivy, and following the suggestion of a pretty lover of the picturesque, the shawls and cloaks, with their bright colors, were thrown over the nearest fragments of the roof, and every- body unbonneted and assisted in the arrangements. An old woman who sold apples outside the walls was em- ployed to build a fire for our teakettle in a niche where, doubtless, in its holier days, had stood the effigy of a saint ; and at the pedestals of a cluster of slender columns our attendants displayed upon a table a show of pasties and bright wines, that, if there be monkish spirits who walk at Netley, we have added a poignant regret to their purgatories, that their airy stomachs can be no more vino ciboque gravati. We were doing justice to a pretty shoulder of lamb, with mint sauce, when a slender youth who had been wandering around with a portfolio, took up an artist's position in the farther corner of the ruins, and began to sketch the scene. I mentally felicitated him on the accident that had brought him to Netley at that par- ticular moment, for a prettier picture than that before him an artist could scarce have thrown together. The inequalities of the floor of the abbey provided a mossy table for every two or three of the gayly-dressed ladies, and there they reclined in small and graceful groups, their white dresses relieved on the luxuriant grass, and between them, half buried in moss, the sparkling glasses full of bright wines, and an air of ease and grace over all, which could belong only to the two extremes of Arcadian simplicity, or its high-bred im- itation. We amused ourselves with the idea of ap- pearing, some six months after, in the middle ground of a landscape, in a picturesque annual ; and I am afraid that I detected, on the first suggestion of the idea, a little unconscious attitudinizing in some of the younger members of the party. It was proposed that the artist should be invited to take wine with us : but as a rosy-cheeked page donned his gold hat to carry our compliments, the busy draughtsman was joined by one or two ladies not quite so attractive-looking as himself, but evidently of his own party, and our mes- senger was recalled. Sequitur — they who would find adventure should travel alone. The monastic ruins of England derive a very pecu- liar and touching beauty from the bright veil of ivy which almost buries them from the sun. This con- stant and affectionate mourner draws from the moist- ure of the climate a vividness and luxuriance which is found in no other land. Hence the remarkable love- liness of Netley — a quality which impresses the visit- ers to this spot, far more than the melancholy usually inspired by decay. Our gayety shocked some of the sentimental people rambling about the ruins, for it is difficult for those who have not dined to sympathize with the mirth of those who have. How often we mistake for sadness the depression of an empty stomach ! How differently authors and travellers would write, if they commenced the day, instead of ending it, with meats and wine! 1 was led to these reflections by coming suddenly upon a young lady and her companion (possibly her lover), in climbing a ruined staircase sheathed within the wall of the abbey. They were standing at one of the windows, quite unconscious of my neighborhood, and looking down upon the gay party of ladies below, who were still amid the debris of the feast arranging their bonnets for a walk. " What a want of soul," said the lady, "to be eat- ing and drinking in such a place!" SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 559 " Some people have no souls," responded the gentle- After this verdict, I thought the best thing I could do was to take care of my body, and I very carefully backed down the old staircase, which is probably more hazardous now than in the days when it was used to admit damsels and haunchesof venison to the reverend fathers. I reached the bottom in safety, and informed my friends that they had no souls, but they manifested the usual unconcern on the subject, and strolled away through the echoing arches, in search of new points of view and fresh wild-Mowers. " Commend me at least,"' I thought, as I followed on, "to those whose pulses can be quickened even by a cold pie and a glass of champagne. Sadness and envy are sown thickly enough by any wayside." We were embarked once more by the middle of the afternoon, and with a head wind, but smooth water and cool temperature, beat back to Ryde. If the young lady and her lover have forgiven or forgotten us, and the ghosts of Netley, frocked or petticoated, have taken no umbrage, 1 have not done amiss in marking the day with a stone of the purest white. How much more sensible is a party like this, in the open air, and at healthy hours, than the untimely and ceremonious civilities usually paid to strangers. If the world would mend by moralising, however, we should have had a Utopia long ago. CHAPTER VIII. COMPARISON OF THE CLIMATE OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. One of Hazlitt's nail-driving remarks is to the effect that he should like very well to pass the whole of his life in travelling, if he could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterward at home. How far action is neces- sary to happiness, and how far repose — how far the appetite for novelty and adventure will drive, and how far the attractions of home and domestic comfort will recall us — in short, what are the precise exactions of the antagonist principles in our bosoms of curiosity and sloth, energy and sufferance, hope and memory — are questions which each one must settle for himself, and which none can settle but he who has passed his life in the eternal and fruitless search after the happi- est place, climate, and station. Conteutment depends upon many things within our own control, but, with a certain education, it depends partly upon things beyond it. To persons delicately constituted or delicately brought up, and to all idle persons, the principal ingredient in the cup of enjoy- ment is climate ; and Providence, that consults "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," has made the poor and the roughly-nurtured independent of the changes of the wind. Those who have the misfortune to be delicate as well as poor — those, particularly, for whom there is no hope but in a change of clime, but whom pitiless poverty compels to languish in vain after the reviving south, are happily few ; but they have thus much more than their share of human ca- lamity. In throwing together my recollections of the cli- mates with which I have become acquainted in other lands, I am aware that there is a greater difference of opinion on this subject than on most others. A man who has agreeable society about him in Montreal, but who was without friends in Florence, would be very likely to bring the climate in for its share of the dif- ference, and prefer Canada to Italy; and health and circumstances of all kinds affect, in no slight degree, our susceptibility to skies and atmosphere. But it is sometimes interesting to know the impressions of oth- ers, even though they agree not with our own ; and I will only say of mine on this subject, that they are so far likely to be fair, as I have been blessed with the same perfect health in all countries, and have been happy alike in every latitude and season. It is almost a matter of course to decry the climate of England. The English writers themselves talk of the suicidal months ; and it is the only country where part of the livery of a mounted groom is his master's great-coat strapped about his waist. It is certainly a damp climate, and the sun shines less in England than j in most other countries. But to persons of full habit this moisture in the air is extremely agreeable ; and the high condition of all animals in England, from man downward, proves its healthfulness. A stranger who has been accustomed to a brighter sky, will, at I first, find a gloom in the gray light so characteristic of I an English atmosphere; but this soon wears off, and he finds a compensation, as far as the eye is con- cerned, in the exquisite softness of the verdure, and | the deep and enduring brightness of the foliage. The effect of this moisture on the skin is singularly grate- ful. The pores become accustomed to a healthy ac- tion, which is unknown in other countries ; and the bloom by which an English complexion is known all over the world is the index of an activity in this im- portant part of the system, which, when first experi- enced, is almost like a new sensation. The transition to a dry climate, such as ours, deteriorates the condi- tion and quality of the skin, and produces a feeling, if I may so express it, like that of being glazed. It is a common remark in England, that an officer's wife and daughters follow his regiment to Canada at the expense of their complexions ; and it is a well-known fact that the bloom of female beauty is, in our coun- try, painfully evanescent. The climate of America is, in many points, very different from that of France and Great Britain. In the middle and northern states, it is a dry, invigora- ting, bracing climate, in which a strong man may do more work than in almost any other, and which makes continual exercise, or occupation of some sort, abso- lutely necessary. With the exception of the " Indian summer," and here and there a day scattered through the spring and the hot months, there is no weather tempered so finely that one would think of passing the day in merely enjoying it, and life is passed, by those who have the misfortune to be idle, in continual and active dread of the elements. The cold is so acrid, and the heat so sultry, and the changes from one to the other are so sudden and violent, that no enjoyment can be depended upon out-of-doors, and no system of clothing or protection is good for a day together. He who has full occupation for head and hand (as by far the greatest majority of our country- men have) may live as long in America as in any por- tion of the globe— vide the bills of mortality. He whose spirits lean upon the temperature of the wind, or whose nerves require a genial and constant atmo- sphere, may find more favorable climes ; and the hab- its and delicate constitutions of scholars and people of sedentary pursuits generally, in the United States, prove the truth of the observation. The habit of regular exercise in the open air, which is found to be so salutary in England, is scarcely pos- sible in America. It is said, and said truly, of the first, that there is no day in the year when a lady may not ride comfortably on horseback ; but with us, the extremes of heat and cold, and the tempestuous char- acter of our snows and rains, totally forbid, to a deli- cate person, anything like regularity in exercise. The consequence is, that the habit rarely exists, and the high and glowing health so common in England, and consequent, no doubt, upon the equable character of the climate in some measure, is with us sufficiently 560 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. rare to excite remark. "Very English-looking," is a common phrase, and means very healthy-looking. Still our people last — and though I should define the English climate as the one in which the human frame is in the highest condition, I should say of America, that it is the one in which you could get the most work out of it. Atmosphere, in England and America, is the first of the necessaries of life. In Italy, it is the first of its luxuries. We breathe in America, and walk abroad, without thinking of these common acts but as a means of arriving at happiness. In Italy, to breathe and to walk abroad are themselves happiness. Day after day — week after week — month after month — you wake with the breath of flowers coming in at your open window, and a sky of serene and unfathomable blue, and mornings and evenings of tranquil, assured, heav- enly purity and beauty. The few weeks of the rainy season are forgotten in these long halcyon months of sunshine. No one can have lived in Italy a year, who remembers anything but the sapphire sky and the kindling and ever-seen stars. You grow insensibly to associate the sunshine and moonlight only with the fountain you have lived near, or the columns of the temple you have seen from your window, for on no objects in other lands have you seen their light so constant. I scarce know how to convey, in language, the effect of the climate of Italy on mind and body. Sitting here, indeed, in the latitude of thirty-nine, in the middle of April, by a warm fire, and with a cold wind whistling at the window, it is difficult to recall it, even to the fancy. I do not know whether life is pro- longed, but it is infinitely enriched and brightened, by the delicious atmosphere of Italy. You rise in the morning, thanking Heaven for life and liberty to go abroad. There is a sort of opiate in the air, which makes idleness, that would be the vulture of Prome- theus in America, the dove of promise in Italy. It is delicious to do nothing — delicious to stand an hour looking at a Savoyard and his monkey — delicious to sit away the long, silent noon, in the shade of a col- umn, or on the grass of a fountain — delicious to be with a friend without the interchange of an idea — to dabble in a book, or look into the cup of a flower. You do not read, for you wish to enjoy the weather. You do not visit, for you hate to enter a door while the weather is so fine. You lie down unwillingly for your siesta in the hot noon, for you fear you may oversleep the first coolness of the long shadows of sunset. The fancy, meantime, is free, and seems lib- erated by the same languor that enervates the severer faculties ; and nothing seems fed by the air but thoughts, which minister to enjoyment. The climate of Greece is very much that of Italy. The Mediterranean is all beloved of the sun. Life has a value there, of which the rheumatic, shivering, snow-breasting, blue-devilled idler of northern regions has no shadow, even in a dream. No wonder Dante mourned and languished for it. No wonder at the sentiment I once heard from distinguished lips — Fuori d' Italia lutto e esilio. This appears like describing a Utopia ; but it is what Italy seemed to me. I have expressed myself much more to my mind, however, in rhyme, for a prose essay is, at best, but a cold medium. CHAPTER IX. STRATFORD-ON-AVON. " One-p'un'-five outside, sir, two p'un' in." It was a bright, calm afternoon in September, prom- ising nothing but a morrow of sunshine and autumn, when I stepped in at the " White Horse Cellar," in Piccadilly, to take my place in the Tantivy coach for Stratford-on-Avon. Preferring the outside of the coach, at least by as much as the difference in the prices, and accustomed from long habit to pay dearest for that which most pleased me, I wrote myself down for the outside, and deposited my two pounds in the horny palm of the old ex-coachman, retired from the box, and playing clerk in this dingy den of parcels and portmanteaus. Supposing my business concluded, I stood a minute speculating on the weather-beaten, cramp-handed old Jehu before me, and trying to rec- oncile his ideas of "retirement from office" with those of his almost next door neighbor, the hero of Strath- fieldsaye. I had mounted the first stair toward daylight, when a touch on the shoulder with the end of a long whip — a technical "reminder," which probably came easier to the old driver than the phrasing of a sentence to a "gemman" — recalled me to the cellar. " Fifteen shillin', sir," said he laconically, pointing with the same expressive exponent of his profession to the change for my outside place, which I had left lying on the counter. " You are at least as honest as the duke," I solilo- quised, as I pocketed the six bright and substantial half-crowns. I was at the " White Horse Cellar" again the fol- lowing morning at six, promising myself with great sincerity never to rely again on the constancy of an English sky. It rained in torrents. The four inside places were all taken, and with twelve fellow-outsides, J mounted to the wet seat, and begging a little straw by way of cushion from the ostler, spread my um- brella, abandoned my knees with a single effort of mind to the drippings of the driver's weather-proof upper Benjamin, and away we sped. 1 was "due" at the house of a hospitable catholic baronet, a hundred and two miles from London, at the dinner-hour of that day, and to wait till it had done raining in England is to expect the millennium. London in the morning — I mean the poor man's morning, daylight — is to me matter for the most speculative and intense melancholy. Hyde park in the sunshine of a bright afternoon, glittering with equipages and gay with the Aladdin splendors of rank and wealth, is a scene which sends the mercurial quali- ties of the blood trippingly through the veins. But Hyde park at daylight seen from Piccadilly through fog and rain, is perhaps, of all contrasts, to one who has frequented it in its bright hours, the most dispirit- ing and dreary. To remember that behind the barri- caded and wet windows of Apsley house sleeps the hero of Waterloo — that under these crowded and fog- wrapped houses lie, in their dim chambers breathing of perfume and luxury, the high-born and nobly- moulded creatures who preserve for the aristocracy of England the palm of the world's beauty — to remem- ber this, and a thousand other associations linked with the spot, is not at all to diminish, but rather to deepen, the melancholy of the picture. Why is it that the deserted stage of a theatre, the echo of an empty ball- room, the loneliness of a frequented promenade in untimely hours — any scene, in short, of gayety gone by but remembered — oppresses and dissatisfies the heart ! One would think memory should re-brighten and re-populate such places. The wheels hissed through the shallow pools in the Macadam road, the regular pattering of the small hoofs in the wet carriage-tracks maintained its quick and monotonous beat on the ear; the silent driver kept his eye on the traces, and "reminded" now and then with but the weight of his slight lash a lagging wheeler or leader, and the complicated but compact machine of which the square foot that I occupied had been so nicely calculated, sped on its ten miles in the hour SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 561 with the steadfastness of a star in its orbit, and as in- dependent of clouds and rain. "Est ce que monsieur parte Francois!" asked at the end of the first stage my right-hand neighbor, a little gentleman, of whom I had hitherto only remarked that I he was holding on to the iron railing of the seat with great tenacity. Having admitted in an evil moment that J had been in France, I was first distinctly made to understand that my neighbor was on his way to Birmingham purely for pleasure, and without the most distant ob- ject of business — a point on which he insisted so long, | and recurred to so often, that he succeeded at last in persuading me that he was doubtless a candidate for the French clerkship of some exporter of buttons. After listening to an amusing dissertation on the rash- i ness of committing one's life to an English stage- j coach, with scarce room enough for the perch of a j parrot, and a velocity so diablement dangercux, I tired I of my Frenchman ; and, since I could not have my j own thoughts in peace, opened a conversation with a straw-bonnet and shawl on my left — the property, I soon discovered, of a very smart lady's maid, very in- ! - dignant at having been 'made to change places with Master George, who, with his mother and her mistress, were dry and comfortable inside. She "would not have minded the outside place,'' she said, " for there were sometimes very agreeable gentlemen on the out- side, very ! — but she had been promised to go inside, and had dressed accordingly ; and it was very pro- voking to spoil a nice new shawl and best bonnet, just because a great school-boy, that had nothing on that would damage chose not to ride in the rain." " Very provoking, indeed !" I responded, letting in the rain upon myself unconsciously, in extending my umbrella forward so as to protect her on the side of the wind. " Wc should have gone down in the carriage, sir," she continued, edging a little closer to get the full ad- vantage of my umbrella ; " but John the coachman has got the Irinjluenzy, and my missis wo'n't be driven by no other coachman ; she's as obstinate as a mule, sir. And that isn't all I could tell, sir; but 1 scorns to hurt the character of one of my own sex." And the pretty abigail pursed up her red lips, and looked determined not to destroy her mistress's character — unless particularly requested. I detest what may be called a proper road-book — even would it be less absurd than it is to write one on a country so well conned as England. I shall say nothing, therefore, of Marlow, which looked the picture of rural loveliness though seen through fog, nor of Oxford, of which all I remember is that I dined there with my teeth chattering, and my knees saturated with rain. All England is lovely to the wild eye of an American unused to high cultiva- tion ; and though my enthusiasm was somewhat damp, I arrived at the bridge over the Avon, blessing England sufficiently for its beauty, and much more for the speed of its coaches. The Avon, above and below the bridge, ran brightly alonn between low banks, half sward, half meadow; and on the other side lay the native town of the im- mortal wool-comber— a gay cheerful-looking village, natrowing in the centre to a closely-built street, across which swung, broad and fair, the sign of the " Red horse." More ambitious hotels lay beyond, and broader streets; but while Washington living is re- membered (and that will be while the language lasts), the quiet inn in which the great Geoffrey thought and wrote of Shakspere will be the altar of the pil- grim's devotions. My baggage was set down, the coachman and guard tipped their hats for a shilling, and, chilled to the bone, I raised my hat instinctively to the courtesy of a slender gentlewoman in black, who, by the kevs at her girdle, 3G should be the landlady. Having expected to see a rosy little Mrs. Boniface, with a brown pinafore and worsted mittens, I made up my mind at once that the inn had changed mistresses. On the right of the old- fashioned entrance blazed cheerily the kitchen fire, and with my enthusiasm rather dashed by my disap- pointment, 1 stepped in to make friends with the cook, and get a little warmth and information. " So your old mistress is dead, Mrs. Cook," said I, rubbing my hands with great satisfaction between the fire and a well-roasted chicken. " Lauk, sir, no, she isn't !" answered the rosy lass, pointing with a dredging-box to the same respectable lady in black who was just entering to look after me. "I beg pardon, sir," she said, dropping a cour- tesy ; " but are you the gentleman expected by Sir Charles ?" "Yes, madam. And can you tell me anything of your predecessor who had the inn in the days of Washington Irving?" She dropped another courtesy, and drew up her thin person to its full height, while a smile of gratified vanity stole out at the corners of her mouth. "The carriage has been waiting some time for you, sir," she said, with a softer tone than that in which she had hitherto addressed me; " and you will hardly be a t C in time for dinner. You will be coming over to-morrow or the day after, perhaps, sir; and then, if you would honor my little room by taking a cup of tea with me, I should be pleased to tell you all about it, sir." I remembered a promise I had nearly forgotten, that I would reserve my visit to Stratford till 1 could be accompanied by Miss J. P , whom I was to have the honor of meeting at my place of destination ; and promising an early acceptance of the kind land- lady's invitation, I hurried on to my appointment over the fertile hills of Warwickshire. I was established in one of those old Elizabethan country-houses, which, with their vast parks, their self-sufficing resources of subsistence and company, and the absolute deference shown on all sides to the lord of the manor, give one the impression rather of a little kingdom with a castle in its heart, than of an abode for a gentleman subject. The house itself (called, like most houses of this size and consequence in Warwickshire, a "Court,") was a Gothic, half- castellated square, with four round towers, and in- numerable embrasures and windows; two wings in front, probably more modern than the body of the house, and again two long wings extending to the rear, at right angles, and enclosing a flowery and formal parterre. There had been a trench about it, now filled up, and at a short distance from the house stood a polyangular and massive structure, well calculated for defence, and intended as a strong-hold for the re- treat of the family and tenants in more troubled times. One of these rear wings enclosed a catholic chapel, for the worship of the baronet and those of his tenants who professed the same faith ; while on the northern side, between the house and the garden, stood a large protestant stone church, with a turret and spire, both chapel and church, with their clergyman and priest, ' dependant on the estate, and equally favored by the liberal and high-minded brronet. The tenantry form- ed two considerable congregations, and lived and wor- shipped side by side, with the most perfect harmony —an instance of real Christianity, in my opinion, which the angels of heaven might come down to see. A lovely rural graveyard for the lord and tenants, and a secluded lake below the garden, in which hundreds of wild ducks swam and screamed unmolested, completed the outward features of C c ° urt ; , . . . There are noble houses in England, with a door communicating from the dining-room to the stables, that the master and his friends may see their favorites, 562 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. after dinner, without exposure to the weather. In the place of this rather bizarre luxury, the oak-panelled and spacious dining-hall of C is on a level with the organ loft of the chapel, and when the cloth is re- moved, the large door between is thrown open, and the noble instrument pours the rich and thrilling music of vespers through the rooms. When the service is concluded, and the lights on the altar ex- tinguished, the blind organist (an accomplished musi- cian, and a tenant on the estate), continues his volun- taries in the dark until the hall-door informs him of the retreat of the company to the drawing-room. There is not only refinement and luxury in this beautiful arrangement, but food for the soul and heart. I chose my room from among the endless vacant but equally luxurious chambers of the rambling old house ; my preference solely directed by the portrait of a nun, one of the family in ages gone by — a picture full of melancholy beauty, which hung opposite the window. The face was distinguished by all that in England marks the gentlewoman of ancisnt and pure descent ; and while it was a woman with the more tender qualities of her sex breathing through her fea- tures, it was still a lofty and sainted sister, true to her cross, and sincere in her vows and seclusion. It was the work of a master, probably Vandyke, and a picture in which the most solitary man would find company and communion. On the other walls, and in most of the other rooms and corridors, were distributed por- traits of the gentlemen and soldiers of the family, most of them bearing some resemblance to the nun, but differing, as brothers in those wild times may be sup- posed to have differed, from the gentle creatures of the same blood, nursed in the privacy of peace. CHAPTER X. VISIT TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON SHAKSPERE. One of the first visits in the neighborhood was nat- urally to Stratford-on-Avon. It lay some ten miles south of us, and I drove down, with the distinguished literary friend I have before mentioned, in the car- riage of our kind host, securing, by the presence of his servants and equipage, a degree of respect and at- tention which would not have been accorded to us in our simple character of travellers. The prim mistress of the "Red Horse," in her close black bonnet and widow's weeds, received us at the door with a deeper courtesy than usual, and a smile of less wintry formal- ity; and proposing to dine at the inn, and "suck the brain" of the hostess more at our leisure, we started immediately for the house of the wool-comber— the birthplace of Shakspere. Stratford should have been forbidden ground to builders, masons, shopkeepers, and generally to all people of thrift and whitewash. It is now rather a smart town, with gay calicoes, shawls of the last pat- tern, hardware, and millinery, exhibited in all their splendor down the' widened and newer streets; and though here and there remains a glorious old gloomy and inconvenient abode, which looks as if Shakspere might have taken shelter under its eaves, the gayer features of the town have the best of it, and flaunt their gaudy and unrespected newness in the very windows of that immortal birthplace. I stepped into a shop to inquire the way to it. " Shiksper's 'ouse, sir? Yes, sir!" said a dapper clerk, with his hair astonished into the most impossi- ble directions by force of brushing; "keep to the right, sir! Shiksper lived in the wife 'ouse, sir — the 'ouse, you see beyond, with the windy swung up, sir." A low, old-fashioned house, with a window sus- pended on a hinge, newly whitewashed and scrubbed, stood a little up the street. A sign over the door in- formed us in an inflated paragraph, that the immortal Will Shakspere was born under this roof, and that an old woman within would show it to us for a considera- tion. It had been used until very lately, I had been told, for a butcher's shop. A "garrulous old lady" met us at the bottom of the narrow stair leading to the second floor, and began — not to say anything of Shakspere — but to show us the names of Byron, Moore, Rogers, &c, written among thousands of others on the wall ! She had worn out Shakspere ! She had told that story till she was tired of it! or (what, perhaps, is more proballe) most people who go there fall to reading the names of the visiters so industriously, that she has grown to think some of Shakspere's pilgrims greater than Shakspere. "Was this old oaken chest here in the days of Shakspere, madam?" I asked. "Yes, sir, and here's the name of Byron — here with a capital B. Here's a curiosity, sir." "And this small wooden box?" " Made of Shakspere's mulberry, sir. I had sich a time about that box, sir. Two young geminen were here the other day — just run up, while the coach was changing horses, to see the house. As soon as they were gone I misses the box. Off scuds my son to the ' Red Horse,' and there they sat on the top looking as innocent as may be. ' Stop the coach,' says my son. 'What do you want?' says the driver. ' My mother's mulberry-box ! — Shakspere's mulberry-box ! — One of them 'ere young men's got it in his pocket.' And true enough, sir, one on 'em had the imperence to take it out of his pocket, and flings it into my son's face ; and you know the coach never stops a minnit for nothing, sir, or he'd a' smarted for it." Spirit of Shakspere ! dost thou not sometimes walk alone in this humble chamber ! Must one's inmost soul be fretted and frighted always from its devotion by an abominable old woman ? Why should not such lucrative occupations be given in charity to the deaf and dumb ? The pointing of a finger were enough in such spots of earth ! I sat down in despair to look over the book of visit- ers, trusting that she would tire of my inattention. As it was of no use to point out names to those who would not look, however, she commenced a long story of an American who had lately taken the whim to sleep in Shakspere's birth-chamber. She had shaken him down a bed on the floor, and he had passed the night there. It seemed to bother her to comprehend why two thirds of her visiters should be Americans— a circumstance that was abundantly proved by the books. It was only when we were fairly in the street that I began to realize that I had seen one of the most glori- ous altars of memory — that deathless Will Shakspere, the mortal, who was, perhaps (not to speak profanely), next to his Maker, in the divine faculty of creation, first saw the light through the low lattice on which we turned back to look. The single window of the room in which Scott died at Abbotsford, and this in the birth-chamber of Shak- spere, have seemed to me almost marked with the touch of the fire of those great souls — for I think we have an instinct which tells us on the spot where mighty spirits have come or gone, that they came and went with the light of heaven. We walked down the street to see the house where Shakspere lived on his return to Stratford. It stands at the corner of a lane, not far from the church where he was buried, and is a newish un-Shaksperian looking place — no doubt, if it be indeed the same house, most profanely and considerably altered. The present pro- prietor or occupant of the house or site took upon himself some time since the odium of cutting down SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 563 the famous mulberry-tree planted by the poet's hand in the garden. I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes that two or three miles before coming to Stratford we passed through Shottery, where Anne Hathaway lived. A nephew of the excellent baronet whose guests we were occupies the house. I looked up and down the green lanes about it, and glanced my eye round upon the hills over which the sun has continued to set and the moon to ride in her love-inspiring beauty ever since. There were doubtless outlines in the landscape which had been followed by the 'eye of Shakspere when coming, a trembling lover, to Shottrey — doubt- less, teints in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke- wreaths from the old homesteads on the high hill- sides, which are little altered now. How daringly the imagination plucks back the past in such places ! How boldly we ask of fancy and probability the thou- sand questions we would put, if we might, to the magic mirror of Agrippa ? Did that great mortal love timid- ly, like ourselves? Was the passionate outpouring of his heart simple, and suited to the humble condition of Anne Hathaway, or was it the first fiery coinage of Homeo and Othello ? Did she know the immortal honor and light poured upon woman by the love of genius ? Did she know how this common and often- est terrestrial passion becomes fused in the poet's bo- som with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous elevation and purity, ascends lambently and musically to the very stars? Did she coy it with him? Was she a woman to him, as commoner mortals find woman — ca- pricious, tender, cruel, intoxicating, cold — everything by changes impossible to calculate or foresee ? Did he walk home to Stratford, sometimes, despairing, in perfect sick-heartedness, of her alfection, and was he recalled by a message or a lover's instinct to find her weeping and passionately repentant? How natural it is by such questions and specula- tions to betray our innate desire to bring the lofty spirits of our common mould to our own inward level — to seek analogies between our affections, passions, appe- tites, and theirs — to wish they might have been no more exalted, no more fervent, no more worthy of the adora- ble love of woman than ourselves! The same temper that prompts the depregiation, the envy, the hatred, exercised toward the poet in his lifetime, mingles, not inconsiderably, in the researches so industriously prose- cuted after his death into his youth and history. To be admired in this world, and much more to be beloved for higher qualities than his fellow-men, insures to genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be ferreted out with all his frailties and imperfections from the grave. The church in which Shakspere is buried stands near the banks of the Avon, and is a most picturesque and proper place of repose for his ashes. An avenue of small trees and vines, ingeniously overlaced, ex- tends from the street to the principal door, and the interior is broken up into that confused and accidental medley of tombs, pews, cross-lights, and pillars, for which the old churches of England are remarkable. The tomb and effigy of the great poet lie in an inner chapel, and are as described in every traveller's book. I will not take up room with the repetition. It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb of his wife and daughter beside him. One does not realize before, that Shakspere had wife, children, kinsmen, like other men — that there were those who had a right to lie in the same tomb; to whom he owed the chari- ties of life ; whom he may have benefited or offended ; who in. iv have influenced materially his destiny, or he theirs ; who were the inheritors of his household good*, his wardrobe, his books — people who looked an him — on Shakspere — as a landholder, a renter of a pew, a townsman : a relative, in short, who had claims upon them, not for the eternal homage due to celestial inspiration, but for the charity of shelter and bread had he been poor, for kindness and ministry had he been sick, for burial and the tears of natural affection when he died. It is painful and embarrassing to the mind to go to Stratford — to reconcile the immortality and the incomprehensible power of genius like Shak- spere's, with the space, tenement, and circumstance of a man ! The poet should be like the sea-bird, seen only on the wing — his birth, his slumber, and his death, mysteries alike. I had stipulated with the hostess that my baggage should be put into the chamber occupied by Wash- ington Irving. I was shown into it to dress for dinner — a small neat room, a perfect specimen, in short, of an English bedroom, with snow-white curtains, a look- ing-glass the size of the face, a well-polished grate and poker, a well-fitted carpet, and as much light as heaven permits to the climate. Our' dinner for two was served in a neat parlor on the same floor — an English inn dinner — simple, neat, and comfortable, in the sense of that word unknown in other countries. There was just fire enough, in the grate, just enough for two in the different dishes, a servant who was just enough in the room, and just civil enough — in short, it was, like everything else in that country of adaptation and fitness, just what was ordered and wanted, and no more. The evening turned out stormy, and the rain pat- tered merrily against the windows. The shutters were closed, the fire blazed up with new brightness, the well-fitted wax lights were set on the table ; and when the dishes were removed, we replaced the wine with a tea-tray, and sent for the hostess to give us her com- pany and a little gossip over our cups. Nothing could be more nicely understood and de- fined than the manner of English hostesses generally in such situations, and of Mrs. Gardiner particularly in this. Respectful without servility, perfectly sure of the propriety of her own manner and mode of ex- pression, yet preserving in every look and word the proper distinction between herself and her guests, she insured from them that kindness and ease of commu- nication which would make a long evening of social conversation pass, not only without embarrassment on either side, but with mutual pleasure and gratification. "I have brought up, mem," she said, producing a well-polished poker from under her black apron, be- fore she took the chair set for her at the table — "I have brought up a relic for you to see, that no money would buy from me." She turned it over in my hand, and I read on one of the flat sides at the bottom — "gkoffrey crayon's SCEPTRE." " Do you remember Mr. Irving," asked my friend, "or have you supposed, since reading his sketch of Stratford-on-Avon, that the gentleman in number three might be the person ?" The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the ex- pression of a person about to compliment herself stole into the corners of her mouth. " Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the habit of observing my guests, and I think I may say I knows a superior gentleman when I sees him. If you re- member, mem" (and she took down from the mantle- piece a much-worn copy of the Sketch-15ook), " Geof- frey Crayon tells the circumstance of my stepping in when it was getting late, and asking if he had rung. I knows it by that, and then the gentleman I mean was an American, and I think, mem, besides" (and she hesitated a little, as if she was about to advance an I original and rather venturesome opinion)— " I think I can see that gentleman's likeness all through this book." . ... A truer remark or a more just criticism was per- haps never made on the Sketch-Book. We smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded : — 564 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. " I was in and out of the coffee-room the night he arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his modest ways and timid look that he was a gentleman, and not fit company for the other travellers. They were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and you know, mem, ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit, and af- ter their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I says to Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, ' That nice gentleman can't get near the fire, and you go and light a fire in number three, and he shall sit alone, and it shan't cost him nothing, for I like the look on him.' Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and after his tea, he puts his legs up over the grate, and there he sits with the poker in his hand till ten o'clock. The other travellers went to bed, and at last the house was as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate now and then in number three, and every time I heard it, I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting up to ring for a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded, and still no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I, 4 Go into number three, and upset something, for 1 am sure that gentleman has fallen asleep.' — ' La, ma'am,' says Sarah, 'I don't dare.' — 'Well, then,' says I, 'I'll go.' So I opens the door, and I says, 'If you please, sir, did you ring ?' — little thinking that question would ever be written down in such a beautiful book, mem. He sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire, and a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought was in his mind. 'No, ma'am,' says he, 'I did not.' I shuts the door, and sits down again, for I hadn't the heart to tell him that it was late, for he was a gentle- man not to speak rudely to, mem. Well, it was past twelve o'clock, when the bell did ring. 'There,' says I to Sarah, ' thank Heaven he has done thinking, and we can go to bed.' So he walked up stairs with his light, aud the next morning he was up early and off to the Shakspere house, and he brings me home a box of the mulberry-tree, and asks me if I thought it was genuine, and said it was for his mother in America. And I loved him still more for that, and I'm sure I prayed she might live to see him return." "I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon after did you set aside the poker ?" " Why, sir, you see there's a Mr. Vincent that comes here sometimes, and he says to me one day — • So, Mrs. Gardiner, you're finely immortalized. Read that.' So the minnit I read it, I remembered who it was, and all about it, and I runs and gets the number three poker, and locks it up safe and sound, and by- and-by I sends it to Brummagem, and has his name engraved on it, and here you see it, sir — and I wouldn't take no money for it." I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving, and I evidently lost ground with the hostess of the "Red Horse" for that misfortune. I delighted her, however, with the account which I had seen in a late newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the prairies of the west ; and she soon courtesied herself out, and left me to the delightful society of the distinguished lady who had accompanied me. Among all my many loitenngs in many lands, I remember none more in- tellectually pure and gratifying, than this at Stratford- on-Avon. My sleep, in the little bed consecrated by the slumbers of the immortal Geoffrey, was sweet and light ; and I write myself his debtor for a large share of the pleasure which genius like his lavishes on the world. CHAPTER XI. CHARLECOTE. Once more posting through Shottery and Stratford- on-Avon, on the road to Kenilworth and Warwick, I felt a pleasure in becoming an habitue in Shakspere's town — in being recognised by the Stratford post-boys, known at the Stratford inn, and remembered at the toll-gates. It is pleasant to be welcomed by name anywhere ; but at Stratford-on-Avon, it is a recogni- tion by those whose fathers or predecessors were the companions of Shakspere's frolics. Every fellow in a slouched hat — every idler on a tavern bench — every saunterer with a dog at his heels on the highway — should be a deer-stealer from Charlecote. You would almost ask him, " Was Will Shakspere with you last night ?" The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortalized by a varlet poacher who was tried before old Sir Thomas for stealing a buck. They have drawn an apology from Walter Savage Landor for making too free with the family history, under cover of an im- aginary account of the trial. I thought, as we drove along in sight of the fine old hall, with its broad park and majestic trees — very much as it stood in the days of Sir Thomas, I believe — that most probably the descendants of the old justice look even now upon Shakspere more as an offender against the game-laws than as a writer of immortal plays. I venture to say, it would be bad tact in a visiter to Charlecote to felici- tate the family on the honor of possessing a park in which Shakspere had stolen deer — to show more in- terest in seeing the hall in which he was tried than in the family portraits. On the road which I was travelling (from Stratford to Charlecote) Shakspere had been dragged as a cul- prit. What were his feelings before Sir Thomas ! He felt, doubtless, as every possessor of the divine fire of genius must feel, when brought rudely in contact with his fellow-men, that he was too much their supe- rior to be angry. The humor in which he has drawn Justice Shallow proves abundantly that he was more amused then displeased with his own trial. But was there no vexation at the moment? A reflection, it might be, from the estimate of his position in the minds of those who were about him — who looked on him simply as a stealer of so much venison. Did he care for Anne Hathaway's opinion then ? How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand the relation between judge and culprit on that trial ! How little did he dream he was sitting for his picture to the pestilent varlet at the bar ; that the deer-stealer could better afford to forgive him than he the deer-stealer ! Genius forgives, or rather forgets, all wrongs done in ignorance of its immortal presence. Had Ben Jonson made a wilful jest on a line in his new play, it would have rankled longer than fine and imprisonment for deer-stealing. Those who crowd back and trample upon men of genius in the common walk of life ; who cheat them, misrepresent them, take advantage of their inattention or their generosity in worldly matters, are sometimes surprised how their injuries, if not them- selves, are forgotten. Old Adam Woodcock might as well have held malice against Roland Graeme for the stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of Mis- rule. Yet, as I might have remarked in the paragraph gone before, it is probably not easy to put conscious and secret superiority entirely between the mind and the opinions of those around who think differently. It is one reason why men of genius love more than the common share of solitude — to recover self-respect. In the midst of the amusing travesty he was drawing in his own mind of the grave scene about him, Shak- spere possibly felt at moments as like a detected culprit as he seemed to the gamekeeper and the justice. It is a small penalty to 1 pay for the after worship of the world ! The ragged and proverbially ill-dressed peasants who are selected from the whole campagna, as models to the sculptors of Rome, care little what is thought of their good looks in the Corso. The SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 565 disguised proportions beneath their rags will be ad- mired in deathless marble, when the noble who scarce deigns their possessor a look will lie in forgotten dust under his stone scutcheon. CHAPTER XII. WARWICK CASTLE. Were it not for the " out-heroded" descriptions in the guide-books, one might say a great deal of War- j wick castle. It is the quality of overdone or ill-ex- pressed enthusiasm to silence that which is more | rational and real. Warwick is, perhaps, the best kept • of all the famous old castles of England. It is a superb j and admirably-appointed modern dwelling, in the shell, and with all the means and appliances preserved, of an ancient stronghold. It is a curious union, too. My lady's maid and my lord's valet coquet upon the bar- tizan, where old Guy of Warwick stalked in his coat- of-mail. The London cockney, from his two days' watering at Leamington, stops his pony-chaise, hired . ai half-a-crown the hour, and walks Mrs. Popkins over the old draw-bridge as peacefully as if it were the threshold of his shop in the Strand. Scot and French- ; man saunter through fosse and tower, and no ghost of , the middle ages stalks forth, with closed visor, to J challenge these once natural foes. The powdered butler yawns through an embrasure, expecting "mila- di," the countess of this fair domain, who in one day's j posting from London seeks relief in Warwick Castle j from the routs and soirees of town. What would old j Guy say, or the " noble imp" whose effigy is among I the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers, if they could ; rise through their marble slabs, and be whirled over the j drawbridge in a post-chaise ? How indignantly they j would listen to the reckoning within their own port- j cullis, of the rates for chaise and postillion. How j astonished they would be at the butler's bow, and the proffered officiousness of the valet. " Shall I draw off your lordship's boots ? Which of these new vests from Staub will your lordship put on for dinner ?" Among the pictures at Warwick, I was interested by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth (the best of that sov- ereign I ever saw) ; one of Machiavelli, one of Essex, and one of Sir Philip Sidney. The delightful and gifted woman whom I had accompanied to the castle observed of the latter, that the hand alone expressed all his character. I had often made the remark in real life, but I had never seen an instance on painting where the likeness was so true. No one could doubt, who knew Sir Philip Sidney's character, that it was a literal portrait of his hand. In our day, if you have j an artist for a friend, he makes use of you while you call, to "sit for the hand" of the portrait on his easel. Having a preference for the society of artists myself, and frequenting their studios habitually, I know of some hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on canvass, who have procured for posterity and their children portraits of their own heads and dress-coats to be sure, but of the hands of other persons ! The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the marble in the gallery of Florence, small, slender, and visibly " made to creep into crevices." The face is impassive and calm, and the lips, though slight and almost femi- nine, have an indefinable firmness and character. Es- sex is the bold, plain, and blunt soldier history makes him, and Elizabeth not unqueenly, nor (to my think- | ing) of an uninteresting countenance; but, with all j the artist's flattery, ugly enough to be the abode of | the murderous envy that brought Mary to the block. I We paid our five shillings for having been walked through the marble hall of Castle Warwick, and the dressing-room of its modern lady, and, gratified much more by our visit than I have expressed in this brief description, posted on to Kenilworth. CHAPTER XIII. KENILWORTH. On the road from Warwick to Kenilworth, I thought more of poor Pierce Gaveston than of Elizabeth and her proud earls. Edward's gay favorite was tried at Warwick, and beheaded on Blacklow hill, which we passed soon after leaving the town. He was executed in June; and I looked about on the lovely hills and valleys that surround the place of his last moments, and figured to myself very vividly his despair at ihis hurried leave-taking of this bright world in its bright- est spot and hour. Poor Gaveston! It was not in his vocation to die ! He was neither soldier nor prel- ate, hermit nor monk. His political sius, for which he suffered, were no offence against good-fellowship, and were ten times more venial than those of the "black dog of Arden," who betrayed and helped to murder him. He was the reckless minion of a king, but he must have been a merry and pleasant fellow ; and now that the world (on our side the water at least), is grown so grave, one could go back with Old Mor- tality, and freshen the epitaph of a heart that took life more gayly. As we approached the castle of the proud Leices- ter, I found it easier to people the road with the flying Amy Robsart and her faithful attendant, with Mike Lam- bourne, Flibbertigibbet, Richard Varney, and the troop of mummurs and players, than with the more real characters of history. To assist the romance, a little Italian boy, with his organ and monkey, was fording the brook on his way to the castle, as if its old towers still held listeners for the wandering minstrel. I tossed him a shilling from the carriage window, and while the horses slowly forded the brook, asked him in his own delicious tongue, where he was from. " Son' di Firenze, signore .'" " And where are you going ?" " Li ! at castello." Come from Florence and bound to Kenilworth ! Who would not grind an organ and sleep under a hedge, to answer the hail of the passing traveller in terms like these ? I have seen many a beggar in Italy, whose inheritance of sunshine and leisure in that de- licious clime I could have found it in my heart to envy, even with all its concomitants of uncertainty and want; but here was a bright-faced and inky-eyed child of the sun, with his wardrobe and means upon his back, travelling from one land to another, and loiter- ing wherever there was a resort for pleasure, without a friend or a care ; and, upon my life, I could have donned his velveteen jacket, and with his cheerful heart to button it over, have shouldered his organ, put my trust in iforestieri, and kept on for Kenilworth. There really is, I thought, as I left him behind, no profit or reward consequent upon a life of confinement and toil ; no moss ever gathered by the unturned stone, that repavs, by a thousandth part, the loss of even this poor boy's share of the pleasures of change. What would not the tardy winner of fortune give to exchange his worn-out frame, his unloveable and furrowed features, his dulled senses, and his vain regrets, for the elastic frame, the unbroken spirits, and the redeemable, yet not oppressive poverty of this Florentine reeazzo ! The irrecoverable gem of youth is too often dissolved, like the pearl of Cleopatra, in a cup which thins the blood and leaves disgust upon tne 1'P- „, .. . , . . The magnificent ruins of Kenilworth broke in upon my moralities, and a crowd of halt and crippled ciceroni p 566 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. beset the carriage-door as we alighted at the outer tower. The neighborhood of the Spa of Leamington, makes Kenilworth a place of easy resort ; and the beggars of Warwickshire have discovered that your traveller is more liberal of his coin than your sitter-at- home. Some dozens of pony-chaises and small, crop saddle-horses, clustered around the gate, assured us that we should not muse alone amid the ruins of Elizabeth's princely gift to her favorite. We passed into the tilt-yard, leaving on our left the tower in which Edward was confined, now the only habitable part of Kenilworth. It gives a comfortable shelter to an old seneschal, who stands where the giant probably stood, with Flibbertigibbet under his doublet for a prompter ; but it is not the tail of a rhyme that serves now for a passport. Kenilworth, as it now stands, would probably dis- enchant almost any one of the gorgeous dreams con- jured up by reading Scott's romance. Yet it is one of the most superb ruins in the world. It would scarce be complete to a novel-reader, naturally, without a warder at the gate, and the flashing of a spear-point and helmet through the embrasures of the tower. A horseman in armor should pace over the draw-bridge, and a squire be seen polishing his cuiras through the opening gate; while on the airy bartizan should be observed a lady in hoop and farthingale, philander- ing with my lord of Leicester in silk doublet and rapier. In the place of this, the visiter enters Kenil- worth as I have already described, and stepping out into the tilt-yard, he sees, on an elevation before him, a fretted and ivy-covered ruin, relieved like a cloud- castle on the sky ; the bright blue plane of the western heavens shining through window and broken wall, flecked with waving and luxuriant leaves, and the crusted and ornamental pinnacles of tottering masonry and sculpture just leaning to their fall, though the foundations upon which they were laid, one would still think, might sustain the firmament. The swelling root of a creeper has lifted that arch from its base, and the protruding branch of a chance-sprung tree (sown perhaps by a field-sparrow) has unseated the key-stone of the next ; and so perish castles and repu- tations, the masonry of the human hand, and the fabrics of human forethought ; not by the strength which they feared, but by the weakness they despised ! Little thought old John of Gaunt, when these rudely- hewn blocks were heaved into their seat by his hercu- lean workmen, that, after resisting fire and foe, they would be sapped and overthrown at last by a vine-ten- dril and a sparrow ! Clinging against the outer wall, on that side of the castle overlooking the meadow, which was overflowed for the aquatic spots of Kenilworth, stands an antique and highly ornamental fireplace, which belonged, doubtless, to the principal hall. The windows on either side looking forth upon the fields below, must have been those from which Elizabeth and her train observed the feats of Arion and his dolphin; and at all times, the large and spacious chimney-place, from the castle's first occupation to its last, must have been the centre of the evening revelry, and conversation of its guests. It was a hook whereon to hang a revery, and between the roars of vulgar laughter which assailed my ears from a party lolling on the grass below, I con- trived to figure to myself, with some distinctness, the personages who had stood about it. A visit to Kenil- worth, without the deceptions of fancy, would be as disconnected from our previous enthusiasm on the subject as from any other scene with which it had no relation. The general effect at first, in any such spot, is only to dispossess us, by a powerful violence, of the cherished picture we had drawn of it in imagination ; and it is only after the real recollection has taken root and ripened — after months, it may be — that we can fully bring the visionary characters we have drawn to inhabit it. If I read Kenilworth now, I see Mike Lambourne stealing out, not from the ruined postern which I clambered through, over heaps of rubbish, but from a little gate that turned noiselessly on its hinges, in the unreal castle built ten years ago in my brain. I had wandered away from my companion, Miss Jane Porter, to climb up a secret staircase in the wall, rather too difficult of ascent for a female foot, and from my elevated position I caught an accidental view of that distinguished lady through the arch of a Gothic window, with a background of broken architecture and foliage — presenting, by chance, perhaps the most fit- ting and admirable picture of the authoress of the Scottish Chiefs, that a painter in his brightest hour could have fancied. Miss Porter, with her tall and striking figure, her noble face (said by Sir Martin Shee to have approached nearer in its youth to his beau ideal of the female features than any other, and still possessing the remains of uncommon beauty), is at all times a person whom it would be difficult to see with- out a feeling of involuntary admiration. But standing, as I saw her at that moment, motionless and erect, in the morning dress, with dark feathers, which she has worn since the death of her beloved and gifted sister, her wrists folded across, her large and still beautiful eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and benevolent tranquillity, while, around and above her, lay the material and breathed the spirit over which she had held the first great mastery — it was a tableau vivant which I was sorry to be alone to see. Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked the spirits of the ruins she stood among — a mind in which (by Sir Walter's own c^u *ssion) she had first bared the vein of romance which breathed so freely for the world's delight ? Were the visions which sweep with such supernatural distinctness and rapidity through the imagination of genius — visions of which the millionth portion is probablyscarce communicated to the world in a literary lifetime — were Elizabeth's courtiers, Elizabeth's passions, secret hours, inter- views with Leicester — were the imprisoned king's nights of loneliness and dread, his hopes, his indignant, but unheeded thoughts — were all the possible circum- stances, real or imaginary, of which that proud castle might have been the scene, thronging in those few moments of revery through her fancy ? Or was her heart busy with its kindly affections, and had the beauty and interest of the scene but awakened a thought of one who was most wont to number with her the sands of those brighter hours ? Who shall say ? The very question would perhaps startle the thoughts beyond recall — so elusive are even the most angelic of the mind's unseen visitants ? I have recorded here the speculations of a moment while I leaned over the wall of Kenilworth, but as 1 descended by the giddy staircase, a peal of rude laughter broke from the party in the fosse below, and I could not but speculate on the difference between the various classes whom curiosity draws to the spot. The distinguished mind that conceives a romance which enchants the world, comes in the same guise and is treated but with the same respect as theirs. The old porter makes no distinction in his charge of half-a-crown, and the grocer's wife who sucks an orange on the grass, looks at the dark crape hat and plain exterior — her only standards — and thinks herself as well dressed, and therefore equal or superior to the tall lady, whom she presumes is out like herself on a day's pleasuring. One comes and goes like the other, and is forgotten alike by the beggars at the gate and the seneschal within, and thus invisibly and unsuspect- ed, before our very eyes, does genius gather its gold- en fruit, and while we walk in a plain and common- place world, with commonplace and sordid thoughts SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 567 and feelings, the gifted walk side by side with us in a world of their own— a world of which we see distant glimpses in their after-creations, and marvel in what unsunned mine its gems of thought were gathered ! CHAPTER XIV. A VISIT TO DUBLIN ABOUT THE TIME OF THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE. The usual directions for costume, in the corner of the court card of invitation, included, on the occasion of the queen's marriage, a wedding favor, to be worn by ladies on the shoulder, and by gentlemen on the left breast. This trifling addition to the dress of the individual was a matter of considerable importance to the milliners, hatters, etc., who, in a sale of ten or twelve hundred white cockades (price from two dollars to five) made a very pretty profit. The power of giv- ing a large ball to the more expensive classes, and or- dering a particular addition to the costume — in other words, of laying a tax on the rich for the benefit of the poor, is exercised more frequently in Ireland than in other countries, and serves the double purpose of popularity to the lord lieutenant, and benefit to any particular branch of industry that may be suffering from the decline of a fashion. The large quadrangular court-yard of the castle rattled with the tramp of horses' feet and the clatter of sabres and spurs, and in the uncertain glare of torches and lamps, the gay colors and glittering arms of the mounted guard of lancers had a most warlike appear- ance. The procession which the guard was stationed to regulate and protect, rather detracted from the ro- mantic effect — the greater proportion of equipages being the covered hack cars of the city — vehicles of the most unmitigated and ludicrous vulgarity. A coffin for two, set on its end, with the driver riding on the turned-down lid, would be a very near resemblance ; and the rags of the driver, and the translucent leanness of his beast, make it altogether the most deplorable of conveyances. Here and there a carriage with liveries, and here and there a sedan-chair with four stout Milesian calves in blue stockings trotting under the poles, rather served as a foil than a mitigation of the effect, and the hour we passed in the line, edging slowly toward the castle, was far from unfruitful in amusement. I learned afterward that even those who have equipages in Dublin go to court in hack cars as a matter of economy — one of the many indications of that feeling of lost pride which has existed in Ireland since the removal of the parliament. A hall and staircase lined with files of soldiers is not quite as festive an entrance to a ball as the more com- mon one of alleys of flowering shrubs ; but with a waltz by a military band resounding from the lofty ceiling, I am not sure that it does not temper the blood as aptly for the spirit of the hour. It was a rainy night, and the streets were dark, and the effect upon myself of coming suddenly into so enchanted a scene — arms glittering on either side, and a procession of uniforms and plumed dames winding up the spacious stairs — was thrilling, even with the chivalric scenes of Eglinton fresh in my remembrance. At the head of the ascent we entered a long hall, lined with the private servants of Lord Ebrington, and the ceremony of presentation having been achieved the week before, we left the throne-room on the right, and passed directly to St. Patrick's Hall, the grand scene of the evening's festivities. This, I have said before, is the finest ball-room I remember in Europe. Twelve hundred people, seated, dancing, or promenading, were within its lofty walls on the night whose festivi- ties I am describing ; and at either end a gallery, sup- ported by columns of marble, contained a band of music, relieving each other with alternate waltzes and quadrilles. On the long sides of the hall were raised tiers of divans, filled with chaperons, veteran officers, and other lookers-on, and at the upper end was raised a platform with a throne in the centre, and seats on either side for the family of the lord lieutenant and the more distinguished persons of the nobility. Lord Ebrington was rather in his character of a noble host than that of viceroy, and I did not observe him once seated under his canopy of state ; but with his aids and some one of the noble ladies of his family on his arm, he promenaded the hall conversing with his ac- quaintances, and seemingly enjoying in a high degree the brilliant gayety of the scene. His dress, by the way, was the simple diplomatic dress of most conti- nental courts, a blue uniform embroidered with gold, the various orders on his breast forming its principal distinction. I seldom have seen a man of a more calm and noble dignity of presence than the lord lieu- tenant, and never a face that expressed more strongly the benevolence and high purity of character for which he is distinguished. In person, except that he is taller, he bears a remarkably close resemblance to the Duke of Wellington. We can scarcely conceive, in this country of black coats, the brilliant effect of a large assembly in which there is no person out of uniform or court-dress — every lady's head nodding with plumes, and every gentleman in military scarlet and gold or lace and embroidery. I may add, too, that in this country of care-worn and pale faces, we can as little conceive the effect of an assembly rosy with universal health, habitually unacquainted with care, and abandoned with the apparent child-like simplicity of high breeding, to the inspiring gayety of the hour. The greater con- trast, however, is between a nation where health is the first care, and one in which health is never thought of till lost; and light and shade are not more con- trasted than the mere general effect of countenance in one and in the other. A stranger travelling in our country, once remarked to me that a party he had at- tended seemed like an entertainment given in the con- valescent ward of a hospital — the ladies were so pale and fragile, and the men so unjoyous and sallow. And my own invariable impression, in the assemblies I have first seen after leaving my own country was a corresponding one — that the men and women had the rosy health and untroubled gnyety of children round a May-pole. That this is not the effect of climate, I do most religiously believe. It is over-much care and over- much carelessness — the corroding care of an avid temer- ity in business, and the carelessness of all the functions of life till their complaints become too imperative to be disregarded. But this is a theme out of place. The ball was managed by the grand chamberlain (Sir William Leeson), and the aids-de-camp of the lord lieutenant, and except that now and then you were reminded by the movement around you that you stood with your back to the representative of royalty, there was little to draw your attention from the attrac- tions of the dance. Waltz, quadrille, and gallop, fol- lowed each other in giddy succession, and "what do you think of Irish beauty?" had been asked me as often as "how do you like America /" was ever mum- bled through the trumpet of Miss Martineau, when I mounted with a frieud to one of the upper divans, and tried, what is always a difficult task, and nowhere so difficult as in Ireland, to call in the intoxicated fancy, and anatomize the charm of the hour. Moore's remark has been often quoted— " there is nothing like an Irish woman to take a man of! his feet;" but whether this figure of speech was suggested by the little bard's common soubriquet of "Jump-up- and-kiss-me* Tom Moore," or simply conveyed his • The name of a small flower, common in Ireland 568 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. idea of the bewildering character of Irish beauty, it contains, to any one who has ever travelled (or waltzed) in that country, a very just, as well as realizing descrip- tion. Physically, Irish women are probably the finest race in the world — I mean, taller, better limbed and chested, larger eyed, and with more luxuriant hair, and freer action, than any other nation I have ob- served. The Phoenician and Spanish blood which has run hundreds of years in their veins, still kindles its dark fire in their eyes, and with the vivacity of the northern mind and the bright color of the nor hern skin, these southern qualities mingle in most admira- ble and superb harmony. The idea we form of Ital- ian and Grecian beauty is never realized in Greece and Italy, but we find it in Ireland, heightened and ex- ceeded. Cheeks and lips of the delicacy and bright teint of carnation, with snowy teeth, and hair and eye- brows of jet, are what we should look for on the palette of Appelies, could we recall the painter, and reanimate his far-famed models ; and these varied charms, united, fall very commonly to the share of the fair Milesian of the upper classes. In other lands of dark eyes, the rareness of a fine-grained skin, so necessary to a bru- nette, makes beauty as rare — but whether it is the damp softness of the climate or the infusion of Saxon blood, a coarse skin is almost never seen in Ireland. I speak now only of the better-born ranks of society, for in all my travels in Ireland, I did not chance to see even one peasant-girl of any pretensions to good looks. From north to south, they looked, to me, coarse, ill-formed, and repulsive. I noticed in St. Patrick's Hall what 1 had remarked ever since I had been in the country, that with all their beauty, the Irish women are very deficient in what in England is called style. The men, on the contrary, were particularly comme ilfaut, and as they are a magnificent race (corresponding to such mothers and sisters), I frequently observed I had never seen so many handsome and elegant men in a day. When- ever I saw a gentleman and lady together, riding, driving, or walking, my first impression was, almost universally, that the man was in attendance upon a woman of an inferior class to his own. This differ- ence may be partly accounted for by the reduced cir- cumstances of the gentry of Ireland, which keeps the daughters at home, that the sons may travel and im- prove ; but it works differently in America, where, spite of travel and every other advantage to the con- trary, the daughters of a family are much oftener lady-like than the sons are gentleman-like. After wondering for some time, however, why the quick- witted women of Ireland should be less apt than those of other countries in catching the air of high breeding usually deemed so desirable, I began to like them bet- ter for the deficiency, and to find a reason for it in the very qualities which make them so attractive. Noth- ing could be more captivating and delightful than the manners of Irish women, and nothing, at the same time, could be more at war with the first principles of English high breeding— coldness and relenu. The frank, almost hilarious "how are you?" of an Irish girl, her whole-handed and cordial grasp, as often in the day as you meet her, the perfectly un-missy-ish, confiding, direct character of her conversation, are all traits which would stamp her as somewhat rudely bred in England, and as desperately vulgar in New York or Philadelphia. Modest to a proverb, the Irish woman is as unsus- pecting of an impropriety as if it were an impossible thing, and she is as fearless and joyous as a midship- man, and sometimes as noisy. In a ball-room she looks ill-dressed, not because her dress was ill-put-on, but because she dances, not gHdes, sits down without care, pulls her flowers to pieces, and if her head-dress incommodes her, gives it a pull or a push — acts which would be perfect insanity at Almack's. If she is of- fended, she asks for an explanation. If she does not understand you, she confesses her ignorance. If she wishes to see you the next day, she tells you how and when. She is the child of nature, and children are not "stylish." The niminy-piminy, eye-avoiding, finger-tipped, drawling, don't-touch-me manner of some of the fashionable ladies of our country, would amuse a cold and reserved English woman sufficiently, but they would drive an Irish girl into hysterics. 1 have met one of our fair country-people abroad, whose "Grecian stoop," and exquisitely subdued manner, was invariably taken for a fit of indigestion. The ball-supper was royally sumptuous, and served in a long hall thrown open at midnight ; and in the gray of the morning, I left the floor covered with waltzers, and confessed to an Irish friend, that I never in my life, not even at Almack's, had seen the half as much true beauty as had brightened St. Patrick's Hall at the celebration of the queen's marriage. CHAPTER XV. CLOSING SCENES OF THE SESSION AT WASHINGTON. The paradox of" the more one does, the more one can do," is resolved in life at Washington with more success than I have seen it elsewhere. The inexora- I ble bell at the hotel or boarding-house pronounces the I irrevocable and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers j after eight. The elastic depths of the pillow have ! scarcely yielded their last feather to the pressure of the sleeper's head, before the drowse is rudely shaken from his eyelids, and with an alacrity which surprises i himself, he finds his toilet achieved, his breakfast over, and himself abroad to lounge in the sunshine till the \ flag waves on the capitol. He would retire to his I chamber to read during these two or three vacant j hours, but the one chair in his pigeon-hole creaks, ot has no back or bottom, or his anthracite fire is out, or is too hot for the size of the room : or, in short, Wash- ington, from whatever cause, is a place where none read except those who stand up to a padlocked news- 1 paper. The stars and stripes, moving over the two ! wings of the capitol at eleven, announce that the two J chambers of legislation are in session, and the hard- i working idler makes his way to the senate or the I house. He lingers in the lobby awhile, amused with 1 the button-hole seizers plying the unwilling ears of | members with their claims, or enters the library, | where ladies turn over prints, and enfilade, with their ' battery of truant eyes, the comers-in at the green ! door. He then gropes up the dark staircase to the j senate gallery, and stifles in the pressure of a hot gallery, forgetting, like listeners at a crowded opera, that bodily discomfort will unlink the finest harmonies of song or oratory. Thence he descends to the rotunda to draw breath and listen to the more practical, but quite as earnest eloquence of candidates for patents; and passes, after while, to the crowded gallery of the house, where, by some acoustic phenomena in the construction of the building, the voicesof the speakers comes to his ear as articulate as water from a narrow- necked bottle. "Small blame to them !" he thinks, however : for behind the brexia columns are grouped all the fair forms of Washington ; and in making his bow to two hundred despotic lawgivers in feathers and velvet, he is readily consoled that the duller legislators who yield to their sway are inaudible and forgotten. To this upper house drop in, occasionally, the younger or gayer members of the lower, bringing, if not politi- cal scandal, at least some slight resumer of what Mr. Somebody is beating his desk about below ; and thus, crammed with the day's trifles or the day's business, and fatigued from heel to eyelid, our idler goes home SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 569 at five to dress for dinner and the night's campaign, having been up and on his legs for ten mortal hours. Cold water and a little silence in his own room have rather refreshed him, and he dines at six with a party of from fifteen to tweuty-five persons. He discusses the vital interests of fourteen millions of people over a glass of wine with the man whose vote, possibly, will decide their destiny, and thence hurries to a ball- room crammed like a perigord-pie, where he pants, efoows, eats supper, and waltzes till three in the morning. How human constitutions stand this, and stand it daily and nightly, from the beginning to the end of a session, may well puzzle the philosophy of those who rise and breakfast in comfortable leisure. I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of Februa- ry, to pay my respects to the president, and see the J cheese. Whatever veneration existed in the minds of j the people toward the former, their curiosity in ref- i erence to the latter predominated, unquestionably. The circular pave, extending from the gate to the White House, was thronged with citizens of all classes, I those coming away having each a small brown paper j parcel and a very strong smell; those advancing mani- j festing, by shakings of the head and frequent exclama- tions, that there may be too much of a good thing, j and particularly of a cheese. The beautiful portico ; was thronged with boys and coach-drivers, and the j odor strengthened with every step. We forced our way over the threshold, and encountered an atmo- sphere, to which the mephitic gas floating over Aver- nus must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the i hall hung a rough likeness of the general, emblazoned [ with eagle and stars, forming a background to the huge tub in which the cheese had been packed ; and , in the centre of the vestibule stood the "fragrant gift," j surrounded with a dense crowd, who, without crackers, [ or even *' malt to their cheese," had, in two hours, eaten and purveyed away fourteen hundred pounds ! The small segment reserved for the president's use counted for nothing in the abstractions. Glad to compromise for a breath of cheeseless air, we desisted from the struggle to obtain a sight of the table, and mingled with the crowd in the east room. Here were diplo mates in their gold coats and officers in uniform, ladies of secretaries and other ladies, soldiers on volunteer duty, and Indians in war-dress and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms, and all — it was rather a gay assemblage. I remembered the de- scriptions in travellers' books, and looked out for millers and blacksmiths in their working gear, and for rudeness and vulgarity in all. The offer of a mam- moth cheese to the public was likely to attract to the presidental mansion more of the lower class than would throng to a common levee. Great-coats there were, and not a few of them, for the day was raw, and unless they were hung on the palings outside, they must re- main on the owners' shoulders ; but, with a single ex- ception (a fellow with his coat torn down his back, possibly in getting at the cheese), I saw no man in a dress that was not respectable and clean of its kind, and abundantly fit for a tradesman out of his shop. Those who were much pressed by the crowd put their hats on ; but there was a general air of decorum which would surprise any one who had pinned his faith on travellers. An intelligent Englishman, very much inclined to take a disgust to mobocracy, ex- pressed to me great surprise at the decency and proper behavior of the people. The same experiment in England, he thought, would result in as pretty a riot as i paragraph-monger would desire to see. The president was down stairs in the oval reception room, and, though his health would not permit him to stand, he sat in his chair for two or three hours, and received his friends with his usual bland and dignified courtesy. By his side stood the lady of the mansion, dressed in full court costume, and doing the honors of her place with a grace and amenity which every one felt, and which threw a bloom over the hour. Gene- ral Jackson retired, after a while, to his chamber, and the president elect remained to support his relative, and present to her the still thronging multitude, and by four o'clock the guests were gone, and the " ban- quet hall" was deserted. Not to leave a wrong im- pression of the cheese, I dined afterward at a table to which the president had sent a piece of it, and found it of excellent quality. It is like many other things, more agreeable in small quantities. Some eccentric mechanic has presented the presi- dent with a sulkey, made entirely (except the wheels) of rough-cut hickory, with the bark on. It looks rude enough, but has very much the everlasting look of old Hickory himself; and if he could be seen dri- ving a high-stepping, bony old iron-gray steed in it, any passer by would see that there was as much fitness in the whole thing as in the chariot of Bacchus and his reeling leopards. Some curiously-twisted and gnarled branches have been very ingeniously turned into handles and whip-box. and the vehicle is compact and strong. The president has left it to Mr. Van Buren. In very strong contrast to the sulkey, stood close by, the elegant phaeton, made of the wood of the old frigate Constitution. It has a seat for two, with a driver's box, covered with a superb hammercloth, and set up rather high in front; the wheels and body are low. and there are bars for baggage behind ; altogeth- er, for lightness and elegance, it would be a creditable turn out for Long Acre. The material is excessively beautiful — a fine-grained oak, polished to a very high degree, with its colors delicately brought out by a co<n of varnish. The wheels are very slender and light, but strong, and, with all its finish, it looks a vehicle capa- ble of a great deal of service. A portrait of the Con- stitution, under full sail, is painted on the panels. CHAPTER XVI. THE INAUGURATION. While the votes for president were being counted in the senate, Mr. Clay remarked to Mr. Van Buren, with courteous significance : — " It is a cloudy day, sir !" " The sun will shine on the fourth of March!" was the confident reply. True to his augury, the sun shone out of heaven without a cloud on the inaugural morning. The air was cold, but clear and life-giving ; and the broad avenues of Washington for once seemed not too large for the thronging population. The crowds who had been pouring in from every direction for several days before, ransacking the town for but a shelter from the night, were apparent on the spacious sidewalks ; and the old campaigners of the winter seemed but a thin sprinkling among the thousands of new and strange faces. The sun shone alike on the friends and oppo- nents of the new administration, and, as far as one might observe in a walk to the capitol, all were made cheerful alike by its brightness. It was another augury, perhaps, and may foretell a more extended fusion under the light of the luminary new risen. In a whole day passed in a crowd composed of all classes and parties, I heard no remark that the president would have been unwilling to hear. I was at the capitol a half hour before the proces- sion arrived, and had leisure to study a scene for I which I was not at all prepared. The noble starrcase of the east front of the building leaps over three i arches, under one of which carriages pass to the base- ' meut door; and, as you approach from the gate, the 570 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. eye cuts the ascent at right angles, and the sky, broken Dy a small spire at a short distance, is visible beneath. Broad stairs occur at equal distances, with corre- sponding projections ; and from the upper platform rise the outer columns of the portico, with ranges of col- umns three deep extending back to the pilasters. I had often admired this front with its many graceful columns, and its superb flight of stairs, as one of the finest things I had seen in the world. Like the effect of the assembled population of Rome waiting to re- ceive the blessing before the front of St. Peter's, how- ever, the assembled crowd on the steps and at the base of the capitol heightened inconceivably the gran- deur of the design. They were piled up like the people on the temples of Babylon in one of Martin's sublime pictures — every projection covered, and an inexpressible soul and character given by their pres- ence to the architecture. Boys climbed about the bases of the columns, single figures stood on the posts of the surrounding railings in the boldest relief against the sky ; and the whole thing was exactly what Paul Veronese would have delighted to draw. I stood near an accomplished artist who is commissioned to fill one of the panels of the rotunda, and I can not but hope he may have chosen this magnificent scene for his subject. The republican procession, consisting of the presi- dents and their families, escorted by a small volunteer corps, arrived soon after twelve. The General and Mr. Van Buren were in the constitution phaeton, drawn by four grays, and as it entered the gate, they both rode uncovered. Descending from the carriage at the foot of the steps, a passage was made for them through the dense crowd, and the tall white head of the old chieftain, still uncovered, went steadily up through the agitated mass, marked by its peculiarity from all around it. I was in the crowd thronging the opposite side of the court, and lost sight of the principal actors in this imposing drama, till they returned from the senate chamber. A temporary platform had been laid, and railed in on the broad stair which supports the por- tico, and, for all preparation to one of the most impor- tant and most meaning and solemn ceremonies on earth — for the inauguration of a chief magistrate over a republic of fifteen millions of freemen — the whole ad- dition to the open air, and the presence of the people, was a volume of holy writ. In comparing the impres- sive simplicity of this consummation of the wishes of a mighty people, with the tricked-out ceremonial, and hollow show, which embarrass a corresponding event in other lands, it was impossible not to feel that the moral sublime was here — that a transaction so impor- tant, and of such extended and weighty import, could borrow nothing from drapery or decoration, and that the simple presence of the sacred volume, consecrating the act, spoke more thrillingly to the heart than the trumpets of a thousand heralds. The crowd of diplomatists and senators in the rear of the columns made way, and the ex-president and Mr. Van Buren advanced with uncovered heads. A murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass be- low, and the infirm old man, emerged from a sick- chamber, which his physician had thought it impossi- ble he should leave, bowed to the people, and, still uncovered in the cold air, took his seat beneath the portico. Mr. Van Buren then advanced, and with a voice remarkably distinct, and with great dignity, read his address to the people. The air was elastic, and the day still ; and it is supposed that near twenty thou- sand persons heard him from his elevated position dis- tinctly. I stood myself on the outer limit of the crowd, and though I lost occasionally a sentence from the interruption near by, his words came clearly ar- ticulated to my ear. When the address was closed, the chief justice ad- vanced and administered the oath. As the book touched the lips of the new president, there arose a general shout, and expression of feeling common enough in other countries, but drawn with difficulty from an American assemblage. The sons, and the immediate friends of Mr. Van Buren, then closed about him ; the ex-president, the chief justice, and others, gave him the hand of congratulation, and the ceremony was over. They descended the steps, the people gave one more shout as they mounted the con- stitution carriage together, and the procession returned through the avenue, followed by the whole population of Washington. Mr. Van Buren held a levee immediately afterward, but I endeavored in vain to get my foot over the threshold. The crowd was tremendous. At four, the diplomatic body had an audience ; and in replying to the address of Don Angel Calderon, the president astonished the gold coats, by addressing them as the democratic corps. The representatives of the crowned heads of Europe stood rather uneasily under the epithet, till it was suggested that he possibly meant to say diplomatic. CHAPTER XVII. WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. Thkrk is a sagacity acquired by travel on the sub- ject of forage and quarters, which is useful in all other cities in the world where one may happen to be a stranger, but which is as inapplicable to the emergen- cies of an arrival in Washington as waltzing in a ship- wreck. It is a capital whose peculiarities are as much sui generis as those of Venice; but as those who have become wise by a season's experience neither remain on the spot to give warning, nor have recorded thei experiences in a book, the stranger is worse off* in a coach in Washington than in a gondola in the "city of silver streets." It is well known, I believe, that when the future city of Washington was about being laid out, there were two large lot-buyers or land-owners, living two miles apart, each of whom was interested in having the public buildings upon the centre of his own do- main. Like children quarrelling for a sugar horse, the subject of dispute was pulled in two, and one got the head, the other the tail. The capitol stands on a rising ground in solitary grandeur, and the president's house and department buildings two miles off on an- other. The city straddles and stretches between, doing its best to look continuous and compact; but the stranger soon sees that it is, after all, but a "city of magnificent distances," built to please nobody on earth but a hackney-coachman. The new-comer, when asked what hotel he will drive to, thinks himself very safe if he chooses that nearest the capitol — supposing, of course, that, as Washington is purely a legislative metropolis, the most central part will naturally be near the scene of action. He is accordingly set down at Gadsby's, and, at a price that would startle an English nobleman, he engages a pigeon-hole in the seventh heaven of that boundless caravansary. Even at Gadsby's, however, he finds himself over half a mile from the capitol, and wonders, for two or three days, why the deuce the hotel was not built on some of the waste lots at the foot of Capitol hill, an improvement which might have saved him, in rainy weather, at least five dollars a day in hack-hire. Meantime the secretaries and foreign ministers leave their cards, and the party and dinner-giving people shower upon him the " small rain" of pink billets. He sets apart the third or fourth day to return their calls, and inquires the addresses SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 571 of his friends (which they never write on their cards, because, if they did, it would be no guide), and is told it is impossible to direct him, but the hackney-coachmen | all know! He calls the least ferocious-looking of the most bullying and ragged set of tatterdemalions he has ever seen, and delivers himself and his visiting-list into his hands. The first thing is a straight drive two miles away from the capitol. He passes the presi- dent's house, and getting oft' the smooth road, begins j to drive and drag through cross lanes and open lots, , laid out according to no plan that his loose ideas of geometry can comprehend, and finds his friends liv- ing in houses that want nothing of being in the coun- try, but trees, garden, and fences. It looks as if it had j rained naked brick houses upon a waste plain, and each occupant had made a street with reference to his '■ own front door. The much-shaken and more-aston- ' ished victim consumes his morning and his temper, and has made, by dinner-time, but six out of forty calls, all imperatively due, and all scattered far and wide with the same loose and irreconcilable geogra- phy. A fortnight's experience satisfies the stranger that this same journey is worss at night than at morning; and that, as he leaves his dinner which he pays for at home, runs the risk of his neck, passes an hour or two on the road, and ruins himself in hack-hire, it must be a very — yes, a very pleasant dinner-party to compensate him. Consequently, he either sends a *' p. p. c." to all his acquaintances, and lives incog., or, which is a more sensible thing, moves up to the other settlement, and abandons the capitol. Those who live on the other side of the president's house are the secretaries, diplomatists, and a few wealthy citizens. There is no hotel in this quarter, but there are one or two boarding-houses, and (what we have been lucky enough to secure ourselves) fur- nished lodgings, in which you have everything but board. Your dinner is sent you from a French cook's near by, and your servant gets your breakfast — a plan which gives you the advantage of dining at your own hour, choosing your own society, and of having covers for a friend or two whenever it suits your humor, and at half an hour's warning. There are very (ew of these lodgings (which combine many other advantages over a boarding-house), but more of them would be a good speculation to house-owners, and I wish it were suggested, not only here, but in every city in our country. Aside from society, the only amusement in Wash- ington is frequenting the capitol. If one has a great deal of patience and nothing better to do, this is very well ; and it is very well at any rate till one becomes acquainted with the heads of the celebrated men in both the chambers, with the noble architecture of the building, and the routine of business. This done, it is time wearily speut for a spectator. The finer orators seldom speak, or seldom speak warmly, the floor is oftenest occupied by prosing and very sensible gentle- men, whose excellent ideas enter the mind more agreeably by the eye than the ear, or, in other words, are better delivered by the newspapers, and there is a great deal of formula and etiquetical sparring which is not even entertaining to the members, and which consumes time " consumedly." Now and then the senate adjourns when some one of the great orators has taken the floor, and you are sure of a great effort the next morning. If you are there in time, and can sit, like Atlas with a world on your back, you may en- joy a front seat and hear oratory, unsurpassed, in my opinion, in the world. The society in Washington, take it all in all, is by many degrees the best in the United States. One is prepared, though I can not conceive why, for the con- trary. We read in books of travels, and we are told by everybody, that the society here is promiscuous, rough, inelegant, and even baibarous. This is an untrue representation, or it has very much changed. There is no city, probably no village in America, where the female society is not refined, cultivated, and elegant. With or without regular advantages, woman attains the refinements and the tact necessary to polite intercourse. No traveller ever ventured to complain of this part of American society. The great deficiency is that of agreeable, highly-cultivated men, whose pur- suits have been elevated, and whose minds are pliable to the grace and changing spirit of conversation. Every man of talents possesses these qualities naturally, and hence the great advantage which Washington en- joys over every other city in our country. None but a shallow observer, or a malicious book-maker, would ever sneer at the exteriors or talk of the ill-breeding of such men as form, in great numbers, the agreeable society of this place — for a man of great talents never could be vulgar; and there is a superiority about most of these which raises them above the petty standard which regulates the outside of a coxcomb. Even compared with the dress and address of men of similar positions and pursuits in Europe, however (members of the house of commons, for example, or of the cham- ber of deputies in France), it is positively the fact that the senators and representatives of the United States have a decided advantage. It is all very well for Mr. Hamilton, and other scribblers whose books must be spiced to go down, to ridicule a Washington soiree for English readers; but if the observation of one who has seen assemblies of legislators and diplomatists in all the countries of Europe may be fairly placed against his and Mrs. Trollope's, 1 may assert, upon my own authority, that they will not find, out of May Fair in England, so well-dressed and dignified a body of men. I have seen as yet no specimen of the rough animal described by them and others as the " western member;" and if David Crockett (whom I was never so fortunate as to see) was of that description, the race must have died with him. It is a tiling 1 have learned since I have been in Washington, to feel a wish that foreigners should see congress in session. We are so humbugged, one way and another, by travellers' lies. I have heard the observation once or twice from strangers since I have been here, and it struck myself on my first arrival, that I had never seen within the same limit before, so many of what may be called "men of mark." You will scarce meet a gentleman on the sidewalk in Washington who would not attract your notice, seen elsewhere, as an individual possess- ing in his eye or general features a certain superiority. Never having seen most of the celebrated speakers of the senate, 1 busied myself for the first day or two in examining the faces that passed me in the street, in the hope of knowing them by the outward stamp which, we are apt to suppose, belongs to greatness. I gave it up at last, simply from the great number I met who might be (for all that features had to do with it) the remarkable men I sought. There is a very simple reason why a congress of the United States should be, as they certainly are, a much more marked body of men than the English house of commons or lords, or the chamber of peers or deputies in France. I refer to the mere means by which, in either case, they come by their honors. In England and France the lords and peers are legislators by hered- itary right, and the members of the commons and deputies from the possession of extensive property or family influence, or some other cause, arguing, in most cases, no great personal talent in the individual. They are legislators, but they are devoted v.iry often much more heartily to other pursuits— hunting or farming, racing, driving, and similar out-ot-door pas- sions common to English gentlemen and lords, or the I corresponding penchants of French peers and deputies 572 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. It is only the few great leaders and orators who devote themselves to politics exclusively. With us every one knows it is quite the contrary. An American politician delivers himself, body and soul, to his pur- suit. He never sleeps, eats, walks, or dreams, but in subservience to his aim. He can not afford to have another passion of any kind till he has reached the point of his ambition — and then it has become a mordent necessity from habit. The consequence is, that no man can be found in an elevated sphere in our country, who has not had occasion for more than ordi- nary talent to arrive there. He inherited nothing of his distinction, and has made himself. Such ordeals leave their marks, and they who have thought, and watched, and struggled, and contended with the pas- sions of men as an American politician inevitably must, can not well escape the traces of such work. It usually elevates the character of the face — it always strongly marks it. A-propos of " men of mark ;" the dress circle of the theatre, at Power's benefit, not long since, was graced by three Indians in full costume — the chief of the Foxes, the chief of the Ioways, and a celebrated war- rior of the latter tribe, called the Sioux-killer. The Fox is an old man of apparently fifty, with a heavy, aquiline nose, a treacherous eye, sharp as an eagle's, and a person rather small in proportion to his head and features. He was "dressed in a bright scarlet blanket, and a crown of feathers, with an eagle's plume, standing erect on the top of his head, all dyed in the same deep hue. His face was painted to match, ex- cept his lips, which looked of a most ghastly sallow, in contrast with his fiery nose, forehead, and cheeks. His tomahawk lay in the hollow of his arm, decked with feathers of the same brilliant color with the rest of his drapery. Next him sat the Sioux-killer, in a dingy blanket, with a crown made of a great quantity of the feathers of a pea-hen, which fell over his face, and concealed his features almost entirely. He is very small, but is famous for his personal feats, having, among other things, walked one hundred and thirty miles in thirty successive hours, and killed three Sioux (hence his name) in one battle with that nation. He is but twenty-three, but very compact and wiry-looking, and his eye glowed through his veil of hen-feathers like a coal of fire. Next to the Sioux-killer sat "White Cloud," the chief of the Ioways. His face was the least warlike of the three, and expressed a good nature and freedom from guile, remarkable in an Indian. He is about twenty-four, has very large features, and a fine, erect person, with broad shoulders and chest. He was painted less than the Fox chief, but of nearly the same color, and carried, in the hollow of his arm, a small, glittering tomahawk, ornamented with blue feathers. His head was encircled by a kind of turban of silver- fringed cloth, with some metallic pendents for earrings, and his blanket, not particularly clean or handsome, was partly open on the breast, and disclosed a calico shirt, which was probably sold to him by a trader in the west. They were all very attentive to the play, but the Fox chief and White Cloud departed from the traditionary dignity of Indians, and laughed a great deal at some of Power's fun. The Sioux-killer sat between them, as motionless and grim as a marble knight on a tomb-stone. The next day I had the pleasure of dining with Mr. Power, who lived at the same hotel with the In- dian delegation ; and while at dinner he received a message from the Ioways, expressing a wish to call on him. We were sitting over our wine when White Cloud and the Sioux-killer came in with their inter- preter. There were several gentlemen present, one of them in the naval undress uniform, whose face the Sioux-killer scrutinized very sharply. They smiled in bowing to Power, but made very grave inclinations to the rest of us. The chief took his seat, assuming a very erect and dignified attitude, which he preserved immoveable during the interview ; but the Sioux-killer drew up his legs, resting them on the round of the chair, and, with his head and body bent forward, seemed to forget himself, and give his undivided atten- tion to the study of Power and his naval friend. Tumblers of champagne were given them, which they drank with great relish, though the Sioux-killer provoked a little ridicule from White Cloud, by cough- ing as he swallowed it. The interpreter was a half- breed between an Indian and a negro, and a most in- telligent fellow. He had been reared in the Ioway tribe, but had been among the whites a great deal for the last few years, and had picked up English very fairly. He told us that White Cloud was the son of old White Cloud, who died three years since, and that the young chief had acquired entire command over the tribe by his mildness and dignity. He had paid the debts of the Ioways to the traders, very much against the will of the tribe; but he commenced by declaring firmly that he would be just, and had carried his point. He had come to Washington to receive a great deal of money from the sale of the lands of the tribe, and the distribution of it lay entirely in his own power. Only one old warrior had ventured to rise in council and object to his measures; but when White Cloud spoke, he had dropped his head on his bosom and submitted. This information and that which followed was given in English, of which neither of the Ioways understood a word. Mr. Power expressed a surprise that the Sioux- killer should have known him in his citizen's dress. The interpreter translated it, and the Indian said in answer: — " The dress is very different, but when I see a man's eye I know him again." He then told Power that he wished, in the theatre, to raise his war-cry and help him fight the three bad- looking men who were his enemies (referring to the three bailiffs in the scene in Paddy Carey). Power asked what part of the play he liked best. He said that part where he seized the girl in his arms and ran off the stage with her (at the close of an Irish jig in the same play). The interpreter informed us that this was the first time the Sioux-killer had come among the whites. He had disliked them always till now, but he said he had seen enough to keep him telling tales all the rest of his life. Power offered them cigars, which they refused. We expressed our surprise ; and the Sioux- killer said that the Indians who smoked gave out soonest in the chase ; and White Cloud added, very gravely, that the young women of his tribe did not like the breaths of the smokers. In answer to an in- quiry I made about the comparative size of Indians and white men, the chief said that the old men of the whites were larger than old Indians, but the young whites were not so tall and straight as the youths of his tribe. We were struck with the smallness of the chief's hands and feet ; but he seemed very much mortified when the interpreter translated our remark to him. He turned the little sallow fingers over and over, and said that old White Cloud, his father, who had been a great warrior, had small hands like his. The young chief, we were told by the interpreter, has never yet been in an engagement, and is always spared from the heavier fatigues undergone by the rest of the tribe. They showed great good nature in allowing us to look at their ornaments, tomahawks, &c. White ; Cloud wore a collar of bear's claws, which marked i him for a chief; and the Sioux-killer carried a great ; cluster of brass bells on the end of his tomahawk, of I which he explained the use very energetically. It ! was to shake when he stood over his fallen enemy in SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 573 he fi^ht, to let the tribe know he had killed him. After another tumbler of champagne each, they rose to take their leave, and White Cloud gave us his hand gently, with a friendly nod. We were all amused, however, with the Sioux-killer's more characteristic adieu. He looked us in the eye like a hawk, and gave us each a <*rip of his iron fist, that made the blood tingle under our nails. He would be an awkward customer in a fight, or his fixed lips and keen eye very much belie him. CHA*PTER XVIII. WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION. The leaf that is lodged in some sunny dell, after drifting on the whirlwind — the Indian's canoe, after it has shot the rapids — the drop of water that has strug- gled out from the Phlegethon of Niagara, and sleeps on the tranquil bosom of Ontario — are faint images of contrast and repose, compared with a Washingtoni- an after the session. I have read somewhere, in an oriental tale, that a lover, having agreed to share his life with his dying mistress, took her place in the grave six months in the year. In Bagdad it might have been a sacrifice. In Washington I could con- ceive such an arrangement to make very little dif- ference. Nothing is done leisurely in our country ; and, by the haste with which everybody rushes to the rail- road the morning after the rising of congress, you would fancy that the cars, like Cinderella's coach, would be changed into pumpkins at the stroke of twelve. The town was evacuated in a day. On the fifth of March a placard was sent back by the inn- keepers at Baltimore, declaring that there was not so much as a garret to be had in that city, and imploring gentlemen and ladies to remain quietly at Washington for twenty-four hours. The railroad engine, twice a day. tugged and puffed away through the hills, draw- ing after it, on its sinuous course, a train of brick-color- ed cars, that resembled the fabulous red dragon trailing its slimy length through the valley of Crete. The gentlemen who sit by the fire in the bar-room at Gadsby's. like Theodore Hook's secretary, who could hear his master write " Yours faithfully" in the next | room, learned to distinguish " Received payment" j from " Sundries," by listening to the ceaseless scratch ! of the bookkeeper. The ticket-office at the depot j was a scene of struggle and confusion between those ! who wanted places ; while, looking their last on these vanishing paymasters, stood hundreds of tatterdema- \ lions, white, yellow, and black, with their hands in j their pockets, and (if sincere regret at their departure could have wrung it forth) a tear in their eye. The i bell rang, and the six hundred departures flocked to their places — young ladies, with long faces, leaving the delights of Washington for the dull repose of the \ country — their lovers, with longer faces, trying, in vain, I to solve the X quantity expressed by the aforesaid " Sundries" in their bill — and members of congress I with long faces, too — for not one in twenty has " made the impression" he expected ; and he is moralizing on the decline of the taste for eloquence, and on the < want of " golden opportunity" for the display of indig- nant virtue! Nothing but an army, or such a concourse of people as collects to witness an inauguration, could ever make Washington look populous. But when congress, and its train of ten thousand casual visiters are gone, and only the official and indigenous inhabitants remain, Balbec, or Palmyra, with a dozen Arabs scattered among its ruins, has less a look of desolation. The few stragglers in the streets add to its loneliness — pro- ducing exactly the effect sometimes given to a wood- land solitude by the presence of a single bird. The vast streets seem grown vaster and more dispropor- tionate — the houses seem straggling to greater distan- ces — the walk from the presidents house to the capitol seems twice as long — and new faces are seen here and there, at the doors and windows — for cooks and inn- keepers that had never time to lounge, lounge nov/, and their families take quiet possession of the unrented front parlor. He who would be reminded of his de- parted friends should walk down on the avenue. The carpet, associated with so many pleasant recollections — which has been pressed by the dainty feet of wits and beauties — to tread on which was a privilege and a delight — is displayed on a heap of old furniture, and while its sacred defects are rudely scanned by the curi- ous, is knocked down, with all its memories, under the hammer of the auctioneer. Tables, chairs, ottomans — all linked with the same glowing recollections— go for most unworthy prices ; and while, humiliated with the sight, you wonder at the artificial value given to things by their possessors, you begin to wonder wheth- er your friends themselves, subjected to the same searching valuation, would not be depreciated too! Ten to one, if their characters were displayed like their carpets, there would come to light defects as un- suspected ! The person to whom this desolation is the »« un- kindest cut" is the hackney-coachman. "His voca- tion" is emphatically gone ! Gone is the dollar made every successive half hour! Gone is the pleasant sum in compound addition, done "in the head," while wait- ing at the doors of the public offices! Gone are the short, but profitable, trips to the theatre ! Gone the four or five families, all taken the same evening to par- ties, and each paying the item of" carriage from nine till twelve !" Gone the absorbed politician, who would rather give the five-dollar bill than wait for his change ! the lady who sends the driver to be paid at "the bar;" the uplifted fingers, hither and thither, which embar- rass his choice of a fare — gone, all! The chop-fallen coachy drives to the stand in the morning and drives home at noon; he creeps up to Fuller's at a snail- pace, and, in very mockery of hope, asks the home- ward-bound clerk from the department if he wants a coach! Night comes on, and his horses begin to be- lieve in the millenium — and the cobwebs are wove over his whip-socket. These changes, however, affect not unpleasantly the diplomatic and official colony extending westward from the president's. The inhabitants of this thin-sprinkled settlement are away from the great thoroughfare, and do not miss its crowds. The cessation of parties is to them a relief from night-journeys, colds, card-leavings, and much wear and tear of carriage-horses. They live now in dressing-gowns and slippers, read the re- views and the French papers, get their dinners com- fortably from the restaurateurs, and thank Heaven that the capitol is locked up. The attaches grow fat, and the despatches grow thin. There are several reasons why Washington, till the month of May, spite of all the drawbacks in the pic- ture delineated above, is a more agreeable residence than the northern cities. In the first place, its climate is at least a month earlier than that of New York, and, in the spring, is delightful. The trees are at this mo- ment (the last week in March) bursting into buds; open carriages are everywhere in use ; walking in the i sun is oppressive ; and for the last fortnight, this has ! been a fair chronicle of the weather. Boston and I New York have been corroded with east winds, mean- i time, and even so near as Baltimore, they are still I wrapped in cloaks and shawls. To those who, in I reckoning the comforts of life, agree with me in making j climate stand for nine tenths, this is powerful attrac- ' tion. 574 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. Then the country about Washington, the drives and rides, are among the most lovely in the world, the banks of Rock creek are a little wilderness of beauty. More bright waters, more secluded bridle- paths, more sunny and sheltered hill-sides, or finer mingling of rock, hill, and valley, I never rode among. Within a half hour's gallop, you have a sylvan retreat of every variety of beauty, and in almost any direction ; and from this you come home (and this is not the case with most sylvan rides) to an excellent French dinner and agreeable society, if you like it. You have all the seclusion of a rural town, and none of its petty politics and scandal — all the means and appliances of a large metropolis, and none of its exactions and lim- itations. That which makes the charm of a city, and that for which we seek the country, are equally here, and the penalties of both are removed. Until the reflux of population from the Rocky mountains, I suppose Washington will never be a me- tropolis of residence. But if it were an object with the inhabitants to make it more so, the advantages I have just enumerated, and a little outlay of capital and enterprise, would certainly, in some degree, effect it. People especially who come from Europe, or have been accustomed to foreign modes of living, would be glad to live near a society composed of such attractive materials as the official and diplomatic persons at the seat of government. That which keeps them away is, principally, want of accommodation, and, in a less de- gree, it is want of comfortable accommodation in the other cities which drives them back to Europe. In Washington you must either live at an hotel or a boarding-house. In either case, the mode of life is only endurable for the shortest possible period, and the moment congress rises, every sufferer in these de- testable places is off for relief. The hotels are crowd- ed to suffocation ; there is an utter want of privacy in the arrangement of the suites of apartments ; the ser- vice is ill-ordered, and the prices out of all sense or reason. You pay for that which you have not, and you can not get by paying for it that which you want. The boarding-house system is worse yet. To pos- sess but one room in privacy, and that opening on a common passage; to be obliged to come to meals at certain hours, with chance table companions, and no place for a friend, and to live entirely in your bedroom or in a public parlor, may truly be called as abominable a routine as a gentleman could well suffer. Yet the great majority of those who come to Washington are in one or the other of these two categories. The use of lodgings for strangers or transient resi- dents in the city does not, after all the descriptions in books, seem at all understood in our country. This is what Washington^wants, but it is what every city in the country wants generally. Let us describe it as if it was never before heard of, and perhaps some en- lightened speculator may advance us half a century in some of the cities, by creating this luxury. Lodgings of the ordinary kind in Europe generally consist of the apartments on one floor. The house, we will suppose, consists of three stories above the basement, and each floor contains a parlor, bedroom, and dressing-room, with a small antechamber. (This arrangement of rooms varies, of course, and a larger family occupies two floors.) These three suites of apartments are neatly furnished; bed-clothes, table- linen, and plate, if required, are found by the proprie- tor, and in the basement story usually lives a man and his wife, who attend to the service of the lodgers ; i. e., bring water, answer the door-bell, take in letters, keep the rooms in order, make the fires, and, if it is wished, do any little cookery in case of sickness. These people are paid by the proprietor, but receive a fee for extra service, and a small gratuity, at departure, from the lodger. It should be added to this, that it is not infra, dig. to live in the second or third story. In connexion with lodgings, there must be of course a cook or restaurateur within a quarter of a mile. The stranger agrees with him for his dinner, to consist of so many dishes, and to be sent to him at a certain hour. He gives notice in the morning if he dines out buys his own wine of the wine-merchant, and thus saves two heavy items of overcharge in the hotel or boarding-house. His own servant makes his tea or coffee (and for this purpose has access to the fire in the basement), and does all personal service, such as brushing clothes, waiting at table, going on errands, &c, &c. The stranger comes in, in short, at a mo- ment's warning, brings nothing but his servant and baggage, and finds himself in five minutes at home, his apartments private, and every comfort and con- venience as completely about him as if he had lived there for years. At from ten to fourteen dollars a week, such apart- ments would pay the proprietor handsomely, and af- ford a reasonable luxury to the lodger. A cook would make a good thing of sending in a plain dinner for a dollar a head (or more if the dinner were more expen- sive), and at this rate, a family of two or more persons might have a hundred times the comfort now enjoyed at hotels, at certainly half the cost. We have been seduced into a very unsentimental chapter of "ways and means," but we trust the sug- gestions, though containing nothing new, may not be altogether without use. The want of some such thing as we have recommended is daily and hourly felt and complained of. THE FOUR RIVERS. THE HUDSON — TnE MOHAWK THE CHENANGO — THE SUSQTJEHANNAH. Some observer of nature offered a considerable re- ward for two blades of striped grass exactly similar. The infinite diversity, of which this is one instance, exists in a thousand other features of nature, but in none more strikingly than in the scenery of rivers. What two in the world are alike ! How often does the attempt fail to compare the Hudson with the Rhine — the two, perhaps, among celebrated rivers, which are the nearest to a resemblance ? Yet looking at the first determination of a river's course, and the natural operation of its search for the sea, one would suppose that, in a thousand features, their valleys would scarce be distinguishable. I think, of all excitements in the world, that of the first discovery and explanation of a noble river, must be the most eager and enjoyable. Fancy " the bold Englishman," as the Dutch called Hendrich Hudson, steering his little yacht, the Halve-Mane, for the first time through the Highlands ! Imagine his anxiety for the channel forgotten as he gazed up at the tower- ing rocks, and round upon the green shores, and on- ward, past point and opening bend, miles away into the heart of the country; yet with no lessening of the glorious stream beneath him, and no decrease of promise in the bold and luxuriant shores ! Picture him lying at anchor below Newburgh, with the dark pass of the " Wey-Gat" frowning behind him, the lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the hill-sides around covered with the red lords of the soil, exhibit- ing only less wonder than friendliness. And how beautifully was the assurance of welcome expressed, when the "very kind old man" brought a bunch of arrows, and broke them before the stranger, to induce him to partake fearlessly of his hospitality! SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 575 The qualities of the Hudson are those most likely to impress a stranger. It chances felicitously that the traveller's first entrance beyond the sea-board is usually made by the steamer to Albany The grand and im ies of rock and horizon answer to his an- ticipations of the magnificence of a new world ; and if he finds smaller rivers and softer scenery beyond, it strikes him but as a slighter lineament of a more en- larged design. To the great majority of tastes, this, toot is the scenery to live among. The stronger lines of natural beauty affect most tastes ; and there are few who would select country residence by beauty at all, who would not sacrifice something to their prefer- , ence for the neighborhood of sublime scenery. The quiet, the merely rural— a thread of a rivulet instead of a broad river— a small and secluded valley, rather than a wide extent of view, bounded by bold moun- tains, is the choice of but few. The Hudson, there- fore, stands usually foremost in men's aspirations for escape from the turmoil of cities; but to my taste, though there are none more desirable to see, there are sweeter rivers to live upon. I made one of a party, very lately, bound upon a rambling excursion up and down some of the river- courses of New York. We had anticipated empty boats, and an absence of all the gay company usually found radiating from the city in June, and had made up our minds for once to be contented with the study of inanimate nature. Never were wiseheads more mistaken. Our kind friend, Captain Dean, of the j Stevens, stood by his plank when we arrived, doing his | best to save the lives of the female portion of the crowd rushing on board ; and never, in the most palmy ; days of the prosperity of our country, have we seen a j greater number of people on board a boat, nor a strong- j er expression of that busy and thriving haste, which is thought to be an exponent of national industry. How those varlets of newsboys contrive to escape in time, or escape at all, from being crushed or carried off; how everybody's baggage gets on board, and everybody's wife and child ; how the hawsers are | slipped, and the boat got under way, in such a crowd and such a crush, are matters understood, I suppose, by Providence and the captain of the Stevens — but they are beyond the comprehension of the passenger. Having got out of hearing of "fere's the Star !" "Buy the old major's paper, sir?" "Here's the Ex- press !" " Buy the New-En/ ?" " Would you like a New-Era, sir ?" " Take a Sun, miss ?" and a hun- dred such deafening cties, to which New York has of late years become subject, we drew breath and com- parative silence off the green shore of Hoboken, thank- ing Heaven for even the repose of a steamboat, after the babel of a metropolis. Stillness, like all other things, is relative. The passage of the Hudson is doomed to be be-writ- ten, and we will not again swell its great multitude of describers. Bound onward, we but gave a glance, in passing, to romantic Undercliffand Cro'-Nest, hallow- ed by the sweetest poetry our country has yet com- mitted to immortality ; gave our malison to the black smoke of iron-works defacing the green mantle of nature, and our benison to every dweller on the shore who has painted his fence white, and smoothed his lawn to the river ; and sooner than we used to do by some five or six hours (ere railroads had supplanted the ploughing and crawling coaches to Schenectady), we fed our eyes on the slumbering and broad valley of the Mohawk. How startled must be the Naiad of this lovely river to find her willowy form embraced between railroad and canal ! one intruder on either side of the bed so sacredly overshaded ! Pity but there were a new knight of La Mancha to avenge the hamadryads and water-nymphs of their wrongs from wood-cutters and contractors ! Where sleep Pan and vengeful Oread, when a Yankee settler hews me down twenty wood- nymphs of a morning ! There lie their bodies, limb- less trunks, on the banks of the Mohawk, yet no Dutch- man stands sprouting into leaves near by, nor woollen jacket turning into bark, as in the retributive olden time! We are abandoned of these gods of Arcady ! They like not the smoke of steam funnels ! Talking of smoke reminds me of ashes. Is there no way of frequenting railroads without the loss of one's eyes. Must one pay for velocity as dearly as Cacus for his oxen ? Really this new invention is .1 blessing — to the oculists ! Ten thousand small crystals of carbon cutting right and left among the fine vessels and delicate membranes of the eye, and all this amid glorious scenery, where to go bandaged (as needs must), is to slight the master-work of nature ! Either run your railroads away from the river courses, gentle- men contractors, or find some other place than your passengers' eyes to bestow your waste ashes ! I have heard of " lies in smiles," but there's a lye in tears, that touches the sensibilities more nearly ! There is a drowsy beauty in these German flats that seems strangely profaned by a smoky monster whisk- ing along twenty miles in the hour. The gentle canal- boat was more homogeneous to the scene. The hills lay off from the river in easy and sleepy curves, and the amber Mohawk creeps down over its shallow gravel with a deliberateness altogether and abominably out of tune with the iron rails. Perhaps it is the rails out of tune with the river — but any way there is a discord. I am content to see the Mohawk, canal, and railroad inclusive, but once a year. We reached the head waters of the Chenango river, by what Miss Martineau celebrates as an " exclusive extra," in an afternoon's ride from Utica. The latter thrifty and hospitable town was as redolent of red bricks and sunshine as usual ; and the streets, to my regret, had grown no narrower. They who laid out the future legislative capital of New York, must have been lovers of winter's wind and summer's sun. They forgot the troubles of the near-sighted— (it requires spectacles to read the signs or see the shops from one side to the other); they forgot the perils of old women and children in the wide crossings ; they forgot the pleasures of shelter and shade, of neighborly vis-a-vis, of comfortable-lookingness. I maintain that Utica is ■not a comfortable-looking town. ]t affects me like the clown in the pantomime, when he sits down without bending his legs— by mere straddling. I would not say anything so ungracious if it were not to suggest a remedy— a shady mall upand down the middle ! What a beautiful town it would be — like an old-fashioned shirt bosom, with a frill of elms! Your children would walk safely within the rails, and your country- neighbors would expose their " sa'ace," and cool their tired oxen in the shade. We felt ourselves compen- sated for paying nearly double price for our " extra," by the remarkable alacrity with which the coach came to the door after the bargain was concluded, and the politeness with which the " gentleman who made out the way-bill," acceded to our stipulation. He bowed us off, expressed his happiness to serve us, and away we went. The Chenango, one of the largest tributaries to the Susquehannah, began to show itself, like a small brook, some fifteen or twenty miles from Utica. Its course lay directly south— and the new canal kept along its bank, as deserted, but a thousand times less beautiful in its loneliness than the river, whose rambling curves it seemed made to straighten. We were not in the best humor, for our double-priced » extra" turned out to be the regular stage ; and while we were delivering and waiting for mails, and taking in passengers, the troop of idlers at tavern-doors amused themselves with reading the imaginative production called our "extra way-bill," as it was transferred, with a sagacious wink. 576 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. from one driver's hat to the other. I thought of Paddy's sedan-chair, with the bottom out. "If it were not for the name of the thing," said he, as he trotted along with a box over his head. I say we were not in the best of humors with our prompt and polite friend at Utica, but even through these bilious spectacles, the Chenango was beautiful. Its valley is wide and wild, and the reaches of the capricious stream through the farms and woods along which it loiters, were among the prettiest effects of water scenery I have ever met. There is a strange loneliness about it ; and the small towns which were sprinkled along the hundred miles of its course, seem rather the poineers into a western wilderness, than settlements so near the great thoroughfare to the lakes. It is a delicious valley to travel through, barring "corduroy." Tre-men-dous ! exclaims the traveller, as the coach drops into a pit between two logs, and surges up again — Heaven only knows how. And, as my fellow-passenger remarked, it is a wonder the road does not echo — '• iree-mcnd-us .'" Five miles before reaching the Susquehannah, the road began to mend, the hills and valleys assumed the smile of cultivation, and the scenery before us took a bolder and broader outline. The Chenango came down full and sunny to her junction, like the bride, who is most lovely when just losing her virgin name, and pouring the wealth of her whole existence into the bosom of another; and, untroubled with his new burden, the lordly Susquehannah kept on his majestic way, a type of such vainly-dreaded, but easily-borne responsibilities. At Binghamton, we turned our course down the Susquehannah. This delicious word, in the Indian tongue, describes its peculiar and constant windings, and I venture to say that on no river in the world are the grand and beautiful in scenery so gloriously mixed. The road to Owego follows the course of the valley rather than of the river, but the silver curves are con- stantly in view; and, from every slight elevation, the majestic windings are seen — like the wanderings of a vein, gleaming through green fringes of trees, and circling the bright islands which occasionally divide their waters. It is a swift river, and singularly living and joyous in its expression. At Owego there is a remarkable combination of bold scenery and habitable plain. One of those small, bright rivers, which are called "creeks" in this coun- try, comes in with its valley at right angles, to the vale and stream of the Susquehannah, forming a star with three rays, or a plain with three radiating valleys, or a city (in the future, perhaps), with three magnificent exits and entrances. The angle is a round mountain, some four or five hundred feet in height, which kneels fairly down at the meeting of the two streams, while another round mountain, of an easy acclivity, lifts gracefully from the opposite bank, as if rising from the same act of homage to Nature. Below the town and above it, the mountains, for the first time, give in to the exact shape of the river's short and capricious course ; and the plain on which the town stands, is enclosed between two amphitheatres of lofty hills, shaped with the regularity and even edge of a coliseum, and resembling the two halves of a leaf-lined vase, struck apart by a twisted wand of silver. Owego creek should have a .prettier name — for its small vale is the soul and essence of loveliness. A meadow of a mile in breadth, fertile, soft, and sprink- led with stately trees, furnishes a bed for its swift windings ; and from the edge of this new tempe, on the southern side, rise three steppes, or natural ter- races, over the highest of which the forest rears its head, and looks in upon the meeting of the rivers, while down the sides, terrace by terrace, leap the small streamlets from the mountain-springs, forming each again its own smaller dimple in this loveliest face of Nature. There are more romantic, wilder places than this in the world, but none on earth more habitably beauti- ful. In these broad valleys, where the grain-fields, and the meadows, and the sunny farms, are walled in by glorious mountain sides, not obtrusively near, yet by their noble and wondrous outlines, giving a per- petual refreshment, and an hourly-changing feast to J the eye — in these valleys, a man's household gods j yearn for an altar. Here are mountains that, to look on but once, "become a feeling" — a river at whose grandeur to marvel — and a hundred streamlets to lace about the heart. Here are fertile fields, nodding with grain ; " a thousand cattle" grazing on the hills — here is assembled together, in one wondrous centre, a spe- cimen of every most loved lineament of Nature. Here would I have a home ! Give me a cottage by one of these shining streamlets — upon one of these terraces, that seem steps to Olympus, and let me ramble over these mountain Aies, while my flowers are growing, and my head silvering in tranquil happiness. He wfcfose Penates would not root ineradicably here, has no heart for a home, nor senses for the glory of Na- ture ! END OF LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. DASHES AT LIFE WITH A FREE PENCIL. PART III; EPHEMERA 37 EPHEMERA. FROM SARATOGA. TO THE JULIA OF SOME YEARS AGO. Augusts, 1843. I have not written to you in your boy's lifetime — that fine lad, a shade taller than yourself, whom T sometimes meet at my tailor's and bootmaker's. I am not very sure, that after the first month (bitter month) of your marriage, I have thought of you for the duration of a revery — fit to be so called. I loved you — lost you — swore your ruin and forgot you — which is love's climax when jilted. And I never ex- pected to think of you again. Beside the astonishment at hearing from me at all, you will be surprised at receiving a letter from me at Saratoga. Here where the stars are, that you swore by — here, where the springs and colonnades, the woodwalks and drives, the sofas and swings, are all coated over with your delicious perjuries, your "pro- tested" protestations, your incalculable bankruptcy of sighs, tears, caresses, promises! Oh, Julia — amis, retiens (oi, ma plume! I assure you I had not the slightest idea of ever coming here again in the world — not the slightest ! I had a vow in heaven against it, indeed. While I hated you — before I forgot you, that is to say — I would not have come for your husband's million — (your price, Julia !) I had laid Saratoga away with a great seal, to be reopened in the next star I shall inhabit, and used as a lighthouse of warning. There was one bannister at Congress Hall, particularly — across which we parted nightly — the next object my hand touched after losing the warm pressure of yours — the place I leaned over with a heart under my waistcoat which would have scaled Olympus to be nearer to you, yet was kept back by that mahogany and your "no" — and I will believe that devils may become dolls, and ghosts play around us like the smoke of a cigar, since over that bannister I have thrown my leg and sat thinking of the past without phrensy or emotion ! And none have abetter right than we to laugh now at love's passionate eternities! For we were lovers, Julia — I, as I know, and you, as I believe — and in that entry, when we parted to dream, write, contrive for the blissful morrow — anything but sleep and forget — in that entry and over that bannister were said words of tenderness and devotion, from as deep soundings of two hearts as ever plummet of this world could by possibility fathom. You did love me — monster of untruth and forgetfulness as you have since been bought for — you did lovr. me! And that you can ride in your husband's carriage and grow fat, and that I can come here and make a mock of it, are two comments on love worthy of the common- place-book of Mephistophiles. Fie ou us' II T came to Saratoga as I would look at a coat that i had worn twenty years before — with a sort of vacant I curiosity to see the shell in which I had once figured. j A friend said, "Join me at Saratoga !" and it sounded like, "Come and see where Julia was adorable." I came in a railcar, under a hot sun. and wanted my dinner, and wished myself where Julia, indeed, sat fat in her fauteuil — wished it, for the good wine in the cellar and the French cook in the kitchen. And I did not^ go down to "Congress Hall," the old palais d 1 amour — but in the modern and comfortable parlor of the " United States," sat down by a pretty woman of these days, and chatted about the water-lily in her bosom and the boy she had up stairs — coldly and ev- ery-day-ishly. I had been there six hours, and you had not entered my thoughts. Please to believe that, Julia! But in the evening there was a ball at Congress Hall. And though the old house is unfashionable now, and the lies of love are elsewhere told and lis- tened to, there was a movement among the belles in its favor, and I appended myself to a lady's arm and went boldly. ] say boldly, for it required an effort. The twilight had fallen, and with it had come a mem- ory or two of the Springs in our time. I had seated myself against a pillar of the colonnade of the "Uni- ted States," and looked down toward Congress Hall — and you were under the old vineclad portico, as I should have seen you from the same spot, and with the same eye of fancy, sundry years ago. So it was not quite like a passionless antiquary that I set foot again on that old-time colonnade, and, to say truth, as the band struck up a waltz, I might have had in my lip a momentary quiver, and some dimness in my world-weary eye. But it passed away. The ball was comme ca, and I found sweet women (as where are they not — given, candles and music?) and aired my homage as an old stager may. I danced without thinking of you uncomfortably, though the ten years* washing of that white floor has not quite washed out the memory of your Arab instep with t its embracing and envied sandal, gliding and bound- I ing, oh how airily! For you had feet, absolute in their perfection, dear Julia! — had you not ? But I went out for fresh air on the colonnade, in an evil and forgetful moment. I strolled alone tow- ard the spring. The lamp burned dim, as it used to I burn, tended by Cupid's minions. And on the end of the portico, by the last window of the music-room, : under that overhanging ivy, with stars in sight that I would have sworn to for the very same— sat a lady in ' a dress like yours as I saw you last, and black eyes, like jet lamps framed in velvet, turning indolently tow- | ard me. I held by the railing, for I am superst.tM.us, and it seemed to me that I had only to ask why you were there— for, ghostly or bodily, there I saw you ! Back came your beauty on my memory with yester- 580 EPHEMERA. day's freshness of recollection. Back came into my heart the Julia of my long-accursed adoration! I saw your confiding and bewildering smile, your fine- cut teeth of pearl, your over-bent brow and arch look from under, your lily shoulders, your dimpled hands. You were there, if my senses were sufficient evidence, if presence be anything without touch — bodily there ! Of course it was somebody else, I went in and took a julep. But I write to tell you that for a min- ute — a minute of enormous capacity — I have loved you once more. For one minute, while you probably were buried deep in your frilled pillow — (snoring, per- haps — who knows ?) — for one minute, fleeting and blissful, you have been loved again — with heart, brain, blood, all on fire with truth, tenderness, and passionate adoration — by a man who could have bought you (you know I could!) for half the money you sold for! And I thought you would like to know this, Julia! And now, hating you as before, in your fleshy forget- fulness, Yours not at all. Did it ever strike you how much more French than English we are in many of the qualities, especially the superficies and physiognomy, of our national charac- ter? In dressing, dancing, congregating — in chivalry to women, facility of adaptation to new circumstances, inflammability of excitement, elasticity of recupera- tion from trouble — in complexion and figu« even, how very French! The remark, perhaps, is more particularly true of New York. Where in the world is there such a copy of the sweeter features of the jour de Van at Paris, as to day in the hons-bons shops of Broadway ? Here, as there, ingenuity and art are taxed to their utmost to provide gay and significant presents of confectionary for children and friends, and the shops are museums of curiosities. Everybody has a child or two by the hand ; everybody is abroad, and alive to the spirit and baby-supremacy of the hour; everybody abandons his mouotone of daily life, to strike into the general diapason, a full octave higher, for Christmas. But Christmas has not these superficial features in England. This is the way they keep Christmas in France ; and the French extrava- gance of confectionary is one of the outer indices of the original from which we copy, and points us directly to Paris. Were the language of the three countries the same, we should seem to a traveller's eye, I am inclined to think, much more like a nation of French origin than English. Although our communication with England is much more intimate, we hardly copy anything English except its literature and religion. Our fash- ions in dress, male as well as female, are principally Parisian. The style of cookery in our hotels, and at all private tables of any pretension, is French. Our houses are furnished a la Francaise ; our habits of society, our balls, private concerts, and places of en- tertainment for the idlers about town, are all French. We have a hundred French bootmakers to one Eng- lish. We have a large colony of Americans in Paris engaged in the business of exporting French fabrics, elegancies, and conveniences, for this country, and almost none of the same class in England. In fact, if England is our mother-country, France is the foster-nurse from whom we draw the most of our nourishment, of the tasteful and ornamental order. In the society of New York I think the predomi- nance of Gallicism over Anglicism is still more stri- king. The French language is heard all over a crowded drawing-room ; and with costume entirely, and furniture mainly, French, it is difficult sometimes at a party in this city, not to fancy one's self on the other side of the Atlantic. Frenchmen are quite at home in New York, while no Frenchman is at home in England. And lately the fashion of soirees, begin- ning with music and ending with a dance, another Parisian usage, has followed on the heels of the matinees which I referred to in a previous letter. We certainly have not inherited, with our English blood, the English reluctance to copy even an excellence, if it be French; and it is a curious mark of the differ- ence made in such matters by national antipathy, that, with a separation of only twenty miles from the French coast, the English assimilate not at all, even to the acknowledged superiorities of French life, while we, at a distance of three thousand miles, copy them with the readiness of a contiguous country. There was, of course, a period when every work on the country was English ; and it would be a curious chapter in a historical memoir to trace back our Gal- licism to its incipient point, and give its rise and prog- ress in detail. And, apropos of suggestions, which sometimes travel like the seed in the migrating bird, what an interesting book might be written (and by no man living so admirably and ably as by your corres- pondent, Mr. Walsh) tracing the influences that have spread from our country eastward ; and to what de- gree our institutions, opinions, and discoveries, have affected European countries, and paid back our debt of literature and refinement ! The snow-storm of Wednesday cleared up at night- fall with an old-fashioned frosty and sparkling north- wester. While the south wind was disputing his ground, however, the sun found a chink to creep through, and quietly took to himself the scanty re- mainder of the city's mantle of snow. I chanced to look down upon the Park while the ground was cov- ered, and I wished that the common council might see it with my eyes, for the fountain was playing beau- tifully in a basin of spotless white, which, if exactly imitated in marble, would be better worthy of that radiant column than the mingled mud and greensward that commonly surround it. I have been surprised to notice the complete satiety of public curiosity to this superb object. A column of water, fifty or sixty feet high, is continually playing in the most thronged thoroughfare of the city, and it already attracts as little attention as the trees in the Park, or the liberty- cap on Tammany hall. Seldom a passer-by stops to gaze at it; and I have watched in vain, in my daily stroll through Broadway, for the turning toward it of the refined eyes of shoppers and danglers. I under- stand there is to be another jet in the Bowling-Green, and another on the Battery — though this last will be bringing the rural water-nymph into very close con- tact with the uproarious Neptune. The joy of New York comes to Broadway as color comes with the same impulse to the cheek. The ex- citement of shoving off the old year and helping in the new, was made visible by a pave as thronged on Saturday night at twelve, as it commonly is on a holy- day at noon. Sunday (the superseded first) was pretty gayly infringed upon by sleighing parties ; for even in Broadway the sleighing was tolerable, and, out of town, said to be excellent. To-day is " black Mon- day" for horse-flesh ! Such ringing of sleigh-bells and plunging of runners through the mud-holes, and laughing, and whipping, and hurrying by, is enough to give inexperienced Forty-three a most confused impression of the world he is called upon to govern. It is snowing slightly at this moment, and gives prom- ise of a violent storm by noon. The temperance people have made a strong effort to discountenance, this year, the giving of wine and EPHEMERA. 581 other stimulants to visiters on New Year's day. But there is a much more powerful principle at work in the same cause, or rather in a cause which covers this — the destroying of the custom of New dear's visiting altogether — and that principle is omnipotent fashion. The aristocratic feeling now is against the receiving on that day ; and some of the leading fash- ionables have reduced their observance of the custom to a matter of pasteboard — a servant standing at the door to take in cards. The truth is, the good feeling of the day has been abused of late years. The hilar- ity amounted to a general saturnalia, in which every- body went anywhere and everywhere to drink and shake hands, and exclusiveness was very much of- fended, and so, very often were propriety and deli- cacy — three very implacable members of society ! Once well understood that fashionable people do not receive — -presto! the custom will vanish like a ghost at cock-crowing. If this formidable gun could be brought to bear upon some other things, now ? A score at least of the aristocratic dames in the upper part of Broadway have adopted the fashion of a matinee — receiving visits one morning only in the week. This is rather a usage en prince, but, ambi- i tious as it seems, it is a novelty which common sense might father if it had been disowned by fashion. In the first place, it leaves to those who thus entertain, six mornings in the week, if they please, of excusable j closed doors — a very available privilege for very many important uses. In the second place, it saves much outlay of time consumed in ineffectual attempts to see \ people ; it times your visit when the ladies are in a j dress-humor to receive ! and (last, though perhaps ' least important) the class of gregarious idlers, so fast increasing in our country, are provided with a resource against ennui, which may profitably take the place of j less innocent amusement. It may be put down as an I accidental advantage, also, that ladies may dress very gayly with propriety to pass two or three hours in a reception-room, and, with this compensation, perhaps j our fair countrywomen may be willing to forego that •how mess of street costume which has been so often i objected to. The most becoming toilet (which is undoubtedly that of out-doors, at least to all women I past seventeen) must have its field of display, and this necessity has been amply proved by the fashion pecu- i liar to our country of dressing highly for steamboat- decks and street promenades — the only opportunities for showing the hat and iis accompaniments. In Eng- land, ladies dress plainly in the street, but they dress showily for Hyde park and the opera. In default of a Hyde park and an opera, our persevering country- women have adopted the matinee. Sequitur — Broad- way will be shorn of the genteeler rays of its splen- dor; ladies will heighten the style of their visiting toilets till they can not visit without equipages, and so the aristocracy of money takes another long stride toward exclusiveness and empire. An advertisement of '■'■fifteen Indians and squaws to be seen at the American Museum in their native cos- tume," drew me into this place of popular resort last evening. I found a crowd of five or six hundred peo- ple collected in the upper story, and the performances of a small theatre going on, with the Indians sitting, in full costume, on the stage ; not " native costume," certainly, unless they are born in wampum and feath- ers. There were only nine Indians upon the stage, and several of these seemed to have bad coughs; and I was told that those who were not visible were con- fined to their skins with severe colds and fevers. I am not surprised that these hardy sons of the forest suc- cumb under the delicacies (?) of civilization. They all sleep in one small room in the museum building, their buffalo-skins spread around a stove — heated to an insufferable degree with anthracite coal — and they ascend to the terrace-roof of the house to smoke their pipes, and are regaled with a daily sleigh-ride, changing their temperature continually from ninety to zero. The old chief who " has killed with his own hand one hundred Osages, three Mohawks, two Sioux, and one Pawnee," and " No-chee, or the Man of Fire," are the principal victims to the luxury of anthracite. I saw but one of the squaws, '• Do-hum- me, or the Productive Pumpkin," a handsome and benign looking woman, who was married a few days ago to Cow-kiclc-ke, son of the principal chief of the lowas. The bride and bridegroom sat together, she leaning very affectionately upon her husband ; but I observed that the " Productive Pumpkin" modestly turned her eyes away during the pirouettes of La Petite Celeste, a savage niaiserie which will, of course, wear away with civilization. Still, I could wish that some of the " daughters of the pale faces," in this respect, at least, were more like " Productive Pump- kin." These Indians, I believe, are well authenti- cated as the first people of their important tribes ; and the question arises whether, in becoming a shilling show at the museum, they have entered civilized so- ciety upon a stratum parallel to their own. Is "No- nos-ee, the She-Wolf" (a niece of Blackhawk, and, of course, an Indian princess), on a level, as to rank, with the dancing and singing girls of a museum ? But this question of comparative rank would lead a great way, and, as it stands, it makes a very pretty topic of discussion for your female readers. You will have seen mentioned in the papers the death of the young squaw at the museum. She had been married but six weeks, and was a very beautiful creature. I saw her, a few days ago, at the Park theatre, with a circlet of jewels around her head, and thought her by far the prettiest woman in the house. She was the survivor of the two females of the party, the other squaw having died a few weeks since. The immediate cause of her death was a violent cold, taken in coming home a night or two before from a ball at the Tivoli. The omnibus in which they were returning broke down in Hudson street, and they were obliged to walk a mile through a light snow falling at the time. Their thin moccasins were no protection, and four or five of the Indians were ill the next morn- ing, the bride worst of all. She died in dreadful agony, of congestion of the blood, on the third day, spite of the best medical attendance and every care on the part of the ladies of the neighborhood. The In- dians were all standing around her, and on being told that she was dead, they tore the rings from their ears, and stood for some minutes in silence, with the blood streaming upon their cheeks. Their grief afterward became quite uncontrollable. They washed off all the paint with which they have been so gayly bedecked while here, and painted the dead bride very gaudily for burial. She was interred in the Greenwood ceme- tery. The most passionate affection existed between her and her husband. He is a magnificent fellow, the handsomest Indian we have ever had in the cities, and a happier marriage was never celebrated. She fol- lowed close at his heels wherever he went, and had scarce been separated from him five minutes at a time since her marriage. The poor fellow is an object of great commiseration now, for he seems completely in- consolable. His wife was the idol of the party. They are very impatient to be away since this melancholy event, and will start westward as soon as the sick recover. 582 EPHEMERA. Public opinion, which is notoriously unkind to the misdoings of old men, has at last taken up the matter of— " Winter lingering in the lap of May." There are strong symptoms (in everything but the in- flexible thermometer) that the spring is universally believed to have arrived. A steamboat made its way on Wednesday as far as Poughkeepsie, ploughing up the ice where it was at least eighteen inches thick. People were running out from every side to meet her, and many climbed up her sides while she was making way. Some heavily-laden sleighs were obliged to whip up to get out of her course, and altogether the skirmish between hot and cold water (both a Vou- trance) is said to have been very daringly fought. The " town" is " verdant." The enchanting spring- hats of the ladies are breezily exposed in the plate- glass windows of the milliners. The airy, delicate, daisy-mead patterns for ladies' wear in the transition month make every shop-window like a landscape of May in Arcady ; the men-tailors " turn out for lining to the sun" the light woofs of the " demme !" tribe for the demi-senson ; the Ctoton pipers water the streets ; the small wooden signs hang on every leafless tree in the park, warning you to " keep off the grass;" people are beginning to discuss the resorts of the sultry season ; and, in fact, everything is here but the month itself. The table is set, and the hour and the appe- tite come, but the dinner is not served. " Oh ! ever thus from childhood's hour !" &c. Apropos of Croton water — there has been a great overturn lately of " mill-privileges" in some of the cellars of New York. The authorities have ferreted out, it is said, an incredible quantity of usurped water- power, applied to almost every branch of mechanism, and drawn very quietly from the main "race" down Broadway. One scratches one's head and wonders he never thought of it before, the adaptation seems so simple ; but as the Common Council will hear no argument about "natural privileges" and "backwater," the interloping wheels will easily be stopped turning. As I presume you are interested in the one portion of New York made classic by a foreign pen, let me jot you down a mem. or two from my first visit to Dickens's Hole at the Five Points, made one evening last week with a distinguished party under the charge of the Boz officer. I had had an idea that this celebrated spot was on the eastern limit of the city, at the end of one of the omnibus-routes, and was surprised to find that it was not more than three minutes' walk from Broadway, and in full view from one of the fashionable corners. It lies, indeed, in a lap between Broadway and the Bowery, in what was once a secluded valley of the island of Manhattan, though to believe it ever to have been green or clean, requires a powerful effort of im- agination. We turned into Anthony street at half- past ten, passed " the Tombs," and took the down- ward road, as did Orpheus and Dickens before us. It was a cold night, but women stood at every door with bare heads and shoulders, most of them with some- thing to say, and, by their attitudes, showing a com- plete insensibility to cold. In everything they said, they contrived to bring in the word " shilling." There were very i'ew men to be seen, and those whom we met skulked past as if avoiding observation — possibly ashamed to be there, possibly shrinking from any fur- ther acquaintance with officer Stevens, though neither of these feelings seemed to be shared by the females of the community. A little turn to the left brought us up against what looked to me a blind, tumble-down board fence; but the officer pulled a latch and opened a door, and a flight of steps was disclosed. He went down first and threw open a door at the bottom, let- ting up a blaze of light, and we followed into the grand subterranean Almack's of the Five Points. And really it looked very clean and cheerful. It was a spacious room with a low ceiling, excessively white- washed, nicely sanded, and well lit, and the black pro- prietor and his " ministering spirits" (literally fulfilling their vocation behind a very tidy bar) were well-dress- ed and well-mannered people, and received Mr. Ste- vens and his friends with the politeness of grand chamberlains. We were a little early for the fashion- able hour, the "ladies not having arrived from the theatres;" and, proposing to look in again after making the round of the other resorts, we crept up again to the street. Our next dive was iDto a cellar crowded with ne- groes, eating, drinking, and dancing, one very well made mulatto-girl playing the castinets, and imitating Elssler in what she called the cracoveragain. In their way, these people seemed cheerful, dirty, and com- fortable. We looked in afterward at several drinking- places, thronged with creatures who looked over their shoulders very significantly at the officer; found one or two barrooms kept by women who had preserved the one virtue of neatness (though in every clean place the hostess seemed a terrible virago), and it was then proposed that we should see some of the dor- mitories of this Alsatia. And at this point must end all the cheerfulness of my description. This is called " murdering alley," said our guide. We entered be- tween two high brick walls, with barely room to pass, and by the police-lantern made our way up a broken and filthy staircase, to the first floor of a large building. Under its one roof the officer thought there usually slept a thousand of these wretched outcasts. He knocked at a door on the left. It was opened unwil- lingly by a woman who held a dirty horse-blanket over her breast, but at the sight of the police-lantern she stepped back and let us pass in. The floor was covered with human beings asleep in their rags ; and when called by the officer to look in at a low closet beyond, we could hardly put our feet to the ground, they lay so closely together, black and white, men, women, and children. The doorless apartment be- yond, of the size of a kennel, was occupied by a wo- man and her daughter, and the daughter's child, lying together on the floor, and covered by rags and cloths of no distinguishable color, the rubbish of bones and dirt only displaced by their emaciated limbs. The sight was too sickening to endure, but there was no egress without following close to the lantern. Anoth- er door was opened to the right. It disclosed a low and gloomy apartment, perhaps eight feet square. Six or seven black women lay together in a heap, all sleeping except the one who opened the door. Some- thing stirred in a heap of rags, and one of the party removing a dirty piece of carpet with his cane, dis- covered a newborn child. It belonged to one of the sleepers in the rags, and had had an hour's experience of the tender mercies of this world ! But these de- tails are disgusting, and have gone far enough when they have shown those who have the common com- forts of life how inestimably, by comparison, they are blessed ! For one, I had never before any adequate idea of poverty in cities. I did not dream that hu- man beings, within reach of human aid, could be abandoned to the wretchedness which I there saw— and I have not described the half of it, for the deli- cacy of your readers would not bear it, even in de- scription. And all these horrors of want and aban- donment lie almost within sound of your voice, as EPHEMERA. 583 you pass Broadway ! The officers sometimes make a descent, and carry off swarms to Blackwell's Island — for all the inhabitants of the Five Points are supposed to be criminal and vicious — but still thousands are there, subjects for tears and pity, starving, like rats and dogs, with the sensibilities of human beings ! As we returned we heard screams and fighting on every side, and the officers of the watch were carry- ing off a party to the lock-up-house. We descended once more to the grand ballroom, and found the dance going on very merrily. Several very handsome mu- latto women were in the crowd, and a few "young men about town," mixed up with the blacks; and al- together it was a picture of " amalgamation," such as I had never before seen. I was very glad to get out of the neighborhood, leaving behind me, I am free to confess, all discontent with my earthly allot- ment. One gentleman who was with us left behind him something of more value, having been robbed at Almack's of his keys, pencilcase, and a few dollars, the contents of two or three pockets. I wind up my " notes" with the hope that the true picture I have drawn may touch some moving-spring of benevolence in private societies, or in the Common Council, and that something may be soon done to alleviate the hor- rors of the Five Points. I took a stroll or two while in Boston, and was struck with the contrast of its physiognomy to that of New York. There is a look of staid respectabil- ity and thrift in everything that strikes the eye in Bos- ton. The drays, carts, omnibuses, and public vehicles, are well horsed and appointed, and driven by respect- able-looking men. The people are all clad very warmly and very inelegantly. The face of every pe- destrian in the street has a marked errand in it — gen- tlemen holding their nerves to the screw till they have achieved the object of being out of doors, and ladies undergoing a "constitutional" to carry out a system. There are no individuals in Boston — they are all classes. It is a cohesive and gregarious town, and half a dozen portraits would give you the entire population. Every eye in Boston seems to move in its socket with a check — a fear of meeting something that may offend it — and all heads are carried in a pos- ture of worthy gravity, singularly contagious. It struck me the very loaves in the bakers' windows had a look of virtuous exaction, to be eaten gravely, if at all. New York seems to me to differ from all this, as a dish of rice, boiled to let every grain fall apart, differs from a pot of mush. Every man you meet with in our city walks with his countenance free of any sense of observation or any dread of his neighbor. He has evidently dressed to please himself, and he looks about with an eye wholly at ease. He is an integer in the throng, untroubled with any influence beyond the risks of personal accident. There is neither restraint nor curiosity in his look, and he neither expects to be noticed by the passers-by, nor to see anything worthy of more than half a glance in the persons he meets. The moving sights of the city have all the same inte- gral and stand-alone character. The drays, instead of belonging to a company, are each the property of the man who drives it; the hacks and cabs are under no corporate discipline, every ragged whip doing as he likes with his own vehicle; and all the smaller trades seem followed by individual impulse, respons- ible to nothing but police-law. Boston has the ad- vantage in many things, but a man who has any taste for cosmopolitism would very much prefer New York. Wednesday was a long warm summer's day, with no treachery in it to the close ; and the rivulet of Croton, which ripples round the sidewalk of the park, and goes down the great throat of the drain, seemed giving the dry city to drink. The pavement of Broadway burst into flower. Birds were hung out at the windows ; hyacinths were put out to breathe ; and open casements and doors, lounging footsteps and cheerful voices in the street, all gave sweet token of summer. Thursday was a fine day, too, with a little soupcon of east wind in its blandishments, and the evening set in with a gentle summer rain, welcome as most things are after their opposites, for the dust was a nuisance; and to-day, Friday, it rains mildly and steadily. March made an expiring effort to give us a spring- day yesterday. The morning dawned mild and bright, and there was a voluptuous contralto in the cries of the milkmen and the sweeps, which satisfied me, be- fore I was out of bed, that there was an arrival of a south wind. The Chinese proverb says, "when thou hast a day to be idle, be idle for a day ;" but for that very elusive " time when," I irresistibly substitute the day the wind sweetens after a sour northeaster. Oh, the luxury (or curse, as the case may be!) of break- fasting leisurely with an idle day before one ! I strolled up Broadway between nine and ten, and encountered the morning tide down; and if you never have studied the physiognomy of this great thorough- fare in its various fluxes and refluxes, the differences would amuse you. The clerks and workies have passed down an hour before the nine o'clock tide, and the sidewalk is filled at this time with bankers, brokers, and speculators, bound to Wall street ; old merchants and junior partners, bound to Pearl and Water; and lawyers, young and old, bound for Nassau and Pine. Ah, the faces of care ! The day's operations are working out in their eyes; their hats are pitched for- ward at the angle of a stagecoach with all the load on the driver's seat, their shoulders are raised with the shrug of anxiety, their steps are hurried and short, and mortal face and gait could scarcely express a heavier burden of solicitude than every man seems to bear. They nod to you without a smile, and with a kind of unconscious recognition ; and, if you are un- accustomed to walk out at that hour, you might fancy that, if there were not some great public calamity, your friends, at least, had done smiling on you. Walk as far as Niblo's, stop at the greenhouse there, and breathe an hour in the delicious atmosphere of flowering plants, and then return. There is no longer any particular current in Broadway. Foreigners com- ing out from the cafes, after their late breakfast, and idling up and down, for fresh air; country-people shopping early; ladies going to their dress-makers in close veils and demi-toilets; errand-boys, news-boys, duns, and doctors, make up the .throng. Toward twelve o'clock there is a sprinkling of mechanics go- ing to dinner — a merry, short-jacketed, independent- looking troop, glancing gayly at the women as they pass, and disappearing around corners and up alleys, and an hour later Broadway begins to brighten. The omnibuses go along empty, and at a slow pace, for people would rather walk than ride. The side-streets are tributaries of silks and velvets, flowers and feath- ers, to the great thoroughfare; and ladies, whose proper mates (judging by the dress alone) should be lords and princes, and dandies, shoppers, and loungers of every description, take crowded possession of the pave. At nine o'clock you look into the troubled faces of men going to their business, and ask your- self " to what end is all this burden of care?" and at two, you gaze on the universal prodigality of exterior, and wonder what fills the multitude of pockets that pay for it! The faces are beautiful, the shops are thronged, the sidewalks crowded far an hour, and 584 EPHEMERA. then the full tide turns, and sets upward. The most of those who are out at three are bound to the upper part of the city to dine; and the merchants and law- yers, excited by collision and contest above the de- pression of care, join, smiling, in the throng. The physiognomy of the crowd is at its brightest. Din- ner is the smile of the day to most people, and the hour approaches. Whatever has happened in stocks or politics, whoever is dead, whoever ruined since morning, Broadway is thronged with cheerful faces and good appetites at three ! The world will prob- ably dine with pleasure up to the last day — perhaps breakfast with worldly care for the future on dooms- day morning ! And here I must break off my Da- guerreotype of yesterday's idling, for the wiud came round easterly and raw at three o'clock, and I was driven in-doors to try industry as an opiate. The first day of freedom from medical embargo is equivalent, in most men's memories, to a new first im- pression of existence. Dame Nature, like a provident housewife, seems to take the opportunity of a sick man's absence to whitewash and freshen the world he occupies. Certainly, I never saw the bay of New York look so beautiful as on Sunday noon; and you may attribute as much as you please of this impres- sion to the "Claude Lorraine spectacles" of conva- lescence, and as much more as pleases you to the fact that it was an intoxicating and dissolving day of spring. The Battery on Sunday is the Champs-Elysees of foreigners. I heard nothing spoken around me but French and German. Wrapped in my cloak and seated on a bench, I watched the children and the poodle-dogs at their gambols, and it seemed to me as if I were in some public resort over the water. They bring such happiness to a day of idleness — these for- eigners — laughing, talking nonsense, totally uncon- scious of observation, and delighted as much with the passing of a rowboat, or a steamer, as an American with the arrival of his own " argosy" from sea. They are not the better class of foreigners who frequent the Battery on Sunday. They are the newly-arrived, the artisans, the German toymakers and the French boot- makers — people who still wear the spacious-hipped trousers and scant coats, the gold rings in the ears, and the ruffled shirts of the lands of undandyfied poverty. They are there by hundreds. They hang over the railing and look off upon the sea. They sit and smoke on the long benches. They run hither and thither with their children, and behave as they would in their own garden, using and enjoying it just as if it were their own. And an enviable power they have of it ! There had been a heavy fog on the water all the morning, and quite a fleet of the river-craft had drift- ed with the tide close on to the Battery. The soft south wind was lifting the mist in undulating sweeps, and covering and disclosing the spars and sails with a phantom effect quite melo-dramatic. By two o'clock the breeze was steady and the bay clear, and the ho- rizon was completely concealed with the spread of can- vass. The grass in the Battery plots seemed to be growing visibly meantime, and to this animated sea- picture gave a foreground of tender and sparkling green ; the trees look feathery with the opening buds; the children rolled on the grass, and the summer seemed come. Much as Nature loves the country, she opens her green lap first in the cities. The val- leys are asleep under the snow, and will be for weeks. 1 think I may safely announce to you the opening of a new channel for literature. Mr. Stetson, mine host of the Astor,asyou are aware, is a man of genius, whose advent, like Napoleon's, was the answer to a demand in the national character. The peculiarly American passion for life in hotels, and the mammoth size to which these luxurious caravansaries have grown, demanded some mind capable of systematizing and generalizing, and of bringing these Napoleonic qualities to bear upon the confused details of comfort and comestibles. I need not enlarge upon the well-known military disci- pline of the Johns and Thomases at the Astor, as most of your readers have witnessed their matutinal drill, and seen the simultaneous apparition of the smoking joints, when the hundred and ten covers have been whisked off by the word of command, like the heads of so many Paynim knights decapitated in their hel- mets. It has been reserved for this epoch to take and digest beef and pudding by platoon, in martinet obe- dience to a controlling spirit in white apron and car- ving-knife ; but, as I said before, it was the exigency of the era, and the historian who records the national trait will emblazon the name of Stetson as its interpre- ter and moulding genius. I am wandering a little from my design, however, which was simply to make an admiring comment on the tact and adaptation of Mr. Stetson, and to show how such minds open the doors to important changes and innovations. Mr. Stetson's observing eye had long since detected, that, if there was any point in which his table d'hote suf- fered by comparison with private and princely ban- quets, it was in the poverty of conversation and the absence of general hilarity. This, of course, was ow- ing partly to the temperance reform, but more partic- ularly to the want of topics common to the guests, the persons meeting there being but slightly acquaint- ed. Music would have furnished a good diapason for ! harmonizing the animal spirits of the company, but this was too expensive; and the first tentative to the present experiment was the introduction of a very fa- cetious wine list on the back of the carte. When people no longer smiled at " Wedding Wine," " Wan- ton Madeira, exceedingly delicate," &c, the French carte was suddenly turned into English (explaining many a sphinx riddle to faithful believers in the cook), and a postscript was added, containing a list of the times of arrival and departure of the mails, and information relative to steamboats and railroads. And with the spring, I understand, this is to be extended into a " Daily Prandial Gazette," and a copy to be furnished to each guest with the soup, containing the arrivals of the day at the hotel, the range of the thermometer, the prospect of rain, " burstings-up" in Wall street, and general advice as to the use of the castors — the whole adapted to the meridian of a table d'hote, and the ascertained demand of subjects for conversation. In this improvement your prophetic eye will see, probably, a new field for the ambition of authors (the addition of one poem per diem, for example, coming quite within the capacity of such a gazette), and, if I might venture to saddle Mr. Stetson with advice, I should recommend that it be confined as long as pos- sible to the debuts of young poets, the genial criticism with which they would be read at such time and place being an " aching void" in their present destiny. The City Hotel re-opens to-morrow under the care of the omni-recognisant Willard and his partner of the olden time. The building has been entirely re- freshed, refitted, and refurnished, and I am told that in comfort and luxury it far exceeds any hotel in this country. The advances in the commodiousness and elegance of these public houses, their economy com- pared with housekeeping, and the difficulty of ob taining tolerable servants, combine to make an inroad upon the Lares and Penates of the metropolis, which EPHEMERA. 585 may have an influence upon national character at least worth the noting. Hundreds of persons who, up to these disastrous times, have nursed their domestic virtues in the privacy of their own firesides, are now living at these gregarious palaces, passing their even- U>g* in such society as chance brings together, and | subjecting their children to such influences of body j and mind as belong more properly to a community of ! Owen. Other more obvious objections aside, these ! collections of families are not the most harmonious communities in the world, and the histories of the conflicting dignities and jostling interests of these huddled masses will yet furnish most amusing mate- rial to some future Pickwickian writer. The ladies of the Carlton have lately sent in a remonstrance against the admission of errandless bachelors into their privileged drawing-room, and the brawls of the Gu- elphs and Ghibellines are but a faint type of the con- tentions in the ladies' wing of the Astor for places at table, &cc, &c. I should like to have the opinion of some such generalizing mind as Dr. Channing's or Mr. Adams's as to whether the peculiar gregarious- ness of Americans is a crudity of national character which will refine away, or is only a kind of bolder crystallization characteristic of the freer nuclei of our institutions. Channing long ago fastened the re- proach upon us of having weaker domestic ties than the nations of Europe, though he did not see in it a possible adaptation of Providence to the wants of a wide country waiting for emigrants from families easily dismembered ; and it would not require much ingenuity, perhaps, to find a special Providence in the fact commented on above. But this is getting to be a seriuon. Since commencing this letter, 1 have taken a stroll up Broadway, and looked in at the City hotel. Wil- lard was in his place behind the bar, a little fatter than of old, and somewhat gray with cabbage-growing, but his wonderful memory of names and (aces seemed in full vigor ; and, what with the tone of voice, the dexterity of furnishing drinks, the off-hand welcome to every comer-in, and the mechanical answering of questions and calling to servauts, he seemed to have begun pre- cisely where he left oft", and his little episode of farm- ing must seem to him scarcely better than a dream. A servant showed us over the house. A new gentle- men's dining-room, lighted from the roof, has been built in the area behind, and the old dining-room is cut up into a reading-room and private parlors. The famous assembly-room in the second story is also di- vided up into parlors and ladies' dining-room ; but the garnishing and furnishing of the public and private parlors are quite beyond anything I know of short of the houses of nobility and royal palaces. The car- pets are of the finest Wilton and Brussels; the paper upon the walls of the latest Parisian pattern ; a new piano in every parlor ; and the beds and their belong- ings of the most enticing freshness and comfortability. The proprietors have not seen fit, however, to adopt the fashion of " prices to suit the times," but have begun, plump and bold, at two dollars a day, and a shilling a drink. Until the fine edge of all this nov- elty wears off", they may reap a harvest which will re- pay them for their outlay in paint and garnish. One remark might be dropped into Willard's ear to some j advantage — that while he has been resting on his oars at Dorchester, the people "on the town" have become over-epicurean in their exactions of luxuries at hotels, .and it will take some " sharp practice" to beat the "United States" at Philadelphia, and the Astor here. People, at first, who have been accustomed to live at the latter place, will find a certain relief at not being helped to fish and pudding by fire of platoon, but in the long run the systematic service of the Astor achieves comfort. The Atlantic hotel, opposite the Bowling Green, is also in progress of rifarimento ; and its old landlord, Anderson, who made a fortune in it once, and kept one of the best houses in the country, opens with it again on the 1st of May. I am happy to announce to you that the leaves of the trees in Trinity churchyard have fairly come to light. The foliage in this enclosure is always a week in advance of all others in the city, possibly from ca- daverous stimulus ("to such base uses may we come at last"), and perhaps accelerated particularly, this year, by the heat of the steam-engine, which, with remorseless travestie, perpetually saws stone for the new building over the " requiescat in pace .'" I read the names on desecrated tombstones every day in pas- sing, and associate them in my mind with the people ag- grieved (of whom one always has a list, longer or short- er). Poor ghosts ! as if there was no other place for a steam-engine and a stonecutter's saw than a-top of the sod which (if hymn and prayer go for anything) is ex- pected to "lie lightly on the dead man's breast!" There is many a once wealthy aristocrat, powdered over with the pumice of that abominable saw, who, if he could rise and step down into Wall street, would make sharp reckoning with heirs and executors for suffering his small remainder of this world's room and remembrance to be so robbed of its poetry and re- spect ! Meantime, this exquisitely-conceived piece of architecture (Trinity church) is rising with admira- ble effect, and, when completed, it will doubtless be the first Gothic structure in America. We had rather a novel turn-out of a four-in-hand yesterday in Broadway — a vehicle drawn by four ele- phants. There was some grandeur in the spectacle, and some drollery. These enormous specimens of the animal, most like us in intellect and least like us in frame, are part of a menagerie ; and they drew, in the wagon to which they were attached, a band of mu- sic belonging to the concern. They were, all four, en chemise — covered with white cotton cloths to the knees— but, Elssler-like, making great display of their legs and ivory. The ropes were fastened to their tusks, and they were urged by simple pounding on the rear — which was very like flogging the side of a hill, for they were up to the second stories of the houses. To walk round one of these animals in a tight fit of a booth is a very different thing from see- ing him paraded under the suitable ceiling of the sky. I had no idea they could go over the ground so swim- mingly. They glided along with the ease of scows going down with the tide, and, with their trunks play- ing about close to the pavement, seemed to be walk- ing Broadway like some other loafers — looking for something green! The Battery, or, as it has been called in England, the "Marine Parade," is never lovelier than in the early freshness of the morning. The air is yet unim- paired by the myriad fires of the city — the dew is un- trodden, and the velvet sheensparkles in the sunshine — the walks are all neatly swept; and, treading pleas- antly upon the elastic earth, invigorated by the fresh breeze from the sea, we cast our eyes over a scene of beauty and enchantment unsurpassed in the world. The correspondent of the Intelligencer says: I have been out on the Battery this morning enjoying life, and everything I saw was in the same humor — trees, children, ladies, and ships-of-war. The very port- holes of the Warspite seemed pleased to have their eyelids up. The Battery is a good deal thronged before breakfast, and really I do not remember a prom- enade in Europe which contains so much that is beautiful. Just now we have three men-of-war lying 586 EPHEMERA. on the stream — the majestic North Carolina and the Independence having come round to their summer moorings. Jersey shore looks fringed with willows, and the islands and Brooklyn heights are bright and verdant. The Croton river is bubbling up in a superb fountain in Castle Garden. The craft in the bay always seem doing a melo-drama — they cross and mingle so picturesquely ; and the trees are always there; and the grass grows better for the children's playing on it. Many thanks to fashion for having taken the rich up-town and left their palaces and the Battery to those who "board." I have spent an afternoon, since I wrote to you, in the " animal kingdom" of Herr Driesbach. Four ele- phants together were rather an uncommon sight, to say nothing of the melo-drama performed by the lion- tamer. There was another accidental feature of in- terest, too — the presence of one or two hundred deaf and dumb children, whose gestures and looks of aston- ishment quite divided my curiosity with the show. Spite of the repulsiveness of the thought, it was impossible not to reflect how much of the difference between us and some of the brute animals lies merely in the gift of speech, and how nearly some human beings, by losing this gift, would be brought to their level. I was struck with the predominating animal- look in the faces of the boys of the school, though there were some female children with countenances of a very delicate and intellectual cast. I was an hour too early for the " performances," and I climbed into the big saddle worn by " Siam," and made a leisurely study of the four elephants and their keepers and visiters. I had not noticed before that the eyes of these huge animals were so small. Those of" Hannibal," the nearest elephant to me, re- sembled the eyes of Sir Walter Scott ; and I thought, too, that the forehead was not unlike Sir Walter's. And, as if this was not resemblance enough, there was a copious issue from a bump between his forehead and his ear! (What might we not expect if elephants had " eaten paper and drunk ink ?") The resemblance ceased with the legs, it is but respectful to Sir Walter to say ; for Hannibal is a dandy, and wears the fash- ionable gaiter-trowser, with a difference — the gaiter fitted neatly to every toe! The warlike name of this elephant should be given to Siam, for the latter is the great warrior of the party, and in a fight of six hours with " Napoleon," some three months since, broke off both his tusks. He looks like a most determined bruise. " Virginius" (the showman told me) killed his keeper, and made an escapade into the marshes of Carolina, not long ago ; and, after an absence of six weeks, was subdued and brought back by a former keeper, of whose discipline he had a terrific recollec- tion. There are certainly different degrees of amia- bility in their countenances. I looked in vain for some of the wrinkles of age, in the one they said was much the oldest. Unlike us, their skins grow smoother with time — the enviable rascals! I noticed, by-the- way, that though the proboscis of each of the others was as smooth as dressed leather, that of Siam resem- bled, in texture, a scrubbing-brush, or the third day of a stiff beard. Why he should travel with a " hair- trunk," and the others not, I could not get out of the showman. The expense of training and importing these animals is enormous, and they are considered worth a great deal of money. The four together con- sume about two hundred weight of hay and six bush- els of oats per diem. Fortunately they do their own land transportation, and carry their own trunks. At four o'clock Siam knelt down, and four or five men lifted his omnibus of a saddle upon his back. The band then struck up a march, and he made the circuit of the immense tent; but the effect of an ele- phant in motion, with only his legs and trunk visible (his body quite covered with the trappings), was singularly droll. It looked like an avenue taking a walk, preceded by a huge caterpillar. I could not resist laughing heartily. After one round, Siam stopped, and knelt again to receive passengers. The wooden steps were laid against his eyebrow, and thence the children stepped to the top of his head, though here and there a scrambler shortened the step by putting his foot into the ear of the patient animal The saddle was at last loaded with twelve girls ; and with this " fearful responsibility" on his back, the ele- phant rose and made his rounds, kneeling and renew- ing his load of " innocence" at every circuit. The lion-tamer presently appeared, and astonished the crowd rather more than the elephant. A prologue was pronounced, setting forth that a slave was to be delivered up to wild beasts, etc., etc. A green cloth was spread before the cages in the open tent (" parlous work," I thought, among such tender meat as two hundred children), and out sprung suddenly a full- grown tiger, who seized the gentleman in flesh-colored tights by the throat. A struggle ensues, in which they roll over and over on the ground, and finally, the victim gets the upper hand, and drags out his devourer by the nape of his neck. I was inclined to think once or twice that the tiger was doing more than was set down for him in the play ; but as the Newfoundland dog of the establishment looked on very quietly, I reserved my criticism. The Herr next appeared in the long cage with all his animals — lions, tigers, leopards, etc. He pulled them about, put his hands in their mouths, and took as many liberties with his stock of peltry as if it was already made into muffs and tippets. They growled and showed their teeth, but came when they were called, and did as they were bid, very much to my astonishment. He made a bed of them, among other things — putting the tiger across the lion for a pillow, stretching himself on the lion and another tiger, and then pulling the leopard over his breast for a " com- forter !" He then sat down, and played nursery. The tiger was as much as he could lift, but he seated him upright on his knees, dandled and caressed him, and finally rocked him apparently asleep in his arms ! He closed with an imitation of Fanny Elssler's pirouette, with a tiger standing on his back. I was very glad, for one, when I saw him go out and shut the door. A man then brought out a young anaconda, and twisted him round his neck (a devil of a boa it looked), and, after enveloping himself completely in other snakes, took them off again like cravats, and vanished. And so ended the show. Herr Driesbach stood at the door to bow us out, and a fine, handsome, determined- looking fellow he is. Pardon us, ladies — those riding-hats let the sun look in upon your alabaster foreheads — ay, and ever? cross the bridge of your delicate noses ! Take ad- vice ! Wear your hats with a pitch forward rather, like the dames in Charles the Second's time. You look very charmingly on Roulstone's well-broken and well-trained horses, but take not your pleasure at the expense of the bright complexions which we admire. " Sun-burnt," in old English, was an epithet of contu- mely, and " The chariest maid is prodigal enough, If she unveil her beauty to the moon," let alone the sun. We have been paid for letting the world know a great many things that were of no consequence to the world whatever — and, among other nothings, a certain metropoliphobia of our own, on which we have ex- pended a great deal of choice grammar and punctua- tion. We trust the world believes, by this, that, ca- pable as we are of loving our entire species (one at a EPHEMERA. 587 time), we hate a city collectively. Having a little moan to make, with a little moral at the close, we put this private prejudice once more into type, trusting to your indulgence, good reader. This is June — and "where are you going this sum- mer?" though a pertinent question enough, and sea- sonable, and just what anybody says to everybody he meets, has to our ear a little offence in it. If it were asked for information — a la bonne heure .' — we are willing to tell any friend where we are going — this side the Styx. But though the question (asked with most affectionate earnestness by your friend) is merely a preface to enlightening youas to his own "watering- place," there must still bean answer! And suppose that answer, though not a whit attended to, touches upon your secret sorrow — your deucedest bore ! Sup- I pose but you see our drift ! You understand, that we are to sweat out the summer solstice within the " bills of mortality !" You see that we are to comfort our bucolic nostrils as we best may, with municipal grass — picking here and there a clover-top or an ag- gravating dandelion 'twixt postoffice and city-hall. Heaven help us ! True, New York is " open at the top." We are prepared to be thankful for what comes down to us — air, light, and dew. But alas! Earth is our mother! — Earth, who sends all her blessings upward — Earth, who, in the city, is stoned over and hammered down, paved, flagged, suffocated — her natural breath quite cut off, or driven to escape by drain and gas-pipe — her flowers and herbs prevented — her springs shut down from gushing ! This arid pavement, this hot smell of dust, this brick-color and paint — what are they to the fragrant lap of our overlaid mother, with her drapery of bright colors and tender green ? Answer, oh omnibus-horse! Answer, oh worky-editor ! But there be alleviations! It is to these that hangs "the moral of our tale." We presume most men think themselves more worthy than "sparrows" of the attention of Providence, and of course most men be- lieve in a special Providence for themselves. We do. We believe that we shall not "fall to the ground with- out" (a) "notice." (But this, let us hope, is antici- pating.) We wish to speak now of the succedaneum thrown in our path for our pastoral deprivations — for , the lost brook whose babbling current turned the wheel of our idleness. Sweet brook, that never robbed the pebbles of a ray of light in running over them! It became a type to us — that brook. Our thoughts ran brook-wise. Bright water, braiding its ripples as its ran, became our vehicle of fancy. We lagged, we dragged, we were " gravelled for lack of matter" without it. And now mark ! — Providence has supplied it — (through his honor the mayor). A brook — a clear brook — not pellucid, merely, but trans- parent — a brook with a song, tripping as musically (when the carts are not goin^ by) as the beloved brook now sequestered to the Philistines — trips daily before I us! Our daily walk is along its border — for (say) a I rod and a half. Meet us there if you will, oh conge- nial spirit ! As we go to the postoffice, we span its fair current at the broadest, and take a fillip in our fancy for the day. Would you know its geography more definitely ? Stand on the steps of the Astor, and gaze over to the sign of " P. Pussedu, wig-maker, from Italy." Drop then the divining-rod to the left, and a much frequented pump will become apparent, perched over a projecting curb-stone, around which the dancing and bright water trips with sparkling feet, and a murmur audible at least to itself. It is the outlet of the fountain in the Park, and, as Wordsworth says, " Parching summer hath no warrant To consume this crystal well,'' as an order is first necessary from the corporation. Oh ! (if it were not for being taken to the watch- house) we could sit by this brook in the moonlight, and pour forth our melancholy moan! But the cab- men wash their wheels in it now, and the echo would be, "Want a cab, sir?" Metropolises, avaunt ! Lady Sale's Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan impresses us somewhat with the idea that her ladyship was a Tartar; and she was, perhaps, as "well bestow- ed" in the army as anywhere else, in a world so gene- rally peaceful. It is a roughly-written book, too, in point of style. Indeed she avows : " I do not attempt to shine in rounded periods, but give everything that occurs as it comes to my knowledge." It appears, however, that some injustice to officers, committed, as she acknowledges, "in the heat of temper," have awakened a little censure in England, and have been apologized for by her ladyship. This allowed, there is much to admire — her manly modesty, among other things. Toward the close of her journal, she re- marks : " Nothing can exceed the folly I have seen in the papers regarding my wonderful self — how I headed the troops, &c. Certainly I have headed the troops, for the chiefs told me to come on with them for safety sake ; and thus I certainly did go far in advance of the column; but it was no proof of valor, though one of prudence." We can readily believe that the qualities which gained her ladyship such general admiration, were not of a showy order. As a " soldier's wife," the title she gives herself, she esteemed it her duty to take her part in danger, hardship, and captivity, with- out complaint — to oppose a brave resistance to the foe when others thought only of base submission, and to set an example of invincible fortitude to the host of meaner spirits in the camp. In the extremity of peril and suffering she never murmurs, except when the weakness of the commanders wrings from her some expression of disgust and contempt. Of all the per- sons attached to the army, she had the most real cause of alarm, yet manifested the least. Unlike the other ladies, she was separated from her husband, and heard continually of his battles, his exposure, his wounds. Her son-in-law dies in her arms, and she is left with her widowed daughter in the hands of a band of mer- ciless savages, without one male relative to support her. She is harassed by continual marches in the depth of winter among mountain passes, where the path is so thickly strewn with the mangled corpses of her countrymen, that the hoofs of her horse tread them into the earth ; yet these multiplied ills fail to quell her spirits or conquer her presence of mind. A bullet pierces her arm ; but when the ball is extracted, she treats the wound as a scratch. This kind of for- titude is the only courage which appears estimable or becoming in a woman, and shines with as much lustre in the conduct of Lady Sale throughout those trying transactions, as in any character of which history makes mention. It is scarcely necessary to add, that few books published of late years have such strong claims upon the attention of the public as the present. The author evidently does not desire display; but her courage and magnanimity will secure, in the annals of heroic women, a foremost place for the name of Flor- entine Sale. Porcelain and crockery, champagne and cider, sun- shine and candlelight, silver cup and tin dipper, are not of more different quality to our apprehension, than people beautiful and people plain. We do not be- lieve they are to have the same destiny. We believe that the plain and the beautiful are to be reproduced in their own likeness in another world, and that beauty must be paramount alike among men and an- 588 EPHEMERA. gels. We believe everything should be given to beauty that beauty wants — everything forgiven if beauty err. We have no limit to our service of beauty — no imaginable bound to our devotion. We are secondary —subject — born thrall to beauty. And in this faith we shall die. But beauty in America is a very differently prized commodity from beauty in England. Let us keep clear of making an essay of this, and show what we mean by parallel examples. Take two beautiful girls, of the same comparative station — Miss Smith, of Lon- don, daughter of a master-in-chancery, and Miss Brown, of New York, daughter of a master-carpenter: — for the former gentleman is about as far below an earl as the latter is below any aristocrat of New York, supposed or acknowledged. Miss Brown, of the Bowery, is a lovely creature. She excites curiosity in Broadway. She hinders de- votion, right and left, when she turns round in church. In the best society of New York there is not a pret- tier girl, and nature has made her elegant in her man- ners, and education has done as much for her as was at all necessary. Her father delights in her beauty, and her mother is very proud of her, and she carries her heart in her bosom to do what she pleases with it — but neither Mr. Brown, nor Mrs. Brown, nor Miss Brown, ever dream that her beauty will advance their condition in life one peg. They love her for it — she controls the family by it — she exercises influence as a belle in their own circle of acquaintance — but that is all. She lives a very gay and pleasant life, hears of balls in more fashionable parts of the town without dreaming that, for her beauty, she should be there, and continues a Bowery belle till she marries a Bow- ery beau. And beauty, once married, in that class of our country, is like a pair of shoes once sold — never inquired for again. Miss Smith, of London, is a superb girl. Her fa- ther was of dark complexion and her mother a blonde ; and jet and pearl have done their daintiest in her dark eyes and radiant skin. At twelve she is considered a beauty past accident. Her sisters, who were either "all father" or " all mother," grimy dark, or parsnip blonde, are married off to such husbands as would un- dertake them. But for the youngest there is a differ- ent destiny — for she is a beauty. The father wishes for advancement and a title. The mother wishes to figure in high life before she dies. And Miss Smith, young as she is, is taught the difference between a plain young lord in a cab and a handsome lawyer's clerk with a green bag. Beauty, well managed, may be made to open every door in England. Masters — the best of masters for Miss Smith ! More money is spent in " finishing" her than was given to all her sisters for dowries. She is permitted to form few acquaintances of her own sex, none of the other. And when Miss Smith is sixteen, Mrs. Smith makes her first strong push at Lady Frippery (for Mr. Smith has put Lord Frippery under obligations, which make it inevitable that the first favor asked should be grant- ed), and out comes Miss Smith, chaperoned by Lady Frippery at a mixed subscription ball. It is for the ben- efit of the Poles, and the liberal nobility are all there ; and all the beaux of St. James's street, of course, for they like to see what novelty will turn up in such places. One hour after the ball opens, Miss Smith's beauty has been pronounced upon by half the noble eyes of Lon- don, and Lady Frippery is assailed for introductions. The beauty turns out high-bred. Lord George and Lord Frederick torment their Right Honorable mam- mas into calling on Mrs. Smith, and having the beauty at their next ball ; and so climbs Miss Smith to a stratum of society unattainable by her father's law or her mothers wealth, or anything in the world but beauty. She is carefully watched, keeps herself chary, and by-and-by chooses between Lord Freder- ick and Lord George, and elevates her whole family by an alliance with the peerage — for in England there is no mesalliance if the lady descended to be of great beauty, as well as virtuous, modest, and well edu- cated. But — as we would show by these examples — per- sonal beauty is undervalued in America. At least, it is less valued than in England and older countries. An eminent English artist, recently returned home, expressed his surprise that he had so few beauties among his sitters. " The motive to have a miniature done," said he, " seems, in America, to be affection. In England it is pride. Most of my sitters" (and he had a great many at a very high price) " have been old people or invalids, or persons going away ; and though they wished their pictures made as good-look- ing as possible, their claim to good looks was no part of the reason for sitting. It was only to perpetuate that which was loved and would soon be lost." Pray take notice, madam, that we give no opinion as to the desirableness of the English value of beauty. Whether beauty and worldly profit should be kept separate, like church and state — whether it is desecra- ted by aiding the uses of ambition — whether it should be the loadstar of affection or pride — we leave with you as an open question. We know nothing of a more restless tendency than a fine, old-fashioned June day — one that begins with a morning damp with a fresh south wind, and gradu- ally clears away in a thin white mist, till the sun shines through at last, genial and luxurious, but not sultry, and everything looks clear and bright in the transparent atmosphere. We know nothing which so seduces the very eye and spirit of a man, and stirs in him that gipsy longing, which, spite of disgrace and punishment, made him a truant in his boyhood. There is an expansive rarity in the air of such a day — a something that lifts up the lungs, and plays in the nostrils with a delicious sensation of freshness and elasticity. The close room grows sadly dull under it. The half-open blind, with its tempting glimpse of the sky, and branch of idle leaves flickering in the sun. has a strange witchery. The poor pursuits of this drossy world grow passing insignificant ; and the scrawled and blotted manuscripts of an editor's table — pleasant anodyne as they are when the wind is in the east — are, at these seasons, but the " Diary of an Ennuyee" — the notched calendar of confinement and unrest. The commendatory sentence stands half- completed; the fate of the author under review, with his two volumes, is altogether of less importance than five minutes of the life of that tame pigeon that sits on the eaves washing his white breast in the spout ; and the public good-will, and the cause of literature, and our own precarious livelihood, all fade into dim shadow, and leave us listening dreamily to the creep- ing of the sweet south upon the vine, or the far-off rattle of the hourly, with its freight of happy bowlers and gentlemen of suburban idleness. What is it to us, when the sun is shining, and the winds bland and balmy, and the moist roads with theii fresh smell of earth tempting us away to the hills — what is it, then, to us, whether a poor-devil-author has a flaw in his style, or our own leading article a "local habitation and a name?" Are we to thrust down our heart like a reptile into its cage, and close our shutter to the cheerful light, and our ear to all sounds of out-door happiness ? Are we to smother our uneasy impulses, and chain ourselves down to a poor, dry thought, that has neither light, nor music, nor any spell in it, save the poor necessity of occu- pation ? Shall we forget the turn in the green lane where we are wont to loiter in our drive, and the cool EPHEMERA. 589 claret of our friend at the Hermitage, and the glorious golden summer sunset in which we bowl away to the c i t y_ mU sing and refreshed? Alas— yes! the heart must be closed, and the green lane and the friend that is happier than we (for he is idle) must be forgotten, and the dry tboafht must be dragged up like a wilful steer and yoked to its fellow, and the magnificent sun- set, with all its glorious dreams and forgetful hap- piness, must be seen in the pauses of articles, and the "bleared een" of painful attention — and all this in June — prodigal June — when the very worm is all day out in the sun, and the birds scarce stop their singing from the gray light to the dewfall ! What an insufferable state of the thermometer! We knock under to Heraclitus, that fire is the first principle of all things. Fahrenheit at one hundred degrees in the shade ! Our curtain in the attic unstirred ! Our japonica drooping its great white flowers lower and lower. It is a fair scene, indeed ! not a ripple from the pier to the castle, and the sur- face of the water, as Shelley says, " like a plane of glass spread out between two heavens" — and there is a solitary sloop, with the light and shade flickering on its loose sail, positively hung in the air — and a gull, it is refreshing to see him, keeping down with his white wings close to the water, as if to meet his own snowy and perfect shadow. Was ever such intense, unmiti- gated sunshine ? There is nothing on the hard, opaque sky, but a mere rag of a cloud, like a handker- chief on a tablet of blue marble, and the edge of the shadow of that tall chimney is as definite as a hair, and the young elm that leans over the fence is copied in perfect and motionless leaves like a very painting on the broad sidewalk. How delightful the night will be after such a deluge of light ! How beautiful the modest rays of the starlight, and the cool dark blue of the heavens will seem after the dazzling clear- ness of this sultry noon ! It reminds one of that ex- quisite passage in Thalaba, where the spirit-bird comes, when his eyes are blinded with the intense brightness of the snow, and spreads her green wings before him ! I went to the Opera last night for the first time. The theatre was filled half an hour before the rising of the curtain, and with a very fashionable audience. The ladies had not quite made up their minds whether it was a full-dress affair, but the pit and boxes had a very pari. look. The neighborhood of the orchestra, particularly, looked very Parisian and dressy, as the French beaux (whose heads are distinguishable from Yankee heads by their soigne trimness and polish) crystallize to the beau-nucleus of foreign theatres — the stalies between stage and pit! One of the drop- curtains was a view of Paris; and the principal cur- tain, though representing, I believe, the Croton res- ervoirs, had a foreground of figures such as are never to be seen on this side of the Atlantic. The opera was " L'Ambassadrice, by Auber," and the orchestra played the overture with a spirit and fin- ish of execution which was quite enchanting. It was much the highest treat in music which I have yet had in this country. The story of the opera has been the rounds of the papers — an actress marrying an ambassador, trying the mortifications and vexations of sudden elevation to high-life, and returning to her profession. As a play, it was very indifferently per- formed, with the exception only of the part of the duenna by Madame Mathieu. As an actress of com- edy (if I may judge after seeing her once) we have no one in our theatres at all comparable to this lady. Madame Lecourt was next best, and the rest, as play- ers, were not worth criticising. As an opera, the mu- sic rested entirely on the orchestra and the prima don- na, the tenor being good for nothing, and the rest mere stopgaps. The great attraction put forward in the advertisements was Mademoiselle Calve\ the pri- ma donna, and, seeing and hearing her over such very large capitals, I was somewhat disappointed. Mad- emoiselle Calve has had a very narrow escape of be- ing a remarkably pretty person. Indeed, filled out to her model — plump as Nature intended her to be — she would be very handsome; and to be what every young Frenchwoman is, is far on the road to beauty — grace and manner, which are common to them all, having so much to do with the effect of the celestial gift. But though she trips charmingly across the stage, gives charming glances, dresses charmingly, and would probably be a very charming acquaintance, she is an inanimate and inexpressive actress. When, for ex- ample, she discovers suddenly that her old lover is in her presence (she becomes a dutchess and he still in his profession as first tenor), she exclaims, " Bene- dict!" as quietly as if she were calling her brother to bring her a chair. There is no interest in her acting — far less any enthusiasm or passion. She sings, however, with great sweetness and correctness, and, if she were not over-advertised, she would probably surprise most persons agreeably. After all, she is a great acquisition to the amusements of the city, and I hope, for one, that she and the "troop" may find it worth their while to do pendulum regularly between this and New Orleans. Niblo's Garden opened last week for the season, and to compare it to "a scene of enchantment" would be doing great injustice to its things to drink. I spe- cify this because public gardens are commonly very slipslop in what they term their " refreshments," and (as it was a very exhausting night for the bodily juices) we had an opportunity of testing the quality of ices and " coblers." This aside, there is a great deal about Niblo's, probably, that is very like enchant- ment. The ticket (price fifty cents) admits you to a brilliantly-illuminated hall, opening on one side to a delicious conservatory full of the rarest plants, and on the other to a labyrinthine garden glittering with lights and flowers ; large mirrors at either end of the hall make it look interminable, and the walks are so ingeniously twisted around fountains and shrubberies, as to seem interminable too; and in the immense hall of refreshment there is a bifrons bar, which effectu- ally embarrasses you as to the geography of your ju- lep — all very mystical and stimulative. Thus far, however, it is only tributary to the French theatre, which is completely open on one side to the garden, with half the audience out of doors, and the lobby as cool and summery as a garden-alley. Between the acts the audience go out and air and ice themselves, and a resounding gong gives notice to the stragglers in the labyrinths that the curtain is rising. I have seen no public place so well appointed as this — waiters badged and numbered — seats commodious, and ser- vice prompt — and, above all, a very strict watch at the door for the exclusion of miscellany. The play was "Z,e Vicomle de Peturieres" — a kind of Frenchification of Don Juan. The young vaurien was played by Madame Lecourt, and played with a charm of talent and vivacity for which her personifi- cation of Charlotte, in " L , Ambassadrice, ,, had not prepared me. She is the very soul of witching espie- glerie, and made love and did mischief in her hose and doublet to the perfect delight of the audience. The other members of the French company have very much improved on the public liking since their first appearance, and, with more or less excellence, they all belong to a good school of acting. The pri- ma donna, Mademoiselle Calve, is too ill to appear. One likes to see every best thing of its kind in the world, and never having been pretent at any of the 590 EPHEMERA. Fashion's races, I took a cold ride to Long Island to see her gallop over the course. On the way I picked up some of the statistics of milk, from a com- municative fellow-passenger "who knew," and it may or may not surprise you to know that there are three qualities in this supposed innocent simple of na- ture. There is milk — milk once watered, and milk twice watered ; and sold as such, with three prices, by the owners of the dairies, to the venders in the city. A friend of my companion is a dairyman, he told me, and supplies the American hotel with milk No. 1, at a high price ; so that in the milk line, at least, we may certify that Mr. Cozzens cozens us not. Un- luckily for the Long Island cowmongers, the long arm of the Erie railroad has taken to milking Orange county for the New York market, and the profits of milk and water have very much diminished with the competition. It was the great day of the Union races, but the course presented a very dreary sight. There were just people enough to make solitude visible, and the "timer" in the stand looked as bleak as a bell-ringer setting the clock on a cold day in a country belfry. Here and there one of the jockey-club walked about with bis blue badge forlorn in his buttonhole, and here and there an unhappy-looking pie-seller set down his full baskets to blow his fingers; and there were a few sporting trotters in sulkies, and two turnouts such as are common at races, and a wight or two like my- self wondering who enjoyed the " sport" except the riders. All of a sudden a single horse was discovered half round the course, and before I could find out what it was, Fashion had made one of her two-hun- dred-dollar rounds. To take the eight hundred (un- contested sweepstakes), she was obliged to go around four times, and I had a good opportunity to see her movement. She is smaller than I expected, and runs less like a horse and more like a greyhound than any racer I have seen. Sorrel is a color I dislike in beard or horsehair, and her complexion suited me not; but, in make, action, and particularly in expression of face, Fashion is an admirable creature. Of course it takes a sporting-eye to admire the tension of muscle in high training, and the queen of the course would be a better model for a sculptor after a month's grass ; but she is a beautiful sight, and even with the little I have seen of her, I should know her again among a thousand horses — so marked is superiority, in horse or man. The other races were nothing very extraordinary. I started for home, cold and sorry. On the road our jarvey stopped to " water horses and liquor passen- gers," and I got sight of a dance calculated to soften my next criticism of the Park ballet. A ferret-eyed fiddler struck up a tune, and an old farmer with gray hairs and one "hermit tooth," jumped into the mid- dle of the barroom and commenced a jig. As the spring of his instep had gone with his teeth, he did the work on his unmitigated heels, and a more sturdy performance I never saw. He danced in greatcoat and hat, with whip in hand, and, after ending his dance by jumping up into a chair and dropping down from it like a pavior's beetle, he paid for amusing the spectators (and this was not a la Fanny the "divine") by giving the fiddler half a dollar. With a look round at the company, and an inquiry whether any- body would like "something wet," he took his drink and got into his wagon. This is one man's taste in a flare-up. There is a great change in the "surface of society" within the last two days — straw and white hats having become nearly universal. As we are a nation of black coats (the English call Broadway a procession of un- dertakers), this somewhat brightens up the superficial aspect of the city. Summer came upon us with a jump out of a raw easterly fog, and what with the lack of premonition, and the natural incredulity of flannel waistcoats, people went about yesterday clad for cold weather and looking uncomfortably hot. To- day the surprised clouds are gathering for a thunder- storm. I see by the papers that the snow prophesied for June by Lorenzo Dow, has fallen in several parts of the country. The other two horns of his triple prophesy for June, 1843, have also come true, for there is "no king in England," and "no president over the United States" — strictly speaking. I quite longed yesterday for a magnetic eye, to look into the heads of two or three Chinese who were let loose in the vestibule of the Astor, newly landed from a Canton trader. Their " first impres- sions" of New York, fully daguerreotyped, would be amusing. I understand they have come over in the suite of the Rev. Mr. Boone, missionary from Ku- lang-sa (wherever that is). During the summer solstice, the guests at the gen- tleman's ordinary at the Astor are to be furnished with linen jackets to dine in — one on the back of ev- ery chair, "without respect of (the size of) persons." I am told privately that half the expense of these airy furnishings is borne by the venders of fancy suspend- ers, as it is presumed that no gentleman will be willing to " shift himself" before company who is not daintily provided in this line. Fond, as we are reproached with being, of foreign- ers in the ornamental walks of society, I observe, by the general tenor of advertisements, that we prefer the indigenous worky. " Wanted," says an advertiser in the True Sun, " a smart American woman xcho can go right through with the work of a small religious fam- ily." Vague as this specification would seem to an English eye, the advertiser's want is most definitely expressed to an American. You will have seen with regret the accounts of the sudden death of Mr. Abbott — one of the few remain- ing actors of the Kemble school. He was, in private life, one of the most agreeable and cultivated of men, and is deeply regretted. I understand that his widow is entitled to a pension from the Theatrical Fund of London, of about seven hundred dollars per annum. She was married to him a few months since — a Miss Buloid of the Park theatre. Abbott is said to have been, in his youth, one of the gay associates of the Prince of Wales. The Broughams have returned from Boston, and commenced an engagement at the Park Theatre. We are likely to have no more theatrical importations for some time, I think, the late declension of the drama having somewhat damped the repute in Lon- don of American starring. Actors coming out, now, require an advance, and an insurance of a certain de- gree of success, and this our managers are not in a condition to pay. The sufferers by theatrical depres- sion in this country are the actors, who do not get their money unless they draw it. In England the manager must pay his company, by the law of rigor- ous usage, and he is the sufferer till his theatre closes. Booth has been playing wonderfully well at the Park of late, and I understand that the prelty Mrs. Hunt has been cast in one or two new characters, which have drawn out her abilities, very much to the pleasure and surprise of the theatre-goers. Broadway has a very holyday aspect now from the competition in the splendor of omnibuses. Several new ones of mammoth size have been turned out, drawn by four and six horses, and painted in the gay- est colors. The handsomest one I have seen is called "The Edwin Forrest." The Scotch, who have formed themselves into a military company, and dress in the uniform of the EPHEMERA. 591 highland regiments of the British army, came out yesterday in philebig and tartan, making a most im- posing and gallant appearance. The bare legs looked rather cool in Broadway, but nature suits the animal to his native climate, and Scotch legs are very com- fortably hair*" 2 observed that a physician, with no distinctive dress except a plaid scarf over his shoul- der, walked with the lieutenant — ready for minister- I ing to any member of the corps who might find the ! exposure unsalutary. He should be skilled in curing | rheumatism, I should say. Apropos of adaptations of ; the physiological features to climate, it is said, I know not with how much truth, that there are islands north i of Great Britain where the females are web-footed. I Hence, perhaps, Grace Darling's heroic self-confidence j on the water. New York is all alive with a new musical prodigy — j Mr. Wallace. There is no doubt that he is so far the ] best pianist we have ever heard in this country, as to | dwarf all others in comparison. The musical people j all allow this with enthusiasm. As a violinist, those who should know say he is equal to Paganini. I have j not heard him, but I understand he is a most uncon- i scions man of genius, very eccentric, and is on his way back to Ireland, after having traversed South and [ North America on foot. His pedestrian and musical \ passions are strangely compounded. He has set to a j magnificent air a national anthem, which has been sung by the class under the direction of Mr. George Loder, of this city, with immense eflfect. In this an- them Mr. Wallace has made a remarkable contribu- tion to the musical stores of this country. Editors have a very sublime way of lumping Eu- rope, Asia, Africa, and America, and under the dimin- ished monosyllable of the "world," spanning it with their reflections as they would shade an ant-hill with an umbrella. We tell you with becoming coolness what the " gay world" is about, viz. : that a few fami- lies up-town have taken to giving matinees. By the "pious world," we convey the Broadway Tabernacle — by the " mercantile world," Wall street or Pearl. The English have become tired of the phrase, and call the world "Mrs. Grundy." What will be said about any- thing, anywhere between the antipodes, is, " what will Mrs. Grundy say?" And we like this — (as we like I anything which aggrandizes the editorial individual) — only there is the little inconvenience, that when we wish to speak of the world, as defined in the diction- ary, we are subjected to a periphrasis which cumbers our style, or we have to explain that we really mean Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The world is getting on — wrote we at the head of this article, and scratched it out again till we had made a comment on the phrase. We were going into a little disquisition on the evident approach of a new order of things under the sun, as shown by wonderful changes and discoveries all over the world — apropos, however, of a very interesting book which has just fallen into our hands, and of which we wish to give the essence to the reader, in brief. We will omit the dis- quisition on the approach of the millenium (to write which, to say the truth, we sat down this morning), for the weather is too hot, on second thoughts, to do more than allude to a subject connected with a gen- eral conflagration. Let us come at once to the book in question. Elevation by hemp has been considered a sovereign remedy for low spirits, and indeed for most of the in- tolerable evils of life — subject, however, to the draw- back that the remedy could be used but once. Will our readers believe that this drawback is entirely removed by a late discovery ? Intoxication has been long known to be a state of very considerable happiness, subject to a " tariff which amounts to a prohibition," viz. : complete destruction of the physical man by the residuum. Will the reader believe that, by this same discovery, the resid- uous penalty is removed ? By the same discovery, the hydrophobia is changed to a death of physical pleasure — acute and chronic rheumatism are first modified into ecstasy, then cured — a " persuasion of high rank" is engendered in the bosom of the humblest, a " feeling as if flying" is communicated to the dullest and most plethoric. And all this with no penalty, no subsequent physical pros- tration, none of the long train of evils which, till now, have been the inseparable pursuers of intoxication. In telling our readers thus much, we have given them the butt-end of one of the most curious subjects we have for a long time been called upon to handle. What we have said is far from a joke. A drug has been discovered by the English in India, which has these wonderful properties ; and the mode in which it is gathered, which we will tell with the same butt- endity, is as novel as the drug. " Men clad in leathern dresses run through the fields, brushing through the plant with all possible violence; the soft resin adheres to the leather, and is subsequently scraped off, and kneaded into balls. In Nipal the leathern attire is dispensed with, and the resin is gathered on the skins of naked natives." The plant from which this extraordinary drug is ex- tracted, is Indian hemp ; differing from the hemp of this and other northern countries only by the presence of this narcotic stimulant. There are several prepara- tions of it — one for smoking, one for sweetmeats, and others for beverages and medical compounds — but the effects are, with slight variations, the same. "From the beverage, intoxication ensues in half an hour. The inebriation is of the most cheerful kind, causing the person to sing and dance, to eat food with great relish. The intoxication lasts about three hours, when sleep supervenes. No nausea or sickness of the stomach succeeds, nor are the bowels at all affected." The preparation for smoking is called gunjah, the confection is called majoon, and the resin is called churrus. Gunjah is used for smoking only. One hundred and eighty grains, and a little dried tobacco, are rubbed in the palm of the hand, with a few drops of water. This suffices for three persons. A little tobacco is placed in the pipe first, then a layer of the prepared gunjah, then more tobacco, and the fire above all. Four or five persons usually join in this debauch. The hookah is passed round, and each person takes a single draught. Intoxication ensues almost instantly; and from one draught to the unaccustomed, within half an hour; and after four or five inspirations to those more practised in the vice. The effects differ from those occasioned by the sidhee. Heaviness, la- ziness, and agreeable reveries, ensue ; but the person can be readily roused, and is able to discharge routine occupations, such as pulling the punkah, waiting at table, &c. We add the following passages from the treatise : — " The fourth case of trial was an old muscular cooley, a rheumatic malingerer, and to him half a grain of hemp resin was given in a little spirit. The first day's report will suffice for all : In two hours the old gentleman became talkative and musical, told sev- eral stories, and sang songs to a circle of highly-de- lighted auditors, ate the dinners of two persons sub- scribed for him in the ward, sought also for other lux- uries we can scarcely venture to allude to, and finally fell soundly asleep, and so continued till the following morning. On the noonday visit, he expressed himself free from headache or any other unpleasant sequel, and begged hard for a repetition of the medicine, in 592 EPHEMERA. which he was indulged for a few days and then dis- charged. "While the preceding case was under treatment, and exciting the utmost interest in the school, several pupils commenced experiments on themselves to as- certain the effects of the drug. In all, the state of the pulse was noted before taking a dose, and subsequently the effects were observed by two pupils of much intel- ligence. The result of several trials was, that in as small doses as a quarter of a grain the pulse was increased in fulness and frequency ; the surface of the body glowed; the appetite became extraordinary ; vivid ideas crowded the mind ; unusual loquacity oc- curred ; and, with scarcely any exception, great aph- rodisia was experienced. " In one pupil, Dinonath Dhur, a retiring lad of excellent habits, ten drops of the tincture, equal to a quarter of a grain of the resin, induced in twenty minutes the most amusing effects I ever witnessed. A. shout of laughter ushered in the symptoms, and a transitory state of cataleptic rigidity occurred for two or three minutes. Summoned to witness the effects, we found him enacting the part of a rajah giving or- ders to his courtiers. He could recognise none of his fellow-students or acquaintances; all, to his mind, seemed as altered as his own condition. He spoke of many years having passed since his student's days ; described his teachers and friends with a piquancy which a dramatist would envy; detailed the adventures of an imaginary series of years, his travels, his attain- ment of wealth and power. He entered on discus- sions on religious, scientific, and political topics, with astonishing eloquence, and disclosed an extent of knowledge, reading, and a ready, apposite wit, which those who knew him best were altogether unprepared for. For three hours, and upward, he maintained the character he at first assumed, and with a degree of ease and dignity perfectly becoming his high situation. A scene more interesting, it would be difficult to ima- gine. It terminated nearly as suddenly as it com- menced, and no headache, sickness, or other unpleas- ant symptom, followed the innocent excess." The treatise on this subject, from which we have made the foregoing extracts, is a reprint from the Transactions of the Medical Society of Calcutta, and written by a surgeon in the Bengal army, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, now in this country. It is, as our readers will have seen by the extracts, a very able treatise ; and the experiments, of which we had only room to quote here and there an exponent passage, are described with most lucid clearness. We may refer to this interesting topic again. On the day the president arrived, the be-windowed houses of New York seemed to have none too many windows, and if all the men on the tiles had been Ty- ler men, the president's party might for once have been declared formidably uppermost. We know sev- eral things since Mr. Tyler's visit: how many people roofs will hold ; how many heads can look out of one window ; for how little ladies will wave their pocket- handkerchiefs ; " what swells the soldier's warlike breast" (or, rather, what becomes of all the cotton) ; how much extra horse hair it takes to make a dra- goon ; how unanimous a prayer may be put up by four hundred thousand people, for the cutting of the hair of a "prince royal ;" how the devils may be cast out of a barouche and four, commonly used to take frailty to the races, and how a chief magistrate and his suite may innocently enter in ; how gayly a city may be dressed with flags, partly for the president of fif- teen millions of freemen, and partly for the " fat girl" of the museum ; what endurance of horses' hoofs lies in the toes of female "freemen;" and how long and far, at a "sink-a-pace," will last the smile of Mr Tyler. I presume the entire sanitary and locomotive popu. lation of New York turned out to the show, and a very fine show it was altogether. The military companies would alone have made a sight worth coming far to see, for (by the measurement on Broadway) their brilliant uniforms cover a mile and a half — an expanse of tail- oring (with the exception of the trouserless High- landers) that should make politicians deal kindly with " cross-legs." I remarked, by the way, that, though all the officers of the companies are not fat men, all the fat men among them are officers — a tribute to avoirdupois which should delight the ghost of Sir John Falstaff, spite of his " give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones." I saw one of the plethoric captains rubbing the calf of his leg, after his march of five or six miles over the round stones, and I presume he might have said to the "prince royal," as Sir John did at Gadshill, " S'blood ! I'll not bear mine own flesh as far afoot again, for all the coin in thy father's exchequer." Some English friends who were with me, expressed continual wonder at the total absence of raggedness or poverty in the dress of the populace. We can hardly realize how striking is this feature of our country to the eye of a European. They were a good deal amused, too, with the republican license given to a fellow on horseback, either drunk or saucy, who chose to ride in the staff of one of the generals with his coat off, and with the good-nature and forbearance mani- fested by the crowd in their occasional resistings of the encroachments of mounted constables. I was told that not only the president, but his friends and suite, were exceedingly surprised' at the reception given him. It was certainly, in every way, calculated to show the honor paid by the people to the office of the chief magistrate ; and Mr. Tyler can not but feel, that while hedged in with the dignity of his office, he is an object of interest and attention with which mere politics conld have but little to do. The president having got through with the weather of New York, it was at liberty to rain next day, and it rained. The clouds parenthesised his visit, laying the dust the night before he arrived, and holding up till the night after his departure. I presume it did not rain in Boston next morning — King Lucky having occasion for a dry day. I have heard of but one partial exception to the accurate culmination of the Tyler star. The officer in command on the Battery, finding that he could uot see through the walls of Castle Garden, re- quested to have a flag raised, or some other sign giv- en, to make the movement for the salute, when the president should land. " Oh !" said the marshal, " you needn't bother about that. You'll know by the cheers." The cheers not being audible, however, the artillery rather " hung fire," letting off their con- gratulatory welcome as the president landed — from the high flight of his oration. He had been landed from the steamboat some time before ! Perhaps the congratulation was well timed, and so, very likely, his star (which must be a planet) intended to plan it. A man should be felicitated when he touches terra firma once more, after most public speeches. There seems to be a finger pointing the way, even in the picking of flowers by the wayside, for his happy "Accidency." Some pleasurable surprise has been expressed at the careful zeal with which the president kissed the ladies twice round on several occasions, where a limited number had been introduced to him. I was at a loss to know how a man, bred in a state distinguished for the deferential proprieties, should have jumped, ready-armed, to such an act of popular- ity, when a visit to the presidential parlor at How- ard's explained the " starry influence." A French painting, with figures of the size of life, representing KPHEMERA. 59* Don Juan giving Haidee a most realizing kiss, had been introduced into the apartment by the sumptuary committee! There it stood, a silent indication to thought during his hours of revery, and as the mys- tic intimation occupied, frame and all, one entire wall of the room, the lesson was inevitable. Sequitur the above-mentioned liberal dispensation of kisses. I am told that a game of chess is child's play to the diplomacy at work, during the president's visit, for the control of his movements. Office-seekers and office- holders, "authorities," private friends, Spartans, re- pealers, whigs, and locofocos, tugged at his ear and button continually. I trust, if he is fond of contrast, that his ex-excellency will try a second first impres- sion of New York a year or two hence. The president's departure was most felicitous as to weather — the loveliness of the sunset, and the beauty of the bay, making up for him the finest of back- ground effects. Some hundreds of people were on the Battery, and the steamboat-wharf was crowded with spectators. As the boat started, the crews of the men-of-war ran up the rigging like disturbed ants, and saluted her as she passed with three cheers. He went out of the harbor with relays of " Hail Columbia," the band on board the boat beginning with it, and the two ships taking it up as he went along. So Colum- bia is decidedly hailed — if it will do it any good ! t saw an amusing resurrection of a horse yesterday. One of the military companies were marching gayly down the street on their way to embark for Boston, when a blind horse in a swill-cart, whose calamity was forgotten for the instant by his occupied master, walked deliberately into one of the Croton excava- tions. The harness was just strong enough to break his fall, the cart was left above ground, and he stood on the bottom, as comfortably out of the way as '• truth in a well." The driver was a man for an emergency, and, indeed, acted so much as if it was " part of the play," that a Chinese traveller would probably have recorded it as a melo-dramatic accom- paniment to the show. He took off his coat very qui- etly, picked up one of the shovels of the absent work- men, and commenced filling up the ditch. The loose dirt went in very fast, and the horse, with an in- stinct against being buried alive, rose with the sur- face. From being some inches below the pavement, his head was getting above ground when I left him; and as the old man was still piling on very industri- ously, I presume he soon had him once more at the level of cock-crowing. There have been various definitions of "a gentle- man," but the prettiest and most poetic is that given by a young lady of this city the other day: " A gen- tleman," said she, " is a human being, combining a woman's tenderness with a man's courage." " Cheap literature" is shaking in its shoes. I un- derstand the publishers "see the expediency" of ma- king their editions more costly, and accommodating them to the smaller sales. The great American maw is surfeited with " new novels" at last. I trust that booksellers and authors will now become slightly ac- quainted. What shall it be ? If we understand you rightly, you would prefer on this last page, some well-con- trived nonsense — to wind off trippingly, as it were. Wisdom is respectable. Pictures, poetry, prose, pa- thos, and puffery, are all very well — but after being instructed, you wish to be let out of school. Js that it? Something about " town," of course. Folly lives here, all the year round. Fashion is exclusively ur- han. And when we have mentioned these two, we have named the persons in our acquaintance about •vliom there is, by much, the liveliest curiosity. What 38 Folly is doing in town, and what is the last antic of Fashion, are departments of news that are read before the deaths and marriages — " as nobody can deny." Fashion be our theme, then, "for the nonce." We would devote this page to it eternally, if we dared. That we should please you by so doing, we very well know. But the owl is the king of types, and wisdom has, of print, a chartered monopoly — hang her! Well, madam, the fashions. Let us begin at the small end of the horn, and touch first upon the crock- ery sex — winding off with the china and porcelain. The gentlemen, who had been previously let up, have been lately let down. Straps were abandoned by the cognoscenti last autumn — with the first "slosh." Suspenders were abandoned with the first intimation of the present summer solstice. There is at present no unnatural restraint upon trousers. They are pre- vented from coming up by their natural gravity — from coming down by being "caught on the hip." Shoul- ders are emancipated from the caprices of genuflec- tion. The hollow of the foot suffers no longer from the shrug of incredulity. The nether man, in short, is free, sovereign, and independent. Among the advantages of this revolution is the cleanly circumstance that the boot, in its nightly exit, is no longer compelled to make a thoroughfare of the leg of the pantaloon. This is an " inexpressible" re- lief. Buttons, also, are subjected no longer to the severe trials of stooping. Boots, unhappily, can no longer conceal their " often infirmities" — high polish and indifference to surprise and exposure being indis- pensable accompaniments to their present loose asso- ciations. As an offset to the expensiveness of this, the pantaloons themselves will not be so frequently in-kneed. Frock-coats are going out of fashion, and Newmar- ket cut-aways are worn for the morning. Very well for those who have small hips, as the latter are rather spready. This exacts also great tidiness in the cut of the "continuations." Waistcoats are made longer, and with drooping wings, to conceal any little vagaries in the newly emancipated trousers. But this, too, exaggerates unbecomingly the apparent size of the hips. " The pyramid inverted" is our model, by the laws of art, as the " pyramid proper" is that of the ladies. Gaiters are the mode — but they require a neat pastern. Your greyhound breed of man looks well in them. They should be made separate from the shoe, for they require washing, and your unscru- pulous dingy shoe is an abomination. Patent leather, of course, till death. Hats are a delicate subject. There should be as many fashions of them as there are varieties of human faces. Indeed, hats should be destined and allotted to men, as irrevocably as noses and hair — suitable by infallible harmonies of physiognomy. We should be born in hats — hats that would grow without materially altering in shape or expression. We would as soon let a barber choose us a nose as a hatter a hat. And as to a fashion in hats — one fashion for all men — where is thy rebuke, oh Nature, tortured and traves- tied ! But still, fashions there be ! John Bull is at present wearing his hat very small — the Frenchman is wearing his very large. The Yankee wears his very peaked — the German wears his very flat. We scorn to give the encouragement of print to any one of these. Suit yourself— since Nature has left you un- finished. Take counsel of an artist or of a woman. Buy no hat rashly. As to the ladies, we would not, like " Fools, rush in where angels fear to tread," but we must be permitted to record our little private distress and apprehension at the utter cessation of all novelty in their fashions. The one new stuff of "Balzarine," unless we are in a most benighted state of ignorance, comprises the entire variety of the sea- 594 EPHEMERA. son. We meet our few sins of idolatry in the very bonnets, the very boddices, the very namelessnesses of last year's product and admiration ! Are the brains of milliners subject to drought ? Is invention dried up — fancy, imagination, quite squeezed dry? Are we to be subjected to sameness in angels — one eternal and unchanging exterior ? Forbid it, while the world continues sinful, oh sumptuary powers! We could not bear, in our present state of mind, the angelic liv- ery of one eternal gown (wings, if you like to call it so), with no new hat, no ravishing garniture for the shoulders! Oh no ! Immolate the milliners for their dull brains ! Turn your genius into this seemingly exhausted channel, oh, unemployed painters! Show us woman — like the opal or the cloud — dressed in new colors whenever she comes into the sun ! Adora- bly sweet as she is, she is sweeter for the outer spice of variety ! If to lack classes of society which another nation possesses, be a falling behind that nation in refine- ment (query, whether !), we are behind England, at least, in this degree, that we possess no class of table- talkers. Dinner-parties in this country are gather- ings-together of friends, chiefly to eat, and to chat, as it may happen. The host has been at great pains to procure a haunch of venison, but he has not thought of " the wit" for dinner. He has neither overlooked the olives nor the currant-jelly — but, alas! the attic salt is forgotten ! The tomatoes will flank the roast, and the celery-sauce the boiled — but who is to listen to Doctor Gabble, or draw out Alderman Mumchance ? There will be two misses and no " el- igible," or two eligibles and no miss. The dinner is arranged with studied selection, but the guests are in- vited by the alphabet. The eating will be zealous and satisfactory, but the " entertainment" as the god of dulness pleases. So provides not his dinner, this gentleman's foreign correspondent (we take one of the same class), in Russell square. Mr. Mordaunt Figgins (large trader and small banker, of Throgmorton street) wishes, we will say for example, to give a very smart and impres- sive dinner to Mr. Washington, Wall street, just ar- rived with a travelling credit from New York. The butler sees to the dinner — ca va sans dire. Who shall be asked ? Smith, of course. His jokes will be | all new to the Yankee, and it will look spirituelle to have an author. He will be sure to come — for Fig- gins discounts his bills. Put down Smith. Who next? We must have a lord. Smith won't show off without a lord, and the American will all but go into fits to meet one at dinner. Let's see ! There's old Lord Fumble, always wanting to borrow ten pounds. Put down Lord Fumble. So— a lord and a wit. Now, two good listeners. They must be ladies, of course. We shall have too many black-coats. What, ladies listen, Mrs. Figgins? The Pimpkinsons. Well— they are poor and stylish-looking, and the Yankee knows nothing of the blue-book. Say the Pimpkinsons. Now for a dandy or two, and one handsome woman that flirts, in case Jonathan is a gay man. And, I say, Mrs. Figgins, there'll be a spare seat, and you may ask your mother — only she must dress well and say nothing of "the shop." And duly at eight o'clock Mr. Figgins's guests arrive — Smith wishing bills could be discounted without black-mail interest— my Lord Fumble turning up his (inward) nose, but relieved to meet Smith — the dandies hungry and su- percilious — the Misses P. delighted and frisky — and the Yankee excessively well-dressed and dumbfound- ed to meet Smith and a live lord. Smith talks to the lord and at the Yankee, the rest play their parts "as cast in the bill," and everybody goes off delighted. The dinner was a hit, and Smith was " never so bril- liant" — if Mrs. Figgins and Mr. Washington, Wall street, can be relied on. Let us glance at another phase of the "life of thf diner-out." Mr. Smith has accepted one of his mos agreeable invitations — a west-end dinnei, with a no- bleman for his host. Mr. Smith is the son of a music- master, and of course was born with an indisputable claim to the supreme contempt of his noble convives. By his talents, and more particularly by his agreenbla powers, however, he has uncurled the lip of scorn, and moves in aristocratic society, a privileged intru- der. In the drawing-room, before dinner, Mr. Smith is ceremoniously polite — he is the one man in the com- pany who dare not venture to be at his ease. Dinner is announced. The ladies are handed down by those who are born his betters, and he follows, silent and alone. He takes the seat that is left, wherever it be, and feels that he must be agreeable to his neighbor, whoever it be — at least till the conversation becomes general, when he is expected to shine. Meantime his brain is busier than his stomach, for he is watch- ing for an opening to a pun, and studying the guests around him to arm his wit and lay traps for his sto- ries. If, by chance, he is moody or ill at ease, he has not the noble privilege of reserve or silence. Not to talk — Smith not to be funny — were outrageous! " What was the man asked for ?" would have been the first exclamation after his departure. Oh, no ! he must be brilliant, route quHlcoute; and as he is ex- pected to extemporize verses at the piano after dinner, he must be cudgelling his invention at the same time to get together the material, and weave in the current news of the day, and the current scandal of the hour, with, of course, the proper seasoning of compliment to lords and ladies present. Hie, labor, hie opus est! The dishes are removed and the desert is set on the table, and Mr. Smith,- who hrfjj hitherto kept up a small fire of not very old puns on the meats and their concomitants, becomes the object of general, but im- passive and supercilious expectation. His listeners are waiting to be amused, without feeling the slightest obligation to draw out his wit by their own, and after this wet blanket has made his efforts hang fire for some time, the master of the house calls for "that very droll story" — the same song and story having been not only told often before, but expanded and em- bellished in the New Monthly or the John Bull. Wishing lords would tell stories of their own (which they never do), and dreading lest the company are al- ready familiar with his story, Smith affects to select one listener to whom it is quite new, and to tell it for his individual amusement. In the midst of his narra- tion, he discovers by some maladroit interruption that this person knows the story by heart, and, obliged to finish it without the zest of novelty, he makes a failure, and concludes amid a general silence. We have seen this happen once, and, from the nature of things, it must happen often. Who would wear such laurels ? Who would wish this state of society intro- duced — this yet unforged link added to the social chain of America ? It is the common argument with the advocates of a monarchical form of government, that the arts and literature would be better fostered — that the wealth of which 'patronage is a growth, is only accumulated by primogeniture and entail. Heaven defend us from such fostering, say we ! Heaven defend us from such patronage ! No, no ! Genius is proud ! Genius is humbled and cowed, damped and degraded by pat- ronage — " patronage" so called, we mean. The man gifted by his God with superiority to his fellows, does not, without an anguish of shame, yield precedence to the nobility of a king's patent. He is self-humbled when he does it. He loses the sense of superiority, without which he is no more noble in genius than the knight is noble in the field when his spurs are hacked EPHEMERA. 595 off by the herald. There is no equality, felt or un- derstood, between lord and author in England. It pleases authors so to represent it in books, but they never felt it. We have seen the favorites of the day in their hour of favor, and heard enough said of them to show us how much more would be said to ears more confidential. Through all the abandon, through all the familiarity of festive moments, when there is nothing which could be named which marks a distinc- tion between noble and simple, there is an invisible arm for ever extended, with reversed hand, which the patronized author feels on his breast like a bar of iron. He never puts it aside. He never loses the remem- brance of his inferiority. He is always a parasite— always a belier of God's mark of greatness, the no- bility of mind. If we are remarkable for anything worth putting your finger on, it is for a kind of divining-rod faculty that we have — useful to everybody but ourself. We can point to hidden treasure with a dip infallible — if it be for another man'a benefit. In our own case, and for our own profit, we are, like all enchanted rods when dropped from the hand of the enchanter — a manifest and incapable stick. In the exercise of this vicarious faculty, we are about to take a walk up Broadway (on paper), and by pointing to undiscovered values, show to several persons how they can make their fortunes. Here we are at the Battery — the most popular re- sort in town, and the most beautiful promenade in the known world. Within three minutes' walk of this lovely spot reside at least two or three thousand for- eigners, the lower part of Broadway being their cho- sen and favorite quarter, and the " marine walk" their constant lounge. Bachelors innumerable of our own nation herd hereabout. The great baths of the city are near by, and any additional inducement would be the last drop in the bucket of attraction, and would double the number of Battery-frequenters. Where in the world beside, is there — unoccupied — such a place for a cafe ? Dispossess yourself, dear reader, of all impressions of cafes as you see them now, and of all idea of cof- fee and other friandises such as are commonly served to you in places so called. We speak of a Parisian cafe, — a palace of cushions, gilding and mirrors, sump- tuous as a thing rubbed out of the lamp of Aladdin, and presided over by a queen of the counter in the shape of a lady only less pretty than respectable. We speak of a luxurious and fashionable saloon, where, in the neighborhood of a lovely promenade, gentlemen and their dames and daughters can find faultless coffee, and faultless ices and fruits— a place to resort to in the slow hours, to rest in after a walk, to find refreshment after a bath, to meet friends and ac- quaintances. Why, in any city of Europe there would be dozens of cafes around a spot so enchanting. And we are fast overtaking Europe in the taste for these approved luxuries, and, in our opinion, the pub- lic is quite ready for this ! In the month of April just gone by, there were placards " to let" upon the doors of the two houses facing the Battery between Greenwich street and Broadway. What an opportu- nity lost! What safer investment of capital could there be than to have expended a few thousand dol- lars upon the lower story and basement of this block, making of it a grand cafe? What in Europe could ex- ceed the beauty of the prospect from its windows and doors, the freshness of its unpolluted air, the shade upon its sidewalk from the magnificent trees in front, and the charms of scenery and promenade immedi- ately adjoining? We only wonder that to such a "call" of opportunity, a cafe did not spring through the ground like a mushroom, ready furnished with coffee and curacoa, silver spoons and a lady at the counter! Since we are not a Frenchman, nor a German, no. an "adult alien" of any description, we are sorry to saythat these ultra-marine dwellers among us have more taste than we for fine scenery, elegant resorts, and fresh air. Foreigners monopolize the bright spot of Manhattan. The Battery is their nucleus. Fash- ion, indigenous fashion, has gone up town — an " up- town" hedged off from the rivers on either side by streets unfootworthy, and neighborhoods never pene- trated to the water-side on any errand but business — leaving to foreigners the only spot in this vast island-city where the view and fresh air of the sea are decently accessible. On this string we have harped before, and we leave it now with a little suggestion that we can not so well bestow elsewhere — that while this cafe project is in process of incubation, the au- thorities would oblige us and the remainder of the public by giving us a comfortable seat or two with backs to "them in the shady avenues of the Battery. And now, to come up Broadway a little. In all countries but this, rooms commanding advantages of vierv have a proportionate high value as lodgings, and are furnished and let accordingly. Without stopping at the buildings whose value as residences are so much increased by the oppositeness of the superb structure and its leafy surroundings in Trinity churchyard, let us come at once to the Park. From the corner of the American Museum to the church in Beekman street extends a line of buildings, the advantages of which as to neighborhood and prospect would com- mand the highest price, as lodgings, in any other city in the world. The superb fountain — the trees and grass of the enclosure — the views of the magnificent church and hotels, and the thronged pavement of Broadway opposite, are all visible from those desirable chambers. The large company of single gentlemen who occupy rooms similarly situated in other cities — gentlemen who want lodging-rooms and breakfast, and dine wherever they like — are compelled to dive into the dark side-streets, and either live in pent-up quar- ters quite away from this centre of attraction, or un- dertake the life of hotels which has, for many of them, serious objections. Luxuriously fitted and furnished, with a housekeeper and the usual appli- ances of English lodging-houses, this line of build- ings would be unequalled in attractions to bachelors. Everything they desire in a residence would be there attained — centrality, comfort, and accessibility. We recommend to the landlords who now let rooms, com- manding such advantages, for cheap lodgings, bar- ber's shops, and lumber-rooms, to turn their attention forthwith to this obviously better account, and at the same time embellish and improve the most conspic- uous part of the city. We were going into various other details of the un- improved capabilities of New York, but verbum sap. Our drift is visible, and it is only necessary in refer- ence to such subjects to set the wide-awake to think- ing. The extreme heats of the last week or two have depopulated country-seats, and driven thousands from the open glare and thin roofs of rural resorts, to the shady sidewalks and stone walls of the more temperate city. The dim and cool vestibules of the large hotels are thronged with these driven-in strangers; ftlfl in the refreshing atmosphere of the manifold iced drinks and their varied odors of mint and pine-apple, they bless Heaven for the cooling luxuries of cities, pitying all those whose destiny or poverty confines them to the unmitigated country. Enjoying, as we do, the blessings of metropolitan protection in July, we feel called upon to express our deep sympathy with those 596 EPHEMERA unfortunate beings, who, in places of public resort, or in private cottages, are fulfilling their sad destiny of sultry exposure. The once porous hill-sides and val- leys, baked by the sun to the induration of a paved street, lack the delicious sprinklings of Croton water- pipes. The warm milestones, few and far between, do but remind the scorched passer-by of the gushing hydrants of Broadway. The tepid spruce-beer and chalky soda-water of the country-inns only deepen the agony of absence from "juleps" and "cobblers." What would not these poor sufferers give for a brick block between them and the sun ! How would they not bless Heaven for the sight of the cold sweat on a wall of unheated and impermeable granite ! What celestial bliss would it not be, to see, on a country j road, at every few yards' distance, black boys, unpaid and unthanked, directing, like benign angels, streams of the pellucid element across their sultry way ! Ah! the luxury, in the summer-heats, of city-walls and city refrigerations ! It has been unreflectingly thought that there were two classes of human beings overworked and uncared for. It has been said that there was no Providence j for housemaids and editors. The predecessors of these laborious animals, it was supposed, had, in some j previous metempsychosis, committed sins which doomed their posterity to perpetual toil. It is true, I theirs is a destiny of crash, in a world, for others, of j comparative diaper and dimity. But, mark the alle- j viations ! The first of July comes round, and Heaven inflicts upon the task-masters and mistresses of these \ oppressed maids, a locomotive insanity. With toil and sweat they pack up their voluminous traps, and embarking in a seething boat they depart, prating and red-faced, on their demented travels. They go from place to place, packing and unpacking, fretting and j sweating from day to day, and arriving at last at the grand fool-doni of Saratoga, they take up their lodg- i ing for a month in chambers of pill-box dimensions, pitiably persuaded that the smell of pine partitions, ; and the pitchy closeness of shingled roofs reeking in the sun, are the fragrance of the fields, and a blessed relief from the close air of the city ! So, for weeks, they absent themselves, deluded. The housemaid, j meantime, has possession of the cool and spacious j dwellings deserted for her use. The dragged muscles relax over her collar-bone and shoulders, for she has now no water to carry up-stairs and down. She re- covers the elasticity in the small of her back, and the natural distribution of red and white in her flushed and overheated complexion. The well-contrived blinds, closed in the freshness of the morning-hours, keep the house cool and dim for her noontide repose. The spa- cious drawing-rooms are hers, in which to wander at will, barefoot if she likes, on the luxurious carpets. The bath-rooms are near her bed, and the ice-man comes daily to the door, and unless she choose to step out upon the sidewalk at noon, she scarce need know it is summer. Ah, the still coolness of thick brick walls and ample rooms within ! Her worn-out frame recovers its powers, and in the goodness of her heart she can afford to send pitying thoughts after the exiled and infatuated sufferers at Saratoga! Negatively blessed is her fellow-sufferer, the editor, meantime — liable as he is to this same locomotive lu- nacy, and kept within reach of enjoyable and health- preserving luxuries by the un-let-up-able nature of his vocation. Nor this alone. He has his minor reliefs. Omfri-acquainted as he necessarily is, and mostly with the unhappy class self-exiled to the inclement coun- try, his weary arm now lies supine in delicious indo- lence at his side. The habitual five hundred visits, per diem, of his right hand to the rim of his hat, are no more exacted. The two hundred and fifty sugges- tions, per diem, as to the conduct of his paper, the course of his politics, and his private morals, are no longer to be thankfully received. The city is full, but full of strangers, charmingly unconscious of his ex- treme need of counsel. He walks to and fro at ease, looking blandly at the hydrants, blandly at the strange faces, blandly at the deliciously unfamiliar contents of the omnibuses. He dwells in a crowd, in heavenly solitude. He is like a magnetized finger on the body of a man with a toothache — apart from the common pulse, sequestered from the common pain — yet in his habitual place and subject to no separation. He has no engagements to meet gentlemen or com- mittees, for the better manufacture of public opinion. He can shilling it to Staten Island for sea-air, or six- pence it to Harlem for an evening sight of the blood- warm grass, in blessed silence! And so fly the sum- mer months, like three leaves of the book of paradise turned back by chance ; and, refreshed with new cour- age, the doomed editor renews, in September, the multitudinous extras of his vocation. Oh kindly Providence, even for housemaids and editors ! A true leaf from the thoughts of a woman of genius on the subject of woman's love, is stuff to dwell upon in the reading. We totally differ from one of the sweetest writers of the time, Mrs. Seba Smith, on the following disparaging passage touching the love of a gentle and confiding woman as contrasted with that of a proud one. Let our readers judge. The pas- sage occurs, by-the-way, in a story which is the gem of the whole year of monthlies, called "The Proud Ladye" — in Godey's Lady's Book. "The love of a gentle and confiding woman, with its perpetual ap- peals to tenderness and protection, must be dear, very dear to a manly heart ; but then it too often lacketh that exclusive and earnest devotion which imparts a last toucli of value, its sympathies are too readily ex- cited, and the images of others, faint and shadowy it may be, yet still images, too often sit, side by side, with the beloved. But the love of a proud woman, with its depths of untold tenderness, rarely stirred, yet, when once awakened, welling up a perpetual fountain of freshness and beauty, its concentred and earnest faith, its unmingled sympathies, its pure shrine, raised to the beloved, burning no incense upon strange altars, and admitting no strange oblations, the love of such a one should invest manhood with tenfold dignity — should make him fee) as a priest in the very presence of the divinity." " Things lost in air" are not always unproductive, Signora Castellan having received, last night, about two thousand dollars for singing four songs. Signor Giampietro, her husband, may well say that " a sweet voice is a most excellent thing in woman." I made one of the twenty-five hundred who composed the audience of this successful cantatrice last evening, and having missed her introductory concert, this was the first time I had seen her. I should take Madame Castellan to be about twenty-three. She is a plump little Jewess, with an advantage not common to plump- titude — a very uppish and thoroughbred neck, charm- ingly set on. A portrait of her dimpled shoulders and the back of her head would be a fit subject for Titian. Her countenance expresses an indolent sweet- ness, with none of the wide-awakity so common to her tribe — and, indeed, the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz occurred to me in looking at her: — " Her heart is full of passion and her eyes are full of sleep." A most amiable person I am sure she is — but, unless I am much mistaken, there is none of Malibran's intellectual volcano in the "crayther," and the molten lava is what is wanting to make her equal or compar- EPHEMERA. 597 able to that wonderful woman. I certainly do not think we have heard a voice in this country, not even Malibran's, of more astonishing compass tlian Ma- dame Castellan's. There is not a chamber in her throat where a cobweb could remain unswept for a moment. Her contralto notes are far beyond the plum- met of ordinary "soundings," and as rich and effort- less as the gurgle of a ringdove, while her soprano tones go up with the buoyancy of a lark, and raise on tiptoe all the audience who are not fortunate enough to obtain seats. Still, in ascending and descending on this angel's ladder, she misses a round now and then. There are transitions which catch, somehow. She wants fusion. In her trills more particularly, the bal- ance is one-sided, and there is a nerve in the listener's besoin which is not reached by the warble. Give her more practice, however, more passionateness or brandy and water, and she would melt over these trifling flaws, without a doubt. So near perfection as she is, it seems almost impertinent to criticise her. New York has some radii to its outer periphery which are well worth the stranger's following in the way of excursions. The promontory which makes the jumping-off" place at the seaward end of the Nar- rows, is one of these, and upon it (next door to the fishing-huts of Galway), stands one of the most luxu- rious hotels in this country. A friend gave me a delightful drive to it the other day, via a little flourish among the knolls of Long Island, and, as it chanced to be the hottest day of the season, I can speak advi- sedly of the ocean air of Fort Hamilton. To be handed over from the Battery to such a cool place, in half an hour, by the long arm of a steamer, is one of the possibilities that make New York very habitable. The marvel of New York just now is"tiik Al- hamra" — an ice-cream resort lately opened a little below Niblo's. The depth of the building on Broad- way is pierced for a corridor entrance, and this is lined with counters tended by the prettiest Hebes of their class. Traversing this alley of temptation, you de- scend to a marble-paved circular court, tented with gayly-striped awnings and gorgeous colors of barbaric architecture. The seats are around a fountain, and a statue of a water-nymph stands in the centre, holding above her head a horn, from which issues the water, in a jet resembling a glass umbrella. The basin is rimmed with flowers, the falling water makes the con- stant murmur which is needful for a tete-a-tete, the sky looks in through the lacings of the blue and white awn- ing, and " the ices are made of pure cream." The whole scene is more oriental than Spanish, and would have been better named a serail or a kiosk than the Alhamra, but it is a "fairy-spot" (as well as a man can judge who has not seen fairy-land), and, for the price of an ice-cream, it gives the untravelled a new idea of luxury. Great as the difference is between the scents of moist earth and splashed dust, the latter, faule de mieux, comes up to your nostrils very agreeably, as you sit at your summer morning's work in a city win- dow. It is a day to be thankful for "wet" in almost any shape. Yet it shows of what accommodating stuff we are made, when, instead of the gentle minis- try of the exhaling dews, we feel prepared to bless a fat negro with a leathern pipe, dispensing, as it were, the city branch of nature's distribution of moisture. The sable vicegerent of the Croton, whom I have in my eye (hight Jackson) — now brushing the boots of Mr. Stopintown, the poor scribbler, now directing at will the prodigal oulgush of water that comes forty miles to do his bidding — stands, as well he may, pet- rified with astonishment at the zealous activity with which the obedient element follows the turn of his finger. Negro amazement is evidently taken in at the mouth. My friendly moistener airs his trachea very fixedly from the beginning to the end of his easy function. Thanks to his influence, the thermometer beside me, 1 observe, has sunk two degrees with the tepid abatement of the morning air. Whatever else may be left unfinished at the end of the world, we are quite sure that there has been enough written ! The " bow of promise" was no se- curity against a deluge of books — and it has come! " Oh, for a perch on Ararat with Noah'' — the waves of this great flood receding, and nothing visible but the " unwritten" mud ! We would fain have books "done away." We would begin again with "two of" every kind," and wait with patience for a posthumous work by Ham, Shem, or Japhet! " Our eyes are sick of this perpetual flow Of (Extras)— and our heart of (things to read !)" which, we believe are Shelley's "sentiments better expressed." And, by-thc-way, it is a marvel where all these books go to. We do not mean, of course, the type I and paper. We mean the spirit, black, or white, or gray, that on this bridge of print passes from the au- thor's heart into the reader's and there abides — more difficult to cast out than the devils exiled into pork three thousand years ago, and still guarded against by the abhorrent synagogue. Fifteen millions of peo- j pie, all ductile, imitative, and plastic — all, at some | moment or other, waiting for a type upon which to mould their characters — and all supplied, helter-skel- ter, at a shilling the pair, with heroes and heroines I made to sell — the creatures God has first created in his own image, taken soft from his hand, and shaped, moulded, and finished by De Kock and Bulwer ! Who is there, high or low, that is not reached by these pos- sessing and enchanting spirits? We are sure we do not overrate their power. In our own case, a novel of Bulwer's, read in a day, possesses us exclusively and irresistibly for a week, and lingers in our brain for many a day after. Like or dislike the character he draws — we can not resist the fascination. Yet you would think the reading of a book, by an editor, would be like sweeping out the water from a brook. What must it be to the farmer who reads it by his pine-knot fire in the country, and thinks of it all day over his plough — to the apprentice who reads it on Sunday and ponders on it for a week over his bench. We are only looking at them as infusions - into the fountains of opinion and impulse; and, if we had time, we should like to trace them till they appeared in classes of event--, or in features of national character. To do this in detail would require the space of a lecture or an essay. But, at a glance — to what do we owe the fact, that, throughout all the middle and lower classes of American life, everything except toil and daily bread is looked at through the most sentimental and romantic medium ? In their notions, affections, and views of life, the Americans are really the most ro- mantic people on earth. We do not get this from our English forefathers — the English are as much the contrary as is possible. We do not get it from our pursuits — what can be tnore unromantic than the daily cares of an American ? We do not get it from our climate — it is a wonder how romance, fled from the soft skies of Spain and Italy, can stay among us. We get it from books — from the hoisting of the flood- gates of copyright — from the inundation of works of fiction. There are few, we venture to say — few below the more intellectual classes, whose views of life are not shaped and modelled, and whose ambitions are not aimed by characters and impulses found in the attrac- 598 EPHEMERA. tive pages of "cheap literature." We do not con- demn this, we repeat — we do not know that we would stop it if we could. At any rate, we prefer it to the inoculation of English low life — the brutality of the Jack Sheppard school of novels; and we vastly prefer it to the voluptuousness of the literature most popular in France. Thieves are not heroes among us, and woman is enshrined in respect and honor; and with these respective differences from England and France, we can almost rest content under the influences that make us what we are. Sit back in your chair, and let me babble! I like just to pull the spiggot out of my discretion, and let myself run. No criticisms if you please, and don't stare! Eyelids down, and stand ready for slip-slop. I was sitting last night by the lady with the horn and the glass umbrella, at the Alhamra — I drinking a julep, she (my companion) eating an ice. The water dribbled, and the moon looked through the slits in the awning, and we chatted about Saratoga. My com- panion has a very generalizing mind, situated just in the rear of a very particularly fine pair of black velvet eyes, and her opinions usually come out by a little ivory gate witli a pink portico— charming gate, charm- ing portico, charming opinions. I must say I think more of intellect when it is well lodged. I am literally at a dead loss to know whether she said it, or I said it — what my mind runs on at this mo- ment. It's all one, for if I said it, it was with the vel- vet approbation of her ineffable eyes, and before such eyes I absorb and give back, like the mirror that I am. These, then, are her reflections about Saratoga. Why, in mamma's time, it was a different affair. There was a cabinet of fashion in those days, and the question was settled with closed doors. Giants have done being born, and so have super-beautiful women — such women as used to lay down hearts like blocks in the wooden pavement, and walk on nothing else. There were about three in each city — three belles of whom every baptized person in the country knew the name, style, and probable number of victims. Their history should have been written while they lasted — for of course the gods loved them, and " whom the gods love die first,'' and they are dead, and have left no manuscripts nor models. Well, these belles were leagued, and kept up their dynasty by correspondence. New York was the seat of government, and the next strongest branch was at Albany (where the women at one time were lovelier than at any known place and period since the memory of woman). In New York alone, however, were married ladies admitted to the councils. Here and there a renowned beau was kept in the antechamber for advice. April came, and then commenced a vigorous exchange of couriers. "The Springs," of course, but which? Saratoga, or Leba- non, or Ballston ? What carried it, or who decided it, was enshrined in the most eternal mystery — but it was decided and known to a few beaux and the proprietors of the hotels by the middle of May. Wine and Johnson's band were provided accordingly. The sum- mer was more punctual in those days, and July par- ticularly was seldom belated. After the fourth, the cabinet started, and then commenced a longitudinal radiation from north to south — after what, and to fol- low whom, was only a secret to the uninitiated. And such times — for then the people had fortunes, and the ladies drank champagne! La! how 'ma talks about it! But now! — Eheu fugaces ! (Latin for "bless my soul") — change has drank all the spirit of our dream. There is so much aristocracy in New York that there is none at all. Beauty has been scrambled for, and everybody has picked up a little. There must be valleys to make mountains — ugly people before there can be belles — hut everybody being rather pretty, who can be divine? Idem, gentility! Who knows who isn't "genteel" in New York? There are fifty circles as like as peas — and not even an argument as to the perihelion. Live where you please, know whom you please, wear what you please, and ride freely in the omnibuses, and nobody makes a remark ! Social anarchy ! Why, what a state of things it is when it is as much trouble to find out where the prettiest people have gone to pass the summer as it is to inquire out "good"ness in Wall street! No cherishing, either, of belle or beau descent! The daughters of the charming tyrants of ten or twenty years ago, the boys of the beaux of that time, walk about unpointed at and degenerate. The "good society" of twenty years ago is most indifferent society now. " The vase in which roses have once been distilled" goes for a crockery pipkin. A great pity they don't have coffee at the Alhamra ! And no curacoa — and what is ice-cream without a drop of curacoa ! It's a pretty place — a very pretty place! And there should be nobody to wait on you here but dainty and dapper slaves — such as the Moors had, with golden rings on their ankles, in the veritable Alhambra. That tall, crooked blackamoor hurts my eye. So there was no "Mr. Hicks," and no "legacy to Washington Irving." More's the pity ! I wish a Mr. Hicks might be created impromptu, on purpose. And more Mr. Hickses for more authors. Birds that sing should be "provided with cages and full cups. What could be done better with spare moneys than to take the footworn pilgrim of genius and send him softly down from the temple of fame shod with velvet! In every rich man's will there should be at least one line illuminated with a bequest to genius. Heaven give us a million that we may set the glorious ex- ample ! And now, lady, who are you that in this gossiping dream has held converse with me ! I have murmured to the black cross, suspended by its braid of hair upon your throat of ivory, without asking your name — con- tent that you listened. But now (if spiritual visiters have arms) — put your arm in mine and come out under a better-devised ceiling ! The night is fra- grant. Heaven is sifting love upon us through the sieve of the firmament — starlight, you took it for! And as much falls in Broadway as elsewhere. And the stars are as sweet, seen from this sidewalk, as they are from the fountain of Egeria. I have sighed in both places, and know. " Allons ! faites moi Vamour — car je suis dans mon humeur des Dimanches." We are making a study of this big book of a city we live in. We mean, in good time, to peruse it all — its blotted passages no less than the lines of it which fall in pleasant places. And we'll tell you what we think of it as we go along. Not with shovel and pickaxe. Order is a law of industry, and industry, as the child of sin, we virtuously abhor. We shall read this great book, as we do everything else — in the style of the antelapsarians — idly and paradise-wise. The ant and the "little busy bee" were unknown to Adam and Eve, it may be safely conjectured ; and we scorn to take them for models, as enjoined in the primer. Butterflies for ever! We shall flit from flower to flower, and tilt upon any stem that we fancy will sup- port us — as do these full-dress and faineant gentlemen of no care. Pray expect nothing in particular! Stand ready to hop off. Any perfume that comes down the wind may tempt us to follow its invisible track back — for so butterflies detect the self-betraying EPHEMERA. 599 flowers of Paradise. (Though, for this zigzagery in our courses it is, that we butterflies are called volatile and capricious — as if we had no right, in our own wav, to follow our more spiritual and finer noses! And to be blamed, too, for imitating, as far as in us lies, the innocent nothing-to-do-ity of angels !) But, the animated book of Manhattan. Turn we to a plain passage, on which we were just now pon- dering. There seems to us a poor economy of the animal spirits in the mode of life of the New-Yorkers. Let us take a single example, for the convenience of our over-worked adjectives and pronouns. Mr. Splitfig, the eminent wholesale grocer, is at the age of virtue — thirty-five. He rises in the morning at half-past seven, makes so much of his toilet as ap- pears above the tablecloth, and makes his breakfast of the morning paper, a nibble at a roll, and coffee at discretion. He is too newly up to eat — too recently arrived from the spiritual land of dreams, as my ado- rable friend Lyra would express it. He is grave and quiet. The sobriety of a fifteen hours' fast is upou him — for he has not eaten meat since yesterday at three. Refreshed by sleep, however, and cheerful alter his coffee, he draws on his walking seldom-allu- ded-tos, and goes out to be gone till dinner. At elev- en, or thereabout, his spirits begin to flag. He would rather not see a friend, except on business, for he hates the trouble of talking. Debts and peccadilloes lie at the bottom of the stomach, and his heart drops down to them for want of a betweenity of beefsteak. He begins to be faintish, but he is principled against lunching or drinking before dinner, and by one o'clock his animal spirits have sunk into his boots, and, from that time till three, he is a dispirited fag, going through with his habitual routine of business, but, of a civil word or a smile as incapable as Caliban. It is while the chambers of his head are thus unlighted and un- tenanted, however, that the most of his friends and acquaintances see him and judge of his capacity for entertainment. He speaks to fifty people in the course of those two exhausted hours, and speaks sul- lenly and coldly, and, of these fifty, not one considers that " The very road into his kindness" lies over a floating bridge of comestibles which has sunk with an unnatural ebbtide. What says Mene- nius, the rough and wise ? — " He had not dined : The veins unfilled, the blood is cold, and then We pout upon the morning ; are unapt To give or to forgive ; but when we have stuffed These pipes and these conveyances of our blood With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls Than in our priest-like fasts." But, at three, Mr. Splitfig dines — and as he gives them something to stand on, his spirits jump up and look out of his eyes. His tongue feels the inoisture at its root, and grows flowery, and the one man who sits opposite to the unctuous grocer at table thinks him the best of fellows. Splitfig keeps a trotter, and, after dinner, happy and agreeable, he jumps into his wagon, and distributes, along the milestones and hedges of the Bloomingdale road, smiles and good-natured glances, that were much more wisely got up four hours earlier in the day, and sown among his friends for a crop of popularity. To change the similitude, Splitfig makes his day's voy- age with a cold boiler, and gets up the steam on ar- riving at the wharf! Not so Monsieur Toutavous, the French importer. Toutavous takes a cup of coffee at waking, and on the strength of it, dresses, reads the papers, and writes the two or three business-letters which require the coolest head. He keeps for his own society exclu- sively the melancholy hour or two of every day, du- ring which " the stomach is apprehensive that the throat is cut" — the communication is so interrupted. Yet as these unsmiling hours are excellent for thought and calculation, he so shapes his business that he can pass them, alone, without inconvenience. He has taken his coffee, observe, but he has not break- fasted. At eleven he goes to Delmonico's on his way to the " shop." A beefsteak and a pint of claret dress his countenance in smiles, and invigorate his fingers for the friendly clasp exacted by courtesy. He gets to his counting-house a little before twelve, enters upon the hard work of the day with a system alert and lively, and impresses everybody whom he sees with the idea that he is born to good fortune, and has the look of it, and is a good fellow, with no distrust of his credit nor of himself. Sensible of Toutavous — is it not ? Pity, we say again, that the personal, physical econ- omies are so little regarded among us. The ladies lack also a little " fernseed in their ears," but we would not put them off with the tail of a paragraph. We have, for them, a chapter in lavender; not of our own devising altogether ! A superb female Machia- vel whom we once knew, who came always to a ball at three in the morning, fresh as a rosebud after a night's sleep, entrancing you with her dewy coolness when everybody else was hot and weary — she, capa- ble of this brilliant absurdity, once discoursed to us on the economies of heart-breaking. We will show you the trick some day. Meantime, salaam) " As much good stay with thee as go with me "' The first visiter to the bay of New York, and the writer of the first description on record, was John de Verrazzano, a Florentine, in the service of Fran- cis the First. This bold navigator had been for some time in command of four ships, cruising against the Spaniards. But his little fleet being separated in a storm, Verrazzano determined, with one of them, the Dauphin, to take a voyage in search of new countries. He arrived on the American coast, somewhere near North Carolina, and first proceeded south as far as " the region of palm-trees," probably Florida. He then turned, and proceeded north till he entered a harbor, which he describes thus, in a passage of a let- ter addressed by him to his royal master : — "This land is situated in the paralele of Rome, in forty-one degrees and two terces; but somewhat more colde by accidental! causes. The mouth of the ha- ven lieth open to the south, half a league broad; and being entred within it, between the east and the north, it stretcheth twelve leagues, where it wareth broader and broader, and maketh a gulfe about twenty leagues in compass, wherein are five small islands, very fruit- full and pleasant, full of hie and broad trees, among the which islands any great navie may ride without any lea re of tempest or other danger." In this harbor Verrazzano appears to have remained about fifteen days. He and his men frequently went on shore to obtain supplies and see the country. He says, in another part of his letter : " Sometimes our men stayed two or three daies on a little island neere tin: ship for divers necessaries. We were oftentimes within the land five or six leagues, which we found as pleasant as is possible to declare, very apt for any kind of husbandry, of corne, wine, and ayle. We entered aflerward into the woods, which we found so thicke that any army, were it never so great, might have hid itself therein ; the trees whereof are okes, cypress-trees, and other sorts unknown in Europe." These were probably the first European feet that ever trod on any part of the territory now included iu the state of New York. Verrazzano and his crew 600 EPHEMERA. seem to have had considerable intercourse with the natives, and generally to have been treated well, though by his own account he did not always deserve it. Speaking of an excursion made by his men some- where on the coast, he says : " They saw only one old woman, with a young maid of eighteen or twenty yeeres old, which, seeing our companie, hid them- selves in the grasse for feare. The old woman car- ried two infants on her shoulders, and the young woman was laden with as many. As soon as they saw us, to quiet them and win their favors, our men gave them victuals to eate, which the old woman re- ceived thankfully, but the young woman threw them disdainfully on the ground. They took a child from the old ivoman to bring into France ; and going about to take the young ivoman, tvhich teas very beautiful, and of tall stature, they could not possibly, for the great outcries that she made, bring her to the sea ; and especially having great woods to pass thorow, and being far from the ship, we proposed to leave her be- hind, bearing away the child only." In a subsequent part of this narrative, Verrazzano presents a very favorable picture, not only of the ame- nity, but of the discretion of the aborigines: "They came in great companies of their small boats unto the ship, with their faces all bepainted with divers colors, and bringing their wives with them, whereof they were very jealous; they themselves entering aboard the ship, and staying there a good space, but causing their wives to stay in their boats ; and for all the en- treatie that we could make, offering to give them di- vers things, we could never obtaine that they would suffer them to come aboard the ship. And oftentimes one of the two kings coming with his queene, and j many gentlemen for their pleasure to see us, they all j stayed on shore, two hundred paces from us, sending [ us a small boat to give us intelligence of their com- | ing ; and as soon as they had answere from us they came immediately, and wondered at hearing the cries and noyses of the mariners. The queene and her maids stayed in a very light boat at an island a quarter of a league off, while the king abode a long space in our ship, uttering divers conceits with gestures, view- ing with great admiration the furniture of the shippe. And sometimes our men staying one or two days on a little island near the ship, he returned with seven or eight of his gentlemen to see what we did ; then the king drawing his bow, and running up and down with his gentlemen, made much sport to gratify our men." The sail-studded bay of New York at this day pre- sents another scene; and one of these same "gentle- men" is now almost as great a curiosity here as was John de Verrazzano, only three centuries ago, to the rightful lords of this fair land and water. If we are not "qualifying" for the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah, we must look elsewhere for the causes of the accelerated pace at which goes on our national demoralization. How many pegs down we have dropped within three or four years, in political prin- ciple, how many in mercantile honor and credit, how many in the demand and consequent quality of litera- ture, and how many in the dignity of the periodical press, are four very pregnant texts for sermons, as well as questions for political economy. But more striking than any of these changes for the worse, seems to us the demoralization of private life — the increase of scenes of bloodshed, of shocking immor- raliiies, of violence toward the unprotected, of calum- nies, revenges, sabbath-breakings, and all the abomi- nations common to more corrupt and older countries. When is this unnaturally rapid tide to ebb, and to what is it tending ? In the comparative idleness of Americans at pres- ent — the stagnation of business and the food for bad passions, which always lies under misfortune and des- peration — we may doubtless find the immediate causes of these evil changes, and in this there lies a hope, that, with the country's reviving prosperity and indus- try, its morals, public and private, will mend. But there are other and more permanent principles of evil at work among us, which will grow with our growth and strengthen with our strength — as they have grown and strengthened with the progress and prosperity of every country under the sun. In a most philosoph- ical and able letter on the condition of the different countries of Europe, which appeared lately in the National Intelligencer, the writer (President Durbin) remarks upon the gradual diminution of the middle classes in England, and the "widening separation be- tween the rich, who are becoming; richer, and the poor, who are becoming poorer." This middle class — which is the population without its extremes of aris- tocracy and beggary — constitutes the body and strength of England, and when its wealth has been drawn to the aristocracy, and its wants to the beggary of that country, she will be ready for the next stages of national history — revolution and downfall. Amer- ica, however, has as yet neither extreme to any con- siderable extent. Our population are almost entirely persons of such means and pursuits as would place them within the pale of the middle class in England. There is no well-defined aristocracy — no inevitable and irremediable beggary. But the tendency is tow- ard these extremes, and in that tendency — irritated and strengthened just now by the peculiar prostration of "the times" — we see the causes of no small por- tion of the evils we have alluded to. The first step taken toward the formation of an aristocracy is the adoption of its vices, as the first result of inevitable or impending beggary is the contemplation of crime. The refined pursuits of a man born to a certainty of wealth and station, can not be adopted in a moment, nor can suffice for the desires of a man suddenly grown rich. Nor are the higher pleasures of taste and intellect at all satisfying, except after a youth of high culture and ennobled association. The result is, that the corrupted or vacant mind of the fortunate possessor of wealth turns to the pursuit of pleasure, and pleasure in such minds soon degenerates into vice. A virtuous aristocracy, if it ever exist at all, is the slow creation of pride of ancestry, and a well-instilled conviction of the true path of distinction and honor — but meantime the beginners at luxury and power are established as a class of ostentatious and unprincipled members of society, and the license and indulgence they exact is yielded them with exasperation on the part of those they displace and injure. Seduction and intrigue, hushed up, winked at, paid for with money, in European countries, is here resented with the murder of the offender. Public opinion, which, in Europe, under such circumstances, would forgive the offence, and sympathise only with the seducer, takes, in this country, as yet, the other side. To be idle, which was formerly a reproach, is becoming a merit here, as it is in countries where none are gen- tlemen but the idle. But gambling by night for the means of extravagant idleness takes the place of in- dustry by day, and the heart-burnings, jealousies, and unemployed passions of this class, lead almost cer- tainly to scenes of violence and bloodshed. The presence in our community of a large body of idlers (such as exists in all the countries of Europe), whose whole occupation in life is profligacy, is an evil very fast coming upon this country, and one which should at least be guarded against by a total change in the education and guardianship of women. If you have never been on the Beacon course at Hoboken, you have never seen the opening lips of the Hudson river to advantage. As if nature was of EPHEMERA. 601 the same opinion, the long city, with the dot of Gov- ernor's island below it, looks like a note of admira- tion jotted down on the other side. This high table of hind in so near neighborhood to New York is a su- perb natural esplanade, and T marvel much that such unequalled sites for villas can be monopolized by a racecourse. I will spare you the " fine writing" with which the view inspired me while there. It cools too rosy for prose. I went over in the suite of a choice " Spirit of the Times," to see the great match between saddle and wheels — the Oneida Chief, a pacer in harness, against Lady Suffolk and Beppo, two trotters, under jockeys in stirrups. It was rather a new mode of racing — new to me, at least — and I expected a great crowd, but the spectators were in scores instead of thousands. On the way, and in the stand, I was amused with the physiognomy and phraseology of the persons drawn from the city by the sporting nucleus. There was a sprinkling of nobodies, like myself, of course, and some strangers from the hotels; but the remainder had a peculiarity which marked them as a class, and at which I can only fling a conjecture in the way of a definition. Every sense and faculty about them seemed abandoned to jollity, except the eye. The eye looked cool and unsympathetic. In the heartiest laugh, the lids did not relax. The sharp scrutinizing wrinkle and the brow pressed down, remained im- movable while the sides were shaking. I am not sure that the whole expression lay in this; but there was an expression, very decided, about them of a reserva- tion from fun somewhere, and, with all their frolic and nonsense, they looked as cool and ready as a slate and pencil. Sharp boys, I should take them to be, seen singly anywhere. The horses were breathed a little before the race, and as they went to and fro before the stand, I had a fair look at them. Lady Suffolk has all the showi- ness of the trio, and she looks more like a narrow es- cape of beauty than beauty itself. She is a large dap- pled gray mare, with a tail fit for a pacha's standard, legs not particularly blood-like, stiff walking gait, and falls off behind and slopes under the hamstrings like a corn-crib built to shed rain. Cover her head up (which looks knowing enough for a Wall street bro- ker's), and she would not sell, standing still at a coun- try market, for a hundred dollars. A little study of her structure, however, shows you that she is made for something or other very extraordinary, and when she starts from you with a rider on her back, she goes off like something entirely different from any velocity of leg that you are acquainted with. The speed of two passing steamers going at twenty miles an hour — you on one and a horse on the deck of the other — would give you the same sensation of unnatural go- away-ness. Seen coming, from a little distance, she rocks like a pendulum swinging from the rider's head, and when she goes by at full speed, a more poker- ish, awkward, and supernatual gait could scarce be got out of a cross between a steam-paddle and an ostrich. Every time her haunches draw up, she shoots ahead as if she was hit behind with an in- visible beetle. Nothing in the way of legs seems to explain it. The Oneida Chief is not half so fine an animal to look at as his driver, Hiram Woodruff, the great whip of the turf. He is as fine a specimen of the open-air man, born for a field open to all comers, as I have met with in my life. He has a fine frank coun- tenance, a step like a leopard, a bold eye, and a most compact, symmetrical, and elastic frame, fit for a gladiator. In his sulky, he looked as all riders in those ugly contrivances do, like an animal with an axletree through him, and wheels to his hips, but he drove so beautifully as to abate the usual ridicule of the vehicle. The Oneida Chief is a sorrel, and a wonderful pacer, but, as he was beaten, I will say no more about him. Beppo, the second best horse, is the most comical little animal I have ever seen. His color is like a shabby brown plush, and he looks, at a first glance, as if he might have been a cab-horse, or a baker's horse, or in some other mnch-abused line, but retaining, withal, a sort of cocked-pistol expression of eye and limb, and a most catgut extension of muscle. His loins are like a greyhound, and every hair on him seems laid in the most economical way to to, and when he does go there is no outlay for any other purpose. A more mere piece of straightforward work than Beppo's action I could never imagine. Whatever balk there was in starting, he was just at the mark, and he nei- ther broke nor bothered, but did it all in round honest trotting, coming up on the last quarter stretch like a whipped-up arrow. As he only lost the first heat by a head, he of course did his mile, as Lady Suffolk did, in two minutes twenty-six seconds — the fastest trotting on record. " How d'ye do ! — how d'ye do !" as greetings, have passed away. Those two never-answered interrogato- ries have yielded to the equally meaning salutations, " Eh, back !" "Where?" In your autumn trip to the city remember to salute your friends and acquaint- ances. For some three weeks this has been the vogue, and (grown a gravity with use) people now shake hands over "Eh back!" " Where ?" with all the sober earnestness which attended the habitual " how d'ye do ?" "how d'ye do ?" I give it you by way of early report of the prevailing fashion. Since I wrote to you I have aired my magnetic circle with a trip into the solitude of the Highlands. " Retiring from the crowd" is an impoverished phrase for the withdrawal of one's ten thousand spiritual feel- ers from the interlaced contact and influence of four hundred thousand neighbors. We can get used to anything — thanks to the adaptability of our natures — and my four hundred thousandth part of the space, light, air, and locomotion of the island of Manhattan, had grown by habit to be a comfortable allowance; but it was no less a relief to send up my breath to the sky without mixture, and to look about without tan- gling my retina with the optic nerves of other peo- ple. The ordinary accompaniments of departure from town give the fullest effect to the contrast. The pel- let of potato, crowded into the quill of a boy's pop- gun, does not escape with a more sudden relief than the passenger departing by the North river steamer. The crowd grows closer and tighter as you get to the wharf, and the last five minutes before casting off are as close a pressure of flesh, blood, and personal atmo- sphere, as can well be endured with any prospect of recovered elasticity. Suddenly there is a rush ashore, and you shoot out into the calm and open bay, and dropping into a chair, instantly commence the peru- sal of a rural shore, gliding stilly athwart your eye like the lines of a pastoral poem : — no people between you and it, no eyes looking at you from the Palisades, no hats on the trees, no bows from the ripples as you pass, no jostle in the fresh air, no greeting, no beggar, no bore. As a sudden release of mind and body from a tight place, I know nothing (short of death at the Five Points) to exceed it. I was on board "the Swallow," the stillest skimmer of the waters in which I have yet travelled, and I trust the green trees, and indented bays, nooks, and knolls of Hoboken and Westchester, were sensible of the fresh intensity of my admiration, as we glided, dream- like and un-steamer-like, by. I made one or two mundane and gregarious observations, by-the-by, on the voyage, and the principal one was the watchful and delicate attention of the captain of the boat to the 602 EPHEMERA. comfort of the ladies and children on board, and, apropos of that, the superiority of this class in our country over those of every other. I could wish the foreign travellers among us might take our steamboat captains on the Hudson as specimens of our habits and manners, and, for the three whom I have the pleasure to know (the captains of the Troy, Swallow, and Empire), I am quite sure that no gentleman could desire, for wife or daughter, more courteous and well- bred care than they habitually bestow on the passen- gers who embark with them. As an instance (which I noticed and think worth recording), Captain McLean chanced to discover, at the moment a lady was going ashore with a child and a nurse at nine o'clock at night, that her destination was on the other side of the river, near a landing where the boats do not regularly touch. As it looked like rain, and she was to cross in a row-boat, he stopped the baggage on the plank, begged her to be seated for a few minutes, and ran " The Swallow" across, landing her almost at her own door, very much to her delight and relief. It should be set down in his honor, and long may devo- tion to women be, as it certainly is now, a national and peculiar feature of the Americans. When I stated to you that Mr. Morse would prob- ably be the biographer of Allston, I had for the mo- ment forgotten that the great artist married a sister of Richard Dana, who, by every claim and qualification, is, of course, the proper person to undertake it. I trust it will not be a " cold abstraction." It is true, the personal and familiar character of all men of ge- nius will not bear posthumous unveiling — but All- ston's will. He was, in the phraseology of the old dramatists, " a sweet gentleman." God never wove the woof and warp of taste, feeling, and intellect, un- der a more clear and transparent surface than in the " Paint King" of our country. You read his mind first, in seeing him. His frame was but the net that held it in. Everybody loved him. Everybody did homage to him — as a man no less than as an artist. Mr. Dana would write for his family circle the kind of memoir we want for the world. He lives in an atmo- sphere of cold, un-cosmopolite, provincial observance, in Boston, and I am afraid his book will smack of the place and climate. I wish he would go to Florence and write it — off, among the artists, at a proper per- spective distance, and with his blood warmed up with the climate and his kinsman's far-off praises. The biography of Allston should embrace the history of the first cycle of American art — from the beginning to Allston's death. It is truly a rare chance for a model biography, and Dana has it in him — minus fusion. But he will think " the schoolmaster is abroad," and I will say no more. If you are uot particularly acquainted with us, dear reader, pray consider this last page in the light of a private letter — inviolable if not addressed simply to yourself. We have tried to convey this for some weeks past by caption — as " More Particularly," "Confidentially," "Just you and I," etc., etc. — but with no apparent success. We are evidently read. Our private slip-slop, ''twaddled under the secrecy of this page en dishabille, comes back to us, com- mented on with full-dress criticism by the pasto- ral editors. Now (courage, while we administer a slice of the dictionary!) our idiosyncracy is a pas- sion for individual proximity. We would fain be fa- miliar — with one at a time. We write and compile fifteen mortal pages, addressed to the universe. We know by education that it is proper to do so. The snail comes out occasionally from his suitable house, and walks in the open globe. But we are a-cold out of our privacy. We want something between us and the promiscuous points of compass. We yearn to be personal and particular — tele-d-tete. And on this six- teenth page we indulge our little weakness. , If you do not love us — you that have turned over this leaf — pardon us, but you intrude ! If there be a time for all things, there is a time to cease to be gregarious. To measure age by years is to weigh gems against paving-stones — but there is a point in middle age — (from thirty to fifty, as you wear) — when the card-case should be burnt in solemn hol- ocaust. For acquaintances you have no more time. The remainder of life is little enough for friends, and, between friends, pasteboard is superfluous. We have I ripened to that point — we! In our pyramid of life | the base was broad and sympathetic. We spread j ourselves as far as we could reach- — but with the rise of the pyramid of years the outer edges have dropped away, and the planes have lessened. We are limited to friends, now. Our mind runs friendship-wise. We tu-toi, as the French say. We like to chat familiarly — with the world shut out — indulged and slip-shod. We have knocked our head against this corner of speculation, while making threescore or more bows of acknowledgment to editors kind and complimentary. Somebody loves us, there is no doubt. We are wished well in our vocation. And that is much in a world where it is so difficult to butter the dry crust of industry. But, with no design to annoy or rebuke us, there is a leaning, in these friendly notices, to find fault with our frivolity. We are too frisky for break- fast reading. " The spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us." And for this we are sorry. That the following (from the New Bedford Bulle- tin) was written by a man who loves us, nobody will doubt — yet see the word we have underlined ! — " The New Mirror for last week is an exquisite number. Willis has scattered his gems of humor, wit, and puppyism, all over it, mating it odorous and sparkling as a fountain playing rose-water. Willis is the best American prose-writer of a certain class now living. He is as delicious as Tom Moore, and a great deal more decent." Now, what is " puppyism?" That it is "odorous," we may venture to take upon our friend's authority. But, if "sparkling as a fountain playing rose-water," Heaven bless the puppy-most, still say we ! Would you have us graver ? Is there not gravity enough in the world that you can forego our little contribution? Have you no funerals, no false friends, no leaden pol- itics, and no notes to pay — that you must come for our gravity to eke you out ? Or do you find fault with our dabble in the superfineries? Is that it ? Mustn't we mention " patent leather" and " velvet eyes ?" Can't we call the mouth of a charming woman a " pink portico with an ivory door" — without offending you ? Come, come, you are not quite the anchorite you would label yourself, and, while flowers will bloom, horlus siccus be hanged — say you not so ? Let us talk about the things we like. Life is too short for hypocrisy. Try the trick yourself. Write a para- graph or two in our flummery way, and see how trip- pingly it comes off, and what an uncoiling from your heart it is of the dull serpent of care! Put this French proverb in your pipe and smoke it — " Ne pouvoir tolerer les faiblesses d'autrui, voila la faiblesse." If you never thought of that, thank us for a new precept, and slip a copy of it under your friendships. It keeps out moths like camphor. Not quite one hundred years after Verrazzano's dis- covery of the bay of New York, during all which period we have no account of its having been visited by a European vessel, Hudson made the capes of Virginia on his third cruise in search of the northwest EPHEMERA. 603 passage. Standing still on a northward course, he arrived in sight of the Narrows, distinguishing from a great distance the highlands of Neversink, which his mate, Robert Juet, described in the journal he kept as a " very good land to fall with, and a pleasant land to see." The most interesting peculiarity of our country to a European observer, is the freshness of its early his- tory, and the strong contrast it presents of most of the features of a highly-civilized land, with the youth and recent adventures of a newly-discovered one. The details of these first discoveries are becoming every day more interesting; and that part of the journal of the great navigator which relates to his first view of them is very interesting. The following extracts de- scribe the Narrows as they were two hundred years ago : "At three of the clock in the afternoone we came to three great rivers. So we stood along to the nor- thernmost, thinking to have gone into it, but we found it to have a very shoald barre before it, for we had but ten foot water. Then we cast about to the southward, and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the souther side of them, then we had five or six fathoms, and anchored. So we sent in our boat to sound, and they found no less water than foure, five, six, and seven fathoms, and returned in an hour and a halfe. So we weighed and went in, and rode in five fathoms, ose ground, and saw many salmons, and mullets, and rayes, very great. " The fourth, in the morning, as soone as the day was light, we saw that it was good riding farther up. So we sent our boate to sound, and found that it was a very good harbour; then we weighed and went in with our ship. Then our boat went on land with our net to fish, and caught ten great mullets, of a foot and a half long apeece, and a ray as great as foure men could hale into the ship. So we trimmed our boat, and rode still all day. At night the wind blew hard at the northwest and our anchor came home, and we drove on shore, but took no hurt, thanked bee God, for the ground is soft sand and ose. This day the people of the country came aboard of us, seeming very glad of our comming, and brought greene tobacco, and gave us of it for knives and beads. They go in deere skins loose, well dressed. They have yellow copper. They desire cloathes, and are very civil!. They have great store of maise, or Indian wheate, whereof they make good bread. The country is full of great and tall oaks. " The fifth, in the morning, as soone as the day was light, the wind ceased; so we sent our boate in to sound the bay. Our men went on land there and saw great store of men, women, and children, who gave them tobacco at their coming on land. So they went up into the woods, and saw great store of very goodly oakes, and some currants. " The sixth, in the morning, was faire weather, and our master sent John Colman with foure other men in our boat over to the north side, to sound the other river" (the Narrows). "They found very good riding for ships, and a narrow river to the westward" (probably what is now called the Kills, or the passage between Bergen Neck and Staten Island), " between two islands. The lands, they told us, were as pleasant, with grasse and flowers, and goodly trees, as they ever had seen, and very sweet smells came from them. So they went in two leagues and saw an open sea, and returned ; and as they came backe they were set upon by two canoes, the one having twelve, the other four- teen men. The night came on, and it began to raine, so that their match went out ; and they had one man slain in the fight, which was an Englishman, named John Colman, with an arrow shot into his throat, and two more hurt. It grew so dark that they could not find the shippe that night, but laboured to and fro on their oares. "The seventh was fair, and they returned aboard the ship, and brought our dead man with them, whom we carried on land and buried." On the eighth, Hudson lay still, to be more sure of the disposition of the natives before venturing farther ! in. Several came on board, but no disturbance oc- ; curred, and on the ninth he got under weigh, passed \ the Narrows, and proceeded by slow degrees up the river destined to bear his name. The current of life seems to be too rapid in Amer- ica to allow time for reflection upon anything which can possibly be deferred. The monuments are left unfinished on our battle-field ; the tombs of great men become indistinguishable before marked with a stone ; and the sacred places where patriotism has dwelt, are rated by the value of their material, and left to decay. It is difficult to visit Mount Vernon, and feel, from any mark of care or respect visible about it, that America owes anything to the sacred ashes it entombs. The family tomb at Mount Vernon has once been ' robbed by a sacrilegious ruffian, whose ignorance alone preserved for us the remains of Washington. It has been proposed to Congress to buy Mount Vernon, and establish a guard over relics so hallowed. Why should not this be done, and a sufficient sum be ap- propriated to enclose and keep in order the whole estate, improve the execrable road leading to it from : Alexandria, and employ persons to conduct strangers over the place? The vault in which the ashes of Washington re- I pose, is at the distance of, perhaps, thirty rods from I the house, immediately upon the bank of the river. | A more romantic and picturesque site for a tomb can scarcely be imagined. Between it and the Potomac is a curtain of forest-trees, covering the steep declivity to the water's edge, breaking the glare of the pros- pect, and yet affording glimpses, of the river, where the foliage is thickest. The tomb is surrounded by- several large native oaks, which are venerable by their years, and which annually strew the sepulchre with autumnal leaves, furnishing the most appropriate dra- pery for the place, and giving a still deeper impression to the memento mori. Interspersed among the oaks, and overhanging the tomb, is a copse of red cedar, whose evergreen boughs present a fine contrast to the hoary and leafless branches of the oak ; and while the deciduous foliage of the latter indicates the decay of the body, the eternal verdure of the former furnishes a fitting emblem of the immortal spirit. The sacred and symbolic cassia was familiar to Washington, and, perhaps, led to the selection of a spot where the ever- green flourished. One of the most interesting associations with the tomb of Washington, is Lafayette's visit to it, as related by Levasseur: — " After a voyage of two hours, the guns of Port Washington announced that we were approaching the last abode of the father of his country. At this solemn signal, to which the military band accompa- nying us responded by plaintive strains, we went on deck, and the venerable soil of Mount Vernon was be- fore us. At this view an involuntary and spontaneous movement made us kneel. We landed in boats, and trod upon the ground so often trod by the feet of Washington. A carriage received General Lafayette; and the other visiters silently ascended the precipitous path which conducted to the solitary habitation of Mount Vernon. In re-entering beneath this hospit- able roof, which had sheltered him when the reign of terror tore him violently from his country and family, George Lafayette felt his heart sink within him, at no more finding him whose paternal care had softened his misfortunes ; while his father sought with emotion for everything which reminded him of the companion of his glorious toils. " Three nephews of General Washington took La- 604 EPHExMERA. fayette, his son, and myself, to conduct us to the tomb of their uncle ; our numerous companions remained in the house. In a few minutes the cannon, thunder- ing anew, announced that Lafayette rendered homage to the ashes of Washington. Simple and modest as he was during life, the tomb of the citizen hero is scarcely perceived among the sombre cypresses by which it is surrounded. A vault, slightly elevated and dotted over — a wooden door without inscriptions — some withered and green garlands, indicate to the trav- eller who visits the spot where rest in peace the puis- sant arms which broke the chains of his country. As we approached, the door was opened. Lafayette de- scended alone into the vault, and a few minutes after reappeared, with his eyes overflowing with tears. He took his son and me by the hand, and led us into the tomb, where, by a sign, he indicated the coffin. We knelt reverentially, and rising, threw ourselves into the arms of Lafayette, and mingled our tears with his." There are manifest signs that the summer is here. The ladies who are on their travels, and the ladies who are not, wear alike the toilet of transit — dust-proof; dresses and green veils. " Bound for the Springs" is j palpably intended to be expressed by every apparition ! of beauty in Broadway. The gentlemen, in the ab- sence of the more approved targets at which their | irresistiblenesses are aimed, go about in calico coats, j ungloved, unwaistcoated, unstrapped, and uncravatted. I Hot corn is cried at midnight. Raspberries are j treacherous. Green apples and pears grace the tables of the hucksters. The daily papers show signs of the rustication of the leading editors. Hotels crammed, and a pervading odor of the fruity drinks extending a hundred yards from them in every direction. The summer has arrived, I believe — but I feel called upon to admit that count D'Orsay and Lady Blessington have not. Colonel Stone's virtuous horrification at j the mention of such improper people by your corres- pondent has probably driven them into an incognitude which has cost the count his whiskers, at least. With- out them, Niagara itself would not recognise him — brother wonder as he is — and, if in the land of Boz- worship at all, they probably pass for a big Kentuck- ian and his handsome mother. Keep a look out ars you travel, however, amis voyageurs ! Kissing has no longer the drawback of wear and tear. I see that Dr. Ellsworth of Hartford has suc- ceeded in restoring a lost upper lip. The paper which describes it says : " Upon the red facing may possibly be detected the point of connexion between the two halves. The lip is really a handsome one — quite equal to the best cures of hare-lip. No one would for a moment suspect that it had travelled from the cheeks to its present location, which it graces as well as the original, except that it has not quite as free and easy a motion, although enough for all common purposes." Passengers up the Hudson who wish to take the early trains west, embark at present on the forward deck of the "Empire." Those who are not in a hurry take passage in the after cabin, and on the mooring of the boat at Albany, pay their respects to the ex-president at Kinderhook, from the stern taffrail. She is commanded by Captain Roe, who, in the extent of his jurisdiction, ranks with the governor of Rhode Island, and is a potentate to be propitiated in politics. Seriously, this noble steamer is a very great curiosity. The saloon on her promenade deck is nearly three hundred feet long, and, with four or five hundred peo- ple on board, she seems to have few passengers. The sight of her engine at work is an imposing affair. Some of the state-rooms above are small drawing- rooms to accommodate parties, and she is furnished and managed with a luxury and tact worth making a trip to see. I understand it has lately occurred to some gentle- men with open eyes, that anchorage is cheaper than ground-rent — that a ship-of-war is but a spacious hotel upside-down, and that the most desirable site for a summer residence, as to pure air, neighborhood, novelty, and economy, is now occupied by the "Inde- pendence" and "North Carolina," the men-of-war just off the Battery. The latter ship being unsea- worthy, it is proposed to purchase her of the govern- ment for the experiment. It is estimated that she can accommodate comfortably three hundred persons. The immense upper-deck is to be covered with a weather- proof awning, blue and white, in the style of the Al- hamra, and given up entirely to dining, dancing, lounging, and the other uses of hotel drawing-rooms. A more magnificent promenade than this immense deck, cleared of guns and lumber fore-and-aft, and surrounded entirely by luxurious sofas, could scarcely be imagined. The kitchens and offices are to occupy the forward part of the second deck, or, if the vessel is crowded, to be transferred to a small tender along- side. The port-holes are to be enlarged to spacious windows, and the two decks below, which are above the water-line, will be entirely occupied by splendid rooms, open to the entire breadth of the bay, and fur- nished in the oriental and cushioned style, suitable to the luxurious wants of hot weather. Minute-barges will ply to and from the shore, connected with the Waverley line of omnibuses ; bath-houses will be anchored just astern; a cafe and ice-cream shop will be established in the main and mizen-tops (to be reached by a covered staircase) ; and sofas, for the accommodation of smokers, will be put under a peril- house roof, outside the vessel, in the main-chains. The cockpit and hold will of course unite the uses of a hotel-garret and cellar. It will have the advantage of other hotels, in swinging round with the tide, so that the lodgers on both sides of the ship will see, by turns, from the windows, the entire panorama of the bay. When lightened of her guns, and her upper spars and rigging, it is thought she will float so much higher as to bear piercing for another line of port-hole windows, affording some bachelor's rooms at the water-line, cor- responding in price and convenience with the sky- chambers of the Astor. An eccentric individual, I am told, has bargained for a private parlor, to be sus- pended under the bowsprit, in imitation of the nest of the hanging-bird. Altogether, the scheme seems charming and feasible. The name of the hotel, by- the-way, is to be " Saratoga Afloat;" the waiters are to be dressed in the becoming toggery of tars ; and the keeper of the house is to wear a folded napkin, epaulet fashion, on either shoulder, and to be called invariably " commodore." This seems to be the age of invention. Several houses in the city are being made rather higher, by raising them ten feet on screws, and building a story under them — a great economy of the loins of hod- As a metropolis of wealth and fashion, New York has one great deficiency — that of a driving j)ark. Rome has ils Pincian Hill, Florence its Cascine, Paris its Bois de Bologne, and London its Hyde Park; and most other capitals have places of resort-on- wheels, where fresh air and congenial society may be met in the afternoon hours. Such a place is only not considered indispensable in New York, be- cause it has never been enjoyed. It is, for the rich, the highest of luxuries. The Cascine of Florence, EPHEMERA. 605 for example, is a park of two miles square, laid out in wooded avenues; and to its winding roads and forest glades resort, every afternoon, the entire equipaged population of the court and city. At sunset, the car- riages meet in an open square in the centre, and the "lords and ladies'' pass the two hours of the delicious twilight in visiting from vehicle to vehicle, forming parties for the evening, flirting, making acquaintances, talking scandal, and other dainty diversions — breaking up in time to go to the opera or dress for a ball. There is enough room for such a park in the neighborhood of Union square, or on the East or North river ; and the importance of such spaces, left open for lungs to a crowded city, has been long inculcated by physicians. I think it possible such an exclusive resort might be at first a little unpopular (remembering that some three years ago a millionaire was stoned for riding through Broadway with a mounted servant in livery behind him), but, as one of the hand-to-mouth class, I do not care how soon the rich get richer and the poor poorer — leaving a comfortable middle class, in which ambition might stop to breathe. I notice the introduction of the Italian verandah curtains to New York — the sort of striped demi-um- j| brella, put out from the top of the window with falling side folds, which are so common in Venice and Na- \ pies. Two or three shops in Broadway have them, ! and Cozzens has lately fitted them on to the windows | of his ladies' dining-room — and most showy and pic- I turesque luxuries they are. Howard has chosen, for the decoy of his hotel, an j intermittent relay of governors. The immense flag which sweeps the top of the omnibuses in Broadway ! on the arrival of such functionaries, seems to have no sinecure of it, and his house is, in consequence, con- j tinually overrun. He keeps a table suitable to a court hotel, and seems to be the only one of his class who j is independent of "travelling seasons." I observe that the paviors are at work in the upper part of Broadway, removing the wooden pavement, and substituting the broad, flat stones, such as are laid in the streets of Florence. The wooden blocks were certainly in a deplorable condition, but I do not think they have had fair play as an experiment. They were badly laid, and were left to annoy the public long after thty should have been repaired. A periodical journal in Boston gives the name and true history of Tom Thumb, the dwarf now at the Museum. He was christened Charles Stratton. His j parents were of the usual size, and he has two sisters of the usual proportions. General Thumb has not grown since he was six months old, and he is now ' eleven, and twenty-two inches tall. He is perfectly formed, very athletic for his size, and in perfect health ind spirits. In mind he remains childish and un- changed, as in body. You may have noticed in the New York papers, ately, a great abundance of essays upou bathing. Since the Croton facilities, public attention has been urned a good deal that way, and the prices of baths j Mave been universally diminished, while new bathing | establishments have been advertised in various parts of ihe city. The new one lately opened by Stoppani in : Broadway, near the Apollo rooms, exceeds in splendor ! anything we have yet seen in this line. A sumptuous i refectory is part of it; and the long, arched- passages of bathing-rooms remind one of the Roman establish- ments in the way of baths. These were, anciently, the centres around which luxuries of every description were clustered ; and Stoppani seems to have built this with B view to sumptuous idling and enjoyment. The most comprehensive view of Niagara is, no doubt, that from the galleries of Clifton house; but it is, at the same time, for a first view, one of the most unfavorable. Clifton house stands nearly op- posite the centre of the irregular crescent formed by the Falls; but it is so far back from the line of the arc, that the height and grandeur of the two cataracts, to an eye unacquainted with the scene, are deceptively diminished. After once making the tour of the points of view, however, the distance and elevation of the hotel are allowed for by the eye, and the situation seems most advantageous. This is the only house at Niagara where a traveller, on his second visit, would be content to live. Clifton house is kept in the best style of hotels in this country ; but the usual routine of such places, going on in the very eye of Niagara, weaves in very whimsically with the eternal presence and power of the cataract. We must eat, drink, and sleep, it is true, at Niagara, as elsewhere ; and indeed, what with the exhaustion of mind and fatigue of body, we re- quire at the Falls perhaps more than usual of these three " blessed inventions." The leaf that is caught away by the rapids, however, is not more entirely pos- sessed by this wonder of nature, than is the mind and imagination of i»he traveller; and the arrest of that leaf by the touch of the overhanging tree, or the point of a rock amid the breakers, is scarce more mo- mentary than the interruption to the traveller's en- chantment by the circumstances of daily life. He falls asleep with its surging thunders in his ear, and wakes — to wonder, for an instant, if his yesterday's astonishment was a dream. With the succeeding thought, his mind refills, like a mountain channel, whose torrent has been suspended by the frost, and he is overwhelmed with sensations that are almost pain- ful, from the suddenness of their return. He rises and throws up his window, and there it flashes, and thunders, and agonizes — the same almighty miracle of grandeur for ever going on; and he turns and won- ders — what the deuce can have become of his stock- ings! He slips on his dressing-gown and commences his toilet. The glass stands in the window, and with his beard half achieved, he gets a glimpse of the foam- cloud rising majestically over the top of the mahog- any frame. Almost persuaded, like Queen Christina at the fountains of St. Peter's, that a spectacle of such splendor is not intended to last, he drops his razor, and with the soap drying unheeded on his chin, he leans on his elbows, and watches the yesty writhe in the abysm, and the solemn pillars pf crystal eter- nally falling, like the fragments of some palace-crested star, descending through interminable space. The white field of the iris forms over the brow of the cat- aract, exhibits its radiant bow, and sails away in a van- ishing cloud of vapor upon the wind; the tortured and convulsed surface of the caldron below shoots out its frothy and seething circles in perpetual torment ; the thunders are heaped upon each other, the earth trembles, and — the bell rings for breakfast! A vision of cold rolls, clammy omelets, and tepid tea, succeeds these sublime images, and the traveller completes his toilet. Breakfast over, he resorts to the colonnade, to contemplate untiringly the scene before him, and in the midst of a calculation of the progress of the fall toward Lake Erie — with the perspiration standing on his forehead, while he struggles to conceive the junction of its waters with Lake Ontario— the rocks rent, the hills swept away, forests prostrated, and the islands uprooted in the mighty conflux— some one's child escapes from its nurse, and seizing him by the legs, cries out, " Da-da." The ennui attendant upon public houses can never be felt at Clifton house. The most common mind finds the spectacle from its balconies a sufficient and untiring occupation. The loneliness of uninhabited parlors, the discord of baby-thrummed pianos, the dreariness of great staircases, long entries, and bar- 606 EPHEMERA. rooms filled with strangers, are pains and penalties of travel never felt at Niagara. If there is a vacant half- hour to dinner, or if indisposition to sleep create that sickening yearning for society, which sometimes comes upon a stranger in a strange land, like the cal- enture of a fever — the eternal marvel going on with- out is more engrossing than friend or conversation, more beguiling from sad thought than the Corso in carnival-time. To lean over the balustrade and watch the flying of the ferry-boat below, with its terrified freight of adventurers, one moment gliding; swiftly down the stream in the round of an eddy, the next, lifted up by a boiling wave, as if it were tossed up from the scoop of a giant's hand beneath the water; to gaze hour after hour into the face of the cataract, to trace the rainbows, delight like a child in the shooting spray-clouds, and calculate fruitlessly and endlessly by the force, weight, speed, and change of the tremendous waters — is amusement and occupa- tion enough to draw the mind from anything — to cure madness or create it. I met Weir, the painter, at West Point, and he was kind enough to give me a look at his just-finished picture for the Rotundo at Washington. It was but a glimpse of five minutes, while I was waiting for the boat, but I have remembered every line of the pic- ture so distinctly since, that I can speak confidently, at least, of its effect and power of possessing the spectator. Let me transcribe for you the historical passage taken for illustration : — " And the time being come that they must depart, they were accompanied with most of their brethren out of the city to a town called Delft-Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. The next day the wind ^eing fair, they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the key as spectators could not refrain from tears; yet comfortable and sweet it was to see such lively and true expressions of dear and unfeigned love. But the tide, which stays for no man, calling them away that were thus loath to depart, their reverend .pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers unto the Lord and his blessing; and then, with mutual embraces and many tears, they took their leave one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them. Thus hoisting sail, with a prosperous gale of wind, they came in a short time to Southampton, where they found the bigger ship come from London." It would be a curious subject of thought to a man unfamiliar with the wardrobe of the imagination, if he would keep this plain and simple passage of histo- ry in his mind while he looks at the gorgeous inves- titure in which it is clad by the genius of the painter — to compare the picture in his mind while he read it with the picture made of it on this canvass. I will not attempt here — indeed I could not attempt, with- out seeing it again — anything like a criticism on this painting — but may say what I feel while it deepens in my memory, that I have seen no such glorious work of art in this country, and I have not been more filled and wrought upon by any of the great chefs d'ceuvre of the masters in Europe. The effect on the mind is that of expanding the capacity to embrace it. Weir has drawn his figures on a scale larger than life, and the immense canvass is filled with groups of the most exquisite naturalness of posture and rela- tion to each other, but at the same time finished with a breadth and strength of effect that looks done with a hand accustomed to minister only to power without limit. The coloring in the two wings of the picture is exceedingly gorgeous, but the centre, around the kneeling pastor, is admirably subdued in middle teints appropriate to the objects they envelope, and the pas- tor himself, in face, attitude, and costume, is the most masterly embodiment of hallowed piety and devotion which it is possible for poet to conceive. The pres- ence, on board of the vessel, of Mr. and Mrs. Wins- low (the new-married people of fortune, who, while travelling for pleasure, fell in with and joined the emi- grants for conscience sake), gives the artist the neces- sary liberty to enrich the costume of his picture, and there are two or three other female figures very splen- didly drawn and colored — among them the wife of Miles Standish, whose soldierly form in the foreground is one of the most conspicuous objects. Of the twenty-odd figures in this grand picture, there is not one about which a great deal might not be written, even with my transiently impressed memory of it, but I reserve it for a more detailed description after anoth- er visit. Weir has flung his soul upon this work with the complete abandonment of inspiration, and he has wrought out of it, for his country as well as himself, honor imperishable. I think it is some thirty miles from Albany to Sar- atoga, and we did it at the respectable leisure of five hours — rather more time than it took formerly on wheels. True, we did not "devour the way" as we used to do, and it was a comfort to arrive without a lining of dust in one's mouth, but I missed the blow ing of the horn, the chirrup and crack of the whip with which we used to dash through the sandy hoi low of Congress Spring and pull up at Congress Hall and I missed the group in the portico, and the greet ings and the green vines, and I missed — alas, for all the misses of the past ! The cars stop in the rear of the "United States," and the outstretched arms of that new caravansary, in the shape of two yellow wings extending to the depot, embrace you as you come to the ground. My friends were all there, and Congress Hall was down hill, in fact and in figure of speech, and casting poetry and the past behind me, [ rattled to the rising sun and took lodgings with the Marvins. The ex-president was there, with the thir- ty or forty pounds of flesh that would not be recog- nised by the presidential chair, and from five to six hundred of his former subjects sat down with him to dine. Mr. Van Buren has stuck to the "United States," till fashion has gone over to him, for he fre- quented the house when the belles were on the other side of the street. Whether in the dance of politics, the democracy "chassez across," and leave him on the fashionable side, remains to be seen. I had not been at "The Springs" for some years, and between the changes in the place and the changes in myself, I was, for a while (as the French charmingly express it) desoriente. In the times that were, a gen- tleman, on arriving at Saratoga, made his submission to one or two ladies in whom was vested the gyndcra- cy of the season — the mother of a belle, or an ex- belle well preserved, or some marvellous old maid, witty and kindly. Through this door, and this only, ; could the society of the place be reached, and to this authority the last appeal was made in all cases of doubt and difficulty. The beaux and belles conformed and submitted, exchanged hearts and promised hands, and ; drove and danced, fished and picnicked, in obedience to this administration — Coventry the dreadful alter- I native. There were fashionable old-bachelor beaux I in those days who were the masters of ceremony, and I there were belles, upon whom, individually, was con- : centrated the beauty now distributed in small parcels j over the female population of a state. Every girl is | tolerably pretty now. Everybody is, to the extent of EPHEMERA. 607 his natural capacity, a beau. There is no authority higher than every young lady's mamma. Sent to Coventry by one party, you may stay " at court" with another. Flirts are let flirt without snaflie or martin- gal. Fortunes are guarded only by the parental dragon. Nabobs and aristocrats are received upon their natural advantages without prestige or favor, and everybody knows everybody, particularly if not from the same city. Having been happiest myself under the old regime, this agrarian anarchy somewhat of- fended me; and the more, perhaps, that among the company at the "United States," naturally secluding herself somewhat from the crowd, is one of the con- centrations of the beauty of ten years ago — a most magnificent woman whom that lustrum of time has passed over as lightly as a night's sleep. Still, there is beauty at Saratoga — enough, indeed, for all purposes of dreaming or waking. The ball at the " United States" on Friday evening was exceed- ingly brilliant, and at the concert of Castellan on Sat- urday, when the more serious beauties of Union Hall i were added to the assembly, the large saloon was Bought to be very thickly spangled with loveliness. At this last-named hotel, by the way, they have intro- ! duced family prayers at nine o'clock, and at another less-frequented house they give tea with the dinner — little differences which seem to classify the patronage very effectively. This is the great season of Saratoga, j more persons being now at its different hotels than i were ever recorded in any previous season. I must not omit to mention the charming improvements by Mr. Clark in the gem of a valley above Congress spring (by walks, shrubbery, etc.), nor the elegance of Marvin's grounds and embellishments at the United States — a superb hotel indeed, in all its appointments. This is "hop-night" at the Astor, and among the crowd of ladies in the house are a few on their return from Saratoga. The beaux tire of " The Springs" sooner than the belles, and in Broadway yesterday I saw a thick sprinkling of the desirables. Indeed, the weather has been temperate enough to make the city agreeable, and the southerners prefer enjoying Niblo's and the comfortable hotels, when the thermometer ranges below ninety. The boats down the river are very full just now. I came down from West Point in the Empire on Thursday, and found her crowded with presentable company ; and with the elegance of the saloons and decks, looking very drawing-rooms- ical and gay. There is a great deal of gammon in the reasons given for going and for not going to the Springs ; and it is the fashion now for those who are not there to ascribe their absence to a horror of the letter-wri- ters, as if any would be mentioned at all by those im- mortality-bestowing gentry who did not, by flirting and display, show an appetite for notoriety, and in a crowd, too, quite as promiscuous as the reading pub- lic ! It would surprise a believing Judeus, after lis- tening to the indignation current in the saloon of Sar- atoga in the evening, on the subject of the penny pa- pers, to see with what eagerness they are read the next morning, and with what manifest pleasure each lady mentioned shows to her admirers the paragraph peccant. That such letters as 1 refer to are a very great evil no man who respects the delicacy of private life can doubt ; but one half of the mischief, at least, lies in the unwomanly passion for notoriety to which they minister. Those who linger longest at Saratoga are the fami- lies of resident New-Yorkers, their return to town be- ing the return to the solitude of a house to themselves. For " mineral waters" read " society in large doses ;" and the real object of attraction is as easily found at the " Astor" or the "American" as at Saratoga. The sea air of Rockaway may stand for a tenth of its at- tractions, and the other nine parts lie in the necessity of some excusable resort in the neighborhood of the city, which shall supply to the New-Yorkers what the hotels (as a sequel to the Springs) are to travelling strangers. From about the twentieth of this month to the first cool weather, Rockaway will be thronged with excellent society, mostly from this city ; and there is a nucleus of half a dozen of the most delight- ful women in any country, summering there regularly ; three admirably lively and accomplished ladies of one family the leading constellation. It is a part of the commonplacery of fashionable chat to fret at the crowd, and wish for more suitable privacy ; but it is amusing to observe what a difference of opinion there seems to be between the feet and tongue of the fair exclusive. The belle at Saratoga rises at six and walks to Congress spring. The ostensible object is to drink the waters, which she might have in quite as salutary a state by ringing the bell of her apartment. The platform around the spring is crowded with fash- ionables ; and, elbowed and stared at rather freely, and complaining of both very feelingly, she remains in the crowd till breakfast — solitary walks of the most sha- ded coolness though there be, hard by and accessible. She breakfasts with five hundred persons, and from the table comes to the drawing-room, where she promenades, and is elbowed as before, till eleven. At that hour she goes with a party to the bowling-alleys, where she amuses herself till the dressing-bell for din- ner. And after dinner she mingles in the full-dress crowd once more till tea-time (with perhaps the parenthesis of a drive with a party to the lake), and from tea-time till midnight she is in the same crowd, and goes to bed late to get up again early, and so, burning her candle at both ends, finds Saratoga enchanting. But it is not the less " dreadfully crowded," and " horridly mixed." The music at Saratoga was one of its pleasures to me. The band plays at the spring from six to eight in the morning, and the morning hours (anacreon- tics to the contrary notwithstanding) are the part of the day when the senses are most acutely sensitive to pleasure. If I am to see a fine picture with the clearest eye, or read a page of poetry with the subtlest appreciation, or listen to the sweet divisions of music with the nicest and most interpreting ear, or hear a deep-found thought of love, friendship, or philosophy, give it me in the early morning of midsummer. The perturbed blood flows evenly, and the perceptions have settled over-night like a roiled well ; and (if in temperate health) the heart is softer and more sus- ceptible. To express a plain fact poetically — the mar- ble lid is lifted from the fountain of tears at that hour, and though the waters do not " well forth," they are open to the dropping in of those pearls of attendant angels — love, beauty, and music. Yet, " before breakfast" is said commonly to be the prose of the day. One hour of music after dinner is made tributary to the smokers. The ladies and the tobacco escheweis are out of its reach in the drawing-room, but the pa- pas and the inveterates bring their chairs out to the grassy area of the " United States," and smoke under the shade, listening to the German band contentedly and contemplatively. And that is a very pleasant hour; and taken advantage of by those who, like my* self, find comfort in the ellipses of conversation. As to living at Saratoga, no reasonable person would expect a comfortable dinner, sitting down with five or six hundred persons. The meats get cold in the spreading. But, to those who are drinking the wa- ters, any check upon the appetite is not unsalutary, and, for the gourmet, the Lake House, and one or two other resorts in the neighborhood, offer game and fish dinners in compensatory perfection. 1 went over to Barhydt's dark lake, the scene of the loves of the lus- trum gone by, and found it looking neglected and for- saken. The old Dutchman is dead, and his quiet successors look out with repelling surprise upon the 608 EPHEMERA. gay and intruding visiters. It has ceased to be fre- quented. I saw at the engraver's yesterday a portrait of Halleck, engraved for Graham's Magazine, which ex- ceeds anything I have before seen, as a worthy and truthful representation of a poet. It is to be published in the September number, I believe, and is one of the well-conceived series of portraits in progress of publi- cation in that magazine. The keen, joyous, analyti- cal gusto which give such a " sauce Robert" to Hal- leck's poetry is admirably conveyed in this picture, and a more faithful likeness was never drawn. The original is by Inman. Broadway in August is like a pocket-full of change with the gold and silver picked out of it; and like the disrespectful finger thrust by its owner into its scarce diminished bulk, Mr. Stopintown, the lounger, con- temptuously threads the crowd, of which he knows the less precious and residual quality. But let us try again — for this beginning is too Jeremy-Taylor-ous. Have you ever started at Niblo's, dear reader, and, with your eyes particularly open, walked down the "shilling side" of Broadway to the Park? You must have done this, and with speculation in your eyes too, before you can detect, on the fashionable side of Broadway in August, a certain class of prome- naders visible there in no other month, by gas or day- light. Now it occurs to us, that, in the spiritual geog- raphy of this shop-and-show land, we can very possi- bly give you a lesson. Few people live more in the eye of the world than than those who are in transition from poverty to rich- es, bound upward. None are so invisible as those who are going over the same road, downward. The eye, in the city, acquires a habit of selecting what it shall see. Glimpse, the porter (to put it figuratively), sits in the outer vestibule of sight, and passes his judgment on all comers before they are admitted to the presence of consciousness. Prosperity has a color of its own, and a coat with a needy pocket in its skirt is as invisible as the sick heart it is buttoned over. You walk Broadway from the Battery to Bond street (on the golden side), and you remark every flip- pery-flirt and boy-beau, and could recal upon oath their respective riband and waistcoat ; yet a man of genius has gone by, with a thought in his brain new from God, but under a hat set distrustfully on, and you would swear in a witness-box that he never crossed your eye. Visible is an arbitrary word in large cities. But it is a devilish truth that in proportion as the poverty-stricken become invisible, their consciousness of being seen becomes painfully sensitive. They feel pointed at with the finger when they are as totally un- observed as the driver of an omnibus. The prosper- ous and gay, too— the very persons who are blindest to their presence— seem to them their most vigilant and insulting observers. And as there is a side of the street proper to the rich and the happy, the poor and Wretched walk on the other. The great haunt of the distressed — the Alsatia of poverty and crime — the lair of the outcast of hope and pity — borders Broadway on the east. In their recoil from the abyss they hang over — turning back in terror from the fiendish aban- donment of the Five Points, the last platform between despair and death — the unhappy come to that limit of Broadway and look across. And up and down, be- tween Prince street and Chamber, they walk, with a shunning gait, and shoulders shrinking at your look as from a blow, and watch the happy on the other side — wretched men of all degrees of desperation, from the first downward step to the last. Oh, you should walk there, now and then ! You roiil walk there — perhaps you have, with unconscious selection, already — when in want of money. With the same olothes you wore when you had enough — with a cravat as saucily expensive — gloved and booted comme il faut — you will instinctively take the other side of the street if out of pocket — if a five-dollar bill, that is to say — unconsidered rag not long before — cov- ers now as much void as the zodiac ! Oh, most com- parative five-dollar bill ! But the faces on the "shilling side" of Broadway ! If you want a heart-ache, to be succeeded by content with your lot and a prayer to God, cross over and look at one or two. The eyelid unrelaxed — the mouth shut up within, and the lips bloodless with the com- pression of the tongue matted to the teeth — the livid pits beneath the eyes, and the veins blood-shot round the pupil — the rigid neck — the jaw set up with despe- rate endurance — the contracted nostril, and the com- plexion set and dead. And this is the countenance of only poverty— only the agony of one man want- ing a little of what another has too much of — of which the church, building for the God of mercy at the head of Wall street, has millions more than it can spend without ingenuity of extravagance ! Are you and I parts of a world like this, dear reader ! But in August the gay and prosperous go ofT, and the golden-side of Broadway is left to the mechanical and the stranger. Of these the shabby and unhappy have no dread, and they come over and walk, with only their despair, in the haunts they once frequented. You will see them in Broadway now — your attention once directed to them — and if it be on Saturday, preach who will on Sunday, you will have profited the day before by a better sermon. In looking down on the valley of Wyoming, made memorable by savage barbarity and famous by the poet's wand of enchantment, it is natural to indulge in resentful feeling toward the sanguinary race whose atrocities make up its page in story. It is a pity, how- ever, that they, too, had not a poet and a partial chron- j icier. Leaving entirely out of view the ten thousand ! wrongs done by the white man to the Indian, in the | corruption, robbery, and rapid extinction of his race, there are personal atrocities, on our own records ex- ercised toward that ill-fated people, which, in impar- tial history hereafter, will redeem them from all charge except that of irresistible retaliation. The brief story of the famous Cornstalk, sachem of the Shawanees, and king of the northern confederacy, is sermon enough on this text. The northwestern corner of Virginia, and that part of Pennsylvania contiguous, on the south, was the scene of some of the bloodiest events of Indian war- fare. Distinguished over all other red men of this this region, was Cornstalk. He was equally a terror to the men of his own tribe (whom he did not hesitate to hew down with his tomahawk if they showed any cowardice in fight), and a formidable opponent to our troops, from his military talents and personal daring. He was, at the same time, more than all the other chiefs of the confederacy, a friend to the whites ; and, energetic as he was when once engaged in battle, never took up arms willingly against them. After the bloody contest at Point Pleasant, in which Cornstalk had displayed his generalship and bravery, to the ad- miration of his foes, he came in to the camp of Lord Dunmore, to make negotiations for peace. Colonel Wilson, one of the staff, thus describes his oratory : " When he arose, he was nowise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, without stammering or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks, while addressing Dunmore, were truly grand and majestic, yet graceful and attractive. I have EPHEMERA 609 heard many celebrated orators, but never one whose powers of delivery surpassed those of Cornstalk on this occasion." In the spring of 1777, it was known that an exten- sive coalition was forming among the tribes, and that it only waited the consent and powerful aid of the Shawanees, to commence war upon the whites. At this critical time, Cornstalk, accompanied by Red Hawk, came on a friendly visit to the fort at Point Pleasant, communicated the intentions of the tribes, and expressed his sorrow that the tide set so strongly against the colonists, that he must go with it in spite of all his endeavors. Upon receiving this information, given by the noble savage in the spirit of a generous enemy, the com- mander of the garrison seized upon Cornstalk and his companion as hostages for the peaceful conduct of his nation, and set about availing himself of the advan- tage he had gained by his suggestions. During his captivity, Cornstalk held frequent conversations with the officers, and took pleasure in describing to them the geography of the west, then little known. One afternoon, while he was engaged in drawing on the floor a map of the Missouri territory, its water-courses and mountains, a halloo was heard from the forest, which he recognised as the voice of his son Ellinip- eico, a young warrior, whose courage and address were almost as celebrated as his own. Ellinipsico en- tered the fort, and embraced his father most affection- ately, having been uneasy at his long absence, and come hither in search of him. The day after his arrival, a soldier went out from the fort on a hunting excursion, and was shot by In- dians. His infuriated companions instantly resolved to sacrifice Cornstalk and his son. They charged upon Ellinipsico that the offenders were in his com- pany, but he declared that he had come alone, and with the sole object of seeking his father. When the soldiers came within hearing, the young warrior ap- peared agitated. Cornstalk encouraged him to meet his fate composedly, and said to him, " My son, the Great Spirit has sent you here that we may die to- gether!" He turned to meet his murderers the next instant, and receiving seven bullets in his body, expired without a groan. When Cornstalk had fallen, Ellinipsico continued still and passive, not even raising himself from his seat. He met death in that position with the utmost calmness. "The other Indian," says the chronicle, •'was murdered piecemeal, and with all those circum- stances of cruelty with which the savage wreaks his vengeance on his enemy." The day before his death, Cornstalk had been pres- ent at a council of the officers, and had spoken to them on the subject of the war, with his own peculiar eloquence. In the course of his remarks, he expres- sed something like a presentiment of his fate. " When I was young," he said, "and went out to war, I often thought each would be my last adventure, and I should return no more. I still lived. Now I am in the midst of you, and, if you choose, you may kill me. I can die but once. It is alike to me whether now or hereafter!" His atrocious murder was dearly expiated. The Shawanees, the most warlike tribe of the west, became thenceforward the most deadly and implacable foes to the white man. Nine o'clock — an A ugust morning — and every breath out of doors like a bird's life pressed into a minute ! The breast of the earth naked to the sun — the air in a trance— the river breathless with the beauty of the sky it mirrors— and at such an hour to see the ghost of a mended pen and a stubborn resolution ! Out upon the art of writing! Is there no honest wood- 39 chopper, no dog, no squirrel, no anything out of doors, that will change lives with me ! Down, school- boy heart! and come hither, since thou must, pen, ink, and paper! — stationary, indeed! Close the shutters now, and bring candles! If I am to sit at this table till noon, I will have it night. Slip- pers, Thomas! And then shut the stable-door ; my horse neighs; lock up the saddle and lose the key ! And, Thomas! lend old Peter my boat, and break the fishing-rod, and scare away the birds from the win- dow. Has a skylark possessed my soul or no — that I so hate the roof over my head this radiant morning. Play to me ere I begin ! Music is creative ! What a benefactor to the world is John Chickering ! How exquisitely balanced are those octaves, and how glo- riously (with that touch) the rich instrument revels through the music ! The builder of these caves of harmony has a poet's vocation. What rs poetry but the vehicle of man's enthusiasm — the element in which float fancy and feeling — the suggestive awakener of intellect — the soother of care and pain ! He who writes a poem that is read and loved by a thousand hearths, links himself with an angel's round of delight and sympathy ; and the builder of a thousand harmo* nious instruments follows in the same bright orbit of influence. It has been said that " he who can not find happiness can not find an easy-chair." For easy-chair I read one of the evenly-balanced, rich, true, round- toned and incomparable instruments of John Chicker- ing. I have erected mine into a household god! Play me those " Hope Waltzes" again. They come off like Ariel's spiriting. But to bewitch the heels and stir the brain the " Flower Waltzes" against the world ! I have made out their language by daily listening to them, and if I can not divine the compo- ser's thought when they were born, I can tell what they express, as I can what all music expresses that I love and hear often. It is the difference between good and bad music, that one is an articulate thought, and the other mere jingle and gibberish. Among the " coming events" that "cast their shadows before," is, I think, a musical era, in which the intellectual quali- ties of harmony in sounds will be studied and under- stood. For one of the most powerful levers on the human heart, singly or in mass, music has been strangely undervalued, and its professors and masters have been as strangely stigmatized as an idle and unin- tellectual class of people. A revolution has begun in church music, and in Boston (by the efforts of one educated and enthusiastic man, Mr. Mason) the church choirs have become as effective and eloquent as the sermon. The perfection to which Chickering has brought the structure of that universal instru- ment, the piano; this musical reform in Boston; the introduction of singing into the systems of education for children, and last (not least surprising), the adop- tion of music as a political engine, and its powerful operation, are " signs of the times" which would war- rant a musical man of genius in creating a new liberal profession — the adaptation of expression to sound, and the marriage of emotion to music. Moore under- stands this mystery, and when in Spain (I once heard him say) wrote several of his most pathetic songs to the gayest airs of the peasantry. We have tried re- wording old songs with some effect, and it is like bringing notes to their right mind and making them talk sense. There is a delicious thing by Topliff— " Consider the lilies how I hey grow"— which makes one feel as if the whole Bible should be chanted ; and the " Six Songs from Scripture," by Moore, are very beautiful. But admirably as Moore's words are al- ways married to his music, there is one song of his set to an air of Bellini's, which seems to me the mas- terpiece of sense linked to corresponding harmony. I can not at this moment name the opera from which 610 EPHEMERA. the air is taken, nor the volume of Moore which con- tains the poetry. It commences " Is it not sweet to think, hereafter, When the spirit leaves this sphere," and is published in a book called " Kingsley's Choir." It is a song to " lap you in Elysium." From Memnon to Helicon is but to "jump Jim Crow." Who is writing poetry? Nobody in Eng- land, I think, but Mrs. Norton, and out of her sorrows this beautiful woman is beginning to weave herself an immortality. The allusion to her mother in one of her late fugitive pieces, and the frequent mention of her children, are touched in the very deepest truth of nature as well as in the finest skill of the poet. It was necessary for the world that this fine genius should be " tried by fire." With her remarkable beauty, natu- rally gay spirits, and unequalled powers of fascination, Mrs. Norton, had the course of her life and love run smooth, would never have sounded those sorrowful depths of her heart from which wells out the bitter- ness so sweet in song. Happy — we should have heard but of her beauty. Wronged, persecuted, and robbed of her children and her good name — we build her an altar in our hearts as the most gifted poet- ess of her time, and posterity will perpetuate the wor- ship. Is this compensation or no ? By that blast upon the farmer's dinner-horn, twelve o'clock ! Avaunt, quill ! " sweat of my brow !" In how many shapes comes the curse of the fall upon us ! This horn, which calls in my farmer to repose from his course in his chair, releases me from mine to let me amuse myself with his labor. My curse is worked out indoors — his in the field. The literal "sweat of the brow" is my greatest happiness, and his heavy ful- filment of the anathema. Light sits his curse, how- ever, to my thinking, who bears it out of doors ! The yearning for physical action, impatience of confine- ment, dislike of the cobweb niceties of life, seem to me feelings which grow into passions with increasing years. Will no one invent a daguerreotype for the mind, that our thoughts may record themselves — let- ting us walk where we list? The pencil is to be done away with — why not the pen ? Weir, the painter, is moving his glorious picture to Boston, for exhibition. It will be opened to visiters there by the first of September. It is to be exhibited, afterward, at the National Academy in New York — the first home of the pilgrims having, very properly, the honor of the first sight of it. Weir will steep himself in his countrymen's hearts, as his picture shows them how honestly, as well as with what splendor of genius, he has executed their commission. I understand that Vanderlyn's picture is very fine. There are several persons employed in filling up his design, but Mr. Vanderlyn's own pencil is to harmonize and finish it. Mr. Morse has given up his palette and brushes, to devote himself to his electro-galvanic telegraph, which is now being laid down. The visit of Inman, the painter, to England, is partly an errand for the study of costume and data required for his picture for the rotunda. There seems to be a lull in literature, which I hope is the precursor of a storm on the subject of copy- right. No new books of any description since the " Last of the Barons." The "Change for American Notes" is not by Miss Sedgwick, and I presume that the editor of the Enquirer, who must be acquainted, as well as anybody, with her propriety "thrice bolted o'er," had not looked into the free-and-easy pages of the book when he pronounced her the authoress. There is some dispute over julep-straws about the authorship of " Philip in Search of a Wife." It is "by a Gentleman Butterfly," and is a sequel to " Kate in Search of a Husband," by Lady Chrysalis. But public rumor, which was foiled in striving to identify the lady chrysalis with the brightest of the callow divinities of Broadway, has covered the wings of the gentleman butterfly with the same attractive petticoat. Having no eyesight to spare, I wait for an Appleton edition before reading the book. I think that the two or three tricks practised upon title-pages not long ago, have materially hurt the credit of those respectable old truth-tellers, and at the same time have dampened the interest in new publications. TO MISS VIOLET MABY, AT SARATOGA. Astor House, August, 1843. Start fair, my sweet Violet ! This letter will lie on your table when you arrive at Saratoga, and it is in- tended to prepare you for that critical campaign. You must know the ammunition with which you go into the field. I have seen service, as you know, and, from my retirement (on half-pay), can both devise strategy and reconnoitre the enemy's weakness, with discretion. Set your glass before you on the table, and let us hold a frank council of war. You never were called beautiful, as you know ; and at home you have not been a belle — but that is no im- pediment. You are to be beautiful, now, or at least to produce the result of beauty, which is the same thing ; and of course you are to be a belle — the belle, if I mistake not, of the season. Look in your mir- ror, for a moment, and refresh your memory with the wherewithal. You observe that your mouth has blunt corners — which, properly managed, is a most effective feature. Your complexion is rather darkly pale, your forehead is a shade lower than is thought desirable, your lips are full, sweet, and indolent, and your eyes are not remarkable unless when well handled. The lids have a beauty, however, which a sculptor would understand, and the duskiness around them may intensify, exceed- ingly, one particular expression. Your figure is ad- mirably perfect, but in this country, and particularly among the men you are to control, this large portion of female beauty is neither studied nor valued. Your hair is too profuse to be dressed quite fashionably, but it is a beauty not to be lost, so it must be coiffed a V abandon — a very taking style to a man once brought to the point of studying you. There are two phases in your character, Violet — earnestness and repose. The latter shows your fea- tures to the most advantage, besides being a most cap- tivating quality in itself. I would use it altogether for the first week. Gayety will never do. A laugh on a face like yours is fatal. It spreads, into unmeaning platitude, the little wells in the corners of your mouth (the blunt corners I spoke of above), and it makes your eyes smaller — which they can not well bear. Your teeth are minion and white, it is true, but they show charmingly when you speak, and are excellent, as reserved artillery, to follow an introduction. Save your mirth till the game is won, my dear Violet! Of course you will not appear at breakfast the first morning after your arrival. The mental atmosphere of the unaired hours is too cold and questioning for a first appearance. So is the hungry half-hour till the soup is removed. Go down late to dinner. Till after the first glass of wine, the heart of man is a shut book — opened then for entries, and accessible till shut again by sleep. You need no table-lesson. You eat elegantly, and, with that swan's-neck wrist, curving and ivory-fair, your every movement is ammunition well-bestowed. But there may, or may not, be a vic- tim on the other side of the table. EPHEMERA. 611 After dinner is the champ de bataille ! The men are gallant, the ladies melted out, impulses a-top, the key of conversation soprano, and everybody gay and trivial. So be not you. It is not your style. Seat yourself where you will have a little space for a fore- ground, lean your light elbow on your left wrist, and support your cheek languidly in the hollow of your gloved thumb and forefinger. Excuse the particular- ity, but try the attitude as you sit, now. Pretty — is it not? Look only out of the tops of your eyes ! If women's glances were really the palpable shafts the poets paint them, the effective ones would cut through the eye- brows. Stupid ones slide over the under lid. Try this! How earnest the glance with the head bent downward ! — how silly the eyes with the chin salient ! And move your eye indolently, my charming Violet! It traverses the frippery gayety-woof of the hour with a pretty thread of contrast that looks like superiority. Men have a natural contempt for themselves when in high spirits, and repose comes over them like a star left in heaven after the turn of a rocket. Nothing is prettier in woman than a leaning head ! Bow without removing the supporting hand from your cheek when a man is introduced to you ; smile tran- quilly, and look steadfastly in his eyes and hear what he has to say. Lucky for you — it is his devoir to commence conversation ! And in whatever tone he speaks, ^ite/i your reply a note lower! Unutterably sweet is the contralto tone of woman, and the voices of two persons, conversing, are like the plummets of their hearts — the deeper from the deeper — so felt, and so yielded. If you think it worth your while to har- monise with his tone afterward, either in argument or tenderness, the compliment is only less subtle than overpowering. There is a great deal of promenading at Saratoga, and natural instinct will teach you most of its over- comingnesses; but I will venture a suggestion or two. If you are bent on damage to your man, lay your wrist forward, to his, and let you hand drop over it, when you take his arm. No mortal eye would think j it particular, nor would he — but there is a kind of un- I conscious aff'ectionateness about it which is electric. ! Of course you would not resort to manifest pressure, ! or leaning heavily, except you were carrying on the I war a Voulrance. Walk with your head a little drooped. If you wish to walk more slowly, tell him so, but don't hang hack. It is enchanting to have a j woman " head you off," as the sailors say, as if she were trying to wind around you — and it has the charm, too, of not looking particular ! As to conversation, the trick is born with woman. If her person is admired to begin with, this is the least of her troubles. But though you are sweet sub- jects, and men like to hear you talk about yourselves, there is a sweeter subject, which they like better than you — themselves. And lean away from merriment, V r iolet ! No man ever began to love, or made any progress in loving, while a woman was laughing. There is a confidingness in subdued tones and sad topics which sinks through the upper-crust of a man like a stone through the thin ice of a well. And if he is a man of natural sentiment or feeling, though a worldling himself, the less worldliness in you, the bet- ter. Piety, in those who are to belong to us, is a spell that, in any but mythological days, would have superseded the sirens. I believe that is all, Violet. At least it is all I need harp upon, to you. Dress, you understand to a mir- acle. I see, by the way, that they are wearing the nair now, like the chains on the shoulder of a hussar — three or four heavy curls swung from the temples to he back-knot. And that will be pretty for you, as your jaw is not Napoleonesque, and looks better for partial hiding. Ruin your father, if necessary, in gloves and shoes. Primroses should not be fresher. And whatever scarfs are made for, wear nothing to break the curves from ear-tip to shoulder — the sculp- ture lines of beauty in woman. Keep calm. Blood out of place is abominable. And last, not least, for Heaven's sake don't fall in love ! If you do, my pre- cepts go for nothing, and your belleship is forgotten by all but " the remainder biscuit." Your affectionate uncle, Cinna Beverley. The above curious letter was left in the dressing- table drawer of No. , United States Hotel. It was not generally known that the young lady who had occupied the room before a certain respectable spin- ster (who handed us the letter, taking the responsibil- ity of its publication as a warning), eloped after the third day of her belleship— as was to be expected. The result of such pestilent advice is its own proper moral. Nextto-eating, drinking, loving, and money-making, the greatest desire of human beings seems to be to discover the lining of each other's brains; and the great difference between authors and other people seems mainly to consist in the faculty of turning out this lining to the view. But in this same lining there are many plaits, wrinkles, and corners, which even au- thors scarce think it worth their while to expand, but which, if accidentally developed, create an interest, either by their correspondence with other people's wrinkles, or by their intrinsic peculiarity. Let us see if we can give a sketchy idea of the rise and progress of literary celebrity in London ; or, in other words, the climbing into society, and obtaining of notice by men who have a calling to literature. Sterne's method of generalizing, by taking a single instance, is a very good one, and we will touch here and there upon the history of an individual whom we know, and who, after achieving several rounds of the ladder of society, is still, we believe, slowly making his way upward — or downward. Let us call him Snooks, if you please, for we can not give his real name, and still speak as freely as we wish to do of his difficulties in mounting. Snooks was a Manchester boy of good birth, brought up to business — his posi- tion at home about equal to that of a merchant's son in New York. He began writing verses for the coun- try papers, and at last succeeded in getting an article into the London New Monthly, and with this encour- agement came up to town to follow literature for a livelihood. With a moderate stipend from his father, he lived a very quiet life for a couple of years, finding it rather difficult to give away his productions, and quite impossible to sell them. There was no open- ing at the same time through which he could even make an attempt to get a footing in desirable society. In the third year he became proof-reader to one of the publishers, and being called upon to write antici- patory puffs of works hehad examined in manuscript, he came'under the notice of the proprietor of one of the weeklies, and by a lucky chance was soon after employed as sub-editor. This was his first available foothold. It was his business, of course, to review new books, and, as a "teller" in the bank of fame, he was a personage of some delegated importance. His first agreeable surprise was the receipt of a parcel in scented paper, containing the virgin effusions of a right honorable lady, who, in a little note, with her compliments to Mr. Snooks (for she had inquired the name of her probable critic through a literary friend), begged a notice of her little book, and a call from Mr. Snooks when he should have committed his crit- icisms to paper. Snooks was a man of very indiffer- „..bles, his hair of an unmitigated red, and hia voice of a very hair-splitting treble; but he had a ent person 612 EPHEMERA. violent taste for dress, and a born passion for count- esses ; and he wrote most unexceptionable poetry, that would pass for anybody's in the world, it was so utterly free from any peculiarity. This last quality made him an excellent verse-tinker, and he was the man of all others best suited to solder over the cracks and chasms of right honorable poetry. He wrote a most commendatory criticism of her ladyship's book, quoting some passages, with here and there an emen- dation of his own, and called at the noble mansion with the critique in his pocket. By this bridge of well-born vanity, paying the humiliating toll of insin- cere praise, he crossed the repelling barrier of aristo- cratic life, and entered it as the necessary incumbrance in her ladyship's literary fame. Her ladyship was " at home" on Thursday evenings, and Snooks became the invariable first comer and last goer-away; but his happiness on these Thursday evenings could only be called happiness when it was 'reconnoitred from the distance of Manchester. He went always in an irre- proachable waistcoat, fresh gloves, and varnished shoes, but his social performances for the evening consisted in his first bow to her ladyship, and her ladyship's "How d'ye do, Mr. Snooks?" After this exciting conversation, he became immediately interested in some of the bijoux upon the table, striding off from that to look at a picture in the corner, or to procure the shelter of a bust upon a pedestal, behind which he could securely observe the people, so remarkably unconscious of his presence. Possibly, toward the latter part of the evening, a dandy would level his glass at him and wonder how the devil he amused himself, or some purblind dowager would mistake him for the footman, and ask him for a glass of water; but these were his nearest approaches to an intimacy with the set in which he visited. After a couple of years of intercourse with the nobility on this footing, he becomes acquainted with one or two other noble authors at the same price, frequents their parties in the same way, and having unequivocal evidence (in notes of invitation) that he visits at the West End, he now finds a downward door open to society in Russell square. By dint of talking authentically of my lady this, and my lord the other, he obtains a vogue at the East End which he could only get by having come down from a higher sphere, and through this vesti- bule of aristocratic contempt he descends to the high- est society in which he can ever be familiar. Mr. Snooks has written a novel in three volumes, and con- siders himself fully established as one of the notabil- ities of London; but a fish out of water is happy in comparison with Snooks when in the society of the friends he talks most about, and if he were to die to- morrow, these very "friends" would with difficulty re- member anything but his red head, and the exemplary patience with which he submitted to his own society. The fact is, that the position of a mere literary man in England, in any circle above that to which he is born, is that of a jackall. He is invited for what he contributes to the entertainment of the aristocratic lions and lionesses who feed him. He has neither power nor privilege in their sphere. He dare not in- troduce a friend, except as another jackall, and it would be for very extraordinary reasons that he would ever name at the tables where he is most intimate, his father or mother, wife, sister, or brother. The foot- man, who sometimes comes to him with a note or book, knows the difference between him and the other guests of his master, and by an unpunishable differ- ence of manner, makes the distinction in his service. The abandon which they feel in his presence, lie never feels in theirs; and we doubt whether Thomas Moore himself, the pet of the English aristocracy for forty years, ever forgot, in their company, that he was in the presence of his superiors, and an object of conde- scension. Now we have many people in this country, Ameri- cans born, who are monarchists, and who make no scruple in private conversation of wishing for a de- fined aristocracy, and other infrangible distinctions be- tween the different classes of society. In the picture they draw, however, they themselves figure as the aristocrats; and we must take the liberty, for the mo- ment, of putting them "below the salt," and setting forth a few of their annoyances. Take the best-re- ceived Americans in London — yourself, for example, Mr. Reader ! You have no fixed rank, and therefore you have nothing to keep you down, and can rise to any position in the gift of your noble entertainer. As a foreigner, you circulate freely (as many well-intro- duced Americans do) through all the porcelain pene- tralia of the West End. You are invited to dine, we will say, with his grace, the Duke of Devonshire. There are ten or twelve guests, all noble except your- self; and when you look round upon the five other gentlemen, it is possible that, without vanity, you may come to the conclusion, that in dress, address, spirit, and natural gifts, you are at least the equal of those around you. Dinner is late in being announced, and meantime, as you know all the ladies, and are particu- larly acquainted with the youngest and prettiest, you sit down by the latter, and promise yourself the pleas- ure of giving her an arm when the doors are thrown open, and sitting by her at dinner. The butler makes his appearance at last, and the lady willingly takes your arm — when in steps my Lord Flummery, who is a terrible "spoon," but undoubtedly "my lord" takes the lady from you, and makes his way to the dinner-table. Your first thought is to follow and se- cure a place on the other side of her, but still another couple or two are to take precedence, and you are left at last to walk in alone, and take the seat that is left — perhaps between two men who have a lady on the other side. Pleasant — isn't it? Again. You are strolling in Regent street or the park with an Englishman, whose acquaintance you made on your travels. He is a man of fortune, and as independent in his character as any man in Eng- land. On the continent he struck you as particularly high-minded and free from prejudice. You are chat- ting with him very intimately, when a young noble- man, not remarkable for anything but his nobility, slips his arm into your friend's and joins the prom- enade. From that moment your friend gives you about as much of his attention as he does to his walk- ing-stick, lets your questions go unanswered, let them be never so clever, and enjoys with the highest zest the most remote spoonyosities of my lord. You, perhaps, as a stranger, visit in my lord's circle of so- ciety, and your friend does not ; but he would as soon think of picking my lord's pocket as of introducing you to him, and, if you begin to think you are Mon- sieur de Trop, and say "good morning," your friend, who never parted from you before without making an engagement to see you again, gives you a nod with- out turning his head from his lordship, and very dryly echoes your "good morning." And this, we repeat, the most independent man in England will do, for he is brought up to fear God and honor a lord, and it is bred in his bone and brain. We could give a thousand similar instances, but the reader can easily imagine them. The life of a commoner in England is one of inevitable and daily eclipse and mortification — nothing but the force of early habits and education making it tolerable to the Englishman himself, and nothing at all making it in any way endurable to a republican of any pride or spirit. You naturally say, "Why not associate with the middle classes, and let the aristocracy go to the devil ?" but individually sending people to the devil is of no use, and the middle classes value yourself and each other only as your introduction to them is EPHEMERA. 613 aristocratic, or as their friends are approvnble by an aristocratic eye. There is no class free from this hu- miliating weakness. The notice of a lord will at any time take the wind out of your sails when a lady is in the case; your tailor will leave you half-measured to run to my lord's cab in the street; your doctor will neglect your fever for my lord's cold ; your friend will breakfast with my lord, though engaged particularly to you ; and the out-goings and in-comings, the say- ings and doings, the stupidities, impudencies, man- ners, greetings, and condescensions of lords and la- dies, usurp the conversation in all places, and to the interruption or exclusion of the most grave or per- sonal topics. Understand us, we grudge no respect to dignities or authorities. Even to wealth as power, we are willing to yield the wall. But we say again, that a republican spirit must rebel against homage to anything human with which it never can compete, and in this lies the only distinction (we fervently hope) which will ever hedge in an American aristocracy. Let who will get to windward of us by superior sailing — the richer, the handsomer, the cleverer, the stronger, the more be- loved and gifted — there was fair play at the start, and we will pay deference and duty with the prompt- est. But no lords and ladies, Mr. President, if you love us. I am very sorry to record a good piece of news for the coachmakers : — that the ladies are beginning to get superfine about riding in omnibuses. The omni- bus convenience has been upon an excellent footing for the last few years, used, indeed, with a freedom and propriety peculiar to this country, and somewhat characteristic of its deference to the sex. From the longitudinal shape of New York, it is easy to go any- where by omnibus, at any moment, and even if a car- riage could be kept for a shilling a day, the trouble and delay attending a private equipage, would induce many to give them up, and spend their shilling in the " Broadway lines." The gentility of the custom, too, has induced the proprietors to embellish and enlarge their vehicles, and for sixpence you may ride two or three miles in a very elegant conveyance, and mostly with very elegant people. Of late, however, it has become a habit with an improper class of persons to ride backward and forward, instead of walking Broad- way, and propriety has very naturally taken a fright. I am very much afraid, from the symptoms, that om- nibuses will become in New York, what they are in England and Paris — useful only to the un-ornamental classes of society. If so, it will be another step (among many I have noticed lately) toward separating the rich from the middle classes by barriers of ex- pense. With an errand, or an acquaintance two miles off, a lady must ride, at some cost, as a habit, if omnibuses are tabooed. I understand, by inquiry, that there are one hun- dred and fifty omnibuses plying in New York city. The receipts amount to about eight dollars per diem for each one, and the expense wear and tear, &c, substract five from this sum, leaving a profit of three dollars a day on each vehicle. Yet some of them go a course of three miles for the invariable sixpence. There are certain parts of the day when it is difficult to get a place in an omnibus — wishing to ride up Broadway, for instance, at the dinner hour or at dusk. There are several drawn by four horses, which con- tain twenty odd persons. One named for Forrest, the tragedian, with "Edwin Forrest" splendidly embla- zoned on the body, is particularly magnificent. I saw one last night for the first time on three wheels — with two rows of seats, like two omnibuses put lengthwise together. The change from hackney-roaches to cabs I is very unsatisfactory to passenger as well as horse. The old New York jarveys were the best in the world, with the offset of the most abominable imposi- tion in the known world, in the charges of drivers. I Cabs were introduced to remedy this; and now one horse draws the load of two. and reduces the owner's j expenses one half, while the imposition is in no way I lessened. There are laws, but as ninety-nine persons ; in a hundred would rather be fleeced than prosecute | or bully, the extortion goes on very swimmingly. I was honored yesterday by being called in to a pri- vate view of the fall fashion of hats, lying at present j perdu in tissue paper, and not to be visible to the pro- I miscuous eye till the first of September. I ventured I modestly to suggest an improvement, but was told, j with the solemnity of conviction, that the hatters had ; decided upon the fashion, and the blocks were cut, and the hats made, and there was no appeal. It is ! rather a lower crown than has been worn — slightly bell, brim a thought wider, and very much arched un- derneath. The English hat that comes over now is very small, and narrow brimmed, and the Parisian is shaped like an inverted rone, truncated at the base. Of course we have a right to a fashion of our own, but a hat is, more than any article of dress, a matter of whimsey, and any inexorable style, without reference to particular physiognomy, seems to me somewhat in the line of the bed of Procrustes. I recollect hearing the remark made abroad, that Americans could always be known by their unmitigated newness of hat. Cer- tain it is, that the hatters in this country are a richer class, and many pegs higher in tradesman dignity, than those of France or England — tant mieux, of I course. Apropos — in some slight research yesterday for material to refresh the thread bareness of my outer man, I looked in at one or two of the crack shops, and was quite taken by surprise with the splendor and vari- ety of masculine toggeries. The waistcoat patterns, I the scarfs, the pantaloon stuffs, and dressing-gowns, j are sumptuous beyond all modern precedent. A man | must have a gentleman's means, now, to allow carte I blanche to his tailor. I was about to turn aside some j rich stuffs, as being, I was sorry to say, quite beyond my style and condition, when the tailor forestalled me, by the assurance that by the next packet, he should receive something much more splendid and worthy my attention! As I have remarked once or twice be- fore, those who live on literary profits will soon find themselves stranded on the middle class — the rich eb bing from their reach in one direction, and the poor in the other. I have an aversion to the clerk's salt- and-pepper, but I should be content with any other outward mark of my means and belongings. We had a very melo-dramatic out-of-doors exhibi- tion the other evening, iu the illumination of the Bowl- ing Green fountain. An illuminated waterfall is a very phantom-like affair, and the eight ghostly gas- burners, set round the rim of the basin in green hoods, looked as much like demons, popping their heads above water to gaze at the white spirit, as would have been at all necessary for diabolical pantomime. The fountain grows upon the public liking, I think, and certainly, when lighted by red and blue fires (which is part of the Friday evening show) it is a magnificent object. The private fountains in the court-yards of the hotels are very handsome. Bunker, in the rear of his well-kept and most comfortable mansion, has a fine jet under the noble old trees ; and Cozzens has opened an ornamental fountain in the rear of the American— great luxuries, both, to the respective 614 EPHEMERA. hotels. I am told, by the way, that the Croton water does not keep at sea. The literary arena is now unoccupied, and it could be wished that some of our own knights out of prac- tice would don their armor for a tilt — that Wetmore would come away from his crockery, and Halleck from his leger, Bryant from his scissors and politics, and Sprague from his cerberus post at the Hades of Discount — and give us some poetry. Another sea or forest novel by Cooper would be most welcome now, or a volume of prose by Longfellow, and these two, I think, as the only American authors not regularly har- nessed in the car of Mammon, should have store laid away for such exigencies of famine. Kendall's Rec- ollections of the chain round his neck in Mexico, and Brantz Myer's, of his gold coat and court experience at the same place and time, will come out pretty nearly in the same week, and be excellent sauce to each other. Epes Sargent is somewhere in the high grass, rusticating and writing a book, and I hope, if it is not a tragedy for Forrest, it is a novel of good soci- ety — either of which would come out from under his raven locks with little trouble, and of most excellent quality. Placide, who has a scribli-phobia on his own account, has offered his " Life and Times" to a friend, to be delivered verbally over woodcock and sherry, and several of the first chapters are uncorked and di- gested. Mr. Richard Willis, younger brother of one of the editors of the New Mirror, is residing at Frank- fort, in Germany, and preparing a book on the land of beer and the domestic virtues. Mrs. Ellet's mascu- line pen is nearly idle. Simms, the novelist, is in New York, residing with his literary friend Lawson, but not coquetting with the publishers to our knowl- edge. Morris will not " die and leave the world no copy," as he has half a dozen songs about being mar- ried to music — the banns shortly to be published. I do not hear that Hoffman is doing anything except the looking after his bread and butter. Mrs. Embury is editing "The Ladies' Companion," and the author- ess of " The Sinless Child" editing " The Rover," and Mrs. Stephens editing " The Ladies' World ;" and these are three ladies worthy the binding and gilding of less ephemeral volumes. Neal and Snow edit " The Brother Jonathan," Neal living at Port- land, and snow being "on the ground." Witty and racy " Mrs. Mary Clavers" is about returning to "the settlements" from her seclusion in Michigan — an event to be rejoiced over like the return of the Lost Pleiad. She is an accomplished linguist, and with her pure, classic, and flowing style, she might occupy, here, the position of Mary Howitt or Mrs. Austin in England- gaining all the honors of authorship by eminence in translation. I understand a great enthusiasm is about to make itself manifest on the subject of the State Monu- ment to Washington. The association is now in- corporated by the legislature, and the design, as it stands formed at present, is one of unequalled magnifi- cence, worthy (and no more than worthy) of the sub- ject. Four hundred and twenty-five feet is the pro- posed height; and this, one of the New York papers states, will make it the highest building in the world — not quite correctly, as the pyramid of Cheops is six hundred feet high. To realize this prodigious eleva- tion, however, one must remember that the steeple of the new Trinity church, which is to be the tallest in this country, will only reach to two hundred and sev- enty-five feet. It is not to be merely a monument, but an immense public building, containing halls, libraries, and other appropriate apartments. The shape is to be a pentagon, and the style a florid Goth- ic. Union square is named as the site ; but the im- mense size of the base, I should suppose, would re- quire an area of much greater extent — and it would be a pity, besides, to break up the salutary fountain and open park, already ornamental enough, in that part of the city. The placing of this noble monu- ment on the central elevation now occupied by the Tabernacle, and the opening of a new square, extend- ing back to the Bowery and the Five Points, would, in the first place, turn that festering sink into lungs for this crowded metropolis, and in the next place cen- tralize, in the neighborhood of the City Hall, the prominent public buildings. This great monument is to be built by subscriptions of one dollar each. Fifty thousand dollars were collected some time since, and are now at interest; and there is a sum of one hundred thousand dollars in the treasury at Washing- ton, which it is hoped will be given to this. The ob- ject is one which every American must feel interested in ; and there is no citizen, 1 presume, who would not give his dollar toward it. Let it be, if Mr. Dickens ! chooses so to call it, a " dollar" monument to Wash- ington — showing that, devoted to dollars as we are (and yet not more than Englishmen to pounds, shil- lings, and pence), our dollar-patriotism can raise to the first patriot of history, the grandest monument of modern times. The respectable and zealous spinster who sent u* for publication, as a salutary warning, the very worldly and trappy epistle, addressed to Miss Violet Maby, at Saratoga, and published on a previous page, has laid her fingers on another specimen of the same gentle- man's correspondence, which we give, without com- ment or correction, as follows : — Astor House, August 10, 1843. My dear widow: For (he wear and tear of your bright eyes in writing me a letter you are duly cred- ited. That for a real half-hour, as long as any or- dinary half-hour, such well-contrived illuminations should have concentrated their mortal using on me only, is equal, I am well aware, to a private audience of any two stars in the firmament — eyelashes and pet- ticoats (if not thrown in) turning the comparison a little in your favor. Thanks — of course — piled high as the porphyry pyramid of Papantla ! And you want "a pattern for a chemisette." Let me tell you, my dear widow, you have had a narrow escape. Had you unguardedly written to your mil- liner for an article so obsolete — but I'll not harrow up your feelings. Suffice it, that that once-privileged article has passed over, with decayed empires, to his- tory — an aristocracy of muslin too intoxicated to last. "Fuitr The truth is, shams are tottering. The linen cuff which was a shallow representation of the edge of a linen sleeve, and the linen collar or embroidered che- misette, which as faintly imagined forth the spotless upper portion of the same investiture, are now boha- fide continuations of a garment, "though lost to sight to memory dear !" The plait on the throat and wrist is scrupulously of the same fineness, and simply emerges from the neck and sleeve of the dress without turn- ing over. The hem of the skirt is beyond my province of ob- servation, but as the plaited edge would be pretty (spread over the instep when sitting), the unity is prob- ably preserved. Apropos of instep — the new discovery of a steel spring in the shoe to arch the hollow of the foot, has directed attention to the curves of those bewitching locomotives, and heels are coming into fashion. This somewhat improves the shapeliness of the pastern, EPHEMERA. 615 lifts the sex a half inch nearer heaven — more out of reach than ever, of course. Adieu in time— should you lose sight of me ! And now — (for I believe you may trust "The La- dy's Book" for the remainder of the chronicle of fashion) — how comes on, oh, charming widow, the lit- tle property 1 have in your empire of alabaster ? Shall 1 recall the title-deed to your recollection ? Did you not, on a summer's night, having the full posses- sion of your senses, lay a rose-leaf wetted with dew on your left temple ? Did you not, without mental res- ervation, scratch it round with a thorn of the same rose, and then and there convey to me the territory so bounded, to have and to hold for my natural life, to be guarded, at your peril, from trespass or damage ? Did you not, at the same place and time, with blood taken from your pricked finger, write me out, to this effect, a rosy conveyance, of which, if needful, I can send you, in red ink, a paler copy? Of course I do not ask for information, i'ou know you did. And you know you had for it a consideration — of such im- mortality as was in my power to bestow : — '•' Where press this hour those fairy feet ?" &c. You married — and with so prying a neighbor as your remainder's husband, I did not very frequently visit my little property. You had the stewardship over it, and I presume that you respected, and made others respect, the rights of the proprietor. I never heard that your husband was seen invading the prem- ises. I have every reason to believe that he was uni- formly directed to plant his tulips elsewhere than in my small garden. It was to me a slumbering invest- ment — and the interest, I must be permitted to advise you, has accumulated upon it ! And now that my prying neighbor is dead, and the property in the opposite temple and the remainder of the demesne, has reverted to the original proprietor, I may be permitted to propose myself as an occupant of my own territory, pro tern., with liberty to pluck fruit from the opposite garden as long as it remains untenanted. Take care how you warn me off. That peach upon your cheek would make a thief of a better man. You disdain news, of course. China is taken by the English, and the Down-Town-Bard has recovered his appetite for champagne, and writes regularly for the New Mirror. The Queen's Guards have done coming over ; the town dull ; and bonnets (I forgot to mention) are now worn precipitated over the nose at an angle of forty-five degrees. Adieu, my dear widow. Command me till you lose your beauty. Yours at present, Cinna Beverley. CINNA BEVERLEY, ESQ., TO ALEXIS VON PHUHL. Astor House, Sept. 1, 1843. My dear neph-ling : I congratulate you on the attainment of your degree as " Master of Arts." In other words, [ wish the sin of the Faculty well re- pented of, in having endorsed upon parchment such a barefaced fabrication. Put the document in your poc- ket, and come away ! There will be ho occasion to air it before doomsday, probably, and fortunately for you, it will then revert to the Faculty. Quiescat ad- huc — as I used to say of my tailor's bills till they came through a lawyer. And now, what is to become of you ? I do not mean as to what your grandmother calls your " tem- poral welfare." You were born to gold-dust like a butterfly's wing. Ten thousand a year will ooze into your palm like insensible perspiration — (principally from investments in the " Life and Trust"). But your style, my dear boy — your idiosyncrasy of broad- cloth and beaver, satin and patent-leather — your outer type — your atmosphere — your cut ! Oh, Alexis ! But let us look this momentous matter coolly in the face. America has now arrived at that era of civilized ag- grandizement when it is worth a gentleman's while to tie his cravat for the national meridian. We can afford to wish St. James street " Ion voyage''' in its decline from empire. We dress better than Great Britain. Ilium fuit. The last appeal of the universe, as to male toggery, lies in the approval of forty eyes lucent beneath twenty bonnets in Broadway. In the decision of twenty belles or thereabout, native in New York, resides, at this present crisis, the eidolon of the beau supreme. Homage a la mode Manhaltanesque ! But, to the sanctum of fashion there is no thor- oughfare. Three persons, arriving at it by the same road, send it flying like " Loretto's chapel through the air." Every man his own guide thither, and his path trackless as a bird's alley to his nest! I can but give you some loose data for guidance, and pray that " by an instinct you have" you may take a "bee-line" of your own. Of course you know that during the imitative era just past, there have been two styles of men's dress — the Londonish and the Parisian— pretty equally pop- ular, I should say. The London man dresses loose above, the Paris man loose below — tight hips and baggy coat in St. James street — baggy trousers and pinched coat on the Boulevard. The Englishman puts on his cravat with summary energy and a short tie — the Frenchman rejoices in a voluptuous waterfall of satin ; and each, more particularly in this matter of neckcloth, abhors the other. John Bull shows his shirt-collar till death — Monsieur sinks it with the same pertinacity. English extravagance, fine linen — French extravagance, primrose kids. Something is due, of course, to the settled princi- ples of art. By the laws of sculpture, the French- man is wrong — the beauty of the male figure consist- ing in the breadth of the shoulders and the narrow- ness of the hips; and this formation shows blood and breeding, moreover, as to have small hips, a man's progenitors must not have carried burdens. So — for me — trousers snug to the barrel, and coat scant of skirt, but prodigal above. Decide for yourself, not- withstanding. There is a certain je ne scais quoi in bagginess of continuation — specially on a tall man. It only don't suit my style ! And, as to cravat, I have the same weak leaning toward Bond street. The throat looks poulticed in those heavy voluminousnesses. Black diminishes the apparent size, too, and the more shirt-bosom visible, the broader the apparent chest. It depends on the stuff, somewhat. Very rich billows of flowered satin look ruinous — and that the ladies love. But in every other particular, if you will wear these eclipsers of linen, you must be as lavendered as a lily at dawn — compensatory, as it were ! And if you show your collar, for Heaven's sake let it follow the curve of your jawbone, and not run athwart it like a rocket aimed at the corner of your eyebrow ! 1 am sensitive as to this last hint. The reform was my own. One caution — never be persuaded that there is such a thing as a fashion of hat ! Believe me, the thing is impossible! Employ an artist. George Flagg has a good eye for a gentleman's belongings, and he'll make a drawing of you with reference to a hat. No hat is endurable that will not look well in a picture. Ponder the brim. Study how the front curve cuts the line of the eyebrow. Regulate it by the expressmn of face common to you when dawdling. See if you require lengthening or crowding down— physiognomically, I lengthening or crowding mean. Low crowns are monstrous crowns are dressy— white hats rowdy. And, vindictive. Bell once I fixed in your taste by artistical principles, be pretty constant through life to that hat. Have it reproduced I (rigidly without consultation with your hatter), and 616 EPHEMERA. give it a shower-bath befor.e wearing. Unmitigated new hat is truly frightful. Orlando Fish takes your idea cleverly, touching a tile of your own. As to the Castaly of coats, I am driven to believe that the true fount is at Philadelphia. One marvel- lous coat after another arrived at Saratoga while I was there, and to my astonished research as to their ori- gin, and there was but one reply — " Carpenter." What may be the address of this Carpenter of coats, I know not yet. But J shall know, and soon — for he builds to a miracle. Trousers, as you know, are sent home in the rough, and adapted by perseverance. They are a complex mystery, on the whole. Few makers know more than a part in the science of cut- ting them, and you must supply the rest by clear ex- pounding and pertinacious experiment. The trade is trying, and should be expiative of crime in the "suf- ferer." There is but one simple idea in boots — patent- leather and straight on the inside. But, by-the-way, to jump abruptly to the other extremity, how do you wear your hair? For Cupid's and the Grace's sake, don't be English in that .' Short hair on a young man looks to me madhousey. Ugh ! Straight or curly, leave it long enough to make a bootlace for a lady ! And see that it looks threadable by slight fingers — for if you should chance to be beloved, there will be fin- gers unemployed but for that little endearment. So at least I conjecture — bald myself, and of course, not experienced authority. But, whatever you decide, don't step into the street rashly! Keep yourself "on private view" for a few days after you are made up, and call in discreet judges for the benefit of criticism — an artist or two among them for the general effects. First impressions are irrevocable. Adieu, my boy ! Caution ! — and ponder on Balzac's dictum: "Lesfemmes aiment les fats, par ceque lesfats sont les seuls hommes qui eussent soin cfeuz-memes." Your affectionate uncle, Cinna Beverley. P. S. A short cane — say as long as your arm — is rather knowing, now. Nobody carries a long stick, except to poke at snakes in the country. MOORE AND BARRY CORNWALL. Well — how does Moore write a song ? In the twilight of a September evening he strolls through the park to dine with the marquis. As he draws on his white gloves, he sees the evening star looking at him steadily through the long vista of the avenue, and he construes its punctual dispensation of light into a reproach for having, himself a star, passed a day of poetic idleness. " Damme," soliloquizes the little fat planet, " this will never do ! Here have I hammered the whole morning at a worthless idea, that, with the mere prospect of a dinner, shows as trumpery as a 'penny fairing.' Labor wasted ! And at my time of life, too! Faith!— it's dining at home these two days with nobody to drink with me ! It's eyewater I want ! Don for me, brother come back ! ! Don't trouble yourself to sit up Hesper! I shall see clearer when I ' Bad are the rhymes That scorn old wine,' as my friend Barry sings. Poetry? hum! Claret? Prithee, call it claret !" And Moore is mistaken ! He draws his inspiration, it is true, with the stem of a glass between his thumb and finger, but the wine is the least stimulus to his brain. He talks and is listened to admiringly, and that is his Castaly. He sits next to Lady Fanny at dinner, who thinks him " an adorable little love," and he employs the first two courses in making her in love with herself, i. e., blowing everything she says up to the red heat of poetry. Moore can do this, for the most stupid things on earth are, after all, the begin- nings of ideas, and every fool is susceptible of the flattery of seeing the words go straight from his lips to the "highest heaven of invention." And Lady Fanny is not a fool, but a quick and appreciative wo- man, and to almost everything she says, the poet's trump is a germ of poetry. " Ah !" says Lady Fanny with a sigh, "this will be a memorable dinner — not to you, but to me; for you see pretty women every day, but I seldom see Torn Moore !" The poet looks into Lady Fanny's eyes and makes no immediate an- swer. Presently she asks, with a delicious look of simplicity, "Are you as agreeable to everybody, Mr. Moore?" — "There is but one Lady Fanny," replies the poet ; "or, to use your own beautiful simile, 'The moon sees many brooks, but the brook sees but one moon!'" (Mem. jot that down.) And so is treas- ured up one idea for the morrow, and when the mar- chioness rises, and the ladies follow her to the draw- ingroom, Moore finds himself sandwiched between a couple of whig lords, and opposite a past or future premier — an audience of cultivation, talent, scholar- ship, and appreciation ; and as the fresh pitcher of claret is passed round, all regards radiate to the Anac- reon of the world, and with that suction of expecta- tion, let alone Tom Moore. Even our " Secretary of the Navy and National Songster" would "turn out his lining" — such as it is. And Moore is delightful, and with bis "As you say, my lord!" he gives birth to a constellation of bright things, no one of which is dismissed with the claret. Every one at the table, except Moore, is subject to the hour — to its enthusi- asm, its enjoyment — but the hour is to Moore a pre- cious slave. So is the wine. It works for him ! It brings him money from Longman ! It plays his trum- pet in the reviews! It is his filter among the ladies! Well may he sing its praises! Of all the poets, Moore is probably the only one who is thus master of his wine. The glorious abandon with which we fancy him, a brimming glass in his hand, singing "Fly nor yet!" exists only in the fancy. He keeps a cool head and coins his conviviality; and to revert to my former figure, they who wish to know what Moore's elec- tricity amounts to ivithout the convivial friction, may read his History of Ireland. Not a sparkle in it, from the landing of the Phenicians to the battle of Vine- gar Hill ! He wrote that as other people write — with nothing left from the day before but the habit of la- bor — and the the travel of a collapsed balloon on a man's back, is not more unlike the same thing, infla- ted and soaring, than Tom Moore, historian, and Tom Moore, bard ! Somewhere in the small hours the poet walks home, and sitting down soberly in his little library, he puts on paper the half-score scintillations that col- lision, in one shape or another, has struck into the tinder of his fancy. If read from this paper, the world would probably think little of their prospect of ever becoming poetry. But the mysterious part is done — the life is breathed into the chrysalis— and the do- . thing of these naked fancies with winged words, Mr. Moore knows very well can be done in very uninspired moods by patient industry. Most people have very little idea what that industry is — how deeply language is ransacked, how often turned over, how untiringly rejected and recalled with some new combination, how resolutely sacrificed when only tolerable enough to pass, how left untouched day after day in the hope of a fresh impulse after repose. The vexation of a Chinese puzzle is slight, probably, to that which Moore has expended on some of his most natural and flowing single verses. The exquisite nicety of his ear, though EPHEMERA. 617 :t eventually gives his poetry its honeyed fluidity, gives him no quicker choice of words, nor does more, in any way, than pass inexorable judgment on what his industry brings forward. Those who think a song dashed oft" like an invitation to dinner, would be ed- ified by the progressive phases of a " Moore's Melo- dy." Taken with all its re-writings, emendations, &c, 1 doubt whether, in his most industrious seclusion, Moore averages a couplet a day. Yet this persevering, resolute, unconquerable patience of labor is the se- cret of his fame. Take the best thing he ever wrote, and translate its sentiment and similitudes into plain prose, and do the thing by a song of any second-rate imitator of Moore, one abstract would read as well as the other. Yet Moore's song is immortal, and the other ephemeral as a paragraph in a newspaper, and the difference consists in a patient elaboration of lan- guage and harmony, and in that only. And even thus short, seems the space between the ephemeron and the immortal. But it is wider than they think, oh, glorious Tom Moore ! And how does Barry Cornwall write? I answer, from the efflux of his soul ! Poetry is not labor to him. He works at law — he plays, re- laxes, luxuriates in poetry. Mr. Proctor has at no moment of his life, probably, after finishing a poetic effusion, designed ever to write another line. No more than the sedate man, who, walking on the edge of a playground, sees a ball coming directly toward him, and seized suddenly with a boyish impulse, jumps aside and sends it whizzing back, as he has not done for twenty years, with his cane — no more than that unconscious schoolboy of fourscore (thank God there are many such live coals under the ashes) thinks he shall play again at ball. Proctor is a prosperous bar- rister, drawing a large income from his profession. He married the daughter of Basil Montague (well known as the accomplished scholar, and the friend of Coleridge, Lamb, and that bright constellation of spirits), and with a family of children of whom, the world knows, he is passionately fond, he leads a more domestic life, or, rather, a life more within himself and his own, than any author, present or past, with whose habits I am conversant. He has drawn his own por- trait, however, in outline, and as far as it goes, nothing could be truer. In an epistle to his friend Charles Lamb, he says : — " Seated beside this Sherris wine, And near to books and shapes divine, Which poets and the painters past Have wrought in line that aye shall last, — E'en I, with Shakspere's self beside me, And one whose tender talk can guide me Through fears and pains and troublous themes, Whose smile doth fall upon my dreams Like sunshine on a stormy sea, **•**• Proctor slights the world's love for his wife and books, and, as might be expected, the world only plies him the more with its caresses. He is now and then seen in the choicest circles of London, where, though love and attention mark most flatteringly the rare pleasure of his presence, he plays a retired and silent part, and steals early away. His library is his Para- dise. His enjoyment of literature should be men- tioned as often in his biography as the " feeding among the lilies'* in the Songs of Solomon. He forgets him- self, he forgets the world in his favorite authors, and that, I fancy, was the golden link in his friendship with Lamb. Surrounded by exquisite specimens of art (he has a fine taste, and is much beloved by ar- tists), a choice book in his hand, his wife beside him, and the world shut out, Barry is in the meridian of his true orbit. Oh, then, a more loving and refined spirit is not breathing beneath the stars ! He reads and muses; and as something in the page stirs some distant association, suggests some brighter image than its own, he half leans over to the table, and scrawls it in unstudied but inspired verse. He thinks no more of it. You might have it to light your cigar. But there sits by his side one who knows its value, and it is treasured. Here, for instance, in the volume I have spoken of before, are some forty pages of "fragments" — thrown in to eke out the volume of his songs. I am sure, that when he was making up his book, per- haps expressing a fear that there would not be pages enough for the publisher's design, these fragments were produced from their secret hiding-place to his great surprise. The quotations I have made were all from this portion of his volume, and, as I said before, they are worthy of Shakspere. There is no mark of labor in them. I do not believe there was an erasure in the entire manuscript. They bear all the marks of a sudden, unstudied impulse, immediately and un- hesitatingly expressed. Here are several fragments. How evident it is that they were suggested directly by his reading : — " She was a princess — but she fell ; and now Her shame goes blushing through a line of kings. Sometimes a deep thought crossed My fancy, like the sullen bat that flies Athwart the melancholy moon at eve. Let not thy tale tell but of stormy sorrows ! She — who was late a maid, but now doth lie In Hymen's bosom, like a rose grown pale, A sad, sweet wedded wife — why is she left Out of the story ? Are good deeds— great griefs, That live but ne'er complain— naught ? What are tears ?— Remorse ? — deceit ? at best weak water drops Which wash out the bloom of sorrow. »»#****»•♦ Is she dead ? Why so shall I be — ere these autumn blasts Have blown on the beard of winter. Is she dead ? Aye, she is dead— quite dead ! The wild sea kissed her With its cold, white lips, and then — put her to sleep : She has a sand pillow, and a water sheet, And never turns her head, or knows 'tis morning ! Mark, when he died, his tombs, his epitaphs ! Men did not pluck the ostrich for his sake, Nor dyed 't in sable. No black steeds were there, Caparisoned in wo ; no hired crowds ; No hearse, wherein the crumbling clay (imprisoned Like ammunition in a tumbril) rolled Rattling along the street, and silenced grief; No arch whereon the bloody laurel hung ; No stone ; no gilded verse ; — poor common shows ! But tears and tearful words, and sighs as deep As sorrow is — these were his epitaphs ! Thus — (fitly graced) — he lieth now, inurned In hearts that loved him, on whose tender sides Are graved his many virtues. When they perish, He's lost .'—and so't should be. The poet's name And hero's — on the brazen book of Time, Are writ in sunbeams, by Fame's loving hand ; But none record the household virtues there. These better sleep (when all dear friends are fled) In endless and serene oblivion. The lighthouse near Caldwell's Landing is seen to great effect by the passenger in the evening boat from New York to Newburgh. Leaving the city at five in the summer afternoon, she makes the intervening forty miles between that hour and twilight ; and while the last tints of the sunset are still in the sky, the stars just beginning to twinkle through the glow of the west, the bright light of this lofty beacon rises up over the prow of the boat, shining apparently on the very face of the new-starred heaven. As he ap- proaches, across the smooth and still purpled mirror of the silent river is drawn a long and slender line of light, broken at the foot of the beacon by the wild shrubbery of the rock on which it stands ; and as he rounds the point, and passes it, the light brightens and looks clearer against the darker sky of the east, 018 EPHEMERA. while the same cheering line of reflection follows him on his way, and is lost to sight as he disappears among the mountains. The waters of the river at this point were the scene of the brief and tragic drama enacted so fatally to poor Andre. Four or five miles below stands Smith's house, where he had his principal interview with Arnold, and where the latter communicated to him his plans for the delivery of West Point into the hands of the English, and gave him the fatal papers which proved his ruin. At Smith's house Mrs. Arnold passed a night on her way to join her husband at West Point, soon after he had taken command. The sufferings of this lady have excited the sympathy of the world, as the first paroxysms of her distress moved the kind but firm heart of Washington. There seems to have arisen a doubt, however, whether her long and well-known correspondence with Andre had not so far undermined her patriotism, that she was rather inclined to further than impede the treason of Arnold ; and consequently could have suffered but little after Washington gener- ously made every arrangement for her to follow him. In the "Life of Aaron Burr," lately published, are some statements which seem authentic on the subject. It is well known that Washington found Mrs. Arnold apparently frantic with distress at the communication her husband had made to her the moment before his flight. Lafayette, and the other officers in the suite of the commander-in-chief, were alive with the most poignant sympathy; and a passport was given her by Washington, with which she immediately left West Point to join Arnold in New York. On her way she stopped at the house of Mrs. Prevost, the wife of a British officer, who subsequently married Colonel Burr. Here "the frantic scenes of West Point were renewed," says the narrative of Burr's biographer, "and continued so long as strangers were present. As soon as she and Mrs. Prevost were left alone, however, Mrs. Arnold became tranquillized, and assured Mrs. Prevost that she was heartily sick of the theatrics she was exhibiting. She stated that she had corresponded with the British commander; that she was disgusted with the American cause, and those who had the man- agement of public affairs; and that, through great persuasion and unceasing perseverance, she had ulti- mately brought the general into an arrangement to surrender West Point to the British. Mrs. Arnold was a gay, accomplished, artful, and extravagant wo- man. There is no doubt, therefore, that, for the pur- pose of acquiring the means of gratifying her vanity, she contributed greatly to the utter ruin of her hus- band, and thus doomed to everlasting infamy and dis- grace all the fame he had acquired as a gallant soldier, at the sacrifice of his blood." It is not easy to pass and repass the now peaceful and beautiful waters of this part of the Hudson, with- out recalling to mind the scenes and actors in the great drama of the Revolution, which they not long ago bore on their bosom. The busy mind fancies the armed guard-boats, slowly pulling along the shore; the light pinnace of the Vulture plying to and fro on its errands of conspiracy ; and not the least vivid pic- ture to the imagination, is the boat containing the accomplished, the gallant Andre, and his guard, on his way to his death. It is probable that he first ad- mitted to his own mind the possibility of a fatal result, while passing this very spot. A late biographer of Arnold gives the particulars of a conversation between Andre and Major Tallmadge, the officer who had him in custody, and who brought him from West Point down the river to Tappan, the place of his subsequent execution. "Before we reached the Clove" (a landing just be- low the beacon), " Major Andre became very inquisi- tive to know my opinion as to the result of his capture. When I could no longer evade his importunity, I re- marked to him as follows ; ' I had a much-loved class- mate in Yale college, by the name of Hale, who en- tered the army in 1775. Immediately after the battle of Long Island, Washington wanted information respecting the strength of the enemy. Hale tendered his services, went over to Brooklyn, and was taken, just as he was passing the outpost of the enemy on his return.' Said I, with emphasis, 'Do you remem- ber the sequel of this story?' — 'Yes,' said Andre, 'he was hanged as a spy. But you surely do not consider his case and mine alike?' I replied, 'Yes, precisely similar; and similar will be your fate.' He endeav- ored to answer my remarks, but it was manifest he was more troubled in spirit than I had ever seen him before." Sconcia's " Preceptor for the Pianoforte," just pub- lished by Christman, of this city, is a curious and val- uable work. Mr. Sconcia is a thorough musician, and he has compiled the edition before us with much labor and a clear understanding of the beautiful sci- ence of which it treats. Mr. S. is also the author of a valuable scientific work, entitled "An Introduction to the Art of Singing," which is universally popular among the profession. The Messrs. Appleton have sent us a volume of delicious poetry, entitled the "Wife of Leon" and other metrical effusions, by two sisters of the west. We know nothing of these delightful authors beyond their writings ; but that they are gifted, true-hearted, and accomplished girls, is apparent in every line of their beautiful productions. The west has cause to be proud of these sweet "sisters," and so has the country, to whose literary stores the volume before us is a graceful and valuable contribution. If this is the authors' first appearance in print, it is the most favor- able one we have ever witnessed in our whole edito- rial career, and we shall place the book in our library, on the same shelf with the works of Mrs. Hemans, to be referred to frequently in hours stolen from severer duties. The Messrs. Appleton — ever (" The first true merit to defend— His praise is lost who waits till all commend ") deserve the thanks of the public for the elegant edi- tion of the poems before us. I saw two very distinguished gentlemen sitting vis- a-vis at the Astor house table a day or two since — striking exceptions, both, to the physique of the cli- mates from which they severally come. The Hon. Mr. Choate, of Massachusetts, was one, with his pale but intellectual countenance, and Judge Wayne was the other, as glowing a specimen of rosy health and vigor as ever came from the more florescent nurture of the north. It is painful to see the precious accu- mulation of a great mind's treasure intrusted to so fragile a casket as ill-health, and the contrary is pro- portionably agreeable. Judge Wayne is at present at West Point. It is a pretty literal fulfilment of the penalty of Adam's transgression to do more than breathe to-day, and I have chopped down and chopped up many a tree of twice my age with half the " sweat of the brow" brought out by the harnessing of this first sen- tence to grammar. A gentleman is walking up Broad- way, fanning himself, as I look out of the window. The omnibus horses drip. What an Eden would come about again (for me, at least) if this penitential sweat would trickle itself into these inky traceries without the medium of brain and finger-work! One EPHEMERA. (.•19 would be almost content to become a black man to facilitate the miracle. Three successive boys have gone under my window, whistling, "Dance, boatman, dance!" The air is one that sticks in the popular memory, and, like some other of these negro melodies, it is probably suscep- tible of transmutation into a gem of music. I have recorded somewhere else a remark Moore once made in my presence, that one of the most pathetic of his songs stole its air from a merry ballad of Spain, rep- resenting a girl complaining of the wind's blowing her petticoats about, and the change in its character was effected by only playing it slower. No song was ever more popular in this country than " On the lake where drooped the willow," which was a transfer of the ne- gro song "As I was a gwyin down Shinbone alley." Horn, who adapted it to a pathetic song by Morris, took his hint from the pathos with which a black boy at Natchez sang one of the songs peculiar to his race and region. " The Northern Refrain," another very popular song by Morris and Horn, is based upon the carol of the sweeps in New York city. Mr. Horn says that "God save the King" was taken from an air sung about the streets of London, and that "Di tanti palpiti" was suggested to Rossini by hearing a fish- woman sing it in the market while attending her stall. "The Marseillaise" had an origin equally obscure. The first attempt to dislocate these airs from their ludicrous words creates a smile, of course, but it is surprising how quickly the better clothing of music throws its long-worn beggar-rag into forgetfulness. Horn relates in one of his prefaces, that when Mrs. Horn commenced singing before an audience, " Long time ago," with a serious air, there was a general smile; but when the song was ended she left her au- ditors with tears in their eyes. There is no end to tracing back to their origin airs that are afloat among a people, and if Moore's melodies are built upon "Irish airs," without going back to Milesian imagina- tion, these negro melodies may be called American, without giving credit to Guinea or Timbuctoo. I should think it worth a composer's while to travel lei- surely in the south, and bring away all the melodies that inhabit the banjo of the slave, and better still worth Morris's while to devote his singular tact and delicacy of taste and ear to the clothing them with appropriate poetry. He has been so successful in the attempts he has already made, that the warrant is good. A German gentleman, residing at the Astor house, has translated for me an account of a visit to Frederika ! Bremer, by the Countess Von Hahn-Hahn, and a few j of its more personal particulars will not be uninterest- ing. The countess is a celebrated person in the fash- | ionable world, and has just published her travels in Sweden. She found Miss Bremer at a small country | estate near Stockholm, where she resides with her mother and a younger sister. She says : " I had formed some idea about her person from her books. I figured to myself a quiet, serious person, with some humoristic touches. I found her indeed thus in reality, with an addition of an extraordinary degree of sweetness in all her bearing." — " I was offered a promenade. I preferred to remain in the house, though passionately fond of nature, open air, walking. All the attraction for me was within — everything so pleasant, so comfortable ! I could comprehend how * Home' 1 here could be made so attractive. I desired Miss Frederika to show me her own room. It was arranged with the greatest simplicity — almost a cell. It would- not do for me at all. Besides, it was a cor- ner-room, with windows on two sides, consequently a double supply of light. There were three square tables, covered with books, papers, and writing-mate- rials; a sofa in a severe style (I mean one that coolly and merely invites you to sit down without lolling, which is my favorite position). On the walls there were several pictures. 'This is a genuine Teniers, but I know you will not like it,' she said, laughing, pointing to a beautiful little picture of a countryman filling his pipe. I answered honestly, 'no!' and in general I found that I said 'no' when she said 'yes.' Such a difference of opinion is only disagreeable when you have a dislike to a person. I triei] to persuade her to make a voyage to Italy. We would go togeth- er. But she would not. She does not like travel- ling. She thinks that one may soon become over- powered, carried away, get confused — and what to do with all these foreign impressions! I said, 'You will soon conquer them — that is just the pleasantest thing, I think.' She still took a lively interest in all I told her of foreign countries, what I had seen, and what I had written about them. 1 was naturally well-pleased at this. Our conversation was carried on in French and German. She expressed herself with great sim- plicity and decision. She has beautiful, thinking eyes; a clear, firm, I may almost say, a solid forehead, under which the strongly-delineated eyebrows move very much when she speaks. This becomes her very much, particularly when an idea labors to shape itself into words. She has a light and small figure, and was dressed in black silk. In the parlor there were two large bookcases. Miss Bremer paints beautifully in miniature, and she has a collection of heads, done by herself, to which was added mine. I generally get sleepy when sitting to artists; therefore J do not like to have my picture taken, as it hurts my vanity that all my portraits look so immensely sheepish! This time, however, the sitting went better off, for the Countess Rosen was singing the whole time, with her fine voice, some beautiful Swedish songs." By this extract the Countess Hahn-Hahn herself seems a nice, natural creature enough. I have been pleased to find that I rather under than over-colored my slight description of Mr. Weir's pic- ture for the rotunda. The Bostonians have received it with a full measure of enthusiasm; and Mr. Weir has himself returned to West Point, laden not merely with bountiful commendations, but with employment for years in commissions for pictures. He will, prob- ably, realize a small fortune from the exhibition, alone, of his great painting in the different cities ; and alto- gether, this is the best exemplification that has occurred in my time of the jwlici/ (to say no more) of a faithful discharge of a commission, which, because intrusted literally to conscience and honor, may be slighted with impunity. Mr. Weir, I under- stand, has not yet drawn the price of his picture from the treasury, intending to lay it by as an investment for his children, unconscious, probably, how much they will value the father's glory invested in the pic- ture. Oo it the painter has flung his soul prostrate ; and there is a circumstance connected with its work- ing upon his mind while painting it. which we do not feel quite at liberty to mention here, but which will be a thread of the purest gold to weave into the mingled woof of his posthumous biography. By the first of October, I understand, we are to have a view of the " Embarkation" in New York. I was among the liquesced victims of the buffalo- hunt at Hoboken, and gathered little to compensate me for "larding the lean earth" of the Messrs Stevens, except a strong impression of the peculiar good-nature of a republican crowd. As our down- 620 EPHEMERA. laden ferry-boat reached the shore, another one, heav- ily overfreighted, was starting to return. Some one on our wheelhouse inquired in a stentorian voice, " How did you like it?" and was answered by the five hundred disappointed and roasted dupes with a general shout of good-natured laughter. The Courier esti- mates the crowd at twenty or thirty thousand, and cer- tainly the whole Jersey side was black with people, all feeling humbugged and laughing merrily. I thought I would ride up to the ground to see the embroidery of so many moving figures on the green meadows, and this was a fine sight. The lasso-rider, in a fantastical costume, was galloping hard after his shadow, and tossing his long rope into the air; and one of the buf- faloes was quietly munching a hollyhock in the small enclosure of an Irish cabin on the roadside. The rest of the herd, I was told, had made their escape to the woods, offering the proprietor a real hunt for a sham. The morning papers give accounts of some serious accidents during the day. The copyright club is organized with a most active and efficient secretary in Mr. Mathews, and there has been a general summoning of aid and counsel. Bry- ant, the high-priest of American poetry, is very prop- erly chosen president. In addition to the fact which I mentioned in my last as one that should be "kept before the people," viz., that the increase of price on new publications would be very trifling and go to the author — in addition to this, I say, another should be mentioned. The worthless edition that is bought for a shilling, and read with straining eyes from its bad print, is perused and thrown away. Would it not be as well to subscribe to a reading-club, and get the book well-printed for less money, and return it at the end of the week? The hint is worth considering — and this is the way that reading is managed cheaply in England. Macready is to be here in October, and will be ac- companied by Miss Phillips (formerly of the National), and Mr. Ryder — a unicorn team of his own breaking. They both know the leader's paces. Conti Damoreau follows later — but there is nothing very spicy on rec- ord with regard to this prima donna ; and the popular telescope of expectation is fixed exclusively on the charming Mrs. Nesbitt. Before I have had time to be bribed by my share of the spell of this enchantress, I may as well give you an honest inventory of her attractions and professional merits. She is, imprimis, a widow; that is to say, if she be not married within a year or two, as is said, to the famous Mr. Feargus O'Conner, keeping her previous name for theatrical eclat. Mr. Nesbitt was a dashing guardsman (son of Lady Nesbitt, well known in the gay world), who broke his neck driving tandem, and left his widow the idol of the dandies. She is rather above the middle size, with blue eyes, meant to pass for black, black hair, Greek nose, upper lip half scornful, half playful, and a mouth made by none of the Graces' journey- men. This last article is indeed delicious, as seen from any part of the theatre, though, like Madame George Sands, the owner smokes ! But her charm lies mainly in "the way she has with her." Nobody that sees her cares whether she plays well or ill. She ministers at another door. Hang your head — she plays to your heart .' And it is one of her ways to play very unevenly ; and when she thinks you have pouted long enough at her carelessness, to burst sud- denly upon you with a bewitching rally, and "bring the house down," as they alarmingly phrase it. A great actress she probably is not — an enchanting woman she certainly is. It is to be hoped that she will bring over the pieces that have been written expressly for her, as her every peculiarity of look, tone, and gesture, has been most accurately measured and fitted by the dra- matic tailors of London. The world looks disagreeable to us to-day. We are " under the weather ;" and, for to-day at least (and it is odd how rare the wish is), we may say, we wish ourselves fairly above the weather — that is, in heaven ; in heaven, where there are no Saturdays, and of course, no expectations of New Mirrors. For you forgive the dinner's not forthcoming, if the cook be ill. And your washerwoman has her little indulgences — hand scalded, or child sick. And you forego your drive if your horse be ailing or off his feed. What have we done, we should be pleased to know, to be treated less kindly than the other three of your quadruple necessities ? We should like very much to drop our head into our hand, and mope. But you wouldn't like it. No — you want us to chatter. You say as the child says, when the story is done : "Tell us some more." And if we must, we must! But we're sick and sav- age, and we'll rake up something that we can gnaw as we tell it — some old resentment or other — and if we don't feel better after it, we'll go to bed. One of the morning papers, a week ago or more, told a fib about us. In an article on American authors, it is said that we (one of "we") made more money by our writings than any other American author, and were fast growing rich! And out of that, a Boston paper picks the reason that we "write so jauntily!" As if a man were not always gayer as his pockets were lighter, and as if our good humor were drawn with a check — bankable ! Now we are not willing to submit to the odium of prosperity. That we have made some thousands of unnameables by two or three weeks' work, as this writer asserts, we freely own — but it was not in this country. We have sold, for a large price, in England, books for which we tried in vain to find a publisher in America. We can not now find a publisher in Amer- ica who will give us anything for a work, though we have been looking for one these three years ; and we never found but one publisher who would give us, for half-a-dozen works in a lump, money worth shutting thumb and finger upon ; and he gave it in notes, pay- able by ourself — after the little privilege of a discount. We don't complain of this — oh no ! The worth of a thing is, no doubt, what it will bring. But we are not going to be lifted between human envy and the sun, and be hated for throwing a shadow when we have no substance! Not "we!" That three meals a day come punctually round to us, we consider no more a marvel than the arrange- ments for the keeping in motion of any other " heav- enly body." For that much we have safely trusted hitherto, and we shall trust hereafter the crank, what- ever it may be. that turns our mortal orrery. We are fed, and we don't care who envies us for it — for we think we do work enough to earn it — but the posses- sion, at any time, for any considerable portion of an hour, of one unbespoken dollar, we indignantly deny ! We are poor enough (either of us "we") to please the most fastidious, on the contrary. And so, fellow- paupers, take us back to your affections ! But we have hopes (as who has not ?) of living to be " rich and envied !" We shall be less loved. That is the tariff, and we are busy laying up love to pay it. But we should like to know how it feels to berich, and whether for more love, one ever sighs to be poor again ! Please Heaven, we will know, some day — if the Mirror keep prospering. EPHEMERA. 621 Two Sistkrs of the West. — I have done, almost unawares, within the last twenty-four hours, what I would not willingly have undertaken to do, viz., the reading of two hundred and fifty pages of new poetry. It was a book which came to my hand in the livery of a di'lnd — cream-colored binding, most daintily let- tered—and when I opened it my anticipations extend- ed very little beyond the pleasure of rubbing my thumb and finger on the seductive smoothness of the cover. It is entitled, " The Wife of Leon, and other Poems, by Two Sisters of the West," written, as the preface states, to "while away time and gratify a taste for poetry," and published " to gratify a parent to whom they could refuse nothing." With much of the book I think you would be delighted. It seems to me a careless exercise of very uncommon powers —a kind of loitering into dream-land with no particu- lar errand, and here and there plucking a phantom forth to the light as would be done by a concentrated mind gone thither with disciplined determination for the purpose. I speak, of course, now only of the purely imaginative parts of the book. The affections are, with women, no phantoms, and can scarcely be written upon, except well, by any woman of talent; and in this book the touches of feeling are exquisitely true and well expressed. But in verse, which is here and there very incompact and wordy, you will find some bold conceptions, partially done justice to, which show in these sisters a very unusual walk of fancy. •A piece called the "Death of the Master Spirit," seems to me particularly strong and unsuggested. And in some lines beginning — " Never, as I have loved thee, Shalt thou be loved again," there is a most refreshing novelty and meaningness. On the whole, I look upon this as rather a memorable advent in poetry-world, and I hope we shall soon find out who the " Sisters" are. Percival has put forth a new volume, after a very long silence as a poet. If poetry were nothing but an exercise of imagination, Percival would doubtless be the first of American poets. In the art of poetry, probably he is — the art, I mean, as exemplified in this very volume, in which there are no less than " one hundred and fifty modifications of stanza." But Per- cival's poetry is singularly deficient in the very mun- dane quality flesh and blood. His veins seem filled with ether, and his Pegasus uses his wings always, his legs never. I mention it less as a fault than a pe- culiarity, for there may be a school of this quality of poetry, and perfect in its way — but it is a pecu- liarity which accounts fully for the inadequate effect it has produced. Nothing of Percival's is popu- larly known, except one or two pieces, which will live for ever by the very flesh and blood pathos which he has touched by chance, and which he probably thinks beneath him. The poem beginning, " lie comes not. I have watched the moon go down," the mournful plaint of a deserted wife, is one of these, and a most exquisite effusion of feeling. But here is his idea of the harness with which a poet must go into the arena, in a passage of his preface to his new book : — — " An art [poetry] which requires the mastery of the riches and niceties of a language ; a full knowl- edge of the science of versification, not only in its own peculiar principles of rhythm and melody, but in its relations to elocution and music, with that delicate natural perception and that facile execution which render the composition of verse hardly less easy than that of prose ; a deep and quick insight into the na- ture of man, in all his varied faculties, intellectual and emotive: a clear and full perception of the power and beauty of nature, and of all its various harmonies with our own thoughts and feelings; and, to gain a high rank in the present age, wide and exact attainments in literature and art in general. Nor is the posses- sion of such faculties and attainments all that is neces- sary ; but such a sustained and self-collected state of mind as gives one the mastery of his genius, and at the same time presents to him the ideal as an imme- diate reality, not as a remote conception." Now, acknowledged, as Percival must be, to pos- sess these high requirements, 1 have no doubt that the book I have spoken of above will be more read than his own — though, probably, the alarm with which " The Two Sisters" would have looked on this for- midable statement of requisites for poetry, presented to them before they had so unconsciously achieved the task, would have quite equalled the surprise of the gentleman who found that he had all his life been talking grammar without learning it. Percival's is a great mind, however, wonderfully stored with learn- ing, and his poetry is a rich treat to the scholar and the purely imaginative reader. The Public Fountains. — The largest audiences we see in the city, assemble on the advertised nights of the illumination of the Bowling Green fountain. The lower part of the city is rendered completely im- passable by the packed assemblages. With the aid of the many-colored fires burned around it, it is cer- tainly a splendid fountain ; but it would be beautiful by day, and alone, as well as much more beautiful by night, if the same volume of water sprang from some ornamental structure instead of a huge heap of rocks. In all countries but this, an artist would have been employed to make a design for so costly and public a fountain — a man whom peculiar genius and study had qualified for the task. But the designer of this is an engineer, and the designer of the Park fountain, if it had one, was probably a well-digger or a mason. By the way, as the Park is the most frequented part of the city, and much used by persons wishing to get out of the street for a moment's conversation, the plan of the fountain of Lerna, at Corinth, would be a good one. It was encircled by a beautiful portico, under which were seats for the public to sit upon during the extreme heats of summer, to enjoy the cool air from the falling waters. The Park jet would be su- perb seen between the marble columns of a portico like this, and the seats would be certainly a great lux- ury, situated as the Park is. For want of an original idea of our own for a smaller fountain, Michael Ange- lo's conception were a good one to copy — a sturdy woman wringing a bundle of clothes, whence the water issues that supplies the basin. First Night of the Season. — The all-a-gogery of the city on the reopening of the Park theatre, drew me in from the country, contrary to my Mon- day's wont, and as I am bound to ride to your eye on the top wave of the morning talk, I must jot you down the memorabilia of the first night. The wooden Shakspere, by the way, has been hoisted to its niche in the facade of the house, and shows well among the very composite order of the new architectural embel- lishments. A traveller, aiming simply at the graphic, would probably describe our principal theatre as one long shed put on top of another, with a figure ol Shakspere standing in the door of the uppermost. The new paint makes it all right, however. I can not think Mr. Simpson farmed out Mr. Wallack to the 622 EPHEMERA. best advantage, for the first night of the new embel- lishments would have filled the house without Wal- lack. And very sufficient attraction it were too — for the interior is most tasteful and elegant; except that the seats in the boxes are calculated for dwarfs and children, and the grown-up people sit between the knees of the person behind. I see no objection that can be made to the interior of the bouse. The new drop curtain is admirably painted, and represents Shakspere and two or three of the muses, tributary to the glory of Macready, who sits with a volume in his hand, the most dignified and conspicuous figure of the group. The design, I understand, is taken from a piece of plate presented to the actor in England, and the use it is put to in the Park fairly out-Barnums Barnum. The house was crammed, and the band opened with "Hail Columbia"— (immense applause) — followed by "Yankee Doodle" — (immense ap- plause). The gas was let on — (immense applause) — the curtain was drawn up, and discovered Mrs. Slo- man (disinterred after many years of respected histri- onic sepulture) in the character of Elvira — (immense applause). Sombody came on as Valverde — (im- mense applause). Mr. Barry came on as Pizarro — (immense applause). Mrs. Hunt came on looking very handsome — (immense applause). The curtain dropped on the first act and rose again — (two im- mense applauses). Mr. Wallack came on as Rolla — (immense applause). The high-priest of the Sun sung his hymn — (immense applause) — and so the play went on, and, wherever the actors left pauses, there were immense applauses. And all the actors and su- pernumeraries got as much applause as Mr. Wallack. All charmingly levelling and republican. It was quite evident, indeed, that the pleasure and interest in the new lining and reopening of the house was, by much, the predominant sentiment of the evening, and, as I said before, Simpson might well have shelved Wallack till he was more wanted. There were quite enough of his special admirers present to have "brought the house down," it is true; but it was "down" all the time, and nothing but an outbreak of pipes and French horns could have emphasized the acclamations any where in the course of the play. And if Wallack's attraction depended at all on opportuneness, the ma- jority of his fashionable friends are out of the city. So that, altogether, we shall hardly have a fair test of his success till his second engagement, after Macready. Meantime, he is barred from all the parts in which the latter is to appear (" Benedict," among others, in which Wallack is far better than Macready), and driven into the melodrame and farce, in which his versatility makes him almost as " good a card." His " Rolla" was superbly played, and in "Dick Dashall" it is well known he is unsurpassed. A plan was struck out by a clever friend of mine, in conversation, of combining the management of a New York and Lon- don theatre, and of transferring the "gettings-up" in the way of dresses and the more extensive stage prop- erties. The splendors of costume and scenery with which Macready has represented plays within the last year or two in England, could never be produced here except by some such transfer, and the communication by steam is now so rapid and punctual, that it might be done with economy and convenience. By some such combination we may stand a chance of renewing the splendors of theatres in Borne in Nero's time, though, I fear, the perfuming of the lobbies with "Sicilian saffron," and the leading of urine and water all over the house, by pipes concealed within the walls, are luxuries gone irrevocably over Lethe's wharf. We wish some of our friends knew how much easier it is to go to the ship-chandler for a cable than to find a new cobweb in a much-swept upper-story. "Waste time upon trifles," quotha! We do waste time upon them, indeed, if they are not more accepta- ble to our readers than twice the bulk of disinterred "information." We thought this was settled long ago, and that the " cap and bells" in which we indus- triously labor at folly were considered a part of our working livery — the least enviable and the most meri- torious. Few things are easier or more stupid than to be wise — on paper. Nothing is easier, and few tasks sooner done, than to cram, on any subject, and astonish the world with "reading" — astonish without delighting it, that is to say. Give us nothing to do but to be wise, oh, "approved good masters," and we have leisure enough at once for some additional voca- tion — clerk in a bank, or principal in a female semi- nary~-(the two trustworthy offices, we beg leave to record, which have been thought suitable to our abil- ities). Why, there is information enough on any con- ceivable subject, and all within ten minutes walk of where we sit and write, to stupify Minerva ; and it is as easy to unshelf, pick out, and embroider it upon an editorial, as it is to buy grapes at Bininger's. It is a very great mistake to suppose that anybody but a donkey makes a packhorse of his memory, carrying about the rubbish intended only for a storehouse of reference. Let who likes " break his fast With Aristotle, dine with Tully, take His watering with the Muses, sup with Livy, Then walk a turn or two in Via Lactea, And after six hours' conference with the stars Sleep with old Erra Pater ;" we do not believe he would sell to the newsboys — which is our noble ambition. So, if you please (or if you don't please), most worthy critic, we shall go on "wasting our time upon trifles." And, by way of a Parthian fling, let us toss under your nose what Ad- dison says on this subject : "Notwithstanding pedants of a pretended depth and solidity are apt to decry the writings of a polite author as flash and froth, they all of them show, upon occasion, that they would spare no pains to arrive at the character of those whom they seem to despise." And (Parthian arrow No. 2) what that esteemed model Lord Foppington says : " To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own." And if that is not a brace of quotations pungent and apt, we know as little about quoting as our rebukers aver. But we have been more specifically snubbed by a morning paper, and we must say a word specifically in reply — for the notice, done by no means in an unfriendly spirit, was wind in our sail, for which we are grateful, now and always. The writer objects to our mentioning the nearest thing to woman — apropos, as the allusion was, of a late change in the fashion of it. He calls this frivolous ! We are not prepared to go the philosopher's length, that "there is no such thing as a trifle in the world" — but we put it point blank to issue, in any man's judgment, if this be a trifle ! Now we are called an unread ignoramus, but we have read Ovid and Juvenal, and we well re- member blushing over the epithet " linen-wearing," applied frequently to the high-priests in the Egyptian ceremonies — no poor precedent for the like of us, let us modestly say, and the worthier the precedent the more you disparage us. Sacred from the earliest ages was held " cloth of flax," and sacred in any def- erential mind is, to this day, the mention of linen. But, history and precedent apart, how have we become so consecrated, that anything, the least, which apper- tains to woman, is too " frivolous" to be wrapt up in our rhetoric ? The particular aim of the peccant al- lusion was to diffuse the knowledge of a new embel- EPHEMERA. G23 lishment for the sex— to give our poor aid to a wor- thier clothing of beauty, which, after religion, is quite the divinest vouchsafe from our Maker. If this be a trifle, show us your importances ! It is no trifle to devote half a column of a newspaper to a new dahlia no trifle to bring to bear a fine-art criticism on a satin skirt in a painting — no trifle to write for months about the jet of a fountain. Yet what are these and a thousand similar topics — what in worthiness and el- evation — even to the outlined shadow of a woman, if (as it can not) that sweet shadow could be improved? No ! no ! — We are not to be driven from our many- years' worship by such unconsidered taking of excep- tions. We write not, besides, to please any critic — (male). The New Mirror shall be masculine enough, but all-tributary to the ladies — God bless them ! We are their slave — bound to bring to their use and knowl- edge all that can please, and especially all that can embellish them. We are here " To answer their best pleasure ; be't to fly, To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curled clouds ;" and "if any man take exception, let him turn the buckle of his girdle." Saunders, the excellent miniature-painter, went home in the Great Western. He was in this coun- try about three years, and, though his prices were much higher than any of our own painters, he had full occupation from first to last. His delicious miniatures (some of which you will have seen at Washington) are scattered through our principal cities, and the "fleeting show" of some beauty and much worth and talent is preserved in them. He is a very observing mnn, and he made a remark that interested me. He said that the motive for sitting for a picture in this country was almost always affection — in England it was almost always pride. Though among his sitters were a few of the loveliest women he had ever seen, the majority were invalids, or old persons who might soon die, or persons about going on far journeys — those, in short, who were loved and might soon be lost. In England, the subject of a miniature is usu- ally good-looking. It is a young girl the year she comes out, or a beautiful child before his curls are shorn to send him to a public school, or a young man, in his first uniform after entering the army. Pride appears somewhere in the reason for the doing of the picture. And Mr. Saunders's remark confirms a pre- vious impression of my own — that personal beauty is vastly inore valued in countries over the water. Some years since, Mr. Saunders was appointed miniature-painter to the king of Hanover, and resided some time at the royal palace, painting the different members of the family. I met him subsequently in Italy (ten years ago), where several noble ladies of England were sitting to him. His success in this country should be a stimulus to our own artists, for he has proved that, spite of the depression of the times, there is patronage enough for the high degrees of art. He thought very highly, by-the-way, of Mr. Hite, the miniature-painter, of this city, who is doubt- less the legitimate heir to his mantle. Apropos of high prices for the arts, Mr. Cather- wood has opened a subscription, which appeals only to the rich and liberal ; and he is very likely to suc- ceed in his enterprise, I think. His splendid draw- ings in seppia of the ruins of Central America are to be engraved of the size of the originals, and the price of one copy is to be a hundred dollars. I saw one subscription-paper with several names upon it. But a book of drawings by Catherwood at a hundred dol- lars, and a novel of Bulwer's at a shilling, and both successful, leave at least a wide field of betweenity. Catherwood is an unsurpassed artist in his line, and I trust we shall show our appreciation of his genius while he honors us by residing among us. The city is somewhat closer packed by the addition to its contents of Thomas Thumb, jun., Esq., who has returned from the south in time to escape the "fell moscheto." He occupies the American Muse- um as before. Mr. Barnum, who is unsurpassed for felicity of trap, has hit upon an amusing mode of drawing attention to Mr. Thumb, and giving a "real- j izing sense" of his diminutive proportions. On a pole outside the Museum is placed a well-appointed i mansion, two feet square, with " T. Thumb, jun." on the brass-plate of the door. A pair of leather breech- j es, about the size of a double opera-glass, hang out- ! side to dry; a pair of white-topboots of the same pro- portions on another nail, and Mr. T.'s hat and coat on another. The fun lies in all these articles being well- \worn. They are a little shabby indeed ; and, in the boots, the leather is represented as worn a little red by the straps of his trousers ! Whoever got them up i is an artist. Fit as Tommy is to be a "tiger" to ; Queen Mab, his boots and breeches would require \ stretching. There is no end to the rivalry of hotels. Cozzens, i of the "American," is making the attractive show of | Broadway tributary to his house. The former smo- king-room and reading-room on the corner of the sec- j ond story are being converted into a superb ladies' parlor, with a charming look-out over the park and the new fountain; while the ground floor, formerly a tailor's shop, is to be demoted to the loungers who wish to sit in their chairs and see Broadway without the trouble of walking. As a hotel, from which to see what is going on to the best advantage, the " Amer- ican" will now be the best in the city; and, as mine host is famous for his table, he may soon gather his " plum." I see by the report of a late trial that an editor, in the eyes of a counsellor-at-law, is considered " a me- i chanic who carries on a newspaper" — the plea being that a man in this condition of life should be taxed with but small alimony for a divorced wife. It would be convenient to some of the tribe to come down to this classification, though most editors will probably resist it, as ambitious boys sometimes object to being let into a show for half-price. I wish the counsellor had defined the luxuries proper to gentlemen that are not proper for " mechanics." The races between the " Empire"' and the other boats on the Hudson occupy the city talk. I trust they will have done their uttermost before anybody I am very fond of has occasion to embark in them — for I presume it is like the proving of guns. If the boilers stand this, they will stand anything. The Em- pire beats, but not by so much as was anticipated. She is unmatched for comfort and beauty, however, and a trip to Albany in her, a month hence, will be a treat worth looking forward to. She runs as a day- boat hereafter. One of the papers announces Count D'Orsay U already arrived in New York. It is a mistake ; and 624 EPHEMERA. so, I believe, is the announcement that he is coming at all. He resisted strong inducements to come out in the suite of his intimate friend, Lord Durham (late governor of Canada), and if he had ever con- templated a visit to America, he would have availed himself of that opportunity. Brough, the vocalist, had a concert recently of renaissance, well-attended and rapturously applauded. He sung better than ever. Mr. Frank Brown assisted him — a very promising young singer, who is about trying his musical fortune in Italy. He has a hand- some person and good talents, as well as an excellent quality of voice, and will be heard of favorably here- after, I have little doubt. Previous to the last six months, New York has only been to me a place of transit, and for the benefit of transitory travellers, it is perhaps worth while lo mention what I have missed till I became a resident. Like the new Sunday-school pupil who was surprised with the sight of "A," of which he had often heard, though he had never seen it before, I am quite full of raptures about Hoboken — new to me till a day or two since. Its extent, beauty, and particularly its near- ness to Broadway, were all surprises. With the ex- ception of the ferry, it lies at the foot of Barclay street, which you know runs down from the Astor, and if the proprietors of that hotel chose to advertise the proximity of the " Elysian fields" as an attraction to their establishment, the only objection would lie in the dread of alarming the apoplectic. The stile over which you step into these grounds is at the ferry- landing, and you are immediately under the shade of avenues leading to covert and winding walks, and to a park which covers the beautiful promontory of Ho- boken, and which can not be surpassed in the world for union of glade and distant view. Who keeps these walks so smooth and trim, who laid them out and gave them to the public, and who lives in the en- viable residence adjoining them, 1 do not know. But the New-Yorkers may be satisfied that they have at their service, and close at hand, grounds which equal those of any nobleman in England. On week-days they seem little frequented, too ; though on Sundays, I am told, the avenues are thronged. 1 observed a new fashion in ladies' boots, which would take, I should think, among the Orientals. The Arabs, as you know, judge of aristocracy by the test of a hollow under the instep — that if water will run under the naked foot when standing on marble, the ancestors of the owner could not have borne burdens. Mr. Dick, ladies' bootmaker in Broadway, inserts a steel spring into the sole to keep it snug under the instep, supporting the foot very comfortably in walk- ing, and adding very much to its beauty. The amal- gamationists will probably oppose the fashion, as the negro foot is entirely excluded from its advantages. I think there was what is commonly called " an opening" for a fashionable summer-theatre up town. Gayety in private circles ceases very much by the first of May; strangers, travelling for pleasure, and inclined to bestow themselves for the evenings in the resorts of " silk attire," begin to arrive; few leave the city for touring till August, and the great majority of the better clas- ses do not leave it at all except for country-seats in the neighborhood, or for short periods; the other the- atres are shut ; and the patrician complexion given to a place by inducements like the foregoing, is the best trap for what the manager would call " miscellaneous patronage ;" or, to express it by a maxim of theat- rical economy, white gloves in the first circle will in- sure dirty hands in the third. Mr. Niblo has cleverly stepped into this opening. His pretty theatre is newly done up in gilding and blue maroon* (an ill-omened stuff for theatrical lining) ; it is brilliantly lighted ; the scenery is peculiar and new, and he begins with addressing his entertainment solely to those who have either aired their manners •with travel, or " fed of the dainties that are bred in a book." The French company might as well deliver themselves in pantomime as sing in French to most of the ordinary frequenters of our theatres, but the boxes understand ; and it is worth the gallery's time and money to have a three hours' perusal of the un- bonneted attractions of the boxes — the opera aside. An "Admirable Crichton" of music, equally won- derful on the piano-forte and the violin, has appeared among us, in the person of Mr. Wm. Vincent Wal- lace, Director of the Dublin Anacreontic Society. Those who have heard Paganini and Thalberg, pro- nounce decidedly that he is unsurpassed even by those hitherto unequalled maestros ! He performs upon the piano a grand introduction and variations on the theme of the Cracovienne, composed by himself. The in- strument becomes a full orchestra, under his hands, which seems multiplied into a dozen ; while, in the rapid passages, his fingers are invisible as the spokes of a locomotive-wheel in full career. He has no left hand, but two right ones, equally independent of each other. The brilliancy and power of his execution set off admirably the delicate morceaux of melody in- terspersed, and all unite to produce an effect before unknown to us. But his performance on the violin surpasses, if possible, that upon the piano. He exe- cutes on this the Carnival of Venice, and the Witches' 1 Dance of Benevento, and several other difficult compo- sitions, as originally performed by Paganini, and never before heard in this country; and the effect is most startling and thrilling. In his hands, the violin does more than speak — it sings, shrieks, supplicates, re- proaches, dies, revives, and realizes the fancy of Bal- zac, that a soul is imprisoned within it. With his bow he scatters a bright shower of melody through the air, and rasps diamond-sparkles from the strings. Our language may seem extravagant, but it falls far short of the reality. Musicians are in raptures with the fulness and purity of his tones, the decision and accuracy of his stopping, his left-handed pizzicato, and his double notes on the fourth string. We re- joice that such an artist bears an English name, and proves that wonderful musical genius is not confined to foreign nations. At the London Opera, no gentleman is admitted who is not in full dress. Ladies go there jewelled, decolletees, and unbonneted of course. It is a dress- place. Ladies must have a place to "dress." The New York ladies have ceased to dress gayly in the street. Private parties are not a sufficient vent for the pas- sion of dress among ladies. Now, Mr. Niblo, do you see your way? The above is a literal copy of a memorandum we made for an article, while sitting out the expectant half hour before the rising of the curtain, a night or two ago, at the French Opera. We pitch it at you head foremost, dear reader, because you are some- times willing to take us in the lump, or seriatim, as it is convenient for us to deliver ourselves — but more particularly because the printer is clamorous for copy, and, hurried or not hurried, copied we like to be. But, to our text. A dress-opera is happily entailed upon us by the change of the sumptuary character of Broadway. Ladies now (and very likely we are "Marooning, the act of leaving a person ashore where there are no inhabitants. — Johnson. EPHEMERA. 625 telling our country-friends a bit of news) are under I be necessity of having two bonnets. There must be a plain straw with a green veil, to soften down and properize any appearance in the street, on foot and unattended. There must be a dress-bonnet for mom- ma calls, matinees, breakfast-parties, wedding-visits, and, »enerally, for all daylight departures from home, on errands of ceremony or pleasure. This dress-bon- net requires other concomitants in keeping — lace, feathers, flowers — whatever is required for a full pa- rure. And a full parure requires a carriage, of course. And a carriage requires a fortune. And as all this is the fashion, nobody can be fashionable who is not rich. And so comes in the dynasty of the aristocracy of money ! Now we like all this — offensive as it seems, at the first blush, to a republican eye. Part the extremes- widen the distance between wealth and poverty — and you make room for a middle class, which is not yet recognised in our country — everybody who is not absolutely poor, striving to seem absolutely rich. Of i this middle class, literary men are a natural part and parcel. So are many of the worthiest and most intel- j ligent people of this country — people who are now | occupying a station in life like Mohammed's coffin, j neither on the earth of poverty nor in the heaven of j riches, and in sad lack of a resting-place between, j Once recognise that station in society — once make it | respectable to set aside certain extravagances in dress j and living as not proper for a condition in life which is still far above poverty — and you set at ease thou- sands of families that are now subjected to endless uncertainties and mortifications. It requires, now, both judgment and vigilance for many ladies not to dress far above their condition in life — yet what more distasteful than to have seen the husband in his place of business, careworn and distressed, and the next minute to meet his wife in Broadway, dressed out of all keeping with his gains, and of course with no sympathy for his troubles! We believe that, in fact, the ladies are of our way of thinking in this matter. It is un- comfortable for pride to be always "treading water," as the swimmers say. Better sink, and sink, and sink, till you come to your true level — anybody will say. Of course we follow nature, however, and of course we except beauty from all homely precepts and econ- omies. The peacock and the butterfly pay no pen- alty that we know of for their extra-furnishings from the shop of Rainbow & Co. Their business on earth is to delight the eye; and that, we religiously believe, is the errand of human beauty as well. No! Let there be no "condition in life" for beautiful women! Nature's princesses they are by the instinctive consent of human nature ; and the homage we can not but pay, let us be bold enough to acknowledge. As to beau- ty's being, "when unadorned, adorned the most," it is true of nothing but a statue. In real life, we think flowers and gems are the natural belongings and orna- ments of personal loveliness. All beauty should be so furnished — even if ugliness be compelled to "ser- vice dure" to procure them. But to return to the opera. Ladies should be re- minded that nothing adds more to the cheerfulness of the scene, and its consequent attraction, than light and bright colors. A dark dress has no business at the opera, though indeed the dress itself may be anything, so that the bust and head, which are alone seen, are dressed gayly. No bonnets, and least of all, veils! Let us have a dress place of amusement. Let there be a resort in the long and vacant hours after business, where we can seem to enter a brighter cham- ber of this dingy world, and be compelled (we men) to dress ourselves, and feel in a more holyday and lib- eral atmosphere. 40 In the window of a Broadway shop we noticed, the other day, a China dinner-set, otherwise magnificent, but deformed by a representation on each plate of "The great fire in New York." Thus, on every fes- tive occasion, the guests would have their gayety dampened by the suggestion of that scene of loss, danger, and suffering. Such bad taste is too frequent. It would be equally easy to impress devices calcula- ted to arouse cheerful and enlivening associations; but, as a people, we are too careless of such matters. Trifles in themselves they may be; but such little items of enjoyment — such grains of pleasure — make up in time quite a mountain of happiness. Theodore Hook. — Good dinners will not make a man immortal. The prince of diners-out is dead. It would seem as if " good living" meant long living too — for who ever thought Theodore Hook could die! — "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." " Where be your gibes now ? your gambols? your songs ? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table in a roar ? Not one now, to mock your own grinning!" We have carried out the quo- tation somewhat with a feeling of bitterness — not aaainst the dead, but for him. We could have begun the passage with Hamlet — " Alas, poor Yorick ! — I knew him, Horatio !" Everybody knew Theodore Hook, who has been " summered and wintered" in London, and we knew him as others did, with that far-reaching and half-pitying admiration which is given to a wit of all work — a joker never out of har- ness — a " funny man" by profession, as the children thought Mathews. We have seen Theodore Hook make excellent hits, and we have seen him make des- perate failures — many failures to one hit, indeed. But so it must be, as every one knows who has thought twice on wit as a " good continuer." Hook was the editor of the "John Bull" newspa- per, and his portrait would have served for its imprint. He was the personification of John Bull, as the French fancy him, and as he is represented on the stage. Above the middle height, he looked short, from being corpulent and short-necked. His person was "stocky" altogether — thick legs, high chest, short arms, and bluff, rubicund, and rather defying features. We have not heard of what he died; but, we presume, of apo- plexy, for he looked of that habit, and lived in a way to produce and feed it. Over his brows, however, there seemed to be a region, like the sun above clouds on a mountain-side, brighter than that below. His forehead was ample and white, his head smoothly bald, and, if the observer had seen but that portion of The- odore Hook, he would have formed of him a far higher opinion than in following him downward. To that tablet of intellect his works of imagination, we be- lieve, never did justice. His novels are third-rate, while his native powers were first-rate, and against those two unattained steps on the ladder of immortal- ity, Hook's poor offset was his very mortal celebrity as a table-wit — the diner-out, par excellence, of his day. We believe in omens. In the days of Charlemagne large possessions were transferred, not with wax and paper, but with a ring. A ring has been given us by a well-wishing stranger, and we here signify our be- lief that, in it is transferred to us the prosperity of the former proprietor— dead two thousand years ago at the very least, but undeniably a most prosperous gentleman. Let us look a little at the evidence. It is generally supposed, we believe, that the mum- mies preserved to this day are, in all human probabil- 626 EPHEMERA. ity, from two to three thousand years old. Some time before the advent of our Savior, Egypt had become a Roman province, and the more costly usages of the Egyptians had been done away — the embalming of the bodies of the rich and great being among the most costly. Those which have defied time and cor- ruption, through two thousand years, of course were such as were embalmed with the most cost and care, and the poor, the antiquarians tell us, were merely dried by salt and laid away in the catacombs. The rings and other ornaments of the mummied great were wrapped up with them. The ring that was given us three days ago is of silver, holding a stone covered with Arabic charac- ters, and was taken from the finger of a mummy, bought at a great price for exhibition, and partly opened. It is of rude work, and if Egypt's jewellers did their best upon it, we can but say that our friend Tenney, of Broadway, was only born too late to aston- ish the Pharaohs. We have not yet found an Arabic scholar to decipher it, but, if we had not known it to be Arabic (or Coptic), we should have said it was a device of three stars, a wrench, and two streaks of light- ning — very properly expressive of our three selves (the editors and publisher), our manner of work, and the way the Mirror is to go. And, on the whole, we shall let it rest at that — without further translation. We are not sure that, if the former proprietor of this silver ring could wake, he would think his finger- ornament handed down in the same line of life. The classifications of society under the Ptolemies would have put us down low (priests, soldiers, shepherds, swineherds, mechanics, interpreters, and fishermen — the literary profession being the last but one), yet, after all, there is a resemblance between us, and I am happy to say (no offence to the mummy) that it is not in our personal appearance! It was necessary, to embalm this gentleman, that his brains should first be extracted through his nostrils. We trust to be em- balmed by letting ours ooze from our fingers' ends — and, on the whole, we may say, we prefer our way of doing it. But that is all. We see no other resem- blance. The Egyptian was circumcised. He was gloomy and superstitious. He increased his poultry by artificially hatching eggs. The husband had the charge of the domestic concerns ; the wife of buy- ing and selling, and all affairs that were not of a do- mestic character. He hated songs and dances. He was a stranger to gayety, and he drank nothing stronger than barley-beer. We trust that it is no vanity on our part to congratulate his ring on conver- sance for the future with a more pleasant state of things — aristocratic comparisons apart. Prosperous the Mirror is to be — thanks to the lib- eral giver of the ring that foreshadows it! But (to "out with a secret") we should feel easier if the en- yious would begin to manifest their displeasure. We have a dread of "the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire," aud should feel safer in a thornier path than we tread now. This pushing all of one side makes us fancy we topple. We would try our friends at op- position. Feathers that go down with one wind mount with a counter-current. We "cotton" to old King Osymandyas, who caused to be graven on his Colossus: "I am King Osymandyas — if any man will know my greatness let him destroy one of my works." And of that jolly old monarch, the first owner of our ring was possibly a subject — conjunctive omen of our road to prosperity. Beards in New York. — It is odd how a fashion creeps from one country to another, unaware. Has it occurred to you what a bearded nation we have be- come within the last year or two — imitating La Jeune France in that and other accompanying particulars? My attention was called to it yesterday by a friend just returned from a long residence in Europe. He was expressing very emphatically his annoyance at the loss of his mustache. On coming in sight of land he had gone below and sacrificed it, as a thing " most tolerable and not to be endured," among the sober friends to whom he was returning ; when lo ! on land- ing — every second man in a full suit of beard ! His mustache and imperial chanced to be very becoming to him, and his mortification, at being compelled to put them again into nascent stubble, was unbounded. Two schools of dress have prevailed in France for the last six or seven years — the classic and the ro- mantic; the former with the Brutus head, short hair and apparel of severe simplicity, and the other with flowing locks, fanciful beard, and great sumptuous- ness of cravat and waistcoat. The "romantic" is the only one which has "come over," and it prevails at present in New York, with (to use the popular phrase) "a perfect looseness." Almost every man below forty has tried his beard on, and most of the young men about town show their fancy in something beyond the mere toothbrush-whisker of the military." The latter, by-the-way, is the only beard "let out" by the Lon- don men whom the packets bring over, and in Eng- land the synonyme is rigorous between " mustache" and " adventurer." It seems to me, however, that the principles of taste which should affect the fashion of a beard are but little regarded among us, and I rather wonder that some ambitious barber has not set him- self up as an authority — to decide their shape by pri- vate consultation, according to feature and complex- ion. Perhaps I may feed a want of the era by put- ting down what I have gathered on the subject of beards by reading and travel. In a country where all the hair which nature has planted on the face is permitted to grow, a shaved man certainly looks very silly. After a short passage from Asia Minor to Malta, the clean-shaved English officers struck me as a very denuded and inexpressive- looking race, though much more athletic and hand- some than the Orientals I had left. The beards of old men, particularly, are great embellishments, cov- ering as they do, the mouth, which most shows age and weakness, by loss of teeth and feebleness of muscle. When the mouth is covered, the whole ex- pression of the face is concentrated in the eyes, and it is surprising how much the eyes gain in character and brilliancy by a full mustache. A luxuriant and silky beard on a young and clear skin is certainly very beautiful, though, according to medical observation, the faculties are much better matured when the beard comes late. In bearded countries, the character is very much judged of by the beard. There is an old Irish proverb which says : — " Trust not that man, although he were your brother, Whose hair's one color and his beard another." In irritable persons, the beard grows thin and dry. In those of milder temper it is thick and slightly curling. The beard is affected very sensibly by the nature of a man's nourishment; and this explains why they know an aristocrat in the East by the luxu- riance of this appendage — poor food deteriorating its quality. Diplomatists should always wear the mus- tache, as it is much easier to control the expression of the eye than of the mouth — useful to card-players and stock-brokers, for the same reason. Shaving among the ancients was a mark of mourning — though at the era when beards were out of fashion, they were let grow, by those who had lost friends. When a man's mouth is beautiful and expressive, the beard which covers it is a disadvantage, and we may guess that Scipio Africanus (the first Roman who shaved every day) wore on his lips the tenderness and mag- nanimity which he displayed toward the bride of the EPHEMERA. 627 captive Allucius. The first shaving barber was one Ticinius Maenas, who came from Sicily to Rome about three hundred years before Christ, and then commenced an era of smooth chins, interrupted, for a short while only, by the emperor Adrian, who wore his beard to conceal warts on his chin. With most nations the beard has been considered an ornament. Moses commanded the Jews not to shave, and the ancient Germans, and the Asiatics of a later day, have consid- ered no insult so mortal as the cutting off of one man's beard by another. In France, shaving came into fashion during the reigns of Louis XIII. and XIV., both of these monarchs having ascended the throne when beardless, and their subjects imitating them, of course. And as France gave the law of fashion to all Europe, the sacrifice of part of the beard grew to be common, though it is only since the beginning of the last century that the shaving of the whole beard be- came universal. I have noticed, in New York, that men, who had for- merly no pretensions to good looks, have become very handsome by the wearing of mustache and imperial, and I have seen handsome men disfigured by adopting the same fashion. The effect of a mustache and full beard is to make the face more masculine, graver, and coarser, and this is, of course, an improvement to one whose features are over-delicate, or whose expression is too frivolous. On a dapper man, it is quite out of place, and he should wear a clipped whisker, if any beard at all. The beard, I think, gives a middle-aged look, and makes a man of twenty look older, and a man of forty younger. The ladies like a beard — natu- rally thinking faces effeminate which are as smooth as their own, and not objecting to the distinctions which nature has made between the sexes. When the beard is but partially worn, some/jtrtistical knowl- edge should be called in, as a short face may be, made longer, and a broad face narrower, a gay face graver, and an undecided chin put in domino. But of all abominations in this way, I think, the goat's beard, growing under the chin only, is the most brutal and disgusting, though just now, in New York, rather the prevailing fashion. The mistake in taste is very com- mon, of continuing to wear a high shirt collar and cravat, with a beard on the cheek and throat — the beauty of a curling beard depending very much on its freedom and natural adaptation to the mould of the face. There are more people than Beatrice, of course, who are willing to let a man's beard be "of the color that God pleases," but there are others who have aversions to red beards and yellow, and there is great trade in cirages and gums for the improvement of color and texture. Most of the beards you meet in Broad- way glitter in the sun like steel filings. Altogether, I think the fashion of wearing the beard a desirable one, and I particularly wish it would prevail among old men. A bearded senate would make a wiser and more reverend show in congress, and anything which con- ceals the decrepitude of age and moves respect (as beards certainly do, both), is most desirable. Macready's first Night. — Macready had a full, not an overflowing house, to witness his debut last night, and there were more of his own profession among the audience than I ever before saw together — (partly, perhaps, from curiosity to hear the " read- , ings" of Shakspere which the drop curtain represents Macready as giving to the Muses). The play was Macbeth, and Mr. Ryder, who accompanies Mr. Mac- ready, came on first as Macduff, and was very warmly received — applauded, indeed, throughout the play, as his playing deserved. He is a very correct actor, and a " fine figure of a man." Macready's appearance brought the hou«e " down" of course. He went at his interview with the witches most artistically, and the witches did their bedevilments more artistically than we have seen them done before, and so of all the trick and machinery of the play — for Macready is master of " stage business," and the scenery and supernumer- aries had been effectually cleared of cobwebs. The play went on — with a beautiful procession of effects, particularly by Macready in his exits and entrances, his salutations and surprises — and to the theatre-go- ing people present it was an exhibition of drama-pano- rama curiously managed, and all as clean and neat as machinery — and just as moving. The attention was close, but the applause grew less and less. I never saw so cold a house. The most stormy and passion- ate outbreaks of Macbeth's mingled ambition and re- morse were received like the catastrophes in a pup- pet-show — with an unexcited smile of surprise. Each " point" the actor made was looked at like the wheel of a clock shown piecemeal. There was no passion in the audience, no illusion, no general interest in the progress of the story of the play — in short, no feeling. My own sensations during the evening were those of pain and annoyance. Mr. Macready is so accom- plished an artificer in his profession — everything he does is so admirably "studied up" — u So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn" — that a cold reception of so much pains seems most ungracious. When he came in and knelt to the king — when he entered Duncan's chamber to murder him — when he received the first suggestions of crime from Lady Macbeth — I could have shouted myself hoarse with admiration of the artist — it was all done so differ- ently from another man, and so skilfully in a high and finished conception of the character. Every step he took on the stage was a separate study. Every look, gesture, movement, was consummate. As pan- tomime it would have been absolutely faultless. Yet, strange to say, he walks the stage like a transparent man — showing all his anatomy. He wants clothing with natural flesh and blood. His voice wants nature. It sounds like the breaking of crockery in a dry well. He feels no passion and he moves none. What a pity that scholarship, study, labor, patience, and taste, should fall short, in their result, of the most unla- bored off-throwing of genius ! Italian Opera. — I saw only the first act of " Lu- cia de Lammermoor ," and found little to admire ex- cept the performance of the orchestra. Signor An- tognini certainly did not come up to his reputation as a tenor, and he is the great star of the company. He is a curious-looking man to play the lover. The mus- cles of his face pull, every one, upon his nostrils, like " taut halliards," and with eyebrows pointing fiercely at the bridge of his nose, and the mouth like an angry dash of a pen under an emphasized word, he looks as Mephistophilish as one of Retzch's drawings. Mad- ame Majocchi, the prima donna, is a fat woman with a fat voice. She has a good contralto footing in her throat, but her soprano notes are painfully tiptoe, and you are glad when she is comfortably at the bottom of her cadenza. The company appears pretty well drilled, but they want a prima donna, and if they could find a prima donna in want of them (Castellan, for in- stance) we might have good opera. They say that Antoiinini's voice is only grass-grown from neglect, and that he would do brilliantly after a little practice. Considering the certain fortune that waits upon a fine tenor, it is surprising that there should continue to be so few aspirants for the honors of the Rubini; for it can not be that there are only half a dozen (if so many) of human voices possessing his capabilities of tone and cultivation. There is probably "full many 628 EPHEMERA. a" postillion of Lonjumeau "born to" "waste his sweetness on the desert air," and it would be a good speculation to look them up and buy a life-interest in their thoracic capabilities. Dr. Howe. — It will be a curious piece of news to you that our countryman, Dr. Howe (lately married and gone abroad) has been stopped on the borders of Prussia by a cabinet order, and of course is shut out from so much of the Rhine as lies (if my geography serves me) between Coblentz and Cologne. This special edict on the part of a king with a standing army of two hundred thousand men is no small com- pliment to Dr. Howe's consequence; but perhaps it would interest you to be made acquainted with the cetera intus. About ten years ago I had the honor (and as such I shall always treasure the memory) of sharing Dr. Howe's lodgings at Paris for some months. He was then employed in learning that system of instruction for the blind upon which he has since grafted im- provements that have made him a separate fame among philanthropists. Philanthropy seems to be his engrossing and only mission in life, however; for, though giving the most of his day to the objects of his special errand, he found time to make himself the most serviceable man in France to the cause of Po- land. The disasters of Warsaw had filled Paris with destitute refugees, and distinguished men who had shared in that desperate battle were literally house- less in the streets. Our common breakfast-room was thronged with these unfortunate patriots, and, with noble liberality, Dr.Howe kept open table for all who came to him — many of them, to my knowledge, get- ting no food elsewhere, and, among others, Lelewel, the distinguished poet and patriot, coming in one morning to ask a breakfast, as I well recollect, after having slept out a winter's night in the street. La- fayette was at that time at the head of the Polish committee, and Fenimore Cooper (whose generosity to the Poles should be chronicled, as well as the de- votion of his time and talents to the cause) shared with Dr. Howe the counsel and most efficient agency of the benevolent old man. At this time a sum of money was raised to be sent, with some important and secret despatches, to the Poles who had fled into Prussia, and Dr. Howe offered to be the bearer. I went with him to the Mesagerie and saw him off in the diligence, very little suspecting the dangerous character of his errand. He arrived at Berlin, and, after passing the evening abroad, returned to his hotel, and found a couple of gens-d'armes in his room. They informed him that he must accompany them to the police. The doctor understood his po- sition in a moment. By a sudden effort he succeeded in pitching both the soldiers out of the room and clo- sing the door, for it was all-important that he should gain time to destroy papers that he had about him. The gens-d 'armes commenced a parley with him through the bolted door, which resulted in a compact that he should be let alone till morning, on condition of his agreeing to go witfi them peaceably at day- light — they keeping sentry outside. He had no light, but he passed the night in tearing into the smallest possible fragments the important papers, and soaking them in water. Among his papers, however, were two or three letters from Lafayette to himself which he wished to preserve, and after examining the room he secreted these in the hollow of a plaster cast of the king which chanced to be there, and so saved them ; for, though the minute fragments were picked out and put together again (as he subsequently discovered), he wrote to a friend at Berlin, six months after, who went to the hotel and found the secreted letters safe in the plaster king's keeping! At dawn Dr. Howe opened his door, and was marched immediately to prison. By chance, on the evening of his arrival, he had met an American in the entry of the hotel, who had recognised him, and the next day came to call. From the mysterious manner in which the people of the house denied all knowledge of what had become of him, this gentleman suspected an arrest, and wrote to Mr. Rives, our then minister to France, stating his suspicion. Mr. Rives immedi- ately demanded him of the Prussian government, and was assured, in reply, that they knew nothing of the person in question. Mr. Rives applied a second time. Dr. Howe had now been six weeks in solitary con- finement, and at the end of this period he was taken out in silence and put into a carriage with closed win- dows. They drove off, and it was his own terrible belief for the first day that he was on his way to Si- beria. By the light through the covering of the car- riage, however, he discovered that he was going west- ward. The sudden transition from close confinement to the raw air, threw him into a fever, and on the third day of his silent journey he begged to be allowed to stop and consult a physician. They refused. On the next morning, while changing horses, a physician was brought to the carriage-door, who, after seeing the prisoner, wrote a certificate that he was able to proceed, and they again drove on. That day they crossed a corner of the Hanoverian dominions, and, while stopping for a moment in a village, Dr. Howe saw the red coats of some officers, and by a bold at- tempt escaped from his guards and threw himself on their protection. They quietly restored him to the Prussians, and the carriage drove on once more — his guard finally setting him down at Metz, on the bor- ders of Prussia, with orders never to enter again the Prussian dominions. At present he is at Baden-Ba- den, tfnd Mr. Everett is engaged in a negotiation, through the Prussian minister at London (Chevalier Bunsen), for the revocation of the cabinet order, and permission for a simple citizen of the United States to show his bride the Rhine! Mr. Greene, our con- sul at Rome, who is now in New York, informs me that Dr. Howe is also on the black list of the king of Naples — of course as a general champion of lib- erty. Dr. Howe's first reputation, as is well known, was made as a Philhellene in the Greek revolution. He left this country entirely without means, having just completed his studies in surgery, and worked his pas- sage to Greece. He entered the service as surgeon, and soon gained the highest promotion — serving part of the time on board the armed steamer commanded by Hastings — the only fault found with him being (as a Hanoverian comrade of his told me at Paris) that he would be in the fight, and was only a surgeon when the battle was over. His whole career in Greece was one of gallant acts of bravery, generosity, and self- sacrifice, as represented by his companions there — and if he could ever be made to overcome the unwilling- ness with which he speaks of himself, his history of personal adventure would, without doubt, be one of the most curiously-interesting naratives in the world. Dr. Howe's slight person, delicate and beautiful fea- tures, and soft voice, would give one the impression that he was more at home in his patient labor of wind- ing light through the labyrinth of the sense-imprisoned Laura Bridgman ; but a more fiery spirit, and one more reluctant to submit to the details of quiet life, does not exist, and the most trying service he has ever done in the cause of philanthropy, I sincerely believe, is this discipline of his tumultuous energies to the patient teaching of the blind. He is still a young man — not yet forty, I believe. I could not trust my admiration and affection to say more of his character than the giving of this simple statement of facts. EPHEMERA. 629 The New York American, after quoting from what the editor calls " the agreeably gossiping New York cor- respondent of the National Intelligencer," remarks that " this correspondence is not, to be sure, very reliable for j matters of fact" — which isvery like disparaging a hasty J pudding for not being a rump-steak. This style of j criticising things by telling what they are not, suits the j " American" in the two respects, that it is both easy i and oracular. But I should prefer to be tried rather ' by what I undertake to do, which is certainly not to j send you simply " matters of fact." To wait for the j winnowing of error and exaggeration from truth, would j be to send you a correspondence as stale as some of j the columns in which I am found fault with. I pro- | fess nothing of the kind. I send you the novelty and gossip of the hour, and you, and all others (except those who are "nothing if not critical," and must find a fault) take it as they take what they hear in their : day's walk — as material for conversation and specula- ! tion, which may be mere rumor, may be truth. I am j happy to amuse a New York editor, but I do not write i for one so near my sources of information. I write with only such of your subscribers in my eye as are I not resident in New York — who want a gay daguerre- I otype of the floating news and chit-chat of the hour, j such as they would have gathered by observation and i conversation, if they had passed in New York the day j on which I write. Loose as is all this ministry to the ! love of news, however, I will lay any bet which I could j have the conscience to take from that editor, that, I comparing paragraph by paragraph with his own pa- per, for twenty columns, I will find more misstate- ments in his than in my own — though you would think by his criticism that he never committed an error in his life. And apropos of my sins of correspondence, I find that propriety begins to require that all words signify- j ing exhilarating drinks must henceforth be decently disembowelled — that cobblers must be written c s, and julaps j s, slings s s, and punches p s. I have had three letters and one poetic appeal ad- J dressed to me, remonstrative against my shameless mention of these iniquitous beverages in so exemplary • a paper as the Intelligencer. I consider this an expo- nent of the leading enthusiasm of the era, and wil- ] lingly give way. One of my rebukers attacked me more particularly for what he considered a slighting allusion to the coming of Father Mathew to America. To this, in intention at least, I plead not guilty. I revere the character of that great reformer, and I con- sider his mission sacred and salutary. My submission shall be more emphatic, if necessary. Macready draws well, and the town is fully occupied in discussing why he only astonishes and never moves the feelings of his audience. He is a most accom- plished player, and in these days, when theatrical criticism can neither help nor harm an actor, he can pursue the even tenor of his style with little inter- ruption. Longfellow, a poet who combines genius and work- manlike finish, is in New York, under the care of Elliot, the oculist. I trust he will keep an undamaged pair of eyes, though the loss of sight would turn a great deal of new light inward upon his mind — as it did upon Milton's — and be a gain to the glory of his country. I am ministered to while writing to-day by the most deliciously-tempered autumn air that ever intoxicated the heart of a ripening grape. I only lament that the distinct pleasure I feel in every pore and fibre will not be channelled into the nib of my pen and flow to you in rhetoric. The wind is a little northerly, however, and it may bring you a sample. To the Ladies. — We have nothing to write about this morning, ladies! — quite nothing. We presume you know that the crocus yellow and the blue of your own eyes are the fashionable colors ; that Middleton cuts his slippers low behind for such ladies as know what is becoming to the foot ; that the late strain after economy is yielding to a rebound of extravagance (consequently, this winter you can wear nothing too gorgeously sumptuous) ; that ruinous bracelets are ut- terly indispensable to wrists with a swan's neck in them, and that the New Mirror (pardon us!) is of the fash- ionable crocus teint without, and as " blue" within as is bearable by the copyrighted and intoxicating benight- edness of beauty. If you had sent for us to your boudoir and ordered our memory spread out upon a silk cushion, we could tell you no more. If you are interested at all in us — we are having, this morning, our little private mope, with no possible flight of fancy beyond the ends of our fingers. We have been sitting here two hours making caryatides to hold up some spilt ink on our blotting-paper — (rather nicely drawn, one of them, and looks like a Greek girl we saw at Egina). Then we have had a revery on po- litical economy — musing, that is to say, whether we should wear a ring on our right hand (which belongs to the working-classes) or on the left, which is purely an ornamental idler, born but to be gloved and kept gentlemanly. Now, what do you think on that sub- ject? Here is this most virtuous and attached right hand of ours, an exemplary and indefatigable provider for himself and the other members of our family, who has never failed to bring bread to our mouths since we placed our dependance on him, and why should he not be ornamented and made trim and respectable, first and foremost. He is not defiled by his work. He is clean when he is washed. He is made on the same model as the idle dangler opposite, and though he could do very well without that same Mr. Sinister Digits, there would be no "living" for Mr. Sinister Digits without him ! Most meritorious worky ! Put the ring on his forefinger! Um ! it does not look so well on that hand ! There is a dingy groove on the inside of the second finger (which you would not remark, perhaps, but for the conspicuousness of the jewel) — a nasty soil of an ill-effaced ink-spot, made by a quill. Faith ! it calls attention to " the shop," and would do so in good company ! He must work in gloves if he is to be ob- served! And the ring is not so becomingly carried as by that other plumper and more taper gentleman, whose joints, with less dexterity, look supple, and, truth to own, more suitable ! No — no ! " Take back the ring !" The bee works hard enough to have his pick of wings, but he would only be cumbered with the butterfly's. Indulgence for ever to the ornamentals! Money to the ladies whether you have it or no! Credit to the dandies! And, befitting brown bread and plain blessings for the labor-stained right hands of society— our own among the worky-most and least complaining ! We have been ring-mad since the mummy's ring (mentioned on a previous page) was slipped upon our finger, and we have pulled out from our store of relics a huge emerald (in whose light is locked up a history) and it was of the wearing of it that we mused in this morning's mope of idleness. The world is set in a solid emerald, says the Mohammedan — " the emerald stone Sakhral, the agitations of whose light cause earthquakes." We would make a pilgrimage (if our 630 EPHEMERA. "travels" would sell) to see the great " mother of em- eralds" worshipped by the Peruvians in the valley of Manta— big as a gourd and luminous at murk mid- night (or so they say). Excuse us, when we meet you, if we proffer our left hand for courtesy, for, on the forefinger of that sits our agitated emerald — the right hand kept, unrewarded by your touch, to serve you only. Adieu — till they are dead who are to die (one a minute) ere another Saturday — for, at the close of our overflowings into your cup, this sad thought runs over ! And if, in the midst of our trifling, Prov- idence ministers such thoughts to us, they can scarce be unseasonable, passed on, in the same company, to you. Mrs. Flimson. — Few women had more gifts than Mrs. Flimson. She was born of clever parents, and was ladylike and good-looking. Her education was that of a female Crichton, careful and universal ; and while she had more than a smattering of most lan- guages and sciences, she was up to any flight of fash- ion, and down to every secret of notable housewifery. She piqued herself, indeed, most upon her plain ac- complishments (thinking, perhaps, that her more un- common oues would speak for themselves) ; and it was a greater triumph, to her apprehension, that she could direct the country butcher to the sweet-bread in slaughtering his veal, and show a country-girl how to send it to table with the proper complexion of a riz de veau, than that she could entertain any manner of foreigner in his own language, and see order in the stars and diamonds in backlogs. Like most female prodigies, whose friends expect them to be matched as well as praised, Mrs. Flimson lost the pick of the market, and married a man very much her inferior. The pis aller, Mr. Flimson, was a person of excel- lent family (after the fashion of a hill of potatoes — the best part of it under ground), and possessed of a moderate income. Near the meridian sun of a me- tropolis, so small a star would of course be extin- guished ; and as it was necessary to Mrs. Flimson's existence that she should be the cynosure of some- thing, she induced her husband to remove to the sparser field of a distant country-town, where, with her diplomatic abilities, she hoped to build him up into a member of congress. And here shone forth the genius of Mrs. Flimson. To make herself per- fectly au fait of country habits, usages, prejudices, and opinions, was but the work of a month or two of stealthy observation. At the end of this short period, she had mastered a manner of rustic frankness (to be put on at will); she had learned the secret of all rural economies; she had found out what degree of gentil- ity would inspire respect without offending, or exci- ting envy, and she had made a near estimate of the influence, consequence, and worth-trouble-ness of every family within visiting distance. AVith this ammunition, Mrs. Flimson opened the campaign. She joined all the sewing-circles of the village, refusing steadily the invidious honor of man- ager, pattern-cutter, and treasurer; she selected one or two talkative objects for her charity, and was stu- diously secret in her manner of conveying her bene- factions. She talked with farmers, quoting Mr. Flim- son for her facts. She discoursed with the parson, quoting Mr. Flimson for her theology. She was intelligent and witty, and distributed plentiful scraps of information, always quoting Mr. Flimson. She managed the farm and the household, and kept all the accounts — Mr. Flimson was so overwhelmed with other business ! She talked politics, admitting that she was less of a republican than Mr. Flimson. She produced excellent plans for charitable associations, town improvements, and the education of children — all the result of Mr. Flimson's hours of relaxation. She was — and was only — Mr. Flimson's humble vice- gerent and poor representative. And everything would seem so much better devised if he could have ex- pressed it in person ! But Mr. Flimson was never nominated for con- gress, and Mrs. Flimson was very well understood from the first by her country neighbors. There was a flaw in the high polish of her education — an erroi inseparable from too much consciousness of porcelain in this crockery world. To raise themselves suffi- ciently above the common level, the family of Mrs. Flimson habitually underrated vulgar human nature, and the accomplished daughter, good at everything else, never knew where to find it. She thinks herself in a cloud, floating far out of the reach of those around her, when they are reading her at arm's length like a book. She calculates her condescension for " forty fathom deep," when the object of it sits beside her. She comes down graciously to people's capa- city, and her simplicity is set down for trap. And still wondering that Mr. Flimson is allowed by his country to remain in obscurity, and that stupid rustics will not fuse and be moulded by her well-studied congenial- ities, she begins to turn her attention to things more on her own level, and on Sundays looks like a saint distressed to be out of heaven. But for that one thread of contempt woven into the woof of her edu- cation, Mrs. Flimson might have shone as a star in the world where she glimmers like a taper. I think that a walk in New York to-day, if you had been absent a year, would impress you very strongly with the outbreak of showiness in costume. What- ever spirit it is that presides over the fashions we take so implicitly from France, he (this spirit of woof and color) has well suited the last and newest invoice to a moment of reaction from economy. Or (what may better define the present era, perhaps) the moment after prosperity has almost universally changed hands. The stuffs in the shop-windows of Broadway are of a splendor that would scarce be ventured upon (in the street at least) by the severity of last year's aristocratic taste ; but the eruption has spread from the shop-win- dows over the sidewalk, and the ladies are verily rain- bow clad ! The prevailing colors are yellow and blue ; the most of the dresses put all the prismatic colors under contribution, and the wearers would make Chi- nese figures for Gobelin tapestry. It would be a fine speculation in upholstery, indeed, to buy the cast-off dresses of this period, and lay them up to sell for window-curtains to the *next generation. But the ladies have it by no means to themselves. They are only bolder and more consistent in their " bravery of suits." The waistcoats and cravats have taken a long stride into splendor, leaving the coats and trousers in their accustomed sobriety of hue. Jennings's great emporium, opposite the Park, might furnish the knights and courtiers for a new "field of cloth of gold," so effulgent are the velvets and satins; though the bold youths who have ventured to put forth into Broadway with their glittering waistcoats look like butterflies half-born, the dull broadcloth worm still adhering. For one, I should like the age of gauds and such matters to come round again, for I do not see why the lords of nature should leave all the orna- ment to the birds and flowers, and servants in livery ; but let it be consistent, and entire, and when it is that, it will be time to compound a gentleman of "a man, a sword, and an equipage," and to settle the sixty de- grees of precedence which are established in the court of England. But as this will not all be in my time, I think I shall not venture on the more luminous stratum, to say the least, of Jennings's waistcoats. The Americanism of the matter is the much more EPHEMERA. 631 violent array of these gorgeous stuffs in Chatham street and the Bowery. The small tailors' shops in these Alsatian quarters are quite in a glow with the display of cravats and waistcoats, and their catering for the taste of their customers is, of course, careful and well-considered. The age is, perhaps, for ever gone by, when a privileged class could monopolize finery of garb; and, of all the civilized nations, it were least pos- sible in ours. I have seen already a dozen at least of cheap-booted apprentices wearing velvet waistcoats which, a few years ago, would have delighted D'Orsay. This last lustrum of our history, by-the-way, corre- sponds somewhat, as to sumptuary matters, with the year 1759, and after, of French history. The nine months' ministry of Silhouette (whose immortality rests on the accident of giving his name to profiles) was a temporary suspension of French extravagance, somewhat similar to ours of the last year or two, during which coats were worn without folds, snuff- boxes made of plain wood, and painting portraits were discarded for outlines in profile; every fashion, in short, giving way to extreme parsimony. This period was succeeded, as our economical days seem prom- ising to be, by a powerful reflux of the suspended ex- travagance. The parallel must end here, thank Heaven! Brooklyn is as much a part of New York, for all purposes of residence and communication, as "the Borough" is of London. The steam ferry-boats cross the half-mile between it and New York every five minutes : and in less time than it usually takes to thread the press of vehicles on London Bridge, the elegant equipages of the wealthy cross to Long Island for the afternoon drive ; morning visits are interchanged between the residents in both places — and, indeed, the East river is now hardly more of a separation than the same distance in a street. Brooklyn is the shire-town of King's county, and is second in population only to New York. It has become the fashion for business- men of New York to build and live on the fine and healthy heights above the river, where they are nearer their business, and much better situated than in the outskirts of this city itself. Brooklyn is built on the summit and sides of an elevation springing directly from the bank of the river, and commanding some of the finest views in America. The prospect embraces a large part of East river, crowded with shipping, and tracked by an endless variety of steamers, flying through the channel in quick succession ; of the city of New York, extending, as far as the eye can see, in closely-piled masses of architecture ; of the Hudson, and the shore of Jersey, beyond ; of the bay and its bright islands; and of a considerable part of Long and Staten islands, and the Highlands of Neversink. This is "sodgering week," ladies, and the general has gone to the wars Provided there be no Banquo to sit in his leather-rcttomed chair, I am quite alone, and of course, immeasurably more than usual at your service. Walk in, and make no ceremony — that is to say, draw your foot under you, and sit on your heel. Leave the general's chair unoccupied, if you please. [t will remind us that "we" are out, and that /am at home. Sit on that ream of paper, and let's be private and personal. A little scandal would be appetizing, this cloudy morning. Suppose we put the general on the grid- iron and "do him brown!" Poets are so much better \"or toasting.' — (reason why: the first lyre was made 'jy the toasting of the sun — the tortoise-shell, found by Hermes on the Nile, drawn tight by the contracted '.endons — or "so they say"). His health in a glass of Elsinore cherry ! And now, general, come over the coals ! What has he to do (a poor various author, tucked away in the " appendix" of the " Poetry of America") — I say, what has he to do with a lodging in the brain and memory of every man, and in the heart and music- making of every woman in the country ! What has a "various author" to do with as much popularity as a baker's dozen of the big-bugs with their biographies. What business has a "various author" to get his own price for every scrap of a song, and be the only poet- father in the country whose poetical daughters are run after to be married to music! There is more of him abroad "by heart," than of anybody else! He is more quoted, more sung, more trolled, more parodied, more plucked at on his pedestal, than anybody else ! He uses his brevet as if he were full poet! If it weren't for the " damnable iteration" of a cockatoo critic or two, the world would never suspect — never — that Morris is not a song-writer — the song-writer — and the most sung and the best One of all the "Poets and Poetry of America." And, la! — to be sure! — what a mistaken world we live in — that never knows what it likes till it is told in a book ! It is something to be universal, as a poet — some- thing to get that far — it must be confessed. The worth of a thing is (partly, at least) what it will bring — particularly in the way of a long-winded popularity. There is some bedevilment or other about Morris's poetry that makes it stick in people's minds, and answer people's want, in the way of an expression of their poetical feelings — something that music jumps to, and women remember and love him for — some- thing that satisfies the nine hundred and ninety-nine, and displeases the nil admirari thousandth. Let's try this varlet of" a popularity-thief— you judge and jury, and / the aggrieved plaintiff" — one of the robbed. Hand me up that big book, on the floor by you, and let's see the law. He's a lyric poet if there's any truth in the definition of that commodity : — " Lyric poetry is that species of poetry by which the poet directly expresses his emotions. It is neces- sary that the feeling represented should be itself poet- ical, and not only worthy to be preserved, but accom- panied by a variety of ideas, beauty of imagery, and a musical flow of language. One distinct feeling should predominate, giving tone to the whole; the feeling must be worthy of the subject which caused it, cor- responding to the same both in degree and kind, and must be so exhibited as to give a living picture of the poet's mind; while at the same time, what is merely individual and accidental must be excluded, so that the poet shall be truly the representative of his race, and awaken the sympathy of all. But this requires genius of a high order." Quash the suit and turn the plaintiff' out of court ! — there never was a more literal inventory of goods than this of the peculiarities of Morris's poetry ! Lyrist he is, if that describe lyric poetry, and he has come hon- estly by his popularity, and the world is right, that said so before the trial. Court's adjourned. We have sat down once or twice to criticise Weirds picture of the Embarkation— but a criticism of it would be but a recapitulation of its beauties, and as these are quite apparent, and everybody will see the picture, we think it not worth while. We have already described the feeling with which it is seen for the first time, and as we have seen it a dozen times with the same glow, and as that description has been quoted, as just, by many of the critics who have since seen the picture, we can well stop where we are— recording only the present thronging to the exhibition-room in New York, and the universal delight the picture gives 632 EPHEMERA. to the public, man. Weir may well be a proud and happy We should be very happy to polish " M.'s" verses, but as we have seldom seen a penknife that was sharp after it was sharpened, so we never saw verses that were good after being bettered — by anybody but the original maker. Beside, it is not our vocation to mend poets — though we might make one — Heaven Help us ! A " friend who knew us when a boy" (as if any- thing but the crust of us be adult-erated), wishes us to " write something for posterity." Tut ! — posterity is welcome to all we write — though, if posterity will pay us, or if anybody will " down with the dust," as j posterity's " paying-teller," we will write something j which posterity can publish as "entirely original." | For the present we do not hold with the Apotactitre, I that " property, wine, meat, and matrimony, are j things to be renounced" — and though the three last seem to be the only ones to which our destiny has a free copyhold, we are digging away at prose and po- etry, and would peddle pins or pottery to compass the other. One of the most curious and amusing resorts for a man of taste, idle in New York, is the antiquarian book-shop* of Bartlett & Welford, under the Astor. The catalogue of rare and valuable books for sale at this repository, numbers nearly four thousand, and most of these are such works as are found only in choice libraries, or in the possession of scholars. Far from being interesting to antiquarians exclusively, the curiosities of this choice shop would amuse the most general reader, and a lounge at the well-stocked counter of B. & W. is no indifferent relief to the fatiguing idleness of a man stranded on the beach of a hotel between the far-apart .tides of breakfast and dinner. Most courteous bibliopoles are these two gentlemen, by-the-way, and happy to gratify the curi- osity of visiters. Villanous editions, villanous cheap, are the fruits of our present law of copyright, and if we had an American language all to ourselves, we should have no such thing as beauty in a book. Fortunately, England has the same brick from Babel, and we can corrupt, mutilate, defile, and misprint works of genius, and still import, from our more liberal and appreciative fatherland, a purer and worthier copy. Still it seems to me surprising, that, of the publishers who have grown rich with pirating in this country, no one has felt inclined to distinguish himself by a school of fine editions.f One would think that the example of Al- dus, who made himself as famous as the authors he printed, would be stuff for emulation ; and there are some men, probably, even among publishers, who agree with Charles Edwards, that "it is the devil to be growing old as a person of no peculiarity." Al- dus's press lasted eminent for near a hundred years, and it is recorded in history that his ink was excellent! his types beautiful, his paper invariably strong and white, and above all, that his press was next to infal- lible for correctness. Celebrity among bookbinders probably sprung from this renown of a printer, and in • Store, a warehouse. Shop, a place for sale of wares. We call shops " stores" in this country, and it is well to re- cord these Panglossiana as they occur. tTicKNOR, of Boston, expends a praiseworthy carefulness on the correctness and beauty of his reprints, and should be excepted from the disparagement of American booksellers. But every press should have a scholar attached to it, and an artist within reach. England there were famous names in this trade also. Roger Payne received from twenty to thirty guineas for binding a single volume, and he is much better re- membered than any lord-mayor of his time. There has been a mania in bookbinding, however, and the world is too poetical for such matters now. Jeffrey, a London bookseller, had Fox's History bound in fox- skin; and an eccentric bibliomaniast named (descrip- tively) Askew, had a book bound in a human skin. In the library at Konigsberg there are twenty books bound in silver. Very far short of all this, however, there is in this country an unreached point of excel- lence in binding, and great opening for an ambitious bookbinder to distinguish himself. Sat Verbum sapi- enti. Rarity in books is such a difficult thing to define, that a taste for it easily degenerates into absurdity. The mania is very common, but there is a mania fo> books according to their rare value to read, and a mania for books valuable by accidental circumstances — such as coming from a particular press, being made of singular materials, having once belonged to a cele- brated library, or being the only ones of their kind. In Italy they used to print valuable books on blue pa- per; in France on rose-colored paper, and in Germany on yellow or green ; and copies of these are much sought after now. Bibliomaniacs value those printed on large paper with wide margin. In the advertise- ment of rare books, you often see the phrase, " a tall copy." Longman had a single copy printed of "Strutt's Dictionary of Engravers," illustrated and embellished at the cost of ten thousand dollars ! The copy sold, I do not know to what book-madman — but his name should be linked in history to that of the priest in Spain, who murdered three men to get pos session of their libraries! By a turn of fortune not worth describing, Mr. Goggins, a shipchandler, became suddenly a million- aire. His half-score of grown-up children spread themselves at once to their new dimensions, and after a preliminary flourish at home, the whole family em- barked for foreign travel. They remained but a fort- night in England — none in that land walking often in- visible. Germany seemed to the shipchandler a "rubbishy" country, and Italy "very small beer," and, after a short residence in Paris, that gay capital was pronounced the Paradise of money's worth, and there the Gogginses took up their abode. To the appre- hension of most of their acquaintance, Mr. Goggins was now in a speedy and fair way to return to his blocks and oakum, poorer for his fortune. No stint seemed put upon the extravagance of sons or daugh- ters, and in dress and equipage their separate displays and establishments became the marvel of Paris. In Goggins himself there was for awhile no great change of exterior. His constitutional hardness of character seemed in no way disturbed or embellished by the splendors he controlled. He gave way to usages and etiquette with patient facility, bowed through the re- ceptions at his first parties with imperturbable propri- ety, and was voted stolid and wooden by the gay world flaunting at his expense. In the second year of his Parisian life, however, Goggins took the reins gradually into his own hands. He dismissed his sharp French butler, who had made hitherto all the household bargains, and, promoting to the servile part of his office an inferior domestic, dull and zealous, he took the accounts into his own hands, and exacted, of all the tradespeople he patron- ized, schedules of their wares in English, and their bills made equally comprehensible. Pocketing thus the butler's perquisite, he reduced the charges of that department one half, beside considerably improving the quality of the articles purchased. Rejecting, EPHExMEltA. 633 then, the intermediate offices of lease-agents and hommes d'affaires, he advertised in Galignani, in good 'plain English, for the most luxurious house in a cer- tain fashionable quarter, conducted the bargain by a correspondence in {English, and finally procured it at a large abatement, at least, from prices paid by mil- lionaires. He advertised in the same way for propo- sals to furnish his house on the most sumptuous scale, and in the prevailing fashion, and by dint of sit- ting quietly in his office and compelling everything to reach him through the medium of English manu- script, he created a palace fit for an emperor, by fair competition among the tradesmen and upholsterers, and at a cost by no means ruinous. He advertised in the same way for a competent man of taste to oversee the embellishments in progress, and, when complete, the "Hotel Goggins" was quite the best thing of its kind in Paris, and was looked upon as the "folly" of the ruined lessee. With this groundwork for display, Mr. Goggins turned his attention to the ways and j means of balls and dinners, concerts and breakfast, I and having acquired a name for large expenditure, he profited considerably by the emulation of cooks and j purveyors for the material, and privately made use of the savoirfaire of a reduced count or two who, for a "trifling consideration," willingly undertook the man- ner of the entertainments. He applied the same sa- gacious system of commissariat to the supplying of the multifarious wants of his children, economizing at the same time that he enhanced the luxury of their indulgences, and the Gogginses soon began to excite other feelings than contempt. Their equipages (the production of the united taste, of ruined spendthrifts) outshone the most sumptuous of the embassies; their balls were of unexceptionable magnificence, their din- ners more recherche than profuse. How they should come by their elegance was a mystery that did not les- sen their consequence, and so the Gogginses mount- ed to the difficult eminence of Parisian fashion — the plain business-tact of a shipchandler their mysterious stepping-stone. Perhaps we should give more credit to this faculty in Goggins. It is possibly not far removed from the genius of a great financier or eminent state-treasurer. It is the power of coming directly at values and rid- ding them of their "riders" — of getting for less, what others, from want of penetration, get for more. I am inclined to think Goggins would have been quite as successful in any other field of calculation, and one instance of a very different application of his reason- ing powers would go to favor the belief. While in Italy, he employed a celebrated but im- provident artist to paint a picture, the subject of which was a certain event of rather an humble char- acter, in which he had been an actor. The picture was to be finished at a certain time, and at the urgent plea of the artist, the money was advanced. The time expired and the picture was not sent home, and the forfeited bond of the artist was accordingly put in suir. The delinquent, who had not thought twice of the subject, addressed one or two notes of remon- strance to his summary employer, and receiving no reply, and the law crowding very closely upon his heels, he called upon Goggins and appealed, among other arguments, to the difference in their circum- stances, and the indulgent pity due from rich to poor. "Where do you dine to day ?" asked Goggins. " To-day— let me see— Monday— I dine with La- dy ." (The artist, as Goggins knew, was a favorite in the best society in Florence.) " And where did you dine yesterday?" " Yesterday— hum— yesterday I dined with Sir George . No ! I breakfasted with Sir George, and dined with the grand chamberlain. Excuse me! I have so many engagements " "Ah!— and you are never at a loss for a dinner or a breakfast !" The artist smiled. " No !" "Are you well lodged?" " Yes — on the Arno." "And well clad, I see." (The painter was rather a dandy, withal.) " Well, sir!" said Goggins, folding up his arms, and looking sterner than before, "you have, as far as I can understand it, every luxury and comfort which a fortune could procure you, and none of the care and trouble of a fortune, and you enjoy these advantages by a claim which is not liable to bankruptcy, nor to be squandered, nor burnt — without the slightest anx- iety, in short." The artist assented. " So far, there is no important difference in our worldly condition, except that 1 have this anxiety and trouble, and am liable to these very casualties." Goggins paused, and the painter nodded again. "And now, sir, over and above this, what would you take to exchange with me the esteem in which we are severally held — you to become the rich, uned- ucated, and plain Simon Goggins, and I to possess your genius, your elevated tastes, and the praise and fame which these procure you?" The artist turned uneasily on his heels. " No, sir !" continued Goggins, " you are not a man to be pitied, and least of all by me. And I don't pity you, sir. And what's more, you shall paint that pic- ture, sir, or go to prison. Good morning, sir!" And the result was a painting, finished in three days, and one of the master-pieces of that accom- plished painter, for he embodied, in the figure and face of Goggins, the character which he had struck outso unexpectedly — retaining the millionaire's friend- ship and patronage, though never again venturing to trifle with his engagements. Music seems to be the passion of the hour in New- York. Wallack had a house that would hardly pay expenses last night — even the Ravels have somewhat fallen off as they were going off— while Damoreau, Wallace, and the " Hutchinson family," draw well. The latter are four children of a New Hampshire patriarch — (four out of fifteen, as they say in an auto- biographical medley which they sing) — and having been born with a singular natural talent for music, they are turning it to account in a musical tour. There are three brothers under twenty years of age, and a very young sister. Their voices are good (par- ticularly the girl's, who is about fourteen), and they confine themselves to simple melody, such as would suit the least practised ear, while it can not fail, from the truth and expression with which they sing, to please the most fastidious. Their concerts are ex- ceedingly enjoyable. Mrs. Sutton, well known everywhere as a most charming singer, is about to perform a short engage- ment as a prima donna to the Italian company at Nib- lo's. I wish the success of the experiment might bring Castellan and Cinti Damoreau upon the stage. The latter, by the way, is the daughter of a French door-porter, and might easily have been " the grave of her deserving," but for her perseverance and ambi- tion. Maroncelli is preparing a memoir of her, under her own direction. There is a particular season of the year (this is it) when, as most people know, the law forbids the killing and vending of certain game — the zest of illegality, of course, giving great flavor to the birds, and, of course, more than nullifying the law. Not the least in con- 634 EPHEMERA. nexion with this remark — I was very much astonished a day or two since, dining with a friend at a neighbor- ing hotel, to find fairly printed in the bill of fare, " Second Course— Roast Owls." On the succeeding day, at another table, I was startled with the enrol- ment of a dish called "Just Try Me"— which, on ex- periment, I found to be a bird — (with an egg-shaped breast, and a very long bill thrust through it)— decently laid on its back, and covered with a pork apron ! The latter name seemed very much to the point, and ex- plained the bird's errand. The former I was puzzled with— but knowing the landlord of that hotel to be very much ultra crepidam, I was induced to look into ornithology for his meaning. I find that the peculi- arity of the owl is " an external toe which can be turned behind at pleasure"— symbolical of the perverted beak of the woodcock (as well as the makinf of false tracks to evade the law), and serving in the same manner to prepare an orifice for the sauce of lemon-juice and cayenne. When this man cozens, you see, he cozens with edifying knowledge and discretion. Appleton is publishing a very neat and handsome edition of valuable religious books. Among them is the Disce Vivere of Sutton, prebend of Westminster, in 1626 — one of the choicest specimens of rich and pregnant English that I have lately seen. Two sen- tences from his preface will give you an idea of his style, in which every word seems to drive a nail: — "If to live were for no other but to draw in and to breathe out the soft air, as the wise man speaketh, a needless labor were it, good Christian reader, to lay down any instructions to the world of ' learning to live ;' for this is done naturally, both of men and beasts, without any teaching or learning. " If to live were no other but to cast about for the favor and riches of the world, as some men are wont to call it, the way to live, then would it soon fol- low, the greater Machiavellians, the better livers. Somewhat more than is required to live Christianly j than so, and that all shall one day find, than either ' drawing in and breathing out the soft air, or the plot- ting to compass the pleasures and profits of the world." A cold-water procession is going under my window at this moment, in a very propitious shower of rain. From my elevated look-out, the long line of umbrel- las, two and two, gives the street the dress look of a imitation of the qualities of that same poem of Don Juan — and Mr. Simms, who has talent enough when he stumbles on his right vein, has made a woful mis- take as to his capabilities for this. Two extracts will show his idea of the slap-dash-ery vein : — " One moment grows she most abruptly willing. The next— she slaps the chaps that think of billing." And, speaking of woman again : — " Ev'n from his weakness and abandonment Had woman her first being. Thus hath grown Her power of evil since ; — still uncontent Hath she explored his weakness and o'erthrown ; And, in the use of arts incontinent, No longer pacified by one poor vein, She grapples the whole man, brawn, beef, and muscle, Helped by the same old snake, that flings him in the tussle." We should have disclaimed, in giving the portrai.. of the most ornate man of modern times, all approba- tion of dandyism — (as yet) — on this side the water. Dandyism, in the abstract, we delight in, glorify, and rejoice over. But it has its scenery and its appertain- ages. A dandy, in place, is the foreground to a pic- ture — the forward star of a troop untelescoped by the vulgar — the embroidered flower on the veil before a life of mystery. His superior elegance is like the gold edge of a cloud unfathomable ; or (to come to earth) like the soldier's uniform — tinsel but for its association with force and glory. What were the dandies of the firmament, for example — (comets) — without those uninterpretable tails ! But — to alight in Broadway. A dandy indigenous to New York has no back- ground — no untelescoped associations or connexions — no power and glory — and no uninterpretable tail. He is like a docked comet. He is like Tom Fool in a uniform bought at the pawnbroker's. He is a label on an empty bottle. Count D'Orsay drives by you in the park, and a long ancestry of titled soldiers and courtiers, and a present life of impenetrable scenery and luxury untold, arise up for background to his cab j and tiger. Mr. James Jessamy drives by you in i Broadway, and you know at what trade his glory was i manufactured, and you know " what he does of an : evening," and you know his "mechanical rogues" of j relations, the tailor who made him, the hatter who thatched him, and the baker who sold him gingerbread ! when a boy. You admire, or envy, D'Orsay, as you I happen to be constituted — but you laugh, you scarce i know why, at Mr. Jessamy. The latter, perhaps, has fashionable Taglioni coat, with two rows of big but- ! the better right to his toggery and turn-out; but still tons down the middle. I noticed yesterday, by the you laugh! way, a most stalwart and gallant-looking company of \\ Very far short of dandyism, however, lies the point firemen, in an undress military uniform, marching out ij of dressing judiciously — dressing, that is to say, so as for exercise at the target. Everything about them |j to make the most of your personal advantages. The was all right, except that their guests of honor were j favor of women is of course the first of lifetime ambi- placed before instead of behind — making of it a pris- \'. tions, and the dear tyrants have a weakness for the ex- oner's guard instead of a military escort. ; terior. " Tu as du remarquer" says Balzac; "si j toutefois tu es capable d. observer un fait moral, que la ; femme aime lefat. Sais tu pourquoi lafemme aime le j fat ? Mon ami ! les fats sont les seuls homines qui ; aient soin d'eux memes /" And there are ladies, even I see criticised, in one or two papers, a poem which was sent to me some time since as "printed, not pub- lished," called "Donna Florida," by Mr. Simms, the author of Southern Passages, &c. Jt is in the stanza, and intended as an imitation of " Don Juan." The || author says, in his preface, that he fancied " he might imitate the grace and exceeding felicity of expression in that unhappy performance — its playfulness, and \\ and can a/ford, for a consideration he has, to let " the possibly its wit — without falling into its licentious- , spirits of the wise sit in the clouds," &c Had Count ness of utterance and malignity of mood. How he D'Orsay been born in Common-Council-dom and has succeeded in this object, it would not be becom- \\ gone home, sometimes by the Waverley line, some- ing in him to inquire." One of the easiest things fan- jj times by the Knickerbocker, he never would have cied possible, and one of the most difficult to do, is an 1 1 been a dandy — (except, at least, for a motive para- on this plain side of the water, who adore a dandy, and of course there are cases where the dread laugh (men- tioned at the close of the preceding paragraph) must be braved to aid a particular magnetism. If your dandy be a sensible man, and past the moulting age, depend upon it he is ticketed for some two eyes only, EPHEMERA. 635 mount to ridicule)— though, with his superb person, he could hardly have dressed cleanly without being called a fop by the shallow. D'Orsay is a man of sense, and knows too much to open the public oyster with his private razor. So don't come to America, dear D'Orsay ! Stay among your belongings — your " Tapestries of India ; Tyrian canopies ; Heroic bronzes ; pictures half divine — Apelles' pencil ; statues that the Greek Has wrought to living beauty ; amethyst urns And onyx essenced with the Persian rose ; Couches of mother-pearl, and tortoise-shell ; Crystalline mirrors : tables in which gems Make the mosaic ; cups of argentry Thick with immortal sculptures." Stay where " Your meat shall all come in, in Indian shells — Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies ; Your foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmon, Knots, godwits, lampreys. And yourself shall have The beards of barbels served instead of salads, Oiled mushrooms and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow newly cut off, Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce." Yet, if you should take the whim to come over the water, count, I need scarce suggest to your good sense that you had best come with a consignment of buttons from Brummagem ! A gentleman in Saco has taken upon himself some pains and postage to ask "our" two portraits served up in two plates. We don't think the public would stand it. That bold man, Mr. Graham, is to show an outline of one of us in his February number, and then anybody can have us, tale and all, for two shillings — a cheap article, we must say ! But we are surprised to get this petition from Saco! We "come from"close- by-there, and it strikes us our likeness would go east with the welcome of coals to Newcastle. Doubtless there are more like us in the same soil. We remem- ber hanging over a bridge in Saco half one moonlight night (somewhere in our fourteenth year), and if riv- ers have any memory or gratitude lor admiration, our likeness will be found in the water where we left it. We wish our contributors would do us the favor to baptize their own bantlings. Their delegation of godfathership costs us sometimes a five minutes' thought over a proofsheet while the press is waiting, and time is " tin." But, by the*way, be particular in naming your articles! Old Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, gives, by way of satire, what we think an excellent rule ("experto crede Roberto"), and we will lend it you for your uses : " It is a kind of policy in these days to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold ; for, as larks come down to a day- net, many vain readers will stand gazing like silly pas- sengers at an antic picture in a painter's shop, that will not look at a judicious piece." I observe, looking from my window, that the Park theatre hangs out a large American flag with a tri- color banner appended to each of the two lower cor- ners (looking altogether very much like a pair of ori- ental • ousers), symbolical, probably, of the two arri- vals from France which made yesterday memorable. The more interesting- of these twin events, of course, was General Bertrand's advent by the Boston boat at Beven; but the one which excited the more interest was the opening of the winter fashions at " Madame Law- son's, in Park place," at eight. The latter ceremo- nial had been duly heralded for some days previous by notes addressed to the leaders of fashion, and (as far as can be known) the secrets of the Graces' uno- pened cases hud been impartially and unexceptiona- bly kept. Having " a friend at court," I had been for some days invited to witness the effulguration, but was privately advised that there would be a rush, and that six in the morning would not be too early to take a stand upon the steps of the grand milliner in Park place. Some unfinished business in dream-land obliged me to waive to the sun the privilege of rising first, however, and to my misfortune I did not arrive at Park place till the premices de la mode had been ravished by the most intrepid first-comers. The street was lined with carriages, and the house was thronged. On the staircase we met||ro or three ladies descending, flushed with excitement, and murmuring millinery ; and on arriving at the landing on the second floor, the sharp soprano of the hum within betrayed how even the sweetest instruments may outrun modulation, played on with a crescendo troppo furioso. The two saloons of the second floor were crowded with the ladies of fash- ion, and the walls lined all around with a single shelf covered with snowy damask, on which stood the white rods supporting the (as yet) brainless, though already fashionable bonnets. And (begging pardon of Green- wich and William streets) they were unapproachably exquisite ! There were some forced marriages of colors among them — some juxtapositions Heaven would not have ventured upon in bird-millinery — but the results were happy. The bonnets are small, and would probably divide, for the nose, a perpendicular rain-drop ; and the shape of the front edge would be defined by the shadow on the wall of an egg trunca- ted at the smaller end — the choice of colors riotously uncontrollable. Feathers, ruinous feathers, are abso- lutely indispensable. No fashion this winter in a bon- net without feathers — dyed feathers harmonious with the satin. The plush bonnets were the first seized on. Drab satin with very gay fineries, was the color most complimented. The prices varied from twenty- two dollars to fifty. It was very charming to see so many pretty women trying on so many pretty bonnets, and I feared that the two or three venturesome gen- tlemen present might be seized upon as intruders upon vestal mysteries; but, thanks to the " vestalis maxima," Miss Lawson, we escaped with credit. I have seen General Bertrand several times. He is of a very noble presence, though, like Napoleon, be- low the middle height. His features express honesty, firmness, and rapid intelligence — the latter expression aided by eyes of unusual brilliancy. His hair is quite white. He is a man of few words, very collect- ed, but withal very courteous. These, at least, are my impressions of him. It is curious to remark, how the burning of our fin- gers with Dickens makes us hold back from the fire of enthusiastic receptions. If the general had been ante instead of £>os£-Dickens, he would have been overwhelmed with popular acclamation. As it is, the dues of honor are only paid a rigeur. One or two brigades of artillery are ordered out to-moirow to es- cort the general on his rounds to visit the objects of curiosity, and the different staff's accompany him to the theatre in the evening. This morning he is visit- ing the fair of the Institute. The beautiful company of the Life Guards made him a guest of honor at their dinner last evening. Mr. Stetson, of the Astor (who gave the dinner on his appointment as an officer in the corps), complimented General Bertrand very felicitously in his speech, and the applause was rap- turous. Stetson is naturally an " orator, as Brutus 636 EPHEMERA. is," and has acquitted himself on several such occa- sions with great credit. I visited, the other evening, the beautiful rooms of the Mercantile Library Association, and was exceed- ingly interested in the history of its foundation and progress. An advertisement expressing " a call for a meeting of clerks" was the first germ. The paper containing this was preserved and presented to the as- sociation by William Wood, of Canandaigua, a very zealous benefactor of the institute. It has at present a library of nearly twenty thousand volumes, and it has four thousand members. The late report of the librarian shows that eight times the number of volumes is annually taken from the library — aj^ activity of use for a library almost unparalleled. It is, without doubt, one of the most useful institutions of the country, and donations to it of books or money would be admirably well bestowed. Dr. Lardner has grown very much on the public esteem in his last visit to New York. His clear, sim- ple, graphic talent, making abstruse science easy and comprehensible, has never been equalled by another lecturer. Much honor and glory to the Boston publishers for the beauty of their editions, and the credit (not small) which that brings to this country. The most exquis- ite edition of the exquisite songs of inspired Barry Cornwall, published by Ticknor, should be between every four walls where resides the relish for poetry or taste in a book. It is a gem of poetry set in a gem of printing, and most fit for a loving man's gift to a sensible woman. 1 find that "doctors differ" about Macready; and the graphic and gay correspondent of the Providence Journal, more particularly, gives as his great excel- lence, that you forget the man in the character he plays — just what I do not think. Heaven, it seems to me, has done so little, and Macready so much, in making himself the actor he is, that he deserves infin- ite credit, and, as a piece of mechanism, his playing is a fine thing to me, though more curious than over- coming. Young Wheatley has turned over quite a golden leaf of opinion with his personation of Ulric, a very fine part in Byron's play of Werner. I saw yesterday, among the daguerreotypes of Chilton & Edwards, a most perfect one of Dr. Linn, whose death was mentioned in a late paper. The val- ue of these things struck me forcibly — for to any one who had ever seen the fine countenance of Dr. Linn, this is a perfect remembrancer. They color them skilfully now, and the gentlemen 1 speak of particu- larly (Chilton & Edwards, who are to have a room in the Capitol this winter), are daily making improve- ments in the art. Some witty man corrupts the word into derogatory-types, but they are derogatory no longer. We are likely to know something of Mexico be- tween the three authors who are about publishing books on the subject, and the charming book of Mad- ame Calderon. Mr. Prescott's Mexico will of course be a classic. Brantz Mayer and Kendall are up to their elbows in proofsheets — both producing works on Mexico, and both excellent writers. I never saw, in New York, an audience of better quality, for so large a quantity, than was assembled to welcome the perfected Cinti. I presume there were few " ears polite" anywhere else. At a dollar the pair (long and short alike), Madame must have de- lighted these fastidious organs to the amount of five thousand francs, to be diminished only by the expense of room-light and accompaniment — a transmutation of "evening wind," that throws Bryant's coinage of that commodity quite into the shade. Mr. Timm (as is wise and usual) played the audi- ence into tune with an overture, and then the screen gave up its prima donna — Madame Cinti Damoreau in pink satin — three large roses on her breast — the dress, air, and graces of Veens, the composure, plen- titude, and, alas ! the parenthesized smile of 'ties. Madame Cinti has been a good animal resemblance of the beautiful Mrs. Norton. The general mould of the face, and the low forehead, the dark hair, and the unfathomable dark eyes, are like in each to the other. With a trepidation which lasted only through the first bar, she commenced the aria of "Fatal Goffre- do" (from Donisette's opera of Torquato Tasso), and sang it to the breathless delight of the audience. No such finished music has ever been breathed before upon American air, I am persuaded. With not a fourth of the power and volume of Castellan, and none of the passion-lava of Malibran, she reaches a finer fibre of the ear than either. The quality of her voice is exceedingly sweet, and the mingled liquid- ness and truth of her chromatics could never have been exceeded. The ladder of harmony seemed built a round or two nearer to heaven by her delicious music. Madame Damoreau, in the beginning of her career, was hissed from the French stage for singing false — a lesson in study and perseverance which I wish could be laid softly into the memory of Castellan. The lat- ter wonderfully-organized creature, with anything like the same skill, would be the world's queen of song. The New Orleans people, by-the-way, who are Pa- risians in their nice appreciation of operatic talent, consider Castellan a remarkable actress ; and so great was the enthusiasm for her there, that the necessary sum to engage her was made up by private subscrip- tion. It is several thousand pities, at least, that, in the first capital of the country, there is not operatic enthusiasm enough to bring this dormant genius upon the stage. Monsieur Artot, who accompanies Madame Dam- oreau in her tour, alternated performances with her. He is a very gentlemanly-looking young man, with a figure that would make a very good case for his own violin — a very long neck and a very small waist — and he plays with execution enough for all practical pur- poses, but with taste unsurpassed. Wallace knows several heavens of the violin to which Monsieur Artot has not yet ascended, hut the latter knows enough to give all the pleasure which that instrument can give to ordinary listeners. The audience applauded Mon- sieur Artot very long and loudly. I think, by-the- way, that a series of musical contentions between Wallace and Castellan "on the first part," and Artot and Cinti "on the second," would be a most charm- ing and exciting tournament. Madame Damoreau had the good sense not to de- sire a musical contention with a performance on the paving-stones by cabs and omnibuses, and the street in front of Washington Hall was coated with tan. There seems to be a kind of appendix-dawn of lit- erature in Italy. Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella is about being published at Florence in the Italian translation. Sparks's Life of Washington, translated by a young Neapolitan, is also nearly ready. A so- ciety has been formed at Florence, called Societa Ed- itrice Florentine, for the publication of translations of the best foreign works, including those of American EPHEMERA. 637 literature. The Marquis Gino Capponi, one of the most prominent names in Florentine history, has put our country under obligation by his enthusiasm for our literature, and his aid to the publication of the works I have just mentioned. He is himself a re- markable scholar. Our consul at Rome, Mr. George Greene, has had a large agency in the same cause. Mr. Greene, by-the-way, has devoted a labor of some years to a history of Italy, which is still in progress. He, as is known very well, is a credit to the talent and scholarship of our country. The Marquis Cap- poni has furnished Mr. Prescott with materials for his history of Philip II. Weir's picture of the "Embarcation" is now ex- hibiting to throngs of admirers at the Society Libra- ry. Its wonderful ingenuity and beauty of grouping, and the variety and individuality of the faces of the pilgrim company, are the excellences most dwelt upon. I really must venture to record an opinion expressed of this picture by Inman — who (as the artist of a ri- val-panel in the Rotunda, and hindered in his work by ill-health and other obstacles) is in a position to speak invidiously, if he were capable of envy. In- man was asked what he thought of it. " It is a glo- rious picture," he replied, "and its faults, if it has them, are comparatively so trifling, that it would be ungenerous to mention them." And if that speech did not come from a noble heart, I have read of such things with slender profit to my judgment. Dear reader: A volume of poems goes from us in an extra of the Mirror this week, which leaves us with a feeling — we scarce know how to phrase it — a feeling of timidity and dread — like a parent's appre- hensiveness, giving his child into the hands of a stran- ger. It is not Pliny's " quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum" nor is it, what the habitual avoid- ance of grave themes looks like, sometimes — a pref- erence " to let the serious part of life go by Like the neglected sand." We are used to buttering curiosity with the ooze of our brains — careful more to be paid than praised — and we have a cellar, as well as many stories, in our giddy thought-house; and it is from this cave of priv- acy that we have, with reluctance, and consentings far between, drawn treasures of early feeling and impres- sion, now bound and offered to you for the first time in one bundle. Oh, from the different stories of the mind — from the settled depths, and from the efferves- cent and giddy surface — how different looks the world ! — of what different stuff and worth the link that binds us to it ! In looking abroad from one window of the soul, we see sympathy, goodness, truth, desire for us and our secrets, that we may be more loved ; from another, we see suspicion, coldness, mockery, and ill- will — the evil spirits of the world — lying in wait for us. At one moment — the spirits down, and the heart calm and trusting — we tear out the golden leaf nearest the well of life, and pass it forth to be read and wept over. At another, we bar shutter and blind upon pry- ing malice, turn key carefully on all below, and, mounting to the summit, look abroad and jest at the very treasures we have concealed — wondering at our folly in even confessing to a heartless world that we had secrets, and would share them. We are not al- ways alike. The world does not seem always the same. We believe it is all good sometimes. We be- lieve sometimes, that it is but a place accursed, given to devils and their human scholars. Sometimes we are all kindness — sometimes aching only for an an- tagonist, and an arena without barrier or law. And oh what a Procrustes's bed is human opinion — trying a man's actions and words, in whatever mood com- mitted and said, by the same standard of rigor ! How often must the angels hovering over us reverse the sentence of the judge — how oftener still the rebuke of the old maid and the Pharisee. But — a martingale on moralizing! Yours affectionately, Doubleyou. P. S. These poems, dear reader (if you are one of those who " can not spare the luxury of believing That all things beautiful are what they seem") — these poems, we may venture to say to you, are chick- ens of ours that still come home to roost. They have not been turned out to come back to a locked door and a strange face at the postern. We still put such eggs under our hen of revery. We cherish the breed — but privately — privately ! Take these, and come to us for more. Mr. " Newbegin" must excuse us. We like gram- mar even in a pun. His night-ride in the omnibus is pretty fair, but it wont do to jolt pronouns out of place. That " Dark as winter was the flow Of 7, sir, rolling rapidly," would shock our friend Wright into a new edition of " Exercises." There is but one good couplet in " Tiskins's" com- munication : — " His whiskers were like night, coal-black, His hair like morn, coal-red'' — but his rhythm grounds at the overslaugh. He must throw over his ballast of consonants, before his metre- craft will swim buoyant enough to pass. One of the Sunday critics (we hope he "got to press" soon enough to have leisure for confession) sneers at "one of us" for "quoting nothing" of Mor- ris's in our critique of his songs. As if it were neces- sary in a periodical where Morris makes, of every- thing he writes, a Corinthian capital for a column ! Truly the public are not likely to die in igngrance of songs which stand on every piano-rack in the country, and are sung in every concert-room and theatre, and are being endlessly copied. Besides, we believe we can tell "what manner of thing is your crocodile," without bringing the monster bodily in. How the folks find fault with us! We shall really have to pro- claim ourselves an "object," and " boast of nothing else But that we are a journeyman to grief!" or, better still, we shall be driven to get up a crusade against the whip-poor-willises, and " bring up those that shall try what mettle there is in orange-tawny." To the kind old lady who "knit us a pair of stock- | ings after reading some poetry" of ours, but " was J afraid to send them, and gave them to a beggar," we I must say, in the words of the old ballad, " 'Twere better give a thing, I A sign of love, unto a mighty person or a king. Than to a rude or barb'rous swain, but bad or basely born, I For gently takes the gentleman what oft the clown will scorn." ! So, thanks for the good will, dear madam, and pray j knit us a pair of mittens against we make our fortune I and turn farmer. (338 EPHEMERA. " Aunt Charity" wishes us to write an article on the "love of the intellect, and the possibility of a ten- der affection for the old." We will tell you a little story out of an old book: "It is reported of Magda- len, queen of France, that walking forth, an evening, with her ladies, she spied Monsieur Alanus, one of the king's chaplains, an old hard-favored man. fast asleep in a bower, and kissed him sweetly. When the ladies laughed at her for it, she replied that it was not his person she did embrace, but, with a Platonic love, the divine beauty of his soul." The up-town door-plates and bell-handles are shi- ning once more, and open shutters, clean windows, and parted curtains, acknowledge, at last, the reluc- tant truth, that the fashionables have returned from travel, and are open to pasteboard and personal call. The ice has been broken with a "jam," echoed by one musical soiree, and now — vogue la galere till the ice melts again! There is a talk that this is to be more an intellectual winter than the last — more reci- tations, more tableaux vivants, more conversaziones, more finding and producing of new lions in the lamb- kingdom of poetry. There is also a murmur — a "shadow cast before" — of the "coming out" of a very extraordinary beauty, whose name and educa- tional cocoon are wrapt in profound mystery. As the rumor started about a week since, and as "pretty moths" are but twenty days in their chrysalis, we may expect the emergence of her bright wings to light in about a fortnight. She is said to be moulded after the (supposed) lost type of the seven belles of Phila- delphia, whose culmination occurred under the au- tocracy of Jackson — eyes furnished by Juno, mouth by Hebe, and teeth and feet by the smaller fairies. No corresponding Hyperion that I can hear of. There is great fluttering and dismay among the Bowery girls and the less alert followers of the fash- ions. The remarkable splendor of the "spring goods," and the really beautiful and becoming style of the new fabrics, left no doubt in most minds that these were to be "the mode." The autumn pin-moneys of all the moderately "established" ladies and their daughters "went the way of all" earnings accordingly, and Broadway grew as splendid as a tulip-bed, bright as the bazar of Smyrna. The exclusives were at their invisible period meanwhile, but, from their car- riages, they probably saw "what was worn." Down dropped the mercury of the mode-ometer to extreme simplicity ! The few ladies who appeared, crossing the pavement from their equipages to the shops, were dressed in quiet silks, costly and neat, and the name- less and the " unnamed," at the same moment, seemed to flaunt by in the choicest and gayest of the new patterns. Studied simplicity, out of doors at least, is high fashion now, and those who can not afford to convert their new purchases into chair-covers and bed-curtains, are left stranded, as it were, on a petri- fied rainbow. Ten thousand copies of the " Mysteries of Paris" have been poured into our caldron of morals by a single press in this city, and probably fifty thousand will be circulated altogether. It is a very exciting book, and at this moment making a great noise. The translators are busily at work on other saleables of French literature, and there will soon be little left un- known of the arcana of vice. Eugene Sue, the au- thor of the " Mysteries of Paris," is a connoisseur of pleasure; and when I saw him, ten years ago, was an elegant voluptuary of the first water. He was just then creeping through the crust of the Chaussee d'Antin into the more exclusive sphere of the Fau- bourg St. Germain — fat, good-looking, and thirty-two. He is, by this time, "sloped" from his meridian, and apparently turning his experiences into commodity. I observe that he borrows my name for a wicked Flor- ida planter, who misuses a lady of color — a reproach which I trust will not stick to " us." The publishers hang back from American fictions now-a-days, possibly finding the attention of the read- ing-public occupied with the more highly-spiced pro- ductions of the class just alluded to, and it is impos- sible to induce them to give anything for — hardly, in- deed to look at — an indigenous manuscript. Acci- dent threw into my hands, a few days ago, a novel which had lain for some time unread in a publisher's drawer, and after reading a few chapters I became convinced that it was far above the average of modern ; English novels, and every way worthy of publication. I It was entitled "The Domine's Daughter," by Adam | Mundiver, Esq., and would have lain forgotten and unexamined till doomsday, but for a friendly Orpheus ! who made it his Eurydice and went to Lethe after it. Such a book should surely represent money in a | country where literature is acknowledged. I very seldom can find it in my backbone to sit out a five-act play, but I saw Macready's "Richelieu," and I have seen Forrest's, throughout. Forrest be- gan rather ineffectively, probably disturbed by the de- fence he was obliged to make against an aspersion, before the play commenced. He soon warmed into it, however, and, to my thinking, played the character far better than Macready. The details — the imita- tion of decrepitude — the posturing and walking the stage — were better done by Macready ; but the pas- sion of the play, the expression, the transfusion of actor to character, the illusion, the effect — these were all vastly better achieved by Forrest. A line drawn across the tops of Macready's "points" would leave Forrest below in all matters of detail, but it would only cut the base of the latter's pyramids of passion. Forrest runs sometimes into the melo-dramatic, se- duced by the "way it takes,"' but he has fiue genius, and if he played only to audiences of "good discre- tion," he would (or could) satisfy the most fastidious. Wallack's friends, myself among the number, have been annoyed at the many contretemps which have conspired to make his latter engagement at the Park so unsatisfactory. In genteel comedy, of which he is the master-player now on the stage, he was unable to do anything, from the lack of materials in that stock-company for a cast; and, indeed, he played al- ways at the disadvantage of the one free horse in a slow team. Mr. and Mrs. Brougham (both first-rate players of high comedy, and the latter a very beauti- ful and effective woman, into the bargain) might have been engaged at the Park for the winter with great ease, and then we might have seen (what is the most agreeable kind of theatricals) comedies well cast and played. I hope there will be some combination among the actors to give us a "go," with a wheel with more than one spoke in it, and then we might have Wallack as he should be — a dramatic gem in proper setting. I am not sure that I shall be able to make out a let- ter this morning, or, if I do, it will be in spite of an accompaniment of military music. My friend Gen- eral Morris has his battalions in arms for review, and my pen "marks time," as if its forked nib were under the General's orders — (and as, perhaps, it should be, coming from a very military bird, whose father's feath- ers have seen service under him). Apropos of procession, by-the-wny, T have h'id n EPHEMERA. 639 moderate laugh at the effect of a typographical blun- der in Dr. Julius's German edition of his travels in this country. The doctor is giving an account of an abolition procession in Cincinnati, and he records in English the inscriptions on the banners. One, he says, had the reproachful and pathetic sentiment : " Although our shins are black our souls are white.'''' For "shins" read s&ins. The sultan of the Comoro islands has addressed a letter to a gentleman in Wall street, a translation of which by a very accomplished and self-taught linguist (Mr. Cotheal), may be amusing to your readers. The Comoro isles, as you know, lie in the Indian ocean, off the north end of Madagascar, and are in- I habited by a very friendly race of Mohammedan ! Arabs. The king resides in Johanna, the largest of i the islands, and (in London slang) he is a slap-up old ! trader, getting ivory and gold-dust from Madagascar, and swapping these and his cows, pigs, and poultry, for Lowell factory-stuffs, or any other freight of American vessels. He writes a very worshipful let- ter:— " To the American city of New York : For the be- loved sheikh Aaron H. Palmer, No. 49 Wall street. May Allah be his guide! Amen! Badooh! "By the grace of the Most High: "To the dearest, the most glorious, the most gen- ererous sheikh Aaron H. Palmer, the honored, the ex- alted, the magnificent, the contented. May Allah, the Most High, be his guide! Amen! " Now, after offering thee honor and protection from the Henzooanee city (Johanna) and its inhabitants, this is what I tell thee. Thy noble letter arrived and we read it. Thy friend understood its contents. May Allah reward thee well ! Thou sayest in thy letter that thou desirest selling and buying in our land, and that thou wishest friendship with us. Thou art wel- come. We thank thee, and accept thy offer. Thou didst tell us that we should advise thee of anything that we should need from thee. Again we thank thee, and inform thee that thou mayest send to us a person on thy part that shall dwell in the Henzooanee coun- try. In order that thy business may be complete, a shop of the merchants, and everything that there is in the country, shall be made ready, on our part, if it please God. Whatever shall be wanted in these re- gions shall be paid for on delivery. "I and all my Henzooanee tribes request that thou unite us with the American tribes in fri<>nd-ship and good-fellowship, like as we are united with the Eng- lish, and we will serve you all as we serve them. Now, we have conceived here a great desire for the American tribes. Tell them to send as their letters, or a man-of-war-ship* on their part, and we will bind ourselves by a binding treaty. Now, the thing we need and want from thee are sealed letters of advice for our assurance ; and in order that thou mayest know that this letter is from us, we stamp it with oar seal. We request that thou send us all kinds of linen goods and cottons, both white, and brown, and fine stripes, and all kinds of woollen cloths; and ten bed- steads and sixty chairs; all kinds of glass; lamps, large and small, and some for placing on the table; and fine silk handkerchiefs. This is what we tell thee. Now salutation and prosperity be with thee for ever! " Dated the 10th of the month of Dool Heggeh, 1252 (corresponding to about the lGth of March, 1837). "From thy friend the sooltan the sublime, son of the sooltan, Abd-Allah the sublime, Shirazy." • It is refreshing to know that there is an island where " let- ters" and a " man-of-war-ship" arc convertible equivalent*. As a long lesson of civilization, I have advised my friend Palmer, "the magnificent, the contented," to send out to his friend, the sultan of the Comoros, a youth accomplished in compounding the following drinks (copied from the bill of fare of a new restaurant in Boston) : — " Plain mint-julep, fancy do., mixed do., peach do., orange do., pineapple do., claret do., capped do., strawberry do., arrack do., racehorse do. Sherry- cobbler, rochelle do., arrack do., peach do., claret do., Tip-and-Ty, fiscal agent, veto, I. O. U., Tippe-Na- Pecco, moral suasion, vox-populi, ne-plus-ultra, Shambro, pig-and-whistle, citronella jam, egg-nog, Sargent, silver-top, poor-man's punch, arrack-punch, iced punch, spiced punch, epicure's punch, milk- punch, peach-punch, Jewett's fancy, deacon, ex- change, stone-wall, Virginia fancy, Knickerbocker, smasher, floater, sifter, soda-punch, soda, mead, mul- led wines of all descriptions." After this array of compounds, I think the vexed question of the ingredients of FalstafFs sack must sink into insignificance. I understand that a shop is opened in the Strand, London, for the sale of these potations — one instance, at least, of a vice of civiliza- tion going eastward. We must wear it for our feath- er — since our drinks are the only feature of our coun- try for which Dickens gives us unqualified praise. The " life-preserving coffin," lately exhibited at the fair of the Institute, is so constructed as to fly open with the least stir of the occupant, and made as com- fortable within as if intended for a temporary lodging. The proprietor recommends (which, indeed, it would be useless without) a corresponding facility of exit from the vault, and arraugements for privacy, light, and fresh air — in short, all that would be agreeable to the revenant on first waking. Not being, myself, a person wholly incapable of changing my mind, I felt, for the first time in my life, some little alarm as to the frequency of trance or suspended animation, and see- ing a coffin-shop near Niblo's, I ventured to call on the proprietor (Mr. D , a most respectable under- taker) and make a few inquiries. Mr. D. buries from one to three persons a day, averaging from six to eight hundred annually. He has never been called upon to inter the same gentleman twice, in a professional practice of many years. He has seen a great number of coffins reopened, and never a sign of the person's having moved, except by sliding in bringing down stairs. I mentioned to him an instance that came to my own knowledge, of a young lady, who was found turned upon her face — disinterred the day after her burial, to be shown to a relative. But even this, he thought, was the result of rude handling of the coffin. Mr. D. seemed incredulous as to any modern instance of burial alive. He had spent much time and money, however, in experiments to keep people dead. He thought that in an exhausted receiver, made of an iron cylinder, to resist the pressure of the air, the body could be kept unchanged for fifty years, and that, im- mersed in spirits and enclosed in lead, the face would be recognisable after twenty years. (The process seems both undesirable and contradictory, by-the-way, for the posthumous drowning of a man makes his death sure, and he is kept in spirits to prevent his vege- tating — as he would naturally after decay.) Incidentally, Mr. D. informed me that a respectable funeral in New York costs from two hundred to eight hundred dollars, being rather more expensively done in New York and Boston than in any other city except New Orleans (where they say a man may afford to live who can not afford to die). In Philadelphia they make the coffin with a sloping roof, which, he re- marked, is inconvenient for packing in vaults, though 640 EPHEMERA. it seems accommodated to the one epitaph of the Romans — sit ULi terra levis. They line their coffins more expensively in Philadelphia than elsewhere — with satin or velvet instead of flannel — and bury the dead in silk stockings and white gloves. We have not yet arrived at the ceremony of hired mourners, as in England, nor of plumes to the hearse and horses. Notwithstanding the incredulity of my friend the undertaker, however, asphyxia, or a suspension of life, with all the appearance of death, is certified to in many instances, and carefully provided for in some countries. In Frankfort, Germany, the dead man is laid in a well-aired room, and his hand fastened for three days to a bell-pull. The Romans cut off one of the fingers before burning the corpse, or otherwise bestowing it out of sight. The Egyptians made sure by embalming, and other nations by frequent washing and anointing. Medical books say we should wait at least three days in winter and two in summer, before interring the dead. It has been suggested that there should be a public officer who should carefully ex- amine the body and give a certificate, without which the burial should be illegal. The embellishment of burial-grounds is one of the most beautiful and commendable features of our time and country. There always seemed to me far too much horror connected with the common idea of death and burial. The Moravians make flower-gar- dens of their graveyards, and inscribe upon the stone at the head of the buried man the "day he came hither and the day he went home" — his birthday and time of death. This is clothing with the proper as- pect an event which is only an unlinking of a chain, no part of which can decay — the spirit to return to its fountain and the body to be reproduced in other forms of life — and it is a curious thing that most Christians represent death as a frightful skeleton, while the Greeks, who had no happiness in their here- after, painted him as a sleeping child or a beautiful youth. Death in the East was formerly attributed to the attachment of a particular deity, who took his favorite to a better world ; to the love of Aurora, if the death happened in the morning ; of Selene, if it happened at night; of the water-nymphs, if drowned; of Jupiter, if killed by lightning. The caverns where the martyrs were laid were called "chambers of re- pose." And this, surely, is the better impression to give of death to those whose minds are forming. Query — whether a society for the purpose of embel- lishing cemeteries and brightening all the common surroundings of death and burial would not be worthy the attention of some philanthropic enthusiast? The solemnities connected with a future life need not make the gate to it always so dreadful; and, for one, I should be content to put the separation of soul and body on a level with the unlinking of a friendship or a change of opinion— erecting a cenotaph for either of the three changes, as the Pythagoreans did to the memory of those who left their sect. But this is more an essay than an epistle. A beautiful printed copy of a " Translation of ten cantos of Dante's Inferno" has been sent me. The translator is Mr. Parsons, of Boston. It is done with a great deal of scholarship and labor, and an uncommon felicity of language — all of which, expended on an original poem, might, with his talent, have produced something as good as his translation, though not as good as Dante's Inferno. It strikes me that any transfer of a work of genius from one language to an- other — professing more than a simple rendering of the I meaning and yet giving a deteriorated copy — is a loss • of time and an injury to the original author. Mr. j Parsons has done his translation in double rhyme, depriving Dante of the beauty of the terza rima, and at the same time weakening the literalness of the translation by the fetters of rhyme, and this seems to me ill-advised. There is no medium, I think, between a translation of absolute fidelity, and a refusion and recasting of the subject-matter by a genius almost equal to the original author ; and, after the compara- tive failure of Byron at this, Mr. Parsons might hesi- tate. I hope he will try something of his own. A gentleman in New Jersey has sent us some " Lines on the death of a young lady," and they ex- press very natural feelings ; but with neither novelty nor force enough to entitle them to print. He should be aware, that while grief is new, the most common- place expression of it seems forcible to the sufferer. The ear to which " The pine-boughs sing Old songs with new gladness," has the gladness in itself, as the wounded heart has in its wound the eloquence of an old monotone of grief. If he is disposed to sooth his sorrow by an exercise of the imagination, however, he should brood upon such pictures as Shelley draws in the Witch of Atlas : — " For, on the night that they were buried, she Restored the embalmer's ruining, and shook The light out of the funeral lamps to be A mimic day within that deathy nook. And there the body lay, age after age, Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage, With gentle dreams upon its eyelids playing." " T.," a Virginian, has one good touch in his " Re- miniscence," " That fascinating, lustrous eye Which lighted up a shady spot," that is to say, if he meant to express the beauty of a bright eye set in a dusky eyelid — a thing we exceed- ingly admire. But the remainder is of a quality inferior to what he sent us before, and we " put on the break," rather than let him go down hill. " A friend" wishes us to " do our part" toward put- ting down the abuses and perversions of criticism. La! man ! you can't reform the age ! Besides, criti- cism has killed itself by overdoing the matter. Who judges of a book by a criticism upon it ! The best way is to keep overdoing it — to knock down the bull the way he is going, not to keep him on his legs by ineffectual opposition. Nobody is hurt by criticism now — nobody mended. And what Utopia could make it better? Coleridge was over-sensitive on the subject, though he laments the degradation of authors very eloquently.' " In times of old," he says, " books were as religious oracles ; as literature advanced, they next became venerable preceptors; they then de- scended to the rank of instructive friends ; and, as their numbers increased, they sunk still lower to that of entertaining companions; and, at present, they seem degraded into culprits, who hold up their hands at the bar of every self-elected judge who chooses to write from humor or interest, enmity or arrogance." That our leaf By some o'erhasty angel was misplaced In Fate's eternal volume," we have long known and often lamented. There was | a good horse-jockey spoiled, in the making a poet of us. and we took to the swing of an axe like a tadpole EPHEMERA. 641 to swimming. But we were not aware that we were appreciated. Some man, who sees through our poetic visor, writes thus to the " Ohio Statesman" : — " The Rev. Mr. Maffit is in town, exhorting sinners to repentance. N. P. Willis has taken up his quarters at the Astor house lor the winter, I suppose. 1 think Willis would do better in the backwoods than at the Astor, for he is a stout, ablebodied man, and could mall his hundred rails a day like a knife. 1 have no notion of these overgrown, lazy fellows, laying around the flash hotels, idling away their precious time." First correcting this gentleman's facts and cacol- ogy (as we do not " lay" either eggs or wagers, and are not " overgrown," being six feet high to a hair) — we entirely agree with him as to our original destina- tion. We are a crack chopster, and for several win- ters have fulfilled our destiny with delight — chopping an avenue through some woods that we thought belonged to us (which avenue we finished, for some- body else, before we discovered our mistake), and never so happy as when up to the knees in snow, and letting it into the hickories with a woodman's empha- sis and discretion ! No steam-boiler ever rejoiced in its escape-valve, no hawser in the captain's " let go !" as we have done in swinging our heart round and bang- ing it into a tree — for the axe was but a vicar and a vent ! " Woodman, spare that tree !" was the bitterest veto ever laid upon our pleasures. But we didn't make money at it. We saved almost three shillings a day (as to a " penny saved" being "equal to a penny got," we scorn the improbability), and the principal profit was the willingness it gave us to sit still in our chair and scribble. No! we loved our axe with a passion. We feared it might somehow turn out to be a sinful indulgence, it was so tempting and pleasurable — but alas ! we make more with a quill — ( i( would half our wealth Might buy this for a lie !") and while that is the case, the " correspondent of the Ohio Statesman" must pity, not blame, our exile from the woods to the Astor. Set us up — give us a clean deed of Glenmary and its woods, a horse and saddle, and our old axe — and never boy watched the darkening of his beard with the delight with which we shall see thicken again the vanished calluses in our palm ! Fie on a life with neither resistance nor antagonism — with close air, pent lungs, arms aching, and muscles mana- cled and numb ! Horses to break and trees to chop down are Paradise to it — we chance to know — but our axe is rusty and our quill is busy. Invicem cedunt dolor et voluntas. Drums are beating in the Park, and the time and finery of the industrial classes, who form the indus- trious "forces" of New York, are under contribution to glorify the killer of Tecumseh. Of those who see the show, probably few will turn over a thought which the ghost of the old warrior would not consider com- plimentary to himself, and so perhaps it is one of those cases in which two birds are killed with one stone — as the drum, covered with Zisca's skin, both incited to battle and commemorated Zisca. Tecumseh, though a brigadier-general in the British service, should figure as an honored American ghost, and doubtless will be ! so appropriated in poetry, especially should there be written a poem on moral courage, of which his run- ning away in his first fight, and being indomitable ever after, shows, 1 think, a very natural and striking ex- ample. There is another poetical feature in his his- tory — his being persuaded, against his will, to marry a beautiful girl, after mature age, and making so good a husband. Altogether he is a fine hero for an epic, and a great deal more glorious for not surviving to en- gage in a political campaign. : One of the most approvable novelties that I have seen ! of late is a library of six volumes, upon Needlework. j It is a set of miniature hand-books for the use of I schools and families, most neatly printed and illustra- 1 ted, and letting the reader into all the mysteries of " baby-linen, plain and fancy needlework, embroidery, ! knitting, netting, and tatting, millinery, and diess- ! making," and all very cheap and portable. Redfield, of Clinton Hall, is the publisher, and the admirers of the notable in woman-worth should be the purchasers. Mr. Riker has issued the first of his series of an- nuals called "The 0])al," of which Mr. Willis is to be the editor. The present volume, which contains some fine gems of literature, and is beautifully illustrated by Chapman, was prepared by Mr. Griswold, though con- tributed to and prefaced by the editor subsequently employed for the series. The character of the work is religious, and the preface states truly, that "the mirth and the playful elegancies of poetry and descrip- tive writing are as truly within the paths of religious reading as anything else which shows the fulness and variety of the provision made for our happiness when at I peace with ourselves. Nothing gay, if innocent (the j preface continues), is out of place in an annual in- tended to be used as a tribute of affection by the good ; and in this annual, hereafter, that view will be kept before the eye. Its contents will be opal-hued — re- flecting all the bright lights and colors which the prod- igality of God's open hand has poured upon the path- way of life." Edward S.Gould, one of the most distinguished of the merchant-author class so honorable to our country, has put forth an abridgment of "Alison's History of Europe.''' In a terse and strongly-written preface, he gives a resumer of the whole work, with a pungent criticism on its faults and injustices, showing that he (Gould) has not done his work " like a horse in a bark- mill," but with a proper spirit and with a clear insight. Of Alison's chapter on the American war he says, very justly, that "it is destined to a most unenviable noto- riety as a tissue of misrepresentation. As it has no legitimate connexion with the history of Europe, it is a gratuitous libel on the people and institutions of the United States, and as it could not be admitted into an American book without alterations contradictory to the title-page of this volume, it has been wholly omitted." Mr. Gould is the son of the eminent jurist, Judge Gould, of Connecticut, and is happy in having the energy (in addition to his business pursuits) to turn to account his fine natural powers and good edu- cation. He is one of the best of our translators, also, and the author of the new and humorous work, ".The Sleep-Rider in the omnibus." A great deal of fun, and as much genius and pri- vate worth, have just left the city in the person of Harry Placide, bound to New Orleans for a winter engagement. The people of the cis-Atlantic Paris are to be congratulated with all emphasis thereupon. It is equal to a day's allowance of sunshine to see him play at night. He knows humor, from elegant high comedy to irresistible farce — from a hair-line delinea- tion of the ridiculous to a charcoal sketch — and fails in nothing he undertakes. With the exception of Farren, who is only his equal, Placide is unrivalled on the English or American stage. I wish him well, and well back again. God bless him! I see copied into the "Literary Gazette and Quar- terly Advertiser" an article on "Macauley's Miscella- nies," which appeared some time since in a Boston 642 EPHEMERA. periodical, and struck me at the time as somewhat re- markable. A lecture on the habits and characters of literary men, which was quoted from in the Boston papers, has also attracted great attention by its bril- liancy and originality of view, and both these are by a very young business-man in Boston, Mr. E. P. Whip- ple. His mind is of the cast and calibre of the wri- ters for the English magazines often years ago, and I consider him a mine to be worked with great profit by the proprietors of the reviews. His kind is rare. I see that Jules Janin "fobs off" another annual upon us under the name of " The American in Paris." It is written in his sparkling vein, and translated, as sparkle always is translated, with a loss. The truth is, that an American gentleman of New York fell into Janin's company in Paris, and showed him some notes he had made of his Parisian amusements ; that the idea struck the great feuilletoniste of making this small diary the cover for a more detailed description of Paris than would otherwise seem " knowing," and the first having taken and sold, the second of a series has now appeared. Between Eugene Sue's real " Mysteries of Paris," and Janin's presentable drawing-room pic- tures of it, we may get a very fair idea of the gay capital. Janin's preface is written with the intention of being believed. He says : "Our American appears before you once more. Last year, at the same period, he described to you, in the best way he could, Paris- ian life during the brilliant months of winter. He had then arrived at the great city at the very moment when the closing days of autumn were disappearing beneath the yellow leaves. A traveller without affectation, he asked nothing more than to take his part in the sweet joys, lively emotions, and noisy pleasures of this world of the powerful and the rich ; he endured as well as he could the intoxications and the delirium of the masked ball — the thousand cross-fires of Parisian con- versation — the paradoxes, the slanders, and even the innocent calumnies that he saw around him — he en- tered into all ; he wished to see everything, and he fulfilled his wish. Not that he advanced very far into the mysteries of the good city ; but he stood, as one may say, on the edge of the wood, and thence he threw his curious and attentive look upon those gay and quickly-changing lights and shades. For a fellow- countryman of Franklin, our Yankee is certainly somewhat of an acute observer. What he did not see he guessed ; not sometimes without a certain discrim- ination and pertinence. That which we specially ad- mire in him, and which will not displease the reader, is a great fund of benevolence, a happy good-humor which has nothing affected about it, and an indiscri- bable entrain and rapture, which the greater part of the time keeps the reader awake. This is all that we can say in his favor, for we are not of the number of those tiresome editors who are always saying, 'Come and see a masterpiece ; come and salute a great man; the great man and the masterpiece were both invented by me.' We hope never to fall into this enthusiasm, which is very unbecoming in him who is its object. All our duty as editor we have faithfully fulfilled, and now it is for the book to defend itself. If by chance it is a good book, depend upon it the public will re- ceive it with favor. All our ambition is, that after having thoroughly admired the embellishments of Lami, you will read a few of those pages in which the translator has endeavored to reproduce somewhat of the grace, the vivacity, and the interest of the original book." I have made a long extract from the preface, but I thought it would amuse you to see how the cel- ebrated critic can talk about himself, with a transpa- rent mask over his face. A club howling-alley has been established in Broad- way, near Franklin street, most luxurious in all its ap- pointments — carpets, ottomans, dressing-rooms, &c. The families subscribing are of the most fashionable cliques, and no male foot is suffered to enter this gyne- sian gymnasium — the pins being set up by girls, and the attendance exclusively feminine. The luxuries remaining to our sex, up to the present time, are fencing and boxing — the usurpation of which is probably under consideration. The fashion, you would suppose, would scarcely gain by masculinify- ing, but the ladies are wearing broadcloth cloaks — for a beginning. There is another article of male attire which they have long been said to wear occasionally, but I am incredulous. Seeing would be believing. Mr. Kendall, the popular and adventurous editor of the Picayune, has been " Lucy-Long"-ing it some- what over his eagerly-expected book on Mexico, but has lately discovered that his celebrity would stand any halt in the trumpeting. He purchased recently a copy of Captain Marryat's new book, "Monsieur Vi- olet," to go to bed with of a rainy afternoon, and had the pleasure of lying on his back and reading his own adventures amplified in the best style.by the author of Peter Simple. Kendall's letters in the Picayune were, of course, the basis of the extended and illus- trated work he has in press, and this basis, Captain Marryat (who is a subscriber to the Picayune) has ta- ken bodily, and thereupon built his romance with but a small outlay of his own clapboards and shingles. An action of replevin for half the price of the captain's copyright would " he," I should think — at least in the court of equity. Mr. Kendall, I had nearly forgotten to say, is spoken ill of in one portion of the captain's book, and his rejoinder has appeared in the Courier. I have been looking through the new publication called " Etiquette, by Count D'Orsay." That D'Or- say revised the book and lent it his name " for a con- sideration," I think very possible, but there is, to my thinking, internal evidence in its style that he did not write it. There is an acquaintance with vulgarity, and a facility of " hitting it on the raw," which could only have been acquired by a conversance of fellowship with vulgar people, and D'Orsay knows as much of such matters as the thistle-down while afloat knows of the mud it floats over. Besides, the vulgarities are dwelt upon with a kind of unction totally foreign to D'Orsay's nature. He is a most kindly, as well as delicate and fastidious man, and his mind would in- stinctively avoid the knowledge of such matters, let alone the qualifying himself to describe them graphi- cally. From one or two little anecdotes told in the book, I trace its authority to a Mr. Abraham Hay- ward, a frequenter of many different strata of London society, and probably the best judge in England of what is "genteel," by knowing better than anybody in England what is vulgar. It is undoubtedly an in- valuable book, and circulated in one of these mam- moth editions at the shilling price, it will prepare Americans of all classes, if they sin against good man- ners at all, to sin with knowledge — taking away at least the ridicule of the matter. Dear pastoral-minded, centrifu gaily -bent, and mod- erately-well-off Reader, I address you "with all the honors," to be quite sure that my letter be not mis- applied. We, the parties in this correspondence, are neither rich nor poor — as they express it elegantly in EPHEMERA. 643 the mother-country, " neither nob nor snob." I would the critics had not the trick of calling the having one's own way " affectation;" else would I (simple though I am), coin for my own use, since the language is de- ficient in them, some of those epithets, descriptive of a class, which are at the same time so crisp, definite, and expressive. For instance : were I to address a letter to a young man of a certain style (a very preva- lent style indeed), and wish to convey from the first word my appreciation of the character at which I aimed, I should be compelled to use the following cir- cumlocution : My dear universally-benevolent — i. e. — spending-all-the-money-you-can-get-and-making-love- to-all-the-women-you-see, young man. Now, the French have a gracious and modest dissyllable for all this. The word erpansif expresses it all. How much briefer, and more courteous, in the case just supposed, could T commence in English with, My dear expansive ! Again : in English we should say, Oh, you-all-thin gs- to-all-men — ivho-say-you-have-no-prejudices — but-are- understood-by-your-friends-to-mean-no-principles ! but in German they phrase it, quite short, Oh, many-sided ! Understand me not as leaning at all to Carlyle's sys- tem of personification and word-linking. Two and three are five is better than Two and. Three died when Five was born, though this is but a moderate illustra- tion of Carlylism. I would introduce no new epithet that is not the essence of a phrase, no new-linked words that are not the chord of a circumlocutory arc. Touching my trade : — In the matter of pen-craft, I confess to a miserly disposition, yearly increasing. It is natural, I sup- pose, to tuck up close the skirts of those habits in which we run for our lives (or livings), and it is not in- consistent, I would fain hope, with prodigality of other belongings. In my college days, ere 1 discovered that a bore in my brains would produce any better metal than brass (bored since for " tin"), I had a most spendthrift passion for correspondence. Now — paid duly for my blotted sheet — I think with penitential avarice of the words I have run through ! People are apt to fancy it is a natural amusement — laborum dulce lenimen — for an author to write letters, epitaphs, &c. But there are two animals at least, who might differ from that opinion — the author, and the baker's horse, out on a Sunday's excursion, in the ba- ker's pleasure-wagon. The truth is, that the tax on authors, in this particular, is a disease in the literary system, and since it is not likely to be cured while the human race want autographs, epitaphs, epithalamia, and opinions on MSS., the solace seems to lie in the expediency of fat Jack — we should " turn the disease into commodity." If every third epitaph in the grave- yards of this country be not by the author of , &c, &c, all I can say is, there must be a very con- siderable number of gravestones; and I am only sorry that I did not take out copyrights from the start, and serve injunctions on plagiarizing stonecutters. Here is a letter now from a gentleman in Arkansas (whose grammar, by the way, is not very pellucid), informing me that his wife is dead, and giving me an inventory of her virtues ; and I am requested to write the lady's epitaph, and send it on in time for the expectant mar- ble. Of course I am extremely sorry the lady is dead, and since she was " such a pagoda of perfection," as Mrs. Ramsbottom would sny, very sorry I had not the pleasure of her acquaintance ; but my " head" is not " waters" (nor am I teetotaller enough to wish it were), and I can not weep for all the nice women who die, though grieved to think this particular style of person should diminish. Ours is a most romantic nation, for it would seem that there are few who do not think their private sorrows worthy of poetry, and the distinction between meurn and tuum (as to authors) having long ago been broken down by our copyright robberies, the time and brains of poets are considered common property. People, accustomed to call for poetry when they want it, look upon the poet, quoad hoc, as they do upon the town-pump, and would be as much surprised at a charge for poetry as for water. Possibly it is one of the features of a new country. I have lived in a neighborhood where the stopping of a man who should be taking what fruit he wanted from your garden, or what fuel he wanted from your woods, would surprise him as much as stopping his nostrils with corks, till he was off your premises ; and with fruit and fuel, perhaps, time and brains may assume a value. At present (it may as well be re- corded among the statistics of the country), poets, lumber, and watermelons, are among the " inaliena- ble rights of freemen." One of the lesser evils of this appetite for sympa- thy in rhyme, is the very natural forgetfulness of a man absorbed in grief, touching the trifle of postage. Reading a death in the newspaper affects me, now, like seeing myself charged with eighteen and three quarters cents at the grocer's. If I were writing from the " palace of truth," to one of my " bereaved hus- bands," I should still stoutly assure him of my sym- pathy, having lost one and sixpence by the same mel- ancholy event. My bill of mortality (postage, they call it) would frank me for boiled oysters at Flor- ence's, the year round, and, begging pardon of the survivors (not the oyster-shells), I should like it in that shape quite as well. Hereafter, I shall make an effort to transfer the ci- pher to the other side of the unit. If called upon to mourn (in black and white) for people I never before heard of, I propose to send my effusion as " commod- ity," to the first " enterprising publisher" who pays. Honor bright as to by-gones — let them be by-gones ! Indeed, they are mostly too personal to interest the public, one of the most felicitous of my elegies turn- ing (by request) on the deceased's "fascinating and love-inspiring lisps." But in all composed, after this date, I shall contrive so to generalize on the virtues and accomplishments commemorated, that the eulogy will apply promiscuously to all overrated relatives — , of course, forming, for a literary magazine, an attrac- tion which comes home to everybody's business and bosom. I may premise, by the way, that my adver- tisement to this effect would be addressed only to mourners of my own sex, and that ladies, as is hardly i necessary to mention, are supplied with epitaphs on ; their husbands, without publicity or charge ; though j it is a curious fact that my customers, in the epitaph | line, have hitherto been widowers only ! Whether widows choose usually some other vehicle for the I expression of their grief, preferring that it should be | recorded on tablets less durable than marble (pardon j me ! more durable !) I have no data for deciding. I merely contribute this fact also to statistics. "Pray, how does that face deserve framing and gla- zing ?" asked a visiter, to-day. The question had J been asked before. It is a copy from a head in some old picture — one of a series of studies from the ancient masters, lithographed in France. It represents a peas- ant of the campagna, and certainly, in Broadway, she | would pass for a coarse woman, and not beautiful for a coarse one. I have been brought to think the head coarse and plain, however, by being often called on to defend it. I did not think so when I bought it in a print-shop in London. I do not now, unless under catechism. To me, the whole climate of Italy is expressed in I the face of that Contadina. It is a large, cubical- I edged, massy style of feature, which, born in Scot- I land, would have been singularly harsh and inflexible. ! There is no refinement in it now, and, to he sure, lit- 644 EPHEMERA. tie mobility or thought — but it is a face iu which there is no resistance. That is its peculiarity. The heavy eyelid droops in indolent animal repose. The lips are drowsily sweet. The nostrils seem never to have been distended nor contracted. The muscles of the lips and cheeks have never tingled nor parched. It is a face on which a harsh wind never blew. If the woman be forty, those features have been forty years sleeping in balm — enjoying only — resisting, enduring, never. No one could look on it and fancy it had ever suffered or been uncomfortable, or dreaded wind or sun, summer or winter. A picture of St. Peter's — a mosaic of Paestum — a print of Vesuvius or the Cam- panile — none of the common souvenirs of travel would be to me half so redolent of Italy. By special favor I got a sight, while in Boston, of Crawford's statue of Orpheus, not yet open for public exhibition. As I stated in a former letter, the Athe- nceuni has, most appreciatively, erected anew building expressly for this work of art, and nothing remains to De done but the finishing of the walls of the interior. It is a lofty room, and the statue is placed on a pedes- tal of masonry (rather oddly I thought) in the corner. It was, unfortunately, badly packed at Florence, and when taken from the box, in Boston, the legs were found to be both broken off. Mr. Dexter, a young sculptor of singular mechanical dexterity, as well as promising genius (the author of the admirable bust of Dickens), was employed to restore it, and has done it wonderfully. It requires close examination to per- ceive the fracture, and the discoloration might easily be taken, even then, for stains in the marble, so evi- dently are the statuary lines preserved as the artist designed them. The statue is of the size of life — nude, with the exception of a short mantle, and sandals upon the feet. Orpheus is represented as just emerging from hell, and passing Cerberus, whom he has put to sleep with his music. The three-headed dog is " nid, nid, nodding" with his three heads, and either has two tails (which was not down in my mythology) or his unicaud is carefully combed away, madonna-wise, into two parts. The figure is bent over, like a man emer- ging from a cavern, and the right hand is held over the eyes as if to protect them from the sudden blaze of daylight, while the mantle is lifted from the back by the current of air rushing in, leaving the body and limbs, by this natural and poetical contrivance, nude for sculpture. The face of Orpheus, like the action and feeling of the limbs, expresses intent, but soft and subdued earnestness. It is an exquisitely beautiful youth, on the verge of manhood — slight, graceful, and bloomingly filled out; and I thought the body one of the most life-like and perfect representations of nature I had ever seen in marble. I presume the artist intended to represent Orpheus at the moment before he sends his wife back to hell by looking prematurely after her. (Query— moral ?) He holds the lyre, with which he has just charmed the infernals, upon his left hip, and the eager action, expressing the instant pre- ceding the completion of a desperate undertaking, is finely conceived, and breathed into sculpture. The only objection I could make to the statue was one that is simply a difference of conception, and, to his own, the artist is quite entitled. I expected a less effeminate person and countenance. Orpheus was an " old married man," and a reformer and lawgiver before Eurydice's fatal flirtation with Aristseus ; and his char- acter, both in fact and fable, in tradition and in Virgil's verse, was one of the most masculine and self-denying energy. He was a Grahamite, too (the only man of that age who would not eat flesh and eggs), and was finally torn in pieces by the women because he was an incorrigible widower — both which evince rather harsh qualities, and are not expressed in the Cupidon figure of Crawford's Orpheus. I am glad I have such trouble to find a fault, however, and I rejoice in the work al- together, as a most triumphant effort of American genius. I saw another fine piece of art in Boston — Harding's full-length portrait of Governor Seward. It carries conviction, at a first glance, that it is true to the life, and, indeed, a finer piece of work than the head can not be found in the portrait-painting of this country. It is breathing with character and individuality, and an absolute likeness, besides being faultless in color. The figure is correctly done, no doubt, but Jupiter himself in black coat and trousers would be unpicturesque, and Harding has done his possible, redeeming the hor- rors of modern costume a little by an ingenious and graceful disposition of the cloak. Beside this picture stood the most capital portrait of the country, I think — Harding's Allston. This "other self" of the departed poet-artist is about to be engraved in the best style of the art, I am happy to hear. Speaking of Allston, I was told in Boston that his funeral was by torch-light, after nine in the evening, and one of the most impressive and befitting ceremo- nies ever witnessed. He was laid on the bier, simply wrapt in his shroud and covered with a pall, and was borne on men's shoulders to the tomb, and there cof- fined. These differences from ordinary burial were ot his own directing some time before death. The wish to be excepted from the commonplace horrors of burial would be very natural to a mind like Allston's. The lecturing system, which the Evening Post thinks is dying by surfeit in New York, is in full vigor in Boston, and it was thought that Macready would have made more money at it than by theatricals. I think myself that lecturers should be rather differ- ently chosen, and that the object should be rather to come amusingly at the anatomy of society, than to hear the preaching-and-water of which the lectures are now delivered. Why not specify the subjects and choose the lecturer accordingly. If Sprague the cashier would lecture on the pathos of discount and the anxieties of investment; if the head-clerk in a retail dry-goods shop would unfold the inveiglements used for cheapening and getting credit (life across the counter, that is to say) ; if a fireman would give us the pros and cons of excitement and combination, esprit de corps, and what stimulant there would be in putting out fires for charity were other stimulants to fail ; if any intelligent business-man or mechanic would lec- ture simply on the threads of society and common life which he lives by pulling — why, then, it seems to me, lectures would be entertaining, and in no danger of being thinly attended. The greatest mysteries of life are the common linings of common brains, and since people are tired of the "turning out to the sun" of the satin and velvet of refinement and education, it would be well to come to the plainer stuffs without ceremony. A lecturer hired to pick each trade and profession of its mysteries, by diligent inquiry, and to embody these mysteries in presentable elocution, might do a thriving business. I was talking of pictures just now. A Boston mer- chant told me that he had made a considerable spec- ulation lately by sending fifty "copies of the old mas- ters" (imported Italian pictures) to California ! He chanced to be passing a shop where they were to be put up at auction, and bought the lot, fifty paintings, at ten dollars each, frame and all. They sold to the EPHEMERA. 645 CalifomiUers at a great profit. But the original faith in the speculation is the miracle of the business. The influenza is raging in Boston, everybody talking thick through the nose. I never saw such universality of grippe. The air in New York is as pitiless and penetrating as a search-warrant, but it seems to have the wholesomeness of the " Etesian breezes," and a bad cold I started with from Boston left me somewhere in the Sound, for I arrived without it. Perhaps, like Eurydice, it turned back at Hellgate. The pulse of Broadway is accelerated to fever-beat. There is good sleighing in the white margins of that long page of black-letter, and the astonished coal and smoke at weathercock level is doubtless agitated vio- lently with the change from the contralto monotone of wheels to the "frightful tintamarre" of bell-metal. Sidewalks wet and slippery. A very short absence from a great city unhinges one's metropolitan habitude, and on returning, one looks at the placards on the walls as one does at the features of a long-absent friend, doubtful of what de- gree of change these superficial lines may be the ex- ponents. None but your diurnal cit reads playbills with indifference and incredulity ! The writing on the walls just now is, more than usual, flowery in its promises of amusement, and though " promising is the very air o' the time," and " performance is ever the dul- ler for his act," I wanted last night a Mephistophilian ubiquity — the temptations were so many. Niblo's equestrian pageants are glowingly advertised, and said to be very splendid. New dancing-girls at the Chat- ham — new fun at Mitchell's Olympic — concerts in all directions — lectures more than plenty — fortune-tellers and jugglers, dwarfs and fat children, new oyster pal- aces, and all manner of balls, bewilder the eye of the street passenger with their rhetoric of placard. Macready was playing Werner at the Park last night, and I looked in for a few moments. The house was about half full. As I entered he was commencing the long passage of reproach to Ulric, which he utters throughout at the tip-toe agony scream. A smart friction of the tympanum of the ear with a nutmeg- grater would be an emollient in comparison. Why should this accomplished actor aggravate his defects so painfully ! That pipe of his would have been a disqualification for any viva-voce vocation to the mind of a less persevering man, but it seems to me that its dissonance might be abated by the degree of disci- pline he is willing to practise on other capabilities. He was well supported, by the way, by Miss Cushman. Mrs. Sloman has given place to this lady and returned to the shades of the past generation. Her Orpheus, Mr. Simpson, will not go after her again, it is to be hoped. A sudden impulse, as I came out of the theatre, led me to the discovery of a new milliners'-land in New York, the existence of which, "minion of the lamps" as I have been, I had not suspected. I jumped into an omnibus that was passing, with a mere curiosity to see how far into the orient the brilliant shops of East Broadway extended. "We passed by the terra cognita of Catharine street and Chatham, and their pictu- resque sellers of chestnuts by torch-light, and kept up the well-lighted avenue of the Bowery, when (to my momentary disappointment) the omnibus turned suddenly to the right, down Grand street. As the brilliancy of the lamps and shop-windows did not diminish, however, I kept my seat, and, to my sur- prise, rode on through a new Broadway which seemed to me interminable. I got out at last to walk back and look at it more leisurely. The shops on the south side were nearly all those of milliners and fancy- article dealers, differing from those of Greenwich street, on the other side of the city, in being smaller, brighter-colored in the array of goods (as if minister- ing to a gaudier taste), and more in the style of street stalls, such as are common in small Italian towns. There was another primitive peculiarity in the appa- rent custom in that region, for the whole family to wait behind the counter. In one very crowded and low-raftered shop, the sign of which was " Cheap Jemmy," the mother and half a dozen stout daugh- ters were all busy waiting on customers, while a child in arms was dandled by a little girl sitting by the stove. Everything about the shop was of the strictest school of the thrifty primitive. Seeing a pretty and intelligent- looking milliner with her hands crossed over the glass case on her counter, a few doors from "Cheap Jem- my," I went in and bought a pair of gloves, for the sake of asking a question or two. She said rents were much cheaper in Grand street than in the other shopping streets of the city, and goods proportionally cheaper. The colored people do their shopping prin- cipally there. She was not acquainted s»t all in Grand street. When she wanted to go out she got into an omnibus and went down town. Altogether, the Grand street shops are unlike the other parts of the city — gayer and more picturesque — and life seems to be centralized and crowded together there, as if it were a suburb across a river. I must give you some notion of the geography of this quarter. Imagine Manhat- tan to be a man-with-a-hat-on (Union square the hat), lying on his back, with Castle Garden for a bunnion on his great toe, Broadway would be his spine and intestinal canal, Chelsea and Greenwich his right arm, Grand street his outstretched left arm, the Tabernacle and Tombs, City Hall and Park, his rotund corpora- tion, spleen, liver, &c. In ancient times the resem- blance would have been seized upon at once for a deification. A chef d'auvre of daguerreotype is in preparation. The senate-chamber is to be engraved after photo- graphs in the best style of Apollo, Chilton, and Edwards ! These gentlemen (the god of light not the least enterprising and efficient of the three) have in preparation a magnificent engraving of the senators in appropriate positions, after the manner of some of the finest English prints. This is a bold and beautiful undertaking, and from the" known skill 3nd enterprise of these gentlemen, will doubtless be successfully accomplished. Whether an adequate recompense can be realized in this country remains to be seen. Most of the miniatures for this engraving were ob- tained at the daguerreotype gallery of these gentle- men, and theirs is an art particularly suited to the transfer of the strong lineaments of senatorial faces. The engraving will be a curiosity. A celebrated artist is to be employed for the grouping. Late last night, the Norwegian, Ole Bull (pro- nounced Olay Bull), did the magnanimous, and yield- ed the use of one of the world's entire evenings to his rival, Vieux-lemps, whose concert comes off", there- fore, as announced, this evening. I shall go to hear him, and will tell you all I can fathom in what I hear. I do not believe that the leaven of cognoscenti, which " leavens the whole lump" into rapture with these performers, amounts to more than three people in an audience of three thousand, and I think that even those three would be puzzled to distinguish be- 646 EPHEMERA. tween Wallace, Ole Bull, and Vieux-temps, if they played the same pieces behind a screen. (I do not mention Artot, because he plays to the heart exclu- sively.) Nobody with nerves can sit out a concert, it is true, without having the keys of tears occasionally swept over, as a child, thrumming a piano, will occasionally produce a sweet or mournful combination of sounds by accident. But because our eyes are once or twice moistened, and because we occasionally feel that the corner of the veil is twitched which separates us from the chainless articulation we ache after, it is no sign that we at all comprehend the drift of the player's meaning, or see into the world of complex harmony whither he gropes but confusedly himself. I have not heard the violin of Ole Bull, but I have talked with him for an hour or two, and I think he is one of the most inspired creatures (and I should have thought so if I had met him as a savage in the woods) whose conversation I have ever listened to. He talks a braided language of French, Italian, and English, plucking expression to himself with a clutch; and though he moulds every idea with a powerful origi- nality, he evidently does not give birth to more than a fraction of what is writhing in his brain. If there were a volcano missing in Norway, I should fancy we had encountered it on its travels — the crater not pro- vided for in its human metempsychosis. Probably Ole Bull finds his violin a much more copious vent than language, for his imprisoned lava — but to coin that lava into language as he pours it out in tangled chromatics, would be to comprehend his music, and that, I say again, is not done by more than three in three thousand, if done at all! I told him I should like to hear him play a I'improvista, after he had seen Niagara, and upon that he gave me a description of wild Norwegian scenery, describing how he had tried to utter in music the effect it had produced upon him — gave it me with a " fine phrensy," that pulled hard (and I should like to know the philosophy of that) upon the roots of my hair. There is something weird and supernatural about the man. Mechanical dexterity on the violin has as much to do with music, I believe, as drawing a bank-check has to do with credit at the bank — a very necessary part of the matter, but owing its value entirely to what has gone before. Music is mind expressed in one of the half-dozen languages we possess — and as capable of logic and transfer into words, as painting or poetry, or expression of feature and gesture. Ole Bull, when playing, has (or ought to have) an explainable argu- ment in his mind, and the bridge wanting between him and his audience is a translation of his musical argument into language — given before or after the performance. This he could easily do. At present, it is, to the audience, like a most eloquent oration in an unknown tongue— comprehensible only to the or- ator. I have elsewhere mentioned, that while at Vien- na, 1 saw a self-educated philosopher at the institute, who was discovering the link between music and ge- ometry. He took a pane of glass and covered it sparsely with dry sand, and then, by drawing a par- ticular note upon the edge with a fiddle-bow, he drove the sand by the vibration into a well-defined circle, or triangle, or square — whichever we chose of half-a-dozen geometrical figures. I have looked ever since, to hear of an advancement in this phase of da- guerreotype. Once reduced to a grammar, music would be as articulate as oratory, and we should be able to distinguish its sense from its gibberish. In person, Ole Bull is a massive, gladiator-like creature, rather uncouth, passionately impulsive in his manners, and with a confused face, which only becomes legible with extreme animation. Wide- awake, he is often handsome — fast-asleep, he is doubt- less as plain as a Norwegian boulder-stone. If he ever work his musical logic up to his musical impulse and execution, he will hang the first lamp in the dark- est chamber of human comprehension. I have two more steps to announce to you in the advance of the gynocracy. There is a gymnasium in the upper part of Broadway, where the ladies don the Turkish costume, and are taught sparring and climbing in jackets and loose trousers. Greatcoats with a snug fit to the back are superseding cloaks for ladies' out-of-door wear. "Merciful heavings!" as Dick Swiveller would say. I have been looking over a file of English papers, published at Canton, China, in which I find that the interpreter to the French consulate has obtained a copy of the famous Chinese dictionary, which is an encyclopedia of the history, sciences, arts, habits, and usages of the Chinese, composed at the commence- ment of the eighteenth century by order of the em- peror Ram-hi. A very small number of these was printed, for the emperor and principal functionaries of the empire only. It is to be reprinted immediately, with a French and English translation. Mr. Cushing goes there in a good time for finding the material he will want for researches, literary and political. It is curious how much may be born of "a scrape" between catgut and horsehair! We have had two nights of violin-phrensy, and applause, for a trick with a fiddle-bow, that would have embalmed the heart of Demosthenes within him. The beau monde has given a fair hearing to the rival elbows, and, by ac- clamation, at least, Ole Bull has it. As it is the rage, and, as even sages take interest in rages, perhaps I had better "make a clean breast," and tell you all I know about it — albeit, like barley-water, if the fever were cured, it would be unpalatable slop. The conversation of the town, of course, is largely embroidered with the concernings of these fiddle- monsters, and news, as you know, is stripped, like corn, of much of its picturesque outer husk and silk- en lining before it is ground into paragraph-cakes sent to be devoured at a distance. Ole Bull is not simply Ole Bull, but a star with four satellites — his grim keeper, his handsome secretary, his messenger, and his lacquey. The door of his parlor at the Astor is beset, antechamber-fashion, from morning till night, with orchestra-people, people from the music-shops, and all the tribe who get fat upon the droppings o( enthusiasm. What he says is made into anecdotes, and wherever he goes follows the digito monstrari. There is an aristocracy of catgut, however, and Artot and Vieux-temps look upon Ole Bull as the house of lords look upon O'Connell, and greet him as the rocks do the rising tide. Artot has been a king's page, and Vieux-temps is, I believe, a chevalier decore, and both of them have the porcelain air. The French population of New York make a " white-and-red- rose" business of it; and it was remarked last night that there was not a Frenchman to be seen at Ole Bull's concert. Artot is quite a minion of popularity with the fashionables — his expressive eyes and senti- mental elegance probably the raison pourquoi. Vieux-temps's first concert on Monday night was a very stylish jam. He is a small, pony-built man, with gold rings in his ears, and a face of genteel ugliness, but touchingly lugubrious in its expression. With his violin at his shoulder, he has the air of a husband undergoing the nocturnal penance of walking the room with "the child" — and performing it, too, with unaffected pity. He plays with the purest and cold EPHEMERA. 647 est perfection of art, and is doubtless more learned on the violin than either of the rival performers, but there is a vitreous clearness and precision in his notes that would make them more germaine to the humor of before breakfast than to the warm abandon of ves- per-tide. His sister travels with him (a pretty blonde, very unlike him), and accompanies him on the piano. Ole Bull's concert was deferred till last evening, and the immense capacity of the Tabernacle was filled to suffocation. He appeared after the usual appetiser of an overture, and was received with a tumult. Ver- ily, he is made for a "tribune of the people!" The angel who "makes men politic" never moulded a creature more native to the central plane of popular- ity. A splendid animal — herculean and graceful — a faculty of looking, at the same time, overpowered and self-possessed — an unlimited suavity full of reserve — calm lips and wild eyes — cool dexterity and desperate abandonment to his theme — he would have done as well at anything else as at music. He is what Mrs. Ramsbottom would call a " natural pagoda." It is presumptuous in a layman of the religion of music to attempt a critical distinction between these two or three first violinists of the world. Anybody can see differences in their playing, but only a mu- sician can define the degrees in which they differ. 016 Bull's violin seems to have been made where horses and cats were of a wilder breed. He gets out of it a peculiar quality of note, not at first quite satis- factory to the ear, but approaching articulate language as it departs from the glassy melody drawn from the instrument by others. [ have no doubt that, to him- self, the instrument is as good as articulate. He ex- pects it to talk intelligibly to others; and it would, possibly, to those who knew music and heard him often. I proposed to him in conversation, what I think would test the expression of his music very fairly — the transfer of Collins's Ode on the Passions to the violin. The audience could then follow him, as they do an opera by a translated libretto. Wallace is about to enter the field against the vio- linists, many of the musical people here being quite persuaded that he plays as well as any of them. He is certainly the greatest pianist we ever had in Amer- ica, and he is really embarrassed between the two in- struments — the very highest degree of excellence re- quiring complete devotion to one only. He and Ole Bull met one evening at the duke of Devonshire's in London, but without hearing each other play, and they have run together, here, like drops of water — similar in quality and degree of genius, as well as in impulsive and poetical disposition. They met in Bull's room an evening or two since and played du- ets on the piano and violin, solos, &c, till morning. Wallace likes New York so well that he has deter- mined to make it his residence, publishing his exquis- ite musical compositions here, &c. He is a great ac- cession to the musical world, as he is a large essen- tial drop added to the soul resident in this great mass of human life. I offer him one man's welcome. I understand the piano rage is the next thing to come off, and that Lizst and Thalberg are positively coming over. Taking musical accomplishment in such large slices as we do, our vast country is likely to become the main body-corporate of the music of the world. It pays better than any other field of mu- sical enterprise now. Happy New-tear! — Shake hands! Exchange congratulations! Be merry ! Be happy! Another year is gone! It is poetry to regret the past — only poetry. Rejoice that the incumbrance of another year is thrust behind — that another gate onward is flung open — that though this youth is passing or past, you are by so much nearer to a new youth beyond — ■ and better and brighter, as well as beyond. There is no instinct of regret for the past. Spite of Heath brought nearer, and the shroud unfolded to receive us — spite of Decrepitude and Neglect and Pain rising up like phantoms in the way — ice are happy to grow old. The soul rejoices. New-year! New-year! Death closer, but something the soul yearns after coming at his heels! Who, upon impulse, would re- tard time ! Who would — instinct only consulted — go back! Eternal progress is the thirst of life, as it is of the whole eternity of which life is a part. The world says so by acclamation. The old year's death is the festival of universal instinct. Visit your friends! Brighten the links between you ! Forgive slights, neglects, injuries! Go laughing through the gate of the new year! The Hebrew Benevolent Society had a very bril- liant dinner on Thursday, I understand, and drew a large contribution for its excellent objects from the present possessors of the "divining-rod" — the violin- ists. Ole Bull, whose heart is as prodigal as his ge- nius, and who gives money to street-beggars by the handful, gave a hundred dollars, and Vieux-temps and Wallace agreed to combine in a charity-concert. The other contributions, I understand, were correspond- ingly liberal. One of the essays, the most ad rem that I have lately seen, is an address on the "Prevention of Pau- perism," by a relative of the late Dr. Channing. The preface has a certain bold resignation about it which is very idiosyncratic. Mr. Channing says that he was desired to read a discourse before a society for the prevention of pauperism, and agreed to try to do so — but he did not know to what he had pledged him- self. He then defines very philosophically what he found, upon reflection, was to be his task, and goes on to say : — "I went to work. That which might, in the read- ing, be endured forty minutes, grew to twice that al- lotted time, or more ; and when the day came for the anniversary, 1 found I could not read the half I had set down. The auditory was very small; and the few, at first, were less before the forty minutes were up. The contribution-boxes came- to the church- altar with little weight of metal, and few bills — say about twenty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents, all told. Thus was my work accounted little and paid harmoniously. But some, a very few, have asked me to print my writing. From so small a company a large request could hardly come. I have done what those few friends have asked me to." The address is very philosophic, though tinctured with peculiar views of the social system. The lead- ing propositions, which are very eloquently illustra- ted, are worthy the room they will take in these col- umns, if it were only as a skeleton map of the sub- ject carefully laid out, and available for the guidance of inquirers : — "1st. That every social institution, or custom, which separates man from man — which produces dis- tinct classes in the community, having distinct priv- ileges — which is daily occupied to build higher and stronger the partition-walls between men — such insti- tution, or custom, I say, produces and continues pov- erty. "2d. That the political institutions of society, or their administration, frequently become causes of the extremest and widest national poverty. "3d. That the spirit of party, so widely and deeply cherished as it is by society, does, by its exclusiveness^ 648 EPHEMERA. its selfishness, and its intolerance, minister directly to I the production and continuance of poverty. "4th. That such employment of capital by society, as in its products ministers only to the most debasing habits, does directly produce and continue crime and poverty. "5th. The sudden reduction of wages, extended to large numbers, is not only directly injurious to wide interests, but produces pauperism. "6th. That in a country like ours, in which the law of entail does not exist to make property a per- manent possession in families, a system of education which has regard only to simple mental culture, and which leaves the physical powers uncultivated — in which manual labor, a practical knowledge of farm- ing, or the mechanic arts, forms no part — I say that such a system of early education favors the produc- tion of pauperism." Apropos of beggars — the system of ingenious beg- gary, so curiously described in Grant's "Great Me- tropolis," is beginning to be tried on in New York. There is one young lady (of very correct habits, I believe, in point of fact) who maks a living by means that wear a somewhat questionable complexion, out of "distinguished strangers." A member of congress, or a diplomatist in transit, for example, receives a note, the day after his arrival is advertised, in a hand- writing of singular beauty. In the most graceful lan- guage, and with the daintiest use of French phrases, he is informed that a young lady who has long watch- ed his career with the deepest interest — who has a feeling for him which is a mystery to herself — who met him accidentally in a place she will recall to his memory, should she be so fortunate as to see him again — who is an unhappy creature of impulse, all too fondly tender for this harsh world and its construc- tions — would like to see him on a certain sidewalk between eight and nine. By holding his hand across his left breast, he will be accosted at that time and place. The ladylikeness and good taste of the note, so different from the usual tentatives of that descrip- tion, breed a second thought of curiosity, and the victim is punctual. After a turn or two on the ap- pointed sidewalk, he encounters a tall young lady, deeply veiled, who addresses him by name, takes his arm, and discourses to him at first on his own am- bitious history, contriving to say the true and flatter- ing thing, for which she has duly informed herself. She skilfully evades his attempts to make her talk of things more particular, and regretting feelingly that she can only see him on the sidewalk, appeals to his "well-known generosity" for ten dollars to keep her and her dear mother from being turned out of doors. She takes it with tremulous pathos, demands of his honor that he will not follow her, and slips round the corner to meet another "distinguished stranger" with whom she has appointed an interview fifteen minutes later in the next street ! I was in a company of stran- gers at a hotel not long ago, when one of these dainty notes was produced, and it so happened that every man present had one in his pocket from the same hand! Among the party there were four appoint- ments proposed by the same lady, to come off on the four sides of a certain square, for that evening ! She is probably doing a good business. There has been a certain most eligible shop, with a most impracticable rent (3 Astor house, rent $1,000), for a long time vacant. Yesterday the broad doors were thrown open, and an effulgent placard announced it as the depot of the Columbian Magazine. The new periodical lay upon the counter in a most Chap- man-esque cover, lettered gorgeously in vermillion and azure, with a device of Columbus on his pedestal, John Inman, editor, in the blue of the scroll, and Is- rael Post, publisher, in the vermilion of the supporting tablet. (This arrangement is wrong, if there be any meaning in colors, for the ingredients of vermilion are sulphur and quicksilver — stuff of better prophecy for an editor than a publisher.) I understand that' the foundations of this new magazine are thirty thousand dollars deep, and as there is great store of experience in both publisher and editor, it is likely to crowd Gra- ham and Godey — though it will require almost an "avatar of Vishnu" to crush those giants of monthly literature. We are to see whether magazine-popu- larity is like the oil from the glass tomb of Belus — which, once exhausted, never could be refilled. The history of the monthlies, for the last few years, forms a chapter by itself of American progress. It is but a very short time since the "dolhr-a-page" of the North American Review was magnificent pay, and considered quite sufficient for articles by Edward Ev- erett ! The old New York Mirror paid five hundred dollars a year for the original "Pencillings by the Way" — the republication of which has paid the au- thor five thousand. Nathaniel Greene, of the Boston Statesman, was the only man I could hear of, in 1827, who paid regularly for poetry, and I have heard that Percival was kept from starving in New York by sel- ling his splendid poem on the plague for five dollars!' I lost some of the intermediate steps of literary valu- ation, but I think the burst on author-land of Gra- ham's and Godey's liberal prices was like a sunrise without a dawn. They commenced at once paying their principal contributors at the rate of twelve dol- lars a page — nearly three times the amount paid by English magazines to the best writers, and paying it, too, on the receipt of the manuscript, and not, as in London, on the publication of the article. We owe to these two gentlemen the bringing out of a host of periodical talent, which, but for their generous and prompt pay, would have remained dormant, or em- ployed in other channels; and they should be record- ed as the true and liberal pioneers of progress in this branch of literature. They have done very much the same thing with regard to engraving and the encour- agement of the arts, and I believe the effect they have produced on the refinement of the country has been worthy of note — their beautiful books having been sent into its remotest corners by their unprecedented circulation. The prices paid now to acceptable magazine-wri- ters are very high, though the number of writers has increased so much that there are thousands who can get no article accepted. There are so many people, too, who, like the Ancient Mariner, are under the dire compulsion to tell their tale — paid or not paid — that any periodical, with a good furbisher and mender, may fill its pages, for nothing, with very excellent reading. A well-known editor once told me that he could make a \ery good living by the sums people were willing to pay to see themselves in print. The cacoethes scribendi would doubtless support — does doubtless support — a good many periodicals. Ole Bull played to another crammed audience at the Park last night, but the angel or demon impris- oned in this violin was not tractable. If it had been his first appearance, be would have made a losing trip to America. There was a tone in the applause which showed very clearly that his music was turned back at the inner vestibule of the ear. He will probably redeem himself to-night at the Tabernacle — his clo- sing concert. I hear great complaints that the canvass-back ducks are not of as good flavor as usual this year. Will EPHEMERA. 649 you tell us the pourquoi— or whether it is that the wild-celery is not in perfection this season? My own experience goes the other way— for such delicious ducks, so deliciously dressed, 1 never saw, as lately at "Guy's Monument house," in Baltimore. He is a fit cook for Apicius, it is true, and perhaps his sauce deceived me. But the canvass-back is part of our national honor, and the causes of falling off should be looked after. I am delighted to see that our great comedian, Harry Placide, is up to the lips in success and popu- larity in INew Orleans. God bless those southern people — they know a good thing when they see it! The theatres there are a kind of last appeal — confirm- ing just appreciation, and reversing very often the cold injustice of the north. Wallack is gone there now, and he will come away with warm pockets. Burton, the comedian, is also in migration — a man of genius with his pen, and a most attractive actor. I wish we could have a good rollicking season of good acting at the Park, and go in deep for old-fashioned close criti- cism. I sent you a paragraph yesterday which T am anx ious to overtake with another — though the paragraph- chase, especially if the pursuer be a correction of an error, is much more desperate than the shadow's hope of overtaking the substance. Ole Bull, to my think- ing (corroborated since by the opinions of some mu- sical people), played without his inspiration the last night he played at the Park, and so I stated. At the Tabernacle on Tuesday night, his violin-fiend (or an- gel) was at home, and so completely did he search every chamber of my sense of musical delight, and so triumphantly drive out all unbelief, and fill me with passionate admiration and wonder at his skill and power, that I feel a certain compunctious reproach for ever having qualified my homage. One of his themes was a rhapsody of religious music, composed by himself, and, without irreverence, it seemed to me that St. John, in the Apocalyptic vision, could scarcely have been within the compass of music more rapt and unearthly. More than four thousand people held their breath in ravished ecstacy with this performance, 1 and the only drawback to my own rapture was the I conviction that, transparent and articulate as was the ( meaning of every note, to translate it into language the poet must first be himself translated — to the sphere and capabilities of an angel. You will think that I, too, am " bit by the dipsas" — but I, at least, gave up my soul to this Ole Bull madness with some reluc- tance. Genius-like, the Norse magician is journalier, as the French say ; but I pray that when he shall play at Washington he may " give a rise" to the embodied intellect of the capital which will show them a heaven above politics. The Hibernia has brought me a gossiping letter or two from England ; and, by way of letting you down softly from the balloon-flight of the paragraph foregoing, I will quote you a passage from the clever hand of our friend S , the artist, now resident in London, and fully employed in transferring aristo- cratic beauty to ivory. Buckwheat and molasses, it should be premised, are undiscovered luxuries to the Londoners, and it is pleasant and apposite, at this par- ticular season, when these friandises are in conjunc- tive culmination, to see how they loom in the travel- ler's memory. Says our friend : — "So you have taken up your abode at the Astor. You have done well. There are many good things it the Astor; above all. the buckwheats; and I can fancy you at this moment, while I am breaking my fast upon a flabby ' French roll' (so called because no bread of the kind was ever seen in France), with a pile of them smoking before you, and pouring over them, with a liberal hand, copious libations of that exquisite, delicate, transparent molasses which the As- tor alone provides, and which has always reminded me of the wine of the veiled prophet — 'No juice of earth is here, But the pure treacle of that upper sphere Whose rills o'er ruby beds and topaz flow, Catching the gem's bright color as they go.' " A letter from a literary friend in London informs me that Lady Blessington is suffering from a lethargy from which she finds it next to impossible to arouse herself for literary labor. The society she lives in draws very exhaustingly upon her powers of atten- tion, and she has been all her life one of those who " crowd a year's life into a day." My friend adds: — " You had some expectation of seeing D'Orsay in America, but he never had any intention of going out. He has been a prisoner for the last two years in Lady Blessington's house, at Kensington. There is an acre or two of garden, as you know, in the rear, shut in with a wall high enough to keep out creditors, and here D'Orsay takes his exercise on horseback. He devotes himself entirely to painting, making portraits of his friends and receiving money for them — in short, making a profession of it. Every Saturday night, at twelve o'clock, precisely, his cab is at the door, and he drives to his club, and on Sundays he is to be seen in the park, driving with Lady Blessington and her two exquisitely beautiful nieces (the Misses Power) — taking care to be home again, like Cinderella, before twelve o'clock at night. Not long ago, a meeting of his friends took place, and an effort was made to re- lieve him. They subscribed twenty thousand pounds, which would have given his creditors four shillings in the pound. The proposal was made, and the credit- ors refused to accept. The subscription was conse- quently abandoned." There is an article afloat upon the raft of fugitive literature ("a stick of timber among the flood ( — ) trash," as they say on the Susquehannah) which is worth hauling ashore and preserving — Parke God- win's Essay on Shelley, in the Democratic Review. It comes from a mind of the finest powers of analysis and the warmest glow of poetical appreciation, and if we had in our country the class of well -patronized sober magazines which they have in England, this writer's pen and Whipple's would be the two best worth paying in the country, for that kind of article. Ticknor cf Co. have republished a volume of devo- tional poetry by Dr. Bowring, called Matins and Ves- pers. It is pure, even, moderately-inspired, and schol- ar-like poetry — of the best quality for family reading. The doctor's pursuits are all on a lofty level — philan- thropy, patriotism, emancipation, and religion — and if his other faculties (all of which are of more than re- spectable calibre) were as largely developed as his veneration, he would be the moral Washington of his era. The last time I saw him he was in a great rage with a certain Yankee, who, upon very cool acquaint- ance, had drawn at sight upon his hospitality, by hav- ing himself and his baggage set down in the doctor's entry, and sending in the servant to borrow money to pay his coach-fare from Liverpool ! With the ex- 650 EPHEMERA. ception of this private-life " repudiator," however, he is a great admirer of America and Americans. The Langleys have got up a most presentable and elegant edition of the poems of Eliza Cook — the most fireside and home-like of modern poets. There is a great deal in this volume that will touch the " busi- ness and bosoms" of the many. Mrs. Osgood (her- self a poetess of the affections, and wanting nothing but a little earth in her mixture) gives a sketch of Miss Cook in the preface, which is as good as a per- sonal introduction. "When the " last page" morning arrives, dear read- er, we, for the first time in the week, pull the •* stop politic" in our many-keyed organ of livelihood-ma- king, and muse a little on expediency while the ink dries upon our pen. This morning — this particular morning — we chance to have "belayed," as the sail- ors say, " a loose halliard" in our rigging, and in cast- ing an eye " a-low and aloft," to see how it draws upon the canvass, we have determined to alter a little our trim and ballast. You are our passenger, dear reader, and our object is to make the voyage agreea- ble to you, and the query is, therefore, how much you would be interested in these same details of trim, bal- last, and rigging. Our coffee stands untasted (for we write and breakfast, as an idle man breakfasts and dawdles, all along through the up-hill of the morning), and our omelet must cool while we amputate one horn of this dilemma. "We have never explained (have we ?) that as an ar- tist needs a "lay-figure" whereon to adjust drapery and prepare effects, an editor in the fancy line (our line) requires a personification, from the mouth of which he may speak with the definite identity of an individual. There are a thousand little whims and scraps of opinion kicking about the floor of common- place, which, like bits of cloth and riband, might be pinned on to a drapery with effect, though worthless if simply presented to you in a bundle. A periodical needs to be an individual — with a physiognomy that is called up to the mind of the subscriber, and ima- gined as speaking, while he reads. An apple given to you by a friend at table is not like an apple taken from the shelf of a huckster. An article on the lead- ing topic of the day, in a paper you are not accustomed to, is not read as the same article would be in your favorite periodical. The friend's choice alters the taste and value of the apple, as the individual editor's selection or approbation gives weight and value to the article. The more you are acquainted with your editor — even though, in that acquaintance, you find out his faults — the more interest you feel in his weekly visit, and the more curiosity you feel in what he offers you to read. What made the fortune of Blackwood but " Christopher North's" splendid ego- tism ! A magazine without a distinct physiognomy visible through the type of every page, has no more hold on its circulation than an orchard on the eaters of apple-tarts. And if the making of this physiogno- my visible be egotism, then is egotism in an apothe- cary's sign, or in the maker's name in your boot-leg. There is, of course, a nice line to be drawn between the saying that of editorial self which every reader would like to know, and the incurring the deserved charge of egotism ; and it was by that line exactly that we were trying to navigate in the dilemma with which we started. Should we — or should we not — bother the reader's brain with what was bothering our- selves ? To a limited and bearable degree, then, we will. We determined to live by periodical literature, and we came to New York prepared, of course, to unship the wings of our Pegasus and let him trot — if trotting is "the go" — quite sure that if he is worth keeping, his legs are as sound as his feathers. It is one thing to be " willing to come to the scratch," however, and another thing to find out definitely where the scratch is. We were prepared to turn owl and armadillo — to be indefatigable in our cage, and abroad only by night — to live on one meal a day — to be editor, proof-reader, foreman, and publisher, and as many other things as we could get out of life, limb, and twenty-four hours — prepared for any toil and self-denial — in short, to quash debt and keep up the Mirror. Excellent vir- j tue entirely thrown away ! The Mirror rose as easy j as the moon, went on its way rejoicing, and is now out of the reach of kites, rockets, and steeples ! Which way lay — then — the dragons to vanquish ? This brings us to the head and front of our dilemma. Personal slan- der is the only obstacle in American literature. So be it ! "We do not complain of it. We have not the presumption to be above our country. Araer- | ica demands of her literary children that they should ! submit to calumny — demands it in the most emphatic J of all voices, by her support of the presses which in- j flict it. "We agree. We can not make shoes, though ; to that trade there is no such penalty. We should throw away our apprenticeship, if we attempted to live, now, by any but the one trade whose household gods are outlawed. We honor our country. We will live by American literature, with its American draw- back. We can suffer as much as another man. We are no coward. We will step into the arena, and let the country, that looks on, decide upon the weapons and terms of combat. Yet still there is a dilemma. We have Iried for fifteen years the silent system — the living dozen slanders, as the watchman wakes down the stars that rise again in twelve hours. The only exception to our rule occurred in England, where an English pen assumed a few American mis- statements — and being "among the Romans," we did as they do in such cases — got the necessary retraction through the " law of honor." Lately, as perhaps the reader knows, we have taken a fancy to see whether there was any difference between public opinion and the law, as to the protection of literary men against slander. The author of a particular set of slanders we chanced to light upon for the experiment, is, we ' understand, a clergyman and an abolitionist, and, ! though we have literally proved that he published j seven or eight direct lies against our private char- acter, we are condemned by many of the press for what they call " Coopering an editor," and one paper in Philadelphia attacks our defence of our own char- acter as a shallow piece of ostentation, got up for effect! We humbly ask which is most agreeable to the public ? Do they like it submitted to silently, or do they prefer it defended, by dragging our private life with all its details into the street? We will ac- commodate them — for we must live in the country we were born in, and live by literature ! One of the most beautiful sights I have lately seen was the spread for the New England dinner in the large dining-room of the Astor. It wonld have given, even to a " picked man of countries," a heightened standard of sumptuousness in banquet — in fact (and republicans may as well know it), royal entertainments in Europe beat it by nothing but the intrinsic value of the table service. Galleries were erected for ladies behind the columns at either end of the hall, and "all went merry as a marriage bell." It struck me that the " old Plymouth rock" was a little too much hammered upon, and, indeed, I thought, during the dinner, that the fragment of it (which was set upon the table) had better be used for the weight and countenance it could give to objects worthy of the pilgrim spirit, than as an anvil for self-glorification. EPHEMERA. 651 There are interests constantly arising of a philan- thropic character general enough for all parties to partake in, and to the sluggish movement of which the steam of local patriotism might worthily be ap- plied. Without the bugbear of a contribution at the time, a fine orator and philanthropist like Horace Mann might have been invited by the committee to delight and instruct the picked audience with elo- quence on oneof his apostolic schemes of benevolence. As it was, the predominance of one political party made it a whig dinner instead of a New England din- ner. Admiring Mr. Webster as I do, and willing as I am to do more to see the other remaining Titan of our country (Mr. Clay) in the presidential chair than for any other object not personal to myself, I wished that he had replied to the " common-school" toast instead of the one he selected, and kept to the spirit of New England exclusively in the determination of his "thunder." Mr. Bellows took up this just-men- tioned topic, and compared the red school-houses (more graphically than felicitously) to an eruption on the face of New England ! He is a great pulpit orator, but a man who is accustomed to steer by the sober rudder of a pen runs adrift in trusting himself to ex- temporaneous impulse. The best-judged and most nicely-turned speech of the evening, 1 thought, was by Mr. Colden — and quite the most applauded. The overflow of the city's fountain of curiosity pours just now into the fancy-stores and curiosity- shops — the stockings of Santaclaus gaping wide for " gratifications." The new bazar, with the negroes in cocked hats for " sticks in waiting," is thronged like a levee, and, truly, the variety of new nonsenses is marvellous and bewildering. Tiffany's carries the palm, and you would think, to walk around that mu- seum of elegancies, that the fine arts had turned their whole force and ingenuity into the invention of trifles. It would be curious to trace back the genius that in- vents these things to its home and condition in life. One of the new books that will most interest you and the members of congress is " Simcoe's Military Journal ; a history of the operations of a partisan corps called the Queen's Rangers, commanded by Lieuten- ant-Colonel Simcoe, during the war of the Revolution, illustrated by engraved plans of action," &c. Bartlett & Welford, the great bibliologistsof New York, found a copy of the work in their researches in foreign libra- ries, and Mr. Bartlett, who is a scholar, thus prefaces the American republication : — " The military journal of Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, now first published, was privately printed by the author in 1787 for distribution among a few of his personal friends. The production has hitherto, it would seem, entirely escaped the attention of those who are curious in the history of our revolutionary war. As a record of some interesting particulars and local occurrences of that memorable struggle, and as a well-written docu- mentary illustration of the times and the circumstan- ces of the American rebellion, it deserves circulation and favor. The fortunate procurement of a copy of the work in London enables the publishers to present it in an edition securing its preservation, and facilita- ting a general knowledge of its contents. A memoir of so much of the author's life as is not exhibited in his journal, it is thought, will interest the reader and increase the permanent value of the volume. Accord- ingly, such a memoir has been prepared from available and authentic materials, and, by the way of introduc- tion, may serve to fill out the history of the command- er of the Queen's Rangers, presenting also a few facts concerning the corps, not otherwise appearing. Not to extend that portion of the publication too far, how- ever, various relevant quotations from different sources, interesting essentially and expletive in their character, are thrown into the appendix, in addition to what the journalist has given in that form himself." There is a very well-conducted paper in New York called the " Mirror of Fashion," the avowed object of which is to furnish plates and descriptions of gentle- men's fashions in dress — this feature taking the place, in a sheet of general interest, which politics or religion take in others. One sentence of the advertisement runs thus : — " I shall strive my utmost to make the Mirror of Fashion reflect all the important changes in styles of dress, whether in cut, color, or make, that may from month to month be adopted in this metropolis, always eschewing the freaks and follies of foreign fancy. I shall, as I ever have done, recommend only that which is strictly consonant with American feelings and predilections." The motto of the paper, very properly, is taken from Carlyle's, " Sartor Resartus." Thus, in the one preg- nant subject of clothes, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, or been ; the whole external universe, and what it holds, is but clothing; and the essence of all science lies in the philosophy of clothes. There is evidently a man of reading and talent at the head of this paper, and the subject touches men's " business and bosom" so close- ly and widely that it may well be considered a qua- trieme etat, and have its organ to represent it. If May be the season for " the raging calenture of love," this is the calenture of the social affections — the fever-crisis of the year, when the heat that is in the system comes to the surface. Most quiet men go to a ball or two in the holydays — dance a quadrille or two to show the old year that they are not of its party in going out — pay a compliment or two more flowery than their wont ; in short, put on the outer seeming which would befit them in a Utopia. I have tried on, like others, for the last week or two, this holy- day humor; and, though I shall be accused of " keep- ing a sharp eye to business," I must jot down for you a thought or two that has occurred to me, critical and comparative, or the present condition of New York society. It strikes me that there is no provision in the gay society of New York for people of middle age. A man between thirty-five and forty is invited to a large party. He goes too early if he arrives before eleven. He finds the two principal rooms stripped of carpets and of most of the sitting-down furniture, and the re- ception-room entirely lined with the mammas and chaperons of the young ladies on the floor. How- ever he might be a "dancing man" in Europe, where people dance till their knees fail them, he knows that in this haste-to-grow-old country it would be com- mented harshly upon, especially if he has a wife, for whom it is expected his overflow of spirits should be reserved. As he don't dance, he would like to con- verse. The old ladies talk of nothing but their daugh- ters, and the daughters, if not dancing, think it would repel a probable partner to seem much occupied iu conversation. He looks around for a sofa and a lady who don't dance. Sofa there is none, and in a chair in the corner perhaps there is one lady who is neither young nor old — rara avis! He approaches her, and, well nigh jammed against the wall, undertakes a con- versation not audible (he standing and she sitting) un- 652 EPHEMERA. less kept up at a scream. After a half hour of this, the lady, if she be discreet, remembers that "it looks particular" to be engrossed more than half an hour by one gentleman, and looks or says so. The middle- aged man slides along the wall, gets back into the crowded reception-room, talks a little to the chaperons, comes back and looks on at the waltz, and so passes the three hours till supper — on his legs. The ladies take an hour to sup, and, about three o'clock, he gels a corner for some oysters and champagne, and between that and four o'clock gets home to bed. He is a busi- ness man and rises at eight, and by three o'clock the next day he looks and feels as a man naturally would who had burnt his candle at both ends— -for nothing! It is not wonderful that there are no conveniences for conversation in society, for there really is no con- versation to provide for. The want would create the supply. It is one of the most peculiar of our country's features that conversation is not cultivated as a pleasure. When American women leave off dancing they think they have done with society till they reappear to bring out their daughters. All the agreeableness of their middle life — the most attractive and delightful portion of like too, perhaps — is expended on an appreciative husband who wants and uses it all ! Not at all as a disparagement to this state of things, perhaps you will allow me to mention a case, that may be somewhat par- allel, which has turned up in my zoological reading : " These little insects (the coccus, of the family gal- insecta) are remarkable for many peculiarities in their habits and conformation. The inales have long large wings ! The females have no wings, but at a certain period of their life attach themselves to the plant or tree which they inhabit, and remain thereon immove- able during the rest of their existence. As soon as the eggs are produced, they pass immediately under the female parent, whose body becomes their stationa- ry covering and guard. By degrees her body dries up and flattens, and forms a sort of a shell, and, when life is quite extinct, the young insects leave their hiding- place." Whether society has not some claim on them — whether their minds would not be kept from narrow- ing by conversation with agreeable men — whether the one exclusive errand of the loveliest portion of humani- ty is to rear children, are questions which in this country must be handled very gingerly — at least in print. I may be permitted to go on and say " how they do in Spain," however. A middle-aged man in London may or may not be a dancer. There is no comment either way — but he must be something — dancer or good conversationist, or he is dropped as " lumbering up the party." Few men can afford to be seen by the mistress of the house to be unamused and unamusing. A cultivated man, then, who don't dance, gets an hour or two of pleas- ant society in the early part of the evening at the opera. If there is a small party afterward he prefers it to a ball ; but if he goes to the ball he finds that the pleasantest people there are the married women. They do not sit together without room for a gentle- man between them, but every lady is bodily approach- able, and with a little management he can get a com- fortable seat beside any one whom he may know and prefer. If he find her interesting, and talk to her the whole evening, there is no scandal, unless there are other corroborating circumstances ; indeed, the open- ness of the attention would rather discredit any unfa- vorable comment. If there is a new lion present, or any attraction peculiar to one person, a small circle is formed in a corner, or a group stand around and let the conversation be managed by the persons most interested, like listening to music. You could seldom go to a party in London without hearing something worth telling to a person not there, and society (not the newspapers) has the first use and enjoyment of all news and novelties of every description. Newspapers are stale to a man actively conversant in the best society of London. People collect news, and see sights, and invent theories, and study and think — to have material for being brilliant in society, and for no other purpose. A habitue of the best houses grows well-informed by absorption only — if he keep his ears open. And this entire stage of society is wanting in New York. An intelligent gentleman remarked lately upon the absurdity of copying English hours for gayety, with- out copying the compensating English hours for repose. It is the aim of aristocracy to have such habits as to distinguish aristocrats from the working-classes, and lords and ladies please themselves with going home to sleep when the clowns are getting up to toil. * Until we can afford to lie abed like a lord, till noon, we are fools to lose the clown's slumber, and a fashionable lady would deserve well of her country who would tacitly acknowledge her husband to be a man of busi- ness, by giving her party at hours when he and his merchant-friends could attend without loss of needful sleep. Who would not be glad to go to a ball at seven instead of eleven ? This change, and the introduction of comforts and accommodations for conversible wall- flowers, would, in my opinion, improve even the charming circles of grown-up children who now con- stitute New York society. 1 see no very marked differences in the dress or usages of the ball-room. Rather more waltzing and less quadrilling, if anything — but still " marvellous few" tolerable waltzers. Could most of the waltzing men in New York "see themselves as others see them," they would practise the difficult ease of this accomplishment elsewhere for a while. The lower classes of Germans have balls in their peculiar haunts which it would be good practice to attend. HOW TO MAKE A PARADISE IN THE COUNTRY. The back of the winter is broke, dear reader, and it is down-hill to spring. Those who have not our brick and mortar destiny, are chatting, over their evening table, of gardens and fruit-trees, crops and embellish- ments, and longing the snow off their lawns and fields, and the frost out of their furrows. We have been passing a leisure (not an idle) hour in reading our friend Downing's elegant and tempting book on rural architecture — a book which, with others by the same scholarlike and tasteful pen, we commend to your pos- session — and it brings to our mind a long letter we wrote during our last year's residence on the Susque- hannah, on the subject of economical and comeatable paradise-making in the country. For a change — let us turn over for you this leaf of our common-sense book. Thus runs the body of it : — Landscape-gardening is a pleasant subject to expand into an imaginative article, and I am not surprised that men, sitting amid hot editorials in a city (the month of July), find a certain facility in creating woods and walks, planting hedges and building conservatories. So may the brain be refreshed, I well know, even with the smell of printing-ink in the nostrils. But land- scape-gardening, as within the reach of the small farmer people, is quite another thing, and to be man- aged (as brain-gardening need not be, to be sure) with economy and moderation. Tell us in the quarterlies, if you will, what a man may do with a thousand acres and plenty of money ; but we will endeavor to show what may be done with fifty acres and a spare hour in the evening — by the tasteful farmer, or the tradesman retired on small means. These own their fifty acres (more or less), up to the sky and down to the bottom of their "diggings," and as nature lets the tree grow and the flower expand for a man, without reference to his account at the bank, they have it in their power to EPHEMERA. 653 embellish, and most commonly, they have also the inclination. Beginners, however, at this as at most other things, are at the mercy of injudicious counsel,' and lew books can be more expensively misapplied than the treatises on landscape-gardening. The most intense and sincere lovers of the country are citizens who have fled to rural life in middle age, and old travellers who are weary, heart and foot, and j long for shelter and rest. Both these classes of men are ornamental in their tastes — the first because the country is his passion, heightened by abstinence; and the latter because he remembers the secluded and ij sweet spots he has crossed id travel, and yearns for j something that resembles them, of his own. To begin I at the beginning, I will suppose such a man as either i of these in search of land to purchase and build upon, j His means are moderate. Leaving the climate and productiveness of soil I out of the question, the main things to find united are | shade, water, and inequality of surface. With these j three features given by nature, any spot may be made beautiful, and at very little cost; and, fortunately for purchasers in this country, most land is valued and I sold with little or no reference to these or other capa- bilitiea for embellishment. Water, in a country so laced with rivers, is easily found. Yet there are hints worth giving, perhaps, obvious as they seem, even in the selection of water. A small and rapid river is prefer- |.| able to a large river or lake. The Hudson, for in- stance, is too broad to bridge, and beautiful as the sites are upon its banks, the residents have but one egress and one drive — the country behind them. If they could cross to the other side, and radiate in every direction in their evening drives, the villas on that noble river would be trebled in value. One soon tires of riding up and down one bank of a river, and with- out a taste for boating, the beautiful expanse of water soon becomes an irksome barrier. Very much the | same remark is true of the borders of lakes, with the additiooal objection, that there is no variety to the view. A small, bright stream, such as hundreds of nameless ones in these beautiful northern slates, ; spanned by bridges, at every half mile, followed always by the roads which naturally seek the level, and wind- ing into picturesque surprises, appearing and disap- pearing, continually, is, in itself, an ever-renewing poem, crowded with changeable pictures, and every day tempting you to follow or trace back its bright I current. Small rivers, again, insure to a degree the other two requisites — shade and inequality of surface — the interval being proportionately narrow, and backed j by slopes and alluvial soil, usually producing the various nut and maple trees, which, for their fruit and sap, have been spared by the inexorable axes of the first settlers. If there is any land in the country, the price of which is raised from the supposed desirable- ness of the site, it is upon the lakes and larger rivers, leaving the smaller rivers, fortunately, still within the scale of the people's means. One more word as to the selection of a spot. The rivers in the United States, more than those of older countries, are variable in their quantity of water. The banks of many of the most picturesque, present, at the season of the year when we most wish it other- j wise (in the sultry heats of August and September), | bared rocks or beds of ooze, while the stream runs slujjsjishly and uninvitingly between. Those which are fed principally by springs, however, are less liable to the effects of drought than those which are the outlets of large bodies of water; and indeed, there is great difference in rivers in this respect, depending on the decree in which their courses are shaded, and ; other causes. It will be safest, consequently, to select a site in August, when the water is at the lowest, pre- > ferring, of course, a bold and high bank as a protec- tion against freshets and flood-wood. The remotest! chance of a war with water, damming against wash and flood, fills an old settler with economical alarm. It was doubtless a "small chore" for the deluge to heave up a mound or slope a bank, but with one spade at a dollar a day, the moving of earth is a discour- aging job, and in selecting a place to live it is well to be apprized what diggings may become necessary, and how your hay and water, wood, visiters, and lumber generally, are to come and go. A man's first fancy is commonly to build on a hill ; but as he lives on, year after year, he would like his house lower and lower, till, if the fairies had done it for him at each succeeding wish, he would trouble them at last to dig his cellar at the bottom. It is hard mounting a hill daily, with tired horses, and it is dangerous driving down with full-bellied ones from the stable-door, and your friends deduct from the pleasure of seeing you, the inconvenience of ascending and descending. The view, for which you build high, you soon discover is not daily bread, but an occasional treat, more worth, as well as better liked for the walk to get it, and (you have selected your site, of course, with a southern exposure) a good stiff hill at your back, nine months in the year, saves several degrees of the thermometer, and sundry chimney-tops, barn-roofs, and other furni- ture peripatetic in a tempest. Then your hill-road washes with the rains, and needs continual mending, and the dweller on the hill needs one more horse and two more oxen than the dweller in the valley. One thing more. There rises a night-mist (never un- wholesome from running water), which protects fruit- trees from frost to a certain level above the river, at certain critical seasons, and so end the reasons for building low. I am supposing all along, dear reader, that you have had no experience of country-life, but that, sick of a number in a brick block, or (if a traveller) weary of "the perpetual flow of people," you want a patch of the globe's surface to yourself, and room enough to scream, let off champagne-corks, or throw stones, without disturbance to your neighbor. The intense yearning for this degree of liberty has led some seek- ers after the pastoral rather farther into the wilderness than was necessary; and while writing on the subject of a selection of rural sites, it is worth while, perhaps, to specify the desirable degree of neighborhood. In your own person, probably, you do not combine blacksmith, carpenter, tinman, grocer, apothecary, wet-uurse, dry-nurse, washerwoman, and doctor. Shoes and clothes can wait your convenience for mending; but the little necessities supplied by the above list of vocations are rather imperative, and they can only be ministered to in any degree of comfortable perfection, by a village of at least a thousand inhabit- ants. Two or three miles is far enough to send your horse to be shod, and far enough to send for doctor or washerwoman, and half the distance would be better, if there were no prospect of the extension of the vil- lage limits. But the common diameter of idle boys' rambles is a mile out of the village, and to be just beyond that is very necessary, if you care lor your plums and apples. The church-bell should be within hearing, and it is mellowed deliciously by a mile or two of hill and dale, and your wife will probably belong to a " sewing-circle," to which it is very much for her health to walk, especially if the horse is wanted for ploughing. This suggests to me another point which I had nearly overlooked. The farmer pretends to no "gentility;" I may be permitted to say, therefore, that neighbors are a lux- ury, both expensive and inconvenient. The necessity you feel for society, of course, will modify very much the just-stated considerations on the subject of vicin- age. He who has lived only in towns, or passed his life (as travellers do) only as a receiver of hospitality, is little aware of the difference hetween a country and 654 EPHEMERA. city call, or between receiving a visit and paying one. In town, " not at home," in any of its shapes, is a great preserver of personal liberty, and gives no offence. In the country you are " at home," will-you, nill-you. As a stranger paying a visit, you choose the time most convenient to yourself, and abridge the call at pleasure. In your own house, the visiter may find you at a very inconvenient hour, stay a very inconve- nient time, and as you have no liberty to deny your- self at your country door, it may (or may not, 1 say, according to your taste) be a considerable evil. This point should be well settled, however, before you de- termine your distance from a closely-settled neighbor- hood, for many a man would rather send his horse two miles farther to be shod than live within the con- venience of "sociable neighbors." A resident in a city, by-the-way (and it is a point which should be kept in mind by the retiring metropolitan) has, prop- erly speaking, no neighbors. He has friends, chosen or made by similarity of pursuit, congeniality of taste, or accident, which might have been left unimproved. His literal neighbors he knows by name — if they keep a brass plate, but they are contented to know as little of him, and the acquaintance ends, without offence, in the perusal of the name and number on the door. In the city you pick your friends. In the country you "take them in the lump." True, country neighbors are almost always desirable acquaintances — simple in their habits, and pure in their morals and conversation. But this letter is ad- dressed to men retiring from the world, who look for- ward to the undisturbed enjoyment of trees and fields, who expect life to be filled up with the enjoyment of dew at morn, shade at noon, and the glory of sunset and starlight, and who consider the complete repose of the articulating organs, and release from oppressive and unmeaning social observances, as the fruition of Paradise. To men who have experience or philosophy enough to have reduced life to this, I should recom- mend a distance of five miles from any village or any family with grown-up daughters. In my character of dollar, I may be forgiven for remarking, also, that this degree of seclusion doubles an income (by enabling a man to live on half of it), and so, freeing the mind from the care of pelf, removes the very gravest of the obstacles to happiness. I refer to no saving which in- fringes on comfort. The housekeeper who caters for her own family in an unvisited seclusion, and the housekeeper who provides for her family with an eye to the possible or probable interruption of acquaintan- ces not friends, live at very different rates ; and the latter adds one dish to the bounty of the table, per- haps, but two to its vanity. Still more in the comfort and expensiveness of dress. The natural and most blissful costume of man in summer, all told, is shirt, slippers, and pantaloons. The compulsory articles of coat, suspenders, waistcoat, and cravat (gloves would be ridiculous), are a tribute paid to the chance of visi- ters, as is also, probably, some dollars' difference in the quality of the hat. I say nothing of the comfort of a bad hat (one you can sit upon, or water your horse from, or bide the storm in, without remorse), nor of the luxury of hav- ing half a dozen, which you do when they are cheap, and so saving the mental burthen of retaining the geography of an article so easily mislaid. A man is a slave to anything on his person he is afraid to spoil — a slave (if he is not rich, as we are not, dear reader!) to any costly habiliment whatever. The trees nod no less graciously (it is a pleasure to be able to say), be- cause one's trousers are of a rational volume over the portion most tried by a sedentary man, nor because one's hat is of an equivocal shape — having served as a non-conductor between a wet log and its proprietor; but ladies do — especially country ladies; and even if they did not, there is enough of the leaven of youth, even in philosophers, to make them unwilling to ap- pear to positive disadvantage, and unless you are quite at your ease as to even the ridiculous shabbiness of your outer man, there is no liberty — no economical liberty, I mean — in rural life. Do not mislead your- self, dear reader! I am perfectly aware that a Span- ish sombrero, a pair of large French trousers plaited over the hips, a well made English shoe, and a hand- some checked shirt, form as easy a costume for the country as philosopher could desire. But I write for men who must attain the same comfort in a shirt of a perfectly independent description, trousers, oftenest, that have seen service as tights, and show a fresher dye in the seams, a hat, price twenty-five cents (by the dozen), and shoes of a remediless capriciousness of outline. I acknowledge that such a costume is a liberty with daylight, which should only be taken within one's own fence, and that it is a misfortune to be surprised in it by a stranger, even there. But I wish to impress upon those to whom this letter is addressed, the obligations of country neighborhood as to dress and table, and the expediency of securing the degree of liberty which may be desired, by a barrier of distance. Sociable country neighbors, as I said before, are a luxury, but they are certainly an expensive one. Judging by data within my reach, I should say that a man who could live for fifteen hundred dollars a year, within a mile of a sociable village, could have the same personal com- forts at ten miles distance for half the money. He numbers, say fifteen families, in his acquaintance, and of course pays at the rate of fifty dollars a family for their gratification. Now it is a question whether you would not rather have the money in board fence or Berkshire hogs. You may like society, and yet not like it at such a high price. Or (but this would lead me to another subject) you may prefer society in a lump ; and with a house full of friends in the months of June and July, live in contemplative and economi- cal solitude the remainder of the year. And this latter plan I take the liberty to recommend more particular- ly, to students and authors. Touching " grounds." The first impulses of taste are dangerous to follow, no less from their blindness to unforeseen combinations, than from their expensive- ness. In placing your house as far from the public road as possible (and a considerable distance from dust and intrusion, seems at first a sine qua non) you entail upon yourself a very costly appendage in the shape of a private road, which of course must be nicely gravel- led and nicely kept. A walk or drive, within your gate, which is not hard and free from weeds, is as objectionable as an untidy white dress upon a lady, and as she would be better clad in russet, your road were better covered with grass. I may as well say that a hundred yards of gravel-walk, properly " scored," weeded, and rolled, will cost five dollars a month — a man's labor reckoned at the present usage. Now no person for whom this letter is written can afford to keep more than one man servant for " chores." A hundred yards of gravel-walk, therefore, employing half his time, you can easily calculate the distribution of the remainder, upon the flower-garden, kitchen- garden, wood-shed, stable, and piggery. (The female " help" should milk, if I died for it !) My own opin- ion is, that fifty yards from the road is far enough, and twenty a more prudent distance, though, in the latter case, an impervious screen of shrubbery along your outer fence is indispensable. The matter of gravel-walks embraces several points of rural comfort, and, to do without them, you must have no young ladies in your acquaintance, and, especially, no young gentlemen from the cities. It may not have occurred to you in your sidewalk life, that the dew falls in the country with tolerable regu- laritv ; and that, from sundown to ten in the forenoon, EPHEMERA. 655 you are as much insulated in a cottage surrounded with high grass, as on a rock surrounded with forty fathom water— shod a la mode, I mean. People talk j of being " pent up in a city" with perhaps twenty ; imlcs of flagged sidewalk extending from their door- j stone ! They are apt to draw a contrast, favorable to j the liberty of cities, however, if they come thinly shod | to the country, and must either wade in the grass or . •tumble through the ruts of a dusty road. If you | wish to see bodies acted on by an " exhausted receiver" \ /giving out their "airs" of course), shut up your! young city friends in a country cottage, by the com- pulsion of wet grass and muddy highways. Better gravel your whole farm, you say. But having reduced you to this point of horror, you are prepared to listen without contempt, while 1 suggest two humble suc- ccdanca. First : On receiving intimation of a probable visit j from a city friend, write by return of post for the size ] of her foot (or his). Provide immediately a pair of India-rubber shoes of the corresponding number, and on the morning after your friend's arrival, be ready ! with them at the first horrified withdrawal of the damp foot from the grass. Your shoes may cost you a dollar a pair, but if your visiters are not more than j ten or twelve in the season, it is a saving of fifty per , cent., at least in gravelling and weeding. Or, Second : Enclose the two or three acres imme- diately about your house with a ring fence, and pasture within it a small flock of sheep. They are clean and picturesque (your dog should be taught to keep them from the doors and porticoes), and by feeding down the grass to a continual greensward, they give the dew a chance to dry off early and enlarge your cottage " liberties" to the extent of their browsings. I may as well add, by the way, that a walk with the sod simply taken off, is, in this climate, dry enough, j except for an hour or two after a heavy rain ; and be- sides the original saving in gravel, it is kept clean with ! a quarter of the trouble. A weed imbedded in stones j is a much more obstinate customer than a score of j them sliced from the smooth ground. At any rate, out with them ! A neglected walk indicates that | worst of country diseases, a mind grown slovenly and ' slip-slop! Your house may go unpainted, and your! dress (with one exception) submit to the course of , events — but be scrupulous in the whiteness of your j linen, tenacious of the neatness of your gravel-walks; j and, while these points hold, you are at a redeemable remove from the lapse (fatally prone and easy), into barbarianism and misanthropy. Before I enter upon the cultivation of grounds, let me lay before the reader my favorite idea of a cottage — not a collage ornce but a collage insoucieuse, if I may \ coin a phrase. In the valley of Sweet Waters, on the banks of the Barbyses, there stands a small pleasure I palace of the sultan, which looks as if it was dropped into the green lap of nature, like a jewel-case on a birth-day, with neither preparation on the part of the bestower, nor disturbance on the part of the receiver. From the balcony's foot on every side extends an un- broken sod to the horizon. Gigantic trees shadow the grass here and there, and an enormous marble vase, carved in imitation of a sea-shell, turns the silver Barbyses in a curious cascade over its lip; but else, it is all Nature's lap, with its bauble resting in velvet — no gardens, no fences, no walls, no shrubberies — a beautiful valley with the sky resting on its rim, and nothing in it save one fairy palace. The simplicity of the thing enchanted me, and, in all my yearnings after rural seclusion, this vision of old travel has, more or less, colored my fancy. You see what I mean, with half an eye. Gardens are beautiful, shrubberies ornamental, summer-houses and alleys, and gravelled paths, all delightful — but they are, each and all, taxes —heavy taxes on mind, time, and "dollar/' Perhaps you like them. Perhaps you want the occupation. But some men, of small means, like a contemplative idleness in the country. Some men's time never hangs heavily under a tree. Some men like to lock their doors (or to be at liberty to do so), and be gone for a month, without dread of gardens plundered, flowers trod down, shrubs browsed off by cattle. Some men like nothing out of doors but that which can take care of itself — the side of a house or a forest-tree, or an old horse in a pasture. These men, too, like that which is beautiful, and for such I draw this picture of the collage insoucieuse. What more simply elegant than a pretty structure in the lap of a green dell ! What more convenient ! What so economical ! Sheep (we may " return to muttons") are cheaper "help" than men, and if they do not keep your green- sward so brightly mown, they crop it faithfully and turn the crop to better account. The only rule of perfect independence in the country is to make no "improvement" which requires more attention than the making. So — you are at liberty to take your wife to the springs. So— you can join a coterie at Niagara at a letter's warning. So — you can spend a winter in Italy without leaving half your income to servants who keep house at home. So — you can sleep without dread of hail-storms on your graperies or green-houses, without blunderbuss for depredators of fruit, without distress at slugs, cut-worms, drought, or breachy cattle. Nature is .prodigal of flowers, grapes are cheaper bought than raised, fruit idem, butter idem (though you mayn't think so), and as for amusement — the man who can not find it between driving, fishing, shooting, strolling, and reading (to say nothing of less selfish pleasures), has no business in the country. He should go back to town. We have a pleasant and welcome correspondent who signs himself " r. h. d.," and we have a treasured and admired friend known to the world as Richard H. Dana — and they are two different persons. We must beg our friend of the three disembodied initials to give way to the embodied three of the poet, though, as we well know, the three first letters of a man's name may be as momentous to him as the three legs to the " moving tripods" seen in the Indian temples by Apol- lonius. His miracle may be in them ! We ourself have been un-phcenixed of late (we thought there was but one of our kind !) by the discovery that there was another N. P. Willis — (not a quill-pincher, we are pleased to understand). "Florian" wishes us to "draw the portrait of a man fitted by nature to be an editor." A model editor would be very difficult to describe, but among other things, he should answer to the description given in the sporting books of the dunghill cock : " The best cocks should be close hitters, deadly heelers, steady fighters, good mouthers, and come to every point." The poem sent us without a signature, " on a lady with a sweet breath," implies rather too close quarters for print. Poetry for these days must beat arms' length. The new epithet " pimento breath" ought not to be lost, however— quite the spiciest new word that has lately been rolled under our tongue. It never occur- red to us before that there was one word to express cinnamon, nutmegs, and cloves. We wish we could manufacture more of these single triplicates. Does our nameless correspondent know, by the way, that bad breath in Prussia is good ground for divorce ? We recommend him to write a parody on " Knowst thou the land," &c. 656 EPHEMERA. The Boston papers are glorifying (as was to be ex- pected) the new volume of poems by Russell Lowell. We wish for a sight of it, for we are his self-elected trumpeter, and haste to know the key for a new blast. By the way. we have taken the liberty (as the immor- tality he is bound for is a long race) to drop the en- cumbrance of James from his musical name, and here- after we shall economize breath, type, and harmony, by calling him Russell Lowell. An editor is not supposed (as the world and subscri- bers to newspapers know) to require or possess the luxury of sleep. We sleep with one eye open — we scorn to deny. We see all that is going on about us, daylight or dark, and Washington being the fountain of law, order, and information, we duly give the alarm like the geese who saved the capitol. Our readers have, from week to week, read our lucubrations in this wise, and here are are some more of them. We send them forth as daguerreotypes of the present — sent as records of matters as they fly. We think they are worth preserving bodily — and we so preserve them. The first day of '44 came in like a specimen num- ber of a magazine, and the open doors of New York had at least one unexpected visiter in a veritable Oc- tober sun. The day was mild enough to make over- coats uncomfortable in walking — the pavement was dry and summery — and all the male world seemed abroad. The household gods of Manhattan were probably unan- imous in their happiness — as all the ladies were " at home," and all the ladies' lords were bound to be 41 out." This morning the weather is still softer — October, possibly, like other popular persons, not find- ing one day to suffice for its visits. I have a headache on the top of my pen, and can not venture any further description of new-year's day than the above facts, though yesterday I thought I could make you a tip-top gossipy letter out of the day's hilarities. The hosts of the Astor wound up the excitement for their guests by a superb dinner at can- dlelight, with champagne and sweetmeats " a discre- tion" and altogether, I think January one must be marked with a white stone. You have read, of course, and loved (much more, of course) Leigh Hunt's poem of The Rimini. Tick- nor & Co., of Boston, have republished it in one of their beautiful boudoir editions, and along with it, in the same neat volume, the half dozen other poems, most famed, of Hunt's prolific pen. The story (of the lady who married one brother and loved the other) is told with a sort of entire neiv-ness of style and lan- guage, as if it were the one admirable work of a natu- ral but unpractised poet, and it sticks to the memory after it is read like Moore's rose-scent to the vase. Leigh Hunt is a born poet, but one of the most un- happy citizens of the world that the world holds. With all the mental capabilities (the wit, the delicacy, the imagination, and the desire) to be the carpet-poet of aristocracy that Moore is, he has a most wo-begone person, and a most marvellous lack of tact and relia- bility- He never can stay acquainted with the only people who, by refinement and talent, are alone capa- ble of making friendship comfortable to him; and he has quarrelled with most other of his great contempo- raries, as he did with Byron. And, by the way, he is dead — by epigram ! Moore's felicitously-witty verses on Hunt's Life of Byron killed him quite out of con- temporary respect. The ludicrous image of the pup- py-dog desecrating the body of the dead lion follows him into every drawing-room and walks behind him in every street. He will never recover from that epi- gram. Indeed, he has never been like himself since it was written. It is the most signal extinction of a great genius by ridicule that I know of on record — more enduring, from the fact that the English, among their other conservative peculiarities, have none of our marvellous alacrity at public forgetting. Had Leigh Hunt been born with a little thicker skin, somewhat a cooler head, and the inestimable power of catching the snowballs of ridicule in his bosom, and keeping them there till they could be thrown back hardened into ice, he might have been something between Fon- blanque and Moore, Thiers and Janin, and equal at least to either of these powerful "penditti." As it is, he is uncomfortably poor, and more uncomfortably i<n-complacent. With two lines, very Leigh-Hunt- ish, I cut my paragraph short. He is describing Apollo's revery while resolving upon the Feast of the Poets : — " ' I think,' said the god, recollecting (and then He fell twiddling a sunbeam as I would a pen) ." A very superb book of drawings is being subscribed for in New York — " Forty Atmospheric Views of American Scenery," from water-color drawings by George Harvey. The engravings ere to be in aqua- tint, and to be beautifuly and artistically colored, so as closely to resemble the original designs. The views consist of different atmospheric effects at different times of day, beginning at daybreak and ending at midnight — each view a complete landscape, and the subjects emblematic of the progress of civilization, from the log-cabin to the highest achievement in ar- chitecture. Mr. Harvey is one of the leading artists of the new water-color school, and this will probably be the most superb work of its kind ever published. A letter from Washington Allston to Mr. Harvey says : — "I am unwilling that you should leave Boston with- out knowing how much I have been gratified by your beautiful drawings of American scenery. To me it appears that you have not only been successful in giv- ing the character of our scenery, but remarkably happy in clothing it with an American atmosphere, which you have expressed with great truth and va- riety." By the thermometer, the winter has commenced this day, the 5th of January. People pass under my window with their backs shrugged up to their bump of philoprogenitiveness, and even the coats of the hard- working omnibus horses " stare" — as the jockeys say. I wish the physiologists would explain why horses' coats do not lie closer when it is cold, and why men, with the same sensation, raise their arms instinctively from their sides. Cats and dogs seem to economize their bodily heat better — lying down when cold in such an attitude as to expose as little surface to the Our thoughts are entirely occupied this morning with two poets. It must be a pleasant book that we take for company the first hour after waking, and to- day, with his new volume of poems open on our dres- sing-table, we dressed and read Lowell. Thence he went with us to a tete-a-tete breakfast (for we chanced, else, to be breakfasting alone), and we were reading him with a cup of coffee in one hand and his book in the other, when the letters came in from the post — and one letter was from a poet new-plumaged, of whom we had never heard, and who had probably never heard of himself (as a poet), but still indnbita- EPHEMERA. 657 bly a poet — albeit "an apprentice-boy in a printing office" in a small village in Pennsylvania. We read his timid letter and two sweet pieces of poetry enclosed within it, marked the poetry " good" for the Mirror, and then reverted to our breakfast and book. But, so early in the moruing, a little reading is enough for a brainful of thought, and from pondering on Low- ell's "Shepherd King of Admetus," we fell to think- ing over the probable position and destiny of these two poets. Lowell is the best-launched poet of his time, and the defect of his poetry is an advantage to his go- along-ery. He is stern and strong enough to "take the wall" of Envy and Misfortune, but not yielding and soft enough to bend to the unconscious and impul- sive abandonments of love. Love with him is sound sense, not beautiful madness... He is too bold and ab- stract for the " levia affectuum vestigia Gracilesque sensus lineas ;" and, if he knows, he has a contempt for, the " quibus Vehantur alis blanduli Cupidines." The way Lowell handles the word love makes one start like seeing Rolla pick up Cora's baby with one hand. The fact is, he is a strong-minded, tough-sin- ewed, defying poet, fit to be a martyr to opinion or a partisan soldier, and if his love be not an excellent lamp not yet lighted (which is possible), he has never ! experienced its first timidity, nor is he likely to know j its ultimate phrensy and prodigality. He has drawn : his own portrait, however, in a "Sonnet written on his Twenty-fourth Birthday," and let us read his character from it : — " Now have I quite passed by that cloudy If That darkened the wild hope of boyish days, When first I launched my slender-sided skiff Upon the wide sea's dim, unsounded ways ; Now doth Love's sun my soul uith splendor fill, And hope hath struggled upward unto Power ; Soft Wish is hardened into sinewy Will, And longing unto certainty doth tower ; The love of beauty knoweth no despair : My heart would break if " What should you think would naturally follow this " if," dear reader ? He is twenty-four — in the full tide of blood and youth, and "Love's sun has filled his soul with splendor." In building up a climax of his feelings at this impetuous and passionate age, what should you fancy would rush up to crown it like flame to a volcano ? What would his " heart break" for at passionate twenty-four? " if] I should dare to doubt That from the wrong, which makes its dragon's lair Here on the Earth, fair Truth shall wander out Teaching mankind that Freedom 's held in fee Only by those who labor to set free." Tn another poem on " Love," he describes " true love" as " A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks, But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer, Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts By clear sense of inward nobleness : A* love that in its object findeth not All grace Mid beauty, and enough to sate Its thirst of blessing, but, in alf of good Found there, it sees but heaven-granted types Of good and beauty in the soul of man, And traces in the simplest heart that beats A family-likeness to its chosen one That claims of it the rights of brotherhood." This is a cold description of " true love," and it is not half so warm as the " love" which Lowell exhibits in his preface, for his friend William Page. Com- pare the above description, in poetrv, of true love for 42 a woman, with the following confession, in prose, of love for a man : — " My dear friend : The love between us, which can now look back upon happy years of still enlarging con- fidence, and forward with a sure trust in its own pioph- ecy of yet deeper and tenderer sympathies, as long as life shall remain to us, stands in no need. I am well aware, of so poor a voucher as an Epistle Dedicatory. True, it is one of love's chiefest charms that it must still take special pains to be superfluous in seeking out ways to declare itself — but for these it demands no publicity and wishes no acknowledgment. But the admiration which one soul feels for another loses half its worth, if it slip any opportunity of making itself heard and felt," etc. Lowell is one kind of poet, and it is the worst man- ner of criticism to tell what a poet is not, except more clearly to define what he is. Though his sexual heart never swims in his inkstand, he is warm enough in his enthusiasm for all generous sentiments, and both dar- ing and delicate enough in his powers of imagination. Truth, good sense, and fancy, were seldem more evenly braided together than in his poem of "The Heritage," and Rosaline (though it never could have been conceived by a man who had passionately loved) is the very finest cobweb of fancy. Nobody could help loving the truth, honesty, fearlessness, and ener- gy, stamped on all his poetry, and, as we said before, he has the "w'm" to carve out for himself any destiny he pleases. He has determined to live by literature, but we do not believe he will long remain a poet only. He will wish to take the world by the beard in some closer clutch than poetry gives room for, and his good judgment as to the weight of heavy English words, will try itself before long on more serious matter than sonnets. At least, that is what we think while admi- ring him over our breakfast. As to the other poet, Bayard Taylor, we had a great deal to say to him — sympathy, encouragement, promise of watchfulness over his fame, etc., etc. But he will need no special kindness yet awhile. Love is plenty for new-found poets. Many people love little chickens who are insensible to the merits of cocks and hens, and we reserve our friendship till he is ma- tured and envied. Meantime, if he wants our opinion that he is a poet, and can be, with toil and study — im- mortal—he has it. His poetry is already worthy of long preserving — apprentice-boy though he be. I had quite a summery trip to Philadelphia on the second day of the new year, sitting at the open win- dow of the railcar and snuffing the fragrance of the soft, sun-warmed fields with as good comfort as I ever found in April. But for the rudeness and incivility of all the underlings employed upon the line (and I am too old a traveller, and was in too sunny a humor, to find fault unnecessarily), I should have given the clerk of happiness credit for five hours "bankable" satisfaction. It tells ill for the manners of the "Direc- tors of the Philadelphia and New York Railroad Line," that their servants are habitually insolent and profane — servants being usually what their masters look on without reproof. Philadelphia makes an impression of great order, comfort, and elegance, upon a stranger, and there is no city in the country where I like better to "loiter by the way." Not feeling very " gregarious" the day I was there, and having heard much mention of San- derson's restaurant— (moreover, having found a new book at Lea & Blanchard's. a look into winch prom- ised excellent dinner-company)— 1 left my hotel and dined a la Francaise—I and my new book. I never had a more capital dinner in France than this im- promptu one at Sanderson's, and I wish the book had 658 EPHEMERA. been American as well as the dinner — for the glory it is to the country that produced it. It was to me much more enchanting and captivating than a novel, yet the subject was, " The Education of Mothers, or the Civilization of Mankind" — a subject you would naturally expect to find treated with somewhat trite morality. This work, however (which gained the prize offered by the French Academy), is written with complete novelty and freshness, and — to define it in a way that every thinking man will comprehend — it is a most delightfully suggestive book — full of thoughts and sentences that make you stop and close the vol- ume till you have fed awhile on what they convey to you. If this book were properly presented to the ap- preciation of the public, it would circulate widely on the two levels of amusement and instruction, and be as delightful in one field as it would be eminently use- ful in the other. I commend it to every one who is in want of enjoyable reading. The motto, by-the- way, is that true sentiment from Rousseau: " Les homines seront toujours ce qu'il plaira aux femmes. Si vous voulez quHls deviennent grands et verlueux, ap- ■prenez aux femmes ce que c'est que grandeur et vertu." The New Mirror has published No. 3 of what a morning paper calls "aristocratic shilling literature," an extra containing " The Lady Jane, and other Hu- morous Poems," by N. P. Willis. The Lady Jane is a daguerreotype sketch of the London literary so- ciety in which Moore, Bulwer, D'Israeli, Proctor, and others of that class habitually live, and it is, at least, done with the utmost labor limce of the author. By- ron, in a manner, monopolized the Don Juan stanza (in which this poem is written), and no one could now attempt the stanza, however different the story and style of thought, without being criticised inevitably as an imitator. Still, it is the only stanza susceptible, to any high degree, of mingled pathos and humor, philosophy and fun, and it is likely to be used for such purposes until the monopoly is lost sight of — a hun- dred years hence. There is a great deal in "The Lady Jane" which is truer and newer than most sketches of society published in books of travel — a great deal that could only be told in such a poem, or in the rattle of familiar gossip. I met just now, in the corridor of the Astor, Cap- tain Chadwick, of the London packet-ship Welling- ton, just arrived in twenty-two days from England. At this season of the year, and up-hill (as the sailors call it, westerly winds always predominating on the Atlantic), this is a remarkable passage, and could only have been made by a fine ship, well sailed. I have made two remarkably short passages across the water with Captain Chadwick, and a more agreeable com- panion, or a better "skipper," I believe, never tight- ened a halliard. He is one of those happy men fa- mous for "good luck," which commonly means, "ta- king good care." This is the ship on board of which the duke of Wellington made a speech (at a break- fast given to him by the captain) very complimentary to America and Americans. There is a considerable outbreak lately in the way of equipages in New York. Several four-horse ve- hicles have made their appearance, driven by the young men who own them. I have noticed also a new curricle in beautiful taste (driven with a steel bar over the horses' backs), and a tilbury with two ser- vants in livery, one on the seat with his master, and another on horseback, following as an outrider. We are to have a masked ball this evening, and a steeple- chase is to come off on the twentieth (Viscount Ber- trand one of the riders, and each competitor entering a thousand-dollar stake for the winner). I shall be at the ball, not at the steeple-chase — for a horse must have iron legs to run over frozen ploughed fields, and a man must have less use for his life than I, who would risk a fall upon a surface like broken stones. The viscount has won several steeple-chases in Eng- land, and has had some rough riding after the Arabs in Algiers — so I would bet on him, unless there hap- pened to be a fox-hunting Irishman among the com- petitors. There are six riders, I understand, and one of them will win six thousand dollars, of course, and probably six horses will be ruined, and one or two necks broken. Fortunately, there is a superfluity of horses and young men. The story goes that " there is a skeleton in every man's closet," and there is, of course (in a country as independent as ours is of les prestiges), a phantom following every man who is conspicuous, and point- ing at his drawback. The drawback to any elaborate novelty of luxury is at once read legibly in Broadway. Seeing a new and very costly equipage in England, you merely know that the owner had money enough to buy it. The contrivance of it, the fitting of the harness, the matching and breaking in of the horses, are matters attended to by those who make these de- tails their profession. The turn-out is brought per- fect to the owner's door, and he pays, simply, money | for it. In this country, on the contrary, the purchaser j and driver of such a vehicle pays for it money, contri- vance, constant thought, and almost his entire attention. The classes are yet wanting who purvey for luxuries out of the ordinary course. There is no head-groom whose business it is to save his master from all thought and trouble as to his turn-out. The New York " Glaucus" must go every day for a month to the coachmaker's, to superintend the finishing of his new " drag." He must hurry his breakfast to go to the stable to look after his irresponsible grooms. He spends hours at the harness-maker's. He racks his thought to contrive compact working-room for his wheelers, and get the right pull on his leaders. He becomes learned in harness-blacking and wheel-grease, horse-shoes and horse-physic, and, in short, entirely occupies what philosophers are pleased to call " an im- mortal mind" in the one matter of a vehicle to drive. (He could be conveyed, of course, the same distance each day in an omnibus for sixpence — but he does not believe the old satire of " aliquis in omnihus, nihil in singulis.'" Quite the contrary!) A man who is not content, in this country, to be provided for with the masses, and like the masses, becomes his own provider — like a man who, to have a coat different from other people, should make it himself, and, of course, be lit- tle except an amateur tailor. We shall have these supplementary links of society in time. There will be, doubtless, the class of thought-savers. But, until then, the same amount of thought that would serve a constituency in Congress, will be employed in keep- ing a " slap-up turn-out," and rich young men will at least have the credit of choosing between stable knowledge and legislative ambition. I had thought that the revenue which foreign the- atres derive from selling to young men, at large prices, keys for the season to the behind-scenes, and the so- ciety of the goddesses of the ballet while off the stage, was not yet discovered in this country. The following paragraph, from the True Sun, would seem to show that the coulisses are visited for their society, at least, and might be made "to pay :" — EPHEMERA. 659 "Among the cases which are set down for trial next term, is one which will lift the curtain which conceals the affairs of a certain cheap theatre in this city, and give the public a bird's-eye view of what has been re- cently going on behind the scenes. The develop- ments, if not prevented by an amicable arrangement, will be rich and rare — showing the procedure by which a luminary of the law has run out of his orbit, displacing, in his new and erratic course, a luminary of literature /" The fine writing of this paragraph, by-the-way, is rather piquant. The belle of the Olympic, pretty Miss Taylor, could scarce have a better advertisement for attrac- tion than a paragraph which announces that she "has been robbed of six hundred dollars worth of jewelry," and that "many heavy articles of plate, rich dresses, Ar., were left undisturbed !" I am inclined to think that this is a covert puff from Mitchell's ge- nius — for he is a genius, and quite capable of knowing that everybody will go to have a look at an actress who had "six hundred dollars' worth of jewelry and many heavy articles of plate left undisturbed !" Peo- ple, like pictures, are made to "stand out" by a well-contrived background! Ah, vou bright fellow, Mitchell! The event ahead which Jias the most rose-colored promise, just now, is the Annual Ball of the City Guard — to be given at Niblo's on the twenty-fourth. Niblo's finely-proportioned hall has been, for some time, undergoing a transformation into a model of the ancient Alhambra for the purpose, and Smith, the ex- cellent scene-painter of the Park, and a troop of dec- oraters and upholsterers under his direction, are do- ing all that taste and money can do to conjure up a scene of enchantment "for one night only." The supper is to make the gods hungry and envious on Olympus — so sumptuous, they say, are the prepara- tions. The City Guard, as you may know, is what the English army-men call the "crack corps'' of New York. The probability is, that its members repre- sent more spirit, style, and character, than belong to any other combination of young men in the state. They have a great deal of fashion, as well as esprit du corps, and, what with their superb uniform, uppish carriage, superior discipline, and high-spirited union of purpose, they constitute a power of no little weight and consideration. Their ball will probably be the most showy festivity of the season. The masked ball which comes oft" to-night is, I am told, got up by a party of literary ladies, to promote tase in conversation! I can hardly fancy anything more easy than the "freedoms of the press," and, I im told, most of the gentlemen of the press are in- 'ited, myself among the number. A man is a block, of course, who is not open to improvement. ******* I went to the masked ball without any very clear idea of who were its purposers, or what were its purposes. I found to my surprise that it was the celebration of the opening of the Ladies' Club in the upper part of Broadway. A fine house has been taken and furnished, and the reading-room goes im- mediately into operation, I understand. Like the frolic they gave (in some country of which I have read and desire to know more) to the nuns before taking the irrevocable veil, the carpets were taken up and music and men introduced to make the gynocras- tic seclusion hereafter more marked and positive. Being "an early man," I stayed but an hour, listen- ing to the band and looking on; but I saw beauty there which might make one almost envy the news- papers that are to be perused by a "club" of such, and a general air enjoue more lovely than literary. The masks were few, and the fun of them was quite destroyed by the fact that every one seemed to know who they were. Indeed, the pleasure of reputable masking lies in the momentary breaking down of bar- riers that in this country do not exist — in giving low degree and high degree a chance to converse freely, that is to say — and till we have unapproachable lords and princes, and ladies weary of the thin upper air of exclusiveness, masquerading will be dull work to us. At present the mask makes rather than removes an ob- stacle to intercourse. Anybody who is there in a mask, would be just as glad to see you tete-a-tete by daylight, the next morning in her parlor, as to chat with you through pasteboard and black crape. Most of the ladies at this literary ball were in fancy dresses, however, and doubtless with their pastoral attractions displayed to the best advantage; and this part of it was commendable. If women knew what was attrac- tive, I think they would make every ball a '■'■fancy ball. 1 ' " Medora" jackets and " Sultana" trousers are choses entrainantes. I think you would agree with me, after reading it, that Brantz Mayer's work on Mexico, recently published, is as agreeably spiced with wit, humor, and other pleasant metal pimento, as any book of travels written within new-book memory. I have run through it within a day or two with some suspense, as well as great amusement — for so racy and sketchy a power of description should be in the corps of professed, not amateur authors. His descriptions of the outer features of Mexican life, of Mexican character, Mex- ican women, beggars, priests, and gamblers, are ad- mirably spirited and entertaining. There is also a good deal of statistical matter industriously and care- fully got together, and the publisher has done justice to it all in the printing and getting up. There will be elaborate reviews of it elsewhere; but meantime I express my pleasurable surprise and admiration in a paragraph- — commending it for the purchase of readers. The fourth extra of the New Mirror has appeared, embodying Morris's popular songs and melodies, which have heretofore only been published with mu- sic, or in a very expensive embellished edition of his works. The hundred thousand lovers of married po- etry (music the wife, or husband, I don't know which) will be glad to get these " winged words" in a lump for a shilling. Morris's popularity will send this ex- tra to every corner of the land. The betting upon the riders in the proposed hur- dle-race (not steeple-chase, as I mentioned before) goes on vigorously. I rather doubt, however, whether it will ultimately come off. There was a steeple-chase got up on Long Island, last year, in which an Irish- man and an Englishman, whose fames had followed them, as great hunters, were the competitors, and after getting over two fences by pushing them down with their horses' breasts, they got imprisoned in a clover-lot, from which they were extricated with great difficulty by the owner's letting down the bars and leading the horses over ! There is a compact, jockey- built American among the competitors, who has great skill as a horseman, and should there be snow on the ground, his light weight and superior practice will 660 EPHEMERA. win the race for him without a doubt. The Viscount Bertrand, though doubtless the boldest of riders, is over six feet high, and a heavy man. The Statistics of Puffing. — We have been in- duced lately to look a little into the meum and tuum of puffing— partly from having been untruly (qu. pre- maturely?) accused of " receiving consideration for the same," but more to see whether the consideration were worth the having, in case conscience (" John Tet- zel, vender of indulgences," being dead) could be brought to countenance it. We pique ourselves on looking things in the face, and having and allowing as few concealments as possible — so, first, for a clean breast on the subject — say up to January 1, 1844. We are not particular, as "Mrs. Grundy" knows, as to the subject we write upon, nor the harness in which we are put to work, nor the style, rhythm, or rhyme, we are called upon to write in. We go alto- gether for metallic magnetism. It is our duty (on our way to Heaven) to try for a "plum" — in other words, to be "diligent in business." We write what in our judgment is best calculated to sell. But, in the course of this policy, it falls in our way to speak of things to eat, and things to wear — very capable topics, both, as to piquancy and interest. We have had occasion to describe glowingly Florence's crus- taceous cave, and the ice-cream Alhamra, and to pronounce Carpenter the ne plus ultra of coat- builders, and Jennings's the emporium of "bang-up" toggery, and for these and similar serviceable " first- rate notices," we have, in no shape,* received " con- sid-e-ra-tion." The gentlemen who have said so ("the hawks" who would "pick out hawks' een") will please make an early meal of their little fictions. As to literary puffs, we would as soon sell our tears for lemon-drops, as to defile one of God's truthful adjectives with a price for the using it. We never asked for a literary puff in our life, nor made interest for it in any shape, nor would we sell one for the great emerald Sakhral. But if we love a man (as we do many, thank God, whom we are called upon to criticise), we pick out the gold that is inlaid in his book, and leave to his enemies to find the brass and tinsel. And if that's not fair, we don't very much care —for we scorn to be impartial. But let us hop off this high horse, and come down to the trade part of it once more. In England, all influences that aid business are priced and paid. The puffs of new books in the newspapers are invariably sent, ready-written, by the publishers, and paid for at a much higher price than avowed advertisements. The continued effect of this abuse of the public ear is based upon the phlegmatic dulness of perception in the English public, and their consequent chronic humbuggability. It could never "answer" in our country after being once fairly ex- posed. It is, to a certain degree, practised, however — as is pay for concert-puffing, music-puffing, theat- rical-puffing, etc. Having confessed that we are willing to admit an entering wedge of iniquity in this line — in other words, that we are willing to know whether it be hon- est to serve a man and contemplate his thanks in lucre — let us " run the line," as the surveyors say, and see how our new territory of tribute may be vir- tuously bounded. Authors have "the freedom" of us, of course. They are welcome to all we can do for them — if they • One exception — a hat ! We had been somewhat emphatic in avowing Orlando Fish the nonpn v =;il of hat-shapers, and (knowing the measure of our ; .a — critical man !) he did send us a charming hat with a i the disenchantment of a bill. Peccavimus ' publish on their own account. Actors, singers, and painters, are " chartered libertines" for whom we have a weakness ; and, besides, we can not feed on the wages of pleasure-makers. All other pursuits, trades, professions, we are half inclined to admit, will be at liberty to make us such acknowledgments as they choose for any furtherance to their merchandise (in bales or brains) which may come legitimately in our way. We shall, in any case, preserve the value of our commendation by keeping it honest, and we shall never commend any farther than is entertaining and readable — but there is a choice between subjects to write about, and a preference as to giving attention to things about town, and it is for this choice and pref- erence that we may make up our mind to be suscep- tible of corruption. We write this in the cool of the morning. We don't know what we shall think in the more impulsive hours. Meantime — send it to the printer, and see what the governor says of it in the proof-sheet. A few gentlemen (Mr. Philip Hone apparently the mover of the project) have combined to raise a sub- scription for the purchase of Clevenger's statue of a North American Indian. The circular addresses the business-men of the city, and the statue, if purchased, will be presented to the Mercantile Library Associa- tion. Three thousand dollars is the sum fixed upon, five hundred of which are to be appropriated to the immediate relief of Mrs. Clevenger and her children. It would strike, perhaps, even some of the subscribers to this fund with surprise to tell them that the statue they are to purchase is possibly still lying unquarried in the mountains of Carrara. Clevenger is dead, but his genius stands pointing its finger to a rude block of marble, in which lies, unseen, a complete and immor- tal statue, waiting only for the chisel of mechanical workmen to remove the rough stone that encumbers it. That finger is seen and obeyed three thousand miles away (by the committee with Mr. Philip Hone at its head), and the reluctant money will be forth- coming and on its way to Italy in a month, and the statue will be found and finished., imported, and ex- hibited at Clinton Hall ! (Plain matter-of-fact, all this, and yet it sounds very like poetry !) I was told by Thorwalsden, when at Rome, that there were sev- eral of his statues he had never seen. They were fin* ished, as far as he was concerned, when they were moulded in clay. They were then cast in plaster by the mechanics who make a trade of it, and the plaster models were sent to Carrara, where there is a large village of copyists in marble living near the marble quarries. From Carrara the statues were sent, when finished, to Copenhagen, their ultimate destination, and Thorwalsden, on his subsequent visit to his native country, saw them for the first time. The cost of de- livering Clevenger's statue from the womb of the mountain impregnated by his genius will be about one thousand dollars — a round fee for the accouchement of the stony mother of " a North American Indian!" Burns's Letters to Clarinda have disappointed many people, who expected, naturally, to find a poet's love- letters better written than another man's. I think the contrary would naturally be true. Fine writing is an arm's-length dexterity, and the heart works only at close quarters. I should suspect the sincerity of a poet's love-letter if it were not far within his habitual tact and grace. Besides, in strong emotion, the heart flies from the much-used channels of language, and tries for something newer to its own ear, and, while an ordinary man would find this novelty in poetical lan- guage, a poet would seek to roughen, and simplify. EPHEMERA. 661 and break up the habitual art and melody of his pe- riods. By-the-way, the name of Burns reminds me of a little anecdote I heard told with some humor by Campbell, at a dinner-party in London. Count D'Orsay and Barry Cornwall were present, and they were drawing out the veteran bard as to his recollec- tions of the great men who were setting stars when he was rising. " I was dining one day with Burns," said Campbell, " who, like Dr. Johnson and other celebri- ties, had his Bozzy worshipper, a friend who was always in his company. I have forgotten his name. Bums left the room for a moment, and passing the bottle to his friend, I proposed to drink the health of Mr. Burns. He gave me a look of annihilation. ' Sir,' said he, ' you will always be known as Mr. Campbell, but posterity will talk of Burns !'" Such an anecdote makes one look around in alarm, to see if there are not some unrecognised mononoms \nour time, whom we are profaning, unaware, with our Mister-y. It rains in Broadway — as it has often done before, it is true ; but it seems to me a particularly wet rain, for there is an old black beggar standing in front of St. Paul's, holding out his hat for what must be, at any rate, a diluted charity. At a fair calculation (and I have watched him while writing, for the last two hours), every tenth passenger put something into his hat. His gray wool must hold more water than his leaky hat, and, at least, it acts like a sponge — on the passers-by. Begging, as yet, is a good trade in America, and I think that New York, particularly, is a place where money has little adhesiveness — easily made and readily given away. I have noticed in history and real life that reformers, great enthusiasts, and great philosophers, produce effects quite commensurate with their ambitions, but seldom by success in the exact line they had marked out. Providence does not allow "steam" to be wasted. Jn the search after the "elixir of life," and the "phi- losopher's stone," for example, the alchymists have stumbled over some of the most important discoveries of chymistry. This is rather an essayish beginning to a hasty-pudding letter, but I have been looking over Brisbane's book on Fourierism, while eating my break- fast, and it struck me how poorly the direct objects of "socialism" succeeded, while combination, to produce great and small results, seems to me to be the most prominent novelty in the features of the time. Mer- cantile houses are establishing partners in all the prin- cipal capitals — new publications are circulated almost wholly by a lately-arranged system of combined agen- cies — information, formerly got by individual reading, is new fed out to large societies; and the rumor just now is, of a grand experiment of combining all the qual- ities of half a dozen newspapers in one — establishing something like the London Times, for instance, in which the subscriber would be sure to find "every- thing; that is going." I went on Wednesday evening to the temperance tea-party, at Washington Hall, given in honor of the birthday of Franklin. Here was combination again — tea-party, prayer-meeting, lecture, concert, prome- nade, and tableau vivant (a printing-press worked in the room), all given in one entertainment. There were seven or eight long tables, with alleys between, and from a thousand to twelve hundred ladies and gentlemen seated " at tea," and listening to the singing, praying, instrumental music, and speech-making, with a great appearance of comfort. I did not stay for the " prom- enade all round," but I am told that it was very agreeable, and that the party did not separate till two in the morning ! The temperance combination has been a great lesson as to the power of numbers united for one end ; though I fear the action of it has been somewhat like the momentary sweeping dry of a river's channel by a whirlwind, so strikingly seems intemperance, of late, to have resumed its prevalence in the streets. I find that, by my hasty observations on New York society in a late letter, I have given voice to a feeling that has been for some time in petto publico, and I have heard since a great deal of discussion of the quality of New York gayety. It seems to be the opinion of good observers, that the best elements of society are not organized. The intellect and refine- ment of the population (of which there is quite enough for a fair proportion) lies " around in spots," it is thought, waiting only for some female Napoleon to concentrate and combine them. Exclusively liter- ary parties would be as unattractive as exclusively dancing or juvenile parties, and indeed variety is the spice of agreeable social intercourse. In London, beauty is, with great pains, dug out from the mine of unfashionable regions, and made to shine in an aristo- cratic setting; and talent of all kinds, colloquial, lit- erary, artistical, theatrical, is sought out, and mingled with rank, wealth, and elegance, in the most perfect society of Europe. Any sudden attempt to discredit fashionable parties, and ruu an opposition with a "blue" line, would be covered with ridicule. But I think enough has been said, in a community as mer- curial and sympathetic of news as is the population of New York, to induce the Amphytrions of gayety to look a little into their social mixtures, and supply the sweets or acids that are wanting. At the most fash- ionable party lately given, Madame Castellan was the. guest of honor, and not called upon to sing — and this is somewhat more Londonish than usual. It is one of the newnesses of our country that we have no grades in our admiration, and can only see the merits of extreme lions. Second, third, and fourth-rate celeb- rities, for whom in Europe there is attention justly measured, pass wholly unnoticed through our cities. It must be a full-blooded nobleman, or the first singer or danseuse of the world, or the most popular author, or the very first actor, or the miraculous musician, if there is to be any degree whatever of appreciation or enthusiasm. This lack of a scale of tribute to merit is one reason why we so ridiculously overdo our wel- comes to great comets, as in the case of Dickens — leaving very respectable stars, like Emerson, Longfel- low, Cooper, Sully, and all our own and some foreign men of genius, to pass through the city, or remain here for weeks, unsought by party-givers, and unwel- comed except by their personal friends. To point this out, fortunately, is almost to correct it, so ready are we to learn; but I think, by the shadow cast before, that the avatar of some goddess of fashion may be soon looked for, who will shut her doors upon stu- pidity and inelegance, rich or poor, and create a gay- ety that will be enjoyable, not barely endurable I am very sorry to see by the English papers that Dickens has been "within the rules of the Queen's bench"— realizing the prophecy of pecuniary rum I which has, for some time, been whispered about for 1 him. His splendid genius did not need the melan- I choly proof of improvidence, and he has had wealth so completely within his grasp that there seems a par- ticular and unhappy Heedlessness in his rum. The ' most of his misfortune is, he has lived so closely at I the edge of his flood-tide of prosperity, that the ebb i leaves him at high-water mark, and not in the con- 662 EPHEMERA. tented ooze of supplied necessity where it first took him up. And by-the-way, it was in that same low- water period of his life — just before he became cele- brated — that I first saw Dickens; and I will record this phase of his chrysalis (" the tomb of the cater- pillar and the cradle of the butterfly," as Linnaeus calls it), upon the chance of its being as interesting to future ages as such a picture would now be of the anle-bulterjlicity of Shakspere. I was following a favorite amusement of mine one rainy day, in the Strand, London — strolling toward the more crowded thoroughfares with cloak and umbrella, and looking at people and shop-windows. I heard my name called from a passenger in a street-cab. From out the smoke of the wet straw peered the head of my pub- lisher, Mr. Macrone (a most liberal and noble-hearted fellow, since dead). After a little catechism as to my damp destiny for that morning, he informed me that he was going to visit Newgate, and asked me to join him. I willingly agreed, never having seen this famous prison, and after I was seated in the cab, he said he was going to pick up, on the way, a young paragraph- ist for the Morning Chronicle, who wished to write a description of it. In the most crowded part of Hol- born, within a door or two of the "Bull and Mouth" inn (the great starting and stopping-place of the stage- coaches), we pulled up at the entrance of a large building used for lawyers' chambers. Not to leave me sitting in the rain, Macrone asked me to dismount with him. I followed by long flights of stairs to an upper story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal table and two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and Mr. Dickens — for the contents. I was only struck at first with one thing (and I made a memorandum of it that evening, as the strongest instance I had seen of English obsequiousness to employers) — the degree to which the poor author was overpowered with the honor of his publisher's visit ! I remember saying to myself, as I sat down on a rickety chair, " My good fellow, if you were in America, with that fine face and your ready quill, you would have no need to be con- descended to by a publisher !" Dickens was dressed very much as he has since described "Dick Swivel- ler" — minus the " swell" look. His hair was cropped close to his head, his clothes scant, though jauntily cut, and after changing a ragged office-coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the door, collarless and but- toned up, the very personification, I thought, of a close sailer to the wind. We went down and crowded into the cab (one passenger more than the law allowed, and Dickens partly in my lap and partly in Macrone's) and drove on to Newgate. In his works, if you re- member, there is a description of the prison, drawn from this day's observation. We were there an hour or two, and were shown some of the celebrated mur- derers confined for life, and one young soldier waiting for execution; and in one of the passages we chanced to meet Mrs. Fry, on her usual errand of benevolence. Though interested in Dickens's face, I forgot him naturally enough after we entered the prison, and I do not think I heard him speak during the two hours. I parted from him at the door of the prison, and con- tinued my stroll into the city. Not long after this, Macrone sent me the " sheets of Sketches by Boz," with a note saying that they were by the gentleman who went with us to Newgate. I read the book with amazement at the genius display- ed in it, and in my note of reply assured Macrone that I thought his fortune was made as a publisher if he could monopolize the author. Two or three years afterward, I was in London, and present at the complimentary dinner given to Mac- ready. Samuel Lover, who sat next me, pointed out Dickens. I looked up and down the table, but was wholly unable to single him out without getting my friend to number the people who sat above him. He was no more like the same man I had seen than a tree in June is like the same tree in February. He sat leaning his head on his hand while Bulwer was speak- ing, and with his very long hair, his very flash waist- coat, his chains and rings, and withal a much paler face than of old, he was totally unrecognisable. The ; comparison was very interesting to me, and I looked j at him a long time. He was then in his culmination | of popularity, and seemed jaded to stupefaction. Re- membering the glorious works he had written since I had seen him, I longed to pay him my homage, but had no opportunity, and I did not see him again till he came over to reap his harvest and upset his hay- cart in America. When all the ephemera of his im- prudences and improvidences shall have passed away — say twenty years hence — I should like to see him again, renowned as he will be for the most original and remarkable works of his time. A friend lent me yesterday a late file of " The Straits Messenger," an English newspaper published at Singapore. The leader of one number commences with, " We have always had a hatred for republican- ism, and holding it to be the fosterer of every rascality in public life, and every roguery in private, we are not at all surprised when instances turn up to prove our theory true." This is apropos of some news of " repudiation." The advertisements in this paper amused me somewhat, and this consist principally of dissolutions of native partnership. Here are three of them : — " Notice. The interest and responsibility of Kim Joo Ho in our firm ceased from the 8th January. (Signed) Yep Hun Ho." " Notice. The interest and responsibility of the undersigned in the firm of Chop Tyho ceased from this date. (Signed) Chee Ong Seang, Chee Jin Seo." " Notice. The interest and responsibility of Mr. See Eng San in our firm ceased from the 5th January. (Signed Boonteeong & Co." In the old English of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" there is wrapped up a little germ of wisdom which you would hardly look for in the metaphysics of love, but which contains the hand-over-hand, boiling-pot principle of most of the make-money-ries of our country : — " My sonne, yet there is the fifte, Which is conceived of enuie, And 'cleped is suppi.anterie ; Thro' whose compassement and guile Full many hath lost his while In love, as well as other wise." In England nobody gets ahead but by shoving on all those who are before him, but a hundred instances will occur to you of leap-frog experiment in our coun- try, by which all kinds of success in business is super- seded. The most signal and successful jump that I have noticed lately is that of the periodical agents, over the heads of the old publishers — (the trick, indeed, which has hocus-pocused the old pirates into chang- ing their views on the subject of copyright !) Three years ago the great apparatus for the circulation of books, was entirely a secret in the hands of the trade, and a man might as well have attempted to run a rail- car across the fields by hand as an author to have at- tempted to circulate his own book without the con- sent of publishers. The names and terms of book- selling correspondents, the means of transportation of books, and the amount of profits on them, were matters of inaccessible knowledge. The publisher kept the EPHEMERA. 663 gate of the public eye, and demanded his own toll — two thirds of the commodity, if not all ! The first " little pin" that " bored through this castle wall," was the establishment of the mammoth newspaper, by Day and Wilson, and the publication of entire novels in one sheet; and, upon their agencies for the circu- lation of these, is now built a scheme of periodical agency totally separate from publishers, and comparing with these as the expresses of Hale and Harnden and Pomeroy do with the general post-office — cheaper, more expeditious and open to competition. It is, perhaps, not generally known, that any author, vow, can publish his own book, and get all the profits ! Any printer will tell him how to get it printed and bound in paper covers— for which he pays simply what publishers do. Stored up in his own room or a ware- house, he has only to furnish it to the periodical agents, who will take of him, at their wholesale price, all that will sell — (bringing the risk directly on the proper shoulders, those of the author) — and returning to him very promptly the money or the unsaleable copies. There are no " six months publishers' notes" in the business; no cringing or making interest. The author is on a blessed level with the gingerbread bakers and blacking sellers he has often envied — salesman of his own commodity, if saleable it be, and made aware, to a certainty, in a very brief time, whether he has mis- taken his vocation. Let but congress give us a law which shall prevent English books from coming, not into the market, but into the publishers' hands, for nothing, and the only remaining obstacle to a world- wide competition will be gloriously removed. And, books will be no dearer than at present — as the me- morials to congress sufficiently show. There are some delicious works of art now ex- hibiting opposite the hospital, in Broadway— Harvey's Atmospheric Effects of American Scenery. Those who have not been observers in other countries are scarcely aware how peculiar our country is in its at- mospheric phenomena — how much bolder, brighter, and more picturesque. There is scarce a scene pictur- ed in this beautiful gallery which could be at all true of any other country ; but to the American eye they are enchantingly faithful and beautiful. The artist gives in his prospectus for engraving these works the following interesting bit of autobiography : — " In 1827 1 entered upon the line of portrait-paint- ing in miniature; I pursued it for nine years with an assiduity that impaired my health. Country air and exercise being recommended me, I purchased a tract of land on the majestic Hudson ; built a cottage after my own plan ; amused myself by laying out grounds, and gained health and strength by the employment. These exercises in the open air led me more and more to notice and study the ever-varying atmospheric effects of this beautiful climate. I undertook to illustrate them by my pencil, and thus almost accidentally, commenced a set of atmospheric landscapes. The number had reached twenty-two, and as yet 1 had no thought of publication when business called me to Europe. I carried them with me, and, while in Lon- don, occasionally attended the Conversazione of Artists. At one of these I accidentally heard a gentleman, on leaving a little knot of connoisseurs assembled round my portfolio, pass a most flattering eulogium on its contents. 1 felt the more elated by his praise on learning that he was Professor Farrady, the able suc- cessor of Sir Humphrey Davy. At Paris, while par- taking of the courteous hospitality of the American minister, Governor Cass, my portfolio was sent for and received the approbation of that gentleman and his guests. Governor Cass retained my drawings for a week ; on returning them to me he recommended that I should have them engraved, and suggested that it might be done at once, while I was in Pans. I was too diffident, however, of their popular merit, to risk so extensive an undertaking. On my return to New York my personal friends encouraged me in the proj- ect, and at last I made up my mind to lay the original drawings before the Boston public; conceiving that I owed it to that city, where I had received liberal en- couragement in my previous pursuits to give to them the <^<>portunity of originating the work of publica- tion." Mr. Harvey went afterward to London to find print- colorists who could execute the work to his satisfac- tion, and, while there, Mr. Murray, who was formerly in this country, and is now attached to her majesty's household, showed to the queen the first number. The royal subscription was immediately given to the work at a munificent price. It is worth every one's while to see this delicious work of art, and every per- son of easy means should subscribe for a copy of the engravings. The sleighs flying very briskly up and down Broad- way this morning' remind me that Miss Howitt, in her late preface to one of Miss Bremer's works, mentions, among other phrases, our use of the words " sleighs, slec/s, and sleighing, for sledges and sledging," — calling them " Americanisms which all well-educated persons will be careful not to introduce into their families." Miss Howitt might allow, to a continent of the size of ours, the privilege of coining a word without the tariff of her contempt ; but she forgets that sled is a I good English word, and derived from the very lan- guage of the book she has translated — from the Swedish word slrcda. Thomson says in his Seasons : — " Eager on rapid sleds Their vigorous youth in bold contention wheel The long resounding course." And Fletcher says, in a fine passage of his Eclogue: — " From thence he furrowed many a churlish sea, The viny Rhene and Volga's self did pass, Who sleds doth surfer on his wat'ry lea, And horses trampling on his icy face." The cold weather of the last week has justified another Americanism, for it has been literally " a cold spell" — dimming parlor lights, and arresting the flow of thought. The gas-lights burn dim because water freezes in the gasometers, and " whole stacks of new publications" (as a periodical agent told me yesterday) are " books and stationary," from the interrupted navi- gation. Palmo's hew opera has been voted fashionable, nem. con. (as I have been fashionably assured), and the long ellipse of other theatricals will give it a flow- ing launch. It is a small and beautiful edifice, and is toT>e brilliantly lighted, and made every way conform- able to the exactions of white kid and cashmere. Its situation is admirable— far enough up Chamber street to be away from the noises of Broadway, and accessi- ble easilv from all parts of the city. This evening comes off the preparatory rehearsal, to which the connoisseurs and gentlemen of the press are invited as guests. The printed invitation by the way, makes Mr. Palmo out to be (very properly) a fellow-cihzcn of the Muses, and is altogether an amusing production A copy of it, filled up with the name of a friend of ours, lies by me, running thus: "The honor of the ,1 company of N. P- W , Grand Scr.be, are respect- i fully invited to attend the first public rehearsal of the i Italian Opera, on Friday evening. The house will | be brilliantly illuminated, and the connoisseur in music 664 EPHEMERA. will have an opportunity of beholding an edifice erected and dedicated to the Muses, by their fellow-citizen, F. Palmo." This making " fellow-citizens" of the Muses re- minds me of a police report in the " True Sun," announcing that a namesake of the great Roman emperor who was " Amor et delicice generis humanV — a Mr. Titus — was " arrested and committed for stealing a door-mat !" How a man with so great a name could steal so little, is a psychological marvel. In looking over a western paper, a day or two since, my eye fell on an advertisement in very comical verse. Here are a couple of stanzas — to the tune of " the cork leg :" — " You all have in the papers read, That Kibbe has caps for every head, Which are marked so very low, 'tis said, The price can scarcely be cred-i-ted. Ritu-rinu-ri-iditti-i-do-da. " You'll be well pleased to hear the news, That Kibbe has got new boots and shoes ; They're sold so cheap that it beats the Jews ; He'll exchange for hides, if you do choose. Ritu-rinu," etc. I think there should be a committee sent out to in- vite Mr. Kibbe to become a poet. " The Rococo" is the quaint, but, in fact, most descriptive name of one of the " extras of the New Mirror." Those of our readers who have been lately in France will be familiar with the word. The ety- mology of rococo has been matter of no little fruitless inquiry. It came into use about four or five yeats ago, when it was the rage to look up costly and old-fashion- ed articles of jewelry and furniture. A valuable stone, for example, in a beautiful but antique setting, was rococo. A beauty, who had the kind of face oftenest painted in the old pictures, was rococo. A chair, or a table, of carved wood, costly once, but unfashionable for many a day, was rococo. Articles of vertu were looked up and offered for sale with a view to the pre- vailing taste for rococo. Highly carved picture-frames, old but elaborately-made trinkets, rich brocades, etc., etc. — things intrinsically beautiful and valuable, in short, but unmeritedly obsolete, were rococo. The extra published by the proprietors of the New Mirror answers this description exactly. It comprises the three most exquisite and absolute creations of pure imagination (in my opinion) that have been produced since Shakspere : « Lillian" by Praed, " The Culprit Fay" by Drake, and » St. Agnes' Eve" by Keats— all three of which have been overlaid and in a measure lost sight of in the torrent of new literature— but all three now to be had altogether in fair type, price one shilling! The man who could read these poems without feeling the chamber of his brain filled with incense — without feeling his heart warm, his blood moved, and his inmost craving of novelty and melody deliciously ministered to, does not love poetry enough to " possess a rose-teint for his russet cares." I de- clare I think it is worth the outlay of a fever to get (by seclusion and depletion) the delicacy of nerve and perception to devour and relish with intellectual nice- ty, these three subtly-compounded feasts of the ima- gination. We are indebted for many beautiful things not so much to accident as to the quickness of genius to ap- preciate and appropriate accident. I was pleased with an instance that came to my knowledge last night. Wallace (the omni-dexterous) was playing the piano in my room, and, among others of his own inimitable waltzes, he played one called the Midnight Waltz, in which twelve strokes of the clock recur constantly with the aria. In answer to an inquiry of mine, he told me he was playing, one night, to some ladies in Lima, when a loud silvery-toned clock in the room struck twelve. He insensibly stopped, and beat the twelve strokes on an accordant note on the piano, and in repeating the passage, stopped at the same place and beat twelve again. The effect was particu- larly impressive and sweet, and he afterward composed a waltz expressly to introduce it — one of the most charming compositions I ever heard. Wallace is the most prodigal of geniuses, and most prodigally en- dowed. He has lived a life of adventure in the East In- dies, South America, New South Wales, and Europe, that would fill satisfactorily the life-cups of a dozen men, and how he has found time to be what he proba- bly is, as great a violinist and as great a pianist as the greatest masters on those instruments, is certainly a wonder. But this is not all. He was rehearsing for a concert not long since in New York, when the clari- onet-player, in reply to some correction, said that " if Mr. Wallace wished it played better he might play it himself." Wallace took the clarionet from the hand of the refractory musician, and played the passage so exquisitely as quite to electrify the orches- tra. He is the most modest of men, and how many more instruments he is master of (beside the human voice, which he plays on in conversation very attrac- tively), it would be wild to guess.* By the way, it would be worth the while of a music-publisher to send for the music he has literally soivn the world with — for he has written over three hundred waltzes, of most of which he has no copy, though they have been published and left in the cities he has visited. He composes many hours every day. I think Wallace one of the most remarkable men I ever knew. On Saturday night I was at the opening of the new opera — the beginning, as I think, of a regular supply of a great luxury. The bright, festal look of Palmo's exquisite little theatre struck every one with surprise on entering, and the cozy, sympathy-sized construc- tion, and pleasant arrangement of seats, etc., seemed to leave nothing to be wished for. With a kindly fos- tering for a while, on the part of the press and the public, Palmo's theatre may become the most enjoya- ble and refined resort of the city. The new prima donna made a brilliant hit. New York is, at this moment, in love with Signorina Bor- ghese. She dresses a-merveille, has a very intellectual and attractive want of beauty, is graceful, vivid, a cap- ital actress, and sings with a bird-like abandon, that enchants you even with her defects. Nature has giv- en her quite her share of attractiveness, and she uses it all. The opera was " I puritani" — Bellini's last, and the one that was playing, for only the third time, the night he died — (at the age of twenty-seven). It was well selected for the opening opera — being full of in- telligible and expressive melody, and not compelling the musically uninitiated to get on tiptoe to compre- hend it. These same uninitiateds, however, are the class to cater for, in any country, and especially in ours. It is a great mistake to fancy that, in the ap- preciation of an opera, criticism goes before. On the contrary, feeling goes before and criticism follows very slowly. The commonest lover of music feels, for instance, that Bellini's operas are marked by sim- plicity and sameness— but, after having felt that, the * A friend has since told me that Wallace plays every in- strument of the orchestra, and most of them like a master. EPHExMERA. 665 the critic comes in and follows up the idea like an ink-fish, expressing that plain fact in cloudy techni- calities this-wise : "Bellini rather multiplies the rep- etitions of the chord than gives distinct business to the several components of the score !" Who cares to know, when in tears at Rossini's exquisite harmony, that it is produced by a " profuse use of the dimin- ished seventh," or that one of his most electrical ef- fects is done by "an harmonic atrocity of consecutive fifths." To have one's tear shed on a piece of paper, and thus analyzed, may be curious, once, but not very necessary always, and I wish, with all my heart, that the humbug of technicalities in this, as in many other things, might be exposed. It would be a capital sub- ject for a popular lecture. ] lend the suggestion to Mr. Emerson — the man best capable of using it. Supper is a natural sequence to music, and I must mention a pair of canvass-backs that were sent me by a Baltimore friend, and feasted on last night after " I Puritani" — for the sake of giving you and "your pub- lic" some valuable and toothsome directions for the cooking of these birds, contained in a passage of my friend's letter : "I have some anxiety," he says, "about the cooking of these ducks. Pray don't put them in the power of a Frenchman ! Get hold of a good Eng- lish or American cook, knowing in roasts. Let this cook erect a strong, blazing fire, before which he (or she) must tend the birds for about twenty-five or thirty minutes. To determine if they are done, have them held up by the feet, and if the gravy runs out of the necks, of a proper color, they don't require another turn. Serve them up with their oivn gravy. 'Tis safer than a chafing-dish and made gravy. Eat them with hommony patties, between which and the ducks there is a delicate affinity. Beware, I conjure you once more, of a Frenchman — except in the shape of a glass of Chablis. May they prove luscious as those we ate together at Guy's." Here is an epigram on the turning of Grenough's Washington out of the capitol : — Ye sages who work for eight dollars a day, And are patriots, heroes, and statesmen, for pay — Who of Washington prattle in phrases so sweet, Pray why did you tumble him into the street ? Young Poets. — An old man with no friend but his money — a fair child holding the hand of a Magda- len — a delicate bride given over to a coarse-minded bridegroom — were sights to be troubled at seeing. We should bleed at heart to see either of them. But there is something even more touching to us than these — something, too, which is the subject of heart- less and habitual mockery by critics — the first timid offerings to fame of the youthful and sanguine poet. We declare that we never open a letter from one of his class, never read a preface to the first book of one of them, never arrest our critical eye upon a blemish in the immature page, without having the sensation of a tear coined in our heart — never without a passion- ate though inarticulate " God help you !" We know bo well the rasping world in which they are to jostle, with their "fibre of sarcenet !" We know so well the injustices, the rebuffs, the sneers, the insensibilities, from without, the impatiences, the resentments, the choked impulses and smothered heart-boundings with- in. And yet it is not these outward penances, and inward scorpions, that cause us the most regret in the fate of the poet. Out of these is born the inspired ex- pression of his anguish— like the plaint of the singing bird from the heated needle which blinds him. We mourn more over hh fatuous imperviousness to counsel — over his haste to print, his slowness to correct — over his belief that the airy bridges he builds over the chasms in his logic and rhythm are passable, by avoir- dupois on foot, as well as by Poesy on Pegasus. That the world is not as much enchanted — (that we our- selves are not as much touched and delighted) — with the halting flights of new poets as with the broken and short venturings in air of new-fledged birds — proves over again that the world we live in were a good enough Eden if human nature were as loveable as the rest. We wish it were not so. We wish it were natural to admire anything human-made, that has not cost pain and trial. But, since we do not, and can not, it is a pity, we say again, that beginners in poetry are offended with kind counsel. Of the great many books and manuscript poems we receive, there is never one from a young poet, which we do not long, in all kindness, to send back to him to be re- studied, rewritten, and made, in finish, more worthy of the conception. To praise it in print only puts his industry to sleep, and makes him dream he has achieved what is yet far beyond him. We ask the young poets who read this, where would be the kindness in such a case ? A young lady in Brooklyn who signs herself " Short and Sweet," writes to us to say that she is very tired of her name, and seeing no prospect of getting an- other (with an owner to it), wishes to know whether she may lawfully abandon the unsentimental preno- men inflicted on her at baptism, and adopt one of her own more tasteful selection. By an understanding with all the people likely to put her name in their wills, we should think she might. Names are a mod- ern luxury, and if she chose to be rococo, she might do without one, or be known as the ancients were, by some word descriptive of her personal peculiarities. (So came into use the names of Brown, Long, Broad- head, etc.) " Short and Sweet" would not be a bad name. Or — if the lady chooses to follow the Arabian custom, she (supposing her father's name to be a well-sounding one— say Tiskins) would be called "Tiskins's Short and Sweet daughter" — people in Arabia being only designated as brown or fair, short or tall, children of such and such parents. There was a Roman fashion, too, that might help her out — that of adding to the name any quality or exploit for which the bearer was remarkable — Miss Short and Sweet Heartbreaker, for example, or Miss " Noli-me- Tangere," or (after the favorite flower of the Irish), Miss " Jump-up-and-kiss me." (The Irish designate Tom Moore by this pretty prenomen.) Our compli- ments to the lady, and we are sorry she should want a name — sorry she has a want we can not supply. It happens to be the one thing we are out of. The opera gets more crowded, more dressy, and more fashionable, nightly. Some malicious person started a rumor that the building was unsafe, and many stayed away till it was tested. There are many, too, who wait for the stamp of other people's appro- bation before they venture upon even a new amuse- ment. The doubtfuls have now gone over, however, and the opera is " in the full tide," etc., etc. Some of the first families have taken season-tickets in the opera-boxes (there are but two private boxes, and those very inconvenient and undesirable), and the best seats in the pit are sold out, like the stalls at the Italian opera in London, to bachelors in the market. The prima donna, Borghese. improves with every repetition, and what with dressing, singing, and act- ing—all exceedingly well— she is a very enjoyable rechauffee of Grisi. whose style she follows. 666 EPHEMERA. This is a day of such sunshine and air that those " Who can not spare the luxury of believing That all things beautiful are what they seem,'' must be in love with the sunny sidewalk of Broadway. And this recalls to my mind a little book of poems, better described by their title than any book whose name I ever knew — " Droppings from the Heart," by Thomas Mackeltar, lately published in Philadelphia. Everybody must love the man who reads his book, though its simplicity would sometimes make you smile. He thus apostrophizes the city of New Y"ork : — •< New York ! I love thy sons, beyond compare Ennobled — not by empty words of kings, But by ennobling acts, by virtues rare, And charities unbounded. These the things That crown their names with honor. Peerless all Thy lovely daughters, warm with sympathy, Swift to obey meek mercy's moving call, To heal the heart and dry the weeping eye, And hush the plaint that fears no comforter is nigh." The credulity of this stanza is not weak-minded- ness, by any means — as the strength of expression and beauty of poetry in the other parts of the book suffi- ciently prove. The writer's only vent seems to be the expression of affection. He loves everything. He believes good of everything and everybody. I do not know that, in my life, I ever saw a more complete pic- ture than this book of a heart overrunning with ten- derness. The lines to his "Sleeping Wife," are as beautiful as anything of Barry Cornwall's. The piece called " The Heart-Longings," too, is finely expressed. A little infusion of distrust, bitterness, and contempt, would make Mackellar a poet of the kind most ad- mired by critics, and most read and sympathized with by the world. He is, I understand, a printer in Phil- adelphia, and enjoys the kindly friendship of Mr. Chandler, of the United States Gazette, to whom is addressed one of the sonnets in his book. For family reading, among people of simple lives and pure tastes, the "Droppings from the Heart" is the best-adapted book of poetry I have lately seen. One of the most charming resuscitations from the trance of oblivion that have come about lately, is the republication (in the " Mirror Library") of Pinckney's Poems. Mr. Pinckney, your readers will perhaps know, was the son of the Hon. William Pinckney, our minister in 1802 at the court of St. James, and was born in London during the diplomatic residence there of his father. He was partly educated at college, entered the navy, gave it up for the law, and, after much disappointment and suffering, died at twenty- five. With discipline and study, he might, I think, have written as well as Moore. What poetry would be in a world where Toil were not the Siamesed twin of Excellence (in other words, where man had not fallen), *• is a curious question, coz !" The wild horse runs very well in the prairie, but we give a preference of admiration to the " good-continuer" by toilsome training. Whether (he faineant angels who "sit in the clouds," admire more the objectless careerings of the wild steed, or the " wind and bottom" of the winner of the sweepstakes — whether fragmentary poetry, dashed off while the inspiration is on, and thrown aside ill-finished, when the whim evaporates, be more celestial than the smooth and complete product of painful toil and disciplined concentration — I have had my luxurious doubts. Pinckney's genius, as evidenced on paper, has all the impulsive abandonment which marks his biography. He was a born poet — with all needful imagination, discrimination, perception, and sensibility; and he had, besides, the flesh-and-blood- \ fulness necessary to keep poetry on terra-firma. Sev- i eral of his productions have become common air — known and enjoyed by everybody, but without a name. The song beginning — " I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, A woman of her gentie sex the seeming paragon," &c. — this, and two or three others of Pinckney's " entire and perfect chrysolites," should be regraven with his name, for the world owes his memory a debt for them. The small volume of his poetry from which the Mir- ror Library edition is copied, was printed in 1825, and has been long lost sight of. It contains — not the stuff for a classic — but a delicious bundle of heart-reaching passages, fresh and peculiar, and invaluable especially to lovers, whose sweetest and best interpreter Pinckney was. Every man or woman who has occasion to em- broider a love-letter with the very essence-flowers of passionate verse, should pay a shilling for Pinckney's poems. The chair and pen of an editor should be assumed with as binding vows and as solemn ceremony as were the sword and war-horse of knighthood — for the edi- tor, like the armed and mounted knight, is an aggrega- tion of more power than nature properly allots to the individual. Indeed, it is because the power has not been well considered by law and by public opinion, that the penalties of maleficent pen and ink are not more formidable than those of fist and dagger. Take the consideration of this thought for a wile-time in your next omnibus-ride, dear reader, and if you chance to be young and have a lust for power, write down editorship for your second choice — the church, of course, number one, and politics, possi- bly, number three. The temptation to the abuse of pen-power is greater as the mind of the editor is more little. It is so easy to do brilliant tilting in the editorial lists, by slashing alike at the offending and unoffending ! Abuse is the easiest, as courtesy is the most difficult kind of wri- ting to make readable, and as it is a relief for the smooth-faced card-player to vent, before he sleeps, his pent-up malice upon his wife, so a heart naturally ill-willed makes a purulent bile-spigot of a pen — relieved, so the venom is spent, no matter upon what. There is so seldom good cause to be ill-natured in print, that it would be safe, always, when reading an ill-natured criticism, to "smell the rat" of a bad heart near by. If perversion of pen and ink be very blameable, for- bearance should be laudable, and we claim credit for much pains-taking in this latter way. The reputa- tions, ready-spitted, that are sent us for roasting, would alone (did we publish them) sell our paper to the ten thousand malicious, who may be counted on as a separate stratum of patronage to periodicals. This is some temptation. Then we are often attacked, and we could demolish the assailant very amusingly, and we resist this temptation, though, if his pin be not winced at, puny impunity will prick again. There is much that is ludicrous, much that is pervertible to sport, in new books and new candidates to fame; and by fault-finding only, or by abusing the author instead of his book (easy and savory), the review is made read- able without labor in writing — and this tempts both malice and idleness. No man can live, elbow to elbow, with competitors in love, life, and litera- ture, without his piques and his resentments, and to " turn" these pleasantly "to commodity," with a laugh that outstabs a dagger, is very tempting — very — to those who can do it dexterously. Now that you have read the three foregoing para- graphs, dear reader, you are prepared to know the value of your acquittal, if you acquit the Mirror of ill-nature, of which it has been accused. We do not EPHEMERA. 667 remember that, in its pages, we have ever, intention- ally, wounded feelings or trenched upon delicacy. The Rococo No. 1, is ready for your shilling, dear reader — one shilling for the three purest gems ever crystallized into poetry — three narrative fairy-tales in verse, exquisitely full of genius. The book, too, is beautifully printed, as are all the works of the Mirror Library — suitable for company at a lavender-fingured breakfast, or for the drawing-room table of your lady fair. Rococo No. 2, is also ready, containing Pinckney's long-neglected and delicious poems, and you should pay a shilling if it were only to know what the coun- try has to be proud of among its poetical dead. The author of " I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone," had a smoothness in his touch of a thought like the glide of a cloud-edge just under a star. For quaint and sweet couplets of love-makery there are few books like it. Witness this verse: — " We break the glass, whose sacred wine To some beloved health we drain, Lest future pledges, less divine, Should e'er the hallowed toy profane ; And thus I broke a heart, that poured Its tide of feelings out for thee, In draughts, by after-times deplored, Yet dear to memory." The following Bryant-like, finished, and high- thoughted poetry was written by a young lady of seventeen, and her first published production. She is the daughter of one of our oldest and best families, resident on the Hudson. If the noon be like the promise of the dawn of this pure intellect, we have here the beginning of a brilliant fame: — 11 Thou beautiful cloud, a glorious hue is thine ! I can not think, as thy bright dyes appear To my enraptured gaze, that thou wert born Of evening exhalations ; more sublime, Light-giver ! is thy birthplace, than of earth. Art ihou not formed to herald in the day, And clothe a world in thy unborrowed light ? Or art thou but a harbinger of rains To budding May < Or, in thy subtle screen, Nursest the lightnings that affright the world? Or wert thou born of the ethereal mist That shades the sea, or shrouds the mountain's brow ? Spread thy wings o'er the empyrean, and away — Fleetly athwart the untravelled wilds of space, To where the sunlight sheds his earliest beams, And blaze the stars, that vision vainly scans In distant regions of the universe ! Tell me, air- wanderer ! in what burning zone Thou wilt appear, when from the azure vault Of our high heaven thy majesty shall fade ? Tell me, winged vapor, where hath been thy home Through the unchangeable serene of noon ? Whate'er thy garniture— where'er thy course — Would I could follow thee in thy fair flight, When the south wind of eve is low and soft, And my thought rises to the mighty Source Of all sublimity ! O, fleeting cloud, Would I were with thee in the solemn night !" February 14. — This is the day, says the calendar, " for choosing special loving friends" — as if there were room for choice in a world where " He who has one is blest beyond compare !" The Lupercalian custom of keeping Valentine's i day (putting the names of all the marriageable girls in the community into a box, and making the bache- lors draw lots for wives) would make a droll imbroglio of " New York society." By-the-way, if you know a working poet out of employ, recommend to his no- tice the literature of valentines. Never till this year have the copies of amatory verses, for sale in the fancy shops, been comparably so well embellished, and the prices of single valentines have ranged from two shil- lings to two dollars — fine ptices to build a trade upon ! The shops, for two or three evenings last past, have been crowded with young men purchasing these, and probably a little better poetry would turn the choice in favor of any particular manufacture of such lovers* wares. The favorite device seems to be stolen from Mercury's detention of Mars and Venus — a paper net, which, when raised, discloses a tableau of avowal. Editorial skirmishing strikes a light into the people's tinder sometimes, and there is a paragraph this morn- ing which explains the difference between paid puffs and literary notices. The True Sun says: "The man who edits the Hagerstown News can not, it seems, distinguish between an editorial article and an advertisement. He mistakes the long advertisement of Verplanck's Shakspere, which appears in our paper, for the production of the editors of the True Sun, and declines inserting it in the News for less than forty-five dollars. What does the man mean ? It is only surprising than an editor should be ignorant that puffs paid are set in minion type, and puffs of vo- lition are set in brevier — a distinction not 'plain' (as yet) 'to the commonest understanding.'" The Lon- don papers print the word "advertisement" over all their puffs paid for, and, by using different type, the True Sun has taken one step toward making the vol- unteer distinguishable. Mr. Verplanck's project, by-the-way, is a very no- ticeable one. We have never had (to my knowledge) an American annotator upon Shakspere, and Shaks- pere is as much ours as England's. Very many of the Shaksperian words are obsolete in England, but in use here, and put down as Americanisms by travellers. I do not know whether Mr. Verplanck promises to show any new readings of Shakspere, but he is a man of much higher education, and more cultivated and scholarlike "pursuits than Mr. Knight (whose edition of Shakspere has lately been so popular in England), beside being a man of productive original genius, which Mr. Knight has no claim to be. The commen- taries upon works of genius by different men of genius can never be repetitions, and are always interesting — so I look with some interest for Mr. Verplanck's pref- ace and first number. As he is a man of large for- tune and entire leisure, there is no obstacle to his doing it well. The discovery of a gem in a dark mine is a poet- ical matter, but (to my present thinking) it is even a prosaic similitude for the sudden finding out of a work of genius progressing in one of the houses of a brick block. I had often passed Durand's house in one of the retired close-built streets of New York, without suspecting that it contained anything but the domestic problem of felicity and three meals a day ; but a chance errand lately led me to knock at his door. My business over, he placed upon the easel (in a charming studio built in the rear of his house) a large landscape to which he had just given the finish- ing touch. I sat down before it, and (to use a good word that is staled and blunted from overusing) it absorbed me. My soul went into it. I was, it is true, in good pictorial appetite. It was my studious time of day, and I had seen no pictures out of my own rooms for a week ; but it seemed to me as if that land- scape alone would be a retreat, a seclusion,. a world by itself to retreat into from care or sad thoughts— so mellow and deep was the distance, so true to nature 668 EPHEMERA. the coloring and drawing, so sweetly poetical the com- position, and so single-thoughted the conception of the effect. The roofs of a comfortable farmhouse and outbuildings were the subordinate life of the picture, seen over a knoll on the right. The centre of the foreground, and the brightest spot in the picture, was a high grass-bank on which glanced a golden beam of the setting sun. On it was a group of cattle in well- fed repose, and over it stood the finest oak-tree I ever saw painted. Twenty miles of landscape lay below, enveloped in the veil of coming twilight, and a river wound gracefully away from the eye and was lost in the distance. It was indeed a glorious picture, and I stake my judgment upon the opinion that no living artist could surpass it. Durand, as you probably know, has turned painter, after having long been the first engraver of our country. He is patient of labor, and has approached landscape-painting by a peculiar education of hand and eye, and the probability is, that if he live twenty years, he will have no equal in this department of the arts. If you remember, I men- tioned my great surprise at the excellence of two of his landscapes in the last exhibition of the academy here. To see pictures with an appetite in the eye, one should see them singly, however, and but two or three, at farthest, in a day. Artists who would be deliberately appreciated, should make their houses morning- resorts, as they are, and very fashionable ones, in France and Italy. There are people (and those, too, who cm afford to buy pictures) who yawn for some such round of occupation during the summer morn- ings of the travelling season. The want of an excuse to put on bonnet, and go out somewhere in the evening with father, husband, brother, or lover, is doubtless the secret of most au- diences, whether in church or lecture-room. I ar- rived at this conclusion sitting and watching the com- ing in of an audience at a popular lecture a night or two ago. The subject was of a character that would only draw listeners (one would think) from the more intellectual and cultivated classes — dry and of remote interest — and one, too, that could be "read up," to perfect mental satisfaction, by sending a shilling to a library, or buying a bit of the cheap literature of the day. It was a cold, raw night, the lecturer was no orator, and the benches of the lecture-room had no cushions. With these premises, you would look to see anything but a pleasure-loving and youthful audi- ence. Yet this was just the quality of the comers-in till the room was crowded. There was scarce an un- appropriated-looking damsel among them, and not one bald head or "adust" visage. That the young men would have been there without the ladies, I do not believe— nor that the ladies came there with any spe- cial desire to know more of the subject of the lecture. On this necessity for ladies to go somewhere of an evening is based, of course, most of the popular en- thusiasms of the day — for they are never got up by individual reading, and would fail entirely, but for the opportunity to give, in one moment, one thought to many people. This fact seems to me to indicate in what way the inducements should be heightened when audiences fall off; and, instead of cheapening tickets, or spending more money in placards, I think it would be better to treat the ladies to an interlude of coffee and conversation, or to minister in some way directly to the tastes of those in whom resides the primum mobile of attendance. I presume there are thousands of families in New York that are not linked with any particular round of acquaintance — very worthy and knowledge-loving peo- ple, who can afford only a few friends, and shun ac- quaintances as expensive. People in this rank are too moderate-minded to be theatre-goers; but the wife and daughters of the family must go somewhere of an evening. Parties are costly, public balls both costly and unadvisable, and there are eight months in the year when it is too cold for icecream-gardens and walks on the Battery. Lecture-tickets for a family are cheap, the company there is good, the room is warm, and so well lighted as to show comeliness or dress to advantage, and the apparent object of being there is creditable and reputable. I say again, that to add to the social inducements of this attraction, would be to make of the lecture system a great gate to the public heart. I add this gratuitous mite of specula- tion to the unused data that have been long waiting for a compiler of the statistics of metropolitan mo- menta. We have had a week of spring-weather, and the upper part of New York (all above the pavements, ca va dire) has been truly enjoyable. Most persons who do not wear their beards for a protection to the glands of the throat, have got the mumps — on dit. Writing in a warm room with the throat pressed down upon a thick cravat, and going into the open air with the head raised and the throat of course suddenly left ex- posed — is one of those provoking risks that "stand to , reason." By the elaborate inventions to keep the feet dry, there seems to be a "realizing sense" of the danger of wet feet also.* Mr. Lorin Brooks's inven- tion for expeditiously throwing an iron bridge over every small puddle — (that is to say, of making boots with a curved metallic shank under the hollow of the foot) — has the advantage of adding to the beauty as well as the protection of the exposed extremities. Signor Palmo continues to pay his way and his prima donna, and not much more — for the upper gal- lery is so constructed that, though you can see the stage from every part of it, you can only see the dress- circle from the front row; and people goto plays a little to see and hear, and a great deal to be seen and heard of. The price of places being the same all over the house, few will take tickets except for the lower tier. The best evidence that the opera is growing on the public liking is the degree to which the piques and tracasseries of the company are talked about in society. Quite a Guelph and Ghibelline excitement was raised, a few nights ago, by the basso's under- taking indignantly to sing as the critics advised him — with more moderation. Signor Valtellina is a great favorite, and has a famous ypice, ben marlellato. He is a very impassioned singer, and when excited, loses his flessibilita, and grows harsh and indistinct — (as he himself does not think). By way of pleasing the carpers for once, he sang one of the warmest passages of the opera with a moping lamentivole that brought out a hiss from the knowing ones. His friends, who were in the secret, applauded. Valtellina laid his hand on his heart and retired — but came back, as the millers say, "with a head on," and sang once more passionately and triumphantly. Excuse the fop's al- ley slang with which I have told this momentous matter — quite equal in importance (as a subject of conversation) to any couple of events eligible by Niles's Register. Our Library Parish. — Our heart is more spread and fed than our pocket, dear reader, with the new * I have somewhere seen waggish mention of an approved water-proof shoe made of the skin of a drunkard's mouth — warranted never to let in water ! EPHEMERA. possession of this magic long arm by which we are handing you, one after another, the books we have long cherished. Almost the first manifestation of the poet's love, is the sending of his favorite books to his mistress, and no commerce of tenderness is more like the conversance of angels (probably), than the sym- pathies exchanged through the loopholes of starry thoughts — (so like windows twixt soul and soul are the love-expressing conceptions of poetry!) The difference between an hour passed with friends and an hour passed with strangers, will be some guide to you in forming an estimate of the difference between wri- ting for our readers wilJwut, and writing for them rvith the sympathy of books in common. The Mirror be- comes, in a manner, our literary parish — we the in- dulged literary vicar, with whose tastes out of the pulpit you are as familiar as with his sermons of crit- icism when in ; and you, dear reader, become our loved parishioner, for whom we cater, at fountains of j knowledge and fancy to which you have not our fa- I cility of access, and whose face, turned to us on Sat- j urday, inspires us like the countenance of a familiar friend. This charming literary parish (now rising of eleven thousand) we would not exchange for a bish- opric, nor for the constituency of a congress-member; || and we hold our responsibility to be as great as the bishop's, and our chair better worth having than "a seat" in the Capitol. Few things gratify us more than the calls we occasionally get from subscribers who have a wish to see us after reading our paper for a while — and this feeling of friendly and personal ac- quaintance is what we most aim at producing between ourselves and our readers. We shall seldom be more pleased hereafter than in taking one of our parish by the hand — relying more upon the sympathy between us, by common thoughts, than upon any possible cer- emony of introduction. Let us beg our readers to have the different num- bers of the Rococo bound with blank letter-paper be- tween the leaves, and to read always with a pencil in hand. There are such chambers within chambers of comprehension and relish in repeated readings of such sweet creations, and the thoughts they suggest are so noteworthy and so delightful to recal ! "We have sent a poem to the printer this morning (to be published in the same shilling number with The Rimini), which we do not believe ten of our readers ever saw — (a po- em never reprinted in this country, and apparently quite lost sight of in England) — but which exercised upon our imagination, when in college, an influence tincturing years of feeling and revery. An English copy was given us by an old man curious in books, and it was soon so covered with pencil-marks that we were obliged to rebind it with alternate leaves of white paper, and we carried it with us for a travelling com- panion through Europe, and re-read it (once again, we well remember) sitting on the ruins of the church of Sardis in Asia. R is a narrative-poem of inex- pressible richness and melody, and of the loftiest walk of inventive imagination. It is so sweet a story, too, that it would entertain a child like a fairy-tale. We could go on writing about it for hours — for it brings back to us days spent with it in the woods, green banks where we have lain and mused over it, lovely listeners who have held their breaths to hear it, and oh, a long, long chain of associations steeped in love, indolence, and sunshine! And this it is to have a fa- vorite author — to have a choice and small library of favorite authors. It makes a wreath wherein to weave for memory the chance flowers of a lifetime ! It gives Memory a sweet companion. It enables you to with- draw yourself at any time from the world, or from care, and recover the dreams built over these books in the rare hours dream-visited. More valuable still, it gives you — when yon begin to love, and want ! the words and thoughts that have fled affrighted away j — a thread to draw back the truants, and an instant and eloquent language to a heart otherwise dumb. " Sybilla" wants a poetical color given to the " tran- sition state" from the " uncertain age" to the "sad certainty of youth gone by." We can only give her a verse from a piece of poetry written to a delightful and fascinating old maid whom we once had a passion for:— What though thy years are getting on, They pass thee harmless by, I can not count them on thy cheek, Nor miss them in thine eye. The meaner things of earth grow old, And feel the touch of Time, But the moon and the stars, though old in heaven, Are fresh as in their prime. Spring is close behind us, dear reader. What think you of this bit of poetry, touching spring flowers? — The flowers are nature's jewels, with whose wealth She decks her summer beauty ; — Primrose sweet, With blossoms of pure gold ; enchanting rose, That like a virgin queen, salutes the sun, Dew-diademed ; the perfumed pink that studs The earth with clustering ruby ; hyacinth, The hue of Venus' tresses ; myrtle green, That maidens think a charm for constant love, And give night-kisses to it, and so dream ; Fair lily ! woman's emblem, and oft twined Round bosoms, where its silver is unseen — Such is their whiteness ;— downcast violet, Turning away its sweet head from the wind, As she her delicate and startled ear From passion's tale. • A country subscriber writes to know who " Mrs. Grundy" is. She is the lady who lives next door, madam — the lady at whose funeral there will be but one mourner — the last man ! We are not sorry that we know her, but very sorry that she must needs know us, and have her "say" about us. February should be called the month of hope, for it is invariably more enjoyable than the first nominal fruition — more spring-like than the first month of spring. This is a morning that makes the hand open and the fingers spread — a morning that should be con- secrated to sacred idleness. I should like to exchange work with any out-of-doors man — even with a driver of an omnibus — specially with the farmer tinkering his fences. Cities are convenient places of refuge from winter and bad weather, but one longs to get out into the country, like a sheep from a shed, with the first warm gleam of sunshine. I see that Moore has virtually turned to come down from his long ladder of fame — his publishers, Long- mans, having made a final collection of his works in an elaborate edition, and prefixed thereto a picture of an old man— Tom Moore as he is! It is melan- choly to see this portrait. The sparse hair, made-the- most-of— the muscles of the face retreating from the habitual expression— the lamp within still uncon- scious of losing brightness, yet the glass over it stained and cracked. Moore should never have been painted after thirty. This picture is like a decrepit cupid — wholly out of character. His poetry is all youth, its very faults requiring youthful feeling for an apology; and to know that he has grown old— that he is bald 670 EPHEMERA. wrinkled, venerable — is like some unnatural hocus- pocus — some hideous metamorphosis we would ratber not have seen even in melodrame. Moore has not sobered away, twilight-wise, as he might have done. His wit and song have kept admiration so warm around him, that he has forgotten his sun was setting — that it was time the shadows of his face grew longer — time that his pen leaned toward life's downward horizon. The expression on this face of frisky sixty, is of a flogged-up hilarity that is afraid to relax. Moore will look facetious and dining-out-ish in his coffin. I see that Wallack has added lecturing, as a new branch, to his profession, and is very successful. Mr. Barry, the stage-manager of the Park, is to try on the same experiment to-night at the Society Library. " Two strings to your bow" is a good economy in any profession, and there are sundry professions, the du- ties of which do not interfere, for instance, with au- thorship. A man who should read two hours before going to bed, and write for the first two hours after sunrise, would give time and attention enough to any literary pursuit, while the business part of the day, and a good part of the evening, would be still left un- occupied. Actors particularly (so capricious is for- tune with them) should have a brace of vocations, and a poet, with an honest trade besides, is more likely to have his " lines fall in pleasant places." It appears by the English papers that Madame Cat- alani indignantly denies being dead ! She is still liv- ing, and capable of enjoying "good living," at her villa, near Florence. The American story, which went the rounds of the papers some time since, of a man whose capacious throat had "swallowed a plan- tation and fifty negroes," finds its counterpart in the villa and its dependants, which have come out of the throat of Madame Catalani. I was fortunate enough to enjoy much of her hospitality when in Italy, and there are few establishments that I have seen where the honors were done with a more princely liberality and good taste. She was then, as she is probably still, a well-preserved and handsome woman, of majes- tic mien, and most affable manners, and at her own little parties she sang, whenever asked, as well as ever she had done in public. She seemed to me never to have been intoxicated with her brilliant successes, and to have had no besoin of applause left like a thirst in her ears — as is the case with popular favorites too of- ten. Her husband, M. Valabreque, was a courteous man and a fond husband, and their children were on an equal footing of social position with the young no- bility of Florence. Most strangers who see anything of the society of that delightful city, come away with charming remembrances of Madame Catalani. Washington's Birthday is growing into a tem- perance anniversary, probably much to the pleasure and a little to the surprise of the distinguished ghost There was a grand temperance celebration at the Tab- ernacle last evening, at which the eloquent author of the Airs of Palestine, Rev. John Pierpont, delivered an address. By-the-way, it is an overlooked feather in the cap of temperance, that we owe to it the pleas- ant invention of kissing. In the course of my read- ing I have fallen in with the historical fact, that, when wine was prohibited by law to the women of ancient Rome, male relatives had the right of ascertaining, by tasting the lips of their sisters and cousins, wheth- er the forbidden liquor had passed in. The investi- gations of this lip-police, it is said, were pushed with a rigor and vigilance highly creditable to the zeal of the republic, and for a time intemperance was fairly kissed away. Subsequently, female intoxica- tion became fashionable again (temperance kisses not- withstanding), and Seneca (in his Epistolce) is thus severe upon the Roman ladies : " Their manners have altogether changed, though their faces are as cap- tivating as ever. They make a boast of their ex- ploits in drinking.* They will sit through the night with the glass in their hands, challenging the men, and often outdoing them." Now, by restoring the much-abused and perverted kiss to its original mis- sion, and making of it the sacred apostle of inquiry that it was originally designed for, it strikes me that the temperance-committees would have many more "active members," and the cause would assuredly grow on public favor. I submit the hint to that ad- mirable enthusiast, Mrs. Child. There are two establishments in the city of New York which should be visited by those who require stretchers to their comprehension of luxury- -Meeks's furniture-warehouse, behind the Astor, and Tiffany's bijou-shop, at the corner of Warren street and Broad- way. In a search I have lately made for a bookcase of a particular fancy, 1 have made the round of fur- niture-warehouses, and, as a grand epitome of all of them — a seven-story building, crammed with furni- ture on every floor — I should recommend the mere idle sight-seer to spend a morning at Meeks's for his amusement. Upon the simple act of sitting down has been expended as much thought (in quantity) as would produce another Paradise Lost. Some of the chairs, indeed, are poems — the beautiful conception and finish of them, taken into the mind with the same sensation, at least, and the same glow of luxury. The fancies of every age and country are represented, those of the Elizabethan era and the ornate fashion of Louis XIV. predominant, though tables and sofas on Egyptian models are more sumptuous. At so much cost, they ought to put the mind at ease as well as the body. And, by-the-way, the combining of couch and chair in one (now so fashionable) would have pleased the Roman dames, whose husbands kept chairs for women and mourners — a man's sitting upon a chair (in preference to a couch) being considered a received sign of deep mourning or poverty. Few people can trust their taste to go into such an im- mense warehouse as Meeks's and select (in one style, and that style suitable to their house, condition, and manner of living) the furniture for an establishment. It would be a good vocation for a reduced gentleman to keep taste to let, holding himself ready to take or- ders, and execute them at discretion, according to the suitabilities of the employer. Tiffany's is a fashionable pleasure-lounge already, his broad glass doors and tempting windows being at one of the most thronged corners of Broadway. It is better than a museum, in being quite as well stocked with surprises, and these all ministering to present and fashionable wants. Where resides the prodigious ingenuity expended on these superb elegances and costly trifles, it would be hard to discover. And the seductive part of it is, that there are articles for all prices, and you may spend a dollar, or five hundred, in the same dainty line of commodity ! The times are " easy," if we can judge by the ar- ticles that find plenty of buyers. I heard yesterday * They also became the cause of tippling in others, for it grew into a common practice at Roman suppers to drink a glass to every letter of a beauty's name— the longer the mor« toasted. " Nsevia sex cyaihis, septem Justina bibntur ." EPHEMERA. 671 that a shopkeeper in Broadway had imported several ladies' dresses, priced at one thousand dollars each, and had no difficulty in selling them- Mr. Meeks in- formed ma that, of a certain kind of very costly chair, he could not keep one unsold. It was certainly a su- perb article, made of carved rosewood and purple vel- vet ; price (for a single chair) one hundred and fifty dollars! We have not yet adopted, in this country, the French custom of ornamenting dinner-tables very expensively with silver vases and artificial flowers, nor has the old Roman custom ever been resumed, I think, of placing the "household gods"' upon the ta- ble. The aspect of a supper-table in Cicero's time, indeed, must have been beyond the show even of Bourbon sybarites ; the guests in white and scarlet robes, with chaplets of roses, myrtle, or ivy on their heads, lying by threes on couches covered with pur- ple or embroidered with gold and silver — a crowd of slaves, chosen for their beauty, waiting within the square formed by the tables, and dressed in tunics of the brightest colors — over all a canopy of purple cloth, giving the room the appearance of a superb tent — the courses brought in with a regular procession marching to music — last (not least heightening to the effect), the custom, borrowed of the Egyptians, of bringing in a skeleton, in the midst of the feast, to furnish a foil to the enjoyment. All these were com- mon features of Roman luxury at the time when Rome had the treasures of the earth at her disposal, and probably will never be reproduced in the same splendor, unless we rebarbarize and make war upon Europe under a military chieftain. The February rehearsal of spring is over — the pop- ular play of April having been well represented by the reigning stars and that pleasant company of play- ers, the Breezes. The drop-curtain has fallen, repre- senting a winter-scene, principally clouds and snow, and the beauties of the dress-circle have retired (from Broadway) discontented only with the beauty of the piece. By-the-way, the acting was so true to nature, that several trees in Broadway were affected to — bud- ding ! "Ah, friends, methinks it were a pleasant sphere, If, like the trees, we budded every year ! If locks grew thick again, and rosy dyes Returned in cheeks, a raciness in eyes, And, all around us vital to their tips, The human orchard laughed with rosy lips." So says Leigh Hunt. The Land of Intermezzo. — If spring be cognate to one poetical subject more than all others, it is to the single dreamy fable upon which are founded three immortal poems — one by Thomas Moore, one by Lord Byron, and the third (quite as beautiful as either) by the Rev. George Croly. The last — "The Angel of the World," by Croly, and the first, "The Loves of the Angels," by Moore, are issued in ex- tras of the Mirror. The other, Byron's " Heaven and Earth" (so universal are the works of the noble bard), we took for granted was already within the reach of every reader. Apart from the excessive beauty of these poems, it is curious to peruse them with a view to comparison— to read first the short and simple story of " Haruth and Maruth," and then study the different shapes into which it is cast by the ka- leidoscope imaginations of three of the master-min- strels of the time. [Stay — do you live in the country, dear reader? Have you a nook near by — (natural) — or can you go to one in imagination, or will you come to ours— where our spirit is likely to be— that is to say, while scribbling this page, this glorious morning? For spring makes a madhouse of a city's brick walls, and we must think in the country to-day — live, bodily, where we will.] Here we are, then, in a deep down dell — the appa- rent horizon scarce forty feet from us — nothing visible that has been altered since God made it — and a col- umn of clear space upward, topped by the zenith, like a cover to a well — this dell the bottom of it. (The zenith off, we should see heaven, of course!) In my pocket are the three poems abovementioned, and a few editorial memoranda — but we will bind ourselves to nothing — not even to talk about these poems un- less we like, nor to remember the memoranda. Idle- ness was part of Paradise, and with the weather of j Paradise it comes over us, irresistibly. To bring heaven and earth together — to make beav- ! en half earth, and earth half heaven — is the doomed labor and thirst of poetry; and of these three poems, the desire for this pleasant intermezzo is the exclusive under-tow, the unexpressed, yet predominating stim- ulus. To Byron (with his earthly mind unmodified), complete heaven would doubtless have been as unpal- atable as were evidently the mere realities of earth. He, and Moore, and Croly, have seized upon the east- ern fable, of angels made half human and mortals half divine, to give voice to the dumb ache of their imaginations — an ache as native to the bosoms of the "Mirror parish," as to these three immortal subjects of mortal Victoria. (She ought, by-the-way, to wear a separate crown for her loyal immortals — the undy- ing men of genius who are her subjects exclusively, and whose fame is, at least, ws^ue-millenial and a thousand years over.) Each of these has pulled down angels to the love of flesh and blood — (the hap- piness each would least like to lose, probably, in be- coming an angel) — but there are differences in the other particulars of their half-and-half Paradise, most characteristic of the qualities of the different poets, and pleasant stuff for your idle hour's unravelling, oh reader, rich in leisure! But this land of Intermezzo — this kingdom of Mid- dlings— this beatific, and poet-loved half and half! Let us talk of it some more ! We are inclined to think that half way, in most things, is where happiness dwells. We say so timidly, for we live in a country famous for extremes. It must be Heaven "No. I," to tempt the Yankee! Paradise, which lies between earth and heaven, would be poor stock in Wall street! The best — only the best and most exciting, in the way of pleasure, for this market — Rags, or the best broadcloth, the only wear: — Sullen privation or sudden luxury, the only living : — Stars, or no actors : — Millions, or hand-to-mouth : — Perfect- ly obscure, or highly fashionable ! Medium — inter- mezzo — there is (quasi) none in America ! In this sweet land of Intermezzo we find ourself, of latter years, laying up treasure. Quiet lives there. Revery is native there. Content dwells nowhere else. Modesty retires there when she would escape envy, for there envy never sets foot. St. Paul saw that land when he said — "Give me neither poverty nor riches." " Something I must like and love," says old Feltham, " but nothing so violently as to undo myself with wanting it." Travel where you will, up to middle age (says a certain Truth-angel, who sometimes stoops to our ear), but abide, ever after, in the land of Inter- mezzo ! But, in the land of Intermezzo does not live fame! It is a land with an atmosphere of sober gray, and fame is the shadow of one living in the sun. If we may preach to the poets among our flock of parishion- ers, we should say, forego this shadow ! Think of it as it is — only a shadow. Value it as you do the shadow of your friend — nothing, but for the substance that goes before. Live in the land of Intermezzo, 672 EPHEMERA. and let fame find you — taking for it no more care than for your shadow when you walk abroad. Write — for the voice the soul wants — the utterance without which the heart seems over-full — but be not eager for the world's listening ! Fame is sweet when it comes un- beckoned. The world gives, more willingly than it pays on demand. In the quiet fields of Intermezzo, pluck flowers, to dry unseen in your bosom, and if, by chance, years after, they are unloaded in the sun, they will be thrice fragrant for their shaded keeping. Amen! When books were scarcer and scholars given to longer incubation, a pocket companion called a Go- with-me, was the fashion — {Vade-mecum, it you like it better in Latin). It was commonly a favorite author, sometimes a volume of maxims, oftener yet a book of devotion. The monks profess to entertain themselves in all odd hours and quiet places with their pocket breviary — the concentrated and vital essence of missal and prayer-book. We liked better, in our youth (Heaven assoil us !) a self-compiled breviary of beloved poetry — a book half scrap, half manuscript, picked from newspapers and copied from readings — and, in a protracted youth (enriched with a most plentiful lack of anything-to-do), we struck together, with pin and paste, sundry consecutive volumes which had their consecutive day. Various were their uses ! There have occurred deserts, in our travels though most of our loves and friendships, which could only be pleasantly crossed in the company of such caravans of poetry. There have been thoughts born without words to them, aptly fitted to a vehicle by this varied repository. We have been fed through many a famine of hope, supplied through many a drought of tears and memory, by these timely resources. We have them yet. The longer poems we are giving to our friends in the numbers of the Rococo. The shorter ones we purpose giving in the Mirror, or possibly in a sort of mosaic extra — imparting thus, piece-meal, the whole of our Breviary of Idleness. Here and there, it is possible, we may give something you have seen before, but that will not happen often — for we have frequented most, the least known shelves of libraries, and loved most the least-famed authors. Here is a stray passage upon roses ; — (but we don't give you the best first !) " We are blushing roses, bending with our fulness, Midst our close-copped sister-buds warming the green cool- ness. Whatsoever beauty wears, when it reposes, — Blush, and bosom, and sweet breath — took a shape in roses. Hold one of us lightly ; — see from what a slender Stalk we bow in heavy blooms, and roundness rich and tender : Know you not our only vital flower— the human ? Loveliest weight on lightest foot, joy-abundant woman?" What we like about that is the well-contrived en- tanglements compelling you to stop and re-read it, and so find a new beauty— like the wheel of your car- riage coming off amid scenery you are travelling through too rapidly. The Vesuvius of new books has naturally its Pom- peii, in which merit, among other things, is buried quietly under the cinders and remains long trodden over and forgotten. Upon the excavations and disinter- ments in this city of literary oblivion is founded, in a great measure, the New Mirror project of a library of favorite authors, and perhaps the most interesting of its restorations to light, as yet, is the delicious poem by Croly, " The Angel of the World." I hardly think there are ten people in the United States who know this sweet book, though it is founded on the same eastern fable as Moore's " Loves of the Angels," and, to my thinking, a finer expansion of that splendid story. Byron's " Heaven and Earth," and the two poems just named are all founded on this same tradition, and it is curious to read them with a view to comparison, and see of what varieties of com- bination the kaleidoscope of genius is capable. Byron makes his the vehicle of his audacious defiance tow- ard sacred things, while Moore's is all love aud flowers, perfume and gems. Croly's is more a poem of strong human passion and character, and comes II home more to the human " business and bosom." It jj is written (the latter) with wonderful splendor of dic- j; tion and imagery. Few poetical works will be more popular in this country, I think — profoundly as it has slept in Lethe for the last twenty years. Croly is a clergyman (the Rev. George), and, having a fat living from the church of England, his Pegasus has never been in hack harness, and, I think, shows the ease of pasture-gambol in his verse. Tammany Hall is graced to-day with a showy trans- parency representing a huge owl sitting in a Gothic window, and a Latin motto beneath, declaring that "the countenance is the index of the mind." I can not see, by the morning papers, any explanation of the objects of the club whose celebration comes off under these ominous auspices; but if it be a physiog- nomical society, as the motto would purport, they have chosen well. It were a good symbol also for a club of "minions of the moon," if they were less fond of a lark — better still for a society of poets, if poets were ever (which is doubtful) fond of poetical society. It is the poet's cue to look wise and say little, to get his victual by night, to differ altogether in his habit, as owls do, from birds of other feather. Virgil, indeed, makes the owl a poet : — " And oft the owl with rueful song complained From the house-top,* drawing long doleful tunes." Professor Bronson, whose lectures are " going on" and still "come off," draws a very attractive picture in his advertised prospectus. " The lectures," he says, "will be comparatively free, an admission of twenty-five cents only being required." For this, among many other things, he promises that "a key shall be given to the connexion of natural and spiritual things by which all mysteries may be explained !" " The true source of our ideas on the sublime and beautiful will be explained, together with the true principles of taste and criticism." — " The French baquet, or grand mesmeric reservoir, will be exhibited, and minerals, vegetables, animals, and several persons at a time magnetized ; the German rotary magnetic machine for similar purposes ; also three or four hun- dred engravings pertaining to physiology, &c. and each auditor furnished with them gratuitously, with the evening programme ; also several hundred paintings (many expressly imported from London), to illustrate the subjects of mineralogy, botany, natural history, and astronomy. A common rose will be shown, as developing from the bud to full bloom, appearing four or five feet high, in all its glory ; a butterfly in the same manner several feet square, passing through its three stages of development ; and all the phenomena of the natural heavens, to wit, the sun, moon, and stars." As a list of articles to be had for twenty-five cents, I think you will allow the professor's advertise- ment to be worthy of statistical preservation. * Probably not called an attic in Virgil's time. EPHEMERA. 673 The girdle put around the earth by the English is, to my mind, less powerfully figured forth in their drum-beat (so finally alluded to by Webstkr) than in the small colonial-looking newspaper — the same article, whether it come from the pagodas of India or the snows of Canada, the sheep-hills of New South Wales, or the plantations of the Bermudas. By the j kindnes*s of my friend Aaron Palmkr, Esq. (who j does business with arms as long as the world's axis, and has correspondences and exchanges newspapers j with every corner of the globe), I have by me, at this moment a file of English papers published at the seat i of the Great Mogul, Delhi, and another published at I Bermuda. You would think them all edited by the | same man and supplied by the same contributors. They are filled principally, of course, with old English j news, but the Delhi paper (only ninety days from the i heart of Hindostan !) has some strictures on Lady Sale and her book, which show she is not to be a' heroine without the usual penalty of envy and malice. An officer-contributor to the Gazette says : — " We were nearly as much on the tiptoe of expecta- tion for Lady Sale's book as the good folks of Eng- land, though the secret of its origin was here better known. It would be amusing to print, in parallel | columns, the opinions on her production given by the j press of India and England ; c'est a dire, of those who know what they are writing about and those who do Dot. I am safe in asserting that, for every eulogium '' her ladyship has received in England, she has got at least one set down in India." The same writer says, in another part of his letter: — " We look forward to the notice of our Scinde doings in England. Let not the profit of the acquisi- tion blind you to the iniquity. Our late dealings with that country commenced in perfidy, and went on in blood and rapine. May they not end in retribution !" We have commonly two sweet hours of idleness in i the afternoon — two hours that are the juice of our much-squeezed twenty-four hours — two hours that (to borrow a simile from the more homely and tooth- some days of authorship) are "as sweet as a pot of lambalive electuary with a stick of licorice." At four o'clock, " Taking our hat in our hand, a remarkably requisite practice," we button our coat over our resignation (synonym for 'dinner), and with some pleasant errand that has been laid aside for such opportunity, stroll forth. It is sometimes to an artist's room, sometimes to a print- shop, sometimes to an unexplored street, sometimes to look off upon the bay, or take a ride in an omnibus | now and then to refresh our covetous desires at Tiffany's. We have lately been the subject of a pas- sion for pawnbrokery, and taken the precaution to j leave our little pocket-money at home, we have tamper- j ed with exploring and price-asking in these melan- j choly museums of heart-ache. " Twiddling" our pen, this morning (as Leigh | Hunt represents Apollo doing with a sunbeam), we j fell to speculating on what it was that made us think, \ whether we would or no, of the pyramids ! This is ! last-page-day, and we had forty things to write about, but there! — there! ("in my mind's eye, Horatio!") Btands the " wedge sublime" of a pyramid ! Doubt- less the ghost of some word, deed, or similitude of the day before — but why such pertinacity of apparition ? We did, nor noted, nothing pyramidal yesterday. We watched the general; hanging up, in his new-garnish- ed office, Dick's fine print of Sir Walter's monument, and that, it is true, is a pyramid in Gothic. We bought yesterday, in our pawnbroking researches, a bust of a man of genius whom we admired because he 43 found leisure to be a gentleman — the accomplished victim of circumstances, just dead at Andalusia — and a pyramid, truncated by a thunderbolt near the sum- mit, were an emblem of his career that may well have occurred to us. We were talking and thinking much yesterday of Moore's confessed completion of his litera- ry lifetime ; and what is his toil, just finished, but the building of an imperishable pyramid for the memo- ry of his finished thoughts. Stay ! —an anecdote of Moore occurs to us. He is dead, " by brevet," having seen to (and got the money for), his own " last words ;" and when, by the sythe of the relentless mower, Tom Moore shall be no more, to know more of his more personal qualities (what an echo there is to the man's name !) will add spices to his embalming. An old lady in Dublin, who was one of Moore's indigenous friends (he was only aristocratic as an exotic, perhaps you know), told us the story. It is not likely to get into print except by our telling for it records a virtue ; and Moore is a man to have selected his biographer with a special caveat against all contributions to his " life" from its grocery source — his respectable father, the Dublin grocer, probably caring little for his " brilliant successes," and only cherishing in his brown-paper memory the small parcel of his virtues. But — to the story — (which Moore told the old lady, by the way, on one of his reluctant Irish visits). Moore had just returned from his government-office in the West Indies, a defaulter for eight thousand pounds. Great sympathy was felt for him among his friends, and three propositions were made to him to cancel the debt. Lord Lansdowne offered simply to pay it. Longman and Murray offered to advance it on his future works, and the noblemen at White's offered the sum to him in a subscription. This was at the time subscriptions were on foot for getting Sheridan out of his troubles; and while Moore was considering the three propositions just named, he chanced to be walking down St. James street with two noblemen when they met Sheridan. Sheridan bowed to them with a familiar " how are you ?" — " D — n the fellow," said one of the noblemen, "he might have touched his hat ! I subscribed a hundred pounds for him last night !" — " Thank God ! you dare make no such criticism on a bow from me /" said Moore to himself. The lesson sank deep. He rejected all the offers made to relieve him — went to Passy, and lived in complete obscurity, in that little suburb of Paris, till he had written himself out of debt. Under the spur of that chance remark were written some of the works by which Moore will be best known to posterity. This reminds us (and if we don't nab it now, it may never again be nabable), of a laugh at Moore's expense in a company of very celebrated authors. They were talking him over, and one of the company quoted Leigh Hunt's simile for him — "a young Bacchus snuffing up the vine." " Bah !" said another, " don't quite deify the little worldling ! He is more like a cross between a toad and a cupid !" We have got hold of a string and we may as well pull away to see what will come of it. We had long forgotten two or three trifles tied together, of which this last paragraph is one, and we remember now, another anecdote told by the caustic person whose comparison we have just quoted. He said that Byron would never have gone to Greece but for a tailor in Genoa. The noble bard, he went on to say, was very economical, as was well known, in small matters. He had hired a villa at Genoa and furnished it, with the intention of making it a permanent residence. Lord and Lady Blessington and a large society of English people of good style were residing there at the time. In the fullest enjoyment of his house and his mode of life, Byron wanted a new coat ; and, having some English cloth, he left it with his measure in the hands of a 674 EPHEMERA. Genoese tailor, with no particular instructions as to the making. The tailor, overcome with the honor of making a coat for an Eccellenza Inglese, embroidered it from collar to tail, and sent it home with a bill as thickly embroidered as the coat ! Byron kept the coat for fear of its being sold, as his, to an actor of English parts on the stage, but resolutely refused to pay for more than the making of a plain and plebeian garment. The tailor threatened an attachment, and Byron assigned over his furniture to his banker, and finally quitted Genoa in disgust — ready of course, as he would not otherwise have been, for a new project. From indignation at an embroidered coat-tail the transition to "liberty or death," "wo to the Moslem!" or any other vent for his accumulated bile, was easy and natural ! He embarked in the Greek cause soon after, and the embroidered coat was not (as it should have been) " flung to the breeze at Salamis" — the banner of inspired heroism ! So was the tale told- So tell we it to you, dear reader. It is no damage to the gods or demigods to unpedestal them sometimes. The old Saturnalia, when masters and slaves changed places for a while, was founded on the principle in nature that all high- strung-itudes are better for occasional relaxing. We have not done what we sat down to do — which was to run a pretty parallel between a fame and a pyramid — apropos of some trifles bought of a pear- shaped pawnbroker. Pity that ideas once touched are like uncorked claret — good for one draught only ! We shall never dare to take up the figure again, so we may as well hand you the gold thread we meant to have woven into it — a little figurative consolation to the unappreciated poet. To him who is building a pyramid of poetical fame, a premature celebrity is like the lop-stone laid on his back and carried till he has built up to it. We wish those of our contributors whom we neither publish nor praise, would apply this " parmeceti" to their " inward bruise." We take the vital centre of New York to be a cer- tain lamp-post from which radiate five crossings — one pointing to the Astor, one to the American Museum, one up Broadway, one up the Bowery, and the fifth (dead east) to the office of the New Mirror — the which office is clearly visible from the palm of the spread hand upholding this medio-metropolitan lamp- post. Having conceived — (you have — have you not, dear reader?) — the laudable purpose of subscribing for the Mirrors second year (now on the eve of com- mencing), your first inquiry is the geography of "Ann street," — upon which money-welcoming spot shines nightly this central lamp of the municipality. You arrive safely at the Astor. You glide past its substratum of apothecaries, perfumers, goldsmiths, and hatters, and arrest your footsteps at the triple cor- ner studded with three of the notable structures of Manhattan— the imperial Astor, the goodly St Paul's, and the marvellous museum with the " fifty thousand curiosities." You now face due southward. Helm down (coat-skirt down Vesey street, that is to say), and you head east southeast, laying your course ex- actly. Before you lies a crossing of flags by which you may safely reach the islanded palm of the spread hand (holding two granite posts guarding a lamp-post), and, once there, you luff a little to the right, and follow the pointed forefinger of that same hand to the opening lips of Ann street. Cross over, keep down a few doors to the right, and " there you are" — (there we are !) — walk in ! And now, dear sir ! (besides your receipt and the benign smile of the Brigadier) what will you have ? Our visibilities to the naked eye are small, but there be caves and storehouses of our primrose-colored | wares, and if we affect the Turkish fashion of a speci- ! men shop, with room only for one purchaser at a j time, it is for another reason besides saving the rent. Philosophic, like us, is the French Amphytrion, who ! does not show to his delicate guest the pieces de re- | sislance. The roasted joints stand upon a side-table, | removed from view, and if slices are handed you over your shoulder, it is with an apposite comnfendation j which the sight of the whole dish would fatally j smother. Small as the shop is, however (parva, sed apta mihi !) the welcome is spacious ! All who come there, come with a parishioner's regard, self-chosen to our literary flock, and none turn the latch without unlocking our heart with the same door-handle. (" Qualis rex, talis grex!" Having found comfort in loving ourselves, we venture the more easily to love those who are like us.) Touching this shop (of which we have now given you the pictorial chart), we shall have more to say ; hereafter. It has its history. Our landlord is a \ " picked man of countries," and has written his pleas- ant book. Around us "volcanoes belch their fires" of prodigal literature, and opposite us there is a deep- door by which the modest wits about town descend to j Windust's, for news and things more succulent. j There sometimes dives the brigadier, to lunch with needful celerity on the busy Saturday, and thence emerge daily and shiny-ly (after their pot of ale) re- freshed, the manufacturers of public opinion. Oh, from our modest window, we see sights! But, enough for I had a half-hour's interview with the talking machine this morning, and found him a more enter- taining android than most of my wooden acquaintan- ces — (the man who thinks for him being a very supe- rior person). I must first give you a tableau of the room. A German woman takes your half dollar at the door, and points you to a semi-boxed-up Turk (query : Why are all automata dressed in turbans ?) — a Turk seated in a kind of low pulpit, with a green shirt, a good complexion, a very fine beard, and a pearl breastpin. Out from under his shoulder issues a bunch of wooden sticks, arranged like a gamut of pump-handles, and behind this, ready to play on his Turk, sits Mr. Faber, the contriver. (I immediately suggested to Mr. F., by the way, that the costume and figure had better have been female, as the bustle would have given a well-placed and ample conceal- ment for all the machinery now disenchantingly placed outside — the performer sitting down natu- rally behind, and playing on her like a piano.*) The Turk was talking to several ladies and gentlemen when I entered, and my name being mentioned by one of the party, he said, " How do you do, Mr. ?" with perfect distinctness. There was a small musical organ in the room, and one of the visiters played " Hail Columbia !" the automaton singing the words "like a man." There was no slighting or slurring of diphthong or vowel, sybillate or aspirate. Duty was done by every letter with a legitimate claim to be sounded — the only fault being a strong German accent (which of course will wear off with travel), and a few German peculiarities, such as pronouncing v's like w's, gargling the gutturals, &c, &c. I understood Mr. Faber to say that he was seven years contriving the utterance of the vowel e. Mr. F. has a head and countenance fit for a speech-maker (maker of the gift of speech, I mean) — a head of the * A suspicion has since crossed my mind that I may here have stumbled on an explanation of the great mystery of this supernatural addition to the figure, the supernatural continu- ance of articulation in the female requiring, perhaps, some androidal assistance to the lungs. If so, it would appear that woman, like " the church, can not do without a bishop." EPHEMERA. 675 finest model, and a mouth strongly marked with intel- ligence and feeling. He is simple, naif, and enthusi- astic in his manners. The rude musical organ in the room was his own handiwork, and at the request of one of the ladies he sat down to it and played a beau- tiful waltz of his own composing. He may well be completely absorbed, as he seems to be, in his an- droides. It says anything, in any language. It can not cough— not being liable to bronchitis; nor laugh —being a Turk. But it can sing, and has a sweet breath and well-governed tongue. In short, it is what would pass in the world for " a very fine man." Be- sides those whom God has made (Boyle, the philoso- pher, calls the world "an automaton of God's ma- king"), I know of but one or two attempts before this to make a talking-machine— the famous one by Von Kempelen, and the celebrated brazen head constructed by Friar Bacon. What could be uttered by this un- thinking brass has not come down to us. The statue of Memnon could utter musical sounds, and MaelzePs chess-player could say "echec." A much more use- ful automaton than any of these, Mr. Faber's inclu- ded, was one invented by one of the brothers Droz— «'a child, sitting at a desk, who dipped his pen in the ink and wrote in French whatever was dictated to him" (the inventor, of course, somewhere concealed). It struck me as a great pity, indeed, that the ad- mirable ingenuity and perseverance of Mr. Faber should have been wasted on a superfluity — (for there is more talking than enough). Albertus Magnus in- vented, with thirty years' labor, an automaton servant, who would open the door when any one knocked, and salute the visiter — capable, of course, of being able to say " not at home," and so saving the conscience of the domestic; aud this was, perhaps, worth the labor. Less meritorious, again, was the automaton fly made of iron by Regiomontanus, in the 14th century, which would make the circuit of the room with a buz, and return to its master. Something in the Pygmalion line has been attempted within a few years by a Swiss mechanician, Maillardet, who constructed a female with a "bosom that would heave for an hour," once wound up. She would also play forty tunes on the piano with her fingers, and look languishingly by cast- ing her eyes down — almost enough for one woman to do! I think these are facts enough for a very specu- lative essay on the value of such offices as may be performed by the body without the aid of brains. I have been prevented, of late, from going about as much as my wont, and have hardly seen or heard more of the city doings than the country readers of your paper. This will account, if not apologize, for some lack of variety in my letters. 1 broke through my fireside habits last night, and went to the Metho- dist chapel in Madison street, to hear the Rev. Mr. Maffit's diatribe against "Boz" — admittance twenty- five cents. My surprise on being called on for money at the door was pleasurable, for I rejoice in an injus- tice turned by its victims " to commodity." Two hundred people were well amused, and religion (per one of its ministers) was profited fifty dollars in pock- et. Except in this light, however, I should call the using of "Boz" for a pulpit text a decided case of le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle. (The church gas-lights seemed to be of that opinion, for they suddenly paled their fires teu minutes before the conclusion of the lecture!) While I think of it — Dickens has contradicted the report, published in the London papers, touching his durance for debt. I am glad it was not true. Mis- takes of positive assertion and of this personal charac- ter are so rare in the respectable English papers, that I mentioned it in my letter to you with no suspicion of its being an error — the assertion supported, moreo- ver, by the rumors, rife to the same purport, when I was last in London. The reports, doubtless, were born of the coupling of two well-known facts — the de- crease of the prices paid for his books by publishers, and the increase of his " pledges," with no corre- sponding reductions apparent in his style of living. The statement having once appeared in the papers of his own country, an expression of sympathy (as far off as the other shoulder of the world) was but com- plimentary to Mr. Dickens. Mr. Maffit's discourse was more of an event to me than to most of his audience, probably ; for his elo- quence made a great impression upon me when I was a boy between ten and twelve years of age, and I had not seen him since. He preached at that time in the Bromfield chapel, Boston (in the next street to the one in which I lived), and was then a " new light" in the methodist church, and drew crowds after him. I left my play eagerly to hear him, and I have often since wished for an opportunity to analyze the pecu- liar delight he gave me — for it was all pleasure, with- out the slightest effect in the way of religious impres- sion. I could fill my letter with what came to me upon the turned-back leaf of seeing Mr. Maffit in the pulpit again, but the comparison between the effects of oratory upon tastes mature and immature, though interesting elsewhere, would be out of place here. He was not so much changed as I anticipated. Mac- ready has always reminded me of him, and they are still alike. Mr. Maffit did not use to shave his tem- ! pies, and from this peculiar tonsure, his forehead looks \ higher and his hair less Hyperian and more oratorical I than formerly. He commenced with some general remarks as to the charm of variety in customs and manners, and the common English weakness of condemning pitilessly every departure from the cockney standards and pecu- liarities, trying, by this test only, every country under the sun. This part of the oration was written in lam- bent and oily-hinged periods, and delivered— really, in I music absolute ! "" 1 felt the spell over again. It is in the voice and accent of Mr. Maffit that the philtre lies hid. So sweet a tone no other man has, in my knowledge. His inflexions, so long as he remains unexcited, are managed with the skill of the subtlest \ rhetorician. He hides the meaning of his sentences under the velvet words that are sweetest to linger upon, and to press with emphasis, and in this depart- ment of oratory he seems to me unsurpassed. He | soon broke the spell, however. As he left generali- ! zing, and got from poetry to analysis, he began to show bad taste and clumsy discrimination, and fell into a kind of grimalkin sputter of sarcasm, that let down his dignity sadly. The audience began to ap- | plaud, and, with their applause, he grew inflated, both ! in matter and manner, and for the last half hour of his ! discourse was entirely off his feet— trashy, inconse- ! quent, and absurd— most applauded, however, when | most incomprehensible. (And this ill-bestowed ap- plause may easily have been the reverend orator s De- lilah.) I remember little of what he said after the first fifteen minutes. There was a good deal of illus- tration to show that the "Yankees could whip the British," and much more of such clap-trap, and Dick- < ens and Mrs. Trollope were each served out with as much pulpit-pounding and bitter epithet as is com- monly given the devil, at a dose, testimony given by the orator on both sides with authority. One comparative duable, as he speaks He assured us that the from the 676 EPHEMERA. and had been treated everywhere as a son and brother, and spoke advisedly. I could wish this Irish and celestial evidence in our favor might be put (for smo- king) into the pipe of the London Quarterly. I have discovered lately that the household-gods have a vocabulary of their own. Search after a tri- fling invention led me to Windle's furnishing-shop in Maiden lane, and after spending an hour in marvelling at the mind that has been expended upon the inven- tion of household conveniences, I asked for a cata- logue of the shop's wares. A pamphlet of twenty- one pages was handed me, and I give yon, for your despair, a few of the names of the necessary utensils by which your comfort is ministered to: "Pope's heads and eyes," " Shakers' swifts," " beefsteak pound- ers," " faucets and bungstarts," " bootjacks and leg- resters," "salt and spit-boxes," "Chinese swings," "Chinese punk in boxes," "sillabub-sticks," " oven- peels," " allblaze-pans," " ice-cream pagodas," " paste- jaggers and cutters," " crimping and goffering ma- chines," "sugar-nippers and larding-pins," "bread- rasps and sausage-stuffers," etc, etc., etc. This is ver- nacular, of course, to the ladies, but Greek to us. Apropos of words — there should be a replevin (by poetry upon vulgar usage) to restore the word diaper to its original meaning. Ford says in one of his plays (The Sun's Darling) :— " Whate'er the wanton spring, When she doth diaper the ground with beauties, Toils for, comes home to autumn." Diaper means literally, to embroider with raised work — after a stuff which was formerly called d'fyre, from the town of Jpre in Flanders, where it was man- ufactured. There is such a load of descriptiveness in the word that it is a shame it should be lost to poetry. Moore's carefully revised and corrected edition of his works is republished in this country at the price of three dollars and a half. Half of it, at least, is uninteresting to the general reader, consisting of his satires (with names left in unexplained blanks), local poetry, translations from the classics, and a mass of labored notes. The popular portions, consisting of "The Loves of the Angels," "The Irish Melodies and Sacred Songs," and the "National Airs, Ballads, and Miscellaneous Poems," have been published in three extras of the Mirror — five shillings for all of them. This will form as beautiful an edition of the enjoyable part of Moore's poetry as could be wished, and as cheap as beautiful. Charles Dibdin, " The Bard of Poor Jack," as he is commonly called, is one of those authors less known than his works, particularly in this country, where his songs are familiar to every lip, and his name hardly recognised. General Morris has made a col- lection of all the songs of Dibdin that are universal in their popularity, and has added others which from their bold and graphic excellence have been com- monly attributed to him. This shilling extra of the Mirror will become, I think, the sailor's classic, embod- ying, as it does, all their most remarkable songs. Montgomery's " World before the Flood," one of the sweetest poems in the English language, is also in press for the " Mirror Library." On looking over the biography of this good man and true poet, I find, by- the-way, the following passage, referring, I believe, to the father of one of the editors of the intelligencer: "Mr. Montgomery removed to Sheffield (England) in 1792, and engaged himself with Mr. Gales, the pub- lisher of a very popular newspaper, at that time known by the title of the Sheffield Register. Mr. Mont- | gomery became a useful correspondent to this paper, and gained so far the good opinion and affection of Mr. Gales and his family, that they vied with each other in demonstrating their respect and regard for him. In 1794, when Mr. Gales left England to avoid a political prosecution, Montgomery, with the assist- ance of another gentleman, became the editor of the Register." Critics have unanimously agreed that "The World before the Flood" is the best production of Montgomery's muse, and it certainly is a noble and pure structure of elevated imagination. Among the sacred classics, Montgomery, I think, will rank first. Sorrow's Reluctant Gate. — This last-turned leaf, dear reader, seems to us always like a door shut behind us, with the world outside. We have ex- pressed this thought before, when it was a prelude to being gayer than in the preceding pages. With the closed door, now, we would throw off restraint, but it is to be sadder than before. It is so with yourself, doubtless. You sometimes break into singing on en- tering your chamber and finding yourself alone — sometimes you burst into tears. There is nothing for which the similitudes of poetry seem to us so false and poor, as for affliction by the death of those we love. The news of such a calam- ity is not "a blow." It is not like "a thunderbolt," or " a piercing arrow;" it does not " crush and over- whelm" us. We hear it, at first, with a kind of mourn- ful incredulity, and the second feeling is, perhaps, a wonder at ourselves — that we are so little moved. The pulse beats on as tranquilly — the momentary tear dries from the eye. Weeo on, about the errand in which we were interrupted! We eat, sleep, at our usual time, and are nourished and refreshed ; and if a friend meet us and provoke a smile, we easily and for- getfully smile. Nature does not seem to be conscious of the event, or she does not recognise it as a calamity. But little of what is taken away by death is taken from the happiness of one hour, or one day. We live, absent from beloved relatives, without pain. Days pass without our seeing them — months — years. They would be no more absent in body if they were dead. But, suddenly, in the midst of our common occupa- tions, we hear that they are one remove farther from us — in the grave. The mind acknowledges it true. The imagination makes a brief and painful visit to the scene of the last agony, the death-chamber, the burial — and returns weary and dispirited, to repose. For that hour perhaps we should not have thought of the departed, if they were living — nor for the next. The routine we had relied upon to fill up those hours comes round. We give it our cheerful attention. The beloved dead are displaced from our memory, and perhaps we start suddenly, with a kind of reproachful surprise, that we can have been so forgetful — that the world, with its wheels of minutes and trifles, can thus untroubled go round, and that dear friend gone from it. But the day glides on, and night comes. We lie down, and unconsciously, as we turn upon our pillow, commence a recapitulation that was once a habit of prayer — silently naming over the friends whom we should commend to God — did we pray — as those most dear to us. Suddenly the heart stops — the breath hushes — the tears spring hot to the eyelids. We miss the dead ! From that chain of sweet thoughts a link is broken, and for the first time we feel that we are bereaved. It was in the casket of that last hour before sleeping — embalmed in the tranquillity of that hours unnamed and unreckoned happiness — that the mem- ory of the dead lay hid. For that friend, now, we can no longer pray! Among the living — among our blessings — among our hopes — that sweet friend is EPHEMERA. 677 nameable no more ! We realize it now. The list of those who love us — whom we love — is made briefer. With face turned upon our pillow — with anguish and f ears — we blot out the beloved name, and begin the slow and nightly task of unlearning the oft-told sylla- bles from our lips. And this is the slow-opening gate by which sorrow enters in ! We wake on the morrow and remember our tears of the past night ; and as the cheerful sun- shine streams in at our window, we think of the kind face and embracing arms, the soft eyes and beloved lips, lying dark and cold, in a place — oh how pitiless in its coldness and darkness! We choke with a suf- fused sob, we heave the heavy thought from our bosom with a painful sigh, and hasten abroad — for relief in forgetfulness! But we had not anticipated that this dear friend would die, and we have marked out years to come with hopes in which the dead was to have been a sharer. Thoughts, and promises, and meetings, and gifts, and pleasures, of which hers was the brighter half, are wound like a wreath of flowers around the chain of the future, and as we come to them — to the places where these looked -for flowers lie in ashes upon the inevitable link — oh, God! with what agonizing vividness they suddenly return! — with what grief, made intenser by realizing, made more aching by prolonged absence, we call up those features beloved, and re- member where they lie, uncaressed and unvisited ! Years must pass — and other affections must " sweep, and garnish, and enter in" to the void chambers of the heart — and consolation and natural forgetfulness must do their slow work of erasure — and meantime grief visits us, in unexpected times and places, its parox- ysms imperceptibly lessening in poignancy and tena- city, but life in its main current, flowing, from the death to the forgetting of it, unchanged on ! And now, what is like to this, in nature (for even the slight sympathy in dumb similitudes is sweet) ? It is not like the rose's perishing — for that robs only the hour in which it dies. It were more like the removal from earth of that whole race of flowers, for we should not miss the first day's roses, hardly the first season's, and should mourn most when the impoverished spring came one more round without them. It were like stilling the music of a brook for ever, or making all singing-birds dumb, or hushing the wind-murmur in the trees, or drawing out from nature any one of her threads of priceless repetition. We should not mourn for the first day's silence in the brook, or in the trees — nor for the first morning's hush after the birds were made voiceless. The recurrent dawns, or twilights, or summer noons, robbed of their accustomed music, would bring the sense of its loss — the value of what was taken away increasing with its recurrent season. But these are weak similitudes — as they must needs be, drawn from a world in which death — the lot alike of all living creatures that inhabit it — is only a calam- ity to man ! Spring is here, and, with its earliest sunshine, Broadway puts out its first flowers in bright colors and gay drapery. It is a lounge we should love were we idle. We do not write for Autolycus, nor for Timon. (Thieves and misanthropes do not common- ly take the papers.) And as all other classes of man- kind yield to the gregarious instincts of our race, we feel free to discourse of Broadway as a place beloved. Beloved it is — by the philanthropist, interested in the peccant varieties of his fellow-creatures ; by the old, who love to look upon the young ; and by the young, who love to look upon each other; (ah ! the celestial quality of youth!) — by the serious, for whom there would seem to be resorts less thronged with sinners (if need were), and by sinners, who are at least spared the sin of hypocrisy, for, with little disguise, they "love one another." Now, if beautiful women are not laudable objects of contemplation and curiosity, as St. Anthony avers (and he is welcome to let them alone), we are not warned against beautiful children, nor beautiful horses, nor the bright sunshine, nor the gay product of the silkworm, nor the "stuffs from Colchis and Trebizond." Very handsome — isn't she ? And apparently in a very great hurry, and apparently very much disgusted at being seen in the street at all! You would think, now, that that lady's coachman was ill and that she was, for this once in her life, walking alone to her mother's. But she is more amused at this moment than she will be again to-day — and to-morrow she will take the same walk to be happy again. She has a husband, however, and a beautiful house, and not a wish (that money can gratify) ungratified. And her drawing-rooms are full of exquisite objects of art. She might stay contentedly at home, you think ? No ! She was a belle, pampered with admiration when she married, and she married a cynical and cold-blooded parsnip, who sits like a snarling ogre among his statues and pictures — a spot on his own ottoman — a blemish in the elegance of his own house. She married him for an establishment, but forgot he was a part of it — dazzled with the frame, she overlooked the hideous- ness of the picture. And he knows this — and likes her, with his statues, as his property — and is pleased to have her seen as his wife — though she is the wife to but one part of him, his vanity ! She finds it hard to feel beautiful at breakfast, with her husband on the other side of the table, and he finds it hard to be very bland with a wife who looks at his acrid physiognomy I with a shudder. A superb house with him in it, is like a fine tulip with an adder in it. But she is a woman, and whether she has a heart or no, she has a well-cultivated vanity, and unluckily, the parents who taught her to secure luxury in wedlock, taught her no foresight as to her more needful supply of admiration. Love, she would like very well — but admired she must be .' And too I cold and worldly to be imprudent, and too proud to be willing to seem pleased with the gaze of Broadway idlers, she still thirsts after this very stare which is given to her beauty by the passers-by, and has very little happiness beyond her daily hurried walk on the crowded pave. She'll make a match of sentiment if she gets another chance, or, at any rate, will marry for some love and less money. Heaven help her through with her present chrysalis! " How are you V " How are you ?" What would a new-dropped angel think of these two unanswered questions? Indeed, what would an angel think of that smiling fellow who exchanged this nonsense with me. He is one of a thousand in the city who, " like the prodigal, squeezed through a horn," are happy from having got through the tightest place of this mortal Me. Though his dimensions are immeasurably smaller than they were not long ago', they are so mucb easier than they grew to be after, that he feels as if, like Uncle Toby's fly, there was room enough in the world for him now. He is easy with the rebound after being broke with overstraining. He was a merchant, reputed to have made money enough. Sensitive and punctilious in all the relations of life, he was particularly soigne of his commercial honor. Never a breath sullied that clear escutcheon ! For this he was supposed to be over-careful— for this he was inflexible where his heart would have prompted him to be indulgent— for this, it was soberly believed, he would sacrifice his life. His wife was (and has since proved herself by trial) an admirable woman, and with fine children and good looks of his own, he was one of those fallacious contradictions of the equal 678 EPHEMERA. distribution of mortal happiness. Well — his star be- gan to descend from its apogee, and he courageously lugged out his philosophy and retrenched his expen- diture. And then began an agony of mind which could be increased, even hereafter, by the increased capacity of the mind — for, short of reason overturned, he could suffer no more. A thousand years of a com- mon tenor of life would seem shorter than those six terrible months of sinking into bankruptcy. But now comes the curious part of it ! He suddenly took the benefit of the bankrupt law. And instead of lying still prostrate upon the ground, crushed and humiliated — instead of hiding his head, as he longed to do while he still promised to pay, degraded, spiritless, lost, to the enjoyment of life — instead of still seeming an ob- ject of pity to the most ruthless sufferer by his fall — up, like a snapped spring, he bounds to the empyrean ! He could not be gayer with his debts paid and his fortune in his hands again ! He walks the street, smiling, and with a light step. He is a little smarter than he used to be in this dress. He eats well, and the wrinkles have retreated, and his eyes have thrown open their windows, and (as you saw when he passed) there is not a merrier or more fortunate-looking idler in this merry Broadway ! Now, quere ? — Is there a provision in nature for honor to cast its skin ? Be- comes it new, scarless and white, after a certain wear, tear, and suffering ? Does a man remember, till, with the anguish of remembering, he forgets ? Has God, in our construction, provided a recuperative, to guard us against over self infliction ? Can we use up our sense of shame with over-working it, and do we come then to a stratum of self-approval and self-glorifica- tion? Enfin — is this inward whitewashing confined only to money-spots, and is nature hereby provided with a corrective check to our implacabilities of pocket ? TO OUR ONE WITHDRAWING SUBSCRIBER. Sir : A French writer wittily turns the paradox : "iZ faut de far gent meme pour se passer d' argent" — (is it necessary to have money to be able to do without it) — and we please ourselves with suspecting that it is only amid the forgetful ease of possession that you can have made, up your mind to forego us. If so, and your first se'ennight of unmirrored solitude prove heavier to bear than the aching three dollar void balanced against it — so ! The pathos of this parting will have been superfluous. Our connexion, sir, though born of a " promise to pay," has been a matter of friendship ; and in dissolving a friendship, it is desirable, on both sides, to have back again the secrets safe only in a friend's keeping. It is common and easy, as you well know, for one man to " give" another " a piece of his mind," and we ask that piece of yours upon which we have stitched the lining of ours. For the goods and chattels we have sent you, that are yours, of course, bach third-person matters as stories and poesies, pictures, drolleries, gossipries and novelties — the visible contents of our primrose cover — are — like the three dollars paid for them — like the ear of rye up a schoolboy's sleeve — ir- revertible ! They are yours. The money is (was) ours. We would not willingly change back ! But other values have passed to your keeping, that are not strictly commodities of barter. We have vent-pegs, that are, as it may chance to turn out, largesses or weaknesses. We are known, favorably or unfavorably, for an incontinence of ourself — a certain need to ex- pand upon our neighbor. If we are happy it runs over the brim — if we are sad, prodigal, too, with our tears. Withal, we have a natural incredulity of break - ings-off — walking upright upon all manner of eternities till we have tumbled over the end. Do you see how subject we were to improvident confidences ? To fix upon the wares we would have back, you have only to ask what a stranger could buy of us, and subtract it from what you know of us. Could you stop us in the street, for example, and buy the fulness of our heart from us — such as has overflowed upon our last page often and unaware — for sixpence? Could you send to us for a thought that has sailed out of our bosomupon our private tear, and enclose a shilling for two copies through the village postmaster? Could you point us out to a dirty newsboy, and tell him " that gentleman had last week some pangs and some pleasures, and I will give you sixpence to see them in a Mirror, with their expressed gall or honey ?" Could you touch us upon the shoulder in Broadway and say, "Sir, I should like to have sent to me, weekly, the thoughts which are stirred by all you enjoy or suffer, expressed in choice rhetoric and printed on fine paper; and you may throw me in a fine steel plate, a new story or two, all the gossip of the week, some criticisms and any fine poetry that has come to your hand — for which I will pay you sixpence per weekly copy ?" Oh, there is much that you have bought of us with which you have no business, ceasing to be our friend! And when you have sent that part back, your money's- worth will still stretch its long legs comfortably under the covering blanket of the remainder! Well, sir, adieu ! There is some machinery, of one kind and another, that will now cease to labor, at sixpence per week, for your gratification — sundry male printers and engravers, sundry female folders and stitchers, our post-office boy and wheelbarrow, such trifling rail-roads and steamers as have been built to convey the Mirror to you — these and we, with our best brains and contributors, we are sorry to say, will now cease to minister to you — but you will have, in- stead, weekly, an unspent sixpence ! Of this sixpence, much foregone for, we wish you joy in the overbalan- cing value of possession ! And so, sir, drawing back our complicated machinery that you may lift this small silver bridge from between us, we bid you once more, over the chasm of removed equivalent, a re- spectful adieu ! TO OUR PUNCTUAL FIRMAMENT OF FIXED STARS. Ladies and gentlemen : In the eleven thousand shining sixpences which duly rise and dispense their silver light upon our way, we see of course the "Heaven of eternal change" toward whose " patines of bright gold" we have been long stretching with tiptoe expectation. We trust that, like the unpocket- able troop whose indefatigable punctuality you emu- late, there are still comers to your number unarrived, and that the " Lost Pleiad" (the single heavenly body upon whose discontinuance to rise we indited the foregoing epistle), will come round again in his erratic orbit, and take his place in the constellation he has deserted. We give notice here, however, that, at eleven thousand, we shall, like the nuns of St. Ursula, stop numbering. There have been virgins since the shelving of the bones of the " eleven thousand virgins of Cologne," yet the oft-told number is still told, without increase, in the holy tradition. We believe with the sainted sisterhood that human credence can go no farther — that 'twixt millions and billions of virgins the disciple's mind would not be likely to dis- criminate. You will still permit us, therefore, to cast our horoscope upon this nominal number. As other starry sixpences fall into the chinks of boundless space, the perceptible increase of our brightness will alone tell the tale— but they will be marked and welcomed I in the careful astronomy of our leger. EPHEMERA. 679 You are ours, oh pleasant eleven thousand ! The vain astronomer casts over the sky his net of parallels and meridians and calls the caught heavens his own, but the stars he numbers are not, like ours, convertible to things to eat. We will envy Herschel when he can change sixteen of his entrapped stars for a dollar — when he can dabble with their shining faces as we with our constellated' " fips " You are ours, and therefore we will care for you. It occurred to me in an omnibus to-day, that it would be curious to know with what eyes angels watch us. My opinion as to the importance of" every hair of our head" had been somewhat modified within the previous half-hour by a look at one or two of my own (hairs) through a solar microscope, and the thought naturally suggested itself, that if the eyes of our spir- itual guardians were microscopic (as they may easily be), there was no so great marvel in the care they take of us. It was a warm, pleasant morning, and I was letting myself ramble and look into windows. An exhibition of a solar microscope came in my way, and I went in. The wall of a large room was apparently .swarming with rats and mud-turtles when I opened the door, and this was some of the dust from a fig, held on the point of a pin, and magnified five million times. I had seen many of these experiments in col- lege, of course, but one hears so many wonderful things, when one is growing, that I do not remember being much astonished in those days. It was differ- ent now, for I really never was more amused and amazed then at the snakes in the drop of vinegar, and the formidable apparatus of a certain un-nameable lit- tle customer, whose like I had occasion to slay in great numbers in the poetical Orient. To bring the thing home to my own business and bosom, however (the microscope, not the pediculus !) I begged the exhibitor to show me, magnified, one or two of my own hairs. I plucked one from my bump of ima- gination and another from my bump of acquisitive- ness, and gave them both to him, with some curiosity to know if the roots would show the difference in the soil. Somewhat to my surprise there was a differ- ence. He placed them carefully on his instrument, and the root of the imaginative hair was shaped like a claret bottle (and about its size), while that of the ac- quisitive hair was like a short fat porter bottle — the hairs themselves being, to the roots, in about the pro- portions of the necks to the bottles. I must say I was truly delighted at the discovery of this analogy, and seldom have bought so good a fact for twelve and a half cents. As I said before, " the hairs of our heads" being "all numbered," my guardian angel knows how many dozen I have remaining of my imaginative clar- I et, and how my acquisitive porter improves by age, and | he looks after it all like one of Bininger's clerks, let- I ting none "fall to the ground" without careful putting ' down. The exhibitor asked me to try another, but a I man thinks twice of plucking out a hair, impressed with ' the idea that it will leave a hole in his head as big as a claret-bottle ! I declined. But if every hair of my head be as big (to a micro- scopic eye) as a bottle of porter with a neck a mile long, and my body in proportion, at what a very mod- erate charge (thought I, as I rode down) am I carried a mile in the unmagnified omnibus ! What would have become of us if God had inflicted upon us a Babel of the eye instead of the ear, making different men see things through different lenses, diminishing and mi- croscopic ! What work for the lawyers ! I was be- ginning to turn my mind to the quantity of magnified body that one unmagnified soul could properly in- habit (as a house may easily be expanded till one ten- ant is an absurdity), when the omnibus stopped. It is a very good subject for an extravaganza in Thomas Hood's vein. There is a certain curiosity to know "how the thing went off," even though the show in question was a bore to the spectator. Perked up people think that only such curiosity as would sit well upon George Washington should be catered for in print, but I in- cline to think that almost any matter which would be talked about by any two people together would be en- tertaining to one man reading by himself. So I think 1 may put down what I saw at a show that was adver- tised as an "Exhibition of Laughing Gas." My younger readers may perhaps require to be told that nitrate of ammonia, like himself, has a soul that fire will burn out of it. When the lamp over which it is held gets too hot " to be stood" any long- er, up rises a little whitish cloud which has most of the properties of common air, but which has a sweet taste and an agreeable odor, and will pass into any hu- man soul's body upon very slight invitation. Once in, however, it abuses the hospitality extended to it, by immediately usurping all the functions of the body, and behaves, in short, extremely like another more notorious enemy, who, " when admitted into your mouth steals away your brains." The stimulus of this intoxicating gas to the nervous system is very sur- prising. Sir Humphrey Davy administered it to Southey the poet, whose feelings are thus described: " He could not distinguish between the first effects and a certain apprehension, of which he was unable to divest himself. His first definite sensations were a fulness and dizziness in the head, such as to induce the fear of falling. This was succeeded by a laugh which was* involuntary, but highly pleasurable, ac- companied by a peculiar thrilling in the extremities — a sensation perfectly new and delightful. For many hours after this experiment, he imagined that his taste and smell were more acute, and is certain that he felt unusually strong and cheerful. In a second experiment he felt pleasure still superior, and has since poetically remarked, that he supposes the atmo- sphere of the highest of all possible heavens to be com- posed of (his gas /" There were between three and four thousand peo- ple assembled in the Tabernacle. A platform in the centre was hemmed in with benches, and it was adver- tised that " twelve strong men" would be there to pre- vent injury to the spectators. It was mentioned in the advertisement, also, that the gallery would be reserved for ladies, though 1 thought that the inviting of ladies to be present at the removal of all restraint from men's tongues and actions, was a strong mark of con- fidence in the uppermost qualities of our sex. After some impatience on the part of the audience, the pro- fessor appeared with his specimen of " the highest possible heaven" in an India-rubber bag. The can- didates for a taste of it were many and urgent, crowd- ing up from below like the applicants to St. Peter, and the professor seemed somewhat embarrassed as to a selection. A thick-necked and bony youth got pos- session of the bag, however, and applied his mouth to the stopper. After inhaling its contents for a minute or two, he squared away and commenced pummelling the professor in the most approved butcher-boy style — which was possibly his idea of the "highest pos- sible heaven." The " twelve strong men" rushed to the rescue, the audience applauded vociferously, and the lad returned to his senses, having been out of them perhaps three minutes. A dozen others took their turn, and were variously affected. I was only very much delighted with one young man, who coolly undertook a promenade over the the close- packed heads of the audience. The impertinence of the idea seemed to me in the highest degree brilliant 680 EPHEMERA. and delightful. There was one corsair-looking man who rushed up and down the stage, believing himself on the deck of some vessel in pursuit of another, and that was perhaps the best bit of acting. One silly youth went to and fro, smirking and bowing, and an- other did a scene in " Richard the Third," and a tall, good-looking young man laughed heartily, and sud- denly stopped and demanded of the audience, in in- dignant rage, what they were laughing at! There was nothing else worth even putting down among tri- fles, and I was glad when it was over. The only ima- ginable entertainment in such an exhibition would be to watch the effect of self-abandonment on those whose characters we know when under restraint. Among acquaintances it would be charming — particu- larly if the subjects were ladies. I should recom- mend to the professor to advertise himself as open to invitations to administer his " highest possible heav- en" to small and select parties. It would be better than a masquerade and not so unlawful. The etymology of April lies in dispute between aperire, the Latin word for open (because at this time the earth is preparing to open and enrich us with its gifts), and Aphrodite, one of the names of the god- dess of love, to whom the month is especially consecrated. By either derivation, it is the month of promise, and like the trees, we feel the juices lovingly ascending to our top, and we can venture to enter upon that "promising" which is the very "air o' the time," without fearing that " performance" will be "the duller for the act." And, by-the-way, while we think of it, we have been beset by a friendly let- ter to cut short Ihe present year, and commence a new volume with January 1, 1845. We must be ex- cused for preferring, altogether, a commencement in April, accident and convenience quite aside. There is a fitness in commencing (putting out our first leaves) with nature. After nature's example, we may venture, with our first issue, to promise a prodigal summer of flowers and a harvest of fruits, though there we trust the parallel will stop, for we do not pro- pose with nature to "take our leaves''' in October and fall presently to decay! No, sir! Let us com- mence our primrose-colored series in primrose-time. Our hopes are April-ish, as looks our cover. We hope to swell, not dwindle, from April into May — to give out our products more lavishly in June, and have a "harvest home" of prosperity in August. What says old Drayton of the order of such matters ? — " The primrose placing first, because that in the spring Tt is the first appears, then sweetly flourishing, The azure harebell, next, with them they neatly mixed ; r allay whose luscious smell they woodbine placed be- twixt ; And 'mong those things of scent there pricked they in the —a fair picture of the art we mean to make manifest in our medley of literary flowers. There are some productions whose " luscious smell" requires the " al- laying" of common sense; and, now and then, a lily of plain truth and simplicity, "pricked in" between high-wrought prose and gorgeous poetry, makes charming harmony. The periodical-writers of all times have practised this trick of diversity. " If a magaziner be dull" (says Goldsmith) "upon the Span- ish war, he soon has us up again with the ghost in Cock-lane." A writer (" but nameless he, for blameless he shall be") complains of us for taking liberties with the queen's English. He does not specify his instances. Mr. King, of the American (we were not aware before that he was the proprietor of the " King's English!") makes an outcry like Milton's stall-reader,* at the title of the "Rococo." If Mr. King will give us one of his newspaper-words that conveys, like the single word Rococo, the entire periphrasis of "intrinsically valuable and beautiful, but accidentally and unjustly obsolete,''' 1 we will send the offensive word back to France, where we got it. Meantime, as Costard said of his new word "remuneration," we "will not buy nor sell out of it." But, withal, we confess to great responsibility, in the adoption of new words and the restoration of old, and we do not spare, upon every instance, careful consideration. It is due to the liter- ature of our country, that those who write for popu- lar prints should sanction no corruptions of the coun- try's language ; but it is also due to the dignity of America, since she has come of age, that her popular writers should claim her share of improving and em- bellishing her inherited language, and even the right of departing from the usage of the old country, if the inevitable changes, which there creep in, should not be conformable to American taste, customs, climate, or scenery. We would not further, but we certainly would not hinder, the having a language of our own, for we think one language little enough for a repub- lic of fifteen or twenty millions. But, dependence upon England apart, the language of a country is a garden that requires looking after, and it needs graft- ing and transplanting as much as weeding and pru- ning. Who is to be the gardener? One man? One Mr. King of the American? No — but fifty men, if there be fifty popular writers. There are no trustees of the language appointed by congress. There is no penally for the launching of words new and unfreight- worthy. Professors of colleges (unless accidentally men of genius like Longfellow) have no power over the uses or abuses of language. With whom lies the responsibility ? we ask again — for, upon its language, much of the repute and credit of the commonwealth is inevitably adrift. And we say again, with American popular writers lies the burden of it. Mr. Irving's administration of his trust in the country's language is worth to us any two common years of Washington legislation, and will tell with more favorable weight upon our history than any two sessions of our late congresses. We claim to have our small share of this same responsibility, and our small privilege of suggestion and appropriation. The language has owed much to exotic introduction in other days, and it may still be lawfully enriched by the same process; and if we, in our reading, or in our travel, have stum- bled on more compact vehicles for meaning, and can bring them effectively into common use at home, we shall venture to claim praise for it. Indeed, we have long had half a mind to devote a corner of the Mirror to a record of the births and disinterments of the words new and prematurely buried. Whom would that horrify, besides Mr. King? Why, for example, should not the beautiful old English word summer- sunstead (descriptive of the season of the sun's stay or stead in summer) be restored to poetry — its relapse into Latin by the word summer-solstice being wholly unavailable from its technical inelegance? This is rather a forced instance, no other occurring to us at the moment ; but our readers will remember pausing with regret, as we have, over the sweet passages which are the graves of lost words. To the invariable question of " What's the news ?" the invariable answer is, "Nothing at all!" — yet he who answers delivers his budget in the same breath— a death and a marriage perhaps the least of his * " Cries the stall-reader, ' Bless me, what a word on A title-page is this ." » Milton to Sir Harry Vane, EPHEMERA. ,681 announcements. I (the diarist) have no news — none ! I could " swear the gods into agues" that 1 have none ! Vet to entertain a visiter— to divert a country-cousin — to bridge over an awful pause— what would one nat- urally say ? I ask for information. The Park theatre is open— (very open — being near- ly empty !) — Mitchell's, on the contrary, is very close being nightly full. But I do not know that any one cares about theatricals — to have them written or talked about, that is to say. Critics, both of the drama and of literature, I think, have, of late, been shoved aside. The public are tired of interpreters to their taste, and express their opinions, now, by accla- mation, not by one man's pen. Who cares now (as the Aurora said a day or two ago) for a column of criticism on a personation of Hamlet? If there is to be a play, or a concert, it is pretty fairly understood, in the Bowery as in Broadway, in Hyperborean Chel- sea as in the tropics of the Battery, what will be the quality of the goer's money's-worth. And three lines in the morning-paper, when it i9 over, is all that is needful or advisable to be written on the perform- ance. So, God speed the decline of criticism! Apro- pos, Miss Turnbull, the danseuse, has now become one of the regular Povey-dom of the Park — engaged ♦'since the memory of the oldest inhabitant." The cutaneous epidemic of the season has attacked the museum with great violence — a breaking out of its inside humors covering at present the entire sur- face. In plainer phrase, Mr. Barnum has completely covered the prominent and spacious fronts of the American museum with oval paintings of the beasts, birds, fishes, and Indians "on show" within, and a more holyday-looking castle of curiosity could scarce- ly be invented. The "Kentucky Minstrels" are the allure just now, and the pictures of the four ebon bards, large as life, over the balcony, and the remain- der of the be-windowed and be-pictured building, with its indefatigable flags, its lantern steeple-high, and its lofty windmill of Punch and Judy, must all fall very gayly, to say the least, on the sober eye of a Johnny Newcome. The funny little hat, small as Mercury's, which was laughed at upon the bagmen's heads six months ago, has fairly prevailed, and is the mode, nem. con. Truly, " every time serves for the matter (of hat) that is born in it." The eye can be argued with, and convinced. It was stoutly maintained, three months ago, by one who is well known as "the complete varnish of a man," that this fashion of hat was but a porringer thing, and would never thrive in Broadway. And now nothing but that scant porringer looks tip-top and jaunty ! Orlando Fish (who, as tiler number one, is a man of more potent function, for my politics, than Tyler the first) is making money out of the blocks which my facetious dandy friend recommended him rather to make tops of than tops on. Well — fashion goes by "jerks of invention," and as Holofernes says, "the gift is good in those in whom it is acute." Reception is raging up town. All ladies may be said to be " in a parlous state," who have not a speci- fied morning to "receive." Six months ago, the six profane mornings of the week were the property of six privileged ladies by right of first seizure. Such pretenders to "society" as did not visit the week through in this established succession were as "damn- ed" as Touchstone's friend, the uncourtly shepherd. This was a vexatious invention, for, in the stereotyped innumerableness of fashionable houses, a man might blissfully visit nowhere, and yet go undetected for a culprit "not in society." Heaven be praised, how- ever, for the "safety in numbers," and especially for the imitative gregariousness of our country. There are now five hundred families who "receive !" Not quite, as yet, in inextricable confusion, however. A man of a generalizing mind may still comprehend his morning's work, and with fast horses and invariable French leave, may still refresh all necessary memo- ries as to its existence. There is the Monday set, and the Tuesday set, and the Wednesday set, and so on through the week — crystallized according to neigh- borhood, with one or two supercilious and recusant exceptions. The engravers are in full cry, however, and every week brings out new cards, " at home on Monday," "at home on Tuesday," etc., etc., and we shall soon be " Blissfully havened both from joy and pain," by a general acknowledgment of the fact that nobody is more intensely at home than before, and everybody who has a house is simply " at home" whenever those who wish to see them can find leisure to ring the bell. I don't know, by-the-way, that the compliment has been paid our country by foreign naturalists, of rank- ing us with the more virtuous wild-fowl, esteemed for their gregariousness. The Rev. Sydney Smith shows his lack of zoological learning in not modifying his abuse of us by remembering that "no birds of prey are gregarious." — "Of wild-fowl," says Grew, " those which are the most useful fly not singly as other birds, but are commonly gregarious." — "Then for birds of prey and rapacious animals," says Ray, "it is remarkable what Aristotle observes, that they are solitary and go not in flocks." Long live our multi- tudinous hotels, our animated extinguishment of dis- tinction by imitation, our altogetherness of lordship and ladyship! The danger is in the stiffening of this fluidity of rank and condition before the scoria are recognised, and before the mould of aristocracy can be dexterously handled. We shall have lords and ladies or their catamounts tantamounts (bother! which is the word ?) a few days, at least, before the millenium. This big orchard of green fruit is too large not to be destined to ripe and rot, reasonably and seasonably. Apropos — I observe a spot advertised for sale that I have always looked upon as the most beautiful and aristocratic property in this country — an island cra- dled by the Niagara, and in itself the best cradle na- ture could possibly form for the family of a luxurious exclusive. It is about eleven miles above the falls, an arrow-shot from the American shore (with Grand island between it and the Canadas), and contains a I hundred acres of land, charmingly wooded and va- ried, which have been turned into a paradise by one I of the most refined gentlemen of this country. A beautiful villa crowns it, and baths, hot-houses, and all appliances to luxury, are there, and all fenced in by the bright water about to rush over Niagara. The island is called Tonawanda — a delicious word for the I name of a home. One sighs to think that a little money could buy such a paradise for one's own. I observe a new fashion of cap, which gives the la- dies an air " As pert as bird, as straight as bolt, As fresh as flower in May,"— a cap that would fit a child's double-fist, worn perched upon the summit of the organ of self-esteem, looking like an apple-blossom on the top-knot of a French chicken. It is one of those fashions whose worth de- pends upon the wearer— very telling upon a pretty coquette, and very ludicrous, topping dignity or sen- timent. 682 EPHExMERA. Original literature in the lump is sadly at a discount in this country. Miss Sedgwick, in the plenitude of her intellectual power, has taken to school-keeping. Another authoress, very superior to Miss Sedgwick in the qualities necessary to saleable writing, Mrs. Mary Clavers, is employed in the same ill-suited drudgery. Cooper, I understand, makes nothing by his Ameri- can editions, and thinks of publishing only in England and importing a few copies at English prices. Amer- ican literature has nearly ceased, or it is scattered in such small rills of periodical-writing that it will make no mark upon the time. Prescott is an exception, it is true, but Prescott is a man of fortune, and writes for fame, not bread and butter. Why should not a subscription be raised by the patriotic to give fair play and studious leisure to the original and poetic genius of Mrs. Child — wasted now on ephemera for news- papers ! Money left for such uses, or given by the living, would better embalm the memory of the giver than many a common charity. What is to be the effect on the national character of the present hiatus of original American literature, and how long is it to last ? For how long are we to take our mental ward- robe second-hand from England, and read to the world as all wearers of unfitting garments seem — out of harmony with our shape and model from nature? It is stated in the Boston Daily Advertiser (in an article headed " The greatest American author"), that, in a work of no small authority and importance in Germany, a continuation of Frederick Schlegel's "History of Literature," a writer by the name of Sealsfield is put at the head of American literature, and defined as "the great national painter of the char- acteristics of his native land, who has unfolded the poetry of American life and its various relations yet better than Cooper and Irving." The editor of the Advertiser remarks that the critical opinion of this work will be taken implicitly on this subject by half Europe, and no American authority, at least, will be able to gainsay it. He continues : " We have, there- fore, taking shame to ourselves for past ignorance, made all reasonable inquiries in this matter. We have applied at the principal bookstores and libraries in the neighborhood, but to our surprise neither books or author have as yet been heard of. The Athenaeum, Burnham, Little and Brown, and Redding and Co., are all in ignorance. We have applied to all literary circles to which the humble conductors of diurnal publications have the entree, but a hearty laugh has been the only answer to our anxious queries. "We are yet unwilling to let this sin of ingratitude rest upon American readers. We call upon the pub- lic to assist us and solve the question, ' Where is Sealsfield ?' and absolve our country from the shame of ignoring an author, who has been crowned with the laurels of trans-Atlantic criticism. We trust the subject may seem as important to the public as to our- selves, and that if, as seems probable, some publisher who lives by stealing the brains of foreign authors, lias added to his crimes by incarcerating in the dun- geons of Cliff street, or Ann street, or Water street, this hero of our literature, let that public, or the 'American copyright club' have him disinterred im- mediately." The probability is that better information than I can give will be brought out by this " call upon the pub- lic," but meantime I will record, that th\s great Amer- ican author, Sealsfield, is a German, who has resided in this country for some years, returned to Germany a few years since, and could probably be heard of in the neighborhood of his intrepid reviewer and nomen- clator. He probably "furnished the facts" for the review himself. He is ("to give the devil his due") a good writer, and while in this country contributed some excellent articles to the old Mirror. Leaving to other people my share of curiosity as to the source of the Niger, I should like to know the author of now and then a joke that goes the round of the newspapers. Genius is the most promiscuous of animals, and is found in all sorts of disreputable places, dress, and company — in quack, advertisements and negro wit, as often as in patented inventions and pub- lications of gilt-edge. There is a kind of unlabelled genius, which is wholly incapable of being turned to any profit, but which how and then starts out from an unsuspected quarter and takes probability by the beard with a delicious intrepidity. This morning's paper has an instance — a three-line story of a Yankee who bought a bushel of shoe-pegs, and finding they were made of rotten wood, sharpened the other ends and sold them for oats ! Quite aside from the fun of that, it is worth analyzing as an absurdity of the most bril- liant audacity of invention. Will the respectable author oblige me with his autograph ? Confab in the Cloister. — Not a small part of our brain-twisting, dear reader, is the exercise of an office that, at Roman feasts, was delegated to i par- ticular servant called the nomenclator. His business was to inform the guests of the names and ingredients of the dishes set before them. Simple as it seems when well done, there are few things more difficult to do well. It is to describe a book, or a series of books, in the compass of a phrase, and that phrase attractive to eye and ear, piquant, novel, and provocative of curi- osity ! Try your hand at expressing the contents of a charcoal-cart in the compass of a diamond ! It would amuse the reader to be present sometimes when No. 4, Ann street, is resolved into a committee of two for the finding of a good name. (Witlings, avaunt!) The firm is called together by a significant motion of the forefinger of the brigadier founder of the concern — called into the cloister, that is to say, a room of the proportions of a lady's shoe, extending to our (No. 4's) immediate rear. The door being closed, and the window-curtain dropped to exclude the uninspiring view of the clothes-lines of No. 4, up-stairs — the one chair having become occupied by his Serenity, and the remainder of the committee being seated upon the upright end of a ream of paper, the business in hand is forthwith put. Let no one imagine, because he may have assisted at naming a friend's child, that he has any, the most vague, idea of the embarrassments that ensue ! We have a passably fertile invention. We have whiled away the dull transit of what is commonly called " a liberal educa- tion" by a diligent search after such knowledge as was above being "turned to account." We have been a profligate of verbal intemperance, we mean to say, and are likely to know the bin where lies in cobweb your old word, toothsome and tasteable. But for all this, it is no easier. Like the search after happiness, ten to one the thing sought lies near home — overstepped at starting ! But let us particularize. The Brigadier. — My dear boy (a facetious way he has of addressing the rest of the committee !) — my dear boy, stop looking out of that back window, and give your mind to business! Cast your eye over these four incomparable tales ! Irving's " Wife" — Committee. — You don't say he's married, general ! Brigadier. — Tales, my dear boy, I speak of tales— a new series of tales that want a good name ! Come, think of it, now ! EPHEMERA. 683 Committee. — Describe me the article, brigadier ! What is the purpose, plot, character? Is it one book or a series? "Open up," as Bulwer says, and let us know definitively what is wanted ! Brigadier. — You know how many men of genius there are who are only capable of brief inspirations — Committee. — Inspired to the length of a short tale. Well ! Brigadier. — You know that long tales are now out of fashion. People are tired of them. Committee.— Indeed ? Well ! Brigadier. — You know that such men as Brougham, Canning, Macauley — statesmen who are scholars and men of genius, and might have been authors — have occasionally given vent to their pent-up imaginations by a tale for the magazines. Committee. — I do — witness Brougham's magnificent 6tory of the "man in the bell." Well ! Brigadier. — We know what is good, that goes by with the flood, don't we ? Committee. — We are professed tasters. Yes. Brigadier. — For experiment, then, I have put to- gether^ in one number, four tales that delighted me — in more than one enchanted perusal. You shall select the next. It will go, my dear boy ! — people will give their couple of shillings, if it were only for the rescue we make, for them, of things they remember and have lost sight of. There are g — 1 — o — rious things hit off, here as I there, at a heat, by periodical writers — one hit in a thousand failures, it is true, but still enough of them for a brilliant collection — and these we want to gather into our beautiful library, and embalm from perishing. See here ! " Judith, or the Opera Box, by Eugene Scribe"— (great, my boy, great!)— "The Beggar-Girl of the Pont des Arts," by a German man, Hauff (ah ! what a rich bit to read over and over!) — "The Picnic Party," by Horace Smith (you know all about that?)— and "The Wife," by Irving — a worthy companion for them ; and now, what shall we call the series ? Committee.— Hm— m— m. How do you like "fan- noms and fopperies?" Brigadier. — Bah ! Committee. — " Diapasms ?" Brigadier. — Poh ! Committee. — The "pomander-chain ?" Brigadier. — My dear boy, let it be English and honest! You distress me with these affectations! What have cataplasms and pomatum-chains to do with a course of light reading ? Don't waste time ! Committee. — A diapasm, my charming brigadier, was a bunch of aromatic herbs made into a ball with sweet water, and, in Ben Johnson's time, worn in a lady's pocket. Gallants wore these scented balls strung in a necklace under the shirt, and so worn, it was called a pomander-chain. Pardon me, but these would be good names, for want of better ! Brigadier. — Mr. King would be down upon us, and the definition would never get through his hair ! No, my dear boy! We must be ostriches, and feel the ground while we fly. Keep out of the clouds till you're " sent for !" 1 like " The russet yeas, and honest kersey noes," and so does my regiment — I mean the public. Ima- gine a good name, now, that would suit a plain man ! Committee. — Faith, it takes imagination to come at that, sure enough ! Hark ! I have it ! Brigadier. — Come to my arms ! What is it ? Speak quick, or it'll die in delivery ! Committee. — Did you ever hear of a river in Asia called Pactolus? Brigadier. — To be sure. An ass dipped his head into it to be able to stop making money. Committee. — That's the fable. And ever since there have been gold sands in the river — " or so they say." Brigadier. — And that you think is like fugitive literature ? Committee. — I do. I was there ten years ago, and the gold sands were as scarce as good things in the magazines. Brigadier. — You'll swear to that? Committee. — With a reservation, I will. I went to the Pactolus one moonlight night, and filled my pock- ets with sand to look at in the morning. I was travel- ling with a caravan, and we were off before day, but there was no gold in my pocket, come daylight — sifted out, most likely! Brigadier. — Shouldn't be surprised! "Sands of Gold," then, you think would be a good name. Committee. — Sands of Gold, sifted from the flood of fugitive literature. Brigadier. — Good ! passable good ! Let the com mittee rise. You see how it is done, dear reader, and you will the better comprehend, from this specimen, how we came upon another — a name for a series of sacred poetry, of which we are about to issue the first number. We have called this series "The Sacred Rosary"— a musical word that, in old English, meant a plantation of roses, but which was afterward used to define the verses of a church-psalter, strung together with beads for an aid to memory. In either signification, it figures forth what we enrol beneath it — for a more beautiful collection of hallowed verse was never col- lected than this we have to offer. We have always especially loved poetry on sacred themes, and have garnered up specimens of it, and let us assure the reader that in this field of poetry there is a rich har- vest ungathered. Let him look at this first number for a specimen of the mind and taste scattered abroad in these stray leaves of poetry. It will cut up for a fact, when you have done using it as a pun, that " the first sign of spring in the city is the prevalence of spring-cart*." (I borrow this of the author, and lend him, in return, an analogy of my own discovering — between sidewalks and green pas- tures — the simultaneous outbreak of dandy-lions with the first warm weather.) Oh, the moving! But it should be remembered by those who groan over the universal exposure of household gods and shabby fur- niture on May-day, that when it ceases, our now mo- bile republic will harden into a monarchy. The " moss" of aristocracy is not " gathered" by the " roll- ing stone." People must live long iu one place to establish superiority for themselves or to allow it in others. Mrs. Splitfig, the grocer's wife, is but just beginning to submit patiently to the airs of Mrs. In- gulphus, the banker's wife, when May-day comes round, and away she goes with her tin and crockery on a spring-cart, to start fair again with some other pretender, in some other neighborhood. " Old fam- ilies" are of little use without old neighbors to keep the record. The subduing of neighborhoods is (at present) the battle of pretension with a hydra— one sot of heads sliced off, a new set is ready to come on. So, long live our acquaintance with the shabby sides of easy-chairs, and the humilities of bedding and crockery. Some fifty May-days hence, we shall be ready to stop shaking the sugar-bowl, satisfied that the. big lumps are all at the top. The most courted value in New York at the pres- ent time is unquestionably the "nimble sixpence." The new omnibuses that have been put upon the dif- ferent lines within a week or two, are of a costliness and splendor that would have done for a sovereign's 684 EPHEMERA. carriage in the golden age. Claret bodies, silver- plated hubs, and yellow wheels, cut-velvet linings and cushions, and all to tempt the once-unconsidered six- pence to get up and ride! (Query — as to the supe- riority of the " mirror held up to nature," over the New Mirror held up to sixpence ?) The racing of omnibuses seems to be agreeable to inside passengers, since it might always be prevented by pulling the checkstring — but to those who have the temerity or the dangerous necessity to cross Broadway, it is become a frightful evil. King Six- pence could regulate it very easily, if he had his wits about him. As was said before, the checkstring is always obeyed. Terrified ladies, who chance to have no fancy for riding races in Broadway, should be reminded of this leather preservative. Those who have the bold wish to tamper with their standard of human nature can now be gratified, as there are giants at one museum and a dwarf at the other. Mr. and Mrs. Anak, at the American museum, are certainly two very tall people — more tall than comely. The flat-chested and gaunt lady looks as if she had been lengthened with a rolling-pin — her length entirely at the expense of her intermediate belongings. Not so the husband, who is a thick-lipped, big-eyed, double-fisted, knoll-backed, and thick-tongued over- growth. For one, I do not like to have my notions of human stature unsettled, and I abhor giants. Sir- feet stature is undervalued by familiarity with seven — as diamonds would be ruined by the discovery of a few as large as potatoes. I am happy to console the eclipsed six-footers and under, by the information that this large vessel of human nature does not seem intended to hold more soul. He looks like as " regu- lar a spoon" as could be wished by those who are com- pelled to look up to him — his wife, apparently, of the same utensil capacity. The dwarf at Peale's museum, Rado Scauf {that he should ever have been thought worth baptizing!) is a sweet-faced minion, with feet in boots looking like two cockroaches with heels to them. A two-fingered lady's glove would make him an ample pair of trou- sers, and his walking-stick is a sizeable toothpick. He has fine eyes, and would look like a nice lad, through a magnifying-glass. If such bijous were plenty, ladies would carry them in their pockets — portable garter-claspers and glove-buttoners. Fancy the lux- ury ! It were worth a Yankee's while to send a ven- ture to Lilliput, to import them. The Cloister.— Four o'clock and the Pomeridian of an April day. The brigadier's audiences are sus- pended to make room for a session of the committee, and the door is closed— printers, poets, engravers, stitchers and folders (these female), advertisers, car- riers, agents, stereotypers, ruthlessly excluded. Truly, as Shakspere says, "every man hath business and de- sire" (for the brigadier's society), "such as it is." Long last his " suaviler in modo," his "fortiter in re /" Brigadier. — To business, my boy ! "What lies in that fourth pucker of your eyelid? Smile and let it drop away easy ! Committee. — Thirteen letters by to-day's mail, con- taining propositions to publish immortal works by living and mortal American authors, most of them never before heard of — postage nine and sixpence, of which please make a memorandum in my favor. Brigadier. — Fifty-nine cents each to the cause of unbaptized literature ! Are we not involuntary martyrs, my boy ! Why the mischief don't you last-page the fact that we publish exclusively for the trans-Atlantics and the trans-Styxians! — never for those who can cross the water to " settle !" Committee. — It shall be done, but there is one ap- plicant who deserves a hearing. One of the most gifted women now living has employed her leisure in compiling a book to be used as a round game played with forfeits, or as a parlor fortune-teller." The book is to be called " Oracles from the Poets." Ques- tions are proposed, and by the choice of a number the inquirer is referred to an answer, in a passage selected from the poets. The selections are made with great taste, so as not only to convey apposite answers, but to make the reader familiar with the most beautiful passages of poetry. What say to that ? Brigadier. — Worth lots of money to Biker or Ap- pleton, my boy, but we are in the rapid line, and that sort of work takes time. Besides (and here the Brigadier looked modestly at his nails), we couldn't bring our minds to make money out of the sex, my boy ! Fancy a lovely woman calling on us to fork out, as her publisher ! Odious word, "publisher !" It has been too long a synonym for " pirate," and "Philistine." A few of us immortal bards have washed and donned the gaberdine of late, but we must let it air, my boy, we must let it air, before wearing it abroad — at least into a lady's presence ! Think of the maid's asking you to "step into the back room," if you called on a lady and sent up your name as her " publisher !" Committee. — Ah! my illustrious friend and song- builder, dignity is a Minerva that needs no nurse. It jumps out of your head and walks alone. I would not only publish, but peddle from two tiu boxes, if my wants would not bear diminishing, and if only this would supply them ! We're earthy ants, not charter- ed butterflies ! Brigadier. — Ha ! ha ! rny boy ! my dear boy ! " That all the sweetness of the world in one — The youth and virtue that would tame wild tigers — Should thus be cloistered up '." Who else wants to gild a gold leaf in the Mirror Library ? Committee. — Seven and two are nine — seven poet- esses and two frebardlings — pleading for print! We are " Loath to refuse, but loather for to grant ;" — will you write the declinatures, dear brigadier ? Brigadier. — Make a regret-circular, my boy ! Say that we are are a partnership of posterity. They must die, to qualify. The " Home Library," and the " Par- lor Library," and the " Drawing-Room Library," and the " Knickerbocker Library," and many more — (for whose names, see puffs and advertisements) — these publish for the equivocal immortals now living. We publish only for the immortal dead, or for the buried alive, disinterred with our own pick and shovel. Write that out, and I'll have it lithographed to save time. What next ? Committee. — We want a new head. Brigadier. — Speak for yourself, my boy ! Committee A new caption, then (if you ivill be critical) in the Mirror. Where can I praise things, now? There's Headley's new book on Italy, worth the best laurel-sprig of my picking. There's "Ame- lia," of the Lousiville Journal, who has written some poetry about hearing a sermon, that traverses your back-bone like electricity, and where to praise that ! George Flagg has painted a delicious sketch of my Glenmary-born Imogen, and I icill praise him! I want a place to praise — Brigadier. — Hire a pew ! Committee — Will you give me a column ? Brigadier — To your memory, I will. Committee. — Well, my memory wants a column, to record the good things I should not forget to praise. Brigadier. — Take it — take it — but for Heaven's sake be pert and pithy, crisp and critical ! Nothing EPHEMERA 685 so dull as praise to everybody but the praiseg. Any- thing more ? Committee. — Yes — " The loving mother that nine months did bear In the dear closet of her painful side Her tender babe, it seeing safe appear Doth not so much rejoice,' - as I to inform you of the approaching delivery, from the press, of " Pencilliugs by the Way." My travels nave seemed interminable. Brigadier. — Well, as 1 assisted at their birth once before, 1 can certify now to their being "born again." Is that what you want ? Committee. — No — for, half the book was never a book before, not having been published except in the old Mirror. I want you to make it trip " as merry as a trri<r ; And brisk as bottled ale," that I may hurry into " calf" all I have written up to last year, and start fresh from my meridian with "Dashes at Life," and gossips in the cloister. For, as says old Wotton in the " Reliquice," "Though I am a cloistered man in the condition of my present life, yet, having spent so much of mine age among noise abroad, there still doth hang upon me, I know not how, a certain concupiscence of novelty." Brigadier. — Verbum sap. sat. Shall the committee rise — by getting down off the table ? Committee — Yes ! — oue minute ! Have you read (he proof-sheets of that glorious — glorious — say " glorious!" — Brigadier — Glorious. Committee. — Hood's " Midsummer Fairies" — the most delicious "Rococo" conceivable? Yes? Be off! From the window in which I spin my cobweb, I look directly on the most frequented portion in Broad- way— the sidewalk in front of St. Paul's. You walk over it every day. Familiarity with most things alters their aspect, however. Let me, after a long acquaint- ance with this bit of sidewalk, sketch how it looks to me at the various hours of the day. I may jot down, also, one or two trifles 1 have observed while looking into the street in the intervals of writing. Eight in the morning. — The sidewalk is compara- tively deserted. The early clerks have gone by, and the bookkeepers and youngerpartners not being abroad, the current sets no particular way. A vigorous female exerciser or two may be seen returning from a smart walk to the Battery, and the orange-women are getting their tables ready at the corners. There is to be a funeral in the course of the day in St. Paul's church- yard, and one or two boys are on the coping of the iron fence, watching the grave-digger. Seamstresses and schoolmistresses, with veils down, in impenetra- ble incognito, hurry by with a step which says unmis- •akeably. " don't look at me in this dress !" The re- turn omnibuses come from Wall street empty, on a walk. ' J Nine and after.— A rapid throng of well-dressed men, all walking smartly, and all bound Mammon- ward. Glanced at vaguely, the sidewalk seems like a floor with a swarm of black beetles running races across it. The single pedestrians who are struggling up stream, keep close to the curbstone or get rudely jostled. The omnibuses all stop opposite St. Paul's at this hour, letting out passengers, who invariably start on a trot down Ann street or Fulton. The museum people are on the top of the building drawing their flags across Broadway and Ann bv pulleys fasten* ed to trees and chimneys. Burgess and Stringer hang- ing out their literary placards with a listless delibera- tion, as if nobody was abroad yet who had leisure to read them. The "brigadier" dismounting from an up-town 'bus with a roll of manuscripts sticking from his pocket, and hands and handkerchiefs waved to him from the omnibus windows. Tirrlrr and affr-r.— Discount-seekers crowding into the Chemical Bank with hats over their eyes. Flower- merchants setting their pots of roses and geraniums ; along the iron fence. The blind beggar arrived, and set with his back against the church gate by an old woman. And now the streaks, drawn across my side vision by the passers under, glide at a more leisurely j pace, and are of gayer hues. The street full of sun- shine. Omnibuses going slowly, both ways. Female ! exclusives gliding to and fro in studiously plain dresses j and with very occupied air — (never in Broadway with- out " the carriage" of course, except to shop). Stran- | gers sprinkled in couples, exhausting their strength and spirits by promenading before the show hour. I The grave dug in St. Paul's, and the grave-digger | gone home to dinner. Woman run over at the Ful- j ton crossing. Boys out of school. Tombs' bell ring- ing fire in the third district. One and after. — The ornamentals are abroad. A crowd on St. Paul's sidewalk watching the accom- plished canary-bird whose cage hangs on the fence. He draws his seed and water up an inclined plane in a rail-car, and does his complicated feeding to the great approbation of his audience. The price is high —his value being in proportion (aristocracy-wise) to his wants ! It is the smoothest and broadest sidewalk in Broadway — the frontage of St. Paul's— and the ladies and dandies walk most at their ease just here, loitering a little, perhaps, to glance at the flowers for sale. My window, commanding this pave, is a par- ticularly good place, therefore, to study street habits, and I have noted a trifle or so, that, if not new, may be newly put down. I observe that a very well-dressed woman is noticed by none so much as by the women themselves. This is the week for the first spring dresses, and, to-day, there is a specimen or two of Miss Lawson's April avatar, taking its first sun on the promenade. A lady passed, just now, with a charm- ing straw hat and primrose shawl — not a very pretty woman, but, dress and all, a fresh and sweet object to look at — like a new-blown cowslip, that stops you in your walk though it is not a violet. Not a male eye observed her, from curb-stone in Vesey to curb-stone in Fulton, but every woman turned to look after her ! Query, is this the notice of envy or admiration, and, if the former, is it desirable or worth the pains and money of toilet ? Query, again — the men's notice being admiration (not envy) what will attract it, and is that (whatever it is) worth while ? I query what I should, myself, like to know. Half past three. — The sidewalk is in shade. The orange-man sits on a lemon-box, with his legs and arms all crossed together in his lap, listening to the band who have just commenced playing in the mu- seum balcony. The principal listeners, who have stopped for nothing but to listen, are three negro-boys (one sitting on the Croton hydrant, and the other two leaning on his back), and to them this gratuitous mu- sic seems a charming dispensation. (Tune, "Ole Dan Tucker.") The omnibus-horses prick up their ears in going under the trumpets, but evidently feel that to show fright would be a luxury beyond their means. Saddle-horse, tied at the bank, breaks bridle and runs away. Three is universal dinner-time for bosses — (what other word expresses the head men of all trades and professions?) — and probably not a sin- gle portly man will pass under my window in this hour. Four to five. — Sidewalk more crowded. Hotel boarders lounging along with toothpicks. Stout men going down toward Wall street with coats unbuttoned. 686 EPHEMERA Hearse stopped at St. Paul's, and the museum band playing " Take your time, Miss Lucy," while the mourners are getting out. A gentleman, separated from two ladies by the passing of the coffin across the sidewalk, rejoins them, apparently with some funny remark. Bell tolls. No one in the crowd is inter- ested to inquire the age or sex of the person breaking the current of Broadway to pass to the grave. Hearse drives off on a trot. Five and after. — Broadway one gay procession. Few ladies accompanied by gentlemen — fewer than in the promenades of any other country. Men in couples and women in couples. Dandies strolling and stealing an occasional look at their loose demi- saison pantaloons, and gaiter-shoes, newly sported with the sudden advent of warm weather. No private car- riage passing except those bound to the ferries for a drive into the country. The crowd is unlike the morning crowd. There is as much or more beauty, but the fashionable ladies are not out. You would be puzzled to discover who these lovely women are. Their toilets are unexceptionable, their style is a very near approach to comme il faut. They look perfectly satisfied with their position and with themselves, and they do (what fashionable women do not) — meet the eye of the promenader with a coquettish confidence he will misinterpret — if he be green or a puppy. Among these ladies are accidents of feature, form, and man- ner — charms of which the possessor is unconscious — that, if transplanted into a high-bred sphere of society abroad, would be bowed to as the stamp of lovely aris- tocracy. Possibly — probably, indeed — the very wo- man who is a marked instance of this is not called pretty by her friends. She is only spoken to by those whose taste is common-place and unrefined. She walks Broadway, and has a vague suspicion that the men of fashion look at her more admiringly than could be accounted for by any credit she has for beauty at home. Yet she is not likely to be enlightened as to the secret of it. When tired of her promenade, she disappears by some side street leading away from the great thoroughfares, and there is no clue to her un- less by inquiries that would be properly resented as impertinence. I see at least twenty pass daily under my window who would be ornaments of any society, yet who, I know (by the men J see occasionally with them), are unacknowledgable by the aristocrats up town. What a field for a Columbus ! How charming to go on a voyage of discovery and search for these un- prized pearls among the unconscious pebbles ! How delightful to see these rare plants without hedges about them — exquisite women without fashionable affectations, fashionable hinderances, penalties, exac- tions, pretensions, and all the wearying nonsenses that embarrass and stupefy the society of most of our female pretenders to exclusiveness ! Half-past six and after. — The flower-seller loading up his pots into a fragrant wagon-load. Twilight's rosy mist falling into the street. Gas-lamps alight here and there. The museum band increased by two instruments, to play more noisily for the night-cus- tom. The magic wheel lit up, and ground rather capriciously by the tired boy inside. The gaudy transparencies one by one illuminated. Great differ- ence now in the paces at which people walk. Busi- ness-men bound home, apprentices and shop-boys car- rying parcels, ladies belated — are among the hurrying ones. Gentlemen strolling for amusement take it very leisurely, and with a careless gait that is more graceful and becoming than their mien of circumspect daylight. And now thicken the flaunting dresses of the unfortunate outlaws of charity and pity. Some among them (not many) have a remainder of ladylike- ness in their gait, as if, but for the need there is to attract attention, they could seem modest — but the most of them are promoted to fine dress from sculle- ries and low life, and show their shameless vulgarity through silk and feathers. They are not at all to be pitied. The gentleman cit passes them by like the rails in St. Paul's fence — wholly unnoticed. ]f he is vicious, it is not those in the street who could attract him. The " loafers" return their bold looks, and the boys pull their dresses as they go along, and now and then a greenish youth, well-dressed, shows signs of being attracted. Sailors, rowdies, country-people, and strangers who have dined freely, are those whose steps are arrested by them. It is dark now. The omni- buses, that were heavily-laden through the twilight, now go more noisily because lighter. Carriages make their way toward the Park theatre. My window shows but the two lines of lamps and the glittering shops, and all else vaguely. I have repeatedly taken five minutes, at a time, to pick out a well-dressed man, and see if he would walk from Fulton street to Vesey without getting a look at his boots. You might safely bet against it. If he is an idle man, and out only for a walk, two to one he would glance downward to his feet three or four times in that distance. Men betray their subterfuges of toilet — women never. Once in the street, women are armed at all points against undesirable observa- tion — men have an ostrich's obtusity, being wholly unconscious even of that battery of critics, a passing omnibus ! How many substitutes and secrets of dress a woman carries about her, the angels know! — but she looks defiance to suspicion on that subject. Sit in my window, on the contrary, and you can pick out every false shirt-bosom that passes, and every pair of false wristbands, and the dandy's economical half- boots, gaiter-cut trousers notwithstanding. Indeed, while it is always difficult, sometimes im- possible, to distinguish female genuine from the imi- tation, nothing is easier than to know at sight the " glossed (male) worsted from the patrician sarsnet." The " fashion" of women, above a certain guide, can seldom be guessed at in the street street except by the men who are with them. You should sit in a window like mine, to know how few men walk with even passable grace. Nothing so corrupts the gait as business — (a fact that would be offensive to mention in a purely business country, if it were not that the "unmannerly haste" of parcel-bear- ing and money-seeking, may be laid aside with low- heeled boots and sample cards.) The bent-kneed ce- lerity, learned in dodging clerks and jumping over boxes in Cedar and Pearl, betrays its trick in the gait, as the face shows the pucker of calculation and the suavity of sale. I observe that the man used to hurry, relies principally on his heel, and keeps his foot at right angles. The ornamental man drops his toe slightly downward in taking a step, and uses, for elasticity, the spring of his instep. Nature has pro- vided muscles of grace which are only incorporated into the gait by habitually walking with leisure. All* women walk with comparative grace who are not cramped with tight shoes, but there are many degrees of gracefulness in women, and oh, what a charm is the highest degree of it ! How pleasurable even to see from my window a woman walking like a queen ! The magnetic threads of Saratoga begin to pull upon the calculating bumps of foreseeing papas, and many a hair whitens in these spring months that would have ta- ken another lease of youth but for the trip to Saratoga. Ah, the contrivance ! Ah, the calculation! Ah, the sa- ving, upon things undreamed of! — for extravagance is like the lengthening of the Indian's blanket — the piece EPHEMERA. 687 cut from one end that is sewed on to the other ! But, out on monotony, and hey for Saratoga ! If there be an approach to a gayety-paradise on earth — if there be a place where the mortifications of neighborhood are forgotten, and " people's natural advantages" are prom- inent and undisputed— if there be, this side Heaven, a place where it is worth while to dress, worth while to be pretty, worth while to walk, talk, and particu ( larly and generally outdo > " The snowy swans that strut on Isca's sands," it is sandy Saratoga — Marvin's United States Hotel ! Take your papa there, " for his health," my dear belle! "And tell him, too," that it was the well- expressed opinion of the philosopher Bacon, that "money, like manure, is offensive if not spread." Tell your mamma to tell him how pale he is when he wakes in the morning! Tell the doctor to prescribe Congress water without the taste of the cork! Tell him, if he does not, and you are not let go with a chaperon, you will do something you shudder to think of— bolt, slope, elope, with the first base " Arimaspian who, by stealth, Will from his wakeful custom purloin The guarded gold" to which you are the heiress ! For it is credibly and currently reported " in high circles," that the coming season at Saratoga is to be of a crowded uncomforta- bleness of splendor that was reserved for the making fashionable, by Mr. Van Buren, of the " United States" and its dependant colonies. Among the alleviations to passing a summer in town (misericordia pro nobis !) is the completion of Mr. Stevens's Gothic cottage at the lip of the Elysian Hoboken, where are to be had many good things, of course, but where (I venture to suggest) it would be a bliss ineffable to be able to get a good breakfast! What a pleasure to cross the ferry, and, after a morning ramble in that delicious park, to sit down in the fresh air volant through the galleries of that sweet cottage, and eat (if nothing more) a nice roll with a good cup of French coffee ! A restaurateur there would make a fortune, I do think. Bring it about, Mr. "Person Concerned," and you shall lack neither our company nor a zealous trumpeter. THE CLOISTER. Committee — (solus). — Oh, most beset of brigadiers! Most civil of military men ! (for half a firm, the most yielding partner of my acquaintance!) when, oh re- sponsible general, will you get through with your^ar- ticular callers and come to confab? True, I have dined, and can wait! True, there are joint letters to answer! True, I can listen, and look out into the back yard ! Hark ! Syphax, my black boy, loquitur. Syphax — (to the general). — Shall I cut out them favorable notices from the exchanges, sir? Brigadier. — Those favorable notices, Syphax! Heavens! what an unfeeling man! For the love of pity, corrupt not the innocent grammar of the lad, my dear brigadier! Out of seven black boys sent me for trial by the keeper of an intelligence-office, six, to my disgust, spoke with the painful accuracy of Doc- tor Pangloss. The last, my inestimable Syphax, whom that finished brigadier would fain bring to his own level of heartless good grammar — was ignorant (virtuous youth !) even of the sexes of pronouns ! He came to me innocent; and, I need not say to any writer — to any slave of the rule-tied pen — to any man cabined, cribbed, confined, as are public scribblers to case and number, gender and conjugation, participle present, and participle past — I need not say, to such a victim, what an oasis in the desert of perfection was the green spot of a black boy's cacology ! Oh, to the attenuated ear of the grammar-ridden! — to the tense mood of unerring mood and tense — what a lux- ury is an erring pronoun — what a blessed relief from monotony is a too-yielding verb, seduced, from its sin- gular antecedent, by a contiguity of plural! Out on perfectionists! Out on you, you flaw-less brigadier! Correct your own people, however! Inveigle not my Syphax into rhetoric! Ravish not from my use the one variation, long-sought and chance-found, from the maddening monotone of good grammar! And this brings to my mind (if I get time to jot it down before the brigadier comes to cloister) a long- settled conviction of my own, that the corrections in American manners brought about by the criticisms of Trollope and others, have been among the worst in- fluences ever exercised upon the country. Gracious heaven ! are we to have our national features rasped off by every manner-tinker who chooses to take up a file ! See how it affects the English to laugh at their bloat of belly and conceit, their cockney ignorance and their besotted servility to rank. Do they brag less, and drink less beer ? Do they modify their Bow- bell dialect one hair, or whip off their hats with less magical celerity when spoken to by a lord? Not a bit ! They will be English till they are smothered with Russians — English ghosts (those who die before England is conquered by Russia), with English man- ners, at doomsday. They are not so soft as to be moulded into American pottery, or German pottery, or French pottery, because an American, or a Ger- man, or a Frenchman, does not find them like his own country's more common utensils ! Where do national features exist? Not among well-bred people! Not where peas are eaten with a fork and soup-plates left untilted by the hungry! All well-bred people are monotonously alike — whatever their nation and what- ever the government they have lived under. Differ- ences of manners are found below this level, and the mistake — the lamentable mistake — lies in submitting to correct this low level by the standard of coxcombs! What a picture would be without shade — what music would be without discords — what life would be with- out something to smile at — what anything would be without contrast — that are ice becoming by our sensi- tiveness to criticism. Long live our (BM-judice) " abominations." Long live some who spit and whit- tle, some who eat eggs out of wine-glasses and sit on four chairs, some who wear long naps to their hats, some who eat peas with a knife, some who pour out their tea into saucers, and some who are civil to un- protected ladies in stage-coaches! Preserve some- thing that is not English, oh, my countrymen ! [Enter the brigadier.] Brigadier. — Forgive me, my dear boy — what is that I see written on your paper about Russia ? '• The Russie men are round of bodies, fully-faced, The greatest part with bellies that overhang the waist, Flat-headed for the most, with faces nothing faire, But brown by reason of the stoves and closeness of the aire." So says old Tuberville, the traveller — and now to busi- ness. Jot ! Committee. — What ? Brigadier. — Jot — that we are glad to offer to the patrons of the "Mirror Library" a book they will thank us for, at every line—" The Plea of the Min- summer Fairies," and other admirable poems, preg- nant with originality and richness, by Thomas Hood. His poetry is the very attar, the aroma, the subtlest extract of sweet imagination. " Eugene Aram" is one of those included in this volume. Committee.— What else are you glad of? d88 EPHEMERA. Brigadier. — Glad to be sorry that Parke Godwin's fine analytical mind and bold foundry of cast-iron English are not freighted with a more popular sub- ject than Fourierism — worthy though the theme be of the regard of angels whose approbation don't pay. Politics should be at a lift to deserve the best ener- gies of such a writer — but they are not, and so he turns to philosophy. Committee. — But he should play Quintus Curtius, and write up politics to his level, man! The need is more immediate than the need of Fourierism. Brigadier. — My dear boy, give away nothing but what is saleable. Gifts, that would not otherwise have been money in your purse, are not appreciated — par- ticularly advice. We love Godwin — let us love his waste of ammunition, if it please him to waste it. Committee. — " Then let him weep, of no man mercified," if his brains be not coinable to gold, /would make a merchant of genius! The world has need of brains like Godwin's, and need makes the supply into com- modity, and commodity is priceable. That's the logic by which even my poor modicum is made to thrive. Apropos — what do you think of these lines on "bells," by Duganne? A poet, I should say: — M Ye melancholy bells, Ye know not why ye're. ringing: — See not the tear-drops springing From sorrows that ye bring to mind, Ye melancholy bells. " And thus ye will ring on — To-day, in tones of sadness ; To morrow, peals of gladness ; Ye'll sound them both, yet never feel A thrill of either one. " Ye ever-changing bells ! Oh many ye resemble, Who ever throb and tremble, Yet never know what moves them so — Ye ever-changing bells." Brigadier. — Kernel-ish and quaint. But, my dear boy, " twilight, soft arbiter 'Twixt day and night," is beginning to blur the distinctness of the cheeks on that apron drying upon the line in the back yard. Shall we go to tea? The opening of the exhibition at the National Acad- emy is like taking a mask from one of the city's most agreeable features. And it is only those who live in the city habitually, and ioho live as fast as the city does, who are qualified to enjoy it with the best apprecia- tion. Did you ever notice, dear reader, how behind the tide you feel, on arriving in town, even after an absence of a week — how whirling and giddy your sen- sations are — how many exciting things there seem for you to do — how " knowing" and " ahead-of-you" seem all the takers-coolly whom you meet — how incapable you are of any of the tranquil pleasures of the me- tropolis, and with what impatient disgust you pass any exhibition which would subtract you, mind and body, from the crowd. It is not for strangers, then, that the exhibition is the highest pleasure. It is for those who have laid behind them the bulk of the city excite- ments in a used-up heap — to whom balls are nuisances, theatres satiety, concerts a bore, Broadway stale, giants, dwarfs, and six-legged cows, "familiar as your hand." It is only such who have the cool eye to look critically and enjoyingly at pictures. It is for such that Durand has laid into his landscape the touch that was preceded by despair — for such that Ingham elab- orates, and Page strains invention, and Sully woos the coy shade of expression. And, truth to say, it is not one of the least of the gratuitous riches of existence, that while we are sifting away the other minutes of the year in commonplace business or pleasure, forget- ful of art and artists, these gifted minds are at work, producing beautiful pictures to pamper our eyes with in spring ! If you never chanced to think of that before, dear reader, you are richer than you thought! Please enclose us the surplus in bankable funds ! Ehem ! There are more portraits in the exhibition than will please the dilettanti — but hang the displeased ! We would submit to a thousand indifferent portraits, for the accident of possessing a likeness of one friend unex- pectedly lost. For Heaven's sake, let everybody be painted, that, if perchance there is a loved face marked, unsuspected by us, for heaven, we may have its semblance safe before it is beyond recall ! How bitter the regret, the self-reproach, when the beautiful joy of a household has been suddenly -struck into the grave, that we might have had a bright image of her on canvass — that we might have retnoved, by holding converse wiih her perpetuated smile, the dreadful image of decay that in sad moments crowds too closely upon us! For the sake of love and friendship, let that branch of the art, now in danger of being dispar- aged by short-sighted criticism — let it be ennobled, for the sacred offices it performs ! Is an art degrading to its follower which does so much — which prolongs the presence of the dead, which embellishes family ties, which brightens the memory of the absent, which quickens friendship, and shows the loved, as they were before ravage by sadness or sickness ? There should rather be a priesthood of the affections, and portrait- painters its brotherhood — holy for their ministering pencils. We have a customer in Andover, to whose attention particularly we commend the truly delicious poetry of " The Sacred Rosary,'''' as some atonement for having inveigled him into the purchase of the "Songs of the Bard of Poor Jack." That mis-spent shilling troubled our friend, and he wrote us a letter and paid eighteen pence postage to complain of it! — but non omnia pos- sum-us omnes (we can't play 'possum with all our sub- scribers), and we humbly beg our kind friend (who lives where we learned our Latin) to refresh his piety with the "Rosary," and forgive the Dibdin. The apology over, however, wc must make bold to say that of all the pnblications of the " Mirror Library," this collection of Dibdin's songs has sold the best. It has been indeed what our Andover friend scornfully calls " a catch-penny affair," and we wish there were (what there never will be) another catch-penny like it. No— by Castaly ! such a book will never again be written ! If ever there was honest, hearty, natural, manly feel- ing spliced to rhyme, it is in these magnificent songs. England's naval glory — her esprit-de-man-o'-ivar — het empire of the sea — lies spell-bound in that glorious song-book ! She owes more to Dibdin than to Chat- ham or Burke — as much as to Howard or Wilber- force! Ah, dear Anonym of Andover, you have never hung your taste out to salt over the gunwale ! Y"ou don't know poor Jack. Find out when your lease of life is likely to run out— go first to sea — read Dibdin understanding!)', e poi mori /" The proprietor of the " Connecticut pie depot" (corner of Beekman and Nassau), writes us that he will be happy to have us " call and taste his pies when we are sharp-set," and that he hails from Boston and takes a pride in us. So we do in him, though, for a EPHEMERA. 689 pvff, our pen against his rolling-pin for a thousand pound ! He evidently thinks us " the cheese," for he says he wishes to be noticed in our " dairy of town trifles." Well, sir, we don't " fill Our belly with the east wind," nor eat pies, since we left Boston, but we rejoice in your pie-ous enterprise, and agree, with you, to consider ourselves mutually the flour of the city we come from. Apropos — we can do our friend a service which we hope he will reciprocate by opening a sub- scription-book in his pie-magazine, and procuring us five hundred subscribers (payments invariably in ad- vance). A young lady has written to us, imploring the Mirror's aid in reforming the prog at fashionable boarding-schools. There are symptoms of a " strike" for something better to eat in these coops of chicken- angels, and the establishment of a "Connecticut pie depot" seems (seems, madam, nay, it is !) beautifully providential ! We can not trace our anonymous note to any particular school, but we hereby recommend to the young ladies in every " establishment," " nun- i nery," and "seminary," to "hang their aprons on the ] outer wall," and hoist in our friend's pastry, on trial. ! The French pockets will be filled the first day gratis, I we undertake to promise. The second day and after, j of course, the bill will be presented to tante or the music-master. There are poems which the world "does not wil- lingly let die," but which this same go-to-bed world, tired of watching, covers quietly up with the ashes of neglect, and leaves to grow as black as the poker and j tongs of criticism that stand unused beside them Stop the first twenty men (gentlemen, even) whom you j see in the street, and probably not one can tell you even the argument of Goldsmith's great poem ! And the " pourquoy Sir Knight" is simply that " The English Poets," in six formidable volumes, are too much for cursory readers to encounter ! The poems and passages they would "thumb." if they could light readily on them, are buried up in loads of uninterest- ing miscellany. They want the often-quoted, unde- niable, pure fire, raked out of this heap of embers. Our last number of the Mirror Library begins a sup- ply of this want, under the title of " Livk Coals, raked from the Embers of English Poetry." The following advertisement is cut from " The Sun:"— "Notice — To the gentleman that pushed the man over the curbstone in Broadway, at the corner of Lis- penard street, with his dinner-kettle in his hand, from this time forth never to lay his hand on David Brown again." Now, what other country than America would do for David Brown ? God bless the land where a man can pour his sorrows into the sympathizing bosom of a newspaper! Query — does not this seventy -five cent vent supersede altogether the use of that dangerous domestic utensil, a friend! Add to this the invention of an unexpressive substitute for gunpowder, and the world will be comparatively a safe place. Point of fact — we delight in all manner of old tilings made young again, particularly in all kinds of vene- rable and solemn humbug "showing green." If ever there was a monster, grown out of sight of its natural and original intention — a bloated, diseased, wen-cov- ered, abate-worthy nuisance of a monster, it is the newspaper. The first newspaper ever published in France was issHed by a physician to amuse his pa- tients. "To this complexion" would we reduce it once more. Fill them with trifles, or with important news (the same thing as to amusement), and throw a wet blanket, and keep it wet, over congressional twad die, polemical fubbery, tiresome essays, political cob- webberies— yes, especially politics ! People some- times cease to talk when there are no listeners, and ir might be hoped, with God's blessing and help ("Ave Maria! ora pro nobis!") that, congress members would cease to put us to shame as well as to bore us to ex- tinction, if there were no newspapers to fan their indignant eloquence. It is a query worth sticking a pin in — how many nuisances would die (beside con- gress) if newspapers were restored to their original use and purpose ? Any symptom of this regenera- tion inexpressibly refreshes us. Hence our delight at the advertisement of David Brown. Who would not rather know that a man had run against David Brown at the corner of Lispenard street, with a dinner-kettle in his hand (and had better not do it again), than to read the next any ten speeches to be delivered on the rowdy floor of congress ! We have said enough to give you a thinking-bulb, dear reader, and now to our next — but Apropos — we wish our friend Russell Jarvis, or any analytically-minded and strong writer half as good, would prepare us a speculative essay on the query which is the natural inference of the late Washing- ton doings, viz. : how curious must be the process of mind by which a gentleman (there are one or two in congress) could be brought to consent to stay there — hail from there — frank from there — have his letters addressed there — in any way or shape take upon himself a member's share of this lustrum's ob- loquy and abomination ? Not but what we think it wholesome — we do ! You can not cure festers with- out bringing them to a head. The wonder is, how gentlemen are willing to be parts of a congress that is only the nation's pustule — the offensive head and vent of all the purulent secretions of the body politic ! Thank God, they are coming to a head — to this head, if need be (it is rather conspicuous, it is true — like a pimple on a lady's nose, which might be better situ- ated) — to have the worst issue of our national shame on the floor of Congress ; but better so than pent up — better so than an inward mortification precursory of dissolution ! For our own part (though we are no politician, except when stung upon our fifteen mil- lionth of national feeling), we think we could do very well without a congress. We believe the supreme court capable of doing all the legislative grinding ne- cessary for the country, or, if that would not do, we think a congress convened only for the first three months of every administration, in which speaking was prohibited, would answer all wise ends. We are over-governed. The reign of grave outrages and solemn atrocities is at its height, and Heaven overturn it, and send us, next after, a dynasty of laws " left to settle," and trifles paramount. Amen. We are not of the envious and discontented nature of a muttou candle, blackest at the wick — that is to say, we do not think every spot brighter than the one we live in. We'seek means to glorify New York — since we live here. Pat to our bosom and business, therefore, comes a letter " from a gentleman to his sister," apotheosistic (we will have our long word if we like) of this same pleasant municipality. Our friend and anonymous correspondent does not go quite enough into detail, and we cut oft" his long peroration, in which he compares himself very felicitously to "a bottle of soda-water, struggling for vent."— " Now then," he continues, "to uncork (off hat) and let my exuberant contents be made manifest : — " Once more in New York— dear, delightful New York ! the spot of all spots and the place of all places ! the whereabout which the poet dreamed of when he 690 EPHEMERA. spoke of • the first flower of the earth and first gem of the sea ;' and once more here, too, not to look upon it for a moment, and then depart, but to stay, lo live, to be, to exist, and to enjoy. You do not know the love I bear New York ; it is, beyond all others, the place where existence is ; where time passes, not like a summer's dream, but as time should pass, in a suc- cession (constant) of employments and enjoyments. " I love the city, as I love everything loveable, with a full and abiding joyousness. There is nothing pas- sing, or in still life, but goes to make up the sum. The very odor of the atmosphere, which might shock your delicate, country-bred olfactories, is more to me than all the fragrance of all the green fields that were ever babbled of. "The country is all very well, in its way. I love that also — at a distance, or in moderate quantities. Homeopathetically, as it were — as, for instance, the Battery. I love to walk there, to inhale the sea- breeze, and enjoy the sweet smell of the growing grass and the budding trees; and to look over to Long Island or New Jersey, and see the country blooming (afar off) under the loving smiles of spring. Yes, the country is, no doubt, very desirable — for a few days in the summer — for a change, or to come back from with a new relish for the real life that awaits one on his return. "I love to stand on the docks, of a still evening:, and hear the tide rush past. The very rime of the sea drifts in music to my ear. The rushing of the free and ever-changing waters, the glad dancing of its waves, the glowing reflex of the stars in their bosom, the rifting foam, and the swift gushing sound, like a continuous echo, stir up the dormant poetry of one's soul, and send him, with a glowing heart, back to his lonely home, happier for the sweet communion. "All the time, too, is thought-filled; there is no standing still here. Business is part of life, perhaps life itself, and it is constantly going on around and with us. If I choose a walk, Broadway is full of life — never-ending, never-tiring. So all over the city. One can not stroll anywhere but he meets with some- thing new, something strange, something interesting; some chapter opens, which has till then been to him as a dead letter. " Somebody, who wanted to express in strong lan- guage that nature might be improved by art, has said that « God made the country, man made the town.' How true it is! And, beyond that, here are congre- gated hundreds of thousands of ' featherless bipeds' (men and women), of whom, perhaps, you know not a dozen, but every one of whom, in your walks, is to you a study. " Then, again, the very situation — the form, struc- ture, and appliances — of New York, are delightful and fascinating beyond compare. Such a beautiful promontory, swelling up from two magnificent rivers, rising from either, gently, to the palace-lined thor- oughfare on its crown ; and crossbarred with a thou- sand avenues to both rivers — inlets for pure air, ever fresh rising from the sea, blowing over and into every habitation, and freighted with health, like the gales of Araby the blest. • "Nature has been wonderfully prodigal of her be- stowments on this spot, and the hand of man has not been niggardly in completing what the fair dame com- menced, by putting a worthy superstructure on her noble foundation. I have often thought of the remark made by some one, that the man who first stood on Manhattan island, and looked around him with an eye and a mind that could comprehend and appreciate its wonderful beauties and advantages, must have ' h£ld his very breath' in wonder and admiration. "And then more of its present beauties to the dwellers therein. Should one, in hot and dusty weather, choose to change the scene, how joyous a trip to Sandy Hook ! Often have I stood on the heights, and looked off on old Ocean, holding in my gaze one of the most glowing scenes that this world shows. The wide and boundless view — the noble Hudson and the city above, the green beauties of Long island before, and the heaven ocean below, spread out in its grand sublimity; the sails of all nations flashing on its breast and blending in its glory, ; like a mirror where the Almighty's form Glasses itself'.' "Oh who, with such a prospect before him, feels not his soul elevated and his thoughts sublimated! Thoughts, indeed, too wild for utterance, are born, not for others, but to sink deep in the heart and leave him a wiser if not a better man. "This, you will say is the country — ah, but it is the country of New York, close by, and part of city life | itself. Then there is another country (yours is only i one) over the other shoulder, where the moderate sum of sixpence will waft us to the delightful walks, | the green lawns, the shady groves, and cool zephyrs j of dear, charming Hoboken. Doubly dear to a New- Yorker. Fresh smelling and fragrant in the spring, cool and breezy in the hot days of summer ; and, with the rustling leaf of autumn, dear in its remembered beauties, its fading foliage, and the ever-sounding sur- ges that beat with melancholy moan at the foot of its beetling crags and sloping lawns. Ah, lovely Hobo- ken, ' None know thee but to love thee, Nor name thee but to praise !' " Mr. Stevens, we owe you much ; and we can af- ford to owe ; but we pay you a large annual interest in gratitude and praise. ''Tis all we have, we can no more.' " We also cut off the irrelevant tail of our friend's letter (tipped with a " G."), and beg another from him with a finer nib to his pen — going more into the individ- ualities. If you would like a subject suggested (exem- pli gratia) give us the hopes, trials, temptations, and aspirations of a Broadway shop-tender. They seem fine youths, those silk-and-suavity venders. "Who knows what is their pay and prospects ? How can they afford such good manners and fine waistcoats ? What is the degree of friendly acquaintance bred be- tween them and the ladies in the course of a bargain ? Have they legs (below the counter) ? — Do they mar- ry ? — Have they combinations, and esprit de corps ? — Which are the honorablest goods to sell? — As to the " beating down" of grass-cloth and stockings — is it interesting, or more so than the cheapening of calico? When do they eat ? Do handsomer ones get higher wages? May their "cousins" come to see them? How do they look with hats on ? What is the dura- tion of their chrysalis — the time of metamorphosis from boy to." boss" — and what are their several sta- ges of mental discipline ? The most saleable book in the world would be the autobiography of a Broadway clerk — (dry goods, retail). Let this " verbum" be " sat" to a sapienti. We have undertaken to make ourselves acquainted with the island on which we live. We mean to give our readers, bit by bit, the results of our observations upon the customs, manners, geography, and morals of the island of New York, as noted down in our ram- bles. We do not take our walks in chapters, howev- er, and we shall, therefore, be equally miscellaneous and disorderly in our arrangement of topics. It is a curious island, and sortie of the inhabitants are curi- ous islanders. Those who only walk up the city's backbone (Broadway) know very little of its bow r els and extremities. Little by little, we hope to make EPHEMERA. 691 out its truthful anatomy— veins, pulses, functions, and arteries. , , . We should like to know, among other things, why the broadest, most accessible, most convenient street in New York, the noble avenue of Wkst Broadway, is entirely given up to negroes? The rage is to move up town — but there are people who are not rajahs, who are willing to pay high rents— people who don't care where the fashionable people go to (while they live), and who simply desire to reside in broad streets for air and light, and above all, to be near, if possible, to their business. Now the narrowest part of this be- streeted island is of course the most wholesome, as the air from the two rivers comes over fewer chimneys and gutters. The broader the street the better, both for health and show. The access to a street should be good, and West Broadway, in its whole length, is parallel to Broadway, and approachable by Chambers street, Murray, Warren, and all the best short ave- nues of the city. It has. besides, near by, the beau- tiful " lungs" of St. John's park, the hospital grounds, and College Green, and is crossed at its upper end by the broad ventilator of Canal street. Where, on the island, is there a street more calculated to be whole- some — dirty as it now is from the character of its oc- cupants ? It would require, it is true, an entire renova- tion, before any one person, desirous of good neigh- borhood, could live there — but that renovation (we prophesy it) will be done. Some speculator will buy lots in it, and call a meeting of proprietors to suggest a general turn-out and improvement, or some one of the Wall street Astor-hood will buy the street, from lamp-post to lamp-post, and fill it with fashionable dwelling-houses. The up-town tide will partly ebb, the natural advantages of the Battery and Lower Broadway will regain their ascendency, and the san- dalled foot of the island will again wear jewels on its instep. Pearl street (if Manhattan lie on his back) would be the main artery of his left leg, and Franklin square, which occupies a natural knoll, would be his knee- pan. This gives you some idea of its geography, though, probably, dear reader, if you are not in the dry-goods line, you have never visited it. It is a cu- rious place historically, and was once the aristocratic centre of the city. There are still two famous houses in it — one the old Walton mansion, and the other a building that was once the headquarters of Washing- ton. In the yard of the latter house is a pear-tree of Washington's planting. And, by the way, our com- panion (in a first visit which we made to Franklin square a day or two since) told us a story that may be new or old, touching an attempt made to poison Washington. A dish of some vegetables from a for- cing-bed was put upon the table for dinner, and the general, remarking that growths so much earlier than was natural were not wholesome, threw them out of the window. Some pigs in the yard were poisoned by eating them. Colonel Stone can tell us if the story be true — always presuming it is not in some veritable history of New York.* The Walton house is still a noble-looking mansion, with its English mould- ings in good preservation, and is now occupied as a lodging-house. The headquarters of Washington are tenanted by a pianoforte builder, and all around looks trafficky and dull. One of the favorite spring amusements of the peo- ple of New York — (of course of the silly people, of whom there are at least several) — is to attend the auc- tion sales at private houses. We heard of one silly • A recollection has come back to us very reluctantly (on its way to bed with Lethe), that of having seen this anecdote in Dunlap's History. but honest woman (they are often honest) who, on be- ing rallied a day or two since at having so passed the last fortnight, said, " La! it's so amusing to see how people live !" And, truly enough, you may find out by this process how every class "furnishes," which is a considerable feature in living, and it is wonderful with how little ceremony and reluctance the house- hold gods are stripped to the skin and exposed to the gaze of a public invited in by the red flag of an auc- tion ! It is possibly a very natural feature of a new country to have no respect for furniture ; but to our notion it comes close after " honor thy father and mother" to honor the chairs and tables at which they have eaten and prayed, counselled and blessed. And even this were easier got over — the selling of the mere mahogony and damask— if the articles were removed to a shop and disassociated from the places where they had become hallowed. But to throw open sacred boudoirs, more sacred bedrooms, breakfast- rooms, bath-rooms, in which (as has been the case once or twice lately) lovely and cherished women have lived, and loved, and been petted, and secluded, and caressed — to let in vulgar and prying curiosity to sit on the damask seats and lounge on the silken so- fas, and breathe the air impregnated with perfume that could betray the holiest secrets if it had a tongue — and then to stand by while an auctioneer charters, and describes, and tempts the vulgar appetite to buy ! Why, it seems to us scarce less flagrant and atrocious than the ride of Lady Godiva— desecrating to those who sell out, and a profanity and license in those who go to see ! It is a famous time, now, to buy cheap second-hand furniture, by the way — for the fashion of French fur- niture has come in lately, with a rush, and the nabobs are selling out from sideboard to broom, and furnish- ing anew a la Francaise, from skylight to basement. By a year from this time there will be more houses in New York above a certain cost and up to a marquis's taste and wants, than either in Paris or London. (And this estimate is not extravagant, for only " the few" abroad spend money as"//je many" do here.) There is a drygoods retailer in Broadway, -who has a house furnished as sumptuously, and in as good taste, as the most extravagant nobleman's house in London. The thing is done very simply. The dimensions of the house, and an accurate description of the way it is | lighted and arranged, are sent out to the first uphol- sterers of Paris — men who are artists in their way, and who have furnished for royalty and rank all over Europe. Carte hlanche as to expense, and out comes your " interior," complete, lustrous, and as good as his majesty's— wanting only (really only) the society suitable to enjoy it — which is like (something like) a very fine play without a symptom of an audience. So marked is this change of taste, and the new school of furnishing, that the oldest and most wealthy of the cabinet warehouse-men in this city has com- pletely abandoned the making of English furniture. He has sold out an immense stock of high-priced arti- cles at auction, and sent to France for models and workmen to start new with the popular taste. It is a great chance, by the way, to establish the European fashion of hotels garnis for strangers— giving them the temporary hire of houses ready furnished, by the week or month— their meals sent to them from a res- taurateur. Such investments bring large profits ; and the convenience of the custom, to families goming from the south or west, and wishing for greater priva- cy and more room than they can get at a hotel, is very great. So may good come out of an extravagant loily. The Antique Cabinet.— Whether it is a perverse pleasure in seeing costly things out of place, or an aversion we have to new things (except new thoughts, 692 EPHEMERA. new toothpicks, and new ladies' gear), or the natural love for miscellany common to all mankind — whether it is for one of these reasons, or for a lit tie of each — we are in the habit of bestowing the loose ends of our idleness upon the warehouses of second-hand furniture. Nothing grows upon a man like a habit of choice between such entertainment and any society merely tolerable — the preference given, of course, to the shabby but more suggestive damask and mahogany. Ah, the variety of things people sell to get money ! What curious places shops are, where they will buy anything that is "sacrificed!" How entertaining to mousle about among old portraits, broken ornaments, miniatures soiled by wearing in the bosom, unstrung harps, battered statuary, and furniture that has kept proud company! How curious-minded must become at last these dealers in nothing with a gloss on! How exactly they must know the duration and value of fashionable newness ! How well they must under- stand the pitiless transit from ornament to lumber — how well the sudden chill of the money-test to arti- cles valued, till then, only by affection ! But we can not afford a digression here. Resting our umbrella on the steps to a high bed the other day, and our chin on our umbrella (a posture taken for the leisurely perusal of a crowded corner of an old furniture shop), we began to pick out from the mass, an outline of an old cabinet secretary. Now we have been that degree of vagabond, that we have to confess having fairly topped our meridian with- out the knowledge of more luxury in writing-tools than any table, any pen, and any conceivable vagary of ink- holder. It is true, that while travelling we got ac- customed to fastening the other end of our thought- string to an old black trunk — a companion to our hithering and thithering for seven long years — and, by dint of habit in many a far country, we could ill write, at last, where that old portmanteau was not ready to receive our eyes as they came off the paper. But, in reforming our baggage for matrimony, the old trunk was degraded to a packing-box, and at present it peacefully reposes, smelling of quinces, and holding the modest Sunday-clothes of our farmer's dame at Glenmary. Save and since this, our travelled and " picked pen of countries" has been without appanage or equipage, wearing all its honors upon its bare plume of service, and, like a brave and uncomplaining soldier, scorning to claim the dignities which should have been plucked down by its deservings. Well — well ! " the whirligig of time !" " Pen !" we mentally ejaculated, as we made out the odd corners and queer angles of the antique cabinet — " thy proper honors are in flower! Thou shalt do thy work in luxury after this! What pigeon-holes can do to make thee comfortable — what drawers, what slits, what niches and nooks — is as good as done! Rise to-morrow rich and glorious!" We had the advantage to be favorably known to the furniture-dealer. He was a man who rejoiced in our promotions. We bought the old secretary without chaffer, " at the lowest figure," and requested that it might be dug out from its unsold neighbors, and sent home, not too vigorously dusted. Here it is. We are writing upon its broad let-down leaf, and our pen struts like a knight wearing for the first hour his well- earned spurs. It is an old chamberer — the secretary — brown-black mahogany, inlaid with sandal-wood and has held money, and seen frowns and smiles. In its experience (for which we would give a trifle) we ourself are but a circumstance. The hand that first wrote at it is cold ; and, for the hands that are to write at it hereafter, nature may not yet have sorted out the nails. Our own hand will give over its cun- ning and turn to ashes, meantime. One man's life and using are but of the duration of a coat of varnish, to this old cabinet's apprehension. Ah " we !" "By the pricking of our thumbs," the brigadier is mounting the stairs. Since the possession of our first operative luxury, we have taken a disgust to the cloister— conceiting that the smell of soap, from the lavendering in the back yard, gave a stain to such flowers of imagination as were born there. The brig- adier says we grow superfine. Soit! It is time — after " taking it as it comes" for so many years. Be- sides, we must have something to set off against his epaulettes ! Glory in your staff, dear brigadier, but leave us our cabinet ! Brigadier — (entering out of breath). — Paff ! paff! How the breath of life flutters with this vicinity to heaven! Paff! paff! — prophetic nature! How are you, my dear upster? Committee. — You see the ink wet in my pen — I was just about to dash into a critique. That straw-colored volume of poems, by Mrs. Lewis, shows feather? from Pegasus; though, as usual with lady-poems, without any parings from the hoof — any trace of that part of the old steed that touches earth. It takes wrongs and sufferings — like those of Mrs Norton, L. E. L., and Mrs. Hemans — to compound a poetess of any reality and strength. Soil, that, if torn up with a ploughshare, may yield the heavy grain of anguish, will yield nothing but daisies and white clover, lying undisturbed in the sunshine. Yet this same white clover is very sweet grazing, and Mrs. Lewis's is a very sweet book. May she never write a better one — by having suffered enough to "qualify!" Brigadier. — Amen ! I say, my boy, what a clever thing Inman is making of his magazine ! The May number is beautiful. What a good pick he has among the magazine-writers ! Committee. — Excellent — but he uses himself up with making his correspondents work, and sets too little value on his own writings. He wants a sub. for drudgery. He could, with his strong fabric of good sense (which is genius), and his excellent critical pow- ers, make all the rest of the " Columbian" subser- vient to his own articles. Brigadier. — Tell him so. Committee. — Will he stand it — as your firm ally ? Brigadier. — Bless your soul, he has told you many a plainer thing in print. Committee. — Has he ? Here goes, then : — " For Jove's right hand, with thunder cast from sky, Takes open vengeance oft for secret ill." But now we think of it, you are bound to be particu- larly good-natured, my dear brigadier. With what enthusiasm they received your song the other night at the Tabernacle — " The Pastor's Daughter !" That, and " Boatman haste," and " Cheerly o'er the mountains," are three songs, that, skilfully built, as they are, upon three of our most exquisite national melodies, and intrinsically beautiful in words and mu- sic, will be classics. A twill has published them charm- ingly, too. What lots of money you ought to make out of these universalities ! Brigadier. — My dear boy, stop praising me at a ju- dicious place — for praise, like " heat, hath three de- grees : first, it indurateth or maketh strong; next, it maketh fragile ; and lastly, it doth encinerate or calcinate, or crumble to pieces." Committee. — Subtle tactician ! How you have cor- rupted my rural simplicity! Mff — mff — mff! I think I sniff mint ! The wind sets this way from Windust's. How it exhausts the juices to talk pleas- antly with a friend ; and, by-the-way, soft crabs are in the market. What say to a dish of water-cresses, and such other things as may suggest themselves — we two — over the way ! We are in too good humor to dine in public to-day. We should seem to lack modesty, with this look of exultation on our faces. Brigadier. — To dinner, with all my heart — for the EPHEMERA. 693 Mirror lias an appetite — the philosopher's tranquil appetite — idem contemptui el admirationi habitus. Committee. — I go to shave off this working face, my dear general ! Please amuse yourself with my warm pen. Our correspondents, " Y." and " E. K." — two " treasures trove," if such periodical ever had — should be gracefully and gratefully thanked. Do it while f am gone, with your usual suaviter. [Brigadier writes.] I gave in to a friend's proposition to " poke about," lately, one afternoon, and, by dint of turning every corner that we had never turned before, we zigzagged ourselves into a somewhat better acquaintance with the Valley of Poverty lying between Broadway and the Bowery. On our descent we stopped at the Tombs, making, however (as many do), rather an unsatisfacto- I ry visit. We lacked an Old Mortality to decipher the j names and quality of the tenants. It is a gloomy ac- j cess to Justice, up the dark flight of steps frowned over by these Egyptian pillars ; and the resolute-looking constables, and the anxious-looking witnesses and prisoners' friends who lean and group at the bases of the columns, or pace up and down the stony pave- ment, show, with gloomy certainty, that this is not the dwelling of " I^ope, with eyes so fair." We turned out of the dark portico into the police court — a dingy apartment with the dust on the floor — not like other unswept apartments, but ground into circles of fine powder by hurried and twisting footprints. No culprit was before the court, and the judge's terrors were laid on the desk with his spectacles. We looked about in vain for anything note-worthy. Even the dignity of " the presence" was unrecognised by us, for (not be- ing in the habit of uncovering where there is neither carpet, lady, nor sign of holy cross) we were obliged to be notified by the " hats off, gentlemen," of the one other person in the room — apparently a constable on duty. A side door led us downward to the watch-house, which occupies the basement of the Egyptian struc- ture. It is on a level with the street, and hither are brought newly-caught culprits, disturbers of the peace, and, indeed (so easy is disgrace), anybody accused by anybody ! It is not an uncommon shape of malice (so the officer told us in answer to my query) for the aggressor in a quarrel to give the sufferer in charge to the watchman and have him locked up ! The prisoner is discharged, of course, the next morning, the complainant not appearing, to prosecute ; but passing a night in a cell, even on false accusation, is an infliction which might fall with some weight on an honest man, and the power to inflict it should not be quite so accessible — " thinks I to myself." (I made a mental promise to get better information on the sub- ject of arrests, and generally on the subject of the draw- ing of the first line between " ourselves" and the guilty. With Miss Lucy Long's privilege, I shall duly produce what I can gather.) On application at the door of the prisons, we were informed nonchalantly (and figuratively, I presume) that it was "all open," and so indeed it seemed, for there was no unlocking, though probably the hinges would have somehow proved reluctant had a prisoner tried the swing of them. We walked in to the prison- yard unattended, and came first to the kitchens. A very handsome woman, indeed, was singing and washing at a tub, and up and down, on either side of the large boilers, promenaded a half-dozen men in couples — sailors and loafers, " in for a month," as we were after- ward informed. They looked as happy as such men do elsewhere, I thought, and wearing no prison-dress, they seemed very little like prisoners. It is consider- ed quite a privilege, by the way, to be employed in the kitchen. The inner prison-door looked more like one's idea of a " Tolbooth," and by it we gained the interior of the Tombs. Gadsby's Hotel at Washington is a very correct model of it, on a somewhat large scale. The cells all open upon a quadrangle, and around each of the four stories runs a light gallery. In the place of Gadsby's fountain is a stove and the turnkey's desk, and, just as we entered, one of the prisoners was cook- ing his mess at the fire with quite an air of comfort and satisfaction. It chanced to be the time of day when the cell-doors are thrown open, and the tenants were mostly outside, hanging over the railings, smo- king, chatting with each other and the keepers, and apparently not at all disturbed at being looked at. Saunders, the absconding clerk, whose forgery made so much noise not long ago, was pointed out to us, and a more innocent-looking fair-haired mother's boy you could scarce pick out of a freshman class. He has grown fat in the Tombs. His accomplice, Raget, the Frenchman, is not much older, but he looked rather more capable of a clever bad trick, and French- man-like, he preserved, even in prison, the dandy air, and wore his velvet dressing-cap with as jaunty an air of assurance as if just risen to an honest man's break- fast. He is handsome, and his wife still voluntarily shares his cell. A very worthy-looking old gentle- man leaned at his cell-door, a celebrated passer of counterfeit money; and a most sanctimonious and theological-student-looking young man was pacing one of the galleries, and he had been rather a success- ful swindler. Truly " looks is nuffin," as Sam. Weller was shrewd enough to discover. We looked into one or two of the cells. To a man who has ever suited his wants to the size of a ship's state-room, they are very comfortable lodgings, and probably a sailor would think quarters in the Tombs altogether luxurious. Punishment of this kind must be very unequal, until it is meted out by what a man has been used to. (Till then, at least, it is better not to steal !) Two or three of the cells were carpeted and decked with pictures, and the walls of one I look- ed into were covered with drawings. Friends are permitted, of course, to bring to prisoners any luxuries except liberty ; and on the small shelf of another cell we saw a pyramid of giugerbread — the occupant, prob- ably, still a youth. We passed over to the female prison. The cell- doors were all open as in the other wards. But here were strong symptoms that, however "it is not good for man to be alone," it is much more unpalatable to woman. A poor girl who had just been brought in, and was about to be locked up, was pleading piteously with the keeper not to be shut up alone. Seven others who had just been sentenced and were " waiting for their carriage" to go to Sing-Sing, sat around the stove in the passage, and a villanous-looking set they were. It is a pity women ever sin. They look so much worse than we — (probably from falling so much farther) — and degradation in dress is so markedly un- becoming ! Most of the female cells were double- bedded, 1 observed; and in one, whicli was very nice- ly furnished, stood a tall and well-dressed, but ill- favored woman, who gave back our look of curiosity with a ferocious scowl. It struck me as curious, that, out of nineteen or twenty women whom we saw in the Tombs, two thirds had scratched faces! One of the police-officers joined us in the latter part of our rounds, but too late for the thorough inquiries I wished to make; and promising myself another visit to the Tombs, accompanied by some one in authority, I made my envied and unobstructed exit. It was a sunny spring afternoon, the kind of weather in which, before all other blessings, to thank God for 694 EPHEMERA. liberty. With a simultaneous expression of this feeling as we cleared the prison steps, my friend and I crossed the rail-track which forms the limit of the New York Alsatia, and were presently in the heart of the Five Points — very much in the same " circle" of society as we had just left, the difference probably consisting in scarce more than cleanly restraint with- out want, and dirty liberty with it. Luckily for the wretched, the open air is very nearly as pleasant for half the year as the inside of a millionaire's palace, and the sunshine is kept bright and the sky clear, and the wind kept in motion — alike for the pauper setting on his wooden door-step and the rich man on the silk ottoman in his window. Possibly, too, there is not much difference in the linings of their content, and if so, the nominal value of the distinctions between rich and poor should be somewhat modified. At the Five Points, to all appearance, nobody goes in doors except to eat and sleep. The streets swarm with men, wo- men, and children, sitting down. The negro-girls with their bandanna turbans, the vicious with their gay- colored allures, the sailors tired of pleasures ashore, the various " minions of the moon" drowsing the day away — they are all out in the sun, idling, jesting, quarrelling, everything but weeping, or sighing, or complaining. The street is dirty, but no offence to their nostrils ! The police officers are at the watch- house door, always on the alert, but (probably from possessing little imagination) the culprits of to-morrow have no apprehension till apprehended. A viler place than the Five Points by daylight you could not find, yet to the superficial eye, it is the merriest quarter of New York. I am inclined to think Care is a gentle- man, and frequents good society chiefly. There is no print of his crow's-foot about the eyes of these out- casts. Who knows how much happiness there is in nothing to dread — the downfall well over ? We strolled slowly around the triangular area which is the lungs of the Five Points, and, spoken to by some one in every group we passed, escaped without anything like a rudeness offered to us. The lower story of every second house is a bar-room, and every bench in them had a sleeper upon it. There are some houses in this quarter that have been pretentious in their day, large brick buildings with expensive cor- nice and mouldings — one particularly at the corner of the famous " Murdering Alley," which would bring a six-hundred-dollar rent, "borne like Loretto's chapel through the air" to a more reputable neighbor- hood. We wound our way into the German quarter, which occupies the acclivity between the Five Points and the Bowery; but as I wish to connect, with a descrip- tion of this, some notices of the habits and resorts of foreigners generally in New York, I shall drop the reader at the corner. It is right and wholesome that anew country should be the paradise of the working-classes, and that ours is so may be seen very readily. A wealthy merchant, whose family is about leaving the city, sold out his household furniture last week, and among other very expensive articles, a magnificent piano. It was bid off at a very fair price, and the purchaser turned out to be the carman usually employed at the merchant's warehouse! He bought it for his daughters. The profits of this industrious man's horse and cart were stated by this gentleman to approach three thousand dollars a year ! A drygoods palace is now going up in Broadway, which will probably exceed in splendor even the cele- brated shops which are the prominent features of London and Paris. " Stuart" is the projecter, and when it is completed, he will leave the low-browed and dingy long-room in which he has amassed a fortune, and start fresh in this magnificent " bezes- tein." Extending back to a great depth, the new structure is to open by a right angle on another street, giving the facility of two entrances. "Shop- ping" is to be invested with architectural glories — as if its Circean cup was not already sufficiently seductive ! Even this chrysalis-burst of Stuart's, however, is a j less forcible exponent of the warrant for the importa- tion of luxuries, than the brilliant curiosity shop of Tiffany and Young. No need to go to Paris now for any indulgence of taste, any vagary of fancy. It is as well worth an artist's while as a purchaser's, however, to make the round of this museum of luxu- ries. The models of most of these fancy articles have been the perfected work approached with slow degrees, even by genius. Those faultless vases, in which not a hair line is astray from just proportion, are not the chance work of a potter ! Those intricate bronzes were high achievements., of art ! Those mignon gems of statuary are copies of the most inspired dreams and revelations of human beauty ! The arts are all there — their best triumphs mocked in luxurious trifles. Poetry is there, in the quaint and lovely conception of keepsakes and ornaments. Even refinements upon rural simplicity are there, in the simple and elegant basket furniture of Germany. The mechanic arts are still more tributary in the exquisite enamel of port- folios, the contrivance of marvellous trinkets, the fine carving and high finish of the smithery of precious metals. And then, nowhere such trim shape and dainty color in gloves — nowhere such choice dandy appointments in the way of chains and canes — nowhere such mollifiers of the hearts of sweethearts in the way of presents of innumerable qualities, kinds, values, and devices. I think that shop at the corner of Broadway and Warren is the most curious and visit-worthy spot in New York — money in your pocket or no money. And — (left out of ourenumeration) — these enterprising luxurifers have lately opened a second story, where they show such chairs and work-tables as are last in- vented — things in their way gorgeous and unsurpassa- ble. If the gods have any design of making me rich, I wish it might be done before Tiffany and Young get too old to be my caterers. The theatrical astronomers have been mucli inter- ested in the birth of a new star — lovely Mrs. Hunt of the Park — who has suddenly found her sphere and commenced shining brilliantly in a range of characters seemingly written for the express purpose of develop- ing her talent. Her arch, half-saucy, and yet natural and earnest personation of Fortunio has "taken the town." She had made the success also of a very in- different piece — a poor transfer of the celebrated Gamin de Paris — in which she played the character of a young rascal with a very good heart. The in- creasing applause with which Mrs. Hunt is nightly greeted, after having had her light so long " hidden under the bushel" of a stock actress, must be a high gratification to " Strong-back," her husband. Indeed, his undisguised enjoyment of her clever acting (as he plays with her in Fortunio), is as " good as a play" and much more edifying. Success to her, pray I! The Cabinet. — With difficult and analytical de liberation, we have, at last, duly distributed, to the slits, pigeon-holes, drawers, and cavities of our an- EPHEMERA. 695 tique cabinet, their several and appropriate offices and functions. It was a discipline of our talent at strategy, was this job of office-giving— for, to confess a weak- ness, we have become superstitious touching this ven- erable piece of furniture. It seems to us haunted ! We have harbored it, now, some three weeks, and have attempted with it, in that time, certain liberties of arrangement which have been mysteriously cross- purposed. Nothing about it would stay arranged. We put our approved contributions into one pigeon- hole, and our doubtfuls into another, our to-he- noticed into the upright slits, and our damned into the hori- zontal. We had a topic-drawer, and a drawenafor memoranda — an oblivion-hole and a cave of ridicule. We committed the proper documents to each, and thanking Heaven for a tried secretary, commenced our tranquil reign. A week had not glided by, before all was in confusion. Every hole seemed to have kicked out its tenant. The " approved" had scrambled in with the "doubtfuls," and the "damned" into the " noticed-hole," and " things to be written about," " things to be laughed at," and " things to be forgot- ten," had changed places with marvellous and deci- sive celerity! We tried to restore order, but the con- fusion increased. Nothing would stay put. It was manifestly a Tyler cabinet — the doomed victim of dis- arrangement. How order has been restored — by what spirit-fin- gers our labels have been changed — what intimations as to the occupancy of each particular pigeon-hole we have been compelled to regard — is more than a cabinet secret. We have had (to make a confession) enough of telling ghost-stories. We have been called on by all manner of men and women for our facts as to the only glimpse into the spirit-world which we ever described. It has cost us any quantity of brass (in the wear of our knocker) to satisfy curiosity on that subject. Enough that our pigeon-holes are la- belled with supernatural certainty. Our contributors, now, will go to their appointed niche by a selective destiny of which the responsibility is not ours. The rejecteds will be kind enough to note this, and curse the cabinet — not us! If their manuscripts lodge in the upright slits of the " damned," it is because the " accepted" would not hold, keep, or harbor them. We wash our hands. Our first three pulls from the topic-drawers are let- ters of complaint against postmasters for the postage on the Mirror. According to the interpretation of the law by some village postmasters, the government may charge more for carrying the light weight of the Mir- ror than we for editing, printing, embellishing, and wrapping it! The dunce in the Charlestown post- office has compelled our subscribers to have their pa- pers sent to Boston, the nearest office presided over by a gentleman. Another pig's head has control of the Dedham office, and by-the-way, we clipped from a Dedham paper, the following results of his readings of the postage law : — Tweedledum.— The postage at the Dedham office for the New World newspaper of 32 pages, is " one and 4-8ths of a cent." Tweedledee. — The postage for the New Mirror newspaper of 16 pages, smaller in size, with a plate, is "3 and 12-16ths, or twenty -four thirty-twoths of a cent .'" Tweedledum second.— The postage of a New Mir- ror extra, of 32 pages of smaller size, is five cents ! There are one or two offices in the interior of this state where the postage on a single copy of the Mir- ror has been charged fifteen cents — of course leaving it unredeemed in the office for the postmaster's use — as he expected ! Now, pray (we ask of our friend the town-pump), what is the use of the much-vaunted blessing of • cheap literature," if the government, or its petty officials, are to stand between the publishers and the people, making it dear by charging as much as its whole value for carrying it ! Ought the government to favor the circulation of intelligence or not? Is it proper to put the 7>wst oppressive, or the least oppres- sive construction, on all cases which affect the spread of art and literature ? // is a fact, that revenue suffi- cient has been received at the port of New York in the last two months to pay the whole expenses of the government of the United States for one year. (So we were authentically informed yesterday.) But, if government must have more revenue, should not liter- ature (we scarce have patience to ask it) be the last thing taxed ? Should not luxuries, vanities, goods and chattels, be levied upon, to the crack of endurance, for the support of authority, before one ray of light is stopped on its way to the public mind — stopped to be converted into a perquisite for the pocket of a petty despot ? Of the postmasters in the larger cities there is no complaint. They are generally enlightened men. Mr. Graham here— Mr. Green in Boston- throw no obstacles in the way of literature. On the contrary, they do all in their power to promote and to facilitate it. It is the petty, ignorant, peppercorn post- master of a small village, who, clothed with a little brief authority, and knowing that his oppressions leaves the disputed article in his hands, reads the law perversely, and at last shuts his whole neighborhood against everything but newspapers ! It is rather a reproach to a country whose boast and whose reliance for the perpetuity of its free institu- tions is the superior intelligence of its population, that monarchical countries (England and France) should J be before us in the reduction of taxes on the convey- ance of intelligence. It has struck us as extraordi- I nary, too, that in the revising of postage laws, the in- crease of facilities for carrying the mails should not have suggested a reduction of postage! But at any ra te — leaving the laws as oppressive as they are— we call upon on enlightened statesman like Mr. Wick- liffe to insist upon the most lenient and most favorable interpretation of them — instead of having his admin- istration of the department distinguished, as it has been and is, for more postoffice oppressions than were ever known before. The postage on the Mirror, lor one instance — never before charged higher than the newspapers which it scarce equals in weight— now varies (in some of the country postoffices) from five to fifteen cents— -a gross " sliding-scale" of oppression which must put a stop to our enterprise, if persevered in, or cause us to give up cover and embellishment, and circulate only the newspaper sheet, suited to the petty letter of the law ! The great majority of post- masters, however, we are happy to add, charge mere newspaper postage for the Mirror, " as the law" (prop- erly understood) " directs." Our favorite adversary of the American finds pala- table fault with us for not appending Leigh Hunt's name to such good things as we have copied from him. Why should we ? We do not claim them as origi- nal, nor are they leaded, as original contributions are wont to be. The original object of giving the author s name is lost (we conceive) at the distance ot this country from England. Leigh Hunt collects and publishes in volumes all he writes, and his good things are well labelled and guarded in his own country. Neither his fame, his profit, nor his consequence (the three ends he aims at), could be affected by adding his name to what we occasionally take from him. Be- 8ides-<a>-taMcally considered-the English steal our articles by the down, and no only leave out our name but appropriate them, by other initials, as their own They have at this moment a cheap edition of our poems in the press without our leave or license and we have helped swell most of the collections of English poetry, with no clue left for posterity to dis- 696 EPHEMERA. cover that the author had also the honor of the '' American's" frequent notice. Besides again, there is a precedent in nature. The rice-birds of the south are the bobolinks of the north — losing their name and copyright altogether by emigration. But now, having defended our castle, we would fain express our pleas- ure at the tone and quality of the "American's" fault-findings, invariably done in good taste, and con- fined always within legitimate critical bounds. This, which in a Utopia, would be like praising water for running down hill, is great praise in an unmitigated republic. Fault found with our writings, without a smutch on ourself, is " a thing to thank God on" — as things go. In the same breath let us laud the Boston Atlas, who says of us, with something between a pickle and a sweetmeat, that " he has one fault — he caters for his readers as for himself, and novelty or eccentricity of expression sometimes usurps the place which should only be accorded to thoughts of real value." We kiss the rod. (Enter the Brigadier.) Brigadier. — My dear boy, what could have pos- sessed you to get up so early ? Ten o'clock, and the last page all written, and not a subject touched, I'll wager a julep, out of forty that were indispensable ! Have you said no word of the " Mirror Library ?" Cabinet. — Supererogatory, brigadier! Why add perfume to the violet ! Our selections for the Library are appreciated — they sell ! They advertise them- selves. They breathe sweetness. Brigadier. — Like the lady's breath, which made all men exclaim, " Hereof be scent-bags made!" Eh, my boy ? Cabinet. — The " Rubric of Love" — that bundle of all the delicious things ever written on the exciting sub- ject of love — what but its very name and purpose is wanting to make that universal ? Everybody, whose lease of love is not quite run out, must have a copy of it! Brigadier. — They must! they must ! It is a book, charming and cheap at any price. But — Cabinet.— I'll stave oft' your " but" with a passage from Milton's Comus, for I'll talk of work no more. Did you know that the julep was to Milton what gin was to Byron ? Listen! — « " And first behold this cordial julep here, With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed ! Not that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena, Is of such power to stir up joy as this, To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst !" Let us to this " Nepenthe" — for we thirst with Milton. It would probably flabbergast most barn-door fowl to be asked the meaning of eccalobeon, though, call it the hatching of eggs, and they would laugh at being acquainted with anything else. This big word has mystified the posts and corners for a fortnight, and yesterday my curiosity came to a head. I looked at the bottom of the placard to see where the Eccalobeon was to be exhibited, and soon found myself at a small boy, keeping door opposite Washington Hall. (The lad was so small and pale, by the way, that I thought it warrantable to inquire whether he was produced by eccalobeon. It appeared that he was not. He had a regular mother, who " knew he was out.") The chirruping of chickens saluted our ears as we opened the door, and we observed that a corner of the room was picketed off, where a dozen or two of these pseudo-orphans (who had lost their mother by not j having been suffered to have one), were pecking at ! gravel and evidently doing well. Very good manners, i for chickens, though, as the man in the menagerie i says, " where they got them 'mity knows." It began to look very much as if mothers were a superfluity. The centre of the room was occupied by the artifi- cial mother — a square brick structure, containing ovens in which lay the eggs in different stages of prog- ress. Pieces of carpet were suspended before the openings, and, on raising them and putting in the hand, the temperature within seemed to be at about blood-heat. The keeper took out an egg that was about to enter upon its new destiny of skewer and gravy. The chicken had been twenty days on the road from spoon-victual land, and its little beak was jusf. hardened sufficiently to prick a hole into the world in which it was to be eaten. It lay in a heap, rather confusedly packed, its thigh bone close at its beak (apparently ready to be used as a fulcrum in pry- ing the crack open), and its downy fealhers, wet and forlorn, just lifted by respiration. This premature removal of the shell, however, the man said, would be fatal. The destiny of that little well-contrived heart, as far as this world was concerned, was to furnish material fortius sigh and paragraph! In dishes upon the table were eggs, without shells, in all the different stages of formation. In some the veins were just reddening, and the vessels filling around the heart, and in one, just opened, the newly-formed heart, a red globule of the size of a pin's head, was playing backward and forward, like a shuttle in a miniature loom. With a glass, every phase of the process of chicken-making could be distinctly seen. The yolk, I was surprised to learn, does not contribute to the material of the body — the most valuable portion of its existence, as an egg, being, therefore, of no value to it in its after-life of chicken ! The provision is certainly a wise one by which winged creatures, that could not well fly if gravid like other animals, are provided with a removable womb in the shape of an egg, so that their parturition can be carried on outside the body, and their buoyancy of locomotion is not in- terfered with. The comparison between the incuba- tion of fowls and human gestation immediately suggests itself, and the superior convenience of the former to the shape-destroying, beauty-marring, and painful ma- ternity of our race, seems a blessing to be envied, at least by the beautiful. How long might women con- tinue ornamental, and to what age would their person- al loveliness be undiminished, if the care and suffering of maternity could be delegated to a brick oven ! I am inclined to think it is not peculiar to myself to have a sabbath taste for the water-side. There is an affinity, felt I think by man and boy, between the stillness of the day and the audible hush of boundaries to water. Premising that it was at first with the turn- ed-up nose of conscious travestie, I have to confess the finding of a sabbath ramble, to my mind, along the river-side in New York — the first mile toward Albany on the bank of the Hudson. Indeed, if quiet be the object, the nearer the water the less jostled the walk on Sunday. You would think, to cross the city anywhere from river to river, that there was a general hydrophobia — the entire population crowding to the high ridge of Broadway, and hardly a soul to be seen on either the East river or the Hudson. But, with a little thoughtful frequenting, those deserted river-sides become contemplative and pleasant rambling-places, and, if some whim of fashion do not make the bank of the Hudson like the Marina of Smyrna, a fashion- able resort, I have my Sunday afternoons provided for, during the pigritude of city durance. Yesterday (Sunday) it blew one of those unfolding west winds, chartered expressly to pull the kinks out of the belated leaves — a breeze it was delightful to set the face to — strong, genial, and inspiriting, and smell EPHEMERA. 697 ing (in New York) of the snubbed twigs of Hoboken. The Battery looked very delightful, with the grass laying its cheek to the ground, and the trees all astir and trinkling, but on Sunday this lovely resort is full of smokers of bad cigars — unpleasant gentlemen to take the wind of. I turned the corner with a look through the fence, and was in comparative solitude the next moment. The monarch of our deep water-streams, the gigantic " Massachusetts," lay at her wharf, washed by the waving hands of the waters taking leave of the Hudson. The river ends under the prow — or, as we might say with a poetic license, joins on, at this point, to Ston- ington — so easy is the transit from wharf to wharf in that magnificent conveyance. From this point up, extends a line of ships, rubbing against the pier the fearless noses that have nudged the poles and the tropics, and been breathed on by spice-islands and ice- bergs — an array of nobly-built merchantmen, that, with the association of their triumphant and richly- freighted comings and goings, grows «pon my eye with a certain majesty. It is a broad street here, of made land, and the sidewalks in front of the new stores are lumbered with pitch and molasses, flour and red ochre, bales, bags, and barrels, in unsightly confusion — but the wharf-side, with its long line of carved figure- heads, and bowsprits projecting over the street, is an unobstructed walk — on Sundays at least — and more suggestive than many a gallery of marble statues. The vessels that trade to the North sea harbor here, unloading their hemp and iron; andthesuperb French packet-ships, with their gilded prows ; and, leaning over the gangways and tafferails, the Swedish and Norwegian sailors jabber away their Sunday's idle time ; and the negro-cooks lie and look into the pud- dles, and altogether it is a stiangely-mixed picture — Power reposing and Fret and Business gone from the six-days' whip and chain. I sat down on a short hawser-post, and conjured the spirits of ships around me. They were as communicative as would naturally be expected in a tete-a-tete when quite at leisure. Things they had seen and got wind of in the Tndian seas, strange fishes that had tried the metal of their copper bottoms, porpoises they had run over asleep, wrecks and skeletons they had thrown a shadow across when under prosperous headway — these and particu- lars of the fortunes they had brought home, and the passengers coming to look through one more country to find happiness, and the terrors and dangers, heart- aches and dreams, that had come and gone with each bill of lading — the talkative old bowsprits told me all. I sat and watched the sun setting between two out- landish-looking vessels, and, at twilight, turned to go home, leaving the spars and lines drawn in clear trace- ry on a sky as rosy and fading as a poet's prospects at seventeen. Postoffice Abuses. — " It will none otherwise be," says Sir Thomas More, "but that some stumblinge blockes will always bee, by malicious folk, laid in good people's way." Upon this text we propose to preach a little sermon. We have given in to the rage of the day, which is the cheapening of brain-work, not very willingly at first, but heartily when our mind was made up to it. The author is depreciated, and that is, perhaps, not well — but the public is benefited, and that is, very certainly, good. Millions are touched by the length- ened wand of literature, who were beyond its reach till it was eked out by cheapness. The old Mirror, at five dollars per annum, occasion- ally embellished by a plate, was considered, by the successive postmasters-general for twenty years, as a popular good, which it was well worth their while to favor and foster. It throve accordingly. Had Mr. Wickliffe been postmaster-general when it was started, it would not have lived a year ! With or without its plate, with or without its cover, it went rigorously to all parts of the country, at newspaper postage. No village postmaster would have ventured to charge more upon it; and if one had been pragmatical enough to twist the law into a new reading for that purpose, the very first complaint would have set it right, or re- moved him. The editors had no trouble on the sub- ject, and they went on, pioneering the way into the fields of art and elegant literature, and setting an ex- ample which has been followed by the large troop of tasteful periodicals now in existence, to the no small i diffusion of taste and intelligence. Literature began to cheapen. It was proposed to l bring refinement, delicate sentiment, the ennobling ! love of poetry, and an acquaintance with heroic mod- els through song and story, within reach of the hum- | bier classes. New periodicals were started on this j basis. The old Minor was superseded by cheaper ' works — works which, for three dollars, gave as much or more matter, but without embellishment, and of | very inferior typography and paper. That rage had j its day. The circulation of light literature was very I much enlarged, and the people, of all classes, became interested in the current writing of the eventful pres- ent hour. This sudden spread of taste (we may say in passing) was an ingredient thrown into the national character which no doubt powerfully furthered — what ; it seems Mr. Wicklifl'e's sole mission to retard — the refinement and growing intelligence of the American people. But there was one more effort to be made. Com- plaints began to be heard that these cheap publica- tions were inelegant; that, sent forth damp, impressed and unembellished, they became smutched and grew unsightly and hurtful to the eyes; and that more careful workmanship and better type and paper were desirable. The founder of the old Mirror took the subject into examination and study. He made the closest calculations of the cost of fair print and em- bellishment, and after much thought and inquiry, aid- ! ed by twenty years of experience and success, he ma- tured the plan of the present "New Mirror." It was the plan of a periodical to be suited to the now refined taste of the "greatest number," as well as i adapted to the means of the greatest number, and the | uniting of these two desirable extremes brought its I price within a hair's breadth of its cost, and left the feasibility of the project dependant wholly on the I chance of sailing at once, and smoothly, into an enor- I mous circulation. The item of postage was not over- looked — but as the New Mirror, cover and plate in- cluded, would scarce weigh half as much as the Al- bion, Spirit of the Times, and other weekly papers which went for newspaper-postage, and it was no heavier than the old Mirror, which went for the same postage, the subject was not thought worth a doubt. Well — the New Mirror made its appearance. A type worthy of the choicest library, a cover conve- ! nient and elegant, a beautiful steel plate, and sixteen pages of matter edited with careful experience and labor, were offered to the public for this same man- ageable price of " three dollars a year !" The poor- est citizen need not now be without his fair share of knowledge of the arts and literature. Nothing seemed to stand in the way. The manifest high order of style and spirit in the design of the work, combined with its accessibility by cheapness, sent it abroad like day-rising. Its circulation became, as it well needed to be, enormous. And now, you ask, what is the matter ? And we will tell you, and we wish Mr. Wickliffe to listen. A gentleman called at our office a week or two since," and bought a copy or two of the " Mirror Li- brary," expressing his regret that it was not conve- 698 EPHEMERA. nient for him to take the Mirror. He lived in Ver- non. Oneida county, New York, and the postage charged him by Mr. J. W. Jenkins, the postmaster of that place, was fourteen cents on each copy — bringing the cost of the Mirror up to ten dollars twen- ty-eight cents a year! We immediately addressed a letter to Mr. J. W. Jenkins, inquiring respectfully into the reason of this exorbitant charge, and that letter Mr. J. W. Jenkins has never answered. The gentleman assured us that several persons of his ac- quaintance in Vernon had been deterred from subscri- bing to the Mirror by Mr. J. W. Jenkins's overcharge of postage. Again : we have discovered, in many in- stances, that our subscribers, after paying their sub- scriptions, have let their papers lie in the postofhee rather than submit to the extortionate charge of post- age, and the postmasters have never notified us of the fact. Again : the Mirrors miscarry, to a degree that shows more than neglect on the part of the postmas- ters or their subordinates. The complaints and stop- pages for this last reason are out of all precedent and proportion. Again: the postage charged on the New Mirror varies, as we have said before, from one cent to fifteen, in some of the country postoffices, more or less, according to the whim or tyranny of the dull of- ficial. The postmaster of Great Barrington is one of those pigheaded dunces, charging postage on the Mirror sent to the "Berkshire Courier" — in direct vi- olation of the law which exempts papers from postage on exchanges. What is the remedy for these abuses ? We have complained to Mr. Wickliffe of the irregularity and extortion in regard to the postage on the Mirror, and have received in turn a letter of sesquipedalian flum- mery, the compounding of which required the edu- cation of a Virginia politician; and, our letter once answered, the abuse was probably never thought of in the department. Yet it was a matter serious enough to be worth Mr. Wickliffe's attention. These petty tyrants with their "little brief authority," stand between the public and the supply for public refinement and intelligence. They change the cost of the cheap- est and most elegant publication of the day from $3.52 (postage and all) to $10.28! They strangle literary enterprise in the cradle. And for whose ad- vantage ? Not the government's — for subscribers will rather leave their Mirrors in the office than pay the ex- tortionate charge. For the benefit of the postmasters themselves — who, by this indirect fraud, obtain a nice handful of periodicals weekly, to dispose of as one of the perquisites of their office! This is surely a mat- ter worth Mr. Wickliffe's while to look after. To the majority of postmasters we owe thanks rather than reproaches. ' They have rightly judged that the spirit of the law did not intend a difference of two cents between a paper stitched and a paper not stitched — (a difference made by some of the Dogberry post- masters). They feel justly that if there is a question as to the intention of a postage-law, the cause of in- telligence and literature is to have the benefit of the most favorable interpretation. No law can exactly describe every periodical likely to be started. No senate, in making a law, intends to charge more for carrying three printed pieces that weigh one ounce, than one printed piece that weighs two or three ounces — yet so, again, do these petty Dogberrys interpret the law. There is another point about which we would in- quire of the committee now engaged on the revised postage-laws. Why should literary papers of the same iveight be more taxed than newspapers ? Is the circu- lation of moral and refining influences twice as tax- able as the circulation of scandal and politics, rapes and murders, amusements and advertisements ? Sure- ly the intelligence that enlightens the community is as much contained in the weeklies and monthlies as in the daily papers. Yet in the bill now before the house, the former are taxed at twice the price of the latter! This, we suppose, is some of Mr. Wickliffe's handiwork. We give up the postmaster-general — leave him to be bewildered with the technicalities of his office — careful of the husks while the grain sifts away from him. We make an appeal to the fountain of his of- ficial power — public opinion! Let this matter be un- derstood, and let every petty postmaster who plays the tyrant, or misuses his authority, be memorialized out of office. The government ought not to be one penny richer for carrying the mails. No revenue should be derivable to the treasury from the carrying of intelligence. The cheapest postage-rate possible should be set by law, and the law should be bent to suit circumstances in all cases where the cost of car- rying is not thereby made greater. Public opinion should so instruct the public servant. The postmas- ter-general, and the lesser postmasters who obey his dictum, should be made to feel that the least pretence for extortion or oppression on their part, or any want of accommodation and liberal conduct, would be promptly punished. We write freely on this subject, for our enterprise is at stake, and we speak somewhat, too, for other interests than our own. To offer a pe- riodical for three dollars a year, that is made to cost ten by the oppression of postmasters, is to advertise a misnomer. Let the Wickliffe dynasty prevail, and we shall be obliged to leave off cover, plate, and stitching, and change the Mirror to a simple printed sheet, without protection from wear and tear, and without embellishment or capability of binding and preservation. We have always felt great sympathy for the blind. We have felt also great curiosity to know exactly how much of human knowledge is forbidden to go in at the ear — and how much that is turned aside, as inad- missible at that one portal, can be smuggled in after- ward under the cloak of explanation and description. The accounts of Laura Bridgman interested us pro- portionably more from her greater deprivations. It is putting this curiosity in a much more spicy vein of gratification, however, to know that a poet is impris- oned in one of these windowless temples, and to dis- cover how he lives without light and color — as well as how much he is the purer and better from escaping all that offends the eye, which, by-the-way, is not a little. The poems of Miss Frances Jane Crosby, a pupil of the New York Institution for the Blind, lie before us, and we have read them with great mod- ification of our pity for the blind. Eyes could scarce do more. No one in reading the miscellaneous poems oy Miss Crosby would suspect that she was blind. She seems to forget it herself. She talks of " crimson teints" and "purple west" and "stars of mildest hue," with quite the familiarity of those who see. But it is evident that her ear has more than a common share of nicety and susceptibility to measure, for in no early poems that we remember is there such smooth ele- gance of rhythm. The volume is composed principally of poems of the affections, and well-expressed, musical, and cred- itable to the authoress, are all the pieces. The price of such a volume should be nominal merely, and the kindly-disposed should give for it what their benevo- lence prompts. We would suggest to the publishers to send it round by agents with this view. There are things in the world better than poetry and things written without genius that more "stir th EPHEMERA. 699 soul of it man than would some things ticketed for immortality. Now we do not make sure that we are Dot "weak" on the subject of young children. We always thought them quite eligible to any possible choir of cherubim. But we will venture to unmask our foible, if foible it be, by declaring that we have read the following downright, homely, truthful, and funny verses — (sent to us by some charming mother) read them with delight. It is good honest poetry, with a foothold to it, and we should like to see the baby, since reading it : — 1 She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, Her mouth's not a rosebud, her eyes not like jet, Her nose far from Grecian, her skin not like snow, She is not a beauty, dear me ! no, no, do ! But then she is winsome, this bird of my bower, And she grows on my heart every minute and hour. 1 She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, On dimples more witching my eyes have been set ; Her mouth, I must tell you, is large like mama's, While her chin, to-be-sure, is just like her papa's ! But when she smiles trustingly, what can compare With this gem of my casket, bright, sparkling, and fair? ' She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, Far handsomer babies each day can be met ; Her brows are not arching— indeed, they're too straight, Yet time will work wonders, with patience I'll wait. But if she's not handsome, it matters not — no ! This bud of my bosom is pure as the snow. ' She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, That her forehead is too low I can not forget ; No, no, she's not beautiful I must confess, (Between you and I, would her mouth had been less) But she loves me so dearly, oh, how could I part With this light of my pilgrimage, joy of my heart, c. u." We are fortunate in a troop of admirable contribu- tors who write for love, not money — love being the only commodity in which we can freely acknowledge ourselves rich. We receive, however, all manner of tempting propositions from those who wish to write for the other thing — money — and it pains us griev- ously to say "No," though, truth to say, love gets II for us as good things as money would buy — our read- j era will cheerfully agree. But, yesterday, on open- I ing at the office a most dainty epistle, and reading it fairly through, we confess our pocket stirred within I us! More at first than afterward — for, upon reflec- j tion, we became doubtful whether the writer were not j old and "blue" — it was so exceedingly well done! j We have half a suspicion, now, that it is some sharp old maid in spectacles — some regular contributor to j Godey and Graham, who has tried to inveigle us j through our weak point — possibly some varlet of a ; man-scribbler. But no ! it is undeniably feminine. Let us show you the letter — the latter part of it, at j least, as it opens rather too honeyedly for print: — "You know that the shops in Broadway are very j tempting this spring. Sucli beautiful things! Well, you know (no, you don't know that, but you can guess) what a delightful thing it would be to appear in one of those charming, head-adorning, complexion-soften- ing, hard-feature-subduing Neapolitans; with a little gossamer veil dropping daintily on the shoulder of one of those exquisite balzarines, to be seen any day at Stewart's and elsewhere. Well, you know (this you must know) that shopkeepers have the impertinence to demand a trifling exchange for these things, even of a lady; and also that some people have a remark- ably small purse, and a remarkably small portion of the yellow ' root' in that. And now, to bring the mat- ter home, / am one of that class. I have the most beautiful little purse in the world, but it is only kept for show: I even find myself under the necessity of counterfeiting — that is, filling the void with tissue-pa- per in lieu of bank-notes, preparatory to a shopping expedition ! " Well, now to the point. As 'Bel' and I snuggled down on the sofa this morning, to read the New Mir- ror (by-the-way, cousin 'Bel' is never obliged to put tissue-paper in her purse), it struck us that you would be a friend in need, and give good counsel in this emergency. 'Bel', however, insisted on my not tel- ling what I wanted the money for; she even thought that I had better intimate orphanage, extreme suffer- ing from the burdens of some speculating bubble, ill- ness, etc., etc. ; but did not I know you better! Have I read the New Mirror so much (to say nothing of the graceful things coined 'under a bridge,' and a thou- sand other pages flung from the inner heart), and not learned who has an eye for everything pretty? Not so stupid, Cousin 'Bel' — no, no! "However, this is not quite the point, after all; but here it is. I have a pen — not a gold one (I don't think I could write with that), but a nice little feath- er-tipped pen, that rests in the curve of my fore-finger as contentedly as on its former pillow of down. (Shocking! how that line did run down hill ! and this almost as crooked! dear me!) Then I have little messengers racing 'like mad' through the galleries of my head, spinning long yarns, and weaving fabrics rich and soft as the balzarine which I so much covet, until 1 shut my eyes and stop my ears and whisk away with the ' wonderful lamp' safely hidden in my own brown braids. Then I have Dr. Johnson's diction- ary — capital London edition, etc., etc.; and, after I use up all the words in that, I will supply myself with Webster's wondrous quarto, appendix and all. Thus prepared, think you not I should be able to put some- thing in the shops of the literary caterers — something that, for once in my life, would give me a real errand into Broadway ? Maybe you of the New Mirror pay for acceptable articles — maybe not. Comprcnez-vous! "O I do hope that beautiful balzarine like 'Bel's will not be gone before another Saturday ! You will not forget to answer me in the next Mirror; but pray, my dear editor, let it be done very cautiously, for 'Bel' would pout all day if she should know what I have written. Till Saturday, your anxiously-waiting friend, "Fanny." Well — we give in ! On condition that you are un- der twenty-five, and that you will wear a rose (recog- nisably) in your boddice the first day you appear in Broadway with the hat and "balzarine," we will pay j the bills. Write us thereafter a sketch of " 'Bel' " and yourself as cleverly done as this letter, and you may "snuggle down" on the sofa and consider us paid and the public charmed with you. In the days when we were "possessed" with horses, and horse-racing, we were sadly well-acquainted with a jockey who lost his wits in the excitement of losing a race. He hung about race-courses for some years after becoming an idiot, and by dint of always denying a horse's good qualities in the stable, and of never speaking well of one except at the winning moment, he contrived to preserve, through all his idiocy, some influence in the judgment of horseflesh. We have been reminded of our old friend Spavin (call him Spavin — "m£ mortuis") by certain of our critical brother editors, and their very kindly-intended (pos- sibly) critiques on the Mirror. Come a week (as such weeks will come) when our health is queasy, and when our spirits are gathering violets in dells where a pa- ving-stone would be stoned to death as a monster (and I there are dells incapable of a paving-stone) — come such a week, we say, and let the Mirror go forth, I without such quantity of our own work as strains our 700 EPHEMERA. extremest fibre to the crack, and down comes this vigilant critic upon us with a cry of "no go," " falling off," " idle," and " better formerly" — disparagements that would take the conceit out of a church steeple ! And why does he do this ? Why should we not be better at some times than at others, without being criticised like a steam-engine — a thing incapable of mood, humor, and caprice ? Simply because this sort of critique is easy to write, and so favors, in the writer, the very idleness he criticises in us. But, good heavens ! are we not entitled to our worser, as well as our better moments ! Shall we always be at tiptop speed, and never have freedom from disparagement except when winning a race ? We boldly lay claim to more industry than rightly falls to us. as our share of the curse ! Supposing, for the moment, that our writings are better for the Mir- ror than what takes their place occasionally (a flatter- ing inference from our critic's critique), we do more in quantity, in the course of the year, than one editor in a hundred. There is more copied from the Mirror (we have often had occasion to observe) than from any two periodicals in the country. The truth is, we are too famous for comfort ! " Oh mediocrity, Thou priceless jewel only mean men have But never value — like the precious gem Found in the muck-hill by the ignorant cock." You see what troubles us, dear reader ! The flowering into glory of such a century-plant of excellence as our worthy friend and fellow-publish- er, James Harper, has in it, with all our willing ac- clamation, some occasional provocation to a smile. The sudden call for "his picture" — the eager litho- graph of his fun-bestridden nose and money-making spectacles — the stir he has made among the abuses, with his Cliff-street way of doing business, and the salutary feel we get of the wand of power in his clutch, while we still see him in his accustomed haunts, busy and unpedestaled as before — there is something in the contrast which makes us say, with Prince Hal, " Ned, come out of that fat room and give us thy hand to laugh a little," though, with all our heart, we rejoice in his authority. The Courier, speaking of the' likeness just published of Mr. Har- per, says : " The new mayor's pleasant, shrewd, and half-quizzical countenance is cleverly hit off, and he is peering through the official eye-glasses in a manner that portends trouble to all municipal delinquents. Let them look to their ways, and let all subordinate official functionaries look to the streets ; for this por- trait would convince us, even if we were not acquaint- ed with the original, that the chief magistrate has an eye upon them." This bit of speculation as a preface to our lauda- mus of Mayor Harper's administration, as felt particu- larly in two or three abated nuisances. The hack- men are no longer permitted to devour passengers on their arrival in steamboats, nor to make a chcvaux-dc- frise of their whips at the landing-piers, but must sit quietly on their coach-boxes till called for. The omnibus-racing is to be put a stop to, we understand, and that should really be celebrated in an appropriate "northern refrain.' 1 '' There are two refrains more that we would suggest to our city Harper — that hose- boys should be made to refrain from flooding the sidewalks under the thin shoes of ladies, and that gen- tlemen who must smoke in the street should refrain from the windward side of ladies, particularly those who prefer air that has not been used. And apropos — (it will be seen that we were born to make a world) — we wish to suggest to enterprise an- other abatement of the nuisances of Broadway. It | is desirable to reduce the number of omnibuses in this great thoroughfare, for many very cogent rea- sons — but as long as they pay — that is to say, as long as the public require them — they must even go on — deafening promenaders, and endangering private car- riages and the lives of people crossing the street. But who that is down town in a summer's day, and wishes to go anywhere to the western side of the city, would not prefer to take a ferry-boat (if there were one) from the foot of Maiden lane round the Battery to Chelsea ? How preferable the fresh air, and beautiful scenery of the rivers and bay, to a crowded omnibus in hot weather ! How much more desirable would be a residence in Chelsea, if there were such a conveni- ence ! The boats might touch at the foot of Cort- land street and the Battery, and, indeed, extend their course up the East river to the foot of Pike street — plying, say, every ten minutes, from Pike street to Chelsea, and back — rounding the Battery, and touch- ing wherever it was convenient. Who would not pre- fer this to omnibussing ? Let this line communicate with Stevens's upper ferry to Hoboken, and the line would be continuous from that beautiful spot, all round the city. Qrrtte aside from its utility, this would be one of the prettiest pleasure trips that could be invented. Pensez-y, Messrs. Stevens. If any charitable person has an old man or woman whom he would like to set up in an easy and profita- ble business, we have a plan to suggest. Give them half a dozen light chairs, and send them to the Bat- tery or the Park. In all public promenades in France there are chairs to be hired for two cents an hour, and besides being a good trade for the lame and old, this convenience is wanted. By the way, where are the good things, clever couplets, and flings of wit, that used to fly about at the municipal elections ? Squibs grow dull. Where is that witty conservative whig who, when " Forest and Liberty" was placarded by the democrats, put up a rival bill of " Povey and the Constitution?" Wit and poetry (we might have remembered) seem to have gone into advertisements. When people have done with "Who is Seatsfield ?" we shall start a new query — " Who is the bard of Stoppani ?" Moore's oriental flow of melting stanza and balmy imagery is quite paled in its glory by Stoppani's advertisement: — ' Will you come to the Baths in Broadway, Where the genius of luxury presides, And the glorious Croton, by night and by day, Through the conduits silently glides 1 " The ceiling al fresco, the beautiful bar, Rich drapery, and sumptuous screens, The marble as white as a Persian Cymar, The painting — of Italy's scenes," etc. Mellifluously musical! Who is the distinguished au- thor ? The advertisement of a hatter plausibly sets forth that the Miller prophecy being exploded, and the world really not coming to an end (at least within a hat's-wear of time), the prospects of the globe's con- tinuance justifies the venture of a new hat! We think we see a hat bought on that hypothesis ! We are happy to see that our imported word, rococo, is coming into general use. A critic in the Herald, EPHEMERA. 701 noticing the opera, says : " This concert-piece has been rococo for some time, and, like an old maid, is getting, every year, two years older." This is a clever critic, by the way, though in the sentence we have quoted he reminds us of a bit of dialogue in an old play : — " Manes.— Didst thou not find that I did quip thee ? p S y. — No, verily. What is a quip 1 Manes. — A short saying of a sharp wit, with a bit- ter sense in a sweel word." The True Sun quotes, with a clincher, from the Buffalo Commercial, " The common use of the word lady, instead of the definite honored term wife, is an atrocious vulgarism that should be universally scouted." We think the ladies should be informed produced under the meridian of the country it is to of the etymological meaning of the two words, and supply. Who will pretend that any periodical in this take their"choice%fter. Wife is derived from the An- country is edited with half the ability of the London glo-Saxon word signifyingto weave, and means the j magazines and reviews? The leading intellects of person who weaves for the family. Lady originally j the age— men who in this country would be eminent meant a woman raised to the rank of her husband — \\ lawyers and pol not from any falling off in their character. The Eng- lish pictorial papers (for one example) have rather im- proved in merit, but a publisher informed us a day or two since that they do not now sell ten where they sold a hundred a month or two ago. Such, enter- prises used to begin small, and grow into favor gradu- ally. Now, the cornucopia of their prosperity is re- versed — the small end turned from the publisher. Copyrighted American books, and American periodi- cals, though dearer than reprints, sell much better, and in our opinion the American public, in three months more, will give a preference so decided to home literature, and home periodicals, that, as far as protection to our native authors is concerned, the in- ternational copyright will be useless. The truth is, that literature, to be permanently popular, must be from the Saxon word signifying elevated. The pro- priety of calling a man's better half his lady, depends, of course, on the fact whether she was made more respectable by the match; aud the propriety of calling her his wife, hangs upon her expertness and industry at the loom. Which will the fair sex prefer ? Nkw Literary Epoch. — We have been, for the last year, not only working among, but watching; " the signs of the times" in the way of literature. We have been trying, not only to make out a living, but to make out head and tail to our epoch — to see what way the transition was tending, and when there was likely to be any reliable shape and form to American literature ; or (to change the figure) whether the lit- erary boatmen, who stand with their barques hauled ashore, uncertain of the current, and employing them- selves meantime in other vocations, could be called upon to launch and dip their oars, sure at last of tide and channel. International copyright has died a natural death. There was not a statesman in the country who had the courage to take the chance of making or marring his .political fortunes by espousing the question. At the "same time — palpably just, honorable, and expedient, as would be the giving of copyright to English au- thors — there was some excuse for shying the subject, in the violent abuse that was indiscreetly showered upon us by Dickens and the Reviews, at the very moment when general public attention had been called to the subject, and when there was every prospect of its turning the crisis favorably. R would have taken the statesmanship and eloquence of Clay or Webster to have made the discussion at all endura- ble to congress, and we are quite sure that it will be ten years before the public irritation against English travellers and critics will have sufficiently abated to tolerate any measure in their favor. Dickens, and his friend, the critic of the Foreign Quarterly, therefore, have sanded their own bread and butter in throwing dirt at us. But the great end of international copyright is com- ing about without the aid of legislation. The abuse has been that American authors were thrown out of liticians, devote themselves to maga- i zine-writing abroad, and, besides, they are a trained : class of professed authors, such as we have no idea of j in America. Our contributors are men who dash off an article as by-play, and make no investment of thought or money in it — and of course it can not com- pare to the carefully-written and well-considered arti- cles of English weeklies and monthlies. But look at the difference of circulation. See how periodicals languish that are made up of the cream of these Lon- don magazines, and see how Graham and Godey, In- man of the Columbian, and ourselves, quadruple them in vogue and prosperity ! R was to be expected— it is the most natural thing in the world — that America should grow American, at last! What more natural than that we should lire of having our thinking done in London, our imaginations fed only with food tlgit is Londonish, and our matters of feeling illustrated and described only by London associations, tropes, and similitudes ? This weariness of going to so dis- tant a well for better water, we do say, is to be relied upon as a sign of the literary times. The country is tired of being be-Brilished. R wants its own indige- nous literature, and we think we should be safe to- morrow in issuing a replevin upon law, politics, and commerce, for the men of genius draughted for their employ, during the want of a literary market. Give up the blood horses harnessed into your dull drays, oh, Wall street and Pearl ! Untie your fetters of red tape, and let loose your enslaved poets and novelties, oh, Nassau and Pine ! Discharge Halleck, oh, Astor; and give up Wetmore, oh, crates of crockery ! Lead off with a new novel, Mr. Cooper, and let the public give us a five years' benefit of their present disgust with imported literature, to recover from the numb- ness of inaction and discouragement. Give us five- years of the home tide of sympathy that is now setting westward, and we will have an American literature that will for ever prevent the public taste and patron- age from ebbing back again to England. Things as they come— We know of a matter we mean to write about, somewhere between this and the bottom of the next column— somewhere within this half-cent's-worth, that is to say— (this page costs you not quite half a cent, dear reader !)— but we must the market by English works that were to be had for , —. M nothing— (justice to the English author, of course, a haul out two or three things that lie a-top ot it in our secondary consideration). But this abuse is losing; fact-drawer: (acts being, as everybody knows, obstinate strength by surfeit. The publishers and periodical as nails in a keg, when you want a particular one iron, agents are aghast, at this very moment, of the falling underneath. off of interest in the most attractive publications. The We have whims (this lies a-top), about the Jace of zest for novelty has been so pampered, that only the I newspaper type. There are some most worthy and first number or two, of anything new, sells well. And i ! able periodicals that we could not read our own obitua- 702 EPHEMERA. ry in, without an effort — the type is so unexplainably anti-pathetic. Every editor who turns over exchange papers will know precisely what we mean. There is no necessity for naming those which we should never open if we had them in our pocket "forty days in the wilderness," but we can, without offence, name an op- posite example — the Picayune — which, from the mere witchery of type, a man would like to take out of the postoffice on his way to execution. The Bos- ton Transcript is another — (fact No. 2) — which we fatuitously read, and should read, even if it were edited by that broken mustard-spoon, the Portland Thersites. The type is captivating — a kind of insinuating, piquant, well-bred brevier, that catches the eye like a coquette in a ball-room. And this, be it noted, spite of the " burnt child's" prejudice, for the fair editress does not always put on her gloves, before taking a tweak at our immortality! And, apropos — there is an editor " down south" who sympathises with this typical weakness of ours — declaring in a late paper that the reputation of our letters to the Intelligencer " was entirely owing to the large type in which they were printed." And this we not only believe, but if we ever get rich, we will " fork over the swindle" to our deluded employers. The reader will see that we are trying to apologise for our dissipation in reading — newspapers being such very loose mental company, and we, as news-ivriter, having, no more business with the luxury of news written, than a shoemaker with wearing the patent leathers he makes for his gentlemen customers. But we have read an article in the seductive type of the Transcript which led us to philosophise a little touch- ing a point of contrast between Boston and New York ; and as we grew up in Boston, but were dug up, and trimmed, and watered into flowering, in New York, we claim to know both places well enough to r*n a parallel with fairish fidelity. The article we speak of was a letter, containing, among other things, a touch-up of the Astor house ; but the Astor is so much the best hotel in the world, that fault-finding, merited as it may be, will send no- body from its door in search of a better. Without alluding farther to the letter, let us jot down the specu- lation it suggested. New York is far more vicious than Boston, without a doubt. But it is not much more vicious than it was, when it was of Boston's size. We have often wished to preach a sermon to the Bostonians from 1 Corin- thians iv. 7: "For who maketh thee to differ from another ? And what hast thou, that thou didst not receive?" Up to the present time, the Puritan obedi- ence to authority, and the " power paramount" of good principles, have never been sapped or shaken in Boston. It is but one community, with one class of leading prejudices, and worked by one familiar set of moral, social, and political wires. The inhabitants are nearly all Americans, all church-goers of some sect or other, implicitly subject to general and time- honored principles, and as controllable by mayor and aldermen as an omnibus by passengers and driver. Indeed, the municipal history of Boston for the last twenty years, is a Utopian beau-ideal of efficiency and order, which will never herepeated. The authoritative break-up of the first formidable symptom of mob- ocracy two years ago, for example — when bold mayor Elliott quietly took the /ire-engines from their turbu- lent companies, and put them into the hands of a paid fire-police — could never have been done in any other city of this country ; and ten years hence (Boston continuing to increase and vitiate), a similar pluck at the beard of mob license would be a dangerous experi- ment. But look at New York in comparison. There are at least a hundred thousand Irish in this city, twenty thousand French, sixty thousand Germans, and a miscellany of other nations, that probably leaves scarce one fourth of the population (say a hundred thousand), for indigenous and home- spirited New- Yorkers. One quarter too, of the general population, is in a condition that is scarce known in Boston — that of desperate ex- tremity of livelihood, and readiness to do anything for the moment's relief, vicious, turbulent, or conspirative. The municipal government of New York is, unfor- tunately, in some measure, a political tool, and com- pelled to shape its administration somewhat with a view to politics. Harsh measures, used in Boston upon the first germ or symptom of license, are reserved in New York for such signal instances as are melo- dramatically flagrant — such as can not be perverted, by the party out of power, into a counter-current of sympathy and resentment. What there is now remain- ing of the Knickerbocker influence in New York, is the degree in which New York can compare with Boston — and this small remainder of the old Dutch character is, as to power and check, about equal to what will be left of Puritan character in Boston, when Boston, by aid of railroads and inducements for foreign residence, shall have four hundred thousand inhabitants. Look at the difference in the observance of Sunday in the two places ! At least twenty thousand people cross to Hoboken alone, to pass the sabbath in the fields — foreigners, mostly, who have been in the habit of making it a holyday at home. The Bostonians would suppress the ferry, without the slightest hesitation ' There are four or five Sunday newspapers in New York, and Boston will not support one. There are German balls in various places in this city, on Sunday evening ; and oyster-shops, and bar-rooms, and the drinking-places, in all directions in the suburbs, have overflowing custom on that day. The governmen* of the city is, of course, in some degree, a reflex of this large proportion of the sovereign voters, and when public opinion countenances a degree of license, it is next to impossible to bring in a city government that can control it. We have not room to follow out this comparison in detail — but we wished to outline it, as a reply to the condemnations of New York (for the sale of vicious publications, etc., etc.), made from time to time, by our more virtuous brethren in the north. We shall take another opportunity to enlarge upon it. We have received several truly delightful and grati- fying letters from eminent clergymen of different per- suasions, thanking us for the Sacred Numbers of the Mirror Library, and sending us the choice poems which they had severally laid aside, to add to another collection. We had no idea there was so much beauti- ful religious poetry in existence ! This rich vein of literature has been unworked and overlooked, and we assure the religious world, confidently, that we are doing a most important work in the collection of these gems of piety and poetry in a cheap and accessible form. '• Songs for the Sabbath," falls behind none of them in interest, and will be a classic in re- ligious books, as long as religious literature exists. We do not know whether we were particularly in a mood to be pleased on the night of Simpson's benefit at the Park, but several things pleased us more than they seemed to please other people — the dancing, for example, both of Korponat, and of Desjardins. (Of the acting we do not speak, and by-the-way, we may as well say, here, that the stage is so much bet- ter kept in hand by the theatrical critic of the Albion than we could possibly do it, that we generally shie that part of criticism, from a sort of consciousness that it will be done for the public by abler hands. We EPHEMERA. 703 love good criticism, and we love " honor to whom ; honor is duo.") We did not see Korponay at his j debut at Palmo's — but a friend pronounced his dan- cing a failure. As an attempt at anything in Vestris's j line, it certainly was a failure. But that is not the dish to which the well-made Pole invites us. He is, among dancers, what olives are at a feast — " bad i pickles" to the vulgar, but artful appetisers to the \ refined. Korponay seemed to us like a symmetrical | and dashing nobleman, doing gracefully a difficult and j grotesque dance for the amusement and admiration of j a court — leaning as far away as possible from the airs of a professed dancer, and intent only on showing the ■ superb proportion of his figure and the subtle com- i mand over his limbs. His face expressed exactly this || role of performance. It was full of mock solemnity and high-bred assurance. He seemed to us exactly the sort of noble masquer that, at a Venetian festival of old time, would have "topped the jaunty part," and carried away the flower, the ladies' favor. But the untrumpeted deservings of Monsieur Kor- ponay are less surprising than the want of apprecia- tion of Mademoiselle Desjardins. We never saw her before, though she has been dancing in town for some time, and, considering how easily most any hook and line of public amusement catches us, it is very plain that the bait has not been skilfully angled. In the first place, as to qualifications, we never have seen, in all our travels from Niagara to the Black sea (the two poles of our "inky orbit"), so well-bridged an instep, and so Dianesque a pair of serviceable ankles. She should have stood to John of Bologna for his poised Mercury ! There is not a woman's heart better mounted, we venture to say, between Ontario and the Euxine. And she uses these communicators with earth deftly and Ariel-wise! We only saw her in the Polacca, which is a kind of attitudinizing dance, and possibly, better suited to her abilities than a more dif- ficult pas. But she walked and acted it with spirit I and grace enough to be charming, and though she is j not to be named with Ellsler, she is enough of a dan- seuse. in Ellsler's absence, to give one's eyes their night's rations very satisfactorily. Underrated she is ! We see, by one of the careful and elaborate reports of the Republic, that the Mercantile Library Associ- ation have had a report from a despair-committee, on the subject of the decline of lectures. Eloquence don't pay for the candle, it seems. This excellent association, however, shrinks the wrong way from the plague they have had with it. The taste for eloquence is no more dead or torpid in New York than the love of war or the relish for lions. While people have brains and hearts they will love a true orator. But they are tired (and reasonably enough) of the bald and ungamislied style in which oratory is served up to them. To go moping into the dark and silent Taber- nacle — the gas economized till the rise of the orator, and a deathly and gloomy silence maintained for an hour (more or less) before the commencement of the lecture — to have the orator's first opening addressed to chilled, oppressed, and unelevated minds, and all this in a house of such structure, that unless seated clear of the pent-house galleries, the hearer loses everything but the emphatic words in a sentence — to sit an hour amid these disadvantages, and then hear a chance speaker, for whom they are not prepared by any previous information except the name of his sub- iect — this, we say, is indeed " lenten entertainment." t is making of eloquence what the ascetic makes of religion — a dry crust instead of a relishing loaf. No, no! Religion should be adorned with its proper and consistent graces, as woman should be beautifully attired; and eloquence has its natural ornaments and accompaniments as well. See how eloquence was made a pleasure in the gardens of the academy of Athens! Instead of treating our orators as we do the fountain in the Park (giving them a broad margin of bare ground), we should surround their oratory with tributary ornament. The audiences noiv, at lectures, are that passionless and abstract portion of the com- munity that can stand anything in the shape of an in- tellectual bore — the Grahamites of amusement. But give us orators on popular subjects, at Palmo's, with dress circle, bright lights, opera-music, scenery, and interludes for conversation and change of place, and eloquence, from being a jewel dulled with the dirt of a mine, will be a gem in the fit setting of a sparkling tiara. This would be, beside, a kind of premium upon eloquence, that would foster it into a national I excellence. There are men at the bar, in the press, land iu business, who have the " volcano of burning ! words" within them, and would make eloquence a study, were it a source of renown and profit. What say to a new niche for oratory, oh, amiable public ! Let us get a new screw upon public feeling, to use with effect when we have patriotism to arouse, or abuses to overthrow — passions to awake for good pur- poses. Let us have a power at the public car that will be a check-balance to newspapers, that have a monop- oly of the jmblic eye. Let music, oratory, and paint- ing, combine in a tripod to support each other — a fine orchestra, a glowing oration, and beautiful scenery — and we shall have public amusement in which the serious classes will join with the gay, and in which instruction shall be dressed, as it always may be, and should be, with captivating flowers. And while we have this thread in our loom, let us express the delight with which we listened, not long since, to oratory in a silk gown — an oration on con- tempt, that was linked naturally enough to a text and a pulpit, but which would have been a noble piece of intellectual oratory in a public hall or theatre. The orator was Rev. Henrt Giles, and the sermon was delivered in a place that is used to eloquence— the pulpit of Mr. Dewey. There were passages in this discourse that were worked up, both in fervor of lan- guage and concentrated fire of delivery, to a pitch that we should call truly Demosthenian. Mr. Giles is a natural orator— a man of expanded generalizing powers. It is a treat to hear him, such as would not be second in interest to any dramatic entertainment, and properly combined with other things as agreeable to the taste, there would be an attraction in such ora- tory that would draw better than a play. We really wish that some " manager" would undertake the get- ting up of the scenery and musical accessories to ora- tory, and let secular eloquence take leave of the pul- pit where it does not properly belong, and come into a field more natural to its aims and uses. We had a June May, and a May June, and the brick world of Manhattan has not, as yet, become too hot to hold us. This is to be our first experiment at pas- sing the entire summer in the city, and we had laid up a few alleviations which have as yet kept the shelf, with our white hat, uncalled for by any great rise in the thermometer. There is no knowing, however, when we shall hear from Texas and the warm "girdle round the earth" (the equator— no reference to English dominion), and our advice to the stayers in town may be called for by a south wind before it is fairly printed. First-owr substitute for a private yacht. Not having twenty thousand dollars to defray our aquatic tendencies-having, on the contrary an occa- sional spare shilling— we take our moonlight trip on the river— dividing ihe cool breezes, 'twixt shore and shore— in the Jersey ferry-boat. Smile those who have 704 EPHEMERA. private yachts ! We know no pleasanter trip, after the dusk of the evening, than to stroll down to the ferry, haul a bench to the bow of the ferry-boat, and " open up" the evening breeze for two miles and back, for a shilling ! After eight o'clock, there are, on an average, ten people in the boat, and you have the cool shoulder under the railing as nearly as possi- ble to yourself. The long line of lamps on either shore makes a gold flounce to the " starry skirt of heaven" — the air is as pure as the rich man has it in his grounds, and all the money in the world could not mend the outside of your head, as far as the horizon. (And the horizon, at such place and hour, becomes a substitute for the small hoop you have stepped out of.) No man is richer than we, or could be better off — till we reach the Jersey shore — and we are as rich going back. Try this, of a hot evening, all who prefer coolness and have a mind that is good company. Then, there is our substitute for an airing. There is a succession of coaches, lined with red velvet, that, in the slope of the afternoon, ply, nearly empty, the whole length of Broadway — two or three miles, at an easy pace, for sixpence. We have had vehicles, or friends who had vehicles, in most times and places that we remember, and we crave our ride after dinner. We need to get away from walls and ceiling stuck over with cares and brain-work, and to be amused without effort — particularly without the effort of walk- ing or talking. So — " Taking our hat in our hand, that remarkably requisite practice," we step out from our side street to the brink of Broad- way, and presto, like magic, up drives an empty coach with two horses, red velvet lining, and windows open; and by an adroit slackening of the tendons of his left .eg, the driver opens the door to us. With the lei- surely pace suited to the hour and its besoin, our car- riage rolls up Broadway, giving us a sliding panorama of such charms as are peculiar to the afternoon of the great thoroughfare (quite the best part of the day, for a spectator merely). Every bonnet we see wipes off a care from our mental slate, and every nudge to our curiosity shoves up our spirits a peg. Easily and uncrowded, we are set down for our sixpence at M Fourteenth street," and turning our face once more toward Texas, we take the next velvet-lined vehicle bound down. The main difference betwixt us and the rich man, for that hour, is, that he rides in a green lane, and we in Broadway — he sees green leaves and we pretty women— he pays much and we pay little. The question of envy, therefore, depends upon which of these categories you honestly prefer. While Providence furnishes the spare shilling, ice, at any rate, will not complain. Such of our friends as are prepared to condole with us for our summer among the bricks, will please credit us with the two foregoing alleviations. The postoffice irregularities of which we have so often complained, have drawn from one of our good- natured subscribers, a lament in poetry. We wish all our friends would take it as kindly, but it as expressively : — give voice to " No Mirror to-day — No price, no pay ; No chance to spend a sixpence all day Ions • No work at all to do, No help for feeling blue ; No plate, no tale, no ' trifle,' and no song ! No why and no because ; No faith in the whole race of editors • No remedy, 'tis true ; ' No seeing exactly what it's best to do ; No chance of being heard, No profit in a word ; No grumbling at the keepers of the keys ; No hope of men who do just what they please ; No chance to raise a breeze : No hope, no sign, No promise that I can divine ; No faith to-day in high humanity ; No doubt that life is vanity ; No dawn, no rising of a better day ; No faint foreshadowing of a golden way i No knowing when Wickliffe will be turned away ; No last resort but a vile parody. No Mirror " We very seldom buy a volume of new poetry, but the portrait on the first leaf of Mrs. Butler's book, a portrait by the admirable and spiritualizing pencil of Sully, and engraved by the as admirable and spirituali- zing burin of Cheney, was worth quite the price of the volume. We have since read the poetry. The pic- ture bears a slight resemblance to the poetess, Mrs. Norton, and the poetry is very like Mrs. Norton's in its intention. But both in features and verse, Mrs. Butler is very far that glorious woman's inferior. We have been vexed to see how narrow an escape Mrs. Butler has had. of being a fine poetess, however— how easily with a little consistent labor, and some little unity of sentiment and purpose, she might have filled out the penumbra which provokingly shows what she might have been— but for the eclipse of caprice or carelessness. We have struck a word in this last sentence which seems to us to be the master-chord of all her poetry— caprice .' She begins nobly and goes evenly and beautifully half through her strain, and then falters and winds weakly or inconsequently off. We could quote passages from this book as fine as anything of Mrs. Norton's, but there is no one fin- ished poem in it worth reprinting. In all this, we are looking at it with the world's eye. To a poet, who judges of a fragment, as the connoisseur knows the statue of Hercules, by the foot, this volume is full of genius. There is a massy fulness in the use of epithets and figures that shows a Sapphic prodigality of fervor and impulse, and there is, moreover, a mas- culine strength of passionateness in the moulding and flinging off of emotion, that, well carried out, would have swept the public heart like a whirlwind. We had marked many passages of Mrs. Butler's book for ex- tract, but on looking at them again, we find the best and most creditable blemished with flaws, and, with strong admiration for what the authoress might have been, we lay the book aside. Our readers will remember a very clever letter, written to us by an anonymous lady who wished to conjure a new bonnet and dress out of her inkstand. The inveiglement upon ourselves (to induce us to be her banker), was so adroit and fanciful that we sus- pected the writer of being no novice at rhetorical trap — one, indeed, of the numerous sisterhood who, denied the concentrated developments of maternity, scatter their burthensome ammunition of contrivance and re- source upon periodical literature. We "gave in," however — walking willingly into the lady's noose— on a condition, that she should wear a rose recognisably in Broadway the day she first sported the balzarine and Neapolitan, and afterward send us a sketch of herself and her cousin. The " sketch" we have re- ceived, and when we have seen the rose we shall not hesitate to acknowledge the debt. In the following parts of the letter which accompanied the sketch, the reader will see that the authoress feels (or feigns mar- vellously well) some resentment at our suspicions as to her age and quality :— " Have you never heard, my de— (pardon ! I fear it is a habit of mine to write too 'honeyedly') — but have you not heard that 'suspicion is a heavy armor, which, with its own weight impedes more than it protects.' Suspicion is most assuredly a beggarly virtue. It EPHEMERA. 705 may, now and then, prevent you from being ' taken in,' but it nips you in the costs most unmercifully. Oh ! sharpsightednessis the most extravagantly dear whistle that poor humans ever purchased ! That you should suspect me too, when I was opening my heart away down to the core. How could you ? • Inveigle !' no inveigling about it! I want a bonnet and dress, and said so, frankly and honestly. And I never wrote a line for Graham in my life, no ! nor for Godey either. As for le couleur des bas, your keen-eyed hawk pounced on less than a phantom there. From the day that I stood two mortal hours with my finger poked into my eye, and a fool's-cap on my head, because I persisted in spelling ' b-a-g, baker,' to the notable morning of christening my cousin by her profession, I have been voted innocent of all leaning toward the uncelestial. Indeed it is more than suspected by my friend (cousin 'Bel' excepted) that I affect dame Nature's carpet, rather than her canopy. Maybe I am ' some varlet of a man scribbler' — Oh! you are such a Yankee at guessing ! ' Old !' ah, that is the unkindest cut of all ! You an editor, and the son of an editor, and not know that ' old maids' are a class extinct at the present day, save in the sewingsocieties, etc., of some western village, subject only to the exploring expeditions of the in- defatigable ' Mary Clavers !' Have you never heard of five-and-twenty's being a turning point, and ken ye j not its meaning ? Why, /aire maydens then reverse the hour-glass of old gray-beard ; and, one by one, drop back the golden sands that he has scattered, till, in five years, they are twenty again. Of course, then, I must be ' under twenty-five ;' but, as a punishment for your lack of gallantry, you shall not know whether the sands are dropping in or out of my glass. One thing, however, is indisputable : 1 am not ' sharp,' my face has not a single sharp feature, nor my temper (it is I, who know, that say it), a sharp corner, nor my voice a sharp tone. So much in self-justification, and now to the little package which you hold in the other hand. " I send my sketch in advance, because I am afraid cousin 'Bel' and I might not interest you and the pub- lic so much as we do ourselves; and then how are we to 'consider you paid.' In truth, I can not write clever things. 'Bel' might, but she never tries. Some- times she plans for me ; but, somehow, I never can find the right words for her thoughts. They come into my head like fixed-up visiters, and ' play tea-party' with their baby neighbors, until I am almost as much puzzled by their strange performances as the old woman of the nursery rhyme, who was obliged to call on her 'little dog at home' to establish her identity. No, no ! 1 can not write clever things, and particularly on the subject to which I am restricted ; but if it is the true sketch that you would have for the sake of the information, why here it is. You will perceive that I have been very particular to tell you all. " Pray, do you allow us carte blanche as far as the hat and dress are concerned ? You had better not, for 'Bel' never limits herself. How soon may we have them ? The summer, is advancing rapidly, and my old muslin and straw are unco' shabby. Yours with all due gratitude, " Fanny Forester." Whoever our fair correspondent may be, old or young, naive or crafty, we can tell her that talent like hers need never want a market. We commend her, thus in print, to those princes of literary paymasters, Graham and Godey, with our assurance that no more entertaining pen strides a vowel in this country. The sketch of " The Cousins," which we shall give here- after, has a ticirt-tear-and-smile-fulness which shows the writer's heart to be as young as a school-girl's satchel, whatever kind of wig she wears, and whatever the number of her spectacles. And she will be as young forty years hence — for genius will be a child, eternity through, in Heaven. If, by chance, the lady 45 is a sub-twenty -fivily, she is a star rising, and we should like to visit her before she culminates. The rest of what we have to say. — There is a circulation that beats newspapers — beats them particu- larly in this — the Tuesday's paper overtakes the Mon- day's, but the lie of Monday is never overtaken by the truth of Tuesday. Some time since a sketch appeared in the Mirror, written by a correspondent, which was seized upon immediately by some of the busy-bodies of society, as an intentional attack upon one of the first families in this city. A week or two after its publica- tion, a friend informed us of the rumor, and we read the sketch over again to see what was objectionable in it. With the exception of a correction made by the proof- reader, and one accidental circumstance, invented by the writer to round a sentence, there was nothing in it that could possibly apply to the family in question, and we were amazed at the interpretation put upon it. Subsequent knowledge of the writer and her object has completely removed from our mind, and that of the family alluded to, all shadow of suspicion that any particular person or persons were in her mind while writing it. The story has again come round to us, however, and in so bold a shape that we think it worth while to nail it again with a denial. There never has been in the Mirror, and there never will be, any offen- sive allusion to individuals in private life. Descriptive ' writers constantly describe classes, and, if they describe them well, they will apply as the essays in the Specta- tor do. to hundreds of persons. The amiable Miss Sedgwick, utterly incapable of an intentional wound 1 to the feelings of any one, has lived in constant hot water, from the offence taken at the supposed person- ; alities of her descriptions. It is very easy for a mali- cious person to take any sketch of character, and find i for it a most plausible original. But there should be a watch kept for those who first name these discoveries — the first finders of the key to a mischievous allusion. The first time you hear a malicious story, mark the teller of it — for ten to one, in that person, male or female, lies the whole malice of the invention and ap- plication. Such people do not work in the dark, however. Mischief-making is a most unprofitable trade, and we trust that, in the future school of Ameri- can morals, the certain infamy of being the first teller of a malicious tale, will be a predominant feature. It can easily be made so. by " keeping the subject be- fore the people." One of the most curious features of New York is ! the gradual formation of a Paternoster Row— or the making of Arm street to correspond with that famous book-mine and fame-quarry of London. Our enterprising and thrifty friends and neighbors, Bur- gess, Stringer, &Co., are the "Longmans" of this publishing Row, and truly, the activity of their sales, and the crowds leaning continually over their counter, give a new aspect to the hitherto contemplative current of merchandise in literature. Their central and spa- cious shop on the corner of Broadway, is a thronged book-market, as vigorously tended and customered as the sales of pork and grain. They have lately added to their establishment two stores intervening between them and us, and, with the office of our friends of the " Nfw World" farther down the street, and several intermediate publishing and forwarding offices, we of the Mirror are in the midst of a formidable literary mart that seems destined to concentrate the book- trade, and make, of Ann street as we said just now, a Paternoster Row. The Turks (who, by the way, have many other sensible notion, besides washing themselves instead of their shirts), devote each differ- 706 EPHEMERA. ent lane of their grand bazar to a single commodity — no shoemakers to be found out of Shoemaker-lane, and no books out of Book-alley. The convenience of this arrangement, to the public, is very great, and it would be, in this city, a prodigious saving of labor, in cartage and traffic, to the booksellers themselves. We have a faint hope of seducing over, to our Row, the agreeable clique of our friend Porter of the •' Spirit," and we hope Inman of the Columbian will follow alter (to save rent), and in this way, we shall have a morning lounge in Ann street for the beaux esprits, that will enable us to combine into a literary social order and have some fun and more weight. Nothing like combination, oh, feilow-pensmen ! Why should we not have a head, and wag it, like the cham- ber of commerce and the powerful presbytery ? For a class that keeps the key of the city's to-morrow, the press in New York is as strangely unorganized and segregate a body as anarchy of public opinion could possibly desire. But we are trenching here on some- thing we have in petto, to write upon more gravely hereafter. We seldom read a novel. We can not afford the sympathy, even when we have the time. But, some- what liquefied on a warm afternoon of last week, our resolution would not hold, and we took up "The Rose of Thistle Island," a Swedish novel by Em- ilie Carlen, just published by Winchester. The story took hold of us immediately, and we read the book through before going to bed, charmed with its earnest and graphic truth of narration and char ter, and par- ticularly w,ith the entire fusion of the style, betraying no thumb-spot from the dictionary-cover, and no smack of haste or clumsiness in the transfer. It reads like a book original in English, and that, to our pro- fessional superfinery of noun and pronoun, is no small difference from ordinary translations. The Remainder. — One of the greatest pleasures of living in our free country, is the unceasing satis- faction one feels at not having died last week — fortu- nately surviving to put down one more lie that, if you had been dead, would be as durable as your tomb- stone. Another peculiarity of our country — good or bad as you chance to feel about it — is the necessity to talk a great deal about yourself, if you would keep up a lively popularity. With these two patriotic promptings, let us say a word of a trip we made lately to Albany. It is not perhaps generally known that Albany was our birthplace. We were born once before, it is true, in Portland, somewhere about half a life ago— a "man-child." But in Albany, in 1827, we first open- ed our eyes, as an adult lion. Up to that period we had been under tutors, and had known only boy- friends. By a fortunate chance we suddenly acquired the friendship of a man of great talent and accom- plishment, and on a visit to this, our first man-friend at Albany, we stood, for the first time, clear of the 'j imprisoning chalk-lines of boyhood. Those who hav* ' "hived the honey" of their summers of the heart IJ know well how intoxicatingly sweet was the first gar- i den of life in which they walked as men. Still a chila | at home, and still a college-boy at New Haven, we ) were, at Albany, a man who had written a book, and as l| the companion and guest of our fashionable and popu- lar friend,* we saw beauty enough, and received kind- * I trust it will not be considered mistimed or unnatural if I follow the impulse of my heart, and put, into a note to so worldly a theme, the substance of a tearful and absorbing revery, which, for the last half hour, has suspended my pen over the paper. The name of the gentleman f have just al- ness enough, to have whipped a less leathery brain into syllabub. The loveliness of the belles of Albany at that time, and the brilliancy of its society, are perpet- uated in a remembrance that will become a tradition; and we have never since seen, in any country or so- ciety of the world, an equal proportion of elegant men and beautiful and accomplished women. It was so acknowledged over the whole country. The regency of fashion, male and female, was confessedly at Alba- ny. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore, were provinces to this castle of belle-dom! We have an object in showing what Albany was, at the time we were in the habit of visiting it, and how inevitably, from a combination of circumstances, it became and has remained, to us, a paradise of enchanting associa- tions. There is no spot in this country which we re- member with equal pleasure. It was the first leaf turned over in our book of manhood. We went to Albany with these memories upon us, a week or more ago, to lecture. We spent the morn- ing in finding old friends and reviving old associations, and in the evening we had an audience much larger than we looked for, and as brilliant as hope born of such memories could have prefigured it; and we re- turned to the city the morning after, gratified and de- lighted. But (and here comes the matter in hand) there seems to have been a gentleman in Albany who was unwilling we should be delighted. We have not seen the article he wrote, but, as condensed in another paper, it goes to show that the reasons why we were unsuccessful at Albany were, first, that we have been in the habit of abusing its Dutch aristocracy, and second, that two years ago we "insulted a lady there and refused a challenge from her friend !" Now here are four items of absolute news to us: 1, that we did not succeed — 2, that we ever insulted a lady any- | where — 3, that we ever declined any fight that was ever proposed to us — 4, that we ever abused the Dutch at Albany. On the fourth count of the indictment, alone, a friend has thrown a little light. We did once, inad- vertently, use an adjective, in a way which has been remembered fifteen years! We said of the swine in the streets of Albany (in some trifling article for a newspaper), that they were a nuisance " more Dutch than decent." The alliteration seduced us somewhat, but there was provocation as well — for, the night luded to, John Bi.eecker Van Schaick, will call up, at once, to the memory of the Albanians, as well as to the prominent men of all parts of the country, a loss, by early death, of one of our most accomplished gentlemen, and most admira- bly-gifted minds. The proportion — the balance of character and intellect, in Mr. Van Schaick — the fine sense of honor, and the keen discrimination of wit, the manliness and the del- icacy, the common sense and the strong poetical perception — made him, to me, one of the most admirable of studies, as well as the most winning and endearing of friends. I loved and honored him, till his death, as few men have ever won from mc love and honor. It was a matter of continual urging on my part, to induce him to devote his leisure, given him by ample means, to literature. Some of his poetry appeared in the magazines, and is now collected in a volume of the Amer- ican poets. But he had higher studies and more vigorous aims than light literature, and he had just broken ground as a brilliant orator and statesman, when disease unnerved and prostrated him. Mr. Van Schaick had, however, another quality which would have made him the idol of society iu England — (though, comparatively, little appreciated here)— unequalled wit and brilliancy of convers»ar>".. I say une- qualled — for I have lived long in the so<~i''.y of the men of w:t most celebrated in London, and I ha^d *>/er thought that ibis countryman of my own was their ^equivocal superior. His wonderful quickness and fineness of perception, and the ready facility of his polished language, combined with his universal reading and information, made his society in the highest degree delightful and fascinating ; and though, as rny first friend of manhood, I gave him warm and impulsive ad- miration, my subsequent knowledge of mankind has con- stantly enhanced this admiring appreciation. In all qualities of the heart he was uprightly noble J and, altogether, we think that in him died the best-balanced and most highly gifted character we have ever intimately known. EPHEMERA. 707 before writ in g it, strolling home from a party in Al- bany, we had been brought from the seventh heaven to the sidewalk, tripped up by a pig! Now, to us, the pig was Dutch. We had lived only in New Eng- land, where this animal, from some prejudice against his habits, has not the freedom of the city. Visiting two Dutch cities, New York and Albany, we found the pig master of the pave, and the offending adjec- .ive, lubricated by our disaster, slipped into its place with inevitable facility. We have heard from time to time, of this perversion of the word Dutch, as a thing remembered against us. We had hoped that the great fire in Wall street, the death of Harrison, the Miller-prophecy, and the other events of the last fif- teen years, would have wiped that small adjective out. We do not know why it should outlive the poets who have written and been forgotten in that time — the steamboats that have been built and used up — the politicians who have flourished and fallen — the com- ets that have glittered and gone — the newspapers that have started and stopped. The secret of that little adjective's imperishableness is worth analyzing — especially by poets and the patentees of "asbestos safes." We wish we could stumble upon as long- lived a conjunction ! Seriously, we are annoyed and hurt at the discov- ery of a hostility that could make itself heard, in a place we owe so much to for past happiness. We beg the Albanians to forgive us for the unintentional offence, and to take us and our Mirror into that favor of which we have always been ambitious. The spot where all the winds of heaven turn the corner — the coolest and most enjoyable spot in the hottest and least enjoyable summer's day — is the out- side bastion of Castle Garden. We made our way there a few days ago, when the streets were fairly in a swoon with the breathless heat, and it was as cool and breezy, outside the round castle, as a hill-top on a May morning. For children — for happy idlers with a book — for strangers who wish to study the delicious panorama of the bay — there is no place comparable to the embrasures, parapets, and terraces of Castle Garden. TWO OR THREE LITTLE MATTERS. There is 110 struggling against it — we have a need to pass the sum- mer in some place that God made. We have argued the instinct down — every morning since May-day — while shaving. It is as cool in the city as in the country, we believe. We see as many trees, from our window (living opposite St. Paul's churchyard), and as much grass, as we could take in at a glance. The air we breathe, outside the embrasures of Castle Garden, every afternoon, and on board the Hoboken and Jersey boats, every warm evening, are entire rec- ompenses to the lungs for the day's dust and stony heat. And then God intends that somebody shall live in the city in summer-time, and why not we? By the time this argument is over, our chin and our re- bellious spirit are both smoothed down. Breakfast is ready — as cool fruit, as delicious butter under the ice, and as charming a vis-d-vis over the white cloth and coffee-tray as we should have in the country. We go to work after breakfast with passable content. The city cries, and the city wheels, the clang of the char- coal cart and the importunities of printer's imp — all blend in the passages of our outer ear as unconsciously and fitly as brook-noises and breeze-doings. We are well enough till two. An hour to dinner — passed in varnished boots and out-doors-inesses — somewhat a weary hour, we must say, with a subdued longing for some earth to walk upon. Dinner — pretty well ! Discontent and sorrow dwell in a man's throat, and go abroad while it is watered and swept. The hour after dinner has its little resignations also — coffee, music, and the "angel-visit" from the nursery. Five o'clock comes round, and with it nature's demand for a pair of horses. (Alas ! why are we not centaurs, to have a pair of horses when we marry ?) We get into an omnibus, and as we get toward the porcelain end of the city, our porcelain friends pass us in their car- riages, bound out where the earth breathes and the grass grows. An irresistible discontent overwhelms us! The paved hand of the city spreads out beneath us, holding down the grass and shutting off the salu- tary earth-pores, and we pine for balm and moisture! The over-worked mind offers no asylum of thought. It is the out-door time of day. Nature calls us to her bared bosom, and there is a floor of impenetrable stone between us and her! At the end of the omni- bus-line we turn and go back, and resume our paved and walled-up existence, and all the logic of philoso- phy, aided by icecreams and bands of music, would fail to convince us, that night, that we are not vic- tims and wretches. For Heaven's sake, some kind old man give us an acre off the pavement, and money enough to go and lie on the outside of it of summer afternoons! Let us out of this great stone oven ! The city is intolerable ! Oh, from these heated bricks and stones, what moistureless, what wilted, what fainting air comes to the nostrils ! The two river-breezes doing their best to meet across the island, swoon in Broadway. The pores gasp, the muscles droop, the mind is blank and nerveless. Let us out somewhere ! We had such a fever upon us as is expressed above, when a friend offered to drive us to Rockaway. With a mental repetition of the affecting prayer of the poor woman in the ballad, (" Take a white napkin, and wrap my head softly, And then throw me overboard, me and my baby !") we crept into his wagon, and bowled away silently on the road to Jamaica. It was a hot evening, but the smell of the earth, and the woods, and the dairy-farms, roused our drooping petals a little. Jamaica lies somewhat in the island's lap, however, and it was not till we began to sniff the salt of the open Atlantic, that we were once more " capable creatures." But what a revivification as we approached Rockaway ! The sea-breeze nudged up our drooping eyebrows, gave a pull to the loose halliards of our let-go smiles, crisped our pores, and restored everything to its use and its ac- tivity — the irrevocable starch in our shirt-collars alone incapable of rally. Rockaway (we write only for those who know nothing of it) is part of the snowy edge of the Atlantic — St. George's hotel, at Ports- mouth, England, being all but next door to the Rock- away pavilion. Of course there is nothing to take the saline coolness out of the breeze (unless by chance it has come across St. Helena or the Azores), and the difference between the "entire quadruped" in the way of a sea-breeze, and the mixtures they get in some other sea-side places, is worth taking pains for. But let us tell, in plain language, what sort of place Rockaway is— for the benefit of those who are choos- ing a month's resort for health or pleasure. The pavilion of Rockaway is an immense hotel, whose majestic portico forms the centre of a curving beach of two or three miles in the bend, on the south- ern shore of Long Island. From this portico, and from the windows of the hotel, the delightful sight and sound of the beating surf are visible and audible —eternal company to eye and ear. The beach ex- tends for miles either way— a broad floor as smooth as marble, and so hard that a carriage wheel scarce 708 EPHEMERA. leaves a print, and this, as a drive, we presume to be the most delightful and enjoyable in the world. The noiseless tread of the horse, and the unheard progress of the wheels, the snowy surf along the edge of which you keep your way, and the high exhilaration given to the spirits by the sea-breeze, and the enlivening beat of the waves upon the sand at your feet, form, altogether, an enchantment to which, in the way of out-door pleasure, we scarce know a parallel. And, as a tvalk, the pure hard floor of that interminable beach is, of course, equally delightful. The arrangements for bathing are very well man- aged. There are some twenty bathing-houses on the beach, near the house, and, between the hours of ten and twelve in the forenoon, the ocean-side is guarded and kept exclusive to the ladies and their attendants. An omnibus constantly plies between the bathing- houses and the hotel, and to ladies and children, to old men and young, the hour spent in the invigorating surf is the pleasure of the day. All, alike, come back elated and animated, and the society of the place shows very markedly the fillip given by the sea-bath- ing to health and spirits. Children, more especially, who have drooped in the city, pluck up appetite and vigor immediately at Rockaway. As the favorite and regular resort of many of the best families of the city, the society of the pavilion has always been acknowledged to be of a more refined quality and on a more agreeable footing than that of any other watering-place. It is equally removed from useless ceremony and undesirable freedom. Those who wish to combine gayety with the pursuit of health and the enjoyment of luxury, have facilities for all these at Rockaway, in a degree as desirable as it is unusual. The table is not surpassed by that of any hotel even in the city, and this, in a watering-place, is a peculiarity ! Mr. Cranston, the keeper of the house, thoroughly understands his business. As to facilities for getting to Rockaway, the railroad from Brooklyn ferry takes you to Jamaica in half an hour ; from Jamaica, on the arrival of the cars, starts regularly a mammoth omnibus with six horses, and other roomy conveyances are supplied if necessary, which bring you to Rockaway in an hour. All de- lays included, it is about two hours from the city. Certain coolness and certainly-improved health thrown into the scale, the desirableness of Rockaway, as a summer resort, far outweighs that of every other wa- tering-place in the country. A late number of the Southern Literary Messenger contains two poems of uncommon merit for the drift of a periodical. One is by Mr. Gilmore Simms (whose much-worked mine has now and then a very golden streak of poetry), and the other is by H. B. Hirst — a poem of fifty-seven stanzas on the subject of Endtmion. This latter is after Keats. It is very highly studied, very carefully finished, and very airily and spiritually conceived. Its faults are its conceits, which are not always defensible— for instance, the one in italics, in the following beautiful description of Di- ana as she descended to Endymion : — " A crescent on her brow — a brow whose brightness Darkened the crescent ; and a neck and breast On which young love might rest Breathless with passion ; and an arm whose whiteness Shadowed the lily's snow ; a lip the bee Might dream in, and a knee Round as a period ; while her white feet glancing Between her sandals, shed a twilight light Athwart the purple night. Cycling her waist a zone, whose gems were dancing With rainbow rays, pressed with a perfect grace, Her bosom's ivory space." Now we know as well as anybody what the " round of a period" is, and we have seen, here and there, a god- dess's knee, and we declare there is no manner or shape of likeness that justifies the comparison ! With the exception of two or three of these lapses away from nature, however, it is a beautiful poem — this "Endymion" — and will read well in a volume. By the way, let us wonder whether the sweet poetess by the same name is a sister of Mr. Hirst. We consider Niblo's garden one of the chief "broideries" upon our woof of probation in this dirty planet, and if there are to be offsets for good things enjoyed this side of Cocytus, we expect to pay for Mitchell. Oh, thou pleasant Mitchell ! And he to iirow fat under the exercise of such a wand of indus- trious enchantment ! What is the man made of, be- sides brains! We sat through the " Revolt of thk Harem," a night or two ago, and saw all its funny sights, seriatim. The ballet, as intended to be seen, was excellent — for the time and material, indeed, quite wonderful. But we had our little pleasures (not down in the bill), and one of them was to see pretty Miss Taylor, the clever opera-singer, figuring as an Odalisque danseuse ! If that pretty actress be not abducted, and sold to the sultan within a year, we shall think less of the enter- prise of Salem privateers! She only wants to forget that she is Miss Taylor, indeed, to dance uncommonly well — the consciousness of her silk stockings being at present something of a damper to the necessary aban- don. But, modesty and all, she is very charming in this ballet, and one wonders what Mitchell will make of her next ! Korponay, too — the elegant Korponay — figuring as an Abyssinian eunuch ! That, truth to say, had for us a dash of displeasure ! He entered into it with all his might, it is true, and played the nigger with Jim Crow facility ; but the part, for him, was out of character, and we shall not be content till he is dis-niggered by appearing once more in the role of a gentleman. The bath-scene was well arranged, though the prettiest girls were not in the water — (pray why, Master Mitchell ?) And the military evolutions of the revolted ladies were very well done, and will be better done — with a little more practice, and the mend- ing of that corporal's stocking with a hole in it. The town seemed pleased, we thought. We have not yet mentioned the premiere danseuse, Mademoiselle Desjardins, who did very well in the way of her vocation, but from whose feet have de- parted, with the boots she wore, the exquisite symme- try we admired at Simpson's benefit. Ah, ladies, you should wear boots! Here were two feet in tightly- sandalled shoes, looking like two tied-up parcels from Beck's, which, a night or two before, in brodequir bieii faits, looked models of Arabian instep! Ca boots do that? We hereby excommunicate, from the church of true love, all husbands, fathers, and guard- ians, who shall rebel against the preference, by wife, ward, or daughter, of Nunn's boots at S3 50, over Middleton's slippers at ten shillings. The embellish- ment is worth the difference! We have received a very testy letter from some old gentleman, requesting us to reform the gait of the New York ladies. He manages to convey what pecu- liarity it is that offends his eye, but he is mistaken as to the stoop. The lady within stands straight enough ! If he knows this, and means covertly to attack the ar- tificial portion of the outline, we can tell him that he rashly invades, not merely a caprice of fashion (which in itself were formidable enough), but the most jealous symbol and citadel of female domination ! There are ihousands of ladies who would resign carriages and EPHEMERA. 709 Batin without a sigh, but who would die by fire and fagot rather than yield the right to mount on horse- back in the masculine riding habit! " Wearing the breeches" is a worn-out figure of speech, but does anybody in his senses believe that the usurpation has not taken refuge in a new shape ? Need we open our correspondent's eyes any further ? What bird is the most pronounced and unequivocal type of martial and masculine bravery ? What bird is the farthest re- move, in shape, air, and habits, from his female part- ner ? What bird lives up systematically to woman's ideal of a hero — a life of fighting and making love? Draw the outline from the comb of a fighting-cock to the feather-tip of his bustle, and you have the eidolon of male carriage — and the dressmaker's ne plus ultra! We warn off our correspondent! LETTER FROM CINNA BEVERLET, ESQ., TO N. P. WILLIS. Saratoga, U. S. Hotel, August 1. You are feeding the news-hopper of your literary mill, my dear poet, and I am trying on the old trick of gayety at Saratoga. Which of us should write the other a letter ? You, if you say so— though as I get older, I am beginning to think well of the town, even in August. You have your little solaces, my fast liver ! Well— what shall I tell you ? This great khan in in the desert of dulness is full, to the most desirable uncomfonableness. Shall [ begin with the men ? God made them first, and as it is a test of the ultimate degree of refinement to reapproach nature, why. let men have the precedence ! Less American than phi- losophical, you will say ! — but men first, let it be ! I must have my way in my post-meridian. There used to be dandies! That was in the time when there was an aristocracy in the country. With the levelling (from the middle to the top) that has been going on for the last ten or twelve years, the incentive, somehow, seems gone, or, account for it how you will — there are no dandies! I am inclined to think that two causes may have contributed to it — the indis- cretion of tailors in using gentlemen's ideas promis- cuously, and the attention paid to dress by all classes — everybody who can buy a coat at all, being within one degree of comme ilfaut ! The other side of that degree is not far enough off from the mob, and so dandyism is discouraged. Needlessly, it is true, for the differ- ence is marked enough; but the possibility of a woman's being beautiful enough to adore, and yet not wise enough to know that degree of difference ! Ah, my dear Willis, that an angel may " walk unrecog- nised !" It has killed the class ! There is one dandy only, at Saratoga, and he is but the dovetail upon the age gone by — a better-dressed man ten years ago than this morning at breakfast. One dandy among three thousand "fashionables!" It is early in the season, it is true, and (as a youth said to me yesterday, with a clever classification) " all Car- penters coats are gone this year to Newport." But, still, there are those here — done into stereotype, and reckless of the peculiarities in themselves which are susceptible of piquant departures from the fashion — who would have been, twenty years ago, each one a phenix unresembled ! How delightful the springs were, in those days of marked men! How adored they were by the women ! How generously (by such petting as is now unknown) their anxieties of toilet were repaid and glorified ! How the arrival of each " particular star" was hailed by the rushing out of the white dresses upon the portico of Congress hall, the acclamations, the felicitations, the inquiries tender and uproarious ! There was a joyous recipro- city of worship between men and women in those days! — and as innocent as joyous ! Compare it with the arms'-length superfinery, and dangerous pent-up- itude of noic ! And now, my dear Willis, a cautious word or two about the women. There are " belles" at Saratoga, well-born, well-moulded, and well-dressed — five or six of the first degree of perilous loveliness, none of the second degree (I don't know why) and fifty or sixty with beauty enough to make, each one, a dull man happy. The rest are probably immortal creatures, and have angels to look after them — but, as they make no sacrifices in proportion to their mortal plainness, they are ciphers, at least till doomsday. I will not "mpair my advantages by telling, to an enterprising admirer like yourself, even the names of the adorables, for as I slide into the back-swath of the great mower, I am jealous of opportunity — but there is one woman here who was the electric light of the court of France when I was abroad, a creature of that airy stateliness that betrays the veiled symmetry " Of the fair form that terminates so well !" and she is as beautiful now as then, for a kind of tender and maternal mournfulness of eye has more than made up for the fainter roses and more languishing lilies of lip and cheek. (God be praised for compensations !) But, without specifying more to you, I must hold back a bit of speculation that I have in reserve, while I make you marvel at a triumph of toilet — achieved by the kind of short gown, or kirtle,* never before seen but at a wash-tub, but promoted now to be the lode- star of the drawing-room ! There are articles of dress, you know, which are intensijiers — making vulgarity more vulgar, aristocracy more aristocratic — and the lady who comes kirtled to breakfast at Saratoga, is of Nature's daintiest fabric, only less proud than win- ning — but fancy a butloned-up frock-coat over a snowy petticoat, and you can picture to yourself the saucy piquancy of the costume. Titania in the laundry! I was going to philosophize upon the changes in lady-tactics within the last few years, but I will just hint at a single point that has impressed me. The primitive confidingness of American girlhood (the loveliest social phase that ever ascended from the shepherd's fold to the drawing-room) has been aban- doned for the European mamma-dom and watchful restraint, but without some of the compensatory Eu- ropean concomitants. I will not "lift the veil" by telling what those concomitants are. It would be a delicate and debateable subject. But the effect of this partial adaptation is, in my opinion, far more dan- gerous than what it seeks to supplant or remedy, and among other evils is that of making culpable what was once thought innocent. I shudder at the manufac- ture of new sins in a world where enough, for all needful ruin, grows wild by the road-side. I do not believe we shall grow purer by Europeanizing. What else would you like to know ? The water tastes as metallic as of old, though the beauties around the rim of the fountain are an increased congregation. The Marvins keep their great caravansary admirably well, as usual, though, surviving amid such a cataract of travel, they should rather call their hotel "Goat Island" than "United States." Union hall is making a fortune out of the invalid saints, and Con- gress hall looks romantic and flirt-wise as ever ; and by-the-way, they are about to enlarge it, with a portico overlooking the spring. Delicious dinners can be had at the lake? and an omnibus runs there regularly, and in all matters, Saratoga enlarges. It serves a needful •I have since discovered that this promoted article of dress was « dug up" by the spirited belles of Carolina, and is called at the south a " Jib-along-josey." 710 EPHEMERA. purpose in this gregarious country; and on the whole, no place of escape is pleasanter to man or woman. How is the joyous brigadier? Make my homage acceptable to his quill and his epaulets, and ask him, in his next hour of inspired song, to glorify proud beauty in humble kirtle. Come to Saratoga, my dear Willis, and let me tell your how sincerely I am yours, Cinna Beverley. The time will come, perhaps, when we shall be a connoisseur in snuff-boxes, insects, or-autographs — but, meantime, we are curious in the cultivation of the rarer kinds of friendship. The ingenious idea oc- curred to us, some ten years ago, of turning the waste overflow of our heart into some such special and available irrigation, and the result we shall leave to be published posthumously, under the title of Amicul- ture, or a Trkatise on Love-Waste. Our proper channels of affection being first supplied to the point of overflow, we have felt free to venture upon very bold experiments with the remainder, and some of our specimens, of course, are simply curiosities ; but we have them (friends) of every quality, form, and condi- tion, male and female, preserved with studious care and industry — guardedly confining ourselves to only I one of a kind. Some of the humbler specimens are ' of great beauty, but will show better preserved and pressed in a posthumous amibarium. We can only venture, in our lifetime, to give specimens of the more ornamental varieties ; and our object now is to introduce a leaf of the species "callow dandy" — in other words, to give you a letter from a very elegant lad with a nascent mustache, a prized friend of ours, now, for the first time, at Saratoga. He writes about trifles, but in hot weather we (for one) like trifles best; and as he writes, after all, with a dash of philosophy, we have not thought it worth while to omit' or alter. Here is his letter, written in the vanishing legibility of a once good school-hand : — U. S. Hotel, Aug. — . Dear Willis: Your kind note to St. John, of the Knickerbocker, got me the state-room with the pic- ture of " Glenmary" on the panel, and I slept under the protection of your household gods — famously, of course. The only fault I found with that magnificent boat, was the right of any "smutched villain" to walk through her. It is a frightful arrangement that can sell.to a beauty and a blackguard, for the same money, the right to promenade on the same carpet, and go to j sleep with the same surroundings on the opposite sides of a pine partition ! Give me a world where I antipodes slay put! But what a right-royal, "slap- up" supper they give in the Knickerbocker! They'll make the means better than the end— travelling better than arriving— if they improve any more ! I had a I great mind to go back the next day, and come up j again. Saratoga's great fun. I had no idea there were so many kinds of people — beasts and beauties. Five hundred men and women in one house is a lumping of things that shoves aside a great many secrets there's no room for. Old women popping out of their rooms, with their wigs off, to call a waiter — lazy men coming to breakfast unshaved — cross people that can not be smiling all day long — lovers besieging, when the lady would prefer cracker and cheese— jealous people looking daggers while they pretend to blow their noses — bustles flattened by dinner-chairs into upright pianos — ladies spreading their nostrils at un- expected introductions — old maids in calm disgust, and just-outs in " sweet confusion" — a Turk in the portico selling attars, and a Jew in the drawing-room, shining in patent leather — all pretty good sights, as the world goes, and stuff for moralizing — eh, old Willis ? The charm of society at Saratoga lies in getting the thing without paying for it. To see a pretty woman in town, one has to resolve at breakfast, shape his arrangements, stick three hours to his resolve, trav- el a mile, ring a bell, run the chance of intruding or "not at home," talk to some bore in the way of aunt or brother, and two to one, after all, you light upon an undress humor in the lady visited. In the great drawing-room of the United States, on the contrary, the whole visitable world is reduced to the compass of a gamut, and you have it all within the spread of your hand, and all in tune ! You dress, breakfast, and sit on a sofa, and in ten minutes your entire female ac- quaintance passes within three feet of your nose, and every one as ready to be talked to as if you had ridden three miles, and wasted patience and a forenoon to have that pleasure. You leave her when you like, without the trouble of an adieu, see and talk to twenty more with the same charming economy of time and labor, and having got through your duty-talks by eleven, you select your favorite and devote yourself to her for the remaining twelve or fourteen hours — "a month's love in a day !" This, if you please, is letting M the serious part of life go by Like the neglected sand," and very glad to be rid of it! Now, don't you think, my paternal Willis, that society in town has too many hinderances, obstructions, cross-purposes, exactions, mystifications, and botherations — considering that a plague slices off just as much life as a pleasure! I wish the Marvins would take a lease of New Y"ork, roof it in, knock away walls, and make a "Springs" of it ! It is so very cumbrous, letting people have whole houses to themselves ! Have you anatomized this new fashion of gaiter- boots, my dear dandy ? Do you observe what a break- down they give to the instep, and how shamble-footed, and down at the heel the men seem who wear them ? After all, there is a " blood look" to a man's leg as well as a horse's, and no dandy can look "clean- limbed" with unstrapped trousers and his apparent foot cut in two by shoes of two colors. The eye wants a clean line from the point of the toe to the swearing- place of the patriarchs, and an unblemished instep rising to the pantaloon. The world's tailors have been ever since breeches-time learning the proper ad- justment of straps, and now it is perfected, the capri- cious world condemns it to disuse ! Write an article about it, my dear Willis! And then these gathered French trousers — making a man into a " big-hipped humble-bee" — as if we needed to be any more like women ! I see, too, that here and there a youth has a coat padded over the hips ! Though, apropos of coats, there is a well-dressed man here with a new cut of Carpenter's. He's a Prometheus, that Carpenter — heating his goose by undoubted "fire from heaven!" The skirts of the last inspiration cross slightly behind, aiding the Belvidere " pyramid inverted" (from the shoulders down) and of course promoting the fine arts of tailoring. Allowing freely the tip-toppiness of Jennings in trousers, waistcoats, and overcoats, there is nobody like this Philadelphia man for coats! You might as well restore the marble chips to the nose of a statue as suggest an improvement to him. And what a blessing this is, my dear Willis'! Do you remem- ber the French dandy's sublime sentiment: " Si Von rencontrait un habit parfait dans toute sa vie, on pour- rait presque se passer d' 'amour /" Ah! such an interminable letter as I am writing! Your friend " Jo. Sykes," the puller of the big wires, is here, handsome and thoughtful, with a daughter who is to be the belle of 1860 — the loveliest child I have seen in my travels. The beautiful women I will EPHEMERA. 711 tell you about over our olives and tinta. No events that I can trust to the indiscretion of pen and ink. Ever yours, Augustus Iliho. Of course there was a postscript, but that we must reserve for posterity. Our friend 'Gus Iliho is not a man to write altogether upon third person topics. But we have another friend at Saratoga — a female speci- men — and we hope to hear from her, 'twixt this and the season over. Our readers will please expect it. THE CABINET. (" The Committee" trimming pencil in the Eastern-most bathin g-house on Rockaway beach. Enter the briga- dier with nostrils inflated.) Brig. — Fmff! fmff! God bless the Atlantic ocean ! Fmff! "Salt sea" indeed! I never smelt a breeze fresher. Fmff! fmff! fmff! You got the start of me, my dear boy ! (pulls his last high heel out of the deep sand and sits down on the threshold.) What say to a strip and dip before we come to business ? Com. — Fie ! — general, fie ! Look through your fingers at the other end of the beach ! It is the hour of oceanic beatitude — the la lies bathing ! The mur- muring waters will be purer for the interview. Bathe we in the first wave after ! Brig. — How can you " Play in wench-like words with that Which is so serious ?" Did you bring a towel, mi-boy? Com. — Tut ! — would you offend the south wind, that proffers the same office so wooingly ? Walk on the beach, man, and let the sun peruse you, whileyoudry! Brig. — So should I be more red, with a vengeance ! But I don't like this dry-salting, mi-boy ! It's too sticky ! Ye gods ! look at the foam upon that wave ! What is that like, my poet ? Com. — Like the unrolling of a bale of lace on a broad counter! The "tenth wave" is the head clerk, and the clams and soft crabs are the ladies shopping! How 1 love the affinities of Art and Nature! Brig. — Poh ! Where's Nature's twine and brown paper? Don't be transcendental ! Cum. — How ignorant you are, not to know eel-grass and devil's apron — Nature's twine and brown paper! My dear general, were you ever introduced to the Atlantic? Is this your first visit? Stand up in the doorway ! (Brigadier rises and the surf boxes to the ground.) General Morris ! the Atlantic ocean. Atlantic ocean ! General Morris. I am happy to bring two such distinguished " swells" together. Though (apro- pos, Mr. "Heaving Main !") the general is a gay man! Look out for your " pale Cynthia !" The moon is not famed for her constancy ! Brig. — What are you mumbling there, mi-boy! 1 wish, under the tender influence of these suggesting waters, to express a wish that you would write some poetry, or give us a new tale, or dash us off a play, or — Com. — Or, in some other way make rubbish for posterity! No, sir! There are no pack-horses in Posthumousland, and, as much as will ride in a ghost's knapsack, with his bread and cheese, is as much, in quantity, as any man should write who has pity for his pedestrian soul on its way to dooms-day ! Why, general, the tales which I am about to publish (in- cluding " Inklings," "Loiterings" etc., etc.), will make, of themselves, a most adult-looking octavo. My poems and plays have tonnage enough to carry, at least, all the bulk necessary to a fame; my miscel- lanies, yet to be collected, will make a most sizeable volume of slip-slop; pencillings is no pamphlet; and Letters from under a Bridge, and other epistolary production do you see how beautifully the sand immortalizes the industrious waves that write succes- sively their sparkling lines on the beach ! Brig. — Don't malign your "eternal fame, mi-boy !" Com — More eternal, I believe, than the love of the impertinent Lothario in the sonnet : — (" But say, my all ! my mistress ! and my friend ! What day next week th' eternity shall end?") but how much more eternal it would be, if they would make the genesis of a man's works like that of the patriarchs — dateable from the first satisfactory off-shoot of his manhood ! Do you remember the expressive genealogy of Shem ? 12. And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years and begat Salah : 13. And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years and begat sons and daughters. 14. And Eber lived jour and thirty years and begat Peleg: 15. And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. And so on, up to Abraham, whose father was seven- ty years old when he was born. But don't you sup- pose these boys did anything before they were thirty- odd ? Their history begins with their first creditable production ! Eber was nothing till he begat Peleg, though, very likely, the critics of that time "preferred very much his earlier productions." Brig. — And you think you could begin, now, with your first Peleg and Salah ? Com. — You have said it. But, as I hinted before, my posthumous knapsack is already full of rubbish, and a thought strikes me ! Brig. — " Call it out !" Com. — I'll change my style and start a new reputa- tion, incog! Brig. — Famous ! Com. — And sell some man the glory of it for an annuity ! Brig. — Good ! Com. — (Thoughtfully) — The old countess of Des- mond shed her teeth three times. Brig. — A precedent in nature. Com. — (Firmly) — Soit! Done! So be it! Hang me if I don't ! You'll hear of a new author before long — one that beats me hollow ! Look me up a purchaser, my dear brigadier ! Literary fame furnish- ed at — say, three thousand dollars per annum ! Brig.— Mi-boy, the ladies have left the beach — 1 wonder if the sea would condescend to us, now ! Com. — Peltry after roses and ivory ! — I don't know! Brig. — Talking of Esau — he should have lived in cravat-time. Well-drest, your hirsute customers looks not amiss ! (No pun, you villain !) Stand back, my unclad-boy ! Here comes a wagon load of women ! Com. — Chambermaids and nurses; who, by the way they flock to the beach in the male hours, must either have eyes with a nictitating membrane, or a modesty that is confined to what they hear. I wish to heaven that all females were patricians — undesecrated by low taste and servitude ! It's like classifying owls with angels because they are both feathered, to call these rude creatures icomen .' What's that scar on your breast, brigadier ? Brig.— Slide down your " nictitating membrane," mi-boy, and don't be too observing! Here goes! Hup! (The brigadier rushes into the surf, takes a stitch through three frills of the island's shirt, and rises like a curly-headed sun from the ocean.) Com (solus).— There he swims! God bless him for a buoyant brigadier ! How the waves tumble over his plump shoulders, delighted to feel the place where ride his epaulets and his popularity! * Look out for sharks, my dear general ! They snuff a poet afar off ! 712 EPHEMERA. Natural victims we are to them — on land or water ! Hear him laugh as he shakes the brine out of his whiskers ! Was ever such a laugh ! His heart gives that " ha ! ha !" a fillip as it sets out ! I must swim off to him ! Clear the beach, soft crab and sand-bird! Morris and Willis must swim together ! Brig. (Sitting down to dry.) — This salting freshens a man, and this wetting makes him dry. Oh for a drink and the asp of Cleopatra — a cobbler and a wiper ! Shake yourself, mi-boy ! Com. — Suppose we roll in the sand and take a wrestle, like the athletse of old — eh ? How do you propose to get the sand and gravel out from your doigts dupied, general ? Brig. — " Gravelled," we are, mi-boy, but not " for lack of matter !" Let's dress first, and then go down and rinse our feet with the aid of the moon's lover — lacking a servant to bring a pail ! Are you dry ? Com. — Inner and outer man — very ! What's this — dropped out of your pocket ! Brig. — A song* that I wrote for Brown to set to music. Shall I read it to you ? (Brigadier reads with his hand on his breast.) 'tis now the promised hour. u The fountains serenade the flowers. Upon their silver lute — And, nestled in their leafy bowers The forest-birds are mute : The bright and glittering hosts above, Unbar their golden gates, While nature holds her court of love, And for her client waits'. Then, lady, wake — in beauty rise ! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle in the skies To light thee to thy bower. " The day we dedicate to care — To love the witching night ; For all that's beautiful and fair In hours like these unite. E'en thus the sweets to flowerets given — The moonlight on the tree — And all the bliss of earth and heaven — Are mingled, love, in thee. Then, lady, wake — in beauty rise ! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle in the skies To light thee to thy bower." Com. — True and smooth as a locomotive on a "T" rail! Is it sold and set? Brig. — Beautifully set to music by Brown, and sold to Atwill, who will publish it immediately. Com — It's a delicious song, my happy troubadour, and destined to tumble over bright lips enough to make a sunset. That we should so envy the things we make ! My kingdom for a comb ! I shall never get the salt out of my hair — I'm " briny as the beaten mariner, Oft soused in swelling Tethys' saltish tears." Tf you want a curl to keep, now's your time ' Brig.— Willis ? Com.— My lord ? Brig. — I hear you were voted in to the " Light Guard" last week. Com. —Yes, sir, an honorary private ! I feel the compliment, for they are a set of tip-top capables, joy- ous and gentlemanly — but, my dear martinet, what the devil do they want of a man's dura mater? Brig. — A. man's what ? Com. — The weary membrane of an author's brain. Brig. — They want it, you say ? Com — With the official announcement came an order to equip, myself according to directions, and • This song, set to music, has been purchased and copv righted by Mr. Atwill. ! ! " deposite my fatigue-jacket" in the armory of the corps ! What fatigue-jacket have I, but the jacket of 1 1 my brain ? Brig. — True ! Pick up your boots and come along ? (Exit the brigadier barefoot, and the cabinet adjourns.) Half an hour later — room No. 300, Rockaway Pavil- ion. Two sherry cobblers on the table, with two straws, erect in the ice.) Brig. — How like this great structure on the sand must be, to a palace amid the ruins of Persepolis ! Com. — The palace of Chilminar with forty columns and stairs for ten horses to go up abreast ! — very like indeed — especially the sand ! Somewhat like, in another respect, by the way — that the palaces of Persepolis were the tombs of her kings, and Rock- away is the place of summer repose for the indignant aristocracy of Manhattan. Brig. — True, as to the aristocracy, but why " indig- nant ?" Com — That there can be fashion without them at Saratoga (which there could not be once), and that " aristocratic" and " fashionable" are two separate estates, not at all necessary to be combined in one individual. Rockaway is full, now, of the purest porcelain — porcelain fathers, porcelain mothers, porce lain daughters ! Brig — Then why is not the society perfect at Rock away? Com. — Because the beaux go after the crockery al Saratoga. The rush, the rowdydow, the flirtations and game suppers, are all at Saratoga ! Aristocracy likes to have the power of complaining of these things as nuisances inseparable from its own attraction. Aris- tocracy builds high walls, but it likes to have them pertinaciously overleaped. The being let alone within their high walls, as they are now at their exclusive watering-places, was not set down in the plans of aris- tocratic campaigns ! Brig. — But they are charming people here, mi- boy? Com. — The best-bred and most agreeable people in the world, but the others give a beau more for his money. In all countries, but ours, people make ac- quaintances for life. But the hinderances and obstacles which are not minded at the beginning of a lifetime acquaintance, are intolerable in an acquaintance for a week (the length of most summer acquaintances with us), and the floating beaux from the south, the west, the Canadas, and the West Indies, go where they can begin at the second chapter — omitting the tedious preface and genealogical introduction. Brig. — Rockaway is stupid, then. Com. — Quiet, not stupid. The lack of beaux and giddy times is only felt by the marriageable girls, and there are a great many people in the world besides marriageable girls. And upon this same " many people," will depend the prosperity of the Pavilion. When it is known that it is a delightful place for everything but flirting, it will be a centre for sober people to radiate to, and a paradise for penserosos like you and me, general — eh? I suppose Cranston would as lief (liefer, indeed) that his rooms should be filled with tame people as wild. Brig. — How's your cobbler ? Com — Fit to immortalize the straw that passes it ! Brig. — What birds are those, my Willis ? Com. — Shore birds that build in the sedge and feed on molluscous animals — death on the soft crabs ! And, general, do you know that the male of this bird (called the phalarope), is a most virtuous example to our sex ? What do you think he does ? Brig. — Feeds the little-uns ? ETHKMEllA. 713 Com.— Hatches them, half and half, with the she- bird, and helps bring thetn up ! Brig.— la the gender shown in the plumage ? Com. — No. Brig.— So 1 thought. Your handsome peacock, now, leaves it all to the hen. The domestic virtues are their own reward — remarkably so ! Is that the dinner-bell ? Com. — Yes, it is that music ! " Give me excess of it— that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die." I'll meet you below, my dear general ! Adieu ! {Cabinet adjourns for the day.) That I feelings in common than the pulpit admits, believe. Com. — The chasm between them in this world should be narrowed, for they have many sympathies. The bigot makes the separation unnaturally wide. Who is the one man* mentioned in Scripture as "loved" by the Savior? The "young ruler" who could not give up his " great possessions" "to inherit eternal life !" Is not this tender interest in one " out of the fold," a lesson — a most unheeded lesson, to the ? I talk feelingly of this, for I have an ad- strict sect THE CABINET. miration of goodness and purity that has never sepa I rated itself from my love of beauty. I love a simple 1 and unobtrusive piety, and am drawn irresistibly ! toward the possessor. Yet this better part of my nature is excluded with the rest, when 1 am denied ! Christian sympathy. Come out of dream-land, brigadier, and observe the tender violet in that upper , j cloud! (Rockaway beach, Sunday evening. The brigadier and \ Brig.— I was thinking whether the wave that falls committee seated on their boot-legs, after walking two j) upon tne beach is to be congratulated or pitied— com- mies, barefoot, on the hard sand.) paring its arrival, that is to say, with its "swell" time .-Boots are durance vile, mi-boy! How "^^h , upon^se^^^^ f ^^ ^ ^ locks with which it approaches the beach, though they are breakers ahead when seen from the sea, are beautiful when seen from the shore— as the head, whitened with the dreaded troubles of life, grows more beautiful in the eyes of angels, as it is more whitened and troubled, approaching heaven ! But what hypocrites these shore-birds are, with their we lose in not keeping our feet open to female assidu- || ities ! Fancy one of those apostolic washings—a sweet woman kneeling before you, and, with her hair breathing perfumes over your ankles, performing it as an office of tenderness and hospitality! Can patent leather be weighed against desuetude so melancholy ! Com. — I am satisfied that the tender pink in your toe-nails was intended by nature to be admired, my dear brigadier ! And there is nature eloquent in a corn — against the airle boot and stocking ! Why is a poet like a sandal ? Brig. — Philosophize, my dear boy, don't quibble ! Com. — Because he's a soul kept under with a thong ! Brig. — Willis, 1 love the sea ! Com. — So sung Barry Cornwall, "the open sea." As if Pharaoh had not yet passed over! To me the sea seems, on the contrary, for ever slamming down trap-doors of surf, and carefully covering the " treas- ures of the deep" with cold water. I never saw any- thing less "open!" Brig. — There goes the sun down ! as red as — what shall 1 compare it to ? Com.—K wafer, sealing up this 17th of August for the doomsday postoffice. Happy they who have not forgotten the P. S. of repentance ! Brig.— Ah, mi-boy! that pious infancy of yours! It oozes through the after-crust of your manhood in drops of poetry ! Pity you are less of a saint than you were at seventeen ! ( Com.— Less of a saint I am not, though more of a sinner lam .' All I had seen at seventeen was beauty and goodness, and with an innate sense of beauty and goodness, I worshipped the Maker, my youth through, with a poet's adoration ! The heart melts and drops upon its knees within a man, at any sudden revelation of unusual loveliness; and I have worshipped God, and loved one of his angelic creatures, with the white quivering lip of the same rush of blood inward. If to look often and adoringly " through nature up to na- ture's God" be devotion, I am still devout. No sun- set, no morning's beauty, no rich and sudden sight of loveliness in scenery, goes by without the renewal of that worship in my heart that was once religion. I praise God daily. Worldling as I am, and hardly as I dare claim any virtue as a Christian, there is that within me which sin and folly never reached or tainted. The unprompted and irresistible thoughts, upsprings in my mind in any scene of beauty, would seem prayers, and pure ones, to many an humble Christian. Pardon me for reading to you this inner leaf, my dear brigadier ! Brig. — Thank you, on the contrary, for its philos- ophy, my dear boy ! Saints and worldlings have more remonstrance— I whitest plumes turned earthward; confinement of backed snipe on the beach, with hi See that dark- white breast and belly. Brig. — Rather what knowledge of mankind they have— preferring to keep their darker side for the more forgiving eye of Heaven! Com.— True— the better reading! Do you like snipe? Brig. — With a pork shirt they are fairish — that is, if you can't get woodcock. But, mi-boy, it isn't you that need ever eat snipe ! Com. — As how ? Brig.— (Pulling out the Sunday Mercury and read- ing)— " Willis, it" is said, has profited $5,000 by the sale of the last edition of ' Pencillings by the Way.'" Com.— The mischief he has! — for "has" read would be pleased to. Perhaps the editor of the Mercury will be kind enough to fork over the difference be- tween fact and fiction ! By-the-way, I have read the book, myself, for the first time in eight years, and I have been both amazed and amused with the difference between what I saw then, and what I know now ! And I am going to give the public the same amazement and amusement, by writing for the Mirror a review of " Pencillings" with my new eyes— showing the inter- esting difference between first impressions and after familiarity. £ n 'g.— They'll want to read " Pencillings ' over again, mi-boy! Com.— For a hasty pudding it has held out surpri- singly already. The fifth edition, embellished with engravings, is still selling well in England, and in the most stagnant literary month of the year we have sold two editions, as you know. I an. inclined to fear that 1 shall be less known by my careful writings than by this unrevised book-written between fat.gue and sleep, by roadsides and in most unstudyhke places, and republished, in the Mirror edition, exactly as first written ! There is a daguerreotypity in literal first impressions, my dear general, and a man would write an interesting letter, the first moment after seeing the Colosseum for the first time, though a descr.pt.on from memory, a month after, would be very stupid. Did vou ever feel posthumous, brigadier? Brig.— No. I never was dead. 714 EPHEMERA. Com. — Nor I, except "in trespasses and sins" — but a letter I received to-day has given me a most pos- thumous sensation. It was sent me to publish, by a lady who has lived several years abroad, and has lately revisited Saratoga. It will "rub my brass" as the maids say, to publish the passage about myself (quoted from the letter of a German baron), but it may make somebodies buy " Pencillings" to know that it has passed abroad into a vade-mecum for travellers. So, down modesty and swell pocket! Who knows but that the " Sunday Mercury," that " lighted on the heaven-kissing hill" of $5,000, may be a better prophet than historian ! Set your heels comfortably into the sand, general, and listen to this letter. There are some sweet lines at the close, written by the same lady after visiting the home of the young poetess Da- vidson, whose precocious genius and premature death have been so feelingly written upon : — " When you and I, my dear sir, met so pleasantly some weeks since at Saratoga, I forgot to give you an extract from a letter which I had received from Ger- many. No one can be insensible to deserved praise from a far land, and I know you will read with gratifi- cation these few lines from a distinguished friend of mine : ' I remember with pleasure our visit to your splendid frigate, the United States, in the bay of Na- ples. We met Mr. N. P. Willis on board, and after his cruise I met him again at Lady Parley's. He will j not remember me, but if you ever see him, tell him ! that a person who has visited almost all the spots i described in his "Pencillings by the Way," feels the greatest pleasure in reading his book at least twice a | year. It accompanies him regularly from Dresden to hit estates in the spring, and back to the city in the autumn.' " Not having seen Saratoga for many years, I was curious to perceive what changes time had made. Of course, its outward condition is greatly improved, and the remarkable change of all is the transition of the fashion and gayety from Congress hall to the United States hotel. It would be unwise to compare this latter establishment with any other that we have seen in Europe, inasmuch as the whole order of arrange- ment is entirely different ; but this must be conceded, that for a fortnight, no place in the world offers more amusement. One may remain months at Carlsbad, Baden-Baden, &c, without fatigue, in consequence of the entirely independent manner of living; but Saratoga must be taken, to be enjoyed, in homeopathic doses of the beforementioned fourteen days. It is really extraordinary how well-ordered and conducted is the United States hotel, when we remember the crowds that dwell within its four walls and its colo- nies; and assuredly the brothers* who bring about this state of things, deserve great commendation. Having been repeatedly told, since my return from a long absence, that Saratoga had deteriorated, I con- fess to having seen nothing of the sort. I had the good fortune to meet some of the most remarkable men of my country, and many of the fairest of its daughters, and to enjoy their society. I hold that Saratoga must be visited upon broad American prin- ciples — no cliques (like will come to like) — but a gra- cious word for all. At Carlsbad, and all other conti- nental watering-places, the government provides a master of ceremonies, who introduces, regulates the balls, &c. The voice of the people gives this posi- tion, at the United States hotel, to a citizen of Balti- more, and allow me to say, that those who look upon him as a mere manager of balls, totally mistake his character; for a kinder and better heart never beat within a human breast than he possesses. Indeed, Bal- timore seems to have been singularly well represented this year — the incomparable beauty of its women * Messrs. Marvin — excellent hosts and most worthy men. eclipsing all, and the wit alone of one finished gentle- man of that town being sufficient to leaven a ' mass meeting.' "I think the visits of clergymen to watering-places a signal benefit, when they resemble the Rev. Dr. Bethune, engaging in pleasing conversation with young and old, whom he enlivened by his eloquence. He never lost sight of the great aim of his existence — their improvement. Ever surrounded by eager listen- ers, he left them better, wiser. On the whole, I think we must consider Saratoga as a great public good — a neutral ground, where the south discovers that the north is not a Mont Blanc, and the north perceives that the south is not a Vesuvius ! " My last visit at Saratoga wasto the late home of the gifted Davidsons. Their brother kindly accompanied me, and presented me to his bereaved father. It seemed, as I lingered amidst their remains, a very home of shadows'* — a wondrous contrast to the surrounding scenes. I considered myself quite fortunate in hiving paid this visit, as Dr. Davidson leaves Saratoga shortly, and the establishment will thereby be entrHy dismembered. * " A home of shadows ! mid the din Of fashion's gay and glittering scene So calm, so purely calm within Breathing of holiness serene. " A home of shadows ! where the twain, Who dwelt within its hallowed core, Are sought with wondering eyes in vain, Alas ! to bless its walls no more .' " The pair have winged their glorious flight, And, borne by angels through the air, To realms of everlasting light, Are linked with cherubs bright and fair. " Some student, yet, in time untold, Star-seeking in the dark blue sky, Will, midst its silver lamps, behold These joyous Pleiads wandering by. " Back, back to earth — its pleasures, cares — Must thou, my soul, my thoughts be given, But, bless the spot, that, midst its snares, Called for a lingering look to heaven." Brig. — Charming verses, and she must be a fresh hearted and impressible woman who wrote them. Do you remember the first thought of " Pencillings,' mi-boy — the oysters at Sandy Welsh's, over which 1 offered to send you abroad ? Com. — Theodore Fay, you, and I, supping together! Brig. — You have a way of knowing opportunity when you see it! I little dreamed of so long a leass of you! Dear Theodore! howl should like to eat that supper over again ! Com. — I am very glad it agreed with you (presuming it is me and Theodore you want over again — not the oysters !) They say Fay has grown fat, handsome and diplomatic. When shall we have that sweet fel low back among us? Brig. — When they want the place for a green sec retary, who knows nothing of the court or court Ian guage. As soon as a man has been long enough attached to a legation to be presentable and useful, they recall him ! What is that other letter I brought you ? Com. — From a lady at Fishkill, who is dazzled with the upshoot of "Fanny Forester." She thinks Fan- ny's offhand piquancy is easy to do, and the lettet shows how much she is mistaken. I would fain say an encouraging word, however, for she seems to have the best of motives for wishing to be literary. Now, is it kinder to discourage such beginners at once, or to encourage them good-naturedly into a delusion? Brig. — Always discourage, mi-boy, for if they have genius, they will prosper " like a thunder-cloud, against the wind," EPHEMERA. 715 and if they have none, they are better stopped where they are. How many heart-aching authoresses do we know at this moment, who can write just well enough to be wofully distressed with the reluctance of the market! The only style saleable is the spicy but dif- ficult vein of bright Fanny Forester, and yet, to a neophyte, that very woof seems the easiest woven ! A woman who is more intelligent than the people around her, is very apt to believe that she might be famous, and make money with her pen; and unless " Fair politure walk all her body over, And symmetry rejoice in every part," she endeavors in this way to compensate herself for the lack of belleship. Better raise flowers and sell bouquets, dear Rosalie Beverly ! Com. — The gray lace of twilight's star-broidered veil has fallen over the sea, brigadier. Let us paddle back through the surf-edge to the bathing-houses, boot, and reappear to a world (1 don't think) disconsolate without us. THE CABINET. (Shop-door, Ann street. The Brigadier and Commit- tee standing, sphinx-wise, outside.) Brig. — The "devil" was here just now for " copy," my dear boy ! Com. — The devil here and no Fanny Forester! We have given our readers a taste of this charming incognito, brigadier, and now they'll not feast with- out her! I wonder whether she's pretty? Brig. — So would she be over-endowed. No, mi- boy ! I warrant that, with all her cleverness, she has envied, many a time, the doll of the village! Com. — A woman is, sometimes, wholly unadmired, i who would become enchanting by a change of her i surroundings. That playful wit of Fanny Forester's, j what-like shell soever it inhabits, would make her the idol of a circle of appreciators — for its work is in her \ face, somewhere ! Do you remember George Sand's description of one of her heroines ? "Elle etait jolie par juxta-position. Heureuse, elle eut ete ravissante. ! Le bonheur est la poesie des femmes, comme la toi- lette en est le fard. Si la joi d'un bal eut reflete ses teints rosees sur ce visage pale, si les douceurs d'une vie elegante eussent rempli, eussent vermillione ses joues deja legerement creusees, si l'amour eut ranime ses yeux tristes, elle aurait pu lutter avec les plus belles jeunes filles. II lui manquait ce qui cree une sccondefois la femmc : — les chiffons el les billet-doux.'" Brig. — (who had gone in to escape the French quo- tation, and returned as the last word lingered on the committee's lips).— Write a " billetdoux" to the next unrisen star, mi-boy, and ask her — (him, it, or her) — to shine first, like Fanny Forester, in the columns of the Mirror. I love the baptism of genius, and (mod- estly speaking) I have been the St. John in the wil- derness of new writers. Com. — Apostolic brigadier! You do know a star, even " at the breast" — though, from sucking poets de- liver me mostly, oh, kind Heaven ! They exact a faith in their call and mission that precludes every- thing but the blindest and most acquiescent admira- tion. I remember my own difficult submissions to the corrections of the kind, but truthful and consist- ent critic of my youth, Buckingham of the Boston Courier. He was always right, but it is hard, when your feathers are once smoothed down, to pluck out and re-stick them in your poetical peacockery ! Ah, juvenilities ! We build bridges over chasms of mean- ing, but they drop away behind us, as we pass over! In Heaven, where there will be no grammar and dic- tionary, we shall have a new standard of excellence — thought. Here, it is thought's harness — language! What makes these people throw their potato-parings into the gutter, my dear general ? Brig. — Ann street, mi-boy, calls for the attention of Mayor Harper. The Mirror has a dainty nostril or two, and there are flower-pots in the windows op- posite, and Burgess <fc Stringer keep the choicest of literary conservatories, yet we reside upon a rivulet of swill ! The simple enforcement of the law would ' sweeten things, but there is no police except for crim- inals in this land of liberty. Look at that brace of turtle-doves coming up-street! What loving friend- ships women have, at an age when boys are perfect Ishmaelites. Com. — Pardon me, my dear general, if I correct your cacology. The sportsmen call two turtles a ! dule of turtles, not a brace. Though, by-the-way, 1 have not long been in possession of my learning upon that point. Let me read you a chapter on the nomen- I clature of such matters from this book in my hand. Will you listen? The book is "Goodman's Social History of Great Britain" — a gem of delightful read- ing: — "The stags which ran wild in the king's forests were named as early (if not earlier) as Edward III. (1307), from their antlers; thus the first year the male is called a calf, second year a brocket, third year a spayer, fourth year a stag, fifth year a great stag, sixth year a hart of the first head. "In the notes of Sir Walter Scott's 'Lady of the Lake,' is a curious account of the brytling, breaking up, or quartering of the stag. 'The forester had his portion, the hounds theirs, and there is a little gristle, called the raven's bone, which was cut from the bris- ket, and frequently an old raven was seen perched upon a neighboring tree waiting for it. " The fallow-deer, which are kept in the English parks, have also names, but not exactly the same as for stags. The males and the females the first year are called fawns, second year the females are called does, which name she always retains; but the male is called a prickett; third year he is called a shard; fourth year, a sword ; fifth year, a sword-ell, or sor- ! rell; sixth year, a buck of first head; seventh year, a buck; eighth year, a full buck; he is then fit for killing, and not before : and in the summer is very fat, which he loses in winter. Buck-venison is not fit to eat in winter, and ought not to be killed. "When beasts went together in companies, there , was said to be a pride of lions, a lepe of leopards, a herd of harts, of bucks, and all sorts of deer; a bevy ! of roes, a sloth of bears, a singular of boars, a sowndes i of swine, a dryfte of tame swine, a route of wolves, a harass of horses, a .rag of colts, a stud of mares, a pace of asses, a barren of mules, a team of oxen, a drove of kine, a flock of sheep, a tribe of goats, a sculk of foxes, a cete of badgers, a richess of mar- tins, a fessynes of ferrets, a huske or a down of hares, a nest of rabbits, a clowder of cats, a kendel of young cats, a shrewdness of apes, and a labor of moles. "When animals are retired to rest, a hart was said to be harbored; a buck lodged; a roebuck bedded ; a fox kennelled; a badger earthed; a hare formed; and a rabbit seated. " Dogs which run in packs are enumerated by couples. If a pack of fox-hounds consists of thirty- j six, which is an average number, it would be said to I contain eighteen couples. "Dogs used for the gun, or for coursing, two of them are called a brace, three a leash; but two span- l| iels, or harriers, are called a couple. They also say I a mute of hounds, for a number; a kennel of raches, ! a cowardice of curs, and a litter of whelps. " ' The seasons for alle sortes of venery' were regu- lated in the olden time as follows: The 'time of grace' begins at midsummer, and lasteth to holy-rood ; 716 EPHEMERA. the fox may be hunted from the nativity to the an- nunciation of our lady; the roebuck from Easter to Michaelmas; the roe from Michaelmas to Candlemas; the hare from Michaelmas to midsummer; the wolf, as the fox and the boar, from the nativity to the pu- rification of our lady. " So for birds there is a vocabulary ; and first, for aquatic birds: a herd of swans, of cranes, and of curlews, a dropping of sheldrakes, a spring of teals, a serges of herons and bitterns, a covert of cootes, gag- gles of geese, sutes of mallards, baddylynges of ducks. Now for meadow and upland birds : a congregation of plovers, a walk of snipes, a fall of woodcocks, a muster of peacocks, a nye of pheasants, a dule of turtles, a brood of hens, a building of rooks, a numer- ation of starlings, a flight of swallows, a watch of nightingales, a charm of goldfinches, flights of doves and wood-pigeons, coveys of partridges, bevies of quails, and exaltations of larks. " When a sportsman inquires of a friend what he has killed, the vocabulary is still varied ; he does not use the word pair — but a brace of partridges, or pheasants, a couple of woodcocks ; if he has three of any sort, he says a leash. " If a London poulterer was to be asked for a pair of chickens, or a pair of ducks, by a female, he would suppose he was talking to some fine finicking lady's maid, who had so puckered up her mouth into small plaits before she started, that she could not open it wide enough to say couple. "As the objects sportsmen pursue are so various, and as the English language is so copious, various terms have been brought into use : so that the ever- lasting term pair, this pairing of anything (except in the breeding-season) sounds so rude, uninstructive, and unmusical, upon the ears of a sportsman, that he would as soon be doomed to sit for life by the side of a seat-ridden cribbage-player as to hear it. "It is the want of this knowledge which makes the writings of Howitt and Willis, when they write upon this ever-interesting national subject, appear so tame; the sportsman peruses their pages with no more zest than he listens to the babble of a half-bred hound, or •a ranging spaniel that barks at every bird he sees — leaving his game."' Mr. Goodman adds, in a note, the explanation of my blunders in dog-nomenclature: — "Mr. Willis, in vol. iii., p. 203, 'Pencillings by the Way,' gives the following information, speaking of the duke's greyhounds (at Gordon Castle): '"Dinna tak' pains to caress them, sir," said the huntsman, "they'll only be hanged for it." I asked for an expla- nation. He then told me that a hound was hung the moment he betrayed attachment to any one, or in any way showed superior sagacity. In coursing the hare, if the dog abandoned the scent, to cut across or inter- cept the animal, he was considered as spoiling the sport. If greyhounds leave the track of the hare, either by their own sagacity, or to follow the master n intercepting it, they spoil the pack, and are hung without mercy.' Perhaps Mr. Willis will excuse me if I show how unsportsman-like this is. In the first place, there are no packs of greyhounds; in the next place, those who attend on them are not called hunts- men ; in the next place, they never ruu by scent : if they did, they ought to be destroyed. As to the ca- ressing, no dog ought ever to be caressed without he had first performed some extraordinary feat, and then it should be done instantly. The everlasting petting or patting a dog, spoils it in its nature, its disposition, its temper, and its habits. It becomes worthless, ex- cept as a lapdog, and that is the most contemptible and worthless thing in all God's creation. " Many years' close observation has convinced me, that where the dog is once admitted into the house, and petted, the dogs rule the children, and the chil- dren rule the rest; bringing in its train all the usual concomitants of turbulence, filth, and frowsiness; and turning the room into a dog-kennel. " ' If men transact like brutes, 'tis equal then For brutes to claim the privilege of men.' " The correction is very right — thanks to Mr. Good- man. My attention was called to the blunder, by the duke of Gordon himself, soon after the publication of the book in England; and I should have corrected it in this new edition, but for determining not to read the proofs, that the letters might be published literally from the first copy. But what beautifully descriptive words are those in the nomenclature of birds, my dear general : " A watch of nightingales ! — a charm of goldfinches! — a numeration of starlings, and exalta- tions of larks!" How pretty it would be, instead of "Here come two pretty women!" to say, "Here comes a charm of women!" Instead of, "There stand Morris and Willis!" to have the shoemaker op- posite say, " Look at that pride of lions," or that "exaltation of editors!" Brig. — A "muster of peacocks" hits my fancy — de- scriptive, say, of two loungers in uniform! Aha! mi-boy! — fine! Com. — Most brigadierish of brigadiers! You would rather be the sodger men have made you than the poet God made you ! So would not I! Brig. — you rejoice in a destiny fulfilled, then? Com. — Quite the contrary. I mean to say that God made me a natural idler and trifler, and want made me a poet and a worky ; and unlike you, I would rather be what God made me. By-the-way, do you know the trouble there was in the first composing of a horse? This same amusing book quotes from Fitz- herbert's old book on agriculture : "Ahorse has fif- ty-four properties, viz. : two of a man, two of a bad- ger, four of a lion, nine of an ox, nine of a hare, nine of a fox, nine of an ass, and ten of a woman. This description has been somewhat altered, but perhaps not improved upon, viz. : three qualities of a woman, a broad breast, round hips, and a long mane ; three of a lion, countenance, courage, and fire ; three of a bullock, the eye, the nostrils, and joints ; three of a sheep, the nose, gentleness, and patience : three of a mule, strength, constancy, and good feet; three of a deer, head, legs, and short hair; three of a wolf, throat, neck, and hearing ; three of a fox, ear, tail, and throat; three of a serpent, memory, sight, and cunning; and three of a hare or cat, cunning, walk- ing, and suppleness." THE CABINET. (Committee's private study. Brigadier lounging in a fauteuil.) Com. — My dear general, what do you think, ab stractly, of industry ? Does no shuddering con sciousness of awful platitude creep over you, in this dreadfully exemplary career that we are pursuing ? I feel as if the very nose on my face were endeavoring to " dress," as you military men say — striving to come down to the dull, cheek-bone level of tedious uni- formity ! I declare I should be pleased to " hear tell" of something out of the " way of business" — sentiment of some sort ! Brig. — Listen to a song that I have just written. There is a background of truth to it — the true sadness of a lovely living woman — that would supply your need of a sensation, if your imagination could picture her. Com. — It shall ! Bead away, my friend ! (Brigadier reads.) EPHEMERA. 717 Com. — That is a peculiarly musical and engaging measure, and you have hung it upon hinges of honey. It smacks of the days when poets wrote a song a year, finishing, to the last vanishing point of perfec- tion. What do the women say to you for translating their prose into angel-talk ? Brig. — They love poetry, mi-boy ! The more po- etical you can make their life, the more they love life and you ! They would rather suffer than live monot- onously. So, beware the "even tenor!" Com. — Even of prosperity, eh ? I'll beware when 1 see it coming ! Brio. — Ah, mi-boy, you have no idea of the intense abstraction of mind necessary to bring a poetical ima- gination down to habits of business. Com. — Do you really wish to know what is to be the new rage in society this winter? Brig.— What ? Com. — Married belles .' The 'teens dynasty is pas- sing away ! The talk, this summer, at all the water- ing-places, has been of beautiful women, who (if, per- chance, they have loved out their love) have not shone out their shine ! Heavens ! — how many there are completely shelved in American society, who have never had more than two winters of vogue in the world, and who are compelled to believe that, out of thirty years of loveliness, only two are to be rescued from the nursery — only two to intervene between the nursery filial and the nursery maternal! What a utensil woman is, in this way ! For what did Heaven give them their other powers ? Heaven did not put the smile of woman under her arm! No! it was placed where it could not be covered without suffoca- tion, and, doubtless, with a purpose: — that the lips and their outgoing should be kept open to society! Till those lips fade — till the mind that speaks through them loses its playfulness and attraction, woman can not be monopolized without a manifest waste of the gifts of nature — making that bloom for two years only, that was constructed to bloom for forty ! Besides — these very charms are withdrawn from the world be- fore ripening — flowers permitted only to bud ! There never was a belle who was not more agreeable after marriage than before. An unripe mind is far less agreeable than a ripe one. The elegant repose of lovely married women is far more enchanting than the hoydenish romping or inexperienced sentiment of I girls. Speak up, brigadier ! What say ? Brig. — It is highly natural, mi-boy, that this change i should be coming about, now! But it was both nat- ural and necessary that, hitherto — in the unorna- mental foundation of American society, woman should be reduced to her simple primitive mission — shining, i like the glow-worm, only long enough to attract the i male. When married, she passed into the condition of an operative in a nation-factory — a working mother, | a working educatress, a working patriot-maker. Her whole time was then needed for offices that are now performed — (all but the first) — by schools, moral teach- ers, surrounding example, and national routine. Lu- bricate the child now with money, and it will slide on to manhood over an inevitable railroad of education and good influences. Of course, the mother is now at liberty to shine as long as nature feeds the lamp ; and, indeed, it is in this way, only, that she can fulfil her destiny — dispensing elsewhere the sweet influ- ences no longer needed exclusively by her chil- dren. Com. — Statesmanlike and pellucid ! Well, sir, this great national metamorphosis is now coming about ! It has been secretly resolved, among the young mar- ried men of New York, that there shall exist, this winter, a post- connubial belle-ocracy; and that mar- ried belles shall, accordingly, have the pas, in wall/., quadrille, promenade, and conversation. How deli- cious ! — isn't it ? It enlarges the field so ! I believe. general, that I, for one, shall " cast my slough," and try my youth on again ! " For when the life is quickened, out of doubt, The wits that were defunct and dead before, Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move With casted slough and fresh legerity," and who knows ? I may be agreeable in the re- formed baby-house of society ! Brig. — " Hope on — hope ever !" THE CABI.NET. (Committee and Brigadier in confidential session.) Com. — My dear general, it won't do ! Read these two letters ! Brig. — I won't waste my eyes with them ! It must do ! who says it won't do ? Com. — One Noggs. Brig. — Who's Noggs ? Com. — By Jove, he writes a capital letter! Hear this, my incensed brigadier ! — (reads.) " Dear Willis : You frightened me to-day, terri- bly, in the hint you threw out in the course of con- versation with the • brigadier,' to wit : ' Shall we make it into a monthly ?' " Make the Weekly Nkw Mirror into a monthly ! God forbid ! /forbid, anyhow. 'Who are you?' I am a live Yankee, at your service, who lives in the land of soles and codfish, whig pow-wows and demo- cratic clam-bakes — one who has not been so ' deco- rously brought up,' perhaps as some of your readers, but ' a man for a' that' — a constant reader of the Mir- ror, at any rate — proof of my manhood, eh ? Well, sir, I, Newman Noggs, Esq., of Lynn, coun- ty of Essex, etc., etc., do hereby seriously and ar- dently protest against any such nonsense as is implied in the above question. Excuse me, sir, but I couldn't help it. I feel so worked up at the bare idea of the visits of the Mirror coming only monthly, that I can hardly stick to decency. Why, sir, I shouldn't be in trim for my sabbath-day meeting — albeit a pious man am I — were it not for the ' preparatory' study in the Mirror, Saturday nights. Not that you are so dread- fully religious, but there is always sure to be some- thing in you that makes me feel belter, and when 1 feel ' better' I want to go to church, of course, to let myself and the world know that I'm getting kind o' good. As for the literary merits of the Mirror, it don't become the like o' me to be offering an opinion. All I've got to say is, that I ' individually' like it first- rate. There's a sort of racy, spicy, off-hand, unstudied wittiness about it that takes my eye amazingly. So, for God's sake, or more particularly for my sake, dear Willis, don't ye change it. Suppose it does cost some folks a little more for postage than it would for something else — what o' that ? Who's afraid of a cent or two ? I'm a poor man 'long side o' some folk, and yet I rather pay letter-postage than have it stop So, Willis dear, just tell your postage friends to econ omize in some other department, or, if they can't d« that, tell 'em I'll make it up to 'em. " No, no, friend of my early youth, don't think or any such thing, that is, if ye love me— for I could better spare — something better, than the piquant dish of conversation which weekly (oh, let it be ever week- ly) occurs between ' mi-boy' and our dearly-beloved general, the 'brigadier.' " Mrs. Noggs, too — a strong woman, by the way — is, nevertheless, weekly on this point, very. She says she'll never forgive you if you change the fair form of the Mirror. Think o' that ! Though not a vain woman, she has a passion for looking into the Mirror 718 EPHEMERA. that is very affecting. On the other hand, she says if you'll give up the horrid notion of changing the form of the Mirror, she'll fry you 'a nipper' 1 as brown as a nut, with her own fair hands, when next you come Bostonward, and will visit our humble cottage near the sea. I have ye now ! For my well- tried friends, Gentleman Charles (him of the Astor house, I mean) and his handsome partner, tell me you are a gallant youth and well affected toward the ladies. " We shall look anxiously in the next Mirror to find our anxious hopes confirmed, and, if not disappointed, shall henceforth, as in duty bound, ever pray for your everlasting welfare, world without end. " Yours till then, "Noggs." Com. — I have had twenty letters the last week (none as good as that, but) all to the same purpose ! I am inclined to think, general, that Heaven's first pe- riodical (Sunday) was arranged in accordance with some revolution of our mental nature, and that once in seven days, as it is good to rest, so it is good to read, or grieve, or go love-making. Friends dine to- gether once a week, making friendship a weekly peri- odical. Lovers of nature in cities ride to the coun- try once a week. We eat a boiled dinner once a week. Everybody in New England needs beans once a week. The weather comes round once a week — fair Sundays and wet Sundays coming in successive dozens. There is nothing agreeable in nature that is monthly, except the moon, and the very sight of that periodical puts people to sleep.' Brig. — There is the monthly rose, mi-boy ! Com. — The poorest rose that blows! Brig. — But here is a point 1 should like to make clear to the public. With an enormous subscription every day increasing, we are every day making less money. Com. — How, oh, business man ? Brig. — Thus: For Mirrors that we sell through agents in cities, we get but four cents each. For Mirrors that we send to subscribers by mail, we get the full price — sixpence each. The irregular and exor- bitant postage has nearly killed our mail subscription, on which we chiefly depended, while in cities, where our patrons get them from the agents without postage, we have a sale growing daily more enormous. The dense of it is, that the Mirror at sixpence is as cheap as it can possibly be sold with anything like profit, and selling it to agents literally at cost, the increase of the agency circulation does us no manner of good ! Com. — Why sell to agents at cost? Brig. — It was a necessary evil in the beginning — lacking capital to hire the doing of what agents do. Com. — And we must go on as we begun ? Brig — Short of a six months' paralysis, which we could not afford, there is no help for it ! But the postage is the great block in our way ! Most people would subscribe and have it sent to their houses by mail, if the postage were not more than the subscrip- tion. Com. — How would that be helped in the monthly form. Brig. — Ah ! now you come to the matter. The monthly Mirror goes for seven cents postage, and most of our mail subscribers who remain, have the Mirror sent in the monthly form, by mail — and I wish all who value the Mirror, or care for us, would do the same. To take it weekly from an agent, does not bring back to you a single leaf of Glenmary, my dear boy ! Com. — Ah, my dear friend — Glenmary! Some villain — some wanton and unfeeling villain — has de- stroyed a vine I planted, which had completely em- bowered that sweet cottage. In an Ithaca paper, sent to me yesterday, I find a letter — here it is — from some Owego gentleman to the editor. Let me read you part of it : — " The cottage you know, like a bird's nest, is al- | most hid in the foliage. On one side is the road pas- | sing over 'the bridge,' and all around a sweet lawn,, sloping away to ' Owego creek.' The bridge was once white, and neat in its outward appearance. But how Willis, even in the ' summer months,' made his ' bridge-gipsying delicious,' is now a mystery. The ' groundwork' is flood-wood, and reptiles crawl where 1 swallows peeped out from their nests against the sleepers,' while every five minutes a baptism of dust comes down from above, as a benediction from the passing traveller. But the pruning hand of a man of taste has been wanting to all this rural spot for two years past, which may account for the blemishes we find in the picture so beautifully drawn in ' A I'Abri. Some Caligula among shrubbery has cut the root of a luxuriant vine, which spread itself over the collage front, making a delightful arbor of the piazza ; and, its leaves and tendrils, already changed in hue, are folding themselves to die. As through it the night- breeze rustled, it seemed to breathe of the desolation that had stolen upon this garden, sacred to the mem- ory of a lovely exotic which made it a paradise, and the fadeless light of genius." That is written by some kind man, who understood how a heartstring might be cut through with a vine one had planted and cherished. Whoever may be the perpetrator of that needless outrage, I commend him to the notice of my friendly neighbors, adding a petition from me, which may thus reach them, that only Time's hand may be suffered to ravage my lost paradise. Brig — The subject troubles me, mi-boy! Let us change it. I've a funny communication here, from a Rip Van Winkle, who dates fifty years hence, and — Com. — Keep it till next week, general, and let us get into the fresh air. I'm manuscript sick. Allonsl Stay — while I mend my outer man a little, read this funny letter, sent me by the lady to whom it was written. She thinks her friend, young " Cinna Bev- erley," is a genius. (Brigadier reads, with an occasional laugh.) "TO MISS PHffiBE LORN. " Dear Bel-Piuebe : I have been ' twiddling my sunbeam' (you say my letters are ' perfect sunshine') for some time, more or less, in a quandary as to what is now resolved upon as ' Dear Bel-Phcebe' — the be- ginning of this (meant-to-be) faultless epistle. I chanced to wake critical this morning, and, ' dear Phoebe,' as the beginning of this letter of mine, looked both vulgar and meaningless. I inked it out as you see. A reference to my etymological dictionary, however, restored my liking for that ' dear' 1 word. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb Der-ian, which means to do mischief. Hence dearth, which, by doing mischief, makes what remains more precious, and hence dear, meaning something made precious by hav- ing escaped hurting. ' Dear Phoebe,' therefore (mean- ing unhurt Phozbe), struck me as pretty well — you be- ing one of those delicious, late-loving women, destined to be ' hurt' first at thirty. Still, the sacred word ' Phoebe' was too abruptly come upon. It sounded familiar, and familiarity should be reserved for the postscript. I should have liked to write 'dear Lady Phoebe,' or 'dear Countess Phoebe' — but we are not permitted to 'read our title clear,' in this hideously- simple country. Might I invent an appellative? We say char-woman and horse-man — why not put a de- scriptive word before a lady's name, by way of re- spectful distance. Phoebe Lorn is a belle — why not say i?e/-Phcebe ? Good! It sounds authentic. This i letter, then, is to Plmbe, unhurt and beautiful (alias), j • Dear Bel-Phoebe !' " You are an ephemeron of a month — the month at Saratoga, in which you get wings to come forth EPHEMERA. 719 from your eleven months' chrysalis in the country— and you are now once more 'gathered to your fathers,' and mourning over the departed summer! Your Arabian mare feels your thrilling weight again, and you astonish your pet cow with sponge-cake over the lawn fence, and give caraways to your top-knot hens, and say ' Sir' to your greyhound, and make-believe care for your dahlias and tube-roses — but the pleas- aniest part of the day, after all, is its heavenly twilight of closed eyelids, when you can live over again that month at Saratoga— myself, perhaps, then, cursorily remembered ! For you rejoice in the perils of love, unhurt and and adorable Phoebe ! "But you know enough about yourself and you wish to hear about the town ! Well !— the (lies are numb with the first frost, the window-blinds are open nearly to Union square, somebody has been seen with a velvet waistcoat, starch is ' looking up,' and the town is full of palmetto-hatted andready-made-clothing-ized southerners. By these data judge of the epoch. I, myself, am among my dusted household gods, and, at this moment (writing in my bed-room) see my boots phalanxed in their winter parade. 1 must say it is, so far, pleasant! Perhaps — but you want news, not the philosophy of boots in repose. "You heard of the marriage of one of our wild In- dians to an English girl, not long ago in London. She has been at the Waverley some days, and has excited no little curiosity. She is moderately hand- some, but in such an unusual style of beauty that she out-magnetizes many a more strictly beautiful woman. My vaurien friend, F., the artist (who chanced to dine opposite the chief and chief-ess at the table- d 'hote a day or two since), declares the face to be wholly unique, and a sufficient explanation of the extraordi- nary whim of her marriage. I have never, myself, wondered at it. The crust, impenetrable upward, of English middle life, is enough to drive genius of any kind more mad than this ! What hell like inevitable mediocrity in anything ! This fine woman, now going to live a dog's life with an Indian in the wilderness, would have spent her days in a brick row, and grown idiotic with looking out upon the same sidewalk till death. Which would you rather ? "Do you remember (for beautiful women don't al- ways remember beautiful women) the adorable Mrs. C.. at Saratoga — that charming specimen of a healthy and practicable angel ? She has been here a week on her return from Niagara, and Fiagg, the beauty-painter, has stolen a copy of her on canvass. Ah, Bel-Phoebe! You have a loss in not realizing what it is to a man when an exquisite face holds still to be critically ad- mired ! You can see the grain of the velvet in her brown eye, now, and trace by what muscle her heart pulls, to keep down that half-sad cornerof her delicious mouth ! He is an appreciator, that Flagg, and paints a woman as she looks to appreciators— differently from the butchers'-meat estimation of common gazers on beauty. Mrs. C, has gone to Baltimore, where beauty is an indigenous drug — belles of that 'city rich in women' being never valued till transplanted. But heavens! how tired you will be of reading this long female paragraph ! Hasten to speak of some- thing with a man in it ! "One of the most fascinating men in England is ekeing out an exile from May fair, by singing and lecturing on songs to the delighted Croton drinkers. He is a man of that quiet elegance of address that seems nothing in a woman's way till she has broken her neck over it, and he sings as such a man shouldn't — to be a safe man, that is to say ! Fancy Moore's songs any more bewitched than Moore intended ! Mr. McMichael's voice glides under your heart like a gondola under a balcony — Moore's melody represent- ing the embellished and enriched moonlit water. It is the enchanted perfection of lover-like, and gentle- man-like song-singing. I heard Moore sing his own songs in England, and Mr. McMichael sings them in the same style — only in apotheosis ! (Ask your papa to translate that big word.) "Do you care about theatres? We have a new tragedian, about whose resemblance to Macready the critics are quarrelling, and a new tragedian-ess who has put the boxes into fits by coming on the stage without a bustle! (Fancy Desdemona without a bustle !) Of course you are surprised, for this is one of these ' coming events' that could not possibly ' cast their shadows before,' but fashion is imperative, and ' Where ruled the (bustle) Nature broods alone !' I understand the omnibuses are to be re-licensed to carry fourteen inside, and the shops in Broadway are petitioning (so Alderman Cozzens told me to-day) to put out bow-windows, in expectation of the vacated space. " Seriously, there has been a growing mistrust (Pearl-street'mgly speaking) of the article woman, as shown to customers ! Thank fashion, there is more chance now of a poor youth's knowing the ('ground covered by the imposing obligations of matrimony !'J "As to the fault found with Anderson — his resem- blance to Macready — I see it in no objectionable particular, unless it be theincorrigible one, of a mutual brevity of nose. He was educated to his profession by Macready, and of course lias his master's severe taste, and smacks somewhat of his school, which is a good one. I like him much better than I do Mac- ready, however, for. though he has most of his ex- cellences, he has none of his defects, and, in voice and pliancy of action, he is much that artificial man's superior. Criticism aside, Anderson plays agreeably and makes you like him, whereas Macready, playing ever so well, does it disagreeably, and makes you dis- like him ! But I am no judge — for I would rather sit on a sofa by most any woman than sit in a box during most any play. Pity me ! " Hast thou great appetite, and must I vouchsafe thee still another slice of news ? The new hotel up- town is waxing habitable, and the proprietor is in a quandary what to call it. The natural inquiry as to what would be descriptive, has suggested a look at the probabilities of custom, and it is supposed that it will be filled partly with that class of fashionables who feel a desire to do something in life besides laboriously ' keep house,' partly by diplomatists and dandies wish- ing to be ' convaynient' to balls and chez-elles, and partly by such Europeanized persons as have a distaste for American gregariousness, and desire a voice as to the time and place of refreshing and creature. The arrangements are to surpass any previous cis-Atlantic ! experience, and the whole project is considered as the i first public flower of the transplanted whereabout of i aristocracy. It has been proposed to call it May Fair Hotel — ' May Fair' being the name of the fashion- able nucleus of London. Hautevillk Hotkl has been suggested, descriptive of its position up-town. Hotel Recherche, Hotel Choisi, are names pro- posed also, but more liable to criticism. I, myself, proposed A l'abi— as signifying a house aside from the rush of travel and business. Praise that, if you please ! Billings, the lessee, is a handsome man, of a I very up-town address, with the finest teeth possible for i the welcome to new-comers— this last no indifferent I item ! He is young— but young people are the | fashion. 'Young England' and '\ oung h ranee ' wield the power. I have not mentioned the system of the hotel, by the way, which is that of Meunce's at Paris— a table-d'hote and a restaurant, and dinner in I public, or private, or not at all, at your option. Charm- , i n g — wont it be ? ' ' ' " Crawford, the sculptor. has come home from Italy, 720 EPHEMERA. and, as he is the American, par excellence, in whom resides the sense of beauty, I trust he may see you. "What else had I to say? Something — but I'll write it on a slip, for it will be personal, and you like to show all your letters to ' the governor.' " Adieu, dear Bel-Phoebe, and pray tear up the slip enclosed as soon as you have recovered from fainting. Yours at discretion. " Cinna Beverley, jr." "Fanny Forester." — We have been accused, face to face, several times, and by letter once or twice, of being, ourself, that bewitching masquerader. We have conjured some variety out of our workyday quill, it is true, and have an unfulfilled and recorded vow of a new alias — but in " Fanny Forester" there resides a dimpled youthfulness and elasticity that is not found so many miles on the road as our present sojourn ! Oh no, sweet Fanny ! they slander you and do too much credit to our industry and versatility ! Those who wish to know more of Fanny Forester, may hear of her, now, among the high-priced contributors of Graham and Godey. Dr. Lardner's Lecture. — We did not chance to hear Dr. Lardner's excellent and amusing lecture on the " London literati,''' 1 etc., but the report of it in the " Republic" has scraped the moss from one corner of our memory, and we may, perhaps, aid in the true portraiture of one or two distinguished men by show- ing a shade or two in which our observation of them differed from that of the doctor. We may remark here, that Dr. Lardner has been conversant with all the wits and scholars of England for the last two or three lustrums, and we would suggest to him that, with the freedom given him by withdrawal from their sphere, he might give us a book of anecdotical biogra- phy that would have a prosperous sale and be both instructive and amusing. We shall not poach upon the doctor's manor, by the way, if we give our im- pression of one of these literati — himself — as he ap- peared to us, once in very distinguished company, in England. We were in a ball in the height of the season, at Brighton. Somewhere about the later hours, we chanced to be in attendance upon a noble lady, in company with two celebrated men. Mr. Ricardo and Horace Smith (the author of Brambletye House, and Rejected Addresses), Lady Stepney, authoress of the " New Road to Ruin," approached our charming centre of attraction with a proposition to present to her the celebrated Dr. Lardner. " Yes, my dear ! I should like to know him of all things !'" was the reply, and the doctor was conjured forthwith into the magic circle. He bowed " with spectacles on nose," but no other extraneous mark of philosopher or scholar. We shall not offend the doctor by stating that, on this evening, he was a very different looking person from his present practical exterior. With j showy waistcoat, black tights, fancy stockings and I small patent-leather shoes, he appeared to us an ele- J gant of very bright water, smacking not at all, in man- I ner no more than in dress, of the smutch and toil of I the laboratory. We looked at and listened to him, | we remember, with great interest and curiosity. He left us to dance a quadrille, and finding ourself acci- dentally in the same set, we looked at his ornamental and lover-like acquittalof himself with a kindofwonder at what Minerva would say ! This was just before the doctor left England. We may add our expression of pleasure that the Protean facility of our accomplished and learned friend has served him in this country — I making of him the best lecturer on all subjects, and the carver out of prosperity under a wholly new > meridian. But, to revert to the report of the lecture : — " The doctor gave some very amusing descriptions of the personal peculiarities of Bulwer and D'Israeli, the author of ' Coningsby,' observing that those who have read the works of the former, would naturally conclude him to be very fascinating in private society. Such, however, was not the case. He had not a particle of conversational facility, and could not utter twelve sentences free from hesitation and embarrass- ment. Iu fact, Bulwer was only Bulwer when his pen was in his hand and his meerschaum in his mouth. He is intimate with Count D'Orsay, one of the hand- somest men of the day, and in his excessive admira- tion of that gentleman has adopted his style of dress, which is adapted admirably to the figure of the second Beau Brummell, but sits strangely on the feeble, rick- ety and skeleton form, of the man of genius." Now it struck us, on the contrary, that there was no more playful, animated, facile creature in London society than Bulwer. He seemed to have a horror of stilted topics, it is true, and never mingled in gene- ral conversation unless merrily. But at Lady Bles- sington's, where there was but one woman present (herself), and where, consequently, there could be no tetes-d-tetes, Bulwer's entrance was the certain precur- sor of fun. He was a brilliant rattle, and as to any " hesitation and embarrassment," we never saw a symptom of it. At evening parties in other houses, Bulwer's powers of conversation could scarce be fairly judged, for his system of attention is very concentra- tive, and he was generally deep in conversation with some one beautiful woman whom he could engross. We differ from the doctor, too, as to his style of dandy- ism. Spready upper works, trousers closely fitting to the leg, a broad-brimmed hat, and cornucopial whisk- ers, distinguished D'Orsay, while Bulwer wore al- ways the loose French pantaloon, a measurable hat- brim, and whiskers carefully limited to the cheek. We pronounce the doctor's astrology (as to these stars) based upon an error in "observation." The reporter adds : — " D'Israeli he described as an affected coxcomb, with a restless desire to appear witty ; yet he never remembered him to have said a good thing in his life except one, and that was generally repeated with the preface, 'D'Israeli has said a good thing at last.'" That D'Israeli is not a " bon-mot" man, is doubtless true. It never struck us that he manifested a " desire to appear witty." He is very silent in the general melee of conversation, but we have never yet seen him leave a room before he had made an impression by some burst in the way of monologue — eitheran eloquent description or a dashing new absurdity, an anecdote or a criticism. He sits indolently with his head on his breast, taking sight through his eyebrows till he finds his cue to break in, and as far as our observation goes, nobody was ever willing to interrupt him. The doctor calls him an "affected coxcomb," but it is only of his dress that this is any way true. No schoolboy is more frank in his manners. This is true, even since DTsraeli's " gobble up" of the million with a widow. When we were first in London, he was the immortal tenant of one room and a recess, and with manners indolently pensive. Three years after, returning to England, we found him master of a lordly establish- ment on Hyde Park, and, except that he looked of a less lively melancholy, his manners were as untroubled with affection as before. We do not in the least doubt the sincerity of the doctor's report, but it shows how even acute observers (we two are that, doctor !) will see the same thing with different eyes. This article is too long. New York has an unsupplied want — no less a thing than a fashionable promenade. Broadway, that EPHEMERA. 721 used to be the parade of all that was feminine, fashion- able and fair, has been, for some time, only a walk of plain-dress-necessity to the noli-me-tangeries, and it will soon be left entirely to the deaf and the humble j so intolerable is the Bedlam racket of its abominable omnibuses ! (To get an audible answer to the " How do you do ?" one has need to take one's friend into a Btore.) Our ladies have done like the English, in giving up ] shopping and walking the street in full dress, and now, | where is to be the English or Erench substitute — j our Hyde park or our Bois de Boulogne ? Ladies, I in London, are supposed to be so incapable of walk- \ ing at all in the street, that, if they do so, it is rather ■ well-bred not to recognise them in passing. But j after shopping in disguise in Regent street (their Broadway) they go home and " dress for the carriage," j and drive out to meet all the world in the " Rotten j row" of the park. Up and down this half mile they J follow in slow procession, meeting as slow a procession j going the other way, and bowing at every carriage | length, and, no public hack being admitted into the park, those who have no carriages have no promenade ! Don't let us improve with our eyes shut ! We have taken off our foot of fashion from one round of the ladder. How long is it to be suspended in the air — for, a. driving park is the next inevitable step upward ? Odd Enough.— The best view of Trinity steeple and almost the only view of Trinity church, is across some old one-story wooden groceries in Greenwich street, the spectator standing upon the opposite sidewalk ! "We never know to whom we look best," said we to the steeple, when we discovered it ! To Broadway- gazers, Trinity steeple is a Gothic column. The body of the church is wholly lost as to effect, and it was a great mistake not to set it sideicise upon the street. But, let us suggest something to the enormously wealthy vestry of that church. There is not a valua- ble building, nor scarce a lot unoccupied by a nuisance, between this splendid fabric and Greenwich street, j How easy to buy this advantageous slope, and make j of it an ascending foreground, unequalled except by the ascent to the capitol at Washington! Besides J the addition to the beauty of the city, it would give | another "lungs" to the neighborhood of Wall street, j and grace, fitly and with additional beauty, the resting- | place of the gallant and lamented Lawrence. Change in New York Habits. — The great pecu- j Iiarity of America — our gregariousness, as shown in i our populous hotels — has taken a large stride on its \ way to the exclusivism of Europe. The office of the lessee of the new hotel up-town has been overrun with applicants, and most of them, we understand, with a view of availing themselves of its privileges as a hotel garni — or furnished house where the meals are dis- cretionary, as to place, time, and price. Let us look a little into this. A gentleman arrives at a London hotel. He alights at the door of what resembles a private house. He is shown to a small parlor and bed-room, and left alone j with his baggage and the peculiarly neat and unsoci- able chairs and table. He orders his dinner and tea, | and it is served to him alone. He is as much alone the remainder of the day and evening, and from that I time to doomsday, if he stay so long ; and there is no j place about the house where he can vary this loneli- i ness, except the coffee-room, where the parlor class of lodgers have no errand and rarely go. His engage- i ment with the landlord is to pay so much, by the day, | for his rooms, and for whatever else he chooses to order. I 46 What with the absence of books, and all the comforts and trifles that give a look of home, and, on the other hand, the lack of the American compensations, such as reading-room, ladies' drawing-room, sitting-rooms, and thronged halls and entries, the solitude and gloom of a hotel in the heart of London could scarce be exceeded. But, admirably suited as is the American system of hotel to the relief and pleasure of the stranger and traveller, there is a class of hotel-lodgers who would be more comfortable in New York were there a hotel after the European fashion — and it is with a view to this class, mainly, that the new hotel up-town has been designed. We refer to the class who wish a luxurious home, but can not afford time, trouble, or money, to be housekeepers. There are many families of this description — families who pass the summer in the country, but in the winter reside in town, and, dreading the trouble and expense of a town house, would still prefer a private table and drawing-room. For such, a hotel garni, with elegant suites of apart- ments and a restaurant on the floor before, is the well- adapted provision, and this class is sufficiently large to more than warrant the enterprise of the hotel up- town. The great mass, however, even of families (and certainly of bachelors), prefer the gregarious hotel, where two or three hundred people form almost one family, where eating and dancing and social pleasures are all enjoyed in common, and where business and amusement are closely, and without foresight or trouble, closely intermingled. This style of living best suits the great mass of a business community, and it will not be till we have a ruling proportion of aris- tocratic idlers, that the gregarious hotel will go out of fashion. That may be fifty years hence, or our "gre- gariousness" may become a national peculiarity, and the Astor " stay put" for a century. We speak the Tuscan, and lively Mr. Palmo is betrayed by his soft c to be a Piedmontese or a Vene- tian — else we should venture to give him the ideas here-below embodied, in his own lingua de belleza. We beg his worthy and eloquent legal counsellor, however (whom we have the pleasure to know), to translate to him, through some medium more pellucid than the last, the nicer shades of our meaning. We put up our prayer for its happy voyage to the mana- ger's harbor of comprehension. An opera, like a woman, is never to be taken liter- ally. It is not, exclusively or mainly, a place wherein to hear good music. If the music be the best that can be procured (though it were only the best in Ethiopia), the uncrowned but very executive King Public is content. " Our" ear is merciful ! But the opera is a place for the advancing of two ends more — human tenderness and human vanity. Ten go thither to flirt, and forty to be seen, where one goes to pamper his auricular nerve upon a cadenza. We don't see that this requires enlarging upon. We wish to enlighten those who have hitherto been proudly content with their own country (haven't trav elled, and tint's the reason), as to the true uses of the opera abroad— the way it is truly used, that is to say, where sing Rubini and his starry troupe. J irst, as to construction. The London opera-house (like the Parisian) is composed of a hundred or more private boxes, and a pit. The private boxes are used by their lady-proprietors to receive company duung the evening, and the pit is used to reconnoitre the boxes, to lounge, to chat and to be visible in white gloves and opera- glass (this last a most necessary demonstration by those who would not otherwise be considered " men about town"). We have not yet mentioned the lis- 722 EPHEMERA. tening to the opera. This very subordinate part of the evening's entertainment commences at the signal "sh!" "sh!" from the connoisseurs, indicating that some favorite aria is commencing which is worth lis- tening to, or a duett or quartette, or fine point, of action, coming off, and, till this is past, the audience, above and below, is breathlessly still and attentive. At all other times during the performance of the opera, it is rather green than otherwise to pay attention to the stage, and anybody who should request that his neighbors would not converse during the recitativo secco, would be smiled at as " capital fun !" The opera, in short, is considered as a help, an accompani- ment (or, if you like, a stop-gap) to conversation, and the consequence is that nowhere are people so much at their ease, and nowhere are so many bright and merry things said as at the opera! We'll mend our pen, dear reader, while you compare this with the quaker- meeting attention so tediously given at Palmo's. But this is to be mended (the practice, we mean — the pen does pretty well), and the first thing we wish to suggest to Mr. Pal mo is an improvement in the "fop's alley" part of it. To go round behind the boxes, as the house is constructed now, is formidably conspicuous, unless one has a direct errand to the lady next the stage; yet this, with the exception of having a seat in the pit, and silling in it, is the only way to get a look at the house and " see who is there." Let Mr. Pal mo drop a staircase, passing under the stage- box to the front of the pit, and there would he an ex- cusable lounge of observation all round the house — a prodigious difference in the attraction for the dan- dies, let us assure you, signor ! You need the dan- dies! You wish to make it among the necessities of a "man about town," that he should have a season- ticket to the opera. But it is no pleasure to sit cramped and silent in one seat, and no pleasure to come in and stand behind the. audience for the whole evening, or for an hour. It would be a pleasure to see the audience from the front, and that can not be done now, without a pretty " cool" walk to the or- chestra and back. Now could it? We have two or three other propositions to make for the improvement of the social opportunities of the opera, but this will do for to-day. Addio, signore! We cordially approve of the reason for, and the feeling which prompted the following paragraph. We have the pleasure of knowing the three gentle- men mentioned in it, particularly the urbane captain, and we wish the Howards a happy retirement, and Captain Roe ^.-bounding prosperity — but this done, we wish to note a nationality as it passes ; and first, to quote a paragraph: — "It has been announced in various quarters that the Messrs. Howard, who have established the hotel so extensively and favorably known as Howard's Ho- tel, have disposed of that establishment to Captain Roe, of the "Empire" steamboat. * * * As for the Howards, we are glad that they have done so well. We presume that, being relieved now from the labor of keeping such a large establishment, they will retire to some of those beautiful retreats with which their native state, Vermont, abounds." It will be seen at once that a traveller who should measure this trio by the European scale of condition in life — (rank these gentlemen, that is to say. with " mine host" in any other part of the world) — would make a blunder. The difference between an Ameri- can hotel-proprietor, and a London Boniface, is not merely that our hotels are six times as large. It is not merely that he is six times as great a " proprie- tor." The vocation is almost wholly different — and the difference is a result of the totally different hab- its of the two countries. In London, you may, by chance, see the " land-lady," daily, but you may be months in the house without seeing the " land-lord." (Two terrible misnomers, by-the-way, for the hostess, though she has no land, is not a lady but as a land- lady, and mine host is far enough from a lord with land, though he is no lord except as a land-lord !) The English host, therefore, is never an acquaintance of his guest, and the guest knows his hostess only in the quality of an upper servant. The reader will have recognised the difference we wish to point to. The American hotel-keeper has charge, not of twenty or thirty people living wholly in their own private rooms, but of two or three hundred, whose habits are all gregarious, and to almost every one of them he (the landlord) is a personal and familiar friend. The ex- tent of this friendly intercourse with persons mostly of the better class, gives to the hotel-proprietor a mass of influence, direct and indirect, which makes him a very important person in the community. He is continually appealed to for knowledge on popular subjects, such as is got only by great facilities of hear- say. He is often made a reference in disputes, from his necessary habit of impartiality. He is intrusted with deposites of great value by his guests, and is the confidant-general of the secrets and difficulties of strangers, and of travelling lovers and mourners. Ladies and families are committed to his charge. Public entertainments are given by his advice and di- rection; and, in short, he has so much harm, and so much good influence, in his power, that he is, neces- sarily, a person of high moral character, superior judgment, discretion, and information — without all which public opinion would not tolerate him in his place — and, with which, while in the full exercise of his vocation, he naturally holds a high station of re- publican social rank. It is in tacit obedience to this scale of valuation, that the change of masters in a public hotel is made the subject of newspaper an- nouncement and comment — a notice of the fact which would seem to a London editor wholly beyond its con- sequence and value. We are aware that it is rather Utopian to give nom- inal rank to people according to their actual worth and influence; but let us have our little bit of fancy now and then ! We should be afraid to call public attention to the rank of editors — measuring it by their power ! Olk Bull and his missing " spot." — As we pre- dicted, this great luminary took the light of the world to himself on Saturday night, and became vis- ible above the horizon of the footlights precisely at eight, " Bright as a god, but punctual as a slave !" Mrs. Child (the moon who reflects the masculine gold of his music in the feminine silver of language) sat in the stage-box, somewhat obscured in the pe- numbra of a shocking cap. (We rely upon Miss Dorsey to invent a "silver cloud," or, at any rate, some headdress more becoming for the waxing glory of this charming reflector.) The Memnonian music awoke, of course, with the appearance of Ole-Apollo, and the crammed world of fashion sat breathless. By the time the first piece was played, however, it was felt that there was something wrong. The audi- ence was irresponsive. The ivory inside edge of the moon's disk (disclosed by the tranquil smile at first), became less and less visible, and disappeared. The applause was mechanical. Madame Burkhardt arose like a morning vapor, and clouded the horizon with an abominable song. Ole Bull broke out again, and though the shadows had shortened somewhat before EPHEMERA. 723 lie finished his second piece, there was still a lack — jl still but a dull acknowledgment of his glory. We presently discovered the cause. A heavy fore- lock of hair, which used to drop over the forehead of the inspired Norwegian, descending "with the linked sweetness long drawn out" of a cadenza, and ! then tossed back like an absorbed comet with the re- '.' vulsive sweep of R return to the jlon-flon of the air — this expressive forelock, with the steeped sweetness of the Niagara it had overheard, and the dreams of melody it had stirred to, was gone to " and scis- ; sors." The "sun was (the day before) shorn of his beams" — by Cristadoro! Mingled with the hair of the uninspired, that magic lock had been swept into Broadway from the floor of the undiscriminating bar- ber, and, fallen from the heaven of harmony, is now Sticking to the wheels of omnibuses in a purgatory of Sysiphus. Those in other cities who remember the toss back of that wild lock of hair in the convul- sive transitions of Ole Bull's music, will understand that there must have been, emphatically, a spot mis- sins; on his luminous face. Spite of politics and attractions elsewhere, the house was crammed; and in spite of the missing lock, Ole Bull recovered his power over the audi- ence. The last piece he played was electric, and the curtain fell amid unlimited plaudits. The pay for Periodical-Writing. — What a butcher would think of veal, as a marketable article, if everybody had an ambition to raise calves to give away, is very near the conclusion that a merely busi- ness-man would arrive at, on inquiring into the sale- ableness of fugitive literature. It is as pleasant for people not hackneyed in authorship to see their thoughts transferred to print, as it is for beauties to see their faces transferred to canvass; and, if custom- ary, most contributors to periodicals would pay the publisher as willingly as women pay the portrait- painter. Another thing. Females are naturally fa- cile writers, and the attention paid to the mental cul- ture of women in our day, has set their thoughts a-flow upon paper, as the letting in of sunshine upon j the dark floor of the forest draws to the surface new j springs of water. These facts to begin with, the j reader will easily understand the pourquoi of the un- j promising literary market we have to "open up*' to him. There are several of the magazines that pay for articles, but no one of them, we believe, pays for all j its contents. Graham and Gocfey (two men of noble liberality to authors) pay prices to some of their con- j tributors that would far outbid the highest rates of magazine-payment in England. Their prose-writers j receive from two to twelve dollars a page, and their poets from five to fifty dollars an article. The Co- i lumbian and the Ladies' Magazine also pay well, j The North American Review used to think it liberal I enough to pay Edward Everett a dollar a page. All j the paying magazines and reviews, however, reject fifty articles to one that they accept, and they pay nobody whose " name" would not enrich their table of contents. In point of fact, but for the necessity of a brag, and the misfortune that a writer, once made famous, esteems pay a desirable manner of compli- ment (whether he wants the money or not), the liter- ary periodicals in this country might do well, relying only on the editor's pen and the epidemic " cacoethes." The Mirror did so — and was as cleverly contributed to, we think, as any periodical in the country. The rejected articles (offered to us, of course, as a gratu- ity) would have filled, at least, a barrel a month! Newspapers pay for reporting and editing, but sel- dom or never for " articles." The favor, on the con- trary, of giving room and circulation to another man's ideas, is growing into a saleable commodity — the ed» itor (on the ground that he risks the popularity of his paper by relinquishing the chance of a better ar- ticle) charging rent for his columns instead of hiring a tenant. To every scheme of public interest — to every society — to everything which newspapers can binder or further — there is attached some person who is both desirous and able to present the subject forcibly on paper; and, quite as readily and zealously, if there be an objectionable side to it, springs up a pen-and-ink caviller in opposition. Between them, and with the desire to figure in print which besets very many able men, newspaper-editors need pay for little aid except eyewater and scissors, and they get credit for a world of zeal in good causes by articles they neither write nor pay for. We have got to the footboard of our Procrustes bed. Authors' Pay in America. — We have hot coals smouldering in the ashes of " things put off," which we poke reluctantly to the surface just now — reluc- tantly only because we wish to light beacons for an author's crusade, and we have no leisure to be more than its Peter the Hermit. We solemnly summon Edgar A. Poe to do the devoir of Coeur de Lion — no man's weapon half so trenchant! And now let us turn the subject round, small end foremost. These are days when gentlemen paint their own boots, and we have latterly been our own publisher. We have thereby mastered one or two statistics which, we know not well why, never looked us in the face before, and which we proceed to hold up by the nape of the neck for the encouragement of the less stuffy or less inquiring. Authors who can not find publish- ers, and authors who, having found them, have been as much respected by them as pig-iron by the razor- maker, are invited to " lend us their ears"— on interest. What proportion should an author have of the net profits of a book? This seems a shallow question enough! but there is a deep hole in it. Remember, in the first place, that the author wrote the book — that God gave him the monopoly of the vein from which it is worked— that he has been at the expense and toil of an education, and to other expenses and toils — (as in travel)— that his mind's lease is far shorter than his lease of life— and that thoughtsmiths should be better paid than blacksmiths or goldsmiths (that is to say, if the credit the work does to the country goes for anything in the valuation). The question of the division of profit is between author and publisher, and the publisher gives his uneducated mental attention to the sale, a brief use of his credit for the printing and binding, and runs a most partial risk as to the re- sult — for he need not purchase the book except in obedience to his own judgment and his readers', and the cost is paid, of course, before there are any "net receipts." (There is great capital made of this "risk," but ninety-nine books in a hundred more than clear expenses!) Now, taking a stereotyped dollar- book for example, the plates, worth four or five hun- dred dollars, are paid for, with a moderate sale, in Uie first month. Suppose it to be three months. 1 lie use of the publisher's credit for S500 for ninety days has been his only outlay of consequence; but the author has had his outlay of brain-work, time, genius, and years of education. The printing and getting up, after the plates are paid for, cost about one fifth of the retail price-twenty cents on a dollar. To charge ten cent, more on each copy for the absolute expense of selling and circulating, is more than lib- eral • and now, how shall the remaining seventy cents— the 'net profit— be divided between author and pub- lisher ? 724 EPHEMERA. We should like to have a watchmaker's answer to that question, ilow much ought the jeweller to have for buying it from the maker, warranting it "to go" after examining it, for advertising it, and for selling it across a counter? Suppose the watch to sell for a hundred dollars, and seventy dollars to be the net profit above cost of material. What would you say, if the maker got but ten or twenty dollars, and the retailer fifty or sixty ? Yet that is the proportion at which author and bookseller are paid for literary pro- duction — the seller of the book being paid from tioice to five times as much as the author of it! Certainly, the readiest-minded man we ever knew, as well as one of the most brilliant and highly culti- vated conversationists, is Major Davezac, the subject of the anecdote below. Never was a man more out of place as a stump-orator and agitator, well as he acquits himself in these turbulent vocations. It is none of our business to discuss that point, however. We were only about to roll the anecdotical snow-ball a little larger, by recording a Ion mot'of the major's, at the birth of which we chanced to be present. Davezac was charge at Naples in eighteen hundred and some time ago, and French being the language he was born in, his wit of course played freely in the court vernacular. He was quite the idol of the diplo- matic corps, and an "indispensable" at all dances and masquerades. We were dining one evening in his company during the carnival. The major sat oppo- site to us, next to a very pretty German countess. During the procession and the pelting of sugar-plums which had occupied the early part of the day, the countess had received a slight bruise upon her cheek. Davezac wore court-plaster on his lip — a hit also from the sugared ammunition. They were both complain- ing. "Eh, Monsieur Davezac," said the countess, mournfully, " il faut reunir nos douleurs !" — " Oui, madam, et nos blessures /" replied the major instantly, placing his lip upon the cheek of the surprised suf- ferer. Cosmopolite Attraction in Broadway. — With- in a few doors, in the neighborhood of Prince street, are collected accidentally, at present, four most vivid representations of four very distant and different countries — Spain, India, Paris, and Constantinople — the " Alhamra," the "Panorama of Madras," the "Panorama of Paris," and the new shop of " Turk- ish curiosities." He who wishes to realize what bal- loons are to do for us in '55, can astonish and con- fuse his geographical impressions to his entire satis- faction, by a visit to all these in one morning. The Turkish shop has articles for sale that could seldom before be obtained except by a voyage to the Orient. We brought some curiosities from Constan- tinople, but we have a thousand times regretted, since, that we had not quadrupled our purchases in the bazars and bezestein — so much were the articles admired, and so impossible was it, even in the curiosity-shops of Europe, to find specimens of them. No person who is luxurious in personal habits would willingly be, for example, without the Turkish shirts — having once seen them. They are the poetry of neglige costume — the idealized romance of the drapery of dishabille. Those who have time to make a luxury of dressing-room or boudoir — the beautiful and idle of either sex — should take a look at the gossamer shirts from Constantinople. But there are all man- ner of things in this shop beside. There are beauti- ful gold-embroidered slippers, small carpets and otto- man-cloths, attars in gold bottles, gold-embroidered handkerchiefs and gilded pastilles — everything, in short, that one buys of old Mustapha, near the Hip- podrome in Stamboul, confectionary included. We inquired after old Mustapha yesterday, and the Greek who keeps the shop (who was himself a confectioner in Constantinople) delighted us with talking of him, as if he had seen him yesterday! Picturesque and 'jolly old turbaned Mustapha! — what fun it was to have the curtain lifted by his grinning Abyssinian in anklets and wristlets, and step into the back shop to take coffee and try his essences! It quite came over us like a dream yesterday — the chat with this Broad- way Constantinopolitan. If you have any curiosity, dear reader, call and taste the confectionary at this shop, and look at the translucent shirts, and see the Persian inkstands, and handle the graceful cimeters, and look at the Brusa silks and seraglio slippers — in short, see Constantinople — for that is a palpable slice of it ! Jumping the Pew. — We were once in the gallery of a country church when an address was to be de- livered to a Sunday school. The body of the house was reserved for the adult audience, and the boys were confined to one of the side aisles. There was evident- ly an understanding, however, that if not otherwise wanted, the well-cushioned seat facing the chancel was to be given up to as many lads as could occupy if. It would hold, perhaps, twenty, and a hundred of them were packed in the aisle like figs, waiting till the class leader at the head should " open up." Looking on with some amusement, we found our eye arrested by the bright face of a lad, half way down, who bore the keeping back very impatiently. His struggles to pass the other boys were vehement, but of no use. He was slight, and his neighbors were bold and sturdy. Presently he bit his lips, entered a pew, jumped the partition into the central aisle, and walked round to the front. There was a murmur of indignation among the boys, and a general smile among the spectators, but he secured his pick of seals. The clergyman, in the course of his address, thought proper to get up an impromptu colloquy, and, to the evident annoyance of the other boys, selected the pew-jumper, who sat just before him, for the honor. The lad arose, when questioned, and surprised the whole audience with the clearness of his replies. He sat down amid gene- ral applause, and (whatever reproof he got in private for his daring) he was the envied hero of the day. We have often since had the successful boldness of this lad recalled to our memory by the class of things it illustrates, and our mental reply, after reading a let- ter to which this was the preface, was — " Better jump the pew !" Our correspondent can not get a hearing from the public ! Few things are more difficult. We have not read his book, but it may be excellent snuff to keep a fame going, and yet not the stuff to start one. Genius is expected " never to go into the water till it knows how to swim" — never to expect to be read but for having been read before ! With any degree of ability, more or less, it is easy to be almost hopelessly overlaid. We, ourself, are a very humble example. We "jumped the pew" unconsciously, in England, with our furiously abused " Pencillings," and imme- diately sold, for the highest price, an edition of " Ink- lings of Adventure" — a series of tales that bad fallen still-born into the lap of Boston, and for the first print- ing of which we paid more than a thousand dollars on our return to their birth-place. Instances of "jump- ing the pew" will occur to every observer of men — every reader of biography. It is the shabby door to many a path of glory. Almost every profession begins with a dilemma — hope deferred, or a pew to jump ! The starving lawyer in the west, who flogged his neighbor to have a case to plead, jumped the pew ! EPHEMERA 725 The veteran Buckingham, one of the most judicious, able and respected editors in the country, was starving in Boston, when he "jumped the pew" with the abu- sive " Galaxy" — making himself read from terror till he was famous enough to be read for merit. The game is dangerous, however, and the principle lies in most questionable neighborhood. For one who would succeed in it there are ninety-nine who would fail, and failure is hopeless extinction ! The pew can be jumped but once. The attention of the public can be but once summoned by a rude pluck at its beard ; and, to keep attention long enough to have the rude- ness forgotten, there must be merit that the public would regret overlooking — merit, indeed, of xchich the neglect was injury enough, to justify violent extrication. The Mirror Steam-Press. — It would be curious not to lose sight of the Latin word, dropped for transla- tion into the scholar's ear, till it re-appears in English on his tongue, but a half-hour's watching of the steam- press on which the Mirror is printed would be hardly a less instructive spectacle of contrivance. To com- plete the assimilation of the second process to the first, it would have been necessary, till lately, to em- ploy a boy to pull the word oft' the scholar's tongue ; but, by the ingenuity of R. Hoe & Co., the great organ of public opinion is endowed with a happy de- livery of its own — laying oft" the sheet that was printed and ready for utterance, that is to say, and drawing in its iron tongue, unaided, to be laden with the mean- time coinage of another. The improvements in printing-presses within the last ten or fifteen years are probably far less remark- able than some other progresses of mechanic inven- tion, yet they are wonderful enough to use up quite as much curiosity as it is comfortable to find epithets for, in a day. The difference between the old Ramage press, and the steam-miracle in our present office, is peculiarly impressive to ourself. There is a small bar of iron in this press which fulfils precisely the Bame destiny to which we were at one time devoted. We were considered in an exemplary line of life while performing exactly its office — that of inking the type — during a long year of disgust with Latin — (when a sensible papa took us at our word, and allowed us to prefer a trade to a satchel !) The ink was in those days kept in a wooden box, and, with two stuffed leather balls, a boy or man, be- side the press, distributed it over the face of the type, while the pressman was fixing the sheet for the impres- sion. We remember balling an edition of " Watts's Psalms and Hymns,"' which it took weeks to print, and, by the same token, there are lines in that good book of which we caught glimpses on the "frisket," that, to this day, go to the tune we played with the ink-balls while conning them over ! Reviving ambi- tion sent us back to school, however, and invention soon after superseded the ink-boy's elbows (encum- bered with a stomach), by a bit of machinery that neither required to be fed, nor committed verses to memory while inking the type ! This getting rid of the boy was the peculiarity of the Smith press, and then followed the Napier press, which dispensed with the man, and needed only the tending of two girls or boys; and now (thanks to Mr. Hoe), we have a steam- press, which puts up three iron fingers for a sheet of white paper, pulls it down into its bosom, gives it a squeeze that makes an impression, and then lays it into the palm of an iron hand which deposiles it evenly on a heap — at the rate of two thousand an hour ! We often stop with curiosity to look at the little arrangement which does the work our elbows have ached with, and we think the Mirror press altogether is a sight worth your coming to see, dear reader ! The First Day of the World's New Lease was clasped upon the last yesterday of the completed j series, by as glorious a retiring moon, and as brilliant a rising sun, as were ever coveted by the " old gray- beard," at whose funeral they are to be the expiring candles. A finer night than last night— a finer day than to-day — never relieved watch upon the " tented heavens." We stood looking up a steeple from our bed-room window at midnight (having first finished ! an article for to-day's paper, upon the venture of its | being wanted), and we stood shaving at the same j window when the gold smile of the unexpected sun- ; rise called upon the surprised weather-cock to look about him as usual! We, therefore, certify to the world's coming honestly by its "situation." Go about your business, oh, mankind ! Coming down the front steps of the Astor, at half- j past six, we naturally enough took a look up Broad- ! way, to see if, perchance, some blessed change in the j pavement might not give the first sign of anew Jcrusa- '. lem. But if the sapphire paviors had called upon ! Mayor Harper, he had struck at something in the contract. The old holes were there, with stones of the accustomed complexion — (chafed " trap," minera- : logically speaking)— and the mud evidently unaware of a miracle. But, hey ! how ! WHAT ! a rainbow j across Broadway? ? Could we believe our eyes? — t a many-colored arch completely spanning the street, hung with flowers, and men walking over it! ! ! Was an advent forthcoming, after all ? While we write, that Advent is in progress ! It is the Advent of Youth — Juvenocracy in thi as- cendant ! A flowery arch spans the breadth of Broadway, and under it winds, at this moment, the procession in honor of first maturity — manhood in youth '. It scarce needed, it is true, that the world should be born again before its new monarch should make formal entry. It was, ten years ago, discovered in France — two years ago in England — last year in America — that the gray head teas only the wisest while there were no books but experience ! That which men once waited to know till the hair was silvered, is now taught the child at school — conned in the ambitious dream of the youth in his puberty. The world has " hung fire" in other ages, from the damp of burnt- out enthusiasm spread like a blanket over its brain- powder. Improvement lias gone upon crutches. Action waited for enterprise to cough. Courage stayed to fumble for spectacles. The forenoon shadows of the sun of human intellect were of un- trustworthy measure, and the dial to begin to ivork by was shadowed till post-meridian ! Without touching upon the political articulation in " the roar of the Y~oung Lion," we mark the epoch —the epoch of "Young France," " Young England," " Young America!" We could show, had we time, how strikingly the peculiar habits of our land have more prepared us than other countries, for the sover- eignty of Youth ! We have no time now. We must go" forth with the crowd and see the bright cheek and curling beard of the Young Monarch in his hour of triumph. The cannon are pealing ! The drums shake upon the prophetic sunshine in the air! " Hail to the" YOUTH " that in triumph advances !" 12 o'clock— We have been to Broadway. The procession is soon to form. The mounted marshals of the day are galloping to and fro with their ribanded insignia— the pictorial outside of the Museum is per- fectly embroidered with petticoats (a charming relief!) —the windows on both sides of Broadway are cram- med with gayly-dressed spectators— the 500 Boston young men (fine, wholesome-looking fellows, who certainly do credit to their " parsley bed"), are assem- bled with their badges in front of the Astor— the town is full of what the ladies would call " handsome young 726 EPHEMERA. strangers" — the omnibuses carry flags — tbe whole street, from the triumphal arch to the pinnacles of Trinity, looks impassable with the glittering crowd. We never saw comparable preparation for a festal march. It will be a day to be remembered — mocked at, perhaps, as the first after a millenial crisis, but glorified as the first in the great era of Youth fulhood ! Mass Meeting of Newsboys. — We may be per- mitted, perhaps, to please our friends with the an- nouncement that we at least stand well upon the side- walk ! The exhaustion of our large edition at four o'clock, yesterday afternoon, and a general return of the newsboys from their routes with eager demands for more, occasioned a multitudinous holding of counsel among those piping potentates, and to the as- tonishment of our corner and the neighborhood, the assembled varlets actually gave the Evening Mirror three cheers! We bow to the tattered vox populi, and own the soft impeachment. Gentlemen newsboys ! give us your hand (with a newspaper between !) and permit us to offer you a business suggestion. Aston- ish one of your insinuating number with a white shirt, and try the new trick of selling us with a smile to the ladies ! Call him the ladies' boy, and treat him deli- cately when he is dressed and can't afford the results of your familiarity ! Your powerful body amounts at present to some three or four hundred, and your profits will soon tempt the competition of older gen- tlemen, unless you find more worlds to conquer. Hurrah for the ladies, gentlemen (waving whatever you have to represent a pocket-handkerchief) — and now, if you will graciously withdraw your attention, we would speak to those over whom you have the ad- vantage of youth. We have to thank the press all over the country for the most flattering mention and the kindest encour- agement. Our own craft seem to love us. We thought of quoting some of their felicitous notices, but our grateful pride would thus fall into a shape used for puffing, and we shrink from the medium. Thanks to our friends — simply but fervently. Gold Inkstand to the Authoress of the Scot- tish Chiefs. — The works of Jane Porter have probably brought more money into the hands of booksellers than those of any writer except, per- haps, Scott, and at this moment steam-presses are employed in printing large editions of her delight- ful novels. An enthusiastic man, a great admirer of Miss Porter, has, for the second time, started a subscription among the booksellers of this city to pre- sent her with a gold inkstand, and the Harpers, Ap- pletons, Langleys, and others, have subscribed with enthusiastic liberality. Perhaps a description of Jane Porter with a little of her hitherto unwritten history may not be unacceptable. Miss Porter was the daughter of a gallant English officer, who died, leaving a widow, and three children, then very young, but all destined to remarkable fame Sir Robert Ker Porter, Jane Porter, and Anna Maria Porter. Sir Robert, as is well known, was the celebrated historical painter, traveller in Persia, soldier, diplomatist, and author, lately deceased. He went to Russia with one of his great pictures when very young, married a wealthy Russian princess, and passed his subsequent years between the camp and diplomacy, honored and admired in every station and relation of his life. The two girls were playmates and neighbors of Walter Scott. Jane published her "Scottish Chiefs" at the age of eighteen, and became immediately the great literary wonder of her time. Her widowed mother, however, withdrew her imme- diately from society to the seclusion of a country town, and she was little seen in the gay world of Lon- don before several of her works had become classics. Anna Maria, the second sister, commenced her admi- rable series of novels soon after the first celebrity of Jane's works, and they wrote and passed the brightest years of their life together in a cottage retreat. The two sisters were singularly beautiful. Sir Thomas Lawrence was an unsuccessful suitor to Anna Maria, and Jane (said by Sir Martin Shee to have been the handsomest woman he ever saw) was engaged to a young soldier who was killed in the Peninsula. She is a woman to have but one love in a lifetime. Her betrothed was killed when she was twenty years of age, and she has ever since worn mourning, and re- mained true to his memory. Jane is now the only survivor of her family, her admirable mother and her sister having died some twelve or fourteen years ago, and Sir Robert having died lately, while revisiting England after many years' diplomatic residence in Venezuela. Miss Porter is now near sixty. She has suffered within the last two or three years from ill-health, but she is still erect, graceful, and majestic in person, and still possessed of admirable beauty of countenance. Her large dark eyes have a striking lambency of lus- tre, her smile inspires love in all who see her, and her habit of mind, up to the time we last saw her (three or four years ago), was that of reflecting the mood of others in conversation, thinking never of herself, and endeavoring only to make others shine, and all this with a tact, a playfulness and simplicity, an occasional unconscious brilliancy and penetration, which have made her, up to sixty years of age, a most inter- esting, engaging, and lovely woman. We have had the good fortune to pass several months, at different times, under different hospitable roofs, with Jane Porter, and, considering the extent of her charm, over old and young, titled and humble, masters and servants, we sincerely think we never have seen a woman so beloved and so fascinating. She is the idol of many different circles of very high rank, and passes her time in yielding, month after month, to pressing invitations from the friends who love her. The dowager queen Adelaide is one of her warmest friends, the highest families of nobility contend for her as a resident guest, distinguished and noble for- eigners pay court to her invariably on arriving in England, she has been ennobled by a decree of the king of Prussia, and with all this weight of honor on her head, you might pass weeks with her (ignorant of her history) without suspecting her to be more than the loveliest of women past their prime, and born but to grace a contented mediocrity of station. This is an impartial and truthful sketch of the cele- brated person for whom the above-mentioned compli- ment is intended. We trust it may find her alive, and with her accustomed bright smile upon her lips — God guard and preserve her ! RocKiNG-CHAiROTcelNKSTANDresig-fte<f. We gave, " by authority," an account of a subscription paper, the purpose of which was to present to Jane Porter an inkstand of gold. Our publisher-mayor Air. Har- per, headed the list with $40. We wrote a paragraph on the subject, and the same evening were called to see a rocking-chair into which the inkstand had been suddenly converted by a rub against the Aladdin's lamp of propriety. We went into Meeks's museum of sumptuous furniture, and the chair was disrobed, for us, of a beautiful chintz cover presented to Miss Por- ter by Messrs. Meeks, the makers. The chair is a bijou. The model is appropriately Elizabethan — (a EPHEMERA. 727 chair for the virgin queen of English romance, made in the style of the virgin queen of English history) — the carving in rosewood relief, and the lining of crim- son velvet. The exact model of the chair was sent to Queen Victoria not long since, as a specimen of American furniture, by a club of English gentlemen. The cadeuu goes out consigned by the mayor of New York to the iord-mayor of London, for his worshipful presentation, Mr. Griswold, the packet owner, giving it an honorary passage. The following letter, written on parchment and sealed with the city arms, accom- panies it : — " New York, October 28, 1844. " Dear Madam : The undersigned, booksellers, publishers, and authors, of the city of New York, have long felt desirous of transmitting to you a me- morial of the high and respectful admiration which they entertain for one to whose pen we are indebted for some of the purest and most imaginative produc- tions in the wide range of English literature. As the authoress of ' Thaddeus of Warsaw,' the 'Scottish Chiefs,' &c, your name has spread over the length and breadth of our land, and the volumes of your de- lightful works may be found gracing alike the abodes of the wealthy, and the humble dwellings of the poor. And deservedly so — for if purity of sentiment, felicity of expression, and the constant inculcation of the noblest lessons of religion and morality, be any passport to literary fame, then will the name of Miss Porter rank high on the list of those whom the present age delights to honor, and for whom coming ages will entertain a deep feeling of reverential esteem. " Regarding you, therefore, as that one among the writers of our time who first opened up the path that has been since further embellished by the kindred genius of a Scott, we take the liberty, as well on our I own behalf as in the name of thousands of American readers to whom your charming productions have taught, in so graceful and captivating a manner, the lessons of true virtue, of presenting you with the ac- companying testimonial of our sincere and grateful esteem. "We have the honor to remain, dear madam, " Your obedient servants, '•James Harper, Mayor of New York, W. H. Appleton, Daniel Appleton, Chas. S. Francis, S. B. Collins, Harper & Brothers." We have still another light to throw upon this fa- mous chair. The Wood, without which it might not have been built, did not come from the West Indies in planks of amyris balsamifera (rosewood), but from Canandaigua, in the shape of a gentleman whose heart distils a better balsam — of courtesy! We first heard of Mr. Wood and the proposed presentation of an inkstand, from Miss Porter herself. She inquired whether we knew Mr. Wood, and gave us the history of his project to compliment her, apropos of promis- ing us a sight of barrels of presents which had show- ered upon her from all parts of the world. She ex- pressed a most simple-hearted delight in the extent of her American reputation, and wished to see a copy of one of the American editions. On our return to this country we found a small copy of the "Scottish Chiefs," almost illegible with grease and thumbing, in the kitchen of a remote tav- ern in Pennsylvania. We sent it to her with a little water added unintentionally to its romance — having fallen overboard with it in our pocket while ferrying a skiff across the Susquehannah. By the way, let us here record an act of liberality in an p]nglish pub- lisher, which is apropos of this present from the American bibliopoles. We were one day requested by Mr. George Virtue, the enterprising publisher of the American Scenery, to be the bearer of a message to Miss Porter. He wished to publish her Scottish Chiefs in a beautifully-embellished edition. The copy- right, by English law limiting duration, had long since expired — but Mr. Virtue wished to give Miss Porter d£200 — one thousand dollars — for her formal con- sent. The check was sent the next day, and the edition, one of the most superb specimens of embel- lished edition in the language, is since completed. The old proverb says of a burn, " Rub it to Wood, It will come to good," and we had a burn at our fingers' end as to the real mover's getting his share of the credit of this compli- ment to Miss Porter. There is little enough enthu- siasm for others' glory in the world — little enough to prevent all fear of surfeit by mention. We have re- corded, therefore, against his express orders, the dis- interested zeal of William Wood in this matter. The Overcoat Dilemma. — We have received a note from a dismayed tailor in a thriving inland town of Massachusetts, begging us, " for charity's sake," to inform him "what is the fashion for overcoats." He protests that the models sent him from the city are inelegant and unbecoming — and he begs us to in- quire of some dandy, regnant or ci-devant, as to the existence, among knowing men, of some outer habili- ment more becoming than the prevailing type. This is our summing up of his wishes as expressed in a let- ter of three pages. Before venturing to tamper with so ticklish a sub- ject, let us fortify the ground by an extract from a very grave and well-considered lecture on the " Changes of the Fashions," lately delivered before a lyceum in Portsmouth : — Although the inventors of new fashions and the leaders in them are highly culpable for the injury they do society— yet nine tenths of those whom we see in fashionable attire are persons on whom no im- putation can be cast : neither is there one in a hun- dred of their dressmakers or tailors, hatters or cord- vvainers, who are deserving a breath of censure for do- in"- their work in a fashionable style. So powerful an & impetus has been moving the fashionable world, that no individual can with safety hold up a resisting hand. Nothing but a combined strength can over- come it. Common sense asks — why is it that a coat of a few years' standing, with a broad back and long waist, which the prudent man has kept for his holyday wear, is not as really valuable as one in which the seams are more nearly allied, or the buttons placed in a different position ? Public opinion replies — the man is not in fashion. The observers point him out among the multitude — " There is a sample of old times"—" There goes a miser who can't afford a new coat :" and a soft voice whispers as he passes—" I wonder who would have that old-fashioned man !" How frequently is the public sympathy excited for an adroit rogue in fash- ionable attire, who has received the just sentence of th e law— while the poorly-clad culprit by his side, not more guilty, passes almost unpitied to the gal- Thus to be out of fashion a man is generally re- garded as wanting in spirit or purse ; and it becomes a matter of necessity for a modest man, who wishes to elude the notice of the world, to follow along in the wake of fashion. However much a person in common life may be disgusted with its fluctuat.ons, he must bear the imputation of vamty, and in some degree lose his influence in society, if he either has a new dress made in an old style, or for convenience appears in any new clothing which is made more 728 EPHEMERA. with a view to general utility than in subservience to fashion. With this warrant for giving a grave opinion on the subject, we proceed to huddle together our kersey- mere ideas as follows: — The sack-coat belongs to the climate of England, and is wholly desoriente in this country. It was in- vented as a kind of body-umbrella in which elegant men could pass unvvet from club to cab, in that cli- mate of eternal moisture, and was never meant to be used but as a garment of transit. A dandy bicn poinlu in his kid and varnish extremities, may certainly walk the street safely in a sack-coat, as his quality would be known by his gloves and boots only, were he other- wise parenthesized in a barrel. But, unless redeema- ble by the point of his boot or a finger of his glove, no man is " dressed" in a sack. By universally making sack-coats of coarse cloth in England, they class them very definitely with hackney-coaches and umbrellas — temporary conveniences of which the material is by no means a point of honor. In England, however, dandies dress to drive, and in this country they dress to walk, and, of course, it is more important here that the street coat should be be- coming to the shape than is thought necessary in Eng- land. The paletot (for a description of which see " Scott's" authentic " Mirror of Fashion") is becom- ing to men of fine carriage, and the " Taglioni," when cut into the back adroitly, is becoming to slender fig- ures. In the present anarchy of overcoat, however, every man can choose for himself, and our pastoral querist of the shears, we venture to assure him, is perfectly safe in first suiting his customers, and then swearing it to be the fashion. We would just hint, in conclusion, that there is a mixture of cloak and overcoat that we have seen on a " slap-up" man lately from Paris, and this chanced to hit our weakness. Any man who has genius in his shears will require no broader hint of what the combination looks like ! Young Men's Procession — The procession of yesterday, was less remarkable for its numbers (esti- mated at 3,000) than for the unusual interest taken in it by the spectators — the enthusiasm of the ladies and more quiet lookers-on, and the boundless heartiness of the cheers by the people in the streets. The quali- ty of the general feeling, to our thinking, was more nearly up to the warmth of the Lafayette Ovation, than any procession that has taken place since. We remarked, also, that in the escorts and cavalcade, there was a large mixture of fashionable young men, which is a new feature in the public processions of this city. There were also more clergymen, who had errands in town and about the streets, than usual — the white cravat in rather uncommon proportion. Altogether, we think the bed of this new party has a longer and broader blanket — covering higher toward the fastidious public head, and falling more kindly upon the service- able public feet — than any new- party blanket spread within our recollection. Youth is beloved. Its hopes are contagious. Its opinions are supposed free from selfishness. Its ardor is credited with inspiration. The party of youth, whenever it is combined for one object, must triumph, it seems to us — for it carries with it an outside atmosphere of electric sympathies exclusively its own, while, within, it has the energy of enthusiastic first manhood, and confidence unsub- dued by experience. Opening of the Railroad to White Plains. — The first rush of blood through the heart of Pygma- lion's statue, and the first rush of a rail-car, on Satur- day, through the bosom of the Bronx valley, would seem to us a well-matched fable and fact, were not the fact, both as a surprise and a change, more electric than the fable. To realize it, one must get at the way it is looked at by the rustic dwellers in the plains be- yond. They were called upon to believe that a city which has, all their lives, been four hours distant, " good driving," would, after the forthcoming celebra- tion, be slid up to within one hour, " easy going." Their potatoes are to glide to market, and coal and groceries to glide back, with magical facility — their women-folks are to go to town, stop and get home be- tween dinner and supper — the morning newspapers are to arrive from New York a little after breakfast — the citizens are to come out by hundreds for an after- noon walk — New York, in short, is four times as near as it used to be, only the land \snot knocked away be- tween ! A gentleman told us, just before the cars started on their return, from White Plains, that the country-people, around, were not only incredulous as to the completion of the road, up to the time of the arrival of the cars, but that they still (6 o'clock P. M.) looked upon the whole affair — celebration, train, music and guns — as a humbug that could never hold out — got up for some Millerite or political hocus- pocus, and to end only in the ruin of their credulous neighbors ! To start fair, however. We were invited to join the worshipful society of aldermen, bank-directors, stockholders, and judiciary, who, on Saturday after- noon, were to invade, for the first time, by public rail- road, the virgin seclusion of the White Plains. The access, through the valley of theBronx, promised some- thing attractive in the way of landscape, and there was a pull out of town in the soft air of the morning. We were at the cars punctually at one, found a friend inside, and a band of music a-top, and rolled away from the City Hall with a double momentum — steam to draw the cars, and the gentlemen in the cars who are drawn on for the steam ! We went on our musi- cal way through Centre street, embellishing it (by the beauty attracted to the chamber-windows) as the moon brightens the clouds in passing through, and with a momentary chill from the deserted propriety of streets up-town, were soon in the fields — fields by the way, which are secured to Nature and shorn of their chief value (nearness to town) by the railroad which makes fields beyond quite as come-at-able. We gave Harlem an outbreak of music in passing through, stopped a moment at Williams' bridge, where the road has hitherto terminated, and then proceeded upon the new track through the Bronx valley.* The scenery for the next twelve miles was as primitive and fresh as if a three-days' journey lay between it and a great city — the most unconscious looking old water- mills on the stream, the woods and hill-sides with a look most innocent of snob and suburb, and a univer- sal gape of amazement on the faces of cottagers and their cows. The seclusion and thorough country of the whole twelve miles were enchanting, and we prom- ised ourselves a ramble to twenty successive nooks that we saw (and twenty successive times of course had occasion to remember that we had* become a utensil of daily use, labelled " never to be taken out of the kitchen !" We are sorry to say the grass will probably do pretty well without us, now, till we disturb it to ask leave to pass under.) The hill-sides suddenly fell back and we glided into an open plain, where two or three hundred rustic- looking people were assembled — six or seven of them * The road, from a few miles above the Harlem river, fol- lows the valley of the Bronx, a small stream, taking its rise near Rye, and sometimes dignified by the name of a river. We believe that it was contemplated by the British govern- ment, at one time, to form a court of inquiry, to try the British admiral for not ascending the Bronx river with his fleet, and destroying the army of General Washington, then lying near White Plains. EPHEMERA. 729 busy on a knoll near by, ramming a welcome up a gun. The report rang as the engine stopped, and White Plains was cosmopolized ! Out jumped Wall street and City Hall. An old negro and his very old wife commenced furiously opening oysters at a bench near by. The cars stood in the middle of a corn-field. The country people gathered around and looked hard at the boots of the company. Two or three barrels of crackers were rolled over the corn-hills to a new stable building in the field. Everybody from the city seemed exclusively occupied with smelling the plough- ed ground. Horses were tied to the fences all about. The landscape (breasted with fine, fertile hills, and having the While Plains for its lap), was slumbering in a soft haze, with just sunshine enough to content a man who would be contented without it, and al- together the scene was simple and fresh near by, and the distance more picturesque than the name of "White Plains" had suggested. On the floor of the new barn, half boarded and nearly shingled, were spread four long tables, laden with a very profuse and substantial repast, and, in fifteen minutes after arrival, the president was in his place, and the stockholders and their guests seated and " in a fair way" to be enthusiastic. After a round or two of champagne, the president's health was drank and his report called for — but we will give the statistics in another paragraph. Pretty sure of hearing the report and reading the speeches " in the way of business," we accepted the invitation of Mr. Lyon, and drove to his beautiful residence, near by — a Gothic cottage of most absolute taste, a sketch of which we had seen in the new edi- tion of " Downing's Rural Architecture." It is enough to make one doubt all the ills of life to see such a place to pass it in. The table-land of the White Plains lies behind the house, and a valley — folded slope over slope, and sunk, knoll below knoll- drops away from the lawn in front, showing miles of wild-wood and fertile fields, with a shady glen leading away to the left — the whole combination, for an inland view, unsurpassed in variety and beauty. The cottage is in the Tudor style, faultless within and without. We wish we had time and space to say more of it and its surroundings. We should add that Mr. Lyon has been the zealous apostle of the road, and that a pro- cession was formed after the collation to make him a complimentary visit. They went to his house, pre- ceded by the band, but were unfortunately missed by Mr. Lyon, who was conducting his friends back by a shorter path across the fields. The White Plains moon rose to see us off, and, as we got under way with music and cheers, she added another full face to the gazing rustics, and, when last seen, was apparently climbing up on a barrel to look over the spectators' shoulders. As she was in town when we arrived at half past nine, and as there were no ladies invited by the directors, she must have got a ride somehow behind, and whatever the conductor may say (for we know her well !) the paying her pas- sage was probably " all moonshine." Labor and Brains. — We hear much about " pro- tection for labor," and very little about protection for brains — (except in the way of a hat). The working men, those who use their hands skilfully and industri- ously, have many advocates of their claims. The politicians and the law-makers and the newspaper press, take up their cause loudly and sincerely, but those who " can not dig," who are " ashamed to beg" and have nothing but their brains — their intellect, to depend upon — are whistled down the wind, "the prey to fortune." One class of these luckless personages, is that of editors and assistant editors, and their remuneration is not only inadequate, generally speaking, to their sup- port, but far below their real merit. What would the newspaper press of this city be but for these men ? Nothing ! They are the indirect means of giving a livelihood to thousands, and are never thanked for it. For example. We know of a newspaper in this city which owes its success to a small corps of editors, whose whole pay is about two thousand dollars per annum. If they should withdraw their aid, the paper would stop beyond a question. Let us see what their brains do for others. The paper-makers receive from the establishment. 818,000 a year. The compositors receive about $10,000 more —the reporters and clerks about 83,000 more. The type-makers and ink-manufacturers about $2,000 more. And this expenditure goes on from year to year. It I would be utterly impossible for this $32,000 to be re- ceived and expended in this way, but for the talent and tact of two or three persons connected with the paper. A large number of persons is actually supported by their brains, and yet there is not one among the num- ber thus supported, who does not think his own person- al labor and toil, far more important and praiseworthy than that of the men who actually furnish them with employment! This is the justice of the world ! This is the result of the ridiculous notions prevailing, that the lifting of the sledge-hammer is more deserving of reward than the skill which guides its blows. Me- chanical labor of all kinds is better paid than literary labor, and it is time that just impressions prevailed on this subject. Let us honor the working men, but when they are aided by talent and literary industry, they should honor them in return. The editorial corps are making the fortunes of many newspaper and magazine establishments in this country, and yet many men of talent are starving under the effort. Portrait of Wordsworth by Henry Inman — Without wishing to compare our great painter to a worm— except as having used up one system (of artis- tic ideas) and being fairly on wing in a new one— we think the worm in chrysalis and its emergent new creature very fair types of the Inman that teas, in America, and the Inman that is, in England. Before this time we think he would have gone abroad prema- turely. Genius requires to complete its first identity — to ripen fully — to acquire the perfection of com- mand over, and familiarity with, its in-born peculiari- ties—before trusting itself in a sphere which is both removed from habit and aids to concentration, and i bewildering with the glitter and supremacy of other i models. No matter what the pursuit, there is a j natural mental chrysalis— a time after completed man- hood, when a change of scene, change of habits, change of influences, external and internal, renew the life of both mind and body, open chambers in the soul hitherto unseen, and incredibly beautify and enrich the whole existence. How many painters have we seen confirmed into tame copyists— crushed by the weight of the masters above them— by going abroad with a new-born style just struggling into shape and seeming of its own! In a minor way, how many characters are smothered by being forced into a too trying element of society before completing their natural idiosyncrasy ! Power went abroad at the r.ght stage of his exis- tence as a sculptor-Grenough, perhaps, too early Inman might, possibly, have gone earher, with equal advantage. He has been, for some time, gaining little in his art The easily-given and ill-weighed praise of our country had long ago satiated him. He had little stimulus beyond the profit of his pencil. But the mind that lies fallow under such torpor, ripens and 730 EPHEMERA. collects richness under the surface, and ploughed again, before it is mastered by weeds and tangle, it shows wondrous fertility and vigor. "We have put down, now, what passed through our mind while looking yesterday at a head of Words- worth, which is just received from Inman. It is a masterly piece of work, though but a sketch. The truth to nature convinces you that it is an infallible portrait, without your ever having seen the original. It is Wordsworth. It is the shell of the meat in his books. His feeblenesses and his philosophic sim- plicities are there. You see how he came to write what we have read. He has done his own portrait — a faithful copy, in poetry, of the same as this on can- ass. Majestic and weak, wise and silly, far-sighted and credulous old man ! He looks like his poetry, and to a man who could read characters as some do, there would be nothing new in his books after seeing Inman's picture, nor any surprise in Inman's picture, after seeing his books. What will Broadway be like, with omnibuses exclu- ded, and two lines of railcars plying its entire length ? Where will the tracks be?— both in the middle, or one on each side? If the latter, how will car- riages stand by the sidewalk with safety? If the former, will there be room left for two carriages to pass each other on either side ? Will not the fre- quent taking-up and setting-down of passengers, and the consequent hinderance of cars behind, make the passage up and down tediously slow? These are questions that, with sundry others on the same sub- ject, will furnish table-talk to the city for the ensuing week — the announcement of the corporation's inten- tion to have a railroad there being yesterday made public. Let us mumble about it a little. The slow- ness of the motion would justify a very narrow track. By placing the seats lengthwise, and back to back, the cars themselves might be made very narrow, and with a roof overhead, and no sides (or sides remova- ble in fair weather), passengers might easily jump on and off, and be sufficiently protected. They will probably stop for passengers at the crossings only. The fare will be taken by a boy inside, as soon as the passenger is seated, to prevent delay. We shall have the comfort (sitting back to back) of not becoming so compulsively acquainted with anybody's face, breath, knees, and umbrella. Our chances of being the sub- ject of a coroner's inquest will be diminished 100 per cent. — the present rate and manner of omnibus-driving having (we presume) nearly doubled the cost of life-in- surance to those who live in the upper part of the city. There will probably be fast lines established in the streets nearly parallel to Broadway, and the great tide of human life, now concentrated in one thoroughfare, will be divided into three. McNair & Scarpa, and other sellers of "acoustic oil," will languish under the suspended deafening of Broadway, and that charm- ing lounge will be once more susceptible of enjoy- ment by walk and talk. The danger of prying off a wheel upon the railtrack, or coming in contact with the cars, will deter the timid from taking their car- riages into Broadway, and we shall meet all the pretty shopperesses on foot (the greatest Amelia-ration)! The "Kipp& Brown" 'buses will be obliged to come down Church street, and have their terminus at the corner of Fulton street and Broadway — or (query ?) will the lower part of Broadway, between the Park and Bowling-green, be necessarily left open to the converging lines from east and west? "Taglioni is coming to this country." So say the papers; and if it prove true, we shall see the differ- ence between the apparent efforts of a football and a balloon — between common and rarefied air (in manner as well as in motion) — between a smile which, beauti- fully dissected from the muscles that might else move it, is left stereotyped upon the face, and a smile timid, natural, and impulsive — in short, the difference be- tween the "divine p'anny" and the womanly Taglioni. (We prefer a woman to "a divinity" any day !) Like all women permitted to be desirably famous, Taglioni paid the inexorable penalty of being undesirably mated. She has amassed a fortune or "two from the "gold dust" at the toe of her white slipper — dissipa- ted, they say, without pity, by her husband, and she has at last cut him {in toto), and goes entirely upon her own legs. We hope they and the Cunard pad- dles will, indeed, bring her to this country. In see- ing any other stage-exhibition, one is conscious of the seat he sits on and the trouble of holding his hat. To see Taglioni is to be in a trance, during which one might almost be content with the seat of St. Lawrence— on a gridiron. We shall remember (talk- ing of seats), "while memory holds her seat" (and has any pleasure in sitting on it), the first performance of La Sylphide at Paris — by far the most entrancing and intoxicating spectacle we ever witnessed. We venture to refer the reader to our description of it in " Pencillings." We wonder whether Taglioni will come ! Echo — " come !" Major Noah and his Apology for the Cruci- fixion. — Our friend, the lecturer on the Restoration, has written us a letter, phrased with great forbearance and kindness, but finding grievous fault with our yes- terday's notice of his discourse at the Tabernacle. His letter is too long to publish, as he requests, but we will give its substance, and leave out only his ex- pressions of good will. He says he "understood from a friend that we were fast asleep before the lec- ture commenced, and slept throughout the whole of it." With his letter, the major sent us a copy of the Mirror with the objectionable passages of our re- port underlined. Here they are : — " Major Noah arose and commenced with an apolo- gy for the Jews as to the crucifixion of our Savior." "With the exception of his very adroit disparage- ment of the Savior," &c, &c. Some extracts from the lecture, copied from his MS. into the Express, were also sent us by the ma- jor, and we extract the page which, in. the delivery, impressed us as represented in our objectionable sen- tences. "The Jews were amazed, perplexed, and bewil- dered at all they saw and heard. They knew Jesus from his birth : he was their neighbor; they knew his father Joseph, and Mary his mother, his brothers, James and Judas; he was in constant intercourse with his brethren in their domestic relations, and sur- rounded by their household gods; they remembered him a boy, disputing, as was the custom, most learn- edly with the doctors in the temple; as a man pursu- ing to the age of thirty, the modest and laborious calling of his profession; and yet he proclaimed him- self the Son of God, and performed most wonderful miracles, was surrounded by a number of disciples, poor, but extraordinary gifted men, who sustained his doctrines, and had an abiding faith in his mission; he gathered strength and followers as he pro- gressed ; he denounced the whole nation, and proph- ecied its destruction, with their altars and temples; he preached against whole cities, and proscribed their leaders with a force which, even at this day, would shake our social systems. The Jews became alarmed at his increasing power and influence, and the Sanhedrim resolved to become his accuser, and EPHEMERA. 731 bring him to trial under the law as laid down in the 13th of Deuteronomy. "In reflecting deeply on all the circumstances of this, the most remarkable trial and judgment in his- ory, I am convinced, from the whole tenor of the proceedings, that the arrest, trial, and condemnation of Jesus of Nazareth, was conceived and executed un- der a decided panic" Now it seemed to us, and it seems to us (for we are wide awake now), that to represent the Son of God, while on a mission from Jehovah for the salvation of a world, made the victim of a "decided panic'" — the "earth quaking, the rocks rent, the sun darkened, the graves opened, and the veil of the temple rent in twain," as the consequence of a "decided panic," un- der the influence of which the Jews had crucified one whom they "knew as a boy," and as an industrious laborer — this does seem to us a "disparagement of the Savior," and of the dignity of his mission, and it does seem to us as intended to "apologise for the Jews." What other aim or relevancy has this very new and original reason for the crucifixion, but to apologise for the act? As this is the "first time for centuries" that the Jews have had an apologist, our readers will be inter- ested to know more particularly how the crucifixion is defended. We therefore yield to our own wish, and give the following more extended extract from Major Noah's lecture, underlining {hose passages timidity, their hesitation, without even a ray of hope; a people so venerable for their antiquity, so beloved and protected for their fidelity, on the very threshold of political destruction. • " It is not my duty to condemn Uie course of our an- cestors, nor yet to justify the measures they adopted in that dire extremity ; but if there are mitigating cir- cumstances, I am bound by the highest considerations which a love of truth and justice dictates, to spread them before you, at the same time to protest against any entailing upon us, the responsibility of acts com- mitted eighteen hundred years ago by our fathers, and thus transmit to untold generations the anger and ha- tred of a faith, erroneously taught to believe us the aggressors. " The Jews, my friends, were but the instruments of a higher power, and in rejecting Jesus of Nazareth, we have a great and overwhelming evidence of the infinite wisdom of the Almighty. Had they acknowledged him | as their Messiah at that fearful crisis, the whole na- tion would have gradually sunk under the Roman [ yoke, and we should have had at this day paganism i and idolatry, with all their train of terrible evils, and I darkness and desolation would have spread over the earth. But the death of Jesus was the birth of Christianity ; the Gentile church sprang from the ru- ins which surrounded its primitive existence; its march was onward, beset with darkness and difficul- ties, with oppression and persecution, until the Sun which we offendingly described as "adroit disparage- of Reformation rose upon it, dissipating the clouds ment," and " apology for the Jews:'' — " The title of God was a title of power and domin- ion, and frequently was conferred by the Almighty himself on earthly rulers. ' See, I have made thee a God to Pharaoh,' as God supreme said to Moses. Son of God was a title frequently conferred on those of distinguished piety and learning, and on those posses- sing the emanations of the divinity, and this title the apostles themselves carry out in their writings. "'The Son,' 'My Son,' not the Father; the hu- manity, not the divinity, the image of the invisible God, not ihe invisible God himself; and as Paul said, there is one God and one mediator between God and man. Could the Almighty delegate a mediatorial character to any one on earth? Who can doubt it? God said to Moses, 'Behold, 1 send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way; provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him; my spirit is in him.' It was not therefore al- together on the charge of Jesus having called himself Son of God, that the Sanhedrim accused and con- demned him ; political considerations mingled them- selves, and in a measure controlled the decision of the council, and this is demonstrable from the declaration of Caiaphas himself, as stated in the Gospel : ' Better that one man should die than that the nation should be destroyed.' " It icas the sedition, and not altogether the blasphe- my, the terror and apprehension of political overthrow, which led to conviction, and this political and national characteristic teas maintained throughout ; it was that consideration which induced the Jews to urge upon Pi- late a confirmation of the sentence. It was the charge of assuming the prerogatives of Cesar, not the name of the Divinity, which overcame the well-founded ob- jections of the Roman governor, and crucifixion itself was a Roman and not a Jewish punishment. The opprobrious insults heaped upon the master came from the Roman soldiers, and that mixed rabble, which, even in our day, desecrate all that is held sa- cred. " I place these most absorbing events before you, my countrymen, not to contrast things sacred with those which are profane, but that you should under- stand the exact position of the Jews at that time; their painful situation, their prostrate condition, their of darkness which had obscured its beauties, and it 1 shone forth with a liberal and tolerant brightness, ! such as the Great Master had originally designed it. ! Had not that event occurred, how would you have been ! saved from your sins? The Jews in this did nothing | but what God himself ordained, for you will find it ' written in the Acts of the Apostles, 'And now, breth- i ren, I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers !'" We leave it to any Gentile (saved by the " decided political panic" of the Jews under Caiaphas), whether it was not reasonable enough — at least for a man "fast asleep" — to fancy he could detect in the above argument, an "apology for the Jews," and a "dispar- agement of the Savior." We were quite too fast asleep to detect anything else! No, dear major, we were not " asleep" when this was delivered! Our head was down — for you had two unshaded lamps, looking like blazing earrings, on either side of your benevolent head, and our eyes are as weak as your heartstrings — but we went to the Tabernacle, not only with the interest of friendship for yourself, but with high excitement in the unpar- alleled background of your theme ! We could not tell you, without a seeming rhapsody — we could not trust ourself to record, out of blank verse — the scope your subject seemed to possess, the tragic sublimity of your position, the climax of events you wished to be instrumental in bringing to a close, and the interest that might be awakened in the Christian world by an eloquent, life-devoted, fervent apostle of the restora- tion ! There is no theme for eloquence with a thou- sandth part of the pathos, depth, splendor, and pres- ent convergence of this ! Heavens! what a theme! The key of the whole Christian era! The winding up of a cycle of two thousand years numbered from the crucifixion! The close of the one expiation which is the theme of scripture-prophecy, and with the closing of which comes in the millenial glory, and the renewal of Paradise on earth ! This theme, on the lips of genius, one would think — genius ac- cursed eighteen hundred years ago, and to be one of the forgiven at the second coming of the Messiah — might burn like the fire upon the lips of Paul, and turn all eyes toward waiting Jerusalem. This was the view of the subject with which we went to the 732 EPHEMERA. Tabernacle, dear major! — almost envying you your qualification by birth for the using of it. We meant no disrespect in our notice. We were only a liitle disappointed and annoyed that you did not kindle into a crusader, or try on Peter the Hermit, till we gazed at you, spite of your earrings ! And now — (" to step out of the carriage and see ourselves go by") — you are wrong if you are right, major, and right if you are wrong ! If your Jewish creed be right, you are wrong to deny its manifest de- duction. If your Jewish creed be wrong, you are right in wishing to explain it away. But you can not have your cake and eat it, too. You can not rec- oncile the church with the synagogue, nor can you lecture palatably and frankly from the synagogue to Christians. The time, at least, is not come. "At the end of the toorld" (says a commentator on the Bi- ble), " Christ will unite the church with the syna- gogue, the Jew with the Christian, the Christian with the Gentile ; then all things will be restored to a per- fect union, and there will be but one shepherd and one flock." Pkices of Women — cold and warm. — A lovely female slave, warm from the mountains of Circassia, and warranted not to be second-hand, may be bought at Constantinople for three hundred dollars. A lovely female statue, cold from the marble mountains of Car- rara (and spotless as the snow, without a doubt), was lately sold by Mr. Power to the Hon. William Pres- ton, for three thousand dollars. Something would seem to be wrong here — the " cte/-tariflf" — or the Ot- toman "protection" — or something ! Various ques- tions arise. Is an original woman a favorite article ? Is the imitation by Power of the fabrics of Nature & Co. an improvement upon the model ? Is the presence of the faculty of speech in the cheaper article any special indication of a preference that can be relied upon in the buyer ? Perhaps some extensive dealer in both articles will oblige us with a solution of this mercan- tile problem. We had a bonne bouche of opera last night at Niblo's which made us long for the whole feast — a hint of a ballet which provoked great desire for more — and just such a sprinkling of judicious white gloves as satisfied the cognoscents that there was something in the bill that had a pull upon the town's fashion. Then, as if it were to be nothing but an appetizer, Madame Pico appeared in a private box, and the audience saw, that, whatever the warble might be, the throat it would come from was of the most capable fulness of beauty. We have had our suspicions, from the quietness with which she "bides her time," that Madame Pico is a star conscious of the swing for a large orbit, and very sure of "putting a circle round the" town, whenever she rises. It is a considerable spoke in the wheel of this same orbit that she is a very superb woman. She has the adorable low Greek forehead, like Mrs. Nor- ton's (the poetess), and a certain mainlien of bust and neck which shows the kind of passionate uppishness the old gods used to be fond of. (Fide the gods' old pictures.) We were not surprised last night to overhear a foreigner telling one of his countrymen that Madame Pico would make more impression in New York than any prima donna since Malibran. What say, Corbyni ! Light up your dress-circle with a little more gas, and give us ballet and opera with Borghese and Pico on alternate nights ! in every civilized country but this, the government backs up the opera, as an important public refinement. The royal treasurer is always half a stage manager. With us, the people are the sovereign, but Chancellor Bibb, not having, as far as we know, offered terms to Madame Pico, we, as one of the royal pores, do our part of the insensible perspiration, and express the warm desire of the public, that Madame Pico should appear. It is manifest dulness of enterprise, to have no opera now. There are no parties, the autumn weather is moderate, the strangers hang about town, till after the Indian summer, and there is no room for doubt that the thing would be supported. There was a demonstration of enthusiasm, last night, which appeared to be quite a I'improvista, at the per- formance of the Polka, by " Master Wood and la Petite Carline." These two little miniatures — of the size of children six years old — danced, to our thinking, quite wonderfully. We are likely to have no grown-up dancers, this year at least, who, reduced to the same size by an inverted opera-glass, would do the Polka any better. The necessary air of galliar- dise, the precision, combined with abandon, the look and gesture, were all capitally well done. They are charming little people, and a good deal of a " good card" for any theatre. Query, for Corbyn — Would not a ballet, by these Lilliputians, got up for children, to commence at four o'clock in the afternoon, and last about one hour, be a paying enterprise? One hint more : Is there not the making of a fine actress and singer in Miss Rosina Shaw ? She has beauty, remarkable voice, grace and confidence — four " pretty wells." Keep an eye on her, Mr. Manager! The Day after the Ballot. — The contention for the favors of Mrs. Vox Populi is over. The diffi- cult dame has made her election. The future presi- dent is in the ballot-box, and that womb of authority is now silently waited upon by the paternal majority. God bless whatever is to be brought forth ! Thank Heaven the town is stiller ! There is more noise upon the blacksmith's anvil and the shoemaker's lap-stone — more clatter upon the tinman's vice and the coppersmith's rivet — but the town's heart beats less audibly, to-day, and the town's pulse less feverish- ly and wildly. The political bully is looking around unwillingly but peacefully for work. The club wrangler's vocation is gone. The working-man will give less of his evening to the bar-room and caucus. Wives rejoice. Children are glad. Considering only individuals, the immediate tumult and recoil of politics seem only evil and violence. The pore and the pediculus will complain of blood- letting and blister. We believe the country at large is benefited by the bringing of these bad humors to the surface, however. We are sure at least that we see all there is, in our body popular, that is dangerous. There is evil disposition, antagonism, discontent, cra- ving for excitement, love of combination, dormant energy, and ambition — qualities everywhere distribu- ted, and hungering, every one, for a field of action. Where belter would they break out, than in politics ? How, easier, should we know our neighbor's length of conscience-string and proneness to trick and unfair- ness, than by watching him when his passions are roused and his cautiousness forgotten ? What man in a political committee knows too little of his fellows for future living with them ? But, thank God, the tumult once over, the city re- turns to peace, industry, and prosperity. Injury and calumny stand no more behind the editor's chair — literature and cominerce, instead, look promptingly over his shoulder. The merchant is relieved from anxiety, and knows how to shape his venture. The mechanic " hangs" politics for a plague and a bother. The republic has set up its master, and is content to be governed while it toils and prospers. There is one feature of the late contest, however, for which we can find no philosophical offset. We EPHEMKK A 733 refer to the unparallelled and insane extent to which betting lias been carried. Of any good this practice does we do not see even a shadowing. Of its intoler- able evil* we hear mournful accounts at every turn. It seems to have infected, with a gambling mania, those who never before hazarded money on a question of chance or uncertainty. We have heard several really most lamentable instances of fatuity and disaster { in this new demon-shape of party-spirit. Families are ruined, creditors robbed, children deprived of edu- j cation and bread — by men who would as soon cut off j their hands as throw a stake at a gaming-table ! Is there no power in the law to put a stop to this new j evil of politics ? We ask this question to provoke, if j possible, an answer. And now — as politics walk out from the public mind, and there is room for something else to walk in — let us mention a great evil in this country of ours, and tell some news that has an example by which to mend it. We toil too much! Ladies' Dictionary — the word Alpaca. The Al- paca is a South American animal, much used as a beast of burden by the Indians, with long hair, princi- pally black, but slightly grizzled. It is an excessive- ly irritable animal, and indomitable till soothed. The importance of this animal has already been considered by the English, in their hat, woollen, and stuff trade, and an essay on the subject has been published by Dr. Hamilton of London. The wool is so remarkable, being a jet black, glossy, silk-like hair, that it is fitted for the production of texile fabrics differing from all others, occupying a medium position between the wool and the silk. It is now mingled with other ma- terials in such a singular manner, that while a par- ticular dye will affect those, it will leave the Alpaca wool with its original black color, thus giving rise to great diversity. Who wants a Dress-Opera ? — There is a large class in every metropolis who are fond of gayety, dress, and " a place to go to," but who do not like private parties for three or more reasons: 1st, the lateness of the hours; 2d, the trouble of making the agreeable; 3d, the card-and-visit nuisance, the man- agement and ceremony, necessary to keep up fashion- able vogue. The part of the evening between eight and eleven is, to this class, the time of the twenty-four hours in which they wish to be abroad, to be admired, to be amused. The less trouble with it the better; and they would rather give a dollar and think no more about it, than leave a card at an expense of memory, time, equipage, and politic calculation. They want a place where everybody dresses ; where it is light ; where they will see beauty, and be seen themselves by appreciative eyes ; where there is music to hear and a show to look at if they like to be silent, or friends in a box near by if they wish to converse — a place where they can hear the gossip, have singers to criticise, and "see the world" — in short.Ais Opera. To the great majority of ball-goers— particularly to the men— the time from eight to eleven hangs heavily. They would gladly dress early and go first to the opera, if it were habitually a dress-resort. There are many well-off people to whom a dress- opera is the only tolerable amusement — lame people ; ladies who only look well sitting, or look best in shawls and opera-dress ; foreigners who do not speak the language ; timid persons, who wish to see the gay world without encountering it ; and the many fami- lies who have a competency to live and can afford amusement, but want a handle to the door of society. The first object of strangers in town (of whom there are always several thousands), is to go where they can j see the well-dressed and fashionable people. Most i strangers, in a large city, would rather see the exclu- I sives in an opera-box, than the Croton reservoirs, or the monsters in a menagerie. People in ceremonious mourning find a great relief in seeing the gay world from an opera-box. Last (not least, unless you please!) some people would frequent the opera, the season through, for the music. It "soothes" our "savage breast" — for one, and we think the " hang" of opera-music in the town hum and whistle is a desirable and refining variety. Now, with all this desirableness and frequentability, ! is it not wonderful that no larger capitalist than Signor Palmo (pocket edition), should have ventured to em- bark in a scheme for an opera-house! It is not a scheme to prosper — doneby halves. It must be a splen- did affair, or a failure. There must be comfort in the seats, breadth in the alleys, boundless prodigality in the lights, luxury in the saloons and entrances, and Alhambrian excellence in the refreshments. The manager should be a mixture of Caesar, Talleyrand, and Bluebeard — awful, politic, punctual in pay. and I relentless to the caprices of primadonnas. Two slash- ing critics should be employed to annihilate each other daily, in opposing preferences for the performers. The exaction of full dress for all comers should be rigidly enforced. The names of the belles at every last night's opera should be disembowelled and para- graphed every morning. Prestige, celebrity, show, humbug, and ceremony, should be added to the most indefatigable real merit in the management, and then the shareholders would make money. Then, too, we should have a dress-resort — what no theatre now is or ever has been in New York, but what, of all refinements and resources, is the most delightful and indispensable. We could write a column about the blessing of beauty seen in public, the chastening and refining influences of music, the restraining proprieties of dress and observance, etc, etc., etc. — but we confine ourself to tangibilities. One more fact— the existence of such an opera-house, so conducted, would link New York in the operatic chain of star-travel; and Grisi, Lablache, and the rest, would as certainly come here from Loudon and Paris, as go to Vienna and St. Petersburg!!, Berlin and Naples. Our readers in Wall street will please consider this as a " money article.''' PROMISCUOUS REPLIES TO LETTERS. Dear Jack: Since my compulsory budding, flower- ing, and bearing fruit, have been accelerated to one season per diem, to feed a daily paper, you will easily understand that I found it necessary at first to work all my sap into something useful — omitting as it were, the gum deposite of superfluous correspondence. I accordingly left you off. Your last letter was slipped into the no- more-bother hole, without the usual en- dorsement of " answered," and I considered you like a trinket laid aside before a race— not to encumber me. Imiss the writing of trumpery, however. I miss the sweeping out of the corners of my mind— full of things fit only for the dust-pan, but still very possibly hiding a silver-spoon. Do you want any more explanation of why you get a letter from me for one cent, printed, instead of a written one at eighteen and three quarters? It rs wonderful how much cheaper printing is than writing ! I left off my envy of your country life as usual wnh my summer trowsers, not caring to see the death of anything— even the resigned summer. As soon as I I have occasion to button my coat to keep out the air, I I am content with that part of the earth's breast that II is paved over. The town is honored now by the pres- 734 EPHEMERA ence of those who could go away if they wished, and, as, human-like, the town values those who can do without it, " New York is gay." Shopping is this month's pastime, however. The ladies have no need of parties while they can yield reluctant dollars to in- sidious temptation. It was in competition with the " fall goods" that the opera failed a month ago — open- ed on the supposition that people had nothing to amuse them! A manager, and not know the sex ! Kech! Pal mo ! The town is to be illuminated on Monday next by the apparition of a new base and a brace of prima- donnas. Madame Pico has been biding her time like game in the larder, and the town is quite ready to sweeten her with the current condiment and devour her. She is a beautiful woman, and though I never could get my sentiment over the foot-lights, I love to see the town fascinated. Pray Heaven she sings well — after all the heralding I have done for her! If that well-chiselled throat should have an awkward corner in it, we should have to restore to Borghese her divi- ded throne and go back to our worship of her toilet and other utmost-possibles, with an indifferent grace. Happy queen of Sheba, who ordained that no woman should reign after her ! Well, sir, what do you want to know ? There are few things above ground that I do not hear of, some hundreds of newspapers doing their best to make news and send it to me — to cook to your liking ! He who subscribes to the Mirror appoints me his fashioner of things palatable to know, and though, like other cooks, I pass under my nose a vast deal I should not choose for my own relishing, I do my best to give it with due spice and proportion. Indeed, what with serving so many people with so many different kinds of knowl- edge, 1 feel like the omnificent man called for in Ben Jonson's " Staple of news :" — u Where is my fashioner, my feather-man, My linener, perfumer, barber, all !" When Saturday comes round with the life, business, fun, and literature of the whole week in one — a mir- ror'd E Pluribus Unum — it seems wonderful to me how so much, and of such endless variety, could have been gathered into one week's history ! That weekly Mirror is worth binding and keeping, if it were only as a choice record of the events of the buyer's times — set down, point by point, with the life he lived amidst their occurrings. There is nothing good, brilliant, or important, that is not recorded in it, and, if a man wants to forget as he goes along, that pack- horse will take the load off his memory, and for three dollars a year bring it safe after him ! And now, dear Jack, assuring you that this letter is wholly confidential, and that you are not at liberty to give it away as an autograph, I record myself, As usual, Yours, . To John Esq., (a friend in the country). ETIQUETTE OF WEDDING-CARDS. Messrs. Editors: My friend John Smith is to be married to Lucy Jones. She issues a card of invita- tion like this : — MXTND^MTsTTOll^SMTfH > j AT HOME, ! No. 59 B street, Tuesday Evening, < November 14th. i Johx Smith, i \ Lucy Jones. \ Now he intends to use this for inviting to the cere- tnony ; but I tell him it is wrong, and can only be used to invite to the party after the ceremony. He con- tends that this is the usual form — so the engraver tells him, etc. Please give us the law in these matters (we can ap- peal to no higher authority in matters of etiquette and fashion) ; let us have the two customary forms, for wedding and party, for the enlightenment of in- experienced candidates who wish to follow the fash- ions, and much oblige, 'Custom. P. S. — We wait for your infallible decision. Wednesday morning. Dear Custom : Your friend is wrong, from the egg to the apple. Miss Lucy Jones has a mother, or father, guardian, or friend, at whose house she is to be married. The invitation should come from the per- son under whose protection she is given away — (sent, if you please, to Mr. Smith's friends, with Mr. Smith's card, but understood by Miss Lucy Jones's friends, without card or explanation). It is tampering with serious things, very dangerously, to circulate the three words, "and Mrs. John Smith," one minute before the putting on of the irrevocable ring. The law which permits ladies (though not gentlemen) to change their minds up to the last minute before wed- lock, exacts also that the privileged angels should not be coerced by the fear of seeing the escaped name afterward on a wedding card ! Besides, such a card, so issued, would be received from Mrs. Smith before there was any such person. The first proper use of the wedded name is to send it with parcels of wedding-cake, the morning after the ceremony, to friends and persons desired as visiting acquaintances. This is considered an excusable ad- vance on the part of persons entering newly upon life, and the promptness with which a return-card is left upon the bride is an indication of the degree of pleas- ure with which the proposition of acquaintance is re- ceived. Another advantage of cake and card : — the etiquette of (exacting that a new nail should be thus driven in all acquaintances that are to be kept up) en- ables bride and bridegroom to drop, without offence, such acquaintances of each as are respectively unde- sirable — persons inseparable from the set in which the lady has lived, who are not agreeable to the bride- groom, and bachelor acquaintances of the bridegroom, who may be thought too free for the fireside. Wed- ded life is thus begun with a "culled posy of friend- ship," the door of society open before, and mischief- makers shut out behind. Our compliments to Miss Jones, and we remain, Very truly Open to card and cake, Mirror Triplet. Unmarried People four times as liable to insanity as Married People. — The " Concord Freeman," in a statistical article made up from hospital reports, shows, that if a man is, perhaps, oftener out of pocket when married, he is not so often out of his head. The editor says: Few people are aware how much more insanity prevails among bachelors and unmarried la- dies than among the married of both sexes. We learn from the examination of very many reports, that of every five of all lunatics sent to American hospitals, three are unmarried, and only two are married, and that almost all of them are over twenty-one years old. On the other hand, it is pretty certain that in all the community over twenty-one years of age, there are more than three times as many in as out of wedlock. If this be the case, then the unmarried are more than four times as liable to become insane as married people. EPHEMERA. 735 The Herald seems to think we have bought the m Republic." We are sorry that a republic is a mar- ketable commodity, but at any rate we have bought nothing of that name or description. Our ambition, somehow, does not seem to stumble upon things re- publican. In this world we desire a farm, on which we can be " monarch of all we survey," and in the next, we pray for a citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. " Up-Town" and " Down-Town." — We see that these names of the different halves of the city are be- Boming the common language of advertisements, etc. A person advertises in one of the papers a " Dcnon- town singing school," and another a "Down-town dancing academy." We think our friend Billings would better stick to " Up-town Hotel" as the better designation of the new brick khan. The new Sequel to Theatrical Intelligence. — Since the bishops and deacons have taken to in- dicting each other for falliugs-away of which the pub- lic like to read the Scan. Mag., we observe that the particular column of newspapers which is devoted to spicy news, theatricals, police incidents, etc., has silently become the locality for brief paragraphs an- nouncing where distinguished preachers are to hold forth. In the salad column of one of the papers there is one announcement of a play followed by six an- nouncements of sermons! And in another paper there are very nearly two columns of sketches of ser- mons, from a specific " reporter! !" We saw yesterday, for the first time in this coun try, an equipage of full ceremonial splendor, faultless | in taste, and evidently not at all modified by any I dread of democratic prejudices. We admired the J " bravery" of the turn-out, and the courage of using i it. The ice broken, there will soon be conjured oth- j ers from the vaults in Wall street — but meantime, let j us look a little at the necessity for a promenade drive j in New York, and its probable locality. In or near every capital of Europe there is a spot | which serves, for those who have carriages, the same \ purpose which Broadway serves for promenaders on j foot. In London it is the Mayfair side of Hyde park ; in Paris it is the Champs Elysees and Bois de Bou- logne; in Florence it is the Cascine; in Rome the Pincian hill ; in Naples the Strada Nuova. In all of these capitals the titled and wealthy avoid driving in the crowded streets except upon errands of necessity, and in London it is the custom to keep a plainer ve- hicle with cob-horses expressly for use at night and errands in the city. Ladies who have occasion to go out in the morning, do so on foot and in the plainest dress, followed invariably by a servant. They return to lunch at one or two, and immediately after dress for the shoiv part of the day's out-door occupation. The carriage comes round in full livery at the specified hour, and, the shopping and business-errands having been despatched in the forenoon, the equipage starts upon the afternoon destination of ceremony or pleas- ure. An hour before sunset or the dinner hour, the principal drive is over, and the scattered equipages meet, as upon a fashionable exchange, for a prome- nade of display. This conventional assembling is re- lied upon for recognition of acquaintance, for arrange- ments as to the evening, for keeping advised of the fashions, for seeing straugers, and for contests of style in equipage and personal attire. The dandies must be seen there, in cab or mounted ; the women of " po- sition" must refresh there the memories of forgetful tributaries; the new candidate for fashion must there display that taste in " belongings" which can only be guessed at in a ball-room ; there are seen all whose means make them eligible to expensive circles of so- ciety, and who (by something that trill and does tell, in the equipage, or the mode of dressing for, and ap- pearing in, it) there make claim to fitness for, at least, a ceremonious conversance with the haute volte. Of course, there is a postern of society in all cities, through which are admitted certain classes, who keep no equipages — those who are to amuse, instruct, or embellish the gay world — poets, parsons, and pretty women ; but the promenade on wheels is, to all oth- ers, the inexorable vestibule, and, as far at least as this gate, the ordinary seekers of the heaven beyond must come with horses. Cowper only mentioned the barest essentials when he said, " Well-drest, well-bred, Well-equipaged, is ticket good enough To pass us readily through every door." In New York, however undesirable to the mass, this formidable gulf is about to be sunk, between wealth and competency. At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city. There is no place where equipages are exclusively looked for. There are five or ten thousand young men who dress as well as the millionare's son; five or ten thousand ladies for whom milliners and mantua-makers do their b«st; ten or twenty thousand who can show as well on foot, and walk as well without heart-burnings, in Broadway — one as another. New York is (at this critical moment, before the shoot of the centripetal particles to a new nucleus) the largest republic of "first quality" people that the world ever saw. There is one spot which has been talked of as a promenade drive, and we believe some endeavor has been made to purchase it for the purpose — the beau- tiful wood on the right of the Third avenue. That charming spot would stand to New York very much ' as the Cascine to Florence. We doubt, however, ] whether, yet awhile at least, the object would warrant the purchase. The first probable promenade drive, we should say, 1 would be the Fifth avenue, from Washington | square to the Croton reservoir. The splendor of the houses on this broad highway is far beyond that of j any other portion of the city ; it is no thoroughfare : for omnibuses ; it leads from the wealthiest neighbor- I hood to a prominent public work ; it is on the return ! route from the loveliest drives on the island ; and, should the summit of the rising ground on which the reservoir stands be fixed upon, as proposed, for the Washington monument, and planted and decorated, that limit would be a convenient turning-place, and a charming and airy spot for a sunset soiree en voiture- A Story for tour Son, Sir. — The present king of France, one very cold evening, was riding from Boston to Salem on the outside of the stage. He was entirely without money to pay for a lodging that night, and he began to make friends with the driver to get part of his bed. After a while the driver's com- passion was aroused. " You are not a very clean looking chap," said he to the poor Frenchman, "but my bed is in the harness-room, where there's a stove, and if you'll keep your trowsers on, and sleep outside, / don't mind /" The Republic of Broadway. — Eyes were con- trived at some trouble; the great sun shows only the 736 EPHExMERA. outside of things; the present and visible (Carlyle- ically speaking) is the world God adapted our senses to; and though some people like to live the life of a sundial under ground, we prefer to throw to-day's 9hadow from whatever we do — writing about what we see, and thinking most about what jostles our elbow. This explained, We have a loose slip-slop or two for the young men about town — not as to their invisible minds and morals, but as to their visible walking and dressing. Having " bought our doublet in Italy, our round hose in France, our bonnet in Germany, and our behavior everywhere," we may perhaps excusably scale a ped- estal to give our opinion; though the credit we take to ourselves may be granted in the spirit of Falstaff's to Doll Tearsheet, "We catch of you, Doll, we catch of you !" There is nothing so republican as a dressy popula- tion. We are no "leveller," but we like to see things level themselves; and the declaration of independence is impotent in comparison with the tailor's goose. A young man about town slips his miniature into five thousand eyes per diem. Fifty of the five thousand who see him know whether his father is a mechanic or a rich man; and it depends wholly upon his dress and mien whether the remaining four thousand nine hundred and fifty take him to be a rich man's son or a mechanic's son. It is reasonable, of course, to let the fifty who know think what pleases them, and to dress for the very large majority who don't know. This is apparently the tacit philosophy of the young men of New York. There is no telling, by any dif- ference in dress, whether the youth going by has, probably, a sister who is an heiress, or a sister who is a sempstress. There is no telling the merchant from his bookkeeper — no guessing which is the diner on eighteen pence, and which the gourmet of Delmon- ico's — no judging whether the man in the omnibus, whom you vaguely remember to have seen some- where, was the tailor who tried on your coat, or your vis-a-vis last night at a ball. As we said above, this is a true republic. A young man whose appearance is four-story-housy, can very well afford to let a few people know that he sleeps over the shop. If he is more elegant than a rich man's son, he gets as nearly the full value of the dif- ference as ordinary vanity would require. Every young man finds means to dress to his liking, and of course every young man starts fair, each morning, with all of his age, for the day's competition in bright eyes. We shall be understood, now, in our republican ef- fort to add still another levelling to this of the tailor's goose — to bring the attractions of plain men up to those of the "aristocracy of nature." The hints we have to throw out will be slighted by the good-look- ing; taken advantage of by the plain — thus levelling, in another respect, upward. The rarest thing seen in Broadway is a young man who walks well. A stoop in the back is almost na- tional; and an upright, graceful, gentlemanlike gait is as rare as it is singularly striking. If you can af- ford the time to walk slowly, high-heeled boots are a great improvement. With time enough, you drop the foot insensibly from a high heel, like an actor walking down the slope of the stage. Beside, it makes the instep look high, which implies that your father did not carry a hod. Avoid a broadcloth shirt, in the shape of a shape- less garment with sleeves (one of the new fashions). It looks colic-y, with the wind bellying it out in all directions as you walk along. Leave long cloaks to the clergy. The broad velvet collar, turning over, diminishes your apparent breadth of shoulders, and it should be worn with careful dra- matic propriety, not to be very awkward and inelegant. If you are about to have an overcoat made, get a fat friend to go and be measured for it. At any rate, let not your diaphragm be so imprisoned, that the first heroic sentiment will tear off a button. One of Jenning's cutters is the apostle of a reform in this : matter — measuring- you (if you request it) by a mag- nifying-glass, from the waist upward. These are not King Canute's days, when " none under the rank of gentlemen dare presume to have a greyhound to follow him." The outward symbols, once peculiar to elegance, are pretty well levelled up to, as we said before — but, by careful observation, you will now and then see a something that nice men do, or do not do, which has not yet got through the hair of the promiscuous. As an example, and in the hope that it will not be generally understood, we will mention, that very particular men, for the last year, have walked the street invariably with a kind of grieved look — very expressive and distinguishing. We will resume this republican theme. The Designation of the Lady Presidentfss. — If it had not been for a certain ante-expiatory " white horse," we should have prayed for the miraculous re- turn to this world of "John Tetzel, Vender of Indul- gences." The editor of the Morning News did jus- tice to his Irish blood a day or two ago, by giving back, to the loser's wife, a saddle-horse he had won in a bet; but how, in the name of all the gallant pro- prieties, can he justify himself to the ladies of the de- mocracy for making no distinction between their queen and the (of course) less glorious queen of any coun- try on earth? The promiscuousness of two "Mrs. P's!" " White-House. — Among other consequences of the election of Mr. Polk, it is said, will be to locate in the White-house at Washington the handsomest and perhaps the most accomplished lady that ever presided in its stately halls. Mrs. P. has, for some years, been remarkable not only for personal beauty, but for that greater charm, graceful manners, and a highly-cultivated mind." If, in this democratic country, one may venture to say a word for the other " Mrs. P.," we think that Louis Philippe's having slept with a stagedriver in this country (vide a late anecdote) might have pro- cured for his wife the easy privilege of at least one distinguishing initial. It surely would not seriously invade the simplicity of our court circular to add a "J." to the single-letter title of the lady presidentess of fifteen millions and Texas! Be generous, gentle- men people! Let us have some distinction in the Queen " P.'s" of the two countries. The editor of the Morning News will be some day minister to France. Fancy his being called on to present " Mrs. American P." to " Mrs. French P." Overhaul of Sailing Orders. — The sails draw — the freight sits trim in the hold — the ship minds her helm, and the wind strengthens on the quarter with a freshness that strains rope and spar. It is per- haps the best moment that will occur, in the long voyage before us, to overhaul our signals and sailing- papers, and understand how we are to communicate with the fleet, and go straightest and most prosperous- ly to our destined haven. (Whoa, Pegasus! We have been as poetical as will have been expected of us at one day's notice. Drop to the ground and let us go off on a plain trot!) We have always looked upon the gentlemen of the daily press as among the enviably unlabelled poten- tates of this country of King Everybody-nobody — EPHEMERA. 737 enviably as having enormous power and little responsi- bility as to the using of it. The power will doubtless remain as large and the responsibility as small. "A free press" is the lesser of two evils. In the perpet- uation of this state of things, however, lies our future vocation, and— while we have it yet in our power to " make a clean breast," and avow what we have ob- jected to in the exercise, by others, of the spells by which we are to conjure — let us name at least the one blot which most smirches the forward face of the pro- fession. It were of little use for one editor to declare that he would make war freely upon opinions — never upon persons. And the disadvantage is not merely that of throwing away the dagger in battle, because the sword is more gentlemanly — not merely a lessening of one's fonnidabieness to an opponent. The evil is in Ike greater curiosity to watch the stabler, felt by the look- ers-on. The temptation to be personally abusive lies in the diseased appetite of the crowd that will follow the abuser — leaving the scrupulous man alone with his decency. Living as editors do, by the favor of the crowd, if many are willing to minister to this dis- eased appetite, decency in the few is a kind of slow, business-suicide. It would almost require a Utopian fancy to picture the beauty of a press from which personalities and illwilled abuse were wholly excluded. No personal- ities in literature, and none in politics — the author, editor, and statesman, alike intrenched in " that credent bulk That no particular scandal once can touch, But it confounds the breather," — how completely the envy of malignant mediocrity would be deprived of its now easy sting, and how completely ruffianism and brutality would be confined to the bully-club and dram-shop! Scholars would wait on public opinion, at the editor's table, busied only with embellishing, and not engrossed with de- fending their fair fame ; and gentlemen of sensitive honor, who are now appalled at the calumnious gaunt- let of politics, would come forward to serve their country at the small posts occupied now only by men senseless to defamation. To the coming about of this paradise of letters, editorial consent is alone wanting. No one man could live long, the only calumniator of the press. No one man would dare to hold the only pen deficient in courtesy and gentlemanlike regard to private charac- ter. Complete silence from the rest of the press toward the one offender, after a unanimous publica- tion of his disgrace — refusal, without exception, to exchange papers with him from that time forward — any combination, in short, which should make the os- tracism of such an individual, by his brethren of the press, universally known — would suffice to purge the press of him. One year of such united self-censor- ship would so purify the public habit of news-read- ing, that, an offence against propriety would at least startle and alarm the public sense; and, arrived at that point, a very moderate apostleship might complete the reform. We do not anticipate this. Oh, no ! We are '< — in this earthly world, where to do harm Is often laudable ; to good sometimes Accounted dangerous lolly ;'' but, at the risk of being the "grave of our deserv- ing," we shall do the leaning of one to the better side. We shall have harder work for it. Nothing is easier than to be popular by habitual illwill. Trashy minds write most readable satire, and, with the mood on or off— the industry willing or reluctant — fault-finding is fecund production. But if good nature can be spiced — if courteous treatment of our brother editors, 47 brother authors, and all nameable men, can be made palatable to the public — if a paper wholly incapable of an unkindness, but capable of all things pleasurable else, can be fairly tested — we trust to do without the price of giving pain, and we trust that the money so turned out of our hand will not be like the lost oil of the tomb of Belus — irreplaceable. The Cost of Fashion. — From a pamphlet sent us, we learn that five hundred millions of dollars are spent annually in the United States for such articles of dress as are subject to the fluctuations of fashion. Of this sum, it ir computed that sixteen millions are spent for hats, probably about twenty millions for caps and bonnets, and for other articles of dress not less than four hundred millions ! So that not far from a million and a half dollars are spent daily for clothing; of which, if the calls of fashion claim but ten per cent, (but probably she re- ceives double that sum), one hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars are sacrificed daily at the footstool of the fickle goddess, by the enlightened citizens of the United States ! Is it not time that some standard of national dress was established ? We certainly have had sufficient experience to know what kinds of clothing are the most convenient, and one good reason can not be pro- duced for the unmeaning changes which are every day taking place. It is not to be expected that in a free country, where it is proverbial that " every man is at liberty to wear shoes or go without," an association to fix upon a general standard of dress would lead all to adopt it. No — there would be those still found who, lacking other points to recommend them to public notice, would act the cameleon still. But no small portion of the community would recommend that course which would most evidently be for the public good. The number, if large and respectable, would exert a sufficient influence by their example to prevent the standard fashion from ever appearing out of date. The ladies' bonnets would then be new at the end of three years, instead of being old-fashioned at the end of one. The gentlemen's hats would be fashionable until worn out; and the wedding coat, which is saved for holyday occasions, might descend from father to son, a fashionable garment. A HUMBUG FAME. Thomas Carlyle. — We have nowhere seen a just- er view of this much-talked-of writer than is given in the October number of the Biblical Repository, a journal conducted with great ability by an association of divines. The writer (Prof. J. T. Smith, of New- ton Theological Institute, Mass.) allows Carlyle to be a " most vigorous, unique, and original thinker and writer," and that his "Past and Present" is "certainly worth reading." He allows further, that that work contains many noble and truthful sentiments, uttered with commanding energy. This, however, is the ex- tent of his commendation. " We must, on the whole says the writer, " characterize it as a book, m style, barbarous; in politics, incendiary; in philosophy, du- bious ; and in theology, execrable." This opm.on the reviewer supports by an analysis of the work, and by a specification of particulars. The barbarity of the style no one doubts, and no one except a few very warm admirers, defends. This very barbarity seems to us only another manifestation of that arrogance which characterizes all Carlyle's 738 EPHEMERA. attempts. A man who condemns everybody must needs be an inventor. The work is said to "breathe an overweening, mor- bid admiration of the past." Nothing of the present satisfies Mr. Carlyle; nothing of the past but elicits his commendation, and among other things, Scandi- navian savagery, Mohammedanism, twelfth century Catholicism, the fighting barons of feudal times, Popes Gregory and Hildebrand, and other personages of like stamp, each and all present to him some phase worthy of special notice and admiration. The religion and the systems of government of the present day, have very hard fare at his hands, since the former is all cant, hypocrisy, and quackery, and the latter nothing better, to say the least. We are, in truth, recom- mended to go back to the twelfth century for models of religion and government. The hero must be found by some means — or he must find himself. A fighting aristocracy like that of the twelfth century is no longer possible ; but a working aristocracy must take its place, and the system ot'villanage be restored. In- deed, American slavery seems essentially the system recommended by this practical preacher. The sum and substance of our own view of the whole matter is, that while we sympathize to some ex- tent with Mr. Carlyle in his dissatisfaction with the present state of things, the remedies he proposes in his deep-mouthed and most oracular tone, are abso- lutely naught — the mere dreams of a mind well-inten- tioned enough, but half-crazed with overweening self- estimation. He insists much on the necessity of a "French revolution*' in England. "There will be two, if needed ; there will be twenty, if needed. . . — The laws of nature will have themselves fulfilled," and much more to the same purpose. Yet this inevitable fulfilment of the laws of nature which is to work all good, seems, according to the seer's estimate, as yet to have wrought nothing but ill. His final hope is a hero-king: "Yes, friends: hero-kings and a whole world not unheroic — there lies the port and happy haven," &c. In fine, if Carlyle's words mean any- thing (which, the more we read the more we doubt), the whole people are to be roused to violent revolt, and plunged into all sorts of horrors, as a preparation for a better state of things ! Carlyle speaks of the last two centuries as godless centuries — and that in contrast with the long ages that went before them. What is this but to shock the common sense of history ? And his remedy is hero-hood. What is this but inane twaddle ? Mon- strous, unblushing egotism, is one of Carlyle's stri- king characteristics. Great and learned men, astrono- mers, philosophers, and others, are " poor scientific babblers ;" he alone, it would seem, discerns the re- ality of things, and has the key to the mysteries of nature. " Insight" has been granted to no other. One of the wonders of the age to us is, that such a monstrosity as Carlyle should have attained so high a place in its estimation. His merits are so overloaded by the most shocking and unbounded affectation and egotism, that we rise from the perusal of much that he has written with no other sensations than those of weariness and disgust. The poems of the Kentucky Sappho, Amelia, have been published in a very elegant gift-book volume, by Tompkins, of Boston. We have expressed our almost unqualified admiration of this lady's poems, as they separately appeared. She has a mind fed equally from a full heart and a prodigal imagination. It was once remarked to us, by a critic as candid as he is discerning, that there is a great development of; the poetic sentiment in this country ; thai many of our collections, which, in their brief existence, resemble the flowers that seem to be born only to die, like those delicate, odorous, and lovely objects in nature, have often a character of sweetness, purity, and freshness, grateful to refined taste and a feeling heart. The pieces contained in this volume are worthy of such praise. A loving heart, and a soul in harmony with the beauty of the world and the divine spirit which informs it, dictated these poems. We might make many beautiful selections from this handsome volume; but we must content ourselves, for the present, with naming one, " The Little Step- son," which, in its earnest simplicity, and its ringing music, reminds us of that favorite translation, " My ear-rings! my ear-rings! they've dropped into the well !" Not merely that the measure is the same, but that the whole tone seems the echo of far off and primitive manners — the voice of untutored affection. Miff between John Bull and Brother Jona- than — The offensive club exclusion by which Eng- lish aristocrats have undertaken to make Ameri- cans pay their debts, does, unquestionably, put the screw upon a national weakness. We are not sorry for it — but there could have been nothing in worse taste or showing a more ignorant lack of discrimina- tion — setting aside the fact of its being done by a class of men, who are themselves, notoriously bad paymas- ters. We do not believe, however, all that is in the papers on the subject. The " Reform-Club," in which it originated, is a new combination of ill-ballast- ed politicians, and the movement will be disclaimed in some authoritative shape, before a month is over. Trifling as the matter abstractly is, it would act very pungently on any questionof war-makingwhich should arise among us within a year. Perhaps some of our readers would like to know how far an exclusion from the clubs affects America in England. The fact of not having the honorary privilege of admission to the two principal clubs, was (before this national exclusion) sufficient evidence tbat a gentleman had not come well introduced. One of the first and most natural questions addressed to a stranger in London is, " What club are you in ?" — the intention being to ask you to a tete-d-tete club dinner, if you turn out agreeable. This is almost the only courtesy that a literary man in England has it in his power to show you. He can give you a dinner for a few shillings at his club (if you are a member of it and not otherwise), which in point of style and cor fort is equal to a nobleman's entertainment. Or (which is more common) he can say, "I dine at the Athenaeum to-day at six. If you have no better en- gagement, we'll put our chairs together" — each man in this case paying his own bill. An invitation to club privilege is only got up by high interest, however. It requires some person of consequence to play the applicant, and the number of strangers in each club, at one time, is seldom more than twenty or thirty. The following are the formulas of invitation to the two principal clubs : — " Pall Mall, 28M January, 1835. " Dear Sir • I am directed by the committee of the ' Travel- lers' to inform you that they have great pleasure in admit- ting you as a visiter to the club for the ensuing month, and that they hope to be favored with your frequent attendance. " I have the honor to be, sir, " Your most obed't and humble serv't, " J. W. SINGER, Secretary." " Athenjeum, London, 19th February, 1835. " Sir : I am directed to inform you that the committee of the 'Athenaeum' have ordered your name to be placed on the list of distinguished foreigners residing in London, who EPHEMERA. 739 ject to the same regulations as the members are required to observe. " la ease your stay should be prolonged beyond that period, and it should be your wish to have this invitation renewed, it will be necessary that an application be made to the commit- tee to that effect. M I have the honor to be, sir, " Your very obedient, humble servant, " EDWARD MAGRATH, Sec'y." It is rather important to a man making his way in j London society, that he should be seen at the clubs. The formidable " Who is he ?" is always satisfactorily j snswered by, "Don't know, but I saw him at the club." | It influences all manner of introductions, breaking \ down scores of invisible walls between the new-comer J and desirable things and people. A call at the clubs is an invariable part of the routine of a fashionable [ man's morning. He goes there to meet friends, to I hear the news, to bet, to smoke, to make engagements j — to prepare for the out-door part of the day, in short, j All notes, requiring a very private delivery, are ad- dressed to a man at his club. Men who have no li- braries of their own, do the most of their reading there. It is the place to see great men, fashionable men, famous men ; and to see them without their masks — for the security, as to the proper introduction of all present, throws an atmosphere of marked laisser- aller around sensitive greatness. We sat down, however, to comment upon the igno- rance as to our country, shown by the late narrow- viewed movement of club-exclusion — the evident igno- rance of any distinction between state responsibility and national responsibility. To mention it is enough, however; and we turn to that which will show the out-lying proof of English ignorance of us. One of the dullest, most arrogant, and unscrupulous of travellers is commended in the last foreign quarter- ly, by one of the most unfair and ignorant of critics. If all travellers and critics were like this well-matched pair, the subject of British tourists and reviewers, and their opinions and statements concerning us would not be worth a thought. Of the capacity and information of the reviewer, take one or two specimens. " The unanimity of whigs, tories, and radicals, upon the one topic of American society (i. e., in condemnation) is a thing to wonder at and reflect upon." Two of the most readable works of this class within the last ten years are decidedly favorable — those of Miss Martineau, and the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray. A more striking instance still of the reviewer's utter ignorance or most shameful falsification is his representing the internal traffic in slaves as publicly repudiated, and founding on that a charge of duplicity, since "men are ready to swear there is no such thing from one end of America to the other as a trade in slaves." A very suitable person this to write comments on American travels ! With such endorsements Mr. Featherston- haugh's statements can not but pass current! We did not suppose there was, in the obscurest corner of Europe, one dabbler in ink so profoundly and inex- cusably ignorant as not to know that slaves were openly bought and sold in the slave states of this country. That such Cimmerian darkness (to make the most charitable supposition) should envelope the brain of a British reviewer is a marvel indeed ! It was not, however, to expose such ignorance that we took up the pen, nor to draw the very natural con- clusion of the amount of information, which Mr. F.'s book conveyed to his countrymen at large, since, not- withstanding the title "slave states," his reviewer con- cluded there was no acknowledged slavery — for with- out purchase and sale the system is of course knocked on the head. But such are not all British tourists, nor such all British reviewers; and it is worth while to inquire why it is, that, placing out of the account writers of this class, there is still so large a proportion of our well- informed and sensible visitants, who get an unfavor- able impression of our institutions and of our state of society. We ought to give up the idea of a prevalent ill- feeling toward us in the fatherland of our ancestors, or a wish to put us down, because we are on the wrong side of the water. Few Englishmen like us the less because we are Americans, and not French or German or Russians. Thousands of us when abroad have ex- perienced the contrary. Nor ought we to suppose that envy, jealousy, or ancient gzudges, are at the bottom of the hard measure meted out to us by tourists. True, we have met in war as enemies, and in peace as commercial rivals, and have in both held our own; but meanness and spite form no part of the character of John Bull. He has tremendous faults, but he keeps tolerably clear of pettinesses. One fault shows itself with the English abroad, wherever they are. Though the greatest travellers, they are the least cosmopolitan. The island mania attends them everywhere, except at home. Like some mistresses to some lovers, old England seems the dearer the farther they get away from her. Gold- smith's Traveller's lengthening chain is no fiction. Across the ocean it is often insupportable. Some- times, also, this distance has, at the outset of the voyage, " lent enchantment to the view," which, when dispelled, leads to a bitter, though unreasonable dis- appointment. The very resemblance which we bear to the Eng- lish — and must bear, from our origin, our language,' our literature, and our continued intercourse ever since the ocean rolled between us — is unfavorable to a just, and still more to a partial judgment of us, on the part of those honestly disposed to do us justice. To other people the British traveller can apply, in some measure, the true standard — i. e., to each its own; but for us, he can have only the home standard. Weighed by this, we are, of course, found wanting. He find us nine tenths English, and scolds that the other tenth is not English too. It is needless to discuss the point, whether that tenth is better or worse — the English blood renforces (as some Frenchman has pronounced, justly we hope) or not — it is enough that it is not English for the genuine John Bull to pronounce it ridiculous or insufferable ; to laugh or rail at it according to his humor. The general resemblance he can not deny, but he unreasonably demands an exact likeness. In the points where this is not perceptible, he of course considers us shockingly degenerate, altered altogether for the worse. Now there are various points which we should not expect him to appreciate justly, for we j know he is a creature full of prejudices and contra- I dictions, and he must see witli his own eyes or not see ! at all. Another real difficulty is, that no mere passing : traveller can realize the crowning glory of our country and of our institutions — the general diffusion of com- I fort and intelligence. A traveller is looking out for ! the salient points — something striking or marvellous j —something that will tell in his book and his memory. A thousand comfortable or even elegant private dwel- lings that he might pass, would not make upon him so vivid an impression as one splendid palace— while I the former would indicate a thousand families living ' in comfort and abundance, and the latter that there 1 was one family of over-grown wealth with a presump- tion against its possessing the average worth of the former, or even enjoying their average happiness. We contribute to the severity ol the judgments against us by our own fault. Our sensitiveness lays us peculiarly open to attack, and none reply to such attacks with more violence. The foreigner who 740 EPHExMERA. knows this and who can not perhaps conscientiously grant us all we ask, sharpens his weapons beforehand for the encounter, and deals harder blows in anticipa- tion of those which he knows he is about to bring down upon himself. To this must be added our national vanity — a characteristic which the candid among us own. From demanding too indiscriminate praise, we do not get that which we really deserve, as the trader, who praises his wares extravagantly, is sure to have them under- valued. If our claims were more moderate, they would be oftener acknowledged. If we exacted less, more would be voluntarily given. If we did not rise up against deserved reproof, we should b'e oftener spared that which we did not deserve. When we claim the eloquence of a Chatham for every stump orator, and then apply the same phrases to our really great and eloquent men, the latter are sufferers. If we claim for our every-day life or even for our soirees recherchees the grace and polish of a court, where they have nothing to do but to kill time agreeably, the assertion is simply ridiculous. Some traveller (Dickens we believe) says of the factory-girls of Lowell, that they have the port and bearing (or something to that effect) of well-bred ladies. Pretty complimentary we should think! But an annotator somewhere (but where we know not), is not satisfied. He adds, that if Mr. Dickens should meet these per- sons in private circles, he would find they had the corresponding elegance and manners. As if any good factory-girl at Lowell would pass muster at Queen Victoria's drawing-room ! The new Prima Donna. — The haste with which it is the fashion to write about prima-donnas, giving them a cornucopial criticism, on their debut, and drop- ping directly after into very brief notices, reminds us of a lady's reproach to her lover, in the old play of the Spanish friar : " You men are like watches, wound up for striking twelve immediately ; but after you are satisfied, the very next that follows is the solitary sound of single one." We should like very much to defer expressing an opinion of Madame Pico, till she had a little recovered from the embarrassment of a first performance, and (more important still in critici- sing) till we had steeped our tympanum a little longer in the honey the bees of Italy have shed upon her lips; but The audience at Palmo's, last night, was, probably, the best ever assembled since Malibran's time, as to the capability of judging of a cantatrice by taste and comparison. Madame Pico, even in Italy, would scarce have dropped her golden cadences into more judicious ears. Fortunately, too, the unripeness of an entirely new opera was corrected by the predomi- nance of natural melody in the composer's style— ma- king it all come to the ear with the impromptu wel- come sometimes refused to the best music. By the way— without knowing whether this opera will grow upon us, and allowing, at once, that it has none of Beethoven's under-song, nor any of the supernatural combinations of Mozart— we must express our almost passionate delight in its main burthen and character. We write, it is true, by a past-time-to-go-to-bed candle, and with the graciles-quc sensus still reeling under the intoxication of the cup of bewitched sound ; but if this gets to press (and we shall look it over before breakfast, to-morrow morning), we congratulate the every-day-ear of the city we five in, upon a opera that is natural as a bird's song, and that can be enjoyed with as simple a taste for music— at the same "time, no more to be disparaged, for its simplicity, than the bird's throat for not having the harp-stop "of a piano. But let us go on, story-fashion. The curtain drew up, and after the appearance of the usual precedent foil of chorus-singers, Sanquirico, the ben amatoof the company, came on as a postillion After making a bow, with the good-will of a waterfall, in acknowledgment of the applause with which he was met, he went on playing his part, and (to dismiss him with this brief notice) most admirably to the last. The make-way motions of the guard and the aspettando impatience of the music, now prepared us for the prima-donna. She was to represent a young girl, under the protection of the prince and princess, whose escape from ruin by a villain is the story of the opera. "Chiara!" trilled the "cue" and in glided Chiara ! Madame Pico has a look in her face as if " Sorrow had passed that way." She has had a narrow escape of being superbly handsome, and, as it is, she could personate, with small call upon the imagination, tbe part of "Mrs. Helpless Ingulfus," on the stage or off it. Tho' not near so beautiful, she is a strong likeness of Mrs. Norton — the same low, concentrative forehead, the same something-or-other in the sweep of the dark hair, the same caressing inwardness in the white round of the shoulder. There is rather too much of a caden- za in her bust, and her under lip does not always come up with the alacrity we like in a woman, but we may change our opinion. She was very much frightened, and these matters are " now high, now low again, Like a ring of bells that the wind's wooing alters." The welcome of applause ceased, and the expected voice trembled on the silence. It was listened to with pricked ears, nodded to by the cognoscenti at the first pause — approved, applauded. It was a rich, clouded contralto, its depths hidden by a soprano part, like a dark well impoverished by a slant beam of sunshine. As she went on, gathering a little more control, her voice sank to the inner sound-chamber where the heart sits to listen, and the audience, instead of louder applaud- ing, began to murmur their admiration. Evident as it was that the delicious home of her voice was never reached, or borrowed from, by the notes of that soprano part, there was a kind of full forth-shadowing of reser- ved power which made, even what she did sing, satisfy the ear. And then, occasionally, where the lower notes approached her treasury of un-used power, she flung out a contralto cadence upon the air with an ef- fect the audience waited impatiently to hear repeated. We feel bespoken to be enchanted with a fair develop- ment of that full throat's capabilities. Artistic com- parison apart, we have a passion for a contralto — noth- ing that can pass the portal of an ear touching with half the delicacy our levia affectuum vestigia. Thos6 who take our criticisms will, if they like, make allow- ance for this weakness. Borghese was in one of the avant-scene boxes, lend- ing her captive town to her rival with the best grace imaginable. She well may — for a smiling rivalry be- tween her and Pico will give each new attraction, particularly since their voices are of totally opposite quality. The little soprano comme-il-faut has her advantages, and Madame Pico has hers. Neither of them is quite the " horn of Astolpho, at the sound of which the hearer went mad," but while hearing either, as Esdras says, "a man remembereth neither sorrow nor debt." May they pull together " like Juno's swans, coupled and inseparable !" The footrace we have seen this afternoon " car- ried the town" more completely than any excitement we have yet been abroad in — politics not excepted. We were late, but a thousand people were on the road with us, and when we arrived, the first race was EPHEMERA. 741 just over, Jackson the winner. The weather was Indian summer, in its most bracing smile — good omen, a punster would say, for the red-skinned com- petitor! The roads had been dried pretty well by the sharp wind of yesterday, the grass looked glussv, and King Pluribus was in unusual good hu- mor—as he generally is on the first bright day after bad weather. The stands looked like stacks of noses and hats, and after a vain attempt to find room in the principal ones, we descended to the course to take our chance witli the great company of the jostled. As it was an object to get a near view of the runners at the end of the first quarter of a mile, we crossed the area of the I field to the less thronged side of the course, and awaited their coming. Several loads of undisguised ! sinners were near us, one of whom, a professed ma- tron, apparently, coolly sat with a pair of pistols, wait- ing some expected attack from a crowd of ruffians wlio had surrounded them. She looked quite capa- ble of a tragedy; but the striking of the bell at the stand drew off the rowdies to the ring-fence, and the pistols in the gloved hands gave place to a bouquet. We had been thinking that there should be a compet- j itrix in the race to inherit the honors of Atalanta, and a female, by a pull of the forefinger, might easily have taken the day's notoriety from the competitors in the race. A stroke of the bell — a shout from twenty thou- sand throats — a sudden radiation, to one point, of all the loose vagrants in the field — and around came the horse-fence, that in single file kept pace with the run- ners, hemming them in from the crowd. The gro- tesque-looking pedestrians hugged the wooden railing very closely as they came alonsr, Barlow ahead, the Indian close on his heels, and Gildersleeve, the victor ■ of the last race, quietly consenting to be number three. The foremost man was simply "diapered," as the nurses say, exhibiting his white Saxon skin in strong contrast to the smoked hams of the Indian be- hind him, and if the race had depended on muscle merely, a good anatomist might have picked out the winner, by points fairly displayed, as easily as a horse's capabilities are seen by the jockey. They ran very differently. A plumbline, dropped from the forehead of each, would have fallen afoot in advance of Barlow's body, and eighteen inches in ad- vance of the Indian's, while it would have lain close to the breast of the erect little Gildersleeve. Barlow never took his eyes from the ground, and kept his lower jaw relaxed in a kind of shame-faced smile. We observed that his make was in exceeding good distribution, and though he was slightly knock-kneed, he made play as straight ahead as a pendulum, losing nothing by sideling. Gildersleeve's natural ballast, on the contrary, rounded him to, slightly, at every step, and his shoulders were partly employed in coun- teracting the swing. McCabe, who was compact all over, trotted along like a stiff little pig, giving no- where, and the Indian, a long, stringy six-footer, seemed to follow his head like a kite's bobs — the near- est way for a wave. Gildersleeve, it struck us, was lividly pale, the Indian ready to cry with anxiety, McCabe spunky, and Barlow slyly confident of suc- cess. We crossed over to the stands, where, we presume, upon four acres of ground, there were twenty-five thousand men. It was a peculiar-looking crowd — sprinklings excepted, very gamc-y. We presume no pick of New York city could have brought out of it, so completely, the stuff it holds for an army. The betting was going on vigorously — Barlow and Steep- rock the favorites, but every man talking up his coun- tryman. The Irish swore up McCabe as he came along, the English applauded Barlow, the New-York- ers encouraged Gildersleeve and the Indian. Mean- time, the horse-fence-men rode open the crowd with striking and shouting; betting-books were whipped out at every completed mile; boys cried ci«ars; row- dies broke down barriers and climbed into the stands ; the men on the roofs pointed after the runners, and hallooed the gainings and losings; and every third minute the naked white shoulders came round ahead, and it was manifest that Barlow gained constantly, and, unless the little Yankee or the Indian could over- haul him by a miraculous push, he was sure to win. They came along for the tenth mile, and the crowd were almost still with anxiety. The overtaking rush, by which Gildersleeve won in the last race, was now expected of him by his backers. Barlow passed, a hundred feet ahead; Steeprock strained after, with a sponge at his lips, and his knees tottering; Gilder- sleeve came third, a spectacle of pallor and exhaus- tion; Greenhalgh, another Englishman, was evidently making more speed — and that was the last we saw of them in motion. With the thousands rushing in from all sides we were swept toward the judges' stand. The horsemen came on, in the midst of a sea of heads keeping pace with thorn, whips going, shouts pealing, boys and bul- lies screaming, swearing, and crowding. "Barlow!" "Barlow!" "Barlow!" arose from hundreds of wild voices, and the tumult of inquiry as to the others grew deafening. We backed out a little to hear the victor called oil by the judges. A moment's stillness was procured, and the competitors were named from the stand in the order in which they had come in : Barlow, Steeprock, Greenhalgh, Gildersleeve. The time made by the winner was ten miles in fifty-four minutes twenty-one seconds. As we turned away, Gildersleeve was brought along by two men, with his eyes half closed and his tongue loose in his lips; and he seemed just able to place his feet, one after the other, mechanically, as he was lifted over the ground. A sicker-looking man we never saw. A minute after, Barlow appeared above the crowd, on a man's shoulders, waving his hand and smiling quite composedly, and the shouts, apparently from every voice, hailed him victor. P. S. We had nearly forgotten a good conundrum the race gave birtlr to : — Question. — Why did Barlow run so like a locomo- tive yesterday ? Answer. — Because he had behind him an Indian- near. New Trial of Culprit Poets. — Mrs. Gilman has invented a new kind of book ("Oracles from the Poets," of which we gave a uotice a few days ago), and the opening preface, very charmingly written, tries the poets by new standards altogether. She had occasion to ransack all the popular authors for an- swers to the fate-questions of her Fortune-Teller, and of course she discovered where lay the most thought and feeling of a peculiar character. She begins by finding out that poets are benevolent. She had great difficulty in finding sixty answers to the question, " To what have you a distaste or aversion /" while " What gratifies your taste or affections?" was stud as common as clover. She says that in Shakspere there is a singular lack of mention of places of residence, and there seems not to be even a fair proportion of pas- sages descriptive of musical sounds, hours, seasons, and (except in the Winter's Tale) of flowers. In Wordsworth, scarcely a flower or musical sound is de- scribed. They are alluded to, but not painted out. The poetry of Crabbe, though abounding in numer- ous characters, could furnish almost nothing for her purpose, on account of their being woven into the general strain of his narrations. Shelley, Landoti, and Howitt, are eminently the poets of flowers, while 742 EPHEMERA. Darwin, with a whole "Botanic Garden" before him, and Mason, in his "English Garden," gave none fairly entitled to selection. Few passages of any sort, except those hackneyed into adages, could be gained from Milton, on account of the abstract, lofty, and continuous flow of his diction. Coleridge has cor- responding peculiarities. Keats and Shelley are the poets of the heavens. Byron, with faint exceptions, does not describe a flower, or musical sound, or place of residence. The American poets, in contradis- tinction to their elder and superior brethren of the fatherland, display a more marked devotion to nature, with which a continued glow of religious sentiment aptly harmonizes. Apropos — as the living American poets are in pro- cess of 'broidery, would it not be well to know where their worsteds are deficient, that they may shop up their lacking threads in the Broadway of contempla- tion? Will not some of our several sleeping female geniuses (intellectual dolce-far-nientes, of whom we know at least a capable dozen) take up the American poets and go through them with a discriminating bod- kin, showing what colors lack replenishing ? It would serve the poetry of Bryant-dom — the present passing age in which this faultless poet is the flower in most palpable relief. Come, ladies! tell us what Lowell (whose fame is being worked just now) had better thread his inspired needle with! Tell us what Long- fellow is out of. Tell us whether Halleck has done enough to cover the pattern, and whether some oth- ers hadn't better unravel and work it all over again ! At any rate, turn up their frames of immortality and show us the wrong side! Let them mend, if they like, " Ere the worm pierce their tapestry, and the spider Weave his thin curtain o'er unfinished dreams." The Upper Ten Thousand of New York City. — The first three of the following paragraphs are from the True Sun of November 22, and the last is from the same paper of a day or two previous: — "Politically, we are all republicans — socially, we are divided into classes on the 'European plan.' There is a certain class, for instance, that lakes exer- cise only on one side of Broadway — the west side. The 'canaille,' to-be-sure, may walk there too, be- cause, fortunately, our aristocracy, with all its pride and vanity, has no power; but what perfumed and ringleted exquisite would ever think of sporting his white kids, mustaches, and goatee, on the east side of our great thoroughfare? That would be literally wasting his sweetness on the desert air. We under- stand, by-the-by, that Stewart is severely censured for choosing the site of Washington Hall as the lo- cation of his new temple of taste and fashion, merely because it is situated on the east side of Broadway. However, if the pavement in front is sprinkled thrice a day with eau de Cologne, and Mr. Stewart doubles the price of his goods, in order to give ton to the lo- cation, it may do away with the fashionable prejudice against the promenade of the nobodies, and thereby equalize the value of the property on the two sides of the street. At present there is a very material difference in the price of the brick and mortar which borders the two pavements." "The Opera. — That this is a refined and elegant amusement, no one can doubt; but to exaggerate its consequence, to make it a grand controlling feature in our society, is, in our judgment, giving it undue importance. With regard to its being a very 'aristo- cratic' affair in New York, we can only say, that a complete refutation of such an idea may be easily had 3t any time by a glance at the dress-circle habitues.'' "The Aristocracy. — We must confess we do not | think that wealth is the only essential necessary to place one in 'good society.' We can imagine many refined, intellectual, and charming people, who do not drive equipages lined with silk, and who have nei- ther coachman nor footman bedizened with lace. What would be thought of the elegance of a leader of the ton, who could take a peculiarly-dressed par- tridge from a dinner-table, and place it in his hat, in order to carry it home with him ? We do not imagine that such an attempt (for it was unsuccessful) marks any very superior degree of refinement!" "There are some, again, who study a profound re- serve, or rather adopt an appearance of hauteur. They are stiff, quiet, and unapproachable. These are the dandies of the cities, who adopt the Horatian sentiment of " ' Odi profanum vulgus,' &c. You must not come 'between the wind and their no- bility.' They wear the last productions of Watson, or Jennings, or Carpenter, and display a clean pair of kid gloves, with the last fashion of wrist-buttons. You might, if uninitiated, suppose them some dis- tinguished foreigners on their travels. In nine cases out of ten they belong to the parvenu order of the aristocracy. Whiskey or codfish has taken a rise, and their honored father has made a fortune. The family-mansion in a back lane has been abandoned for some fashionable quarter, and visits — on one side — have been paid throughout the neighborhood. If they choose, they could astonish, but they would not condescend. The railroad-car does not shake down their consequence. They regret this progress of one art, which makes so many other arts useless. They are delighted when they escape from the crowd and seek the hotel, where the extravagant charges prevent the danger of further collision." We received yesterday an anonymous letter, re- proving us, in sober bad English, for ministering to the vanity of the rich, by an article in the Mirror on the selection of " a promenade drive." This, the re- proof also given us a day or two since by a political paper for an article on the prima-donna, and the fore- going paragraphs from a neutral paper, aimed princi- pally at popularity with the working classes, are suf- ficient indications, we think, that some bitter weed, passing for an aristocracy-nettle, is rolled up in the present cud of the reposing people. We commence taking exceptions to the tone of these articles, by stating what seems to us a fact of general notoriety — that the ten thousand people up- permost in this city — (aristocrats, if wealth and po- sition make them so) — are the most moral and scru- pulous ten thousand in the four hundred thousand of the population. There is probably about this num- ber — ten thousand — who are rich enough, if they choose, to keep a carriage. Two thirds of them, we presume, were poor men a few years ago, and the children of three fourths of them will be obliged to work for a living (a flying-fish aristocracy, who are hardly long enough out of the water, one would think, to give offence by their brief airs to those left in the element below them). There is a smaller class — perhaps two thousand families — who have been respect- able and well off for two or more generations. There is a third class, still — perhaps one or two hundred — whose display is offensive, from no one's knowing where their money comes from, or from their being sup- posed to live dishonestly above their means, or from being notoriously vicious. Of these three classes — an " aristocracy" of ten thousand — one half, at least, are religious, and the remainder seek refined pleasures, and attend the- atres and operas ; but, with the exception of the third and smallest class last named, we venture to repeat, that the upper ten thousand are by much the most EPHEMERA. 743 exacting of moral character iu their friends, the most rigid in the support of moral opinions and charities, and the most exemplary in their individual private life. This is true of the upper ten thousand of no other country in the world. It would sound Utopian in Eng- land to assert this to be true of the upper classes of any city on the face of the earth. Look at the dif- ference of the standards in ordinary matters. To make a good match, here, it is necessary that a young man should be moral; and if he be of high character in this respect (and the lady willing), public opinion will not suffer his pretensions to be slighted by the richest man! In every other country the lover's mo- rality is altogether a secondary consideration — family and fortune far before it. Morality is a young man's best card in New York ; whether his object be influ- ence, matrimony, good business-connexion, appoint- ments from societies, or general position in the best circles. This truth needed only to be put in print to make people wonder it had not been said before ! It is a wretched trick caught from English papers and English plays, to talk of the rich as certainly vicious, and of the poor as necessarily virtuous. We live in a country where the sovereignty (that part of society which vice commonly noses and follows close after) resides at the opposite end from the sovereignty of England. The more virtuous class, here as there, is comparatively poicerless at the ]}olls. The rowdy drunkard and the gambler do as much toward presi- dent-making and the selection of lawgivers, as the thrifty merchant, and the rich father of a family of virtuous daughters; and, as there are a hundred hus- bands, of either of the first-named classes, to one of either of the others, virtue and order keep company with sovereignty — in this country as little as in Eu- rope! Power is at the surface of a country, and the scum rises to it. We are quite aware, that the pen and inkstand with which we write these sentiments will not be, to all readers, " a pot of lambative elec- tuary with a stick of licorice." Rivalry at the Opera. — The musical tilt, to de- cide which was the more prime of the prima-donnas, came off last night, to the very great entertainment of the town's ornamentals. It reminded us very strongly of the contention between the lute and the nightingale, in the old play of the " Lover's Melan- choly." Borghese drops dead in the last act, very soon after a glorious and triumphant outbreak by Pico; and we will quote a passage to show how this resembles the poetic story — premising, by-the-way, that a musician, playing in the woods, is overheard by a bird, who mocks him till the lute-player gets angry at the excellence of the rivalry: — " To end the controversy, in a rapture, Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly — So many voluntaries and so quick — That there was curiosity and cunning, Concord in discord, lines of difFering method, Meeting in one full centre of delight. the bird (ordained to be Music's first martyr) strove to imitate These several sounds ; which, when her warbling throat Failed in, for grief down dropped she on his lute, And broke her heart." But, to tell the other story — "after the manner of men." The opera was "Lucrezia Borgia." Signorina Borghese represents (as well as we could understand the story) a bad mother, who, in poisoning a large party of youths, half rakes, half conspirators, for hav- ing insulted her sign over the door, poisons one too many — her son. Madame Pico represents the leader of the set, and does the noise aud the jollification. She descends upon the stage the first thing after the rising of the curtain, dressed in a very modest suit of male attire, and figures about as a Roman Captain Rynders, bandying dialogue here and there, but with no chance of display in the three or four first acts. Borghese, we began to think, was to have the best of it all the way through. She was exquisitely dressed, sang with as little of the split-straw in her soprano as we ever heard her sing with, and acted to her singing (as she always does) with what the Greeks called ono- matopcia — movement linked with sound indivisibly. The applause was pretty well, but not overpowering. The fourth act represented the youths at the fatal supper, Pico the principal customer. After a little hobnobbing on the other side of the table, she glides round, upon her plumptitudinous locomotives, and dashes into a song, rich, rollicking, and risveglialo ! Down went the bucket for the first time into her well of contralto, and up came the liquid and golden mu- sic, of a round, true fulness, that made the ear's thirst a luxury. It was a passage full of involutions, abrupt, startling, and bacchanal; but her skill in flinging her voice from point to point, with the capricious surpri- ses of the music, was wonderfully subtle. The au- dience was, for the first time in the evening, fairly lifted clear of the ground. On the part of the stage- company, no encore was looked for at this point of the opera. The closing of Pico's song is the signal for a death-bell and the disclosing of a hearse apiece for the jolly junketers. The audience were not ready, however. The applause kept on till the hearses backed out, and the song was sung over again. Oh, how deliciously it was sung! No voice, however large its compass, was ever sweeter, rounder, mellow- er in its quality, than Madame Pico's. The audience murmured, and leaned forward, and ejaculated, and with one unhesitating accord, it seemed to us, gave over the palm to the contralto. The chorus-singers seemed surprised — she herself forgot her male attire, and courtesied (the first time we ever saw how it was done, by-the-by), a tributary bouquet flew over the footlights, and Lucrezia Borgia rose up once more, like an apparition amid the hearses in waiting. The last act, like the first three, was all Borghese's. It is deep tragedy, and she played it well. The young man, poisoned by mistake, held his stomach till lie was done for, and his letting go was the signal for Borghese to give her " C sharp," and go after him. The curtain dropped, and the applause rose imme- diately. Borghese came out and was cheered till she courtesied out, but still the applause continued. No reply. The canes began to rap, and the audience seemed not beginning to go. " Pico !" shouted some- body. "Pico!" shouted everybody. Still no an- swer. The deafening uproar at last lifted the cur- tain, and there was Borghese! led forward by Peroz- zi, and courtesying again ! And presently, all alone, with her hair down her back, her mustache gone, and a loose dressing-gown about her, the real queen by acclamation took the honors there was no longer any denying her. The will of the audience, and the will of the Italian corps, were two entirelydifferent matters. We really do not see why these fine-throated peo- ple can not consent to do their best, and let the pub- lic like which they please. The two singers are both admirable, each unrivalled in her way : and, because we admire the new-comer, it is no reason why we should not still appreciate our former favorite. But see how unlike musical people in prose are to musical people in poetry. We will quote the conclusion of the pretty story we began our criticism with, for a lesson of magnanimity, after the bird dropped, broken- hearted, upon the lute. " It was the quaintest sadness To see the conqueror, upon her hearse, Weeping a funeral elegy of tears. He looks upon the trophies of his art, 744 EPHEMERA. Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed and cried, ' Alas ! poor creature, I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it. Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, Shall never more betray a harmless peace To an untimely end :' and, in that sorrow, As he was poshing it against a tree, I suddenly stepped in." Another night we trust to see Borghese submitting resignedly, like the bird, to be beaten ; though if the conquering Pico undertakes, in consequence, to "pash herself against a tree," we trust the manager will "suddenly step in." The Historical Society Dinner. — "We went to the dinner of the Historical Society last evening, with a mood in our mental pocket, which was as useless to us as the wrong mask for a night of carnival. We went to indulge in relaxation and gratify curiosity. We decided in the midst of confusing avocations, that it would be delightful to see Mr. Adams and Mr. Gal- latin, pleasant to listen to the voices whose words we should read in the next morning's papers, and curious to see the first menu of the opening hotel up-town. We presumed there would be some dull talking, which the dinner and the friends around would keep off with the by-play of conviviality, and that we should, at any rate, hear wit, get our cares jostled from astride us, and store up, for illustration to future thought and reading, two pictures of men who are soon to pass over to history. But — (the two great statesmen who were to be present set aside for the moment) — it is not easy to come at all into the presence of a large number of men of superior intellect, without feeling the dormant thunder of the cloud about us. This is partly a moral magnetism, we presume, but there is a physiognomy in crowds; and, to the eye accustomed to see men " as they come," the look of an assemblage of master- intellects is the laying of a spirit-hand upon the be- holder. There were present the leading minds of this great metropolis— able divines, merchant princes, formidable politicians, brilliant lawyers, scheming cap- italists, influential citizens, philanthropists, scholars, poets, and journalists — none of them common men, and none without the sympathy-read print upon the forehead— distinction's philactery of pain.* Seated at table, we looked about upon the men we knew, and followed back into their bosoms the visible thread of which we knew the knot at the heart-strings. We have no time here— (our hasty thoughts gomg from us, sentence by sentence, into irrevocable print, as we record them)— no time to separate and describe the crowding influences that changed our careless pre- paratory mood into an overshadowed aud attentive silence. We passed an evening of resistless revery— much of it homage, much of it quickening to ambi- tion, and in part a coveting of fellowship and sympa- thy. But we can not go on with this misplaced rec- ord of emotions. There are weighty and wide influences exercised by an historical society, which, again, we can only hint at. far too hastily. Historical record is the paymaster of the immortality toiled for by greatness- and it is vital to the existence of great motives, that this treasurer's trust should be faithfully discharged, and his accounts chronicled in blazon. Affecting mention was drawn from Mr. Adams of his coming reward from history— the reward of justificatory tri- umph — for having passed through the fire of calumny. It was over these heated plough-shares that he has • We may say, in passing, that we have seen the first men of their time in many countries, and many assemblages of distinguished men, but it struck us that we had never seen either a finer collection of intellectual heads, or finer individ- ual specimens, than this occasion had brought together. walked to the luminous door by which he is about to pass from the world ; and if he could be sure of no brother-spirits left behind, to see the truth written in characters legible to the world, he would have done his great services to his country, by sufferings, indeed, mournfully thankless. In a republic, especially in an age of free-thinking and irreverence for usage, like ours — the influence of a society which brightens and keeps manifest the coolly-proved wisdom of the past, is more especially all-needful. History forgotten, the present is a ship without chart or compass, trusting to the stars alone in the clouded storm-nights of politics. Ambition, with that watchful dragon asleep — no rec- ord to be dreaded beyond the memory of the living — would be a fiend loosed upon the world. History is our citadel of safety. New kind of Hotel up-town. — We have thought that it would, perhaps, interest our readers to go into a detail of the differences between the popular hotel (like the Astor, the American, Howard's, &c.) and what is understood in Europe as the hotel- garni — of which the up-town hotel is the new example in this country. The hotel-garni is a furnished house, in which the lodging is the only charge not variable at the option of the guest. A certain price is charged for the rooms occupied, and the other expenses are accord- ing to what is ordered. A popular bachelor, for ex- ample, makes a great economy of this. He pays for his rooms and his breakfast; and, if invited out to dine five times in the week, saves the corresponding items in his bill — five dinners and five bottles of wine. This, in Europe, is considered a fair offset against patent blacking, white gloves, and hack-hire ; and puts society on a level with health, sunshine, reputa- tion, and other plain matters-of-course. A common table and a restaurant are not necessary parts of a ho- tel-garni, but they serve to increase its eligibility. There is a certain price for a dinner at the table d'hote, charged separately every day ; but in Europe few dine at the common table except strangers in town. A fashionable man avoids it as an implied confession, 1st, that he has not been invited out that day, and, 2d, that he can content himself with everybody's dinner and company. For families, particularly if there are unmarried daughters, it is irreconcilable with position, if not with propriety, to live at the public table. The rooms in these hotels are arranged so as to unite a draw- ing-room with each bedroom, and every person, or fam- ily, respectably lodged, has a private parlor for meals and reception of visits. There is no large common draw- ing-room, of course. The meals are furnished by ex- press order, given each day, to the restaurant below, and sent up with tablecloth, silver, glass, &c — all at the appointed hour, and all removed together when dinner is over — giving the lodger no trouble, except to wait on himself while dining, or provide a servant to do so. As each dish is for one person only, how- ever (or one family), the expense of such a dinner is much greater than where the dishes are cooked in larger quantities for a hundred people. To dine in private on as many dishes as you may taste for fifty cents at a public table, would cost, probably, from two to five dollars. The ordinary hotel is, of course, described by specifying the peculiarities of the other. It will be seen at once that the hotel-garni must prevail with the increase of exclusiveism in this country. It is only in new countries that families can do without household gods ; and it is only where the whole male society of a country is only unharnessed for sleep from the eternal drag of money-making, that the do- mestic virtues can be left safely without private altars EPHEMERA. 745 and locked doors, single roof-trees, and four-walled simplicity. Twenty years hence, we venture to say, the Astor's splendid drawing-room will be occupied by some nabob of a lodger — needed no longer as a common parlor — and its long galleries will be but suites of apartments, every third bedroom converted into a cosy saloon, and the occupants seeing as little of each other as neighbors in a " block." There are some very republican advantages in our present system of hotels, which the country is not yet ready to forego. Tell a country lady in these times that when she comes to New York she must eat and pass the evening in a room by herself, and she would rather stay at home. The going to the Astor, and dining with two hundred well-dressed people, and sitting in full dress in a splendid drawing-room with plenty of company — is the charm of going to the city ! The theatres are nothing to that ! Broadway, the shopping, and the sights, are all subordinate — poor accessories to the main object of the visit. A large company as cheap as none at all — a hundred dishes as cheap as one — a regal drawing-room at her service, with superb couches, piano, and drapery, and costing no more than if she stayed in her bedroom — plenty of eyes to dress for if not to become acquainted with, and very likely a " hop" and a band of music — bless my soul, says the country lady, I hope they'll never think of improving away all that! And, there lies the pinch ! The senator now on his way to congress, dines with his family at the public table. The gentleman who does not choose to keep house, invites his friends to dine with him at the pub- lic table. The man who prefers to dine in a private parlor is satirically made welcome to his own society — if he prefers it ! The distinguished, the fashiona- able, the dressy, and handsome, may all dine, without peril of style, at the public table. But — since so may the opposites of all these, and anybody else who is tolerably dressed and well-behaved — the public table is the tangible republic — the only thing palpable and agreeable that we have to show, in common life, as republican. And when the exclusivism of the hotel- garni draws its dividing line through this promiscu- ous community of habits, the cords will be cut which will let some people up, out of reach, and drop some people down, out of all satisfactory supposible contact with society. Growth of "Western Literature. — We are happy to notice that seven out of the seventeen arti- cles with the names of the authors, in the last two numbers of the Biblical Repository, are from persons connected with literary institutions west of the mount- ains. Among the subjects of the western writers are, The Writings of Martin Luther ; Evidences from Nature for the Immortality of the Soul ; and the Natural History of Man in his Spiritual Relations. Another article contains an able defence of presbyte- rianism. So far as we can judge from a hasty view, these subjects, some of which are the greatest that can employ the pen anywhere, are treated with tact and ability, and give us a favorable opinion of the con- dition of our western seminaries of learning. The remaining contributions are from New England, with the exception of one from Virginia. New York does not appear in the list of contributors' names. The Opera — The " stars" of the opera are just through their night's work and the stars of heaven are half way through theirs. We have not the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with a single individual in either company — knowing neither Venus nor Pico, Lyra nor Borghese, " off the stage." We are about to announce an astrological conjunction, however, and, as "many an inhumane thought hath arisen from a man's sitting uncomfortably in his chamber," we have sent for an emollient to our arm chair, in the shape of cold duck and champagne — expecting there- by to achieve our nearest perihelion to the calm clear- sightedness of Copernicus. Up-town New York, a week ago, was in the situa- tion the starry firmament was in, about two hundred years before the Christian era. Pythagoras recorded his conviction at that time that there were hco stars wanting to complete the harmony of a certain portion of the heavens, and, in the very spots named by the great philosopher, Mars and Jupiter did soon after make their first appearance. In like manner a Daily Pythagoras, of this city (we think it was Mr. King of the American), darkly hinted in a late evening paper, that there were two stars necessary — contralto and soprano — to complete harmony of the Palmospheric constellation ; and, in that very troop, Pico and Bor- ghese did soon after take their places in similarly har- morious conjunction. We trust history will do us | justice for linking together these two marked fore- ' shadowings of stars' " doing something for their fami- lies." [Your health, dear reader, in a glass of Cordon- bleu m — m — mplck ! delicious !] And now we have to beg the discreet portion of the public to step with us behind the curtain — not that (representing the rosy dawn) which drops before Mars and Jupiter, but that (representing Jupiter feel- ing the pulse of Minerva) which drops before Bor- ghese and Pico. There has been a terrible rowdydow in the operatic green-room. Borghese has been hitherto queen of the zodiac, and her orbit was only intersected by nebula? of nameless supernumeraries. The breaking of Pico upon the gaze of the impartial star-worshippers, however, and their undeniable prefer- ence, of the star at fifty dollars a night to the star at double the money, sent Borghese sick to her bed ; and she is said to have vowed (with the spunk of the Lost Pleiad, who died for jealousy of her six brighter sisters) that she would never rise again if papa would excuse her. [Our astronomy is used up, dear reader, but the champagne still holds out. A glass to Borghese's better resignation, and let us go on, in terrestiial phraseology. — M-m-mplck !] Borghese commenced making p>osition, a year or more ago, and has pursued it very skilfully, and, therefore, very creditably to herself. For a winter, or more, before showing herself as an admirable ac- tress, she revolved in the japonica circles up-town, as a singer at parties, and made acquaintances and friendships exclusively among the forced-plant cus- tomers of Hogg and Thorburn. Her manners were of that well-studied, eager unconsciousness, which is the modesty of nature in a hot-house school ; and her tact, elegance, and musical science, were leaved like a rose-bud tied up with a string — showing what the prima-donna might be, if the young lady were loosed and expanded. As the parent-stem required to be relieved of her, she prepared to throw herself on the public; and when she did, she was, of course, plucked from neglect, and cherished in the protect- ing bosom of the society that had secluded her. She has been worn in triumph, as the first flower of the opera, for a couple of seasons— as you know, dear public ! But nature exacts an equilibrium; and where there is more public harmony, there will be more private discord. The children of the " boot on the map," kick against authorities, and every tuneful rehearsal had its offset in a quarrel. Signor Borghese (the star-father), not being of the sect of the Apotactita?, who renounce property, took advantage of a tight 746 EPHEMERA. place in the treasury, and bought in, " for a song," the theatrical weapons and wardrobe. Of course, whatever solvent might separate the other parts of the company, they, crystallized, agaiu, around their only possible nucleus — the prima-donna who had the tog- gery ! And, at this stage of the Borghese monocracy — came Pico ! Months passed away. The story of Pico's errand — her husband a political prisoner at Venice, and her voice the only probable conjurer of the gold key to release or relieve him — was told and apparently for- gotten. We heard it, and reserved our republican sympathy till she should appear. The Mirror suggest- ed a concert — knowing nothing of her powers — but her friends' thought she had better bide her time with the opera. She has done so. At half the pay of Borghese, she played to-night for the second time, in the opera of Lucrezia Borgia. We have come home from hearing her — "posses- sed" (as this undevoured cold duck is our witness) — our capacity for delight plummeted — our cistern of unshed tears strangely and pleasurably troubled — our pen as gushing with welcome to Pico as the miraculous oil-spring of old Rome that welcomed home the con- quering Augustus. [Her health in this last glass of champagne — God bless her !] The house was crowded. Borghese sang beauti- fully, and played as no other female in America can play. She was heartily applauded — but — as on the last opera night — the tumult of the house was reserved for the drinking song of Pico. It is her first chance to unchain soul and voice after nearly a whole opera of subservient by-play. Oh how the first swooping away into those clear silver caverns of her throat — dropping through unfathomable love-depths with her fearless down-c&&&nc&s, and turning with an easy up- lift again toward the summit-perch of the careless altissimo — how like an eagle's swoop it careered ! overtaking the dew falling, and the perfume rising into the sky, and, with all its fierce swiftness, robbing the cleft air of nothing but fragrance and softness. [We are getting poetical — but champagne after Pico, is, as the Venetians say, tanto amorevolc ! We'll go to bed and sum up in the morning.] Thursday Morning. — Our friend of the " Morning News," expresses, in his paper of to-day, a regret that "a feeling of rivalry is encouraged between Borghese and Pico." We are surprised at this discouragement, on his knowing part, of the great secret of good opera and good everything else. When are they ever so likely to sing so well, and to draw so well, as when " their souls come upward to their lips Like neighboring monarchs at their borders meeting ?" He adds, that " Pico fairly out-Pico'd Pico," and we should say the same of Borghese, if the name would come as pat. No ! no ! let them he rivals ! What could be pret- tier ? — more gracefully done, and more touchingly enlisting to the feelings— than Borghese's picking 'up the wreath again, last night, and giving it generously to Pico? We broke a new malacca stick in applaud- ing that action alone. Viva Borghese ! Viva Pico ! You are two halves of a scissors, dear ladies, and rivalry is your rivet. Divide the public — since both halves are your own, after they are divided ! Pico and Borghese. — These two ladies are certain- ly most poculent commodities, and the town drinks their delicious music with unquestionable intoxica- tion. The crammed opera-house was as breathless with absorbed attention last night as if Pico's rosy- lipped cup ministered to every heart's measure of ful- ness — one palate common to all. For ourself, we con- fess immeasurable delight in Pico. Her voice has a road to the heart upon which criticism takes no toll — the gate-opening facility of music going home. One listens to it as Shelley seems to have listened to the witch of Atlas — u Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought," — the very inmost tenant of your bosom, somehow, seeming to have " expected it, all along." Borghese is a treasure to a town — an uncommon creature — such an actress and artist as we shall not see again until we deserve a benefit from the gods — but Pico! oh, Pico is ot quite another invoice of goods from paradise. Borghese is the most ingenious har- mony-pump that, for many a year, has offered patron- age a handle — the other is a natural-well spring of passionate and careless music, that would flow as bountifully, for a bird to drink, as for an emperor to stoop to. Pico's voice would cut up like a polypus — not a fragment without the making of a woman in it. She neither sings, nor moves, nor smiles, as if she remembered ever doing it before ; and if she has not the great " art of concealing art" (of which we have had our half a suspicion), she is one of those helpless irresistibles that could as soon become invisi- ble as not bewitch. The drinking song (Pico's only good chance in the whole opera), was stunningly applauded last night, and, at the close, a wreath was thrown to her from a very select company in a private box, and thrown with a pretty good aim — for she caught it upon her bosom. Out of it — (or the place where she caught it — we could not tell which) — dropped a sealed note, which we trust contained a check payable in favor of the im- prisoned husband at Venice. If we had a moderate thought during the opera of last night, it was that there could be no question of a keen taste for music in New York — for here was a crowded audience, attentive, appreciative, measuring its applause most judiciously, and leaving the house delighted. We are sure a large opera-house would do — with more inducements to foreign subordinates, more enterprise to procure visits from the Parisian and London operatics, better regulations for private boxes, etc., etc. We think, for one, that there is no greater pleasure, away from a man's hearth, than a good opera. Envy of the Rich, or, the Flying-fish Aris- tocracy, and the No. 1 Passenger left behind. — In the hurry of composition, yesterday, we stum- bled upon a similitude (a "flying-fish aristocracy") which, we think, expresses that transitory duration of American "up-in-the-world," which should make the greater number of rich people looked upon with in- dulgent affection by those left temporarily below. Of such short-lease wings as most American " first fami- lies" fly with, there need be little envy, one would think — in the democratic element they drip with till they drop again. There are families, however — a small number — who hold their own for three or four generations ; and, in the " measureless content" of these with their position, the democrats find offence ; but one of the most curious social problems we know of, is the manner in which the old families of New York are let alone, and tacitly eclipsed by the more newly prosperous; and we must offer to our readers a descriptive similitude for this also. (Our object, it will be seen, is to take away the offence of aristocracy, if possible, and induce King Public to let us cater for them, as for all other classes, with level editorial re- publicanism!) EPHEMERA. 747 A half hour before the starting of the Oxford night mail, a fat gentleman was discovered fast asleep in the coach, which was still under the shed. He occupied the back scat, and his enormous bulk filled it so com- pletely that there was no room for the usual fourth inside passenger. But four seats were taken and paid for, and the last man booked insisted on his right to a place — fat man, or no fat man! The stout gentleman was waked, and requested to come out till the other three were seated. " He [however] knew his rights, and knowing dared main- tain ;" and having mentioned his name.and inquired whether it was not first on the book, settled his chin into his cravat, and speedily snored again! "Is this Oxford? — bless me, how'I have slept!" said the fat man, rub- bing his eyes, when the coach door was opened the next morning — in the same place where it stood ivhcn he went to sleep .' The driver had hitched his team to another coach, and the three unprivileged customers last booked were probably breakfasting in Oxford ! It strikes us that the people who are last booked, in this community, may very well monopolize the envy — (success in arriving at their destination of conspicu- ousness being, of course, the chief matter of envy) — and the fat sleepers, upon the usurped seats, once left out of the proscription, the charity for " flying-fish" easily forgives the remainder. If the above does not please our friend "Cheap Jemmy," we will never do a good-natured thing again as long as we live. If he knew Latin, we should send him in a bill for a diaphoretic. AFTER THE OPERA. (Supper in 184's room at the Astor — the brigadier here " on business'' — a poulct pique, and a bottle of cham- pagne in silver tissue paper, also here " on busi- ness" — Eleven O'clock, Esq., just parting from the bell of St. Paul's, with a promise to be " round in the morning." ) Brig, (nodding, and taking up his glass). — Mi-boy ! 184 (laying his hand on the general's arm). — Not in such profane haste, my prompt sodger! That glass of wine is the contemporary of bliss — sent to us to be drank to the health of a bride, now three hours past the irrevocable gate. Brig. Married at eight ? Do you say that ? God bless her, in a bumper! (gazes abstractedly into the bottom of the glass, and speaks musingly.) — Ten min- utes past eleven ! — Well, who's the lady, and who the happy man? 184. One of our parish, who, though he does not personally know us, wishes us to be made aware of his happiness. We have written ourselves into his bosom. God bless him for the loving door in his eye — isn't so, my tree-sparer! So may all men take us in ! Try a bit of chicken now, general, or that tear in your eye will fall back on an empty stomach! Brig. And what a difference it makes — what it falls back upon, mi-boy ! The salt in a tear is not natu- ral, depend on it, or the in'ards would take to it more kindly. What an etiquette of mercy it would be, now, to make pathos and bad news matters of full- dress — never to be alluded to in good society, till a man has ceased, as Menenius says, " to pout upon the morning !" What's your to-morrow's leader ? 184. Not coming to business at the second glass, I hope ? Fie on you for a disrespect to the bride. (The brigadier blushes, and covers his confusion by reading the label on the bottle.) How enchantiogly old Belisario and his captive sung their vows of friend- ship to-night ! Ah, music and lights !— things are so much finer for embellishing! Our small friendship now, general — brought forward to the prompter's cup- board and foot-lights — do you think it would be en- cored, like that ? Brig. As you don't ask for information, mi-boy, let's proceed to business. Can you give me an idea of your to-morrow's editorial ? 184. No! Brig. And the boy is to come for it at seven ! 184 (seizing a pen). What shall it be ? Brig. Why, there's the mud in the streets — and the Bohemian Girl — and the wretched weather — and the menagerie — and Vandenhoff' — and Stuart's candy- shop — and Mrs. Coles — 184. By — the — by ! — a discovery ! — Tryon ought to head his play-bills with the Marsellois war-cry — " to arms ! — to arms !'' I never saw a pair in my life more exquisitely moulded and polished than Mrs. Coles's, of the Bowery circus — as shown after her third undoing on horseback! It takes a symmetrical woman, of course, to stand tiptoe upon a flying horse, and strip, from a jacketed Cracovienne to a short sleeved evening dress — but ladies of this vocation, well made in all other respects, are usually thin from the elbow to the shoulder. Shall I make a " leader" of Mrs. Coles ? Brig. Certainly not, mi-boy ! nor a follower either ! Just indicate, as it were — call attention mysteriously — hint somehow — that there is a part of the equestrian performance that reminds you of things you saw in Italy — statuary or something — delicately, mi-boy — very delicately ! What else have you got down there in your memorandum-book? 184. Half a dozen topics. Here's a note that smells of "above Bleecker," requesting us to implore of Japonica-dom not to give parties on opera-nights! i Really, they should not ! The opera is a rare luxury, without which a metropolis is like a saloon without a mirror, and there should be a little combination, among refined people — if not to give it extra support, at least to throw no hinderance in its way. They do this in London — (where, by the way, there are but two operas a week, and it would be quite enough here) — Lady Blessington, for one, never " at home" on opera-nights, and dinner-parties are given at an earlier hour to release people in time. The quality of the opera depends, of course, on its enthusiastic support, and those who can appreciate it can do no less, I think, than to go in full dress, and go habitually. It is far pleasanter than a party, is over at bearable bed- time, and, just now, the company at Palmo's is too good to be slighted. And, by the way, have you thought how gloriously Pico has beggared the loud trumpet we blew for her on her first appearance! "Ants," says the old proverb, "live safely till they have gotten wings, and juniper is not thrown away till it hath gotten a high top." She is neither your ant nor your juniper-blossom — is she general ? Brig, (who has been dozing). Not my aunt, mi- boy, whoever you're talking of. I never had one — hope I never shall ! 184. What's that note falling out of your pocket, meantime ? Brig. Well thought of— I brought it to you for a paragraph. What do you think it is ? A complaint froin the ladies that the young men waylay them on the staircases ! 184. Heavens and Sabines ! wait till I dip my pen in the thunder-stand ! Who ? How ? When ? How many ? Brig. At parties— at parties— my dear boy— don't be violent ! This lady declares (brigadier opens the note) that it is a " perfect nuisance, the mere descent from the dressing-room to the ball-room" — "a pretty girl has to come down a perfect ladder of boys — every | stair an engagement to dance" — " no chance for a 748 EPHEMERA. pick" — " her mind fatigued with the effort to remem- ber her partners" — " no hope of dancing with a grown- up man from Christmas to April" — "green talk alto- gether" — "dreadful sense of unripeness" — "no sub- ject but Pico and Polka" — " begs we will write the boys off the staircase," etc., etc. You see your sub- ject. 184. Shall I tell you why that was not written by a woman ? Don't you see that if this system of long lists of engagements were done away, a lady would have no escape from a disagreeable partner — no plea of too many engagements — no chance for a lie whiter than many a truth ? Don't you see, that (now duel- ling is laughed at) a lady can leave out an early part- ner on the list, or slip a tardy one in, with perfect ease and comfort — distressing nobody's mamma with fears of Hoboken ! Leave the ladies alone for put- ting down troublesome usages ! Your letter was written by some old coxcomb going out of fashion, who can get nobody to dance with him, and lays it to the boys on the staircase ! Tut ! Brig. Twelve o'clock, and where's your leader ? Oh, mi-boy, think of to-morrow's paper ! 184. Hang the leader ! Let's go without it — once in a way ! Brig. Gracious! no ! What will the public say ? There goes one o'clock ! Bed-time (for me — not ("or you) — and nothing from you for the boy in the morn- ing ! Oh, mi-boy, sit up ! Go and wash your face, and feel fresh ! Write a paragraph requesting the Mirror brides to send their champagne, hereafter, ex- clusively to the talking partner! Where's my hat ? Get inspired, mi-boy, get inspired ! Good night! 184. Stay — stay — stay! Listen to this! (184 reads the foregoing dialogue to the brigadier, whose face gradually reassumes its usual serene placidity. He lays down his hat and picks another wing of the chicken.) Brig. And you have been writing this down, all the time, with your hand deep in that old cabinet ! Bless me, what a boy you are for expedients! I thought you was scratching autographs, or writing " Pico," or sketching Glenmary, or something ! But you haven't mentioned the weekly ? 184. Poh ! it doesn't want mentioning. Brig. Not more than the sun and moon, and other periodicals — but you trust the world's memory too much, my worky ! They'd forget the sun shone if it wasn't down in the almanac ! Say something! 184. Well, let's see ! It's our diary of the world's goings-on and what we think of it — published every seventh day. It is a week's corn, ground, sifted, and bagged, for those who can't go to mill every day. It is a newspaper without the advertisements and other trumpery — at half price, in consequence of lumber left out and one postage instead of seven. It is edited every day, and other weeklies are edited once a week. It gives the news, the fashions, the fun, the accidents, the operas, and our all-spice to make it keep, in a handsome, preservable shape — bindable for reference and re-reading — "the times" as it were, "boned and potted." Shall I say any more ? Brig. Three dollars a year — 184. Mum, man ! Never mention money after midnight! What will the angels say! Go to bed ! go to bed ! (Exit brigadier, after a silent embrace.) AFTER THE OPERA. A FEW GRAVE REMARKS WHILE SUPPER IS COMING. The Cinderella-tude of Madame Pico's own situa- tion, in the operatic corps, and her still disputed claim to the "glass slipper" of preference, sent us to Pal- mo's, to-night, with somewhat of an owl upon our shoulder. We dreaded Prince Public's final choice between her and the favorite daughter of Don Mag- nifico — for the real- life opera had come to its last act, and, as she should or should not, make the most of the opportunity (of which we had done our best to be the " Pilgrim Alidoro"), she would, or would not, wear to-morrow the crown of Palmo-dom. The cur- tain is down, and ENTER SUPPER FOR NO. 181. Before we grow too enthusiastic for the nice distinc- tions of criticism, let us say a word of the general performance of the opera. Why the frisky Signor Antognini, whose conceit, " Ploughed by the sunbeams only, would suffice For the world's granary," was cast in a part that the unemployed Perozzi would have done so much better, and so much more agree- ably to the public, we have no Italian spectacles to see. And — apropos — if it is the object of the com- pany to please and draic, why did not Borghese (ex- cept that silver is less tractile than gold) take the sec- ond role in this opera, as Pico did in Lucrezia Bor- gia ? The part sustained by Miss Moss has rather more scope in it than that of Orsini, and how vastly more attractive the opera, so cast, would be to the public ! Signor Tomasi showed the vertebras in his voice, to-night, more than he did in Belisario — prob- ably from stooping with difficulty to the comic ; but Sanquirico — what shall we say of his admirable per- sonable of Don Magnifico ? We'll drink his health by way of answer. (A lei, Sanquirico !) And so ends our fault-finding. SECOND GLASS. This glass of purple Tinta, steeped in the latitude of Italy, tastes, of course, of the climate of Pico's voice ; and we are glad to vary, with this redolent bumper, the avenue to our heart — so breaking up the ear's monopoly of toll. Health to Cinderella tri- umphant ! Her voice has a flavor — (if this wine be like it — and it is the sun s fault if it is not like it — for the same cupful of his mellow light fed the grape from which gushed the wine and the lip from which poured the melody) — worthy of the immortality of Falernian. (For this discovery of homogeneousness of pulp we beg a medal from the Institute.) We were afraid, as we said before, that Pico, " like a careless farrier, would lame her well-shod glory with the last nail," but she sang throughout with un- blemished deliciousness, and the " piu ?ncstar," at the close, fairly took the town ! Nothing has been heard like it, in this city, since Malibran, either in voice or execution. We have made up our mind about Pico. Her abandon is like the apparent carelessness of all kinds of genius— -fearless trust after finished study. Of that desperate and intoxicating let-go, Borghese has none. She is artistic and careful in the most pas- sionate extremity, dying, even, "with her wits all about her." Pico fastens each link of the composer's melody in her brain, with workmanlike fidelity ; but when she comes out from her music-smithy, she brings with her no memory of the clink of hammer and rivet. In that relying forgetfulness lies the mys- tery of her charm. It is recognised, by the instinct men have that this is the quality of those who do best — statesmen or soldiers, poets or lovers — the most successful, in all enterprises, throwing themselves on what they have once made up their minds to, as a bird launches from the cliff. Nature prodigally sec- onds the unhesitating trust of Pico's execution. Her voice follows her concerted thought with the certainty of a shadow and the fulness of a floodtide. The plentitude of every shade and semi-tone, insures, in the first five minutes of hearing her, an ab- sence of all dread of flaw or falling ofT— an assurance, EPHEMERA. 749 that whatever height or depth she stoops her neck to swoop for, it will bring, for the listener, " those music-wings Lent to exalt us to the seventh sphere." WE DRINK TO THE JACOB'S LADDER OF MUSIC. A new light breaks upon us as to the uses of the opera. As (to the wicked) common speech is a con- venience and swearing a luxury, so poetry is a conve- nience to passion, and music its luxury. An unhar- monized shout — a succession of cries — may mean anything; but a chorus, or a concerted transition of cries, has a meaning to convey floodtides out of the soul. Poetry may fall cold upon the eye, but music must melt in the ear. These premises allowed, the opera becomes (does it not?) a healthful vent to the passions of a metropolis — a chance (for those who long to swear and do violence), by a more innocent •' giving way," '•' to wreak Their thoughts upon expression !" How common the feeling " to want a spree !" and who that for three hours has choked back tears in his throat, and been enraptured with a contralto across the footlights, is not ready to go to bed like a gentle- , man ? An opera is a blessed succedaneum to the many. To the few it is the loan of a dictionary from Heaven ! Thoughts otherwise mute — feelings whose dumbness is the inner man buried alive, leap to free- breathing utterance with music. It is for this reason that an unknown language is the best vehicle for an opera. We wish to hear the harmony, and let our souls furnish the articulation. Don't you see, now, my dear "Bohemian Girl .'" the plain reason of the platitude of English opera! Italian music has words to it, and so has a dancing-girl a carotid artery — but you wish to feel your orvn heart beat delightfully, and not to count the quickening pulses of Taglioni's — you wish to embark your own thoughts in music's en- chanted boat, and not see how it was first laden with other people's. A man's soul can nave nothing in it unsaid, when he wants a libretto to help him listen understanding^ to Pico ! And now, having translated into grammatical Eng- lish, the inarticulate contents of a chicken's breast, and a pint-bottle of Tinta (for the benefit of a public to whom these eloquent midnight companions would otherwise have spoken in vain), let us to bed — apro- pos-imously remarking, that, in the paragraph prece- dent to this, there is a hint as to the uses of an opera, worthy the attention of the society of moral reform. As the clergy are, probably, asleep at this hour (3 o'clock), we say no more. ( Exit " 184," with a candle.) The Mirror held up to the Times. — It is a trick of ours to begin at the other end, when the sub- ject would otherwise open dry — bespeaking attention, as it were, by first naming the inducement. As we have lately been pulled up for not giving credit, we may as well mention, that we took this peculiarity of style from Mother Goose's politic inducement to the five reluctant patrons of the milkpail : — " Cushy cow bonny, give clown your milk, And I will give you a gown of silk." Silk gown : — we are about to show how we have arrived at the conclusion, that, in the state of the country now "opening up," it will be necessary for every gentleman to be a pugilist. We beg to premise, that the state of things we are about to show forth is by no means a sign of repub- lican retrogression. We are about to record no dis- paragement to the outline of the republic. It is a pyramid, in fair progression, but refinement sits with- in it like an hourglass. Half-way up the ascent of political perfection, the social diagram within is at its inevitable "tight place ;" and while we remember on what a breadth of polite foundation public opinion built up society at the Revolution, and while we be- lieve that, half a century hence, we shall have as re- fined standards as any country on earth, we believe that, now, there is a squeeze upon good-breeding in this country (less protection for private rights and feelings than there was once, and will be again), and it is as well that those who are to suffer by the tight place should be prepared to stand it. To protect that upon which the proprietor has a right to put a value, is the object of law and civilization. Five dollars, paid back, will satisfy a man who has been robbed of five dollars; but the thief goes to prison besides. A wound given to a man is soon healed and forgotten, but the .assailant is condemned for a felon. A newspaper-attack upon a man, for pe- culiarities with which the public have no business, may be a deeper offence to him than the loss of half his fortune, yet the attempt at remedy by law is worse than bearing it in silence. The damages given are trifling and nominal, and the prosecution propagates the evil. The above is a skeleton statement, to which the memory of every newspaper-reader will supply the flesh-and-blood illustrations. A late decision in Mas- sachusetts, justifying an unnecessary libel on the ground of its truth, threw off, to our thinking, the last skin of the metamorphosis. There is left, now, no protection, by law or public opinion, to anything but the pocket and the person of the citizen. His private feelings, his domestic peace, his hard-won respect from other men, his consciousness of respectability abroad — commodities of more value to him than money — are outlawed, and, if wronged, left to his in- dividual avenging. Few republicans need to be told that the law casts no formidable shadow unless shone upon by public opinion. The law of libel is powerless, because the license of the press is agreeable to the public. If it were not so, the libeller would not find himself, after conviction, still on the sunny side of public favor — nor would judges charge juries with the little emphasis they do — nor would juries give, as they do, damages that turn the plaintiff into ridicule! There is another thing that republicans need not be told : that where a just remedy is denied by the law, the individual takes the penalty into his own hands — the same public that left him to adminisler it, kindly warding off the law when he is tried for the retribu- tive assault and battery. A case of this sort lately occurred in the tabernacle city. A family of the most liberal habits and highest private worth — just risen to wealth by two generations of honest industry — chose to marry a daughter with entertainments pro- portionate to their fortune. A malicious editor, avow- edly " to make his paper sell," and for no other rea- son, came out with a foul-mouthed ridicule of the festivities, that completely destroyed the happiness of the brightest domestic event of their lives. One hun- dred thousand dollars would have been no inducement to the family to suffer the pain and mortification that were, and will be for years, the consequences of that unprovoked outrage. But where lay the remedy ? The law would perpetuate the ridicule, without giv- ing damages that would outweigh the additional sale of^the paper. It chanced, in this case, that the in- jured man was of athletic habits and proportions, and the editor was small and puny. The plaintiff (that would have been, had there been public opinion to give power to the law) called on the defendant (that I would have been) and whipped him severely; and 750 EPHEMERA. when tried for the assault and battery, was punished with a fine next to nothing. The public opinion of the city of " broad philacteries" virtually justified both outrages. But where would have been the rem- edy, if the physical superiority had been on the oth- er side, or if the popular blight-monger had been an unassailable cripple ? Another case of legal justification of club-law lately occurred in this city. It is so marked an instance, also, of the social impunity of printed injuries (the in- flictor, Mr. Gliddon, being still a popular lecturer, and glorified daily by the model family-newspaper of Boston), that we venture to quote three or four pas- sages from the libel. Mr. Cooley, the fiogger, had described, with humorous ridicule, some people he saw in Egypt, and Mr. Gliddon takes it for granted (though it is denied by Mr. Cooley) that the ridicule was aimed at himself and his father. A pamphlet of thirty or forty pages of abuse of Cooley is the retort to this supposed allusion, and from a notice of the pamphlet in a daily paper, we copy three or four of its quoted sentences: — "If, since the publication of ' The American in Egypt,' it be a work of supererogation on his part (Gliddon's) to place upon public record the petulant vagaries of an upstart, to recall the petty shifts of an itinerant miser, to unmask the insidious insipidities of a would-be author, or to refute the falsehoods of a literary abortion, it will be allowed that the deed is none of his seeking, but has been fastened on him, as the only course within the letter of American laws whereby a poltroon can receive chastisement from those who would have gladly vindicated their honor by means to them far more satisfactory." "Again Mr. Gliddon says: 'I grieved that, not hav- ing been gifted with prophetic vision. I neglected to apply it [the corbash] in the Thebaid to Mr. Cooley himself, for I may never have such an eligible chance again.' " " Had he been in Cairo at the time [of my depar- ture from that city], he should have laid aside all of- ficial character, even at the risk of eventual censure, and Mr. Cooley should not have perpetrated his pas- quinade in 'Arabia Petrea and Palestine,' before he [Gliddon] had hung a 'cowskin on those recreant limbs!' " " If he [Gliddon] do not now apply a horsewhip to Mr. Cooley's shoulders, it is solely because, in a com- munity among which both are residing, the satisfac- tion he should derive from a physical expression of his obligations to Mr. Cooley, might prove more ex- pensive than the pleasure is worth." " Our relative positions have been, and, so far as may depend on him, will remain perfectly distinct; for possible affluence will never raise Mr. Cooley to the social standing of a gentleman.'" " Mr. Cooley's fractiousness is confined to paper pellets. Innate cowardice is a guaranty for his never resorting to a different manifestation of his vicious, though innocuous waspishness." The first time Mr. Cooley saw Mr. Gliddon after these expressions of restrained warlike impatience, he gave him a beating. Mr. Gliddon prosecuted him for assault and battery, recovered "five dollars damages," and went on lecturing with high popular favor. What was Mr. Cooley's remedy for being published as " no gentlemen," a "miser," and a "coward," who had three times escaped personal chastisement? Mr. Cooley is not the "loafer" these epithets would seem to make him. He is a man of fortune, and a most excellent citizen, with highly-respectable connexions, and a hearth blessed with the presence of beauty and refinement. A duel would have brought upon him a ridicule more formidable than personal danger — the law on the subject is a cipher — and, to remove the pointed finger from waiting on him at his very table, he was obliged to chastise the man who stigmatized him. One more proof of the same new state of things, though in a different line. A highly-educated young lawyer in this city, in canvassing for the whigs, during the late political contest, was severely whipped by three members of the leading democratic club. He lay a-bed a week, recovering from his bruises, and, at the end of that time, walked into a meeting of the club referred to and demanded a hearing. Order was called, and he stated his case, and demanded of the president of the club that a ring should be formed, and his antagonists turned in to him — one after the other. It was enthusiastically agreed to, and the three bullies being present, were handed over to him and handsomely flogged, one after the other. Of course this is not all we are to hear of such a man; but who will deny, that when he comes to stand for congress, he will not have counterbalanced, by this act, the disadvantage of belonging to one of the most aristocratic families of the city ? We are expressing no discontent with our country. We are playing the Mirror only — showing the public its face, that it may not forget " what manner of man" it is. We have shown by facts, that there is no more remedy among us, for the deepest injuries that can be inflicted, than there is among wild beasts in the forest. Duelling is as good as abolished, we rejoice with all our hearts — but it owes its abolition to the country's having sunk below the chivalric level at which that weed could alone find nourishment. We leave to others to draw conclusions and suggest rem- edies. We are not reformers. We submit. But we should think a man as improvident, not forthwith to be rubbing up his sparring, as a gentleman would have been in Charles the Second's time, to have walked abroad without his sword. They have a saying in the Mediterranean (from the custom of yoking a hog with a donkey together for draught), "You must plough with a hog if you stay in Minorca!" Rev. Sidney Smith's description of Imnself from a letter to a correspondent of the Neiv York American. — "I am seventy-four years old; and being a canon of St. Paul's, in London, and rector of a parish in the country, my time is equally divided between town and country. I am living amidst the best society in the metropolis, am at ease in my circumstances, in tolera- ble health, a mild whig, a tolerating churchman, and much given to talking, laughing, and noise. I dine with the rich in London, and physic the poor in the country — passing from the sauces of Dives to the sores of Lazarus. I am, upon the whole, a happy man, have found the world an entertaining world, and am heartily thankful to Providence for the part allotted to me in it." We can add a touch or two to the auto-sketch of the witty prebend, who, we think, is one of the men most thought about just now. He is a fat man, weighing probably between two and three hundred pounds, with a head and stomach very church-man -hke — (that is to say in the proportion of a large church with a small belfry) — a most benevolent yet humorous face, and manners of most un-English boisterousness and cordiality. At a party he is followed about, like a shepherd by his sheep, and we remember, once, at his own house, seeing Lord Byron's sister, the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, one of the laughing flock browsing upon the wit that sprung up around him. One would think, to see him and know his circumstances, that the gods had done their best to make one of the Mr. Smiths perfectly happy. EPHEiMERA. 751 JOHN QU1NCY ADAMS. (In reply to our respected private correspondent, and the editor with his puddle against every man, and every man's inkstand against him.) When is a statesman beyond accusation ? Not while he is still armed in the arena! — .not while he has neither dismounted from the car of ambition, nor, even once, made sign to the world, that he would fain stop and turn his face to his Maker ! We are understood as referring to Mr. Adams. We consider this present active member of congress as, beyond competition, the most potent spirit in America. " Venerable" he is — and " his hand trem- hles" — but his venerableness is a cavern of power, and his uplifted forefinger " trembles as the granite trembles Lashed by the waves." We know there is a level on the mountain of life, where the air is pure and cold — a height at which im- purity can scarce come, more, between the climber and his God — but, it is above tvhere the lightning comes f rom it is above the dark cloud where sleeps the thunder, collected from below, and charged with in- separable good and harm. This incorrupt level is, at least, one step above the cloud in which Mr. Adams has pertinaciously lingered; and if his friends insist that he has been long enough lost to common scrutiny to have reached the upper side of the cloud of danger- ous power, we must be excused for pointing our con- ductor till he is done stirring in the thunder. Persuade us that Mr. Adams is so " venerable" as to have outlived all liability to the license described by the poet : — " For now, at last, alone, he sees his might ! Out of the compass of respective awe He now begins to violate all right, While no restraining fear at hand he saw." Persuade us that a vindictive man may be safely bowed before, for an angel, with his hand, for the first time, fetterlessly clutched on this world's thunderbolts ! Persuade us that Mr. Adams could not stoop his statesmanship to resent, and that lie is not one of those dreaders of political extinction, who feel that "not to be at all is worse than to be in the miserablest condi- tion of something.'''' Persuade us, in short, that no provocation in argument, no lull of responsibility, no oracular unanswerableness, no appetite for the exercise of power, no " injury, The jailer to his pity," could tempt Mr. Adams, with his present undiminish- ed mental vigor, to swerve a hair line from good — by weight thrown upon public measure, or by influence wrongfully exercised, over the fair fame of the dead and the private feelings of the living — persuade us of all this, and we will allow that he is beyond — "venerably" beyond — the remindings of human cen- sure ! But now — having arms-lengthed it, in reply to a very formal letter we received last evening condemning the admission into our columns of a communication accusatory of Mr. Adams — let us come closer to the reader with a little of our accustomed familiarity. We were called upon a day or two since, by one of the first scholars and most intelligent of business- men among us — this communication in his hand. He left us to read it at our leisure. We, at first, were unpleasantly affected by it, and slipped it upon our refusal hook — sorry that so great a man as Mr. Adams should have an unbeliever (and so weighty an unbeliever), in greatness so ready for its closing seal. We should have stopped at this regret, probably, and only thought of the subject again when returning the manuscript, but that we had been previously impress- ed with our friend's courage in historical justice — on a wholly different subject. This brought about the sober second thought, and we turned it over somewhat as follows : — Of the allowed Upper Triumvirate of this country — Clay, Jackson, and Adams — the peaceful good name of the first is, just now, closed for history, by his willing relinquishment of public action. The world owes him the glorified repose for which he has signified his desire. The second has also retired ; and, though he sometimes has sent his invincible banner to wave again in the political field, it would be a harsh pen that would transmute, and make read- able by judicious eyes, the silly abuses syringed at the venerable old chieftain by the Bedouin squirt of the " Express." The third— Mr. Adams— we could not but feel, at once, was off the pedestal where the world had willing- ly placed him, and had come down, once more " to dabble in the pettiness of fame." (We shall be pardoned, by the way, for quoting what is recalled by this chance-sprung quotation— a com- parison which seems to us singularly to picture Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams as to loftiness of public life and motive.) Dante says : — «' The world hath left me, what it found me, pure, And, if I have not gathered yet its praise, I sought it not by any baser lure. Man wrongs and time avenges ; and my name May form a monument not all obscure. Though such was not my ambition's end and aim — To add to the vain-glorious list of those Who dabble in the pettiness of fame, And make men's fickle breath the uind that blows Their sail." We felt, at once, that this latter character— this aliquis in omnibus, nihil in singulis— was, as displayed in Mr. Adams's career, rather the mettle of invincible obstinacy and unrest acting upon strong talent, than the ring of the clear metal of human greatness. There was nothing in Mr. Adams's life of toil that had not fed his innate passion for antagonism. He was a born ascetic, in whose nostrils the fiery perils of other men were but offensive smoke— who had no temptation to softer pleasure than a pasquinade against a political ! rival— who had made the most of the morality which I came natural to him, and which, in this land, covers I more sins than charity. He was not, like Clay and ! Jackson, great in spite of the impassioned nature for I which we (so inconsistently), love the man and dis- ' claim his greatness. He has been the terror of his time for wounds worse than murder— yet gave no stab that could be "stopped with parsley." He needed no shirt of penance to make him remember that " The virtues of great men, will only show Like coy auriculas, in Alpine snow." He has profited by men's not remembering that (in the zoology of the pleasures), the sin of the sloth were a merit in the armadillo-one hating to move, and the other hating to be still, and both tested by their activity of motion. In short Mr. Adams— ou-h he has unquestionably walked to the topmost tone of the temple of statesmanship, and is now the hird greatest man in the country that shakes under him-has exclusively pampered his own desires, op- most and undermost, by the practice of the virtues that have shielded him. The toils that have advanced bra were begun in the past.me of an aristocratic youth and position, up to quite the end of that Second heat" of his ambition-race, was an inheritance nerseveringly thrust on him. Can such a man, while destiny is still hourly hanging on his lips, be erable" beyond the possibility of censure 7 our "ven 752 EPHEMERA. With this unwilling mental review of the " boiled peas" of Mr. Adams's pilgrimage to greatness — un- willingly, as it was irresistibly and truthfully dispara- ging — we reverted to our first picture of his present position. We had been truly, and even tearfully, af- fected, on seeing the old man, at the late festival of the Historical Society — doubtless very near his grave, but fighting his way determinately backward through the gate of death — and we expressed ourself in terms of high respect and honor, when we wrote of it the morning after. It is a recompensing ordinance of Nature, that the glory and virtues of a great man ac- company his ]7erson and his sins lie where they first fall — in the furrow of history. It is hard to look upon any man's face, and remember ill of him ; and there is many a great man, who has a halo where he comes, and none where he is heard of. We remembered nothing disparaging to Mr. Adams that evening. But in our office, wiih a shade drawn over our eyes, to compel a disagreeable decision of duty, we saw that the age and decrepitude, which apparently exacted submission to his will, had left no joint open in his harness, loosened no finger upon his weapons of attack. He can defend himself— he has hundreds to defend him, should he be silent. His much talked-of "diary" lacks no evidence that truth can furnish ; and if the charges against him are " mere cobwebs in a church bell," the best of prayers is, that he may burst them with one stroke of living triumph, and not leave even that slight violence to be done by the knell of his departure. The last thought that came to us, and the only one we thought necessary for a preface to the communica- tion, was, that noio would probably be the time chosen by Mr. Adams himself for denying (and they must be denied !) these indictments against his greatness. The five years' silence that will follow his death, had better harden over no ulcer — to be re-opened and cleansed, to the world's offence, hereafter. We took some credit to ourself, for simply saying this, without recording what we have been compelled to record now — the reasons of our thinking gravely of the com- munication. We would have taken the other side and entered into the defence quite as willingly but the writer, as well as Mr. Adams, is a man not to be denied a hearing. We may perhaps be permitted to close this article — written in a most unwonted vein, for us— with a little editorial comfort from Shak- spere : — " What we oft do best, By sick interpreters, or weak ones, is Not ours, or not allowed ; what worst, as oft, Hitting a grosser quality, is cried up For our best act. But if we shall stand still— For fear our motion will be mocked or carped at, We should take root here where we sit. or sit For statues only." " Monet Article" on the Opera.— We were de- lighted to hear it whispered about at the opera, last night, that there is a movement among the people of taste and influence to " set up," by a liberal subscrip- tion, the present excellent, but impoverished and struggling operatic company. The first thought that occurs to any one hearing of this, would, probably, be a surprise that, with such full houses as have graced the opera, they have not been thriving to the fullest extent of reasonable expectation. We understand, however, that it is quite the contrary. When the present company commenced their engagement, there was an arrearage of gas expenses to be paid up, the license was to be renewed, at $500; and the house, even when full, gives but a slender dividend over the expenses of the orchestra, scenery, lights, stage prop- erties, and dresses. At the only " division of the spoils" that has yet been made, Madame Pico re- ceived but sixty dollars — so insufficient a sum being all that this admirable singer has received for several months' waiting, and one month's playing and singing! Her dresses alone cost her twice the sum ! Borghese received twice this amount, but the other performers, of course, much less even than Pico. In the history of the first introduction of Italian music into England, in 1692, it is stated that the sing- ers (an " Italian lady," a basso, and a soprano) were taken up by two spirited women of fashion, wives of noblemen, who arranged benefit concerts at their own houses, for the " charming foreigners," and inviting their friends as if to a ball — demanding five guineas for each invitation! The rage for these expensive concerts is recorded as a curious event of the time, and it was a grievous mark of unfashionableness not to be honored with a ticket. The American public is a hard master to these children of the sun. They take no comfort among us, if they lay up no money. Our climate is both dangerous and disagreeable ! Our usages, and preju- dices, and manner of life, all at variance with theirs! Their hearts are bleak here, and their pockets at least should have a warm lining ! And (by the way) see what a difference there is, even between our coun- try and chilly England, in the way society treats them ! We chance to possess an autograph letter of Julia Grisi's, given us by the lady to whom it was addressed — a daughter of Lucien Bonaparte married to an English nobleman. Look at the position this little chance record reveals of a prima donna in Eng- land : — U AlMABLE ET TRES CHERE PRINCESSE ! — " Je suis vraiment desolee de ne pouvoir aller ce soir chez Lady Morgan. Je dine chez le Prince Esterhazy ou je dois passer la soiree. Demain au soir, j'ai un concert pour M. La- porte, le reste de la semaine je suis libre et tout <). vos ordres. Si vous croyez de combiner quelque-choze avec Lady Morgan, comptez sur moi ! Demain je passerai chez Lady Morgan pour faire mes excuses en personne. " Que dirai-je de ce magnifique voile ! Que la generosite e l'amabilite sont innees dans la grande famille. u Croyez toujours, madame la princesse, a tout le devoue- ment de votre servante, Julia Grisi. " Milady D S " We chance to have another dramatic autograph, a note of Leontine Fay's, given us by the same noble lady (and we may say here, apropos, that we should be very happy to show these, and others, to persons curious in autographs) — showing the same necessary reliance on special patronage : — " Theatre Francais. " M'lle Leontine Fay a l'honneur de presenter ses humble respects a Lady D , et de solliciter sa puissante protection pour la soiree qui aura lieu a son benefice Vendredi, 10 Juliet. Le choix des pieces et les noras des artistes qui veulent bien contribuer a son succes liu font esperer que miladi, qui aime a encourager les arts, daignera l'honprer de sa presence." This is dated from the French theatre in London, but we treasured up the autograph with no little ava- rice, for Leontine Fay was in the height of her glory, in Paris, when we first went abroad, and, to us, she seemed a new revelation of things adorable. She was made for the stage by nature — as scenery is adapted by coarse lines for distant perspective. Her eyes were dark, luminous, and of a size that gave room for the whole audience to "repose on velvet" in them. But we wander ! We resume our subject, after saying that we never envied prince or king, till we heard, at that time, that Leontine Fay passion- ately loved the prince royal — the young duke of Or- leans. He is dead, she is grown ugly, and we are left to admire Pico. " Much after this fashion," etc., etc. Grave people (though by no means all grave peo- ple) are inclined to bid the opera "stand aside" as a thing unholy. We think this is a mistake. We be- EPHEMERA. 753 lieve music to be medicinal to body and soul. With entire reverence, we take leave to remind the religious objector of the cure of Saul, and to quote the pas- sage : — " But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul's servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit troubleth thee. Let our Lord now command thy servants which are before thee, to seek out a man who is a cunninsr player on a harp ; and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well. " And it came to pass that when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his hand : so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.' - The medicinal value attached to music by the an- cients is also shown in the education of Moses at the court of Pharaoh. Clemens Alexandrinus has re- corded that " Moses was instructed by the Egyptians in arithmetic, geometry, rhythm, harmony, but, above all, in medicine and music." Miriam sang and danced in costume, and David " in his linen ephod," and the only reproach made by Laban to Jacob, for carrying off his two daughters, was, that he did not give him the opportunity to send him away "with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp." We refer to these historic proofs, to remind the objecting portion of the community that scenic musical representation was a vent for domestic and religious feeling among the an- cients, and that, in an opera— particularly one unac- companied by modern ballet — there is no offence to moral feeling, but, on the contrary, authorized good. To revert to our purpose, in this article — (chrono- logically, somewhat spready !) — We do not know what shape the aroused liberality of the wealthy clas- ses of New York will take, but we should think that Madame Pico — (as she has given us the most pleas- ure, at the greatest expense to herself, and is an un- protected and exemplary woman, alone among us) — should have a special benefit by subscription concert, or some other means as exclusive to herself. We suggest it — but we presume we are not the first it has occurred to. Will the wealthy gentlemen who are nightly seen in the dress-circles, delighted with her exquisite music, turn the subject over at their luxuri- ous firesides? To AND ABOUT OUR CORRESPONDENTS. We wish to "define our position" with regard to our corre- spondents and their opinions. Were an editor to profess an agreement of opinion with every writer for his paper, he would either claim a superhuman power of decision on all possible sub- jects, at first sight, or he would exclude communica- tions on all subjects, except his own mental hobbies and matters of personal study and acquaintance. To avoid both horns of this fool's dilemma, he opens a correspondence column, in which anything (short of an invasion of a cardinal virtue, or violation of a palpable truth) may very properly and irresponsibly appear. The only questions the editor asks himself are, whether it will interest his readers, and whether it is worOi its space in the paper. But there are people for whom it is necessary that we should go back to the very catechism of political economy, and show upon what principle is founded the expediency of a free press — a press untrammel- led by a king in a kingdom, and by the sovereign re- publicans in a republic. Opinions have been well likened to steam — power- less when diffused abroad, resistless when shut in and denied expansion. The unconscious apostleship of Mr. Adams — procuring an explosion in favor of aboli- tion, by his obstinacy in provoking an undue suppres- I sion of the subject — is a striking illustration of this. ' Nothing makes less impression on the mind than ab- [ stract principles to which there is no opposition — ! nothing is dearer to the heart than opinions for which we have been called on to contend and suffer. A free press, therefore, keeping open gate for all sub- jects not prohibited by law and morals, is far safer than a press over-guarded in its admissions to the public eye. Having thus repeated, as it were, a page of the . very spelling-book of freedom, let us bespeak, of our ] subscribers, a let-off, as far as we personally are con- ! cerned, for any decent opinions expressed under the head of " correspondence." We throw open that part of our paper. It is interesting to know what people think who do not agree with us. We court variety. , We would not (in anything but love) be called a big- I ot. New opinions, even the truest, are reluctantly received, and, we think, very often culpably distrusted. As far, therefore, as the yea or nay may go, on any proper subject, we care not a fig which side writes first to us, and we hereby disclaim responsibility for all articles under "our correspondence," except on the score of morals and readableness. The Opera. — The Puritani is one of those ope- ras with which musical criticism has little or nothing to do. If only tolerably sung, the feeling of the audi- ence goes on before — making no stay with fault-find- j ing. The applause last night, after a most limping ■ and ill-paced duett between Tomasi and Valtellina, j was tempestuous; and Antognini, in one passage, ran ' off his voice, and was gone for several notes in some i unknown region, and yet, on spreading out his hands | immediately after, there was great approbation by the audience ! Great effort was made by the audience to I encore " Suoni la tromba," but the two bases thought ! more basely of their bases than the audience, and did not repeat it. Is there no way to implore Valtellina to abate a little of his overreaching of voice, in that i superb invocation ? He overdoes it terribly. We are not writing in very good humor, we are I afraid — but the enthusiasm of a crammed house needs i no propping. We would not find fault if they needed { our praise. Borghese did well— but will do better at ! the next representation. She would sing with fuller tone for a little egg beat up with brandy. We longed to unreef her voice — in some way crowd a little more abandon into it. She acted as she always does— to a charm. Pico was in one of the proscenium boxes, looking very charming, and evidently enjoying the whole op- era with un-envious enthusiasm. She went with a bouquet for Borghese— so said a bird in our ear. OLE BULL'S NIAGARA. (an hour before the performance.) Saddle, as, of course, we are, under any very striking event, we find ourselves bestridden, now and then, with a much wider occupancy than the plumb-line of a newspaper column. Ole Bull possesses us over our tea-table; he will possess us over our supper- table— his performance of Niagara equidistant between the two. We must think of him and his violin for this coming Hour. Let us take pen and ink into our confidence. .. , . . . . .. The "origin of the harp" has beeu satisfactorily recorded. We shall not pretend to put forward a credible story of the origin of the violin; but we wish to name a circumstance in natural history. 1 he house-cricket that chirps upon our hearth, is well known as belonging to the genus Pneumora. Its in- sect size consists almost entirely of a pellucid abdomen, 754 EPHEMERA. crossed with a number of transverse ridges. This, when inflated, resembles a bladder, and upon its tight- ened ridges the insect plays like a fiddler, by drawing its thin legs over them. The cricket is, in fact, a living violin; and as a fiddler is "scarce himself" without his violin, we may call the cricket a stray portion of a fiddler. Ole Bull " is himself" with his violin before him — but without it, the commonest eye must remark that he is of the invariable build of the restless searchers after something lost — the build of enthusiasts — that is to say, chest enormous, and stomach, if anything, rather wanting ! The great musician of Scripture, it will be remembered, expressed his mere mental afflic- tion by calling out "My bowels! my bowels!" and, after various experiments on twisted silk, smeared with the white of eggs, and on single threads of the silk-worm, passed through heated oil, the animal fibre of cat-gut has proved to be the only string that answers to the want of the musician. Without trying to re- duce these natural phenomena to a theory (except by suggesting that Ole Bull may very properly take the cricket as an emblem of his instinctive pursuit), we must yield to an ominous foreboding for this evening. The objection to cat-gut as a musical string is its sensibility to moisture ; and in a damp atmosphere it is next to impossible to keep it in tune. The string comes honestly enough by its sensitiveness (as any one will allow who has seen a cat cross a street after a shower) — but, if the cat of Ole Bull's violin had the least particle of imagination in her, can what is left of her be expected to discourse lovingly of her natural antipathy — a water-fall ? But — before we draw on our gloves to go over to Palmo's — a serious word as to what is to be attempted to-night. Old Bull is a great creature. He is fitted, if ever mortal man was, to represent the attendant spirit in Milton, who " Well knew to still the wild woods when they roared And hush the moaning winds ;" but it seems to us that, without a printed programme, showing what he intends to express besides the mere sound of waters, he is trusting far too rashly to the comprehension of his audience and their power of musical interpretation. He is to tell a story by music ! Will it be understood? We remember being very much astonished, a year or two ago, at finding ourself able to read the thoughts of a lady of this city, as she expressed them in an ad- mirable improvisation upon the piano. The delight we experienced in this surprise induced us to look into the extent to which musical meaning had been perfected in Europe. We found it recorded that a Mons. Sudre, a violinist of Paris, had once brought the expression of his instrument to so nice a point that he " could convey information to a stranger in another room," and it is added that, upon the evidence thus given of the capability of music, it was proposed to the French government to educate military bands in the expression of orders and heroic encouragements in battle! Hayden is criticised by a writer on music as having failed in attempting (in his great composi- tion " The Seasons") to express " the dawn of day," "the husbandman's satisfaction," "the rustling of leaves," " the running of a brook," " the coming on of winter," "thick fogs," etc., etc. The same writer laughs at a commentator on Mozart, who, by a " sec- ond violin quartette in D minor," imagines himself informed how a loving female felt on being abandoned, and thought the music fully expressed that it was Dido ! Beethoven undertook to convey distinct pic- lures in his famous Pastoral Symphony, but it was thought at the time that no one would have dis- tinguished between his musical sensations on visiting the country and his musical sensations while sitting beside a river — unless previously told what was com- ing ! Still, Ole Bull is of a primary order of genius, and he is not to wait upon precedent. He has come to our country, an inspired wanderer from a far away shore, and our greatest scenic feature has called oli him for an expression of its wonders in music. He may be inspired, however, and we, who listen, still be disappointed. He may not have felt Niagara as we did. He may have been subdued where a meaner spirit would be aroused — as " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." (Seven o'clock, and lime to go.) (after tiik performance.) We believe that we have heard a transfusion into music — not of " Niagara," which the audience seemed bona-fide to expect, but — of the pulses of the human heart at Niagara. We had a prophetic boding of the result of calling the piece vaguely "Niagara" — the listener furnished with no " argument," as a guide through the wilderness of " treatment" to which the subject was open. This mistake allowed, however, it must be said that Ole Bull has, genius-like, refused to mis- interpret the voice within him — refused to play the charlatan, and " bring the house down" — as he might well have done by any kind of" uttermost,'" from the drums and trumpets of the orchestra. The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a " small, still voice" that replies within us to the thun- der of waters. The musical mission of the Norwegian was to represent the insensate element as it teas to him — to a human soul, stirred in its seldom-reached depths by the call of power. It was the answer to Niagara that he endeavored to render in music — not the call ! We defer attempting to read further, or rightly, this musical composition till we have heard it again. It was received by a crowded audience, in breathless silence, but with no applause. Miss Julia Northall's first appearance as a public singer was very triumphant. It her heart had not kept beating just under her music-maker, she would have made much better music, however. When we tell the lovely debutante, that persons in besieged fortresses can detect the direction of the enemy's ap- proach under ground, by placing sanded drums on the surface, which betray the strokes of the mining pickaxes by the vibrations of the particles, she will understand how the beating of her heart may disturb the timbre of her voice — to say nothing of the disturb- ance in the air by the accelerated beating of the anxious hearts of her admirers! She has great ad- vantages — a rich voice deep down with an upper chamber in it (what the musicians call a contralto sfogato), and a kind of personal beauty susceptible of great stage embellishments. " Modest assurance" (with a preponderance of assurance if anything), is her great lack. Sanquirico sang admirably — but his black coat spoiled it for all but the cognoscenti. We came out of the opera-house amid a shower of expressions of disappointment, and we beg pardon of " the town" for remembering what Antigenides of Athens said to a musical pupil who was once too little applauded. " The next time you play," said Anti- genides, "shall be to me and the Muses." The two new Fashions, White Cravats and Ladies' Tarpaulins. — Here and there a country reader will, perhaps, require to be informed that no man is stylish, now, " out" in the evening, without a EPHEMERA. 755 white cravat. To those who frequent the opera this will be no news, of course ; as no eye could have failed to track the " milky way," around the semi- circle, from stage-box to stage-box. The fact thus recorded, however, we proceed to the diagnosis of the fashion (and of another fashion, of which we shall presently speak) — premising only that we are driven to the discussion of these comparatively serious themes, by the frivolous character of other news, and the temporary public surfeit of politics, scandal, and murder. The white cravat was adopted two years since, in London, as the mark of a party — " Young England." Our readers know, of course, that for ten years, they have been worn only by servants in that country, and that a black coat and white cravat were the unmis- takable uniform of a family butler. The Cravat hav- ing been first worn as the distinction of a certain re- forming club, in Cromwell's parliament, however, the author of Vivian Grey adopted it as the insignium of the new political party, of which he is the acknowl- edged leader; and, as the king of the white cravats, he has set a fashion for America. The compliment we pay him is the greater, by the way, that we do not often copy the tight-legged nation in our wearables. It was established in Brummell's time that a white cravat could not be successfully tied, except upon the critical turn preceding the reaction of a glass of cham- I pagne and a cup of green tea. A felicitous dash of I inspired dexterity is the only thing to be trusted, and ! failure is melancholy! As to dressiness, a white cravat ! is an intensifier— making style more stylish, and the ! lack of it more observable ; but artistically it is only becoming to light complexions — by its superior white- ness, producing an effect of warmth on a fair skin, I but impoverishing the brilliancy of a dark one. As a ' sign of the times, the reappearance of the white era- ! vat is the forerunner of a return to old-fashioned showiness in evening dress, and, as the wheel comes round again, we shall revive tights, buckles, and shoes — expelling the levelling costume of black cravat and boots, and making it both expensive and troublesome to look like a gentleman after candlelight. So tilts the plank in republics — aristocratic luxury going up as aristocratic politics are going down ! But what shall we say of trains and tarpaulins for ladies wear! Jack's hat, copied exactly in white satin, is the rage for a head-dress, now — (worn upon the! side of the head with a ruinous feather) — and a velvet train is about becoming indispensable to a chaperon ! j It will be a bold poor man that will dare to marry a \ lady ere long — what with feathers and trains and pages' wages ! We rejoice that we had our fling in j the era of indifferent pocket. Keep the aristocracy unemployed on politics for another administration or two, and we shall drive matrimony to the extremities of society — none but the very rich, or very poor, able to afford the luxury ! Merry Christmas. — Our paper of this evening — (Christmas eve)— is to be read by the light of the J " yule log," — or whatever else represents the bright centre around which, dear reader! your family does its Christmas assembling. We shall perhaps amuse you by suggesting a comparison between the elegant lamp, which diffuses its light over your apartment, and the expedient resorted to by your English ances- tors to brighten the hall for their Christmas evening. " I myself," says an old historian, "have seen table- cloths, napkins, and towels, which being taken foul from the table, have been cast into the fire, and there they burned before our faces upon the hearth." This, of course, was by way of illustrating the greasy habits of our ancestors at table, and gives an amusing piquan- cy to the injunction of wisdom that we should cherish the " lights of the past." There are two points of freedom in which we envy the condition of slaves at the south— freedom from responsibility at all times, and freedom /ro/n all man- ner of work from Christmas to New Year. " The negroes" (says a writer on the festivals, games, and amusements, in the southern states), " enjoy a xoeek's recreation every winter, including Christmas and New Year's ; during which they prosecute their plays and sports in a very ludicrous and extravagant manner, dressing and masking in the most grotesque style, and having, in fact, a complete carnival." We confess this let-up from the pressure of toil is enviable. The distinction between horse and man, in the latter's re- quiring mental as well as bodily rest, should be legis- lated upon — all business barred with penalties, except for the necessaries of life, during the Christmas holy- days and during another week somewhere in June. We are a monotonous people in this country. The festivals of the Jews occupied a quarter of the year, and eighty days were given to festivals among the ancient Greeks! We do not fairly keep more than i one in New York — New Year's day — the only day, , except Sundays, when newspapers are not issued and 1 shops are all shut. We are sorry we can not paragraph America into I more feeling for holydays, but we may perhaps prevent \ a gradual desuetude of even keeping Christmas, by ; heaping up our regrets when it comes round. We shall join the procession of visiters to the toy-shops ! and confectioners to-night, and we think, by the way, ! that these rounds to the gift-venders, might be made ! exceedingly agreeable. " G uion," " Sands," " Thomp- | son," " Tiffany & Young," " Stuart's Candy i Palace," " Bonfanti's," and "the Alhamra," are j beautiful places for a range of soirees in hat and bon- | net, and we went this round last Christmas eve with great amusement. Happy children are beautiful sights, and we can still see bons-bons with their eyes. Reader ! a merry Christmas ! and let us repeat once more to you the old stanza (tho' old Trinity ia no longer what it was when this was written) : — " Hark the merry bells chiming from Trinity, Charm the ear with their musical din, Telling all, throughout the vicinity, Holyday gambols are now to begin ! Friends and relations, with fond salutations, And warm gratulations, together appear, While lovers and misses with holyday kisses Greet merry Christmas and happy New Year." The other side of Broadway. — It is time that the decline of the era of shopping a-foot was fairly an- nounced as at its fall — an epoch gone over to history. Washington Hall has been purchased as a property no longer objectionable from its being the other side of mud, and is to be speedily converted into the most magnificent "ladies store" within the limits of silk and calico. We are credibly assured that this last assertion is fully borne out by the plans of Mr. Stuart, the projector. No shop in London or Paris is to surpass it. But the best part of it remains to be told : — The building is to have a court for carriages in the centre, so that shoppers will thunder in at a porte cochere, like visiters to the grand duke of Tuscany ! There will of course be a spacious door on the street, for those who can cross Broadway without a carriage —(poor zealous things!)— but the building is con- trived for those to whom the crowded side of the street is rather an objection, and who wish their hammer- cloths to stand out of the spatter of omnibuses while they shop ! ! There is a comment on " the times" in this plan of Mr. Stuart's which we commend to the notice of some other parish. 756 EPHEMERA. Farther down-town, however (15G) the shilling side of Broadway has been embellished by a new store, in- tended for all comers and customers, and certainly an ornament to the town — occupied by Beebe & Cos- tar, hatters. No more showy and sumptuous saloon could possibly be contrived than this " hatter's shop;" and it is very well that they keep one article of ladies' wear — (riding-hats) — for it is altogether too pretty a place for a monastery. The specimen hats stand on rows of marble tables, and the room is lined with mir- rors and white panels — the effect very much that of a brilliant French cafe. As to the article of merchan- dise, Beebe & Costar have made tributary the " lines of beauty" to a degree which gives their hats a most peculiar elegance of shape, and it is worth the while of those who are nice in their legmen, to " look in." Apropos : — The only god who employed a hatter was Mercury — why is not that " English clever" deity, with his winged hat, installed as a hatter's crest ? The propriety of it must have occurred to the hatters. Possibly we are so mercurial a nation, that it was thought impolitic — no man wanting any more mercury in his hat — at least when it is on. We see that the annual hatters' ball comes off on the 26th. May we venture to suggest as topics of discussion in the quadrilles — 1st, Mercury's claims to the arms of the assembly, and, 2d, what peltry was probably used by the hatter of OJympus, and 3d, whether (as it was a winged hat) it must not have been made of the only quadruped that flies fur, the flying squirrel? "Curi- ous questions, coz !" France versus England, or the Black Cravat versus the White. — We have received, in a very London-club-y handwriting, a warlike reply to the note we published lately from a French gentleman on the subject of the white cravat. The two nations seem to have separated into hostile array on the sub- ject. Our English correspondent certainly brings cogent arguments in favor of the white, and indeed of English costume generally. After asking very naturally what our French correspondent's phrase, "■perfidious Albion," had to do with it, and suggesting that "black cravat" had better "reflect on the late conduct of the French in the Pacific," he goes on with the matter in question : — "The English fashion for gentlemen's dress is never to sacrifice comfort to appearance, which the French fashion invariably does; the clothes of the English are loosely made, so that every limb of the body is free. You see nothing in the dress that can be called effeminate ; they appear to eschew everything that approaches the ' Miss Nancy school ;' no man with them is considered well-dressed, however costly his attire, if he be not manly in his appearance. Now, a Frenchman's clothes are made to fit so tight, that it is impossible for him to look at his ease. A French- man dressed looks as if he had just come out of a band-box ; he looks like a pretty doll which you see in the shop windows in Paris. To hand a lady a chair, he runs the danger of bursting his coat, or cracking his waist-band ; he can not stoop to pick up a lady's fan, without danger to his inexpressibles. The Frenchman dressed is no longer the easy, pliant, laughing man, that we know him to be when in dis- habille — but he is stiff, unnatural, and effeminate. "The English fashion abhors display ; the French, on the contrary, invites it. With the Frenchman dress is a great affair, for he intends to make a sensa- tion. With the Englishman it is but secondary, for he does not believe that mere dress can have any in- fluence. You may form an idea of the sentiments of both nations from this national character — the English (and Americans) are proud, but not vain; the French are very vain, but have little pride. "Again: we like the Englishman's fondness for white linen, and in this we can not imitate him too | closely. It is not only in the evening, as with the j Frenchman, that he puts on his fine linen, but at J rising he must have it. — Though he may wear a ; shaggy morning coat, his under garments must be j spotless. You may know him when travelling on the j continent, by the unrivalled whiteness of his linen. The same cleanliness makes the white cravat prefer- able. It has its recommendation in being a clean t fashion — for no gentleman can wear it more than ; once ; whereas, the black satin cravat, which your j correspondent so much extols, is an exceedingly dirty 1 fashion — for, after dancing, the perspiration settles in the satin ; and with the dust in the room, &c, it be- comes unfit to wear more than twice, whereas the French wear their cravats until they are worn out." The sun " kept Christmas" yesterday, by appearing "in his best." We never saw a more joyous, kindly, holyday quality of sunshine. All who had hearts to go abroad with, went abroad, and a-Broadwny was a long aisle of beauty in nature's roofless cathedral. God help all who were not happy yesterday ! We picked up a bit of real-life poetry (by-the-way) in a very unexpected place yesterday — a confectioner's shop ! The circumstance is at such a distance from poetry, that the flash comes before the report — a laugh before the eye is moistened. At Thompson's, the best confectioner of the city, we saw a large pound- cake, with a figure of a nun standing on it, dressed in white, and we were told that a cake had just gone to the sisters of the Barclay-street convent, with this lit- tle figure in mourning instead of white — sent by a young catholic lady who had just lost her mother. As a conveyance of a thought, intended to be en- tirely between the mourner and the sympathising sis- ters, we think this was very beautiful. Perhaps we spoil it by giving the coarse-minded a chance to ridi- cule it. We wish to introduce to the reader (.he word tonal- ity. Let us show its availableness at once by using it to express the secret of Pico's overwhelming effect upon the audience on Saturday evening. As musical people know, melody is the natural "concord of sweet sounds," and harmony may be tolerably defined as the artificial creation of surprises to vary melody. Mali- bran saw, for instance, that one of her rustic audiences could feel melody, but was incapable of appreciating harmony, when they tumultuously encored her in "Home, Sweet Home," and let her " Di tanli pal- pitV go by without applause ! It takes more than one hearing, for persons not learned in music, to ap- preciate the harmony of an opera, though if there be in it an air of simple melody, a child will listen to it, for the first time, with delight. But there are op- eras, much cried up, where the melody and harmony are not in tone ; and though people may be made to like them against nature (as they like olives), the ma- jority of the audience will feel incredulous as to its being " good music." (We were two or three years opera-going before these unwritten distinctions got through our dura mater, dear reader; and if you are not in a hurry, perhaps you will pay us the compli- ment of reading them over again, while we mend our pen for a new paragraph.) Pico sang a part in the opera of Saturday night, which, in our opinion, owed its electric power to three tonalities: tone No. 1, between the harmony and mel- ody of the music — tone No. 2, between the music EPHEMERA. 757 and her own impression on the public as a woman — and tone No. 3, between the opera and the mood of the public for that evening. Tone No. 1 is already explained. Tone No. 3 was, perhaps, a combination of pleasurable accidents — both the donnas in one piece, the house crammed with fashion, and graced with more beauty than usual, and (last, not least) the change in the weather. A sud- den south wind in December, makes even fashion af- fectionate, and, with such influences in the air, mu- sic that is " the food of love," may " piny on" — with entire confidence as to its reception. Of tone No. 2 (the pnrt in Donizetti's opera) we wish to speak more at large, but we can uot trust ourself afloat with it in a paragraph already under headway. Donizetti is commonly rated as a trite and not very vigorous composer. As a musical convoy, he never drops the slowest sailor below the horizon. But, that he lets his heart steer the music whenever he can per- suade science to give up the helm, everybody must have felt who has embarked a thought in one of his operas. The music written down for Orsini (Pico's part) expresses the character that Shakspere's words give to Mercutio — the prince of thoughtless good fellows, careless, loveable, and amusing. Between this and Pico's personal qualities (as made legible across the footlights), there is a tonality the town has felt — a joyous recognition, by the audience, of a com- plete correspondence between the good-fellow music she sings and the good fellow nature has made her. There is a class of such women — some of them the most captivating of their sex, and every one of them the acknowledged "best creature in the world" of the circle she lives in. Here and there a person will un- derstand better what we mean if we mention that Pico sat in the proscenium-box on the night of Ole Bull's concert, and, with a full house looking at her with eager curiosity, sat and munched her under-lip most unbecomingly, in perfect unconsciousness of any need of forbearing to do in public what she would have done if she were alone! We must say we like women that forget themselves ! We heard twenty judicious persons comment on the opera of Saturday, and with but one expression of never, in any country, having enjoyed opera more. The universal tonality, to which we have tried to play the interpreter, is partly a matter of coincidence, and may not happen again; but we assure the two donnas and our friend Signor Sacchi, that with the remem- brance of it, and with them both in the glorious opera of Semiramide, next week, they will want a larger house than Palmo's. And, by-the-way, this amiable "Quintius Curtius" of the opera, who has procured us the luxury of a temple of music by jumping into the gulf with his $47,000 — excellent Signor Palmo — claims of the pub- lic a slight return; no more than that they should ac- knowledge the fact of his disaster ! It has been doubt- ed that he has lost money, and some of the world's cruelty has been dealt out to him in the shape of a sneer at his sincerity. We copy (literally) the ex- planation sent us on the subject, and bespeak for him present public regard, and some future more tangible demonstration : — "Being attracted by a statement made in the Mir- ror in reference to the Italian company at Palmo's opera-house, showing the receipts and disbursements for twelve nights, leaving but a small amount to be divided by the company, after having as good and bet- ter houses than when under the auspices of Signor Palmo, whose honesty has been imputed to have made money, and made the public and his creditors believe the contrary, now the mystery is solved, and the pub- lic should be satisfied of Signor Palmo's integrity, who is ready to show by bills paid, and his books, that he has lost $47,000 the last four years." SUPPER AFTER THE OPERA. Private room over the Mirror office, corner of Ann and Nassau— Supper on the round table, and brigadier mixing summat and tcater— Flagg, the artist, fa- tiguing the salad with a paper-folder— Devil in wait- ing—Quarter past ten, and enter « Yours Truly" from the opera. Brig. — Here he comes, like a cloud dropping from Olympus— charged with Pico-tricity ! Boy (to the " devil"), stick a steel pen in my hat for a conductor! Now — let him rain ! Flagg. — Echo — let him reign ! Yours Truly — (looking at the salad-dish). — Less gamboge for me, if you please, my dear artist ! Be merciful of mustard when you mix for public opin- ion ! But, nay! brigadier! Brig. — Thank you for not calling on me to bray, mi-boy! What shall I neigh at ? Yours Tridy. — How indelicate of you to call on an artist to exercise his profession on a party of pleas- ure ! Brig.— Uow 1 Yours Truly — Setting him to grind colors in a sal- ad-dish! What are you tasting with that wooden ladle, my periodical sodger? Brig. — Two of " illicit" to oue of Croton — potheen | from a private still in the mountains of Killarny ! i Knowles sent it to me ! You have no idea what a j flavor of Kate Kearney there is about it ! — (fmflf! fmff!) Flagg — (absently). — I smell the color of the heath- flowers in it — crocus-yellow on a brown turf! Brig. — Stick a pin there, mi-boy ! — a new avenue j to the brain for things beautiful ! Down with priv- ileged roads in a republic! Why should the colors mixed for a limitless sense of beauty go in only at the eye? Flagg. — No reason why. I wish we could hear colors ! Brig. — So you can, my inspired simplicity ! and taste them, too ! You can hear things that are read, and you can taste the brown in a turkey! (Turning to Yours Truly) — Was that well said, my dear boy ? Yours Truly. — Pardon me if I suggest still an im- provement in the aristocracy of the senses ! The eye has a double door of fringed lids, and the mouth an inner door of fastidious ivory; and, with the power to admit or exclude at will, these are the exclusive or- gans ! The republicans are the nose and ear — open to all comers, and forced to make the best of them ! Flagg. — A new light, by Jupiter ! Let us pamper the aristocracy ! An oyster for my ivory gate, if you please, general, and let us spite the ear's monopoly of Pico by drinking her in silence ! ( ) Brig.-( ) Yours Truly. — ( ) Brig. — Touching Pico — is she, or isn't she ? — you know what I want to know, my boy ! Disembowel your mental oyster! What ails Borghese? AVhat is a " contralto ?" Is it anything wrong — or what ? Yours Truly. — A contralto, my particular general, is a voice that touches bottom — rubs your heart with its keel, as it were, while floating through you— com- paring with a soprano, as the air on a mountain-top compares with a breeze from lower down. Brig. — Best possible description of yourself, mi- boy ! Go on, my contralto ! Flagg. — Yes — go on about Borghese — what is the philosophy of Borghese's salary being the double of Pico's ? , , . , Yours Truly.— Ah! now you touch the weight that keeps Borghese down ! The public, like your- self, ask why the prima-donna who gives them the more pleasure is the poorer paid! Borghese— but first let me tell you what I think of her, comparison 758 EPHEMERA. apart. (Boy, light a cigar, and keep it going with the bellows, a la pastille ! I like the smoke, but to talk with a cigar in the mouth spoils the delicacy of dis- crimination.) Brig. — Spare us the scientific, mi-boy ! Yours Truly. — Why, what do you mean? I am as ignorant of music, my dear sodger, as an Indian is of botany — but he knows a weed from a flower, and 7 talk of music as the audience judge of it — by what I hear, "mark, and inwardly digest." Brig. — But the big words, my dear contralto ! Yours Truly. — " Foreign slip-slops," I grant you — but nothing more ! — I lived three years in Italy, and, of course, heard Italian audiences express themselves, and here and there a phrase sticks to me — but if I know "B sharp" from " B flat" (which is more than | some musical critics know), it is the extent of my j knowledge. No, general ! there is no sillier criticism of music than technical criticism. You might as well J paint cannon-balls piebald and then judge of their ; effect by remembering which color showed through \ the touch-hole before priming ! Notes go to the ear ; effects shower the nerves. A musician who is a critic, judges of a prima-donna by the accuracy with which j she imitates what he (the musician) has played on j an instrument — like a tight-rope dancer criticising his brother of the slack-rope, because he don't swing over the pit! Analyze the applause at an opera ! There ] are, perhaps, ten persons in a Palmo audience who are scientific musicians. These ten admire most what they can most exclusively admire — rapid and difficult passages (what the Italians caUfwrituri, or " flourish- es") executed with the most skilful muscular effort of the vocal organs. These ten, however, pass over, as very pleasant accidents of the opera, the part which pleases the rest of the audience — the messa di voce — the tender expression of slower notes which try the sweetness of the voice — the absoluteness of the " art concealing art," and which, more than all, betrays the personal sensibility and quality oj the actress's mind. My dear brigadier, true criticism travels a circle, and ends where it began — with nature- But as the art of the prima-donna brings her to the same point, the un- scientific audience are most with the most skilful pri- ma-donna — nearer to a just appreciation of her than musicians are. Brig. — Now I see the reason I am so enchanted with Pico, mi-boy ! I was afraid I had no business to like her — as I didn't know Italian music ! What a way you have of making me feel pleasant ! Yours Truly. — Pico has enchanted the town, briga- dier ! and I have endeavored to put the flesh and blood of language to the ghost of each night's enchant- ment. That ghost of remembrance sticks by us through the next day, and I thought it would be agreeable to the Mirror readers to have the impres- sion of the music recalled by our description of it. Have I done it scientifically ? Taste forbid .'—even if I knew how ! I interpret for " the million"— not for " the ten." Flagg. — But about Borghese ! Yours Truly.— Well— I have a great deal to say about Borghese— I have a great deal of the "flesh and blood" T just spoke of, in reserve for Borghese • but I shall follow a strong public feeling, and not clothe her enchantments with language, till she slacks her hold upon the purse-strings, and shares equally, at least, with the donna whom the public prefer.' There goes the brigadier — fast asleep ! Good night, gentlemen ! (Exit " Yours Truly.") Ole Bull's Concert. — We longed last night for one of " Curtis's acoustic chairs," by which all the sound that approaches a man is inveigled into his ear and made the most of, for we heard Niagara atten- tively through, and at every change in the music wished it louder. We thought even the "dying fall" too expiring. It occurred to us, by the way, that if the text of this discoursed music had been one of the psalms instead of God's less interpretable voice in the cataract, the room for enthusiasm, as well as the preparation for it, on the part of the audience, would have been vastly greater. In a mixed assembly (of the quality of that at Palmo's last night) no chamber of imagination is furnished or tenanted except that of religion, and the very name of a bible psalm on the vi- olin would have clothed any music of Ole Bull's per- forming with the aggrandizing wardrobe of asso- ciation kept exclusively for " powerful sermons" and "searching prayers." We rather wonder that this ready access to the excitability of the mass has not been taken advantage of by the violinists. We confess to a little surprise in Ole Bull's organi- zation. With the " Bust of a Hercules — waist of a gnat" — a superb build for a gladiator or an athlete — his violin is a woman .' The music he draws from it is all deli- cacy, sentiment, pathos, and variable tenderness — never powerful, masculine, or imposing. " The Mother's Prayer," and the " Solitude of a Prairie," are more effective than " Niagara," for that reason. The audience are prepared for a different sex in a cataract. We know very well that the accordatura of a violin is of all compass, and that Paganini " played the devil" on it, as well as the angel, and we repeat our surprise, that, even in a piece whose name sug- gests nothing but masculine power, the burthen should be wholly feminine ! Fact, as this unquestionably is, we leave it to our readers to reconcile with another fact — that the applause at one of Ole Bull's concerts bears no proportion to the enthusiasm, as the ladies, without exception, are enchanted with him, and the men (who do the applauding) are, almost without exception, dis- satisfied with him. " Gentle shepherd, tell us why !" Even at the high price of tickets, nobody draws like the Norwegian. A very sensible correspondent of ours proposed to him (through the Mirror) to lower his price, and allow those who could not afford the dollar to have an opportunity of hearing him. He is the soul of kindness and charity, and we should sup- pose this would strike him as a felicitous hint. Battle of the Cravats. — The front row of the opera resembles a pianoforte with its white and black keys — the alternation of black and white cravats is so evenly distributed. The Frenchmen are all in black cravats of course, and the English and Americans in white, and a man might stop his ears and turn his back to the orchestra (when the two donnas are on the stage together) and tell who is singing, Pico or Borghese, by the agitation of the black cravats or the white. It is a strong argument in favor of the white cravats, apropos, that the Americans, whose sympa- thy is with the French in almost everything, should have joined the English in this division of opinion. We have received two or three most bellicose letters on each side of this weighty argument, and would publish them if we had a spare page. The Opera. — Madame Pico was evidently strug- gling, last evening, against the effects of her late ill- ness; but she delighted the audience as usual, with her impassioned and effective singing. The opera EPHEMERA. 759 is a very trying one, and, to us, not the most agreea- ble in its general character — particularly in the lach- rymose tone, throughout, of the part allotted to Pico. Sanquirico was a relief to this ennui, and he so charmed one lady in the house, that she threw him a bouquet ! He played capitally well — barring one little touch of false taste in using two English words by way of being funny. It let him down like the falling out of the bottom of a sedan. Several of our French friends, by the way, have re- quested us to contradict the on dit we mentioned in the Minor, touching a " cabal to keep Pico subservi- ent to Borghese." A regularly-formed one there doubtless is not — but the French are zealous allies, and every one of them does as much for Borghese as he can, and, of course, as much as he could do in a cabal. On the contrary, there seems to be no one in- dividual taking any pains about Pico — the general en- thusiasm at the opera excepted. Let us state a fact : We have received many visits and more than a dozen letters, to request even our trifling critical preference for Borghese ; and no sign has been given, either by Pico or her friends, that our critical preference was wished for, or otherwise than tacitly acknowledged. This being true of a mere newspaper, what must be probably the difference of appeal to more direct sour- ces of patronage? One or two persons have talked feelingly of pity for Borghese's mortification ! We are watching to see when her mortification will be so insupportable that she will slacken her grasp upon Pico's just share of the profits ! We are not only the true exponent of public opinion in reference to the merits of these ladies, but, if we are not personally impartial, it is because (though we have no acquaint- ance with either of the two ladies) we chance to know most of Borghese's friends. Pico is evidently a kind- hearted person, indolently careless of her pecuniary interests, and it is impossible to see the shadows of mental suffering in her face and not wish to aid her — but we should not sacrifice critical taste to do even that, and we have not written a syllable that her effect on the public has not more that justified. At the same time we have never said a syllable to disparage Borghese, and have only forborne to say as much of her merits as we should otherwise have done, because she was overpaid and strongly hedged in with sup- porters. Servants in Livery, Equipages, etc. — There is a stage of civilization at which a country will not — and a subsequent stage at which a country will — tolerate liveried servants. In a savage nation, an able-bodied man who should put on a badge of hopeless and sub- missive servitude for the mere certainty of food and clothing, would be considered a disgrace to his tribe. The further step of making that badge ornamental to the servile wearer, would probably be resented as an affront to the pre-eminence of display which is the rightful prerogative of chiefs and warriors. In a crowded and highly-civilized country, it is found convenient for patricians to secure the tacit giving-way of plebeian encounter in thronged places — convenient for them to distinguish their own servants from other people's in a crowd at night — and, more particularly, in large and corrupt cities, it is conveni- ent to have such attendants for ladies as may secure them from insult in public — the livery upon the fol- lower showing that the person he follows is not only re- spectable, but of too much consequence to be annoyed with impunity. The ostentation of servants in livery is scarce worth a comment, as, unless newly assumed, it is seldom thought of by the owner of the equipage, nor is it offensive to the passer-by, except in a coun- try where it is not yet common. The question whether a country is ready for liveries — that is to say, whether it has arrived at that stage where the want they imply is felt, and where the dis- tinctions they imply are acknowledged — is the true point at issue. It is a curious point, too, for, in every other nation, liveries may be excused as traditional — as being only modifications of the dresses of feudal retainers — while Americans, without this apology, must defend the abrupt adoption of liveries on the mere grounds of propriety and convenience. We certainly have not yet arrived at that point of civilization where liveries are needed — as in England — to protect a lady from insult in the street. A fe- male may still walk the crowded thoroughfares of New York by daylight — as she dare not do in Lon- don — unattended, either by a gentleman or a servant in livery. (We live in hope of overtaking the civiliza- tion of the mother-country!) Neither has a liveried equipage, as yet, the tacit consequence, in America, which secures to it in London the convenient conces- sions of the highway. We are republican enough, thus far, to allow no privileges to be taken for grant- ed ; and he who wishes to ride in a vehicle wholly in- visible to omnibus-drivers, and at the same time to have his lineage looked into and perpetuated without the expense of heraldic parchment, has only to ap- pear in Broadway with liveried equipage! We differ from some of our luxurious friends, by thinking, that, as long as the spending of over five thousand dollars a year makes a gentleman odious in the community, liveries are a little premature. It is a pity to be both virtuous and unpopular. The moving about in a cloud of reminded lordship is a luxury very consistent with high morality, but it comes coldly between republicans and the sun — whatever fire of heaven the offending cloud may em- bosom. We wonder, indeed, at the remaining in this country, of any persons ambitious of distinctions in the use of which we are thus manifestly "behind the age." It is so easy to leave the lagging American anno domini of aristocracy, and sail for the next cen- tury — by the Havre packet ! That Heaven does not disdain such love of each other as is quickened by personal admiration, is proved by the injunctions to the children of Israel to appear in cheerful and becoming dresses on festal days — those days occupying rather more than a quarter of a year. The Jews also ornamented their houses on holydays, not as we do with evergreens (a custom we have taken from the Druid "mistletoe, cut with the golden knife"), but with such ornaments as would best embellish them for the reception of friends. The French nation is to be admired for supremacy, in this age, in the exhibition of the kindly feelings and the brightening of the links of relationship and friendship. It has been stated (among statistics) that for bons-bons alone, in Paris, on new year's day, were expended one hundred thousand dollars ! We copy the French with great facility in this country, and (until the pro- posed " annexation of Paris") we rejoice in the pros- perity of Stuart's candy quarry in New York, and the myriad cobwebs of affection that stick, each by one thread, to the corner of Chambers and Greenwich streets! If not quite a "pilgrimage to Jerusalem," it is a pilgrimage to our best signs and emblems of Jerusalem usages, to go the rounds of the gift-shops during the holydays; and no kindly Christian parent, who xvishes to throw out an anchor for his children against the storm of political ruffianism, should neg- lect to bind friendship and family by a new tie in the holydays ! We see a use in the skill at temptation shown by such admirable taste-mongers as Tif- 760 EPHEMERA. fant & Young, Woodworth, Guion, and others, which is beyond the gratification of vanity, and far from provocatives to " waste of money." But this is no head under which to write a sermon. We have (ourselves) a preference among the half dozen curiosity-shops of the city — a preference which may, perhaps, be called professional — springing from love for the memory of a departed poet. The son of Woodworth, the warm-hearted author of the "Old Oaken Bucket" and other immortal embodiments of the affections, in verse, is the present proprietor of the establishment known as Bonfanti's — (by our just men- tioned theory of the holy ministration of gifts, employed on somewhat the same errand in life as the bard who went before). It may not be improper to mention here, that the last few painful years of the poet's life were soothed with a degree of filial devotion and ten- derness which makes the Woodworths cherished among their friends, and this is a country, thank God, where such virtues bring prosperity in business ! BREAKFAST ON NEW TEAR S DAY. Aslor house, No. 184 — nine o'clock in tlie morning — breakfast for tioo on the table — enter the brigadier. Brig. {Embracing "us").— Mi-boy ! GOD BLESS YOU ! ! ! " We." {With his hand to his forehead.)— With what a sculptured and block-y solidity you hew out your benedictions, my dear general! You fairly knock a man over with blessing him ! Sit down and wipe your eyes with that table-napkin ! Brig. — Well — how are you? " We." — Hungry ! I'll take a wing of the chicken before you — killed probably last year. How many " friends, countrymen, and lovers," are you going to call on to day ? Brig. — I wish I knew how many I shall not call on! What is a — (pass the butter if you please) — what is a pat of butter, like me, spread over all the daily bread of my acquaintance ? " We."— " 'Tis Greece— but living Greece no more !" I'll tell you what 1 have done, general. Here is a list of all my circle of pasteboard. It begins with those I love, and ends with those with whom I am cere- monious. Those whom I neither love nor am cere- monious with, form a large betweenity of indifference; and though you may come to love those with whom you are ceremonious, you never can love those you are wholly indifferent to. I have crossed out this be- tweenity. Life is too short to play even a game of acquaintance in which there is no possible stake. Brig. — How short life is, to be sure ! " We."— Shorter this side the water than the other"! In Europe a man is not bowed out till he is ready to go ! Here, he is expected to have repented and made his will at thirty-seven ! I shall pass my " second childhood" in France, where it will pass for a con- tinuation of the first ! Brig. — My dear boy, don't get angry! Eat your breakfast and talk about New Year's. What did the Greeks used to do for cookies? " We." — Well thought of— they made presents of dates covered with gold leaf! Who ever gilds a date in this country ? No ! no ! general ! You will see dozens of married women to-day who have quietly settled down into upper servants with high-necked dresses — lovely women still — who would be belles for ten years to come, in France ! Be a missionary, brigadier! Preach against the unbelievers in mulie- brity ! It's New Year and time to begin something ! Implore your friends to let themselves be beautiful once more ! (Breast-bone of that chicken, if you please !) I should be content never to see another woman under thirty — their loveable common-sense comes so long after their other maturities .' Brig. — What common-place things you do say, to be sure ! Well, mi-boy, we are going to begin another year ! " We." — Yes — prosperously, thank God ! And, oh, after the first in-haul of rent from these well- tenanted columns, what a change we shall make in our paper ! Let us but be able to afford the outlay of laborious aid, which other editors pay for, and see how the Mirror will shine all over .' I have a system in my brain for a daily paper — the fruit of practical study for the last three months — which I shall begin upon before this month has made all its icicles; and you shall say that I never before found my true voca- tion ! The most industriously edited paper in the country is but the iron in the razor; and though it is not easy to work that into shape, anybody can hire it done, or do it with industry. The steel edge, we shall find time to put on, when we are not, as now, employed in tinkering the iron ! Brig. — Black-and-white-smiths — you and I! " We." — No matter for the name, my dear general! — one has to be everything honesty will permit, to get over the gulf we have put behind us. Civilized life is full of the most unbridged abysses. Transitions from an old business to a new, or from pleasure to business, or from amusing mankind to taking care of yourself, would be supposed, by a " green" angel, to be good intentions, easy enough carried out, in a world of reciprocal charities. ** But let them send down the most popular angel of the house of Gabriel & Co., to borrow money for the most brilliant project, without bankable security! And the best of it is, that though your friends pronounce the crossing of a busi- ness-gulf, on your proposed bridge of brains, impossi- ble and chimerical, they look upon it as a matter of course when it is done! You and I are poets — if the money and fuss we have made will pass for evidence — yet nobody thinks it surprising that we have taken off our wings, and rolled up our shirt-sleeves to carry the hod ! Not to die without having experienced all kinds of sensations, I wish to be rich — though it will come to me like butter when the bread is gone to spread it on. Heigho ! Brig. — How you keep drawing similitudes from what you see before your eyes ! Let me eat my breakfast without turning it into poetry! It will sour on my stomach, my dear boy ! " We." — So you are ordered out to smash the Hel- derbergers, general ! Brig. — Ordered to hold myself in readiness — that's all at present. I wish they'd observe the seasons, and rebel in pleasant weather! Think of the summit of a saddle with the thermometer at zero ! Besides, if there is any fighting to do one likes an enemy. This campaign to help the constable, necessary as it is, goes against my stomach. " We." — Fortify it, poor thing ! What say to a drop of curacoa before you begin your New Year's round? {Pouring for the general and himself) Burke states, in his " Vindication of Natural Society," that your predecessor, Julius Cesar, was the means of killing two millions one hundred thousand men! How populous is Helderberg — women and all? Brig. — Twelve' o'clock, my dear "boy, and time to be shaking hands and wishing. Take the first wish off the top of my heart — a happy New Year to you, and — " We." — Gently with that heavy benediction ! Brig. — God bless you, mi-boy !■ {Exit the brigadier, affected.) EPHEMERA. 761 i, anu to mem wc «iau iu K< «/..~. « "•>■* »* 7 hing the usages just now in plastic and manage- transition among the better classes. The follow- Themes for the Table.— Among the "upper ten thousand," there are, of course, many persons, not only of really refined taste, but of practical common sense, and to them we wish to proffer a hint or two, toucl able transition among ing note, received a day or two since, suggests one of the improvements that we had marked down for com ment : — "Mb. Editor: I observe that a 'bachelor,' wri- ting in the 'American,' recommends to 'invited 1 and ' inciters,' to send invitations and answers, stamp- ed, through the penny-post. This is a capital idea, and I shall adopt it for' one. I perceive that a bachelor in another paper says, ' it will suit him and his fellow- bachelors,' for reasons set forth, and that he will adopt the plan. Now, Mr. Editor, I am a housekeeper, and married, and my wife requires the use of all my servants, and can not spare them to be absent three or four days, going round the city, delivering notes, on the eve of a party. These notes could, by the plan suggested, be delivered in three hours, and insure a prompt answer. I can then know exactly who is coming and who is not— a very convenient point of knowledge ! "These reasons induce me to become an advocate of the suggestion. There are other sound arguments that might be urged in its favor, but pray present them j in your own fashion to your readers. " Yours, &c." There is another very burthensome matter, the j annoyance of which might be transferred to the penny- j p 03t — card leaving ! When men are busy and ladies ill (the business and the illness equally unlikely to be j heard of by way of apology) it would often be a most 1 essential relief to commit to envelopes a dozen cards, j and, with an initial letter or two in the corner,* ex- 1 pressive of good-will but inability to call in person, make and return visits without moving from counting house or easy-chair. This, in a country where few keep carriages, and where every man worth knowing has some business or profession, should be an easy matter to bring about ; and, if established into a usage that gave no offence, would serve two purposes— re- lieving the ill or busy, and compelling those, who really wish to keep up an acquaintance, at least to send cards once in a while, as reminders. We wish that common sense could be made fashion- able among us — vigorously applied, we mean, to the fashions of the best style of people. Why should not the insufferable nuisance of late parlies be put down in this country by a plot between a hundred of our sensible and distinguished families? In England they are at the dinner-table between six and ten ; but why should we, who seldom dine later than three or four, yawn through a long unoccupied evening before going out, merely because they go to parties at eleven in London ? Why should it not be American, to revise, correct, and adapt to differences of national character, the usages we copy from other countries ? The sub- ject of late parties is constantly talked over, however, and as all are agreed as to the absurdity of the fashion, a hint at it, here, is enough. There are other usages which require remodelling by this standard, but while we defer the mention of them at present, we wish to allude to another argu- ment (in favor of common sense applied to fashion) remoter and perhaps weightier than mere convenience. It is simply, that, if an aristocracy is to be formed in this country, the access to its resorts must' be kept convenient for men of sense, or society will be left ex- clusively to fools. Believers in the eternity of de- * T. R. M., for instance (meaning this to remind you of me), written in the corner of a card, might imply that the friendly wish had occurred, though the call was overruled by hinderances. mocracy might wish fashion kept inconvenient, for this very purpose; but our belief is, that there is no place like a republic for a positive and even violent aristoc- racy, and, if inevitable, it is as well to compound it of good elements in the beginning. Simply, then, no intellectual man, past absolute juvenility, would con- sent to enfeeble his mind by fashionable habits injuri- ous to health. Late hours and late suppers (in a country where we can not well sleep till noon as they do in Europe) are mental suicide. Hours and usages, therefore, which are not accommodated to the conve- nience of the best minds of the country, will drive those minds from the class to which they form the objection, and the result is easily pictured. We shall resume the topic. Livebiesand Opeba-Glasses.— There is really no way of foreseeing what the Americans will stand* and what they will not. An aristocratic family or two, unwilling to compete wiOi the working-classes in person- al attire, choose to transfer the splendors of their condi- tion to the hacks of their servants.' They dress plainly themselves and set up a liveried equipage — as- they have an absolute and (one would think) an unoffend- ing right to do. This, however, the American pub- lic will not bear — and the persons so doing are insulted by half the presses in the country. But what they will bear is much more remarkable. In the immense theatres of Europe, where the upper classes are all in private boxes, with blinds and curtains to shutout observation if they please, the use of opera- glasses has gradually become sanctioned. It is found convenient lor those classes to diminish the distance across the house, since they have the choice of seclu- sion behind curtains — which those in the pit have not. Abstractly, of course, the giving to a vulgarian the power to draw a lady's face close to him for a half- hour's examination, would be permitting a gross li- cense. This being the custom in Europe, however, it is adopted with no kind of comparisons of reasons why, in New York. We build an opera-house, scarce larger than a drawing-room, and light it so well, and so arrange the seats, that people are as visible to each other as they would be in a drawing-room ; and in this cosy place, allow people to coolly adjust their opera-glasses and turn them full into the faces of those they wish to scrutinize. So near as the glass is, too, j it is utterly impossible not to be conscious of being I looked at, and the embarrassment it occasions to very i young ladies is easy enough shown. We have used I this impertinence ourself (because in Rome we do as Romans do), but we never yet have levelled a glass upon a face without seeing that the scrutiny was at once detected. Since we have preached on the sub- ject, however, we shall " go and sin no more." " We ask for information :"— is the difference of reception, for these two European customs, explain- able on the ground that opera-glasses are a luxury within the reach of most persons, and liveries are not ? Do republicans only object to exclusive impertinences? Opeba last night — We presume we are safe in saying that no four inhabitants in New York gave as much pleasure last night as Pico, Bobghese, Pe- bozzi, and Valtellina. We certainly would not have missed our share for any emotion set down among the pleasures of Wall street— well as we know the let-up of an opportune discount ! That emperor of Rome who poisoned Britannicus because he was a better tenor than himself, and slept in his imperial bed with a plate of lead on his stomach to improve his voice, knew where music went to, and of what 762 EPHEMERA. recesses, within his empire, he was not monarch with- out it. (We suggest a meeting of gentlemen up-town to erect a monument to Nero, now for the first time appreciated !) Let us tell the story of Semiramide — and we must take the liberty, for clearness' sake, to use the names of the performers without the Siamese-ry of the names of the characters. Borghese is queen of Babylon. She and Valtel- lina, who is an old lover of hers, have killed her former husband, a descendant of Belus by whom she had a child. This child is Pico, rightful heir to the throne. At the time the curtain rises, Borghese and Valtel- lina suppose that Pico also is killed, and the throne vacant for a new husband to Borghese. Valtellina wishes to be that husband ; but Borghese, partly from dislike of him, and partly from having had enough of matrimony, takes advantage of a thunder-storm to put off her expected decision. Meantime Pico arrives (acquainted only with Mr. Meyer, apparently, who is a high-priest of Belus), and Queen Borghese, not knowing that it is her own child, falls in love with him ! There is a Miss Phillips who is a descendant of this same Belus, and who is to have the throne if Borghese does not marry Valtellina. Pico loves Miss Phillips for some reason only hinted at, and has come to Babylon to see her. Mr. Meyer, who is the only one aware that Pico is the prince supposed to be lost, takes him down into the tomb of the dead king, tells him who he is, gives him his father's " things" in a box, and leaves him there to have a conversation with his mother who happens to drop in. It is all cleared up between them, and they sing a duet together, and go out for a little fresh air. Valtellina, mousing about after the queen, comes afterward to the tomb and meets the high-priest there ; and one after another drops in, till the tomb is full, and the ghost of the old king takes the opportunity to get up and mention what he died of. Great confusion of course ; and, soon after, Pico, feeling called upon to kill the mur- derer of the sleepless old gentleman, stabs at some- body in the dark and kills his mother ! Valtellina is led off by the police, Pico faints in the arms of Mr. Meyer, the satraps and Babylonians rush in, and the curtain falls — leaving Pico to marry Miss Phillips and succeed to the throne. All this of course took place in a city built two generations after Ham (brother of Shem and Japhet) but what with the look of the " tombs," and the way people were stabbed and pois- oned, it was impossible not to wonder what Justice Malsell would have done in the premises. We shall hear Semiramide again to-night, and speak more advisedly of the music on Monday. At present, we can not convince ourself that Grisi and Persiani sang any better when we heard them in London. We can never hope for — and we need not wish — a better opera. Borghese is a most accomplished creature, with (among other things) an intoxicating way of crushing her eyes up to express passion (in a way that none but people of genius do) and she does nothing indifferently. Pico, with her wonderful at-home-ative- ness anywhere between the lowest note and the high- est, faultless in her science, and personally of the kind of women most loveable, is enough, of herself, to keep a town together. Perozzi, with his sweet, pure voice, and gentlemanly taste (he was king of Egypt last night, by the way, and a candidate for Borghese's hand), is worthy to be a third star in any such Orion's belt, and the fourth may well be Valtellina, whose thorough base, we have no doubt, first suggested the idea of the forty-horse excavator lately patented by congress. But what shall we say of the scenery ? We were taken completely by surprise, with the taste as well as splendor of it, and we think Stanfield himself, the great artist who produces occasionally such marvels in the spectacles of Drury Lane, would have taken a pride in claiming it. Certainly no comparable scene- ry has been exhibited, to our knowledge, in this country. The costumes were also admirable. Abstaining as we do, for to-day, from musical criticism, we cau not help alluding to the electric ef- fect, upon the audience, of the duet between Pico and Borghese — the well-known " Giorno d'orrore." The house was uncomfortably crammed, but a pin might have been heard to drop, at any moment dur- ing the singing of it. It was a case of complete musi- cal intoxication. The applause was boundless, but unluckily the encore (which we trust will not be foiled again to-night) was defeated by an evident fear on the part of the audience of interrupting a part of the duet not yet completed. If you love your public, dear Semiramide, nod, to-night, to the orchestra, after the bouquets have descended ! BEHIND THE CURTAIN. Editor's room, toward midnight — Enter the brigadier, as the printers go down stairs — The day over, and the shop shut up under — A pen (too tired to be wiped) drying in peace on the editor's table — Neus- boys done (thank God ! ) — Brigadier collapsed into a chair. Brig. — Oh, mi-boy! To think of the trouble of " getting along," and the very small place in which we sleep, when we get there ! I wonder whether a man would be much behind the time at his own fu- neral if he stopped working! I'm tired, Willis! I'll send my ticket for the afterpiece, and " go home," as the Moravians say. " We." — You forget ! Editors are on the " free list" in the theatre of life, and " not entitled to a check." Brig. — Talk plain to me, my dear boy, and save your heliotropes for the paper! The work I have done this week ! Is it you that say somewhere, "there's no poetry in a steamboat?" Think of the blessed cry of " stop her !" " We." — And so you are fairly fagged, my " mar- tial Pyrrhus!" Brig. — Fagged and dispirited ! Moving the print- ing office — getting all the advertisements set up in new type — little indispensable nothings plaguing my life out — new arrangements in every corner, and the daily paper going on besides " We." — I don't wonder you're dead ! Brig. — That is the least of my trouble, I was going to say — (though, to be sure, what we have done this last week, changing office, and renewing type, with- out stopping the daily, is very much like shoeing your horse without slacking his trot) — but the " ben- efit," my dear boy, the benefit. " We." — So long since you have had any money to lend — is that what you mean ? You are afraid you have lost the art of making yourself out poorer than the man who comes to borrow. Why, my poor general ! Brig. — Doesn't it strike you as a dreadful mortifi- cation, my dear Willis ? " We." — The whole business ? Brig. — The whole business. " We.'' — Inasmuch as for genius to be rich, after being poor, would make a god of the man so en- riched (by the intensity of his enjoyment, and his nat- ural inoculation against catching the canker from his money) — it is wisely ordained by Providence that we shall not receive it in sums larger than $3, city bill, without mental agony. We should else be in heaven ephemer; res before our time, my dear general — purgatory omit- ted ! Brig. — But isn't your pride wounded for me, my dear boy ? " We." — As Cassio says (who, by the way, loved general Othello very much as I do you), ' I do attend here on the general, And think it no addition, nor my wish, To have him see me womaned." I have no tear to shed on the subject. I have thought it all over, and would have stood in your place and received the painful thousands myself, if I had thought it more than you could bear — but let me tell you how I look at it. Brig. — Do, mi-boy, and don't joke more than you can help ! " We." — Editors are the pump-handles of charity, always helping people to water, and never thought to be thirsty themselves ! Brig. — You funny Willis! — so we are! " We." — You, particularly, have not only been bolted to the public cistern for every benefit of the last twenty years, the fag and worky of every possible charitable committee, but your paper has been called upon (and that people think nothing of) to blow wind into the sail of every scheme of benevolence, every device for the good of individuals or the public. Peo- ple see your face on every printed note that comes to them. You are the other-folks-beggar of the town. When you die Brie- — No painful allusions now, mi-boy ! " We." — I was only going to say, my dear general, that they will wish they had unmuzzled the ox that trod out the corn ! Brig, (swallowing something apparently). But I have had so many misgivings about this benefit concert, my dear Willis ! "We." — The pump-handle changing places with the pail ! Well— it will be a shower-bath at first, but you'll be full when it's over! Brig. — There you go again ! " We." — I was letting that simile trickle off" my lips while I fished up, from my practical under-cur- rent, another good reason for your benefit. Suffer me to be tedious a moment! Brig. — Be so, mi-boy — be so ! I love you best when you're tedious! 44 We." — Well, then ! Political economy differs from the common estimates of things, by taking into consideration not only their apparent value at the time of sale, but what it has cost, directly or indi- rectly, to attain that value. Do you understand me ? Brig. — No. 44 We." — For example, then ! — a leg of mountain mutton may weigh no more than a leg of lowland mutton — but as the fibre of the meat is finer from be- ing fed on highland grass, it is reasonable to estimate it by something besides its weight — i. e., the shep- herd's risk of losing it by wild beasts, and the trouble of driving it up and down the mountain. Brig.— True. 44 We." — Thus, a lawyer charges you fifty dollars for an opinion which it takes him but ten minutes to dictate to his clerk. A savage would laugh at the price, and offer to talk twice the time for half the money — but a civilized man pays it, allowing for the education, study, and talent, which it cost to give the opinion value. Brig.— True again. Now for our 44 mutton." 44 We."— You and I, my dear general, are brain- mongers— which is an exceedingly ticklish trade. We start with our goods in supposition, like the capital of a western bank — locked up in a safe, that is to say (the skull), to which the " teller" alone has the key. We are never sure, in point of fact, that the specie is there, and we are likely at any moment to be 4i broke" by the critics "making a run upon the bank." Brig. — Now that's what I call clear ! " We."— Don't interrupt me ! The risks of suc- cess in literature, the outlay for education, the delay in turning it to profit, the endurance of the gauntlets of criticism, and the rarity of the gift of genius from God, should be added to the usually fragile shop in which its wares are embarked for vending. The poet, by constitution least able to endure rude usage, is the common target of coarseness and malice. Here and there, to be sure, a man is born, like me — with brains enough, but more liver than brains — and such men sell thoughts as they would potatoes, and don't break their hearts if customers find specks in them; but the literary profession, generally, is of another make, and 44 political economy" should compensate proportion- ally. They do it for clergymen! What clergyman feels it an indignity to be sent abroad by subscription, if his health fails? He considers that he is inade- quately paid unless his parish take the risks of his health ! And you ! — besides the reason you have, wholly apart from our joint business, for needing this benefit — here you are, after passing your life in ser- ving people, with a pair of eyes you can scarce sign your name by, and a prospect of a most purblind view of the City Hall when they make you mayor. Brig. — Mi-boy ! oh ! 44 We." — There's but one pair of well-endorsed eyes between us, and suppose somebody leaves me money enough to unharness me from this omnibus, and turn me out to grass at Glenmary ! What will become of you ? Brig. — Heaven indissolubly Siamese us, my dear boy ! 44 We." — And I have not even named, yet, the os- tensible ground for this concert — the songs you have loaded the women's lips with, and never received even a kiss for your trouble! Brig. — What a fellow you are for reasons, Willis! 44 We." — My dear friend, I am going to state all this to the committee for your benefit! By the way — did you ever hear of Ismenias, the D'Orsay of an- cient Corinth ? Brig. — Never. "We." — Ismenias commissioned a friend to buy a jewel for him. The friend succeeded in purchasing it at a sum below its value. " Fool!" said Ismenias, 44 you have disgraced the gem!" Did you suppose, general, that I was going to give the public the pleas- ure of paying you this tribute without taxing their admiration as well as their pockets .' No ! (Hear him !) No ! I trust every woman who has sung, or heard sung, a song of yours, will be there to wave a handkerchief for you! I hope every man who loves literature, and has a corner in his heart for the poet who has pleased him, will be there to applaud you ! I hope David Hale will give us gas enough to see you on the platform. I hope — God bless me, twelve o'clock ! Operatic Party. — As our readers are aware, a private sparkle from the stars of an operatic constella- tion, is one of the luxuries rated as princely in Europe — a proper fitness in the other circumstances of the entertainment requiring a spaciousness of saloons and a magnificence of menu which only the very wealthi- est have to offer. The private dwelling-houses of this city, till within a few years, have been much too small for the introduction of this advanced phase of pleasure. Last night, however, a sumptuous resi- dence, that might compare to advantage with any in- terior in Europe, was thrown open, and its " wilder- ness of beauty" delighted with private performances by the operatic company now in such admirable com- 764 EPHEMERA. bination. As being the head of a new chapter of na- tional refinement, it would, perhaps, be posthumously worth while to depict the scene — not only as to its sumptuary splendors and costumes, but with a de- scription of the " beauty that bewitched the light" — but however posterity might thank us for such an inky Arethusa, we have too much to do with what is above ground, just now, to bury charms for the future. Madame Pico remarked, before the commencement of the performance, that it was almost as trying for singers used to a theatre to adapt the voice, impromp- tu, to a saloon, as for an amateur to calculate, at once, the volume of voice necessary to fill a theatre. The first two or three pieces were, notwithstanding this judicious apprehension, a little too loud. Signor Valtellina must have the credit of having been the first to reduce the " fill of • the empyrean" to the ca- pacity of a saloon, and, after the measure was taken, the music was exquisitely enjoyable. After tea (served in an adjoining apartment at the close of the first part) the artists assumed, to a charm, the neces- sary abandon, and the singing between tea and sup- per was, to our ear, faultless. The pianist only, M. Etienne seemed lacking in the magnetism to quicken the movement with the acceleration of Pico's climax, and we wished a younger or more sympathetic hand in the accompaniment ; but this charming cantatrice has too infallible an ear to outrun the instrument, and the effect was sufficiently enchanting. She and Sig- norina Borghese were rapturously encored, and a laughing terzetto between Borghese, SANquiRico, and Perozzi, was called for, a second time, with bound- less delight and enthusiam. We had never before seen Madame Pico off" the stage. Care has left no foot-print on the threshold of the gate of music, and her mouth is infantine in texture and expression ; but her eyes have that in- definable look which betrays " The thieves of joyance that have passed that way." Her person shows to more advantage in a drawing- room than on the stage, and her manners, like those of all gifted Italians, are of a natural sculpture beyond the need of artificial chiseling. Borghese, too, has charming manners, and we were pleased with the cor- dial accueil given to the prima-donnas by the ladies of the party. Altogether, the absolute good taste of the entertainment, and the unusually choice mixture of elements, social, sumptuous, and professional, made the evening one of high enchantment. Opera Singers — At the benefit of Mademoiselle Borghese, lately, the centre of the ceiling suddenly gave birth (at the close of the first act) to a shower of billets-doux, which, being immediately followed by the descent of the drop-scene, representing Jupiter feeling the pulse of Juno, was understood by the audience " as well as could be expected." The delivery was rather a relief to the feeling of the house, for the crowd and pressure had been very uncomfortable and some critical event was needed to relieve the en- durance. We have been pleased at the example, set by the good authority of the party of Monday evening, of giving a cordial, social welcome to distinguished musi- cal strangers. America profits by having two nations marching immediately before her in civilization — each unwilling to imitate the other, but both open to study, by us, with no impediment as to our selection of points for imitation or rejection. The French and English are wholly at variance on the point we have just alluded to — the social position given to celebrated musicians. In the high circles of France, when a party is given at which the operatic singers perform a concert, the reception for the musicians consults only their personal comfort. — Chairs are placed for them, which they rarely leave to mix with the party, and their supper is always separate from that, of the guests. There is no intention shown, of treating them like equals. In England, on the contrary, the operatic company are the pels of society. Pasta, Catalani, Persiani, Grisi, and the male singers, Lablache, Rubini, Ivanhoff, and others, were free of all exclu- sion on the score of rank, and "dined and teted" familiarly like noble strangers from other countries. We have seen the duke of Wellington holding the gloves of Grisi, while she pulled to pieces a bunch of grapes at the supper table of Devonshire house ; and we have a collection of autographs of public singers (two of which we published the other day), addressed to persons of high rank, and expressed in terms of the most confessed feeling of ease as to relative posi- tion. We repeat that we rejoice in the power to select footsteps to follow in civilization (from those of two nations gone on before), and we take pride, that, in this latest instance, we have copied the more liberal and kindly-hearted usage. These children of a pas- sionate clime are not justly measured by our severe standards; and we should receive them like airs from a southern sky, without cooling them first by a chymi- cal analysis. They are, commonly, ornaments to society — joyous, genial, free from the "finikin" super- fineries of some of those inclined to abase them — and the difference of the pleasure they give, when their hearts are in it, is offset enough for any sacrifice made in ex- cusing the "low breeding" of their genius ! Borghese, whose benefit came off so triumphantly last night, is a woman of very superior mind, of man- ners faultlessly distinguished, and (essential praise to a woman) a model of toilet-ability. She is, besides, a remarkable actress, and a very accomplished musician. This is a pretty good description of an agreeable ac- quaintance ; and, if we were to sketch Madame Pico, it would be in terms still more warmly eulogistic. We leave to the ladies who throw bouquets to San- quirico, to laud the men of the opera, and wind up this essay of political economy, by drawing an instruc- tive example, of the effect of what we preach, from the manufacture of a prima-donna into a queen and goddess, in the days of venerable antiquity. "Among the female performers of antiquity, Lamia is certainly the most celebrated ; how much her fame may have been aided by her beauty we can not deter- mine. She was everywhere received with honor, and according to Plutarch, equally admired for her wit, beauty, and musical performance. She was a native of Athens, but travelled into Egypt to hear the cele- brated flute-players of that country. During her resi- dence at the court of Alexandria, Ptolemy Soter was defeated in a naval engagement by Demetrius, and all his wives and domestics fell into the hands of the conqueror. Lamia was among the number; but Demetrius was so attracted by her beauty and skill, that he raised her to the highest rank, and from her solicitations, conferred such benefits on the Athenians, that they gave him divine honors and dedicated a tem- ple to ' Venus Lamia.' " Madame Pico's Benefit. — We should be happy if Europe would inform us why this remarkable can- tatrice comes to us " new as a tooth-pick," as to fame, and whether (the same lack of previous trumpeting having given us a surprise in Malibran), we are to have the credit also of the eccalobeion of Pico ! Even without the " deep-sea plummet" of her contralto (which certainly does touch bottom for which most EPHEMERA. 765 voices lack fathoms of line) she has a compass as a mezzo soprano, which would alone serve for remarka- ble success in her profession. She is a most correct musician too — (the only false note we have heard from her, having been occasioned by her striking her chest too violently while singing defiance to Vallellina) — and, withal, a most gifted and charming woman, every way formed to be an idol for the public. We have written a great deal about Madame Pico, and, her benefit being the last occasion we shall find, to do more than chronicle her movements, we shall send this quill to our friend Kendall of the Picayune (as the Highlanders send the lighted brand), enveloped in a stanza addressed by an Italian poet to Lady Coventry : — (( Si tutti gli alberi del mondo Fossero penne, II cielo fosse carta, II mare inchiostro Non basterenno a destrivere La minima parte della'' — We leave the rest to the Picayune's prophetic divina- tion. Adieu, Pico, l'in-cantatrice ! A clear throat and a plethoric pocket to you ! Madame Arnoult's Concert. — It looked very queer (and a little wicked withal) to see opera-glasses and ladies with their heads uncovered, in the pews of the Tabernacle ; and we are not sure that our "way we should go" did not twitch us for a " departure," when we found ourselves applauding with kid gloves in the neighborhood of the altar ! We were applaud- ing Pico ; and the next thought that came to us was, a regret that such voices should not be consecrated to church choirs; for (granting the opera to be a profane amusement, as is thought by the worshippers at the Tabernacle), " it is a pity," as a celebrated divine once said, "that the devil should have all the good music.'' And, apropos — was not this capital remark — (attributed, we believe, to Wesley) — suggested by one, recorded of the pope Gregory of the fifth century ? Britain at that time was, to Rome, what Africa is now to us — a savage country they brought slaves from; and the introduction of Christianity into that heathen land is said to have been prompted by the pope's admira- tion of the beauty of two or three young John Bulls who were for sale in the market-place of Rome. On inquiring of the merchant if they were Christians, and being informed they were pagans, he exclaimed, " Alas, what a pity that the author of darkness should be in possession of men of such fair countenances /" He commissioned Pelagius forthwith to send missionaries to the handsome British pagans, and hence the church of England — probably the only church, the members of which owe their salvation to their personal beauty ! (Pardon this historical digression, dear readers!) Madame Arnoult took New York by surprise — she is so much better a singer than was supposed. | With less effort, and in a smaller room than the nave of the Tabernacle, she would, however, appear to much more advantage. Her voice, to our ear, lacked fledg- i ing, or lining, or something to make it warmer or more downy — but it is a clear and most cultivable soprano, and she manages it with wonderful skill for a beginner at public singing. We predict great popu- ' larity for her. Madame Pico sang, with her, the duet from Semiramide, and it was enough to steep even the pulpit cushion in a this world's trance of music. Armlets. — We have observed that there is a late fashionable promotion of the jewels of the arm to the more lovely round above the elbow, where, it must be confessed, a bracelet sits much more enviably im- bedded. We rather think this renewal of the fashion of armlets is a clean jump from the rape of Helen to 1845, for the latest mention we can find of it is in the account of the Trojan nymphs, who laid aside their armlets to dance in the choirs on Mount Ida. It takes an arm, plump and not too plump, to wear this clasp with a grace, but where the arm is really beauti- ful, no ornament could be more fitly and captivatingly located. We were very much struck with the effect upon the dazzling arm on which we lately noticed it. Views of Morris's Concert There are few buttons on the motley coat of human dependance, to which the button-hole is not serviceably correspondent — the button (conferring the favor) commonly draw- ing the same garment closer by aid of the button-hole (receiving the favor). There is one very striking in- stance however, of constant services unreciprocated, in what editors do for singers and actors. Our attention has been called to this by a series of paragraphs — 1 (part silly, part malicious) — expressing surprise that Ole Bull and others, who had never been in any way benefited by Gen. Morris, should have been asked to contribute their services gratuitously to his benefit | concert. It is needful, of course, in a newspaper, to make some mention and some critical estimate of all public performers. It may be done favorably or unfavor- ably ; and there is a way of being abundantly paid for cither. " Black mail" is willingly paid where com- mendation is sold in shambles, but the editor is belter paid, still, if, with skilful roasting and dissection of the faults of public performers, he cruelly enriches his paper (like a pate defoie gras with the liver of the goose roasted alive), and so sends it, palatably spiced, to the uninquiring appetite of the public. He who has a hair of his head left undamned, to creep with shame at the "black mail" sale of his approbation — and he who has common human kindness to prevent his murdering the hopes of strangers to make his paper readable — both these are of classes that go un- paid, and commonly unthanked, for services most essential to others, and forbearance most costly to themselves. The editor's business is to make his paper readable. The most difficult task he has to do is to be readably good-natured. The easiest writing in the world is criticism amusingly severe. If any one doubts, for example, that with the same pains we have taken, glowingly to interpret between Ole Bull and the pub- lic, we could have ridiculed him into a comparative failure — sending a laugh before him through the country that would have armed every listener with an impenetrable incredulity — if any one doubts our power to have done this, as easily as we have ushered him into hearts we made ready for a believing reception of his music, he does not know either the press or the public — neither the arbitrary license of the press, nor the public's weak memory lor everything but ridicule. Where Ole Bull now stands, the press is compara- tively powerless. He is stamped with success. But, when he stood on the threshold of this country's favor — a musician, whose peculiarities at first seemed tricks, and whom few heard for the first time with a confident appreciation — if, then, ridicule had met him, boldly and unsparingly, even though this one paper had alone opened the cry, he would have had us to thank, we believe, for the tide turned back on which he now rides triumphantly onward. Certain as it is that we could not, all alone, have made his present good fortune, it is quite as certain that we could, all alone, have marred it — and that, too, to the profitable spicing of our some- what praise-ridden columns. We need not stop to 766 EPHEMERA. tell the reader that we are describing the fiend Siam- esed to Liberty — an Irresponsible Press which can not be chained without chaining Liberty too — but we wish to show that there is some merit in not harnessing this fiend to our own slow vehicle of fortune. There never was an opportunity so ready as Ole Bull's ad- veut for amusing ridicule — but we were the first, or among the first, to call fur faith in him,, and aid in his appreciation. We did it from love of the man and belief in his genius, and would as soon have been marked on the brow with a hot iron as bargain for a syllable of it. But — the unforeseen opportunity pre- senting itself, when, apparently, he might return our paper's service by a favor to our associate — he was invited without scruple to do so. Suppose he had played ten minutes on the violin for the benefit of the proprietor of a paper devoted, for a year, invariably to his interests? Would it have been the "act of chari- ty" for which a paragraphist says that " Ole Bull was unreasonably called upon ?" The high-spirited Nor- wegian placed his regret, that he could not be here to comply, upon no such footing. While we are calling things by their real names, we may as well change the label of another matter — the motive of the benefit to Gen. Morris. As the public know, our estimable associate, by twenty years of literary labor, amassed a moderate fortune, which, in the disasters of an era of bankruptcy, he suddenly lost. A part of his property was invested in the beautiful country-seat of Undercliff on the Hudson — the residence of his family for several years. His friends — with a provident hope, looking beyond the clouds that enveloped him — fastened, to the transfer of this lovely spot, a condition by which he might, if able, repurchase it at a certain time, and at its then reduced valuation. He has since been suffered to tenant it for a trifling rent. He has improved it, em- bellished it, increased its value. His children have grown up in it. But, meantime, the limit came around — (now only a short time off) — when the purchase must be made or the home lost. His old friends came to inquire into the probable result of their forethought for him. We need not give the particulars of our business — General Morris was partly prepared to re- deem *he property. The lack was a sum that might be covered by a benefit concert — so suggested by one of the parties. It was urged upon him and declined. He was told that Beranger had three subscriptions (one of twenty thousand dollars) — that Campbell had several — that Scott's children were relieved of his debts by a posthumous subscription of two hun- dred thousand dollars — and that private subscrip- tions for literary men were of common occurrence in England. The public know the sequel. He refused, till the concert was agreed upon by his friends without him. The Italians, whom our paper had more especially served, sprang, generously and with acclamation, to reciprocate our constant advocacy of their company's attraction. The musicians resident here were all friends of General Morris, for he alone, more than all othei men in New York taken together, had served the dramatic and musical profession. They, too, joyous- ly sprang to the chance of benefiting him. Never was service more eagerly rendered than that by the performers last night at the Tabernacle — never came good purpose before the public, so lamely and dis- paragingly construed. In making up our mind to allow the public to be intimate with us, we expect now and then to expose the lining of our gaberdine. We conform to the exi- gences of the latitude we live in — but upon dishabille ex- planations, we hope for dishabille constructions. What we have written here, between five o'clock, A. M., and breakfast (wholly without the knowledge of General Morris), goes to press with the ink undried, and we have no security against errors but that of writing as we would talk to our confessor. If the time should ever arise when really good intentions may be trusted to stand, in public opinion : — •'' With that credent bulk That no unworthy scandal once can touch But it confounds the breather," we may cease to explain " why our stocking is un- gartered." Meantime, we expect to die. The Opera Bereavement. — What is to become of this widower of a town when it has lost its fairly-es- poused Pico, we must leave to the survivor's obituary to record. We may as well have our ears boxed and stowed away ! — Their vocation is as good as gone ! No more Pico ? Faith, it will go hard for the first week or two ! But — by the way — as those " lost from us" are invariably supposed to be crowned in the next place they go to, and as, of course, Pico will be crowned in the presence of St. Charles and the brunet angels of New Orleans, we must take upon ourselves, as her New York " gold slick in waiting," to summon one at least, of her liege subjects to his duty. (We happen, fortunately, to possess an autograph of George the Fourth, signed to the necessary formula.) " To G W- K , Marquis of ' Picayune :' "Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Cousin. — We greet you well. Whereas, the 1st day of March next (or thereabouts) is appointed for our coronation. — These are to will and command you (all excuses set apart) to make your personal attendance on us at the time above-mentioned, furnished and ap- pointed as to your rank and quality appertaineth. — There to do and perform all such services as shall be required and belong to you. — Whereof you are not to fail. — And so we bid you heartily farewell. "Given at our court at Palmo's, the 21st day of January, 1845, in the first year of our reign. "Pico Prima (donna).'" Star returning to its Meridian. — Pico has changed her mind! Jubilate! She has declined to go to New Orleans with the Borgheses, and will re- main here to be the nucleus for a new operatic crys- talization. We beg New York and Boston to shake hands in felicitation ! And now that it is settled (as we understand it was, yesterday, by a decisive letter to Signor Borghese), let us splinter a ray or two of light upon the diamond that has so wisely refused re- setting. New Orleans is a French city, with a French opera ; and Mademoiselle Borghese is a French wo- man, with lost laurels to win back from the Italian Pico. This new arena, little likely to have been an impartial one, is a great way off, the journey danger- ous and tedious, and, to go there, Madame Pico must abruptly leave a wave of fortune, which she is now riding "at the flood." and give up three admiring cities for one that might be dubious ! A new opera-house is about to be built here, of which she will be the first predominant star; her concerts, in the meantime, in the different cities, will profitably employ her ; and, as to the company, there is a substitute lying perdu for Borghese, and a tenor might soon be found to re- place Perozzi. Out of these facts, the public can pick the good reasons Madame Pico has for abandon- ing her journey to New Orleans. Let us do our best to show her that she has not made a mistake in pre- ferring us Taking the White Veil. — The Undine of the Bowling-green (Miss Undine W g, if named after EPHEMERA. 767 the gentleman to whose liberality she owes her exist- ence) was shown last evening, with her radiant beau- ty enveloped in aiittering white, to the assembled friends of the author of her being. To alight from the poetry of (he matter: — Mr.W g invited, yester- day, a party of his friends to see an illumination of the superb fountain with which he has embellished that part of the city. The rocky structure through which it leaps, is completely encrusted with ice, and it look- ed like — like more things than we have room to men- tion. The colored light covered the fountain first with a suffused blush of the tenderest pink, and this deepened to crimson, and the glow upon ice and water was really superb beyond any effect of the kind we have ever witnessed. It made even a Dry Dock om- nibus (which chanced to be passing at the moment), look rosily picturesque and fairy-like. The black sky overhead ; the delicate tracery of the naked branches ! of the trees; the enclosure of architecture with lights in the windows (which seemed completely to shut it j in like the court of an illuminated palace), were all striking additions to the effect. We would inquire, by the way, whether this couleur de rose could not be j adapted to the brightening of the ice with which the \ fountains of the mind are sometimes crusted over. J Phlogistic chymists will please explain. Improvements on the American Language. — The making an improvement in one's mother's prop- erty is, of course, a praiseworthy filial service, and we find that we have succeeded in enriching our "mother language" by successfully breaking, to new and valu- able service, a pair of almost useless and refractory terminations. " -Dom" and " -tricity" may now be hitched by a single hyphen to any popular word, name, or phrase, and, without the cumbrous harness of a periphrasis, may turn it out in the full equipage of a collective noun ! Our first experiment in this econo- my of parts of speech was the describing a charming class of society by the single word Japonica-dom. This musical substantive could hardly be displaced by a shorter sentence than " the class up town who usu- ally wear in their hair the expensive exotic commonly called a japonica.'''' The second experiment was the word Pico-tricity — a condensation of " the power, brilliancy, and electric effect of the singing of Mad- ame Rosina Pico." We see by the papers that these expediting inventions (for which we liberally refrained from taking out a patent) are freely used already by our brother administrators of the mother language, and we have only respectfully to suggest a proper economy and fitness in their application. Early-hours-dom. — Wescaicely need explain, we presume, that we have undertaken the wholesome mission of giving interest, as far as in us lies, to the \ more refined occupancy of that portion of the day coin- prised between twilight and go-to-bcd time — becoming, so to speak, the apostle of fashionable early-hours- dom. Of course we are entirely too practical to dream of " reforming out," by mere force of argument, the four-hours' unprofitable yawn and the night's restitu- tion-less robbery of sleep. Every one knoxcs that the reasons for the late hours of European fashion are wholly rcanting in this country — but everyone consents to follow the fashion without the reasons. The only way to diminish the attraction of late amusements is to anticipate them by more attractive early amuse- ments. It will be remembered that we commenced our vigorous support of the opera with this view of the use of it. It was a well-put though unsuspected blow to the habit of late hours, for many gave up par- ties they would otherwise have gone to, from having been sufficiently amused at the opera; and others found out, practically, that to dress and go to the ap- era from seven till ten, gave all the relaxation they re- quired, and their natural night's sleep into the bar- gain ! It is with this ultimate view of making a fash- ionable Kate " Conformable as other household Kates" — giving us a substitute that shall make late hours more easily dispensed with — that we look upon the plan of this new opera-house as a national benefit. If built luxuriously, lavishly lighted, made to serve all the pur- poses of a sumptuous festal saloon, and give exquisite music besides, it will be a preferable resort to a ball- room ; and we believe that it is only from the lack of a preferable resort in evening dress, that late parties are any way endurable. Early parties on the off nights of the opera, would soon follow, we think — the habit of early hours of gayety, once relished — and so would creep out this servile and senseless imitation of foreign fashion. Untilled Field of Literature in New Yore. — The one country we have lived in, without loving a native, is the country that, on the whole, gave us the most to admire — France. We embroidered a year and a half of our memory with the grace and wit of the world's capital of taste, and we have left a heart (travellers' pattern) in every other country between Twenty-second street and the Black sea; but, that we do not even suspect the color of a French heart- ache we solemnly vow — and marvel. We admire the French quite enough, however (perhaps there lies the philosophy of it!) to leave no fuel for sentiment to mourn over as wastage, and now — (apropos des bottes) — why have we no vehicle for French wit in New York — no battery for the friction and sparkle of French electricity? How can the French live without a " Charivari ?" Twenty thousand French inhabitants and no savor in the town, as if the gods had "dined below stairs!" Ten thousand French women (prob- ably), and either no celebrity, of wit or beauty, among them, or no needful newspaper-cloud in which the thunder and lightning of such pervading electricities could be collected ! We wonder whether the ^Courrier des Elats Unis'' (the Anchises French paper which we read, as the pious JEneas carried his father on his back, to have something to cherish, out of the city left behind — something French, that is to say) — we wonder wheth- er, on their alternate days, the editors of that sober tri-weekly paper could not give us something spiced a la Parisiennc — and whether such a vehicle, for the French wit that must he here, benumbed or hidden, would not be a profitable speculation ! The "Cour- rier" is the best of useful and grave papers, and en- tirely fulfils its destiny, but it is small pleasure to the ten thousand people in New York, who relish French literature, to re-peruse the matter of the daily papers, rechauffe in a foreign language. If the lack of Paris- ian material, here, were an apparent objection, what a delightful luxury it would be to have a paper made up, \ at first, entirely, with the condensed essence of the gay papers of Paris ? A feature of New York chari- vari-ty might be gradually worked in— but, meantime, ! a weli-selected bouquet of the prodigal wit and fun of I the capital (made comprehensible by a correspond- ence kept up with Paris, which should explain alio- I sions, etc.) would be, we should really suppose, most attractive to the better classes of our society, and, to | the French of New Orleans and other more remote ' cities, an indispensable luxury. There is a natural homeopathy for everything French in this city — much stronger than for the same things 768 EPHEMERA. a VAnglaise. We would wish, too, that the barrier of a different language were gradually broken down, s^tbat some of the delightful peculiarities of Paris might ooze into our city manners through a conduit of periodical literature. Heigho !— to think of the brilliant intellectual lamps blazing like noonday in France, while, with the material for the same bright- ness about us, we lit by the glimmer of fire-light! Oh, Jules Janin ! " American in Paris !" — come over with your prodigal brain and be a Parisian in Ameri- ca! Ordain yourself as a missionary of wit, and Ja- nin-ify a continent by a year's exile beyond the Bou- levards! You'll laugh at us when you return, but streams chafe the channels they refresh, and we will take you with your murmur! "L'onda, dal mar divisa, Bagna la valle e l'monte, Va passegiara In flume, Va prigionera In fonte, Mormora sempre e gem Fin che non torna al mar." It would hardly be inferred — but we really sat down to write the following paragraph, and not the foregoing one : — The Prima-donnas at Fault. — The "Courrier des Etats Unis" has now and then an ebullition of na- tional spirituality, in the shape of a half column of theatrical gossip, and we have had on our table, for several days, a cut-out paragraph, very well hit off, touching one or two of the town's pleasure-makers. The editor is, of course, behind the curtain, as the natural centre of the foreign circle of New York, and lie writes with knowledge. He gives as a fact that Borghese cleared $550 by her benefit, but he dispara- ges the performance of that evening, and hauls the ladies seriously over the coals for having exhausted themselves at a private party the night before ! He detects an anachronism in Semiramide, and calls Pico to account for appearing before the queen (as Arsace) with his mother's crown on, when the good lady had as yet only promised it to him! The first thing in the succeeding duet, says the " Courrier," should have been a remark from Semiramide (who has promised him the crown as a lover, not knowing it is her son) to this effect : " Vous etes un peu presse, mon bel amoureux!" ou bien, " De quel droit portez-vous cette couronne, que je n'ai fait que vous offrir ?" The crown given him by the high-priest, out of the pater- nal box, was, of course, only symbolic, as the queen was still on the throne. Korponat's Fall, from a Faux Pas. — Another matter touched in the same paragraph is the non- rising of the new ballet-star promised for that evening. The leader of the constellation chanced to be taken ill (below the horizon) at Philadelphia, but the Cour- rier states that the illness was owing to a fall, from a faux pas, and that the faux pas was an engagement by the tumbler (Korponay) to go to Philadelphia once a week for twenty-four dollars, when his expen- ses, wife and all, were twenty-six/ The Courrier does not state, what we think highly probable, that Korpo- nay's blood has come through too many generations of gentlemen to be good at a dancing-master's bar- gains. The new Danseuse. — A third topic of this same pregnant paragraph is the contention between two dancing-masters, Charruaud and Mons. Korponay, for the honor of having given the finishing grace to the 'light fantastic toe" of Miss Brooks, the new won- der. Monsieur Charruaud (Frenchman-like) declares that she is not only his pupil, but by no means the best vf his pupils ! Monsieur Korponay simply advertises her as his; and the star, and the star's mamma, con- fess to her Korponay-tivity. But — (" How Alexander's dust may stop a bung !") What blood does the public think is running in tho veins of this same " fantastic toe?" — James Brooks — the " Florio," who, ten years ago, was the poetical passion of this country — was the father of this dancing girl ! What would that sensitive poet have written (prophetically) on the first appearance of his daughter in a pas seul ! Longfellow's Waif. — A friend, who is a very fine critic, gave us, not long since, a review of this delight- ful new book. Perfectly sure that anything from that source was a treasure for our paper, we looked up from a half-re*\d proof to run our eye hastily over it, and gave it to the printer — not, however, without mentally differing from the writer as to the drift of the last sentence, as follows: — "We conclude our notes on the 'Waif with the observation that, although full of beauties, it is in- fected with a moral taint — or is this a mere freak of our own fancy ? We shall be pleased if it be so — but there does appear, in this exquisite little volume, a very careful avoidance of all American poets who may be supposed especially to interfere with the claims of Mr. Longfellow. These men Mr Longfellow can continuously imitate (is that the word?) and yet never even incidentally commend." Notwithstanding the haste with which it passed through our attention (for we did not see it in proof), the question of admission was submitted to a principle in our mind; and, in admitting it, we did by Longfellow as we would have him do by us. It was a literary charge, by a pen that never records an opinion without some supposed good reason, and only injurious to Long- fellow (to our belief) while circulating, un-replied-to. in conversation-dom. In the second while we reasoned upon it, we went to Cambridge and saw the poet's face, frank and scholar-like, glowing among the busts and pictures in his beautiful library, and (with, per- haps a little mischief in remembering how we have always been the football and he the nosegay of our con- temporaries) we returned to our printing-office arguing thus : Our critical friend believes this, though we do not; Longfellow is asleep on velvet; it will do him good to rouse him ; his friends will come out and fight his battle ; the charge (which to us would be a comparative pat on the back) will be openly disproved, and the acquittal of course leaves his fame brighter than before — the injurious whisper in conversation- dom killed into the bargain ! That day's Mirror commenced its " Circle in the water Which only seeketh to expand itself Till, by much spreading, it expand to naught." We expected the return mails from Boston to bring us a calmly indignant "Daily Advertiser," a coquet- tishly reproachful "Transcript," a paternally severe " Courier," and an Olympically-denunciatory "Atlas." A week has elapsed, and we are still expecting. Thun- der is sometimes " out to pasture." But, meantime, a friend who thinks it the driver's lookout if stones are thrown at a hackney-coach, but interferes when it is a private carriage — (has loved us these ten years, that is to say, and never objected to our being a tar- get, but thinks a fling at Longfellow is a very different matter) — this friend writes us a letter. He thinks as we do, exactly, and we shall, perhaps, disarm the above-named body-guard of the accused poet by quo- ting the summing-up of his defence : — " It has been asked, perhaps, why Lowell was neg- lected in this collection? Might it not as well be asked why Bryant, Dana, and Halleck, were neglect- ed ? The answer is obvious to any one who candidly EPHEMERA. 7G9 considers the character of the collection. It professed to be, according to the proem, from the humbler poets ; and it was intended to embrace pieces that were anon- ymous, or which were not easily accessible to the gen- eral reader — the waifs and estrays of literature. To put anything of Lowell's, for example, into a collec- tion of waifs, would be a peculiar liberty with pieces which are all collected and christened." It can easily be seen how Longfellow, and his friends for him, should have a very different estimate from ourself as to the value of an eruption, in print, of the secret humors of appreciation. The transient j disfiguring of the skin seems to us better than disease concealed to aggravation. But, apart from the intrin- sic policy of bringing all accusations to the light, where they can be encountered, we think that the pe- culiar temper of the country requires it. Our na- tional character is utterly destitute of veneration. There is a hostility to all privileges, except property in money— to all hedges about honors— to all reserves of character and reputation — to all accumulations of value not bankable. There is but one field considered fairly open — money -making. Fame-making, charac- ter-making, position-making, power-making, are priv- ileged arenas in which the " republican many" have no share. The distrust with which all distinction, except wealth, is regarded, makes a whispered doubt more dangerous to reputation than a confessed defect. The dislike to inheritors of anything — birthrights of any- thing — family names or individual genius — metamor- phoses the first suspicion greedily into a belief. A clearing-up of a disparaging doubt about a man is a public disappointment. " That fellow is all right again, hang him!" is the mental ejaculation of ninety- nine in a hundred of the readers of a good defence or a justification. P. S. We are not recording this view of things by way of assuming to be, ourself, above this every-day level of the public mind — too superfine to be a part of such a public. Not a bit of it. We can not afford superfinery of any kind. We are trying to make a living by being foremost in riding on a coming turn of the tide in these matters. The country is at the low- est ebb of democracy consistent with its intelligence. The taste for refinements, for distinctions, for aristo- cratic entrenchments, is moving with the additional momentum of a recoil. We minister to this, in the way of business, as the milliner makes a crown-shaped head-dress for Mrs. President Tyler. It has its pen- alty, but that was reckoned at starting. We knew, of course, that we could not sell fashionable opinions at our counter without being assailed as assuming to be the representative of fashion* — just as if we could not even name a tribute of libertinism to virtue with- out being sillily called a libertine by the Courier, Commercial, and Express. However, there is some hope, by dint of lifetime fault-culture, thai, in the sod over a man's grave, there will be no slander-seed left to flower posthumously undetected. Popularity of Madame Pico. — During the past week we received a letter from a serious writer (a lady), confessing to her own great delight in Madame Pico, * Others have recorded this national habit of attacking the individual instead of the opinion. Dr. Reese, in his ''Ad- dress in behalf of the Bible in Schools," thus speaks of the manner of opposition to his philanthropic labors : — " I have learned that to tremble in the presence of popular clamor, or desert the post of duty when it be*>mes one of danger, is worthy neither of honor nor manhood ; else I would have gladly retired from the conflict to which I found my first official act exposed me, and the hostile weapons of which were aimed, not at the law under which I was acting, but hurled only against my humble self." 49 but wishing us to impress upon our religious readers, by arguments more at length, the sacredness of good music, even by an operatic singer. We remember a passage in Burnet's Records, which shows that even these operatic singers, if enlisted to sing in the choirs of churches, would become the special subjects of prayer. " Also ye shall pray for them that find any light in this church, or give any behests, book, bell, chalice or vestment, surplices, water-cloth or towel, lands, rents, lamp or light, or other aid or service, whereby God's worship is better served, sustained and maintained in reading and singing." It has long been our opinion that to heighten the character of church music would be aiding and giving interest and con- sequence to religious service, and the inviting of pro- fessed singers to the choirs, for the sabbaths they pass in the city, would make them particularly (according to Burnet) special subjects of prayer. The four-feet precipice between the carriage wheel and the side walk, and the back slope to the range of racing omnibuses and drunken sleigh-riders, prevent ladies from embarking in carriages at present, and this is one thing that reconciles us to the opera people's having chosen to " fold up their tents like the Arab And silently steal away." Madame Pico has found a rich oasis in Boston appre- ciation, and we trust the snow will have melted away before the Tabernacle so that it will not bean inacces- sible desert when she returns. Her concert there will be like a dawn after a month's night of music. TWO OR THREE NEW FASHIONS IN FRANCE. In a French pamphlet handed in to our office a few days ago, purporting to be Monsieur Grousset's justification for having been shot down in Broadway by Monsieur Emeric, Mr. Grousset describes a previous affair with the same gentleman, lately, in France. On that oc- casion, he states, Mr. Emeric went to the field attended by nine persons, one of whom was a lady ! We find, also, by a private letter from a friend in Paris, that the now common female practice of smo- king cigars is considered (by connoisseurs in know- ing-dom) as a most engaging addition to the attractions of some particular styles of beauty ! " The play of the mouth upon the cigar, the reddening of the lips by the irritation of the tobacco, and the insouciant air, al- together, which it gives to the smoker, adds to the peculiar quality of a dashing and coquettish woman, as much as it would detract from that of a retiring and timid one." The eyes (he adds) gleam with a peculiar softness, through the smoke. Our correspondent had just returned from a call on a charming American lady, whom he found with a cigar in her rosy mouth ! Wellington boots have been sported during the late bad weather for walking, by some of the fashion- able ladies of Paris. They are made of patent leather, reaching to the knee, with a small tassel in front (at least so exhibited in shop-windows) and the leg of the boot rounded and shaped in firm leather, like the fashion of boots twenty years ago. The high heel (keeping the sole of the foot from the wet pavement), is "raved about," in Paris— the ladies wondering how such a sensible thing as a heel should have been so long disused by the sex most in need of its protection. The relief of the ankles from contact with the cold or wet edge of the dress in wet weather is dwelt upon in the description, as is also the increased beauty of the foot from the heightening of the arch of the instep by the high heel. 770 EPHEMERA. Fashions for country belles. — The following appeal to our gallantry pulls very hard : — "Mr. Editor: One of the greatest treats you could give your country lady readers, would be to furnish them from time to time, with brief hints as to the actual style of fashions in the metropolis. We have, all along, depended for information on this im- portant subject, upon the monthly magazines, all of which piofess to give the fashions as worn, but we find out to our dismay, that they pick up their fashions from the Paris and London prints at random — some of them adopted by our city ladies, some not ! It thus happens that we country people, who like to be in the fashion, are often subjected to great expense and mor- tification — relying too implicitly upon the magazine reports. We cause a bonnet or a dress to be made strictly in accordance with the style prescribed in the fashion plate of the magazine, and when we hie away to the city with our new finery, we discover that our costume is so outre that every one laughs at us! Now, should there not be some remedy for this evil ? " We ladies hope you will do something for us in the way of remedying this. You can make up a para- graph, every now and then, on the subject without more trouble than it costs you in writing a critique on a much less important matter. Let us know all about the real changes in the 'outer woman' in Broadway and in drawing-rooms. Tell us all about the New York shawls, and New York handkerchiefs, and New York gloves, etc. And, when the fine weather again appears, tell us about the riding -dresses and riding- caps your friends in the city wear, and do not fail to give us an exact account of the kind of sun-defenders in vogue, whether they be parasols, shades, hoods, or anything else. ****** " I subscribe myself, your well-wisher, " Kate Salisbury. •« Belle Grange, Jan. 29." We have omitted the bulk of Miss Kate's letter, giving rather too long an account of two or three ex- pensive disasters from being misguided by magazines as to the fashions — but it is easily to be seen that it is a matter that concerns outlay which " comes home to business and bosom." We shall take it into con- sideration. Our present impression is, that we shall set apart half a column, weekly, bi-weekly, or tri- weekly, devoted to " the fashions by an eye-witness." This, however, immediately suggests a dilemma: There are two schools of taste among the ladies ! Some women dress for men's eyes, and this style is both striking and economical. Other women (most women indeed), dress for ladies' approval only, and this style is studiously expensive, sacrifices becoming- ness to novelty, and is altogether beyond male appre- ciation. — Which style should we shape our report for ? Canadian Gossip — The chief of the Scotch clan, McNab, has lately emigrated to Canada with a hun- dred clansman. On arriving at Toronto, he called on his newly illustrious namesake, Sir Allan, and left his card as " The McNab." Sir Allan returned his visit, leaving as his card, " The other McNab." The un- usual relish of this accidental bit of fun, has elevated the definite article into a kind of provincial title, and, in common conversation, the leading individual of a family name is regularly i/ie-ified. Among the officers at Montreal there was lately a son of the late cele- brated " Jack Mytton," the most game-y sportsman in England. Meeting Sir Allan McNab at a mess- dinner, young Mytton sent wine to him with the mes- sage : " The Mytton" would be happy to take wine with " The Other McNab." We should not wonder f this funny use of the definite article became the germ of the first American title. The Tyler ! The Mrs. Tyler! This same young Mytton, by the way, inherited his father's adventurous temper, and though the first favorite of Montreal society, he alone, of all the offi- cers, could find no lady willing to sleigh-ride with him. They openly declared their fear of his pranks of driving. One fine day, however, when all the town was on run- ners, Mytton was seen with a dashing turn-out, and a lady deeply veiled, sitting beside him, to whose com- fort he was continually ministering, and to whom he was talking with the most merry glee. It was, to all appearance, a charming and charmed auditor, at least. The next day, there was great inquiry as to who was driving with Mr. Mytton. The mystery was not solved for a week. It came out at last, that in a certain milliner's shop in Montreal had stood a wooden "lay figure" for the exhibition of caps and articles of dress. The despairing youth had bought this, had it expensively and fashionably dressed, and still keeps it at his lodgings (under the name of " Ma'm'selle Pis-Aller") for his companion in sleigh-riding! WHO ARE THE UPPER TEN THOUSAND ? (In reply to a question of Fanny Forester's.) * * * Your postscript, asking "Enlightenment as to the upper ten thousand" can not be answered with a candle-end of attention. From the " sixes and sevens" of our brain, we must draw a whole " dip," new and expensive, to throw light on that matter — expensive, inasmuch as the same length of editorial candle would light us through a paragraph. If ador- able "Cousin 'Bel" chance to be leaning over your chair, therefore, beg her to lift the curtain of her auburn tress-aract from your shoulder, and allow the American public to look over while you read. The upper ten thousand, all told, would probably number one hundred thousand, or more: Not in Eng- land, where the upperdorn is a matter of ascertained certainty, but in a republic, where every man has his own idea of what kind are uppermost, and where, of course, there are as many " ten thousands" as there are different claims to position. Probably few things would be funnier than for an angel suddenly to re- quest the upper ten thousand of New York to walk up the let-down steps of a cloud, and record their names and residences, for the convenience of the up-town ministering spirits ! A hundred thousand, we are sure, would be the least number of autographs left in the heavenly directory ! But, till we arrive at the "red-book" degree of defi- nite aristocracy, a newspaper addressed to the " upper ten thousand" embraces a sufficient bailiwick for the most ambitious circulation. There are all manner of standards for " the best people." The ten thousand who live in the biggest houses would define New York upperdorn with satisfactory clearness, to some. The ten thousand " safest" men would satisfy others. The educated ten thousand — the religious ten thousand — the ten thousand who had grandfathers — the ten thousand who go to Saratoga and Newport — the liberal ten thousand — the ten thousand who ride in carriages — the ten thousand who spend over a certain sum — the ten thousand "above Bleecker" — the ten thousand "ever heard of" — are aristocracies as others estimate them. And till the really upper ten thousand are indubitably defined, there are ninety thousand, more or less, who are in the enjoyment of a most desi- rable illusion. No! no! — republican benevolence — the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" — would stop the march of civilization as to aristocracy, where it is. Its progress is through a reversed cornucopia, and the EPHEMERA 771 extreme end is too small for the comfort of the " na- tion." Meantime, however, the standard of good manners is rather loosely kept, and though the ten " ten-thousands" are all seen to be tolerable, there is a small class who go wholly unappreciated — those who are unconscious of their oion degree from nature, and are only recognisable bij the highest standards. We speak of those who have " no manner" — simply because they would be less refined if they had. There are enchanting women in New York — we ourself know a half-dozen — who are wholly unaware them- selves, wholly unsuspected by others, of carrying a I mark from nature that in Europe would supersede all j questions of origin and circumstances. — English aris- tocratic society is sprinkled throughout with these sealed packets of nobility from God — one of whom I : remember inquiring out with great interest, a single | lady of thirty-six apparently, but looking like a dis- i tilled drop of the " blood of all the Howards." simple : as a tulip on the stem, and said, though obscurely con- ! nected, to have refused a score of the best matches of England. These "no manners" that are better than " good manners" walk a republic quite undetected . as aristocracy; but, as the persons so born are always | beloved (losing only the admiration that is due to j them) their benighted state scarce calls for a mis- sionary ! We should not be surprised if there were a pair from this Nature's Upper-dom — " Two trusty turtles, truefastest of all true," — in your own village, dear Fanny Forester ! THE WEST IN A PETTICOAT. (By way of declining a communication in hope of a better one.) We have been for years looking at the western horizon of American literature, for a star to rise that should smack of the big rivers, steamboats, alligators, and western manners. We have the down east — embodied in Jack Downing and his imitators. There was wanting a literary embodiment of the out west — not, a mind shining at it, by ridiculing it from a distance, but a mind shining from it, by showing its peculiar qualities unconsciously. The rough-hewn physiognomy of the west, though showing as yet but in rude and unattractive outline, is the profile of a fine giant, and will chisel down to noble features hereafter; but, meantime, there will be a literary foreshadowing of its maturity — abrupt, confiding, dashing writers, regardless of all trammels and fearless of ridicule — and we think we have heard from one of them. The letter from which we shall quote presently, is entirely in earnest, and signed with the lady's real name. We at first threw the accompanying com- munication asjde, as very original and amusing, but unfit for print — except with comments which we had no time to make. Taking it up again this morning, we think we see a way to compass the lady-writer's object, and we commence by giving her a fictitious name to make famous (instead of her own), and by in- teresting our readers in her with showing her charac- ter of mind as her letter shows her to us. She is quick, energetic, confident of herself, full of humor, and a good observer, and the " half-horse half-alliga- tor" impulses with which she writes so unconscious- ly, may be trimmed into an admirable and entirely original style by care and labor. Miss " Kate Juniper,"* (so we name her), thus * The word " Juniper'' is derived from the Latin words "junior and parere" — descriptive of a fruit whidl makes its appearance prematurely. We trust Miss Kate Juniper will see the propriety of using this name till she is ripe enough to re- sume her own. western-fashion, in what she has to say dashes, to us :- " I hate formal introductions. I would speak to you now, and I will see you, when I may, in the Palace of Truth. I am in Godey's Lady's Book with decent compensation, but I want to be published faster than they can do it. I want to write for the Mirror icithout pay, for the sake of 'getting my name up.' I shah ultimately 'put money in my purse' by this course. I have now three manuscript volumes, which good judges tell me are equal to Miss Bremer's. I send you a specimen. I have a series of these sketches, enti- tled 'The Spirits of the Room.' I can sell them to Godey, but he will be for ever bringing them out. I propose to give them to you, if you like them, in the I true spirit of bargain and sale, though not in the let- ter. 1 will give you as many as will serve my purpose of getting my name known; and then, if success 1 comes, you will hold me by the chain of gratitude, as you now do by that of reverence and affection. " Will you write me immediately and tell me your thoughts of this thing ? Truly your friend." We can only give a taste of her literary quality by an extract from her communication, the remainder wanting finish, and this portion sufficing to introduce her to our readers. We give it precisely as written and punctuated. She is describing an interview with a travelling lecturer on magnetism, and gives her own experience in neurological sight-seeing : — "Mark the sequel. I had, on going into the room, lost my handkerchief. A gentleman famed for his wisdom, his powder of seeing as far into the future without the gift of second sight, as others can with it, lent me his, protem. I heard the wonderful statements of the ' New School in Psychology' relative to sym- pathy established by means of magnetized or neurolo- ! gized handkerchiefs, letters, etc. I determined to j keep the handkerchief and see if there were enough of the soul aura of my wise-acre friend imprisoned in it, to affect me. I did so ; I returned to my home in t the hotel — to my lonely room ; evening shut in ; the waiter did not bring me a light; my anthracite burned | blue and dimly enough ; I bound the magic handker- chief about my brow and invoked the sight of my | friend to aid my own. What I saw shall be told in the next chapter. CHAPTER I. " I gazed into the dimness and vacancy that sur- rounded me — I conjured the guardian spirit of the room to come before me, and communicate some of the secrets of his wards. How many hearts, thought j I, have beat with joy and sorrow, with hope, and with ! anguish unutterable in this room. But no guardian spirit appeared, and I began to think that the tee-total pledge of this hotel had really banished all sorts of i spirits, neurology to the contrary notwithstanding. I closed my eyes, laid my hand on the bewitching ! point in my forehead, and lo ! my eyes were opened, not literally but neurologically. At first a figure was ; revealed dimly and indistinctly — gradually its outlines j grew more defined, and a graceful young man stood I before me. He was enveloped in the folds of an am- ple cloak, a jewelled hand held it in front, and he stood as if waiting to be known and noted. While S gazing on him I found myself endowed with new ;md marvellous powers — every line of his face had its language, and told me a broad history. His attitude, his hand, the manner in which the (olds of his cloak fell about him, constituted a library that J. was skilled to read, if I would. Here was" the signatura rerum. I looked and looked— it was like looking into a libra- ry and determining what you shall read, and what you shall leave unread. Some one has said thai • ibe half is greater than the whole.' This may be a physi- cal, yet not a metaphysical paradox. Here I saw thu 772 EPHEMERA. last occupant of my room standing before me. I said I will first look at one week of his life. In a moment I beheld him pacing fitfully the room — his thoughts came before me — they were such as these," &C, &c. Miss Juniper goes on with an account of half a dozen different characters, who (by a very natural vein of revery) she imagines may have occupied the room before her. The specimen we have given sim- ply shows the free dash of her pen, and we think we see in it the capability of better tilings. Female Stock Brokers, Etc. — A letter from Paris to the London Times describes the stock ex- change of Paris (the Bourse) as thronged by female speculators — not less than a hundred in attendance on any one day. To do this, too, they are obliged to stand in the open square in front of the building, as they have been excluded from the interior by a spe- cial regulation ! Every five minutes during the sale of stocks, two or three bareheaded agents rush down the steps of the Bourse to announce to the fair spec- ulators the state of the market; and they buy and sell accordingly. Fancy a few of the customs of the " most polite na- tion" introduced into New York ! What would "Mrs. Grundy" say of a hundred ladies standing about on the sidewalk in Wall street, speculating in stocks, and excluded by a vote of the stock-brokers from the floor of the Exchange! When will the New York ladies begin to smoke in their carriages, as they do in Par- is ? When will they wear Wellington boots with high heels ? When will they frequent the billiard- rooms and public eating-houses ? When will those who are not rich enough to keep house, use "home" only as birds do their nests, to sleep in — breakfasting, di- ning, and amusing themselves, at all other hours, out of doors, or in cafes and restaurants? When will the more fashionable ladies receive morning calls in the prettiest room in the house — their bed-room — them- selves in bed, with coquettish caps and the most soig- nee demi-toilet any way contrivable? Funny place, France ! Yet in no country that we were ever in, seemed woman so insincerely worshipped — so mocked with the shadow of power over men. ' We should think it as great a curiosity to see a well-bred French- man love-sick (when he supposed himself alone) as to see an angel tipsy, or a marble bust in tears. This condition of the " love of the country," and the dissi- pation of female habits, are mutual consequences — so to speak. Men are constituted by nature to love women, and in proportion as women become man-ified they feel toward them as men do to each other — self- ish and unimpressible. We remember once asking a French nobleman who was very fond of London, what was the most marked point of difference which he (as a professed love-maker) found between French and English women. The reply was an unfeeling one, but it will be a guide to an estimate of the effect of the different national manners on female character. "The expense of a love affair," said he, "falls on the man in France, and on the woman in England. Eng- lish women make you uncomfortable by the quantity of presents they give you, and French women quite as uncomfortable by the quantity they exact from you." We only quote this remark as made by a very great beau and a very keen observer — the fact that a high-bred man weighed women at all in such abomina- ble scales being a good argument (at least) against in- viting the ladies to Wall street and the billiard-rooms ! And now let us say a word of what made the letter in the Times more suggestive than it otherwise would have been — Miss Fuller's book on "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." This book begins with an emblematic device re- sembling, at first view, the knightly decoration called by our English neighbors a star. On further exami- nation, a garter seems to be included in the figure; but upon still closer view, we discover, within the rays which form the outer border, first an eternal serpent — then the deeper mystery of two triangles — , one of light, the other of darkness and shadow. We should not have been thus particular in describing a new decoration, but we conceive that the figure is very significant of the tone and design of the book. It belongs to what is called the transcendental school — a school which we believe to have mixed up much of what is noble and true with much of what is merely imaginary and fantastic. Truth, freedom, love, light — these are high and holy objects ; and though they may be sought, sometimes, by modes which we may think susceptible of improvement, we honor those who propose to themselves such objects, according to their aims and not according to their ability of ac- complishment. The character and rights of woman form naturally the principal subject of Miss Fuller's book ; and we hope it may have an influence in con- vincing, if not "man," at least some men, that woman was born for better things than to " cook him some- thing good." The English Premier. — We see a text for the least-taste-in-life of a sermon, in the following touch- up of Sir Robert Peel by the London Examiner: — " Wanted, a Premier's Assistant. — Our friend Punch, who has written some excellent lessons for ministers, 'suited to the meanest capacity,' in words from one syllable to three, by easy upward ascent, should take Sir Robert Peel's education in hand, and teach him how to write a decent note. " Notwithstanding the proverb to the contrary, a man may do a handsome thing in a very awkward way. " It was quite becoming and right to give a pension of c£20 a year to Miss Brown, but what a note about it is this, with its parenthetical dislocations, and its atrocious style as stiff as buckram : — " « Whitehall, Dec. 24. " ' Madam : There is a fund applicable, as vacancies may occur, to the grant of annual pensions of very limited amount, which usage has placed at the dispo- sal of the lady of the first minister. On this fund there is a surplus of c£20 per annum. " ' Lady Peel has heard of your honorable and suc- cessful exertions to mitigate, by literary acquirements, the effects of the misfortune by which you have been visited; and should the grant of this pension for your life be acceptable to you, Lady Peel will have great satisfaction in such an appropriation of it. "'I am, &c. Robert Peel.' "If Punch had been over Sir Robert Peel when he wrote this, he would have hit him several sharp raps on the knuckles with his baton, we are quite certain. The model of the note may be in Dilworth, very probably, or even in the Complete Letter-Writer, by the retired butler; but, nevertheless, it is not a true standard of taste. " Not to mention the clumsy parenthetical clauses so much better omitted, or the long-tailed words so out of place in a note about a matter of c£20 a year, Sir Robert Peel has to learn that none but he-millin- ers and haberdashers talk of their "ladies." Sir Rob- ert Peel, as a gentleman and a prime minister, needs not be ashamed of writing of his wife. He may rest quite assured that the world will know that his wife is a lady without his studiously telling it so. , " Foreigners will ask what is the distinction be- tween a gentleman's lady and his wife; whether they are convertible terms; whether there are minister's wives who are not ladies ; or whether there are ladies who EPHEMERA 773 are not wives; and why the equivocal word is prefer- red to the distinct one; and why the wife is treated if it were the less honorable. " Formerly men used to have wives, not ladies ; but in the announcement of births it has seemed finer to Mr. Spruggins and Mr. Wiggins to say that his lady has been delivered than his wife, the latter sounding homely and low. "But Sir Robert Peel should not be led away by these examples. He is of importance enough in the world to afford to mention his wife in plain, honest, homely old English. •'Any one who is disposed to give lessons in letter- writing can not do better than collect Sir Robert Peel's notes as warning examples. From the Velve- teens to Miss Brown's t £20 a year, they have all the same atrocious offences of style and taste. It is an- other variety of the Yellow Plush school. •• It distresses us to see it. We should like to see MissBrown's c £20 a year rendered into plain, gentle- manly English. " As prizes are the fashion, perhaps some one will give a prize for the best translation of Sir Robert Peel's notes into the language of ease, simplicity, and with them, good taste." Sir Robert's crockery note proves, not that his pre- miership still shows the lint of the spinning-jenny, but that he employed one of his clerks (suitably impressed with his duty to Lady Peel) to write the letter. We wish to call attention, however, to the superior sim- plicity of the taste contended for by the critic, and to the evidence it gives that extremes meet in the usages of good breeding as in other things — the highest re- finement fairly lapping over upon what nature started with. The application of this is almost universal, but perhaps we had better particularize at once, and con- fess to as much annoyance as we have a right to ex- press (in " a free country") at the affected use of the word lady in the United States, and the superfine shrinking from the honest words wife and woman. Those who say " this is my lady, sir !" instead of '• this is my wife, sir !" or those who say "she is a very pretty lady" instead of " she is a very pretty woman,'" should at least know what the words mean, and what they convey to others. In common usage, to speak of one's wife as one's lady, smacks of low-breeding, because it expresses a kind of announcement of her rank, as if her rank would not otherwise be understood. It is sometimes used from a dread of plain-spoken-uess, by men who doubt their own manners — but, as it always betrays the doubt, it is in bad taste. The etymology of the plainer words is a better argument in their favor, how- ever. In the Saxon language from which they are derived, waepman signifies that one of the conjugal pair who employed the weapons necessary for the de- fence of the family, and icifman signified the one who was employed at the woof, clothing the family by her industry. (The terms of endearment, of course, were " my fighter," and " my weaver !") instead of this honestly derived word (wife), meaning the one who has the care of the family, the word lady is used, which (also by derivation from the Saxon) signifies one. who is raised to the rank of her conjugal mate ! But, in this country, where the males invariably bur- row in trade, while the females as invariably soar out of their reach in the sunshine of cultivation, few wo- men are raised to the rank of their husbands. It is an injustice to almost any American woman to say as much — by calling her a lady. It is one part, though ever so small a part, of patri- otism, to toil for improving the manners of the coun- try. If we can avoid the long round of affectations, and make a short cut to good taste by at once sub- mitting every question of manners to the three ulti- mate standards of high-breediDg — simplicity, disinter- estedness, and modesty, it might save us the century or two of bad taste through which older countries have found their way to refinement. Amen! LETTER TO FANNY FORESTER. Dear Fanny: Would your dark eyes vouchsafe to wonder how I come to write to you? Thus it befell :— You live in the country and know what log-haul- ing is like — over the stumps in the woods. You have, many a time, mentally consigned, to condign axe and fire, the senseless trunk that, all its life, had found motion enough to make way for every silly breeze that flirted over it, but lay in unyielding immoveable- ness when poor oxen and horses were tortured to make it stir! If you knew what a condition Broadway is ic — what horses have to suffer to draw omnibuses — and how many pitiless human trunks are willing doggedly to sit still to be drawn home to the fire by brute agony — you would see how, while walking in Broadway, I was reminded of log-hauling — then of the country — and then, of course, of Fanny Forester. Before setting the news to trickle from my full pen let me quote from a book (one that is my present passion), a fine thought or two on the cruelty to ani- mals that has, this day, in Broadway, made me — no better than Uncle Toby in Flanders ! ' Shame upon creation's lord, the fierce unsanguined despot : What ! art thou not content thy sin hath dragged down suffering and death Upon the poor dumb servants of thy comfort, and yet must thou rack them with thy spite f For very shame be merciful, be kind unto the creatures thou hast ruined ; Earth and her million tribes are cursed for thy sake ; Liveth there but one among the million that shall not bear witness against thee, A pensioner of land or air or sea, that hath not whereof it will accuse thee ? From the elephant toiling at a launch, to the shrew-mouse in the harvest-field, From the whale which the harpooner hath stricken, to the minnow caught upon a pin, From the albatross wearied in its flight, to the wren in her covered nest, From the death-moth and the lace-winged dragon-fly, to the lady-bird and the gnat, The verdict of all things is unanimous, finding their master cruel : The dog, thy humble friend, thy trusting, honest friend, The horse, thy uncomplaining slave, drudging from morn to even, The lamb, and the timorous hare, and the laboring ox at plough, And all things that minister alike to thy life and thy com- fort and thy pride. Testify with one sad voice that man is a cruel master. The galled ox can not complain, nor supplicate a moment's respite ; The spent horse hideth his distress, till he panted out his spirit at the goal ; Behold, he is faint with hunger ; the big tear standeth m his eye ; His skin is sore with stripes, and he tottereth. beneath his burden ; . His limbs are stiff with age, his sinews have lost their And^p^in' is stamped upon his face, while he wrestleth unequally with toil ; Yet once more mutely and meekly endureth he the crush- ing blow ; . ^, That struggle hath cracked his heart-stnngs-the generous brute is dead !" I doubt whether fifty years of jumping toothache would not be a lesser evil, hereafter, than the retr.bu- tion charged this day against each passenger from Wall street to Bleecker. And, as if to aggravate the needlessness of the sin, the sidewalk was like the side- walks in June — dry, sunny, and besprinkled with ador- able shoppers. With the sides of the street thus 774 EPHEMERA. clean and bright, the middle with a succession of pits, each one of which required the utmost strength of a pair of horses to toil out of — the wheels continually cutting in to the axletrees, each sinking of the wheels bringing down the whip on the guilty horses, and, with all the lashing, cursing, toiling and breaking of harness, people (with legs to carry them) remaining heartlessly inside the omnibuses. Oh, for one hour's change of places — horses inside and passengers in harness ! But why break your country heart for sins in Broadway ? Think rather of the virtues and the fashions. Large parasols (feminized, from male um- brellas, only by petticoats of fringe and the change- ableness of the silk) are now carried between heaven and bright eyes, to the successful banishment of the former. Ladies sit in the shops smoking camphor cigars while their daughters buy ribands. French lap-dogs, with maids to lead them, are losing singu- larity, as pairs of spectacles. People in the second story are at the level of very fine weather. Literature is at a dead stand-still. The f father of evil" has not yet told us what the next excitement is to grow out of; and meantime (to-night) we are to have an Eng- lish song from Madam Pico at the Tabernacle. So you have been ill and are mortal after all ! Well ! I presume — whatever stays to keep the violets company — "Fanny Forester" goes to Heaven; so you must have your reminders, like the rest of us, that the parting guest is to be looked after. What a to- morrow-dom life is! Eve's fault or Adam's — to-day was left in Eden ! we live only for what is to come. I am, for one, quite sick of hoping ; and if I could put a sack of money at my back to keep my heels from tripping, I would face about and see nothing but the to-day of the children behind me. (Bless me, how grave I am getting to be !) Write to me, dear Fanny ! As I go to market on this river of ink, write me such a letter as will ride without damage in the two-penny basket that brings this to you. And now adieu — or rather au soin de Dieu — for I trust that the first lark that goes up with the spring news will bid the angels not to expect you, yet awhile. Take care of your health. Yours always. Madame Pico's Concert. — We should guess that between two and three thousand persons were listeners in the vast hall of the Tabernacle at the concert. The five hundred regular opera-goers, who were apparent- ly all there, were scattered among a mass of graver countenances, and Madame Pico saw combined her two bailiwicks of fashion and seriousness. She seems to be equally popular with both, and her "good-fel- low" physiognomy never showed its honest beauty to more advantage. She wore a Greek cap of gold braid on the right-side organ of conscientiousness, and prob- ably magnetized very powerfully the large gold tassel that fell from it over her cheek. The English song was the qui-vive-ity of the evening, however, and English, from a tongue cradled in a gondola, is cer- tainly very peculiar! But, preservp us, Rossini-Bel- lini ! After hearing exclusively Italian music from a songstress, the descent to Balfe is rather intolerable. A lark starting for its accustomed zenith with "chicken fixings" would represent our soul as it undertook to soar last night with Balfeathered Pico! — What should make that same song popular is beyond our divining. Most of its movement works directly in the joint be- tween the comfortable parts of the voice, and nobody ever tilted through its see-saw transitions, in our hear- ing, without apparent distress. Madame Arnoult made a very strong impression on the audience last night. She sang with more dew in her throat than when we heard her before, and we fancy that the hard enamel of her tones, at thai time, was from the bracing up against timidity, and not from the quality of the organ. She has only to draw a check for what popularity she wants, we presume. Town-Hunger for Poets. — The appetite for live bards (like other scarce meats, commonly liked best when pretty well gone) is probably peculiar to old countries. We have stumbled lately on the follow- ing letter touching Petrarch, written in 1368, by the Seigneury of Florence, to Pope Urban V. : — " The celebrity and talent of our fellow-citizen, M. Francesco Petrarca, inspire us with a great desire to attract him back to reside in Florence, for the honor of the city and for his own tranquillity; for he has greatly harassed himself by bodily fatigues and scien- tific pursuits in various countries. But as he has here no patrimony nor means of support, and little fancy for a secular life, be pleased to grant him the favor of the first canonry vacant in Florence ; and this notwithstanding any previous promise, so that no one may be appointed canon in preference to him. And you will ascertain from Pitti in what manner this ap- pointment may be obtained for him in the most ample manner." How long it will be before Newburyport will send to the governor of Arkansas for Albert Pike — before New Haven will send to Mayor Harper for Mr. Hal- leck — before Portland will send to President Quincy for Longfellow — before other great cities will send for the now peripatetic ashes of their future honorary urns, and confer on them " appointments in the most ample manner" — we are not prophet enough to know — nor do we know what the locofocos would say to such appointments. We suggest, however, that the poets should combine to vote for Mayor Harper on condition that he inquire what poets New York needs to have back " for the honor of the city and their own tranquillity." Japonica-dom in Italy. — We have often thought that it would amuse, and possibly instruct, New- Yorkers, to know exactly what class of Europeans have, as nearly as possible, their own pretensions to aristocracy, and where such persons " stand," in the way of go-to-the-devil-dom, from the titled classes. There is scarce a man of fortune or fashion in New York who is not what they call in Europe a roturier — a man, that is to say, whose position is made al- together by his money. The treatment which a roturier gets, therefore, from those above him, presents a fair opportunity for contrasting his value (measured by this scale) with that of a rich, but grand fatherless New-Yorker. Besides other profit in the comparison, it is as well, perhaps, to form a guess as to what sort of a sore the upper ten thousand will make, when they come to a head in Manhattan. A letter to the Foreign Quarterly Review from a cor- respondent in' Italy, gives an account of the celebra- tion of a scientific anniversary which draws together the accessible celebrities of Europe, and which was held this year in Milan. Incidentally the writer speaks of Milanese society — thus : — " Yes ! the congress, whatever its other claims to consideration may have been, was deficient in ' quar- terings,' and was therefore, no company for Milanese noblesse. Nowhere, in Europe, is the effete barbar- ism of ' castes' more in vigor than at Milan. The result of course, and of necessity, is, that the exclu- sive there are the least advanced in social and moral civilization of all the great cities of Italy. Will it be EPHEMERA. 775 believed lhat these noble blockheads have a Casino for themselves and their females, to whose festivities the more distinguished of their non-noble fellow-citi- zens are invited— after what mariner does the civilized nineteenth century Englishman think? Thus : A gallery has been constructed, looking from above into the ball-room. There such more distin guislied roturiers (men of low descent), with their families, as the privi- leged caste may condescend toinvite—not to share— but to witness their festivities, being duly fenced in with an iron grating, may gaze through the bars at the paradise that they can never enter. It is at least something ! They may there see what it is to be ' noble ." The happy ones, thus permitted to feast their eyes, may, at least, boast to their less fortunate fellow-citizens, of the condescension with which they have been honored, and thus propagated, in some degree the blessings of exclusiveness among the ranks of the swinish multitude! In their happy gallery, at the top of the noble ball-room, they may at least inhale the refuse breath streaming up from noble lungs — delicious gales from Araby the blest. Surely this is something. The wealthy citizens of Milan feel that it is; and they value the so-coudescendiugly-granted privilege ac- cordingly. "Yes! the roluricr citizens of Milan — incredible as it may seem to those whose more civilized social system has given them the feelings of men in the place of those of slaves— do gratefully and gladly accept these invitations. Yes ■ for one of the curses most surely attendant on the undue separation of a privi- leged caste, is the degradation of both parties — the real abasement of the pariah, as well as the fancied exalta- tion of the noble." Our readers' imaginations will easily transfer this stale of things to New York (fancying one class of rich men inviting another class of men, quite as rich, but with not the same sort of grandfathers, to look at a ball through an iron grating !)' but, leaving our friends to pick out the " customers" for the two sides of the grate, we turn to another difference still, between the nether- graters and the mechanics. There is even a more impassable barrier between these, and it is almost as impassable in England and France as in the more monarchical portions of Europe. A letter from abroad in the Ledger of yesterday, states this phase of social distinction very clearly : — " The present state of society in France presents, therefore, a new and almost incurable evil — the entire separation of the capitalists, the merchants and manu- facturers, from the laboring portion of the community ; and what is worse, a hostile attitude of these social elements to each other. In Germany, and partly even in England, the interests of the manufacturers and capitalists are parallel with those of the laborers, and kept so by the pressure of a wealthy overbearing aris- tocracy in Great Britain ; while on the continent the industrious pursuits are not yet sufficiently developed to effect the separation. Whenever the laborers (the pariahs) of England make common cause with their employers, or rather, whenever their demands coincide with those of their masters, the aristocracy is gene- rally obliged to yield : but whenever, as in the case of the chartists, the laborers or inferior orders of the industrious section of society demand anything for itself which does not agree with the views of their em- ployers, ihey are perfectly powerless — a mere play-ball, tossed to and fro between the landlords and the cotton- lords. "In France, as I have observed, the separation of the higher bourgeoisie from those who help them by their labor to amass wealth, is complete; but so power- less is the latter section that it is not only not repre- sented in the chambers, but not even thought or spo- ken of, except when it is thought necessary to teach it a lesson by putting it down and teaching it obedi- ence. The misery of the laboring classes lias not yet found an orator." We have given, here-above, an attractive nucleus for table-talk and speculation, and we leave it to om friends. Poets and Poetry of America. — An hour's lecture on this subject by Mr. Poe is but a " foot of Hercules," and though one can see what would be the proportions of the whole, if treated with the same scope and artistic minuteness, it is a pity to see only the fragment. What we heard last night convinced us, however, that one of the most readable and sale- able of books would be a dozen of such lectures by Mr. Poe, and we give him a publisher's counsel to print them. After some general remarks on poetry and the uses of impartial criticism, Mr. Poe gently waked up the American poetesses. He began with Mrs. Sigourney, whom he considered the best known, and who, he seemed to think, owed her famousness to the same cause as "old boss Richards"— the being " kept before the people." He spoke well of her poetry abstractly, but intimated that it was strongly be-Hemans'd, and that without the Hemanshood and the newspaper iteration, Mrs. Sigourney would not be the first American poetess. He next came to Mrs. Welhy as No. 2, and gave her wholesome muse some very still' laudation. Mrs. Osgood came next, and for her he prophesied a rosy future of increasing power and re- nown. He spoke well of Mrs. Seba Smith, and lie spent some time in showing that the two Miss David- sons, with all their merit, were afloat " on bladders m a sea of glory." The pricking of these bladders, by- the-way, and the letting out of Miss Sedgwick's breath, and Professor Morse's, and Mr. Southey's, was most artistically well done. Of the inspired males Mr. Poe only took up the copperplate five — Bryant, Halleck, Longfellow, Sprague, and Dana. These, as having their por- traits^ engraved in the frontispiece of Griswold's "Poets and Poetry of America," were taken to rep- resent the country's poetry, and dropped into the melting-pot accordingly. Mr. Bryant came first as the allowed best poet; but Mr. Poe, after giving him high praise, expressed a contempt for " public opin- ion," and for the opinion of all majorities, in matters of taste, and intimated that Mr. Bryant's universality of approval lay in his keeping within very narrow lim- its, where it was easy to have no faults. Halleck, Mr. Poe praised exceedingly, repeating with great beauty of elocution his Marco Bozzaris. Longfellow, Mr. Poe said, had more genius than any other of the five, but his fatal alacrity at imitation made him borrow, when he had better at home. Sprague, but for one drop of genuine poetry in a fugitive piece, was described by Poe as Pope-and-water. Dana found very little favor. Mr. Poe thought his metre harsh and awkward, his narrative ill-managed, and his con- ceptions eggs from other people's nests. With the copperplate five, the criticisms abruptly broke oft, Mr. Poe concluding his lecture with the recitation of three pieces of poetry which he thought had been mista- kenly nut away, by the housekeeper of the temple of fame, among the empty bottles. Two of them were by authors we did not know, and the third was by an author whom we have been exhorted to know under the Greek name of Seauton ("gnoth. seauton )- ourself ' (Perhaps we may be excused for mentioning that the overlooked bottle of us contained "unseen spirits," and that the brigadier, who gave us twenty dollars for it, thought it by no means "small beer . ) Mr Poe had an audience of critics and poets— between two and three hundred of victims and victim- ized—and he was heard with breathless attention. IIo 776 EPHExMERA. becomes a desk, his beautiful head showing like a statuary embodiment of discrimination; his accent drops like a knife through water, and his style is so much purer and clearer than the pulpit commonly gets or requires, that the effect of what he says, beside other things, pampers the ear. Poe's late poem of " The Raven," embroidered him at once on the quilt of the poets ; but as the first bold traverse thread run across the parallelisms of American criticism, he wants but a business bodkin to work this subordinate talent to great show and profit. We admire him none the less for dissenting from some of his opinions. Asylum for Indigent Women. — A benevolent friend surprised us, on Saturday, into one of the most agreeable visits we ever made — a visit to an institution of whose existence we were not even aware. We presume that others have shared our ignorance, and that the name we have written above will convey to most readers an idea either vague or entirely novel. Poetry alone would express truly the impression left on our mind by this visit, but we will confine ourself to a brief description in prose. Our friend informed us, on the way, that an entrance fee of fifty dollars was required, and that the claims of the proposed inmate (as to respectability and such cir- cumstances as would affect the social comfort of the establishment) were decided upon by the board of management. Once there, she has a home for life, with perfect command of egress, absence for visits, and calls from friends, books, medical attendance, oc- cupation, &c. Each inmate commonly adds some furniture to the simple provision of the room. We entered a large building, with two spacious wings, standing on Twentieth street, near the East river. Opposite the entrance, the door opened into a cheerful chapel, and we turned to the left into a drawing-room, which had all the appearance of an apartment in the most comfortable private residence. We descended thence through warm corridors, to the refectory in the basement, and here the ladies (be- tween fifty and sixty of them) chanced to be taking their tea. We really never saw a pleasanter picture of comfort. The several tables were scattered irreg- ularly around the room, and each little party had sep- arate teapot and table furniture, the arrangements reminding one of a cafe in a world grown old. The gay chatting, the passing of cups and plates, the nod- ding of clean caps, and the really unusual liveliness of the different parties, took us entirely by surprise — took away, in fact, all idea of an asylum for sickness or poverty. What with the fragrant atmosphere of souchong, and the happy faces, it would have been a needlessly fastidious person who would not have sat down willingly as a guest at the meal. We looked into the kitchen and household arrange- ments for a few minutes, finding everything the model of wholesome neatness, and then, as the ladies had returned to their rooms, we made a few visits to them, chez dies, introduced by the attendant. Here again, the variety of furniture, the comfortable rock- ing-chairs, the curtains, and pictures, and ornamental trifles, removed all idea of hospital or asylum-life, and gave us the feeling of visiters in private families. The ladies were visiting from room to room, and those we conversed with assured us that they had every- thing for their comfort, and were as happy as they well could be — though they laughed very heartily when we expressed some envy of the barrier between them and the vexed world we must return to, and at our wish that we could "qualify" and stay with them. We have rarely had merrier conversation in a call, and we think that this asylum for age holds at least one or two very agreeable women. But what charity can the angel of mercy so smile upon, as this waiting upon life to its gloomy retiring- door, lighting the dark steps downward, and sending home the weary guest with a farewell, softened and cheerful ! God bless the founder of this beautiful charity ! Who can hear of it and not wish to aid it ? Who has read thus far, our truthful picture, and does not mentally resolve to be one (though by ever so small a gift) among its blest benefactors. We begged a copy of the last report, and we find that the society, which supports the asylum, has some eighty pensioners out of the house, and that there is some fear entertained, from the low state of the funds, as to the ability to continue these latter charities. We can not conceive the treasury of such an institu- tion in want. We are not authorized to make any appeal to the public, but those who- are inclined to give can easily find out the way. Sacred Concert. — We have once or twice, when writing of musical performers, given partial expres- sion to a feeling that has since been very strongly confirmed — the expediency of addressing music, in this country, to the more serious instead of the gayer classes, for its best support and cultivation. The high moral tone, this side the water, of all those strata of society to which refined amusement looks for sup- port, gives music rather an American rebuke than an American welcome — coming as a pleasure in which dissipated fashionables are alone interested. Ralian opera, properly labelled and separated from its need- less association with ballet, would rise to the unof- fending moral level of piano-music, sight-seeing, con- cert-going, or what the serious commonly call inno- cent amusements. Till lately it has been generally understood that the only hope for patronage of fine music, in New York, was the exclusive class which answers to the court circles of Europe; and, so addressed, the opera has very naturally languished. The truth is, that the great mass of the wealthy and respectable population of New York is at a level of strict morality, or of religious feelings rising still higher, and any amusement that goes by a doubtful name among moralists, is at once excluded. But music need never suffer by this exclusion, and as the favor of these stricter classes, once secured, would be of inexhaustible profit to musicians, it would be worth while for some master-spirit among them to undertake the proper adaptation of music to moral favor. Why should the best singers be considered almost profane — was the question that naturally enough oc- curred to us the other night on hearing the Taberna- cle fill, to its vast capacity, with the voice of Madame Pico giving entrancing utterance to Scripture ! Here were a thousand lovers of music sitting breathless to- gether, with their most hallowed feelings embarked upon a voice usually devoted to profane uses. Many whose tears flow only at hallowed prompting, listened with moist eyes to the new-clad notes of familiar sa- cred music — perhaps half-sighing with self-reproach that the enchantment of an opera-singer should have reached such sacred fountains of emotion. Why should not the best musical talent, as well as the more indifferent, be made tributary to religion ? Why should not sacred operas be written for our country exclusively ? Why should not the highly dramatic scenes and events of Scripture be represented on the stage, and seen with reverence by the classes who have already seen them in their imaginations, during perusal of the inspired volume. And why should not the events of human life, as portrayed in unobjection- able operas, be alternated with these, and addressed to the moral approbation of our refined serious classes? EPHEMERA. 777 We believe that this (and not this alone of things com- monly delivered over to the evil spirit among us) would be willingly taken charge of by the angel of good influences. We can not give a critical notice of the performances at the sacred concert, as we were unable to remain after the conclusion of the first part, but we heard a single remark which seems to us worth quoting. At the conclusion of Madame Pico's first air, a gentle- man, standing near us, observed that it was very odd a foreigner should sing with perfect articulation, while he could scarce understand a word from those who sang in their native tongue ! The instrumental mu- sic was admirable, and the scenic effect of the female choir (all dressed in white, and getting up with a spontaneous resurrection for the chorus) was at least impressive. P. S. Just as we are going to press we have re- ceived a critique of the concert, speaking very glow- ingly of Madame Pico, and the " moist melodious hymn From her white throat dim," "as Aristophanes hath it," of the " deep clear tones ofBROUGH, so long lost to us," and "Miss Northall and Mr. Meyer," as having " given full satisfaction." The Famine at Washington. — The city is alive with laughable stories of the distress for bed and prov- ender during the late descent upon the scene of the inauguration. " As the scorched locusts from the fields retire While fast behind them runs the blaze of fire," the belles and beaux, politicians and travellers, are crowding back to the regions of steady population, aghast at the risks of famine run in the capital of a land of proverbial abundance. The stories are mostly such as would easily be imagined taking place in any country, under the circumstances, but we heard of one worth recording — a Yankee variation of an expedient tried some years ago by an Englishman at Saratoga. John Bull, in that instance (it may be remembered), after calling in vain to the flying attendants at the crowded table, splashed a handful of silver into his plate and handed it to a waiter with a request for " a clean plate and some soup." A Massachusetts judge, probably remembering this, drew a gold piece from his pocket last week while sitting hungry at the strip- ped table at Washington, and tapping his tumbler with it till he attracted attention, laid it beside his plate and pointed to it while he mentioned what he wanted. He was miraculously supplied of course, but, when he had nothing more to ask, he politely thanked the waiter and — returned the gold piece to his own pocket .' The German Concert. — The great wilderness of Pews-y-ism — the boundless Tabernacle — was filled to its remotest " seat for one" on Saturday evening, and a more successful concert could scarcely have been given. The nation cradled away from salt air, showed their naturally fresh enthusiasm for the per- formances, and it seemed to have an effect upon Madame Pico, for her friends thought she never had sung so enchantingly, as in the second of the pieces set down for her—" la casta Diva." She was ap- plauded to the utmost tension of Mr. Hale's roof and rafters. The German chorus by a score of amateurs was admirably given, and Schaft'enburg's piano-music was done to the utmost probable of excellence. " Mine Host." — Some time ago, in some specula- tions on American peculiarities, we commented on the hotel-life so much more popular in this country than elsewhere, and the necessity, bred by the manners and habits of our people, that hotel-keepers should be well-bred men, of high character and agreeable man- ners. The trusts reposed in them by their guests, and the courtesy they are called on to exercise, make it almost inevitable that such men should alone be encouraged to assume the direction of hotels. This tendency of fitness has lately put the Howard house into the hands of one of our most courteous, capable, and agreeable friends, Capt. Roe, and the public will find that central hotel all that they can require. The Geode. — We remember being pitched for a week into Query-dom, while attending college lec- tures, by Prof. Silliman's astounding story of the mine in (we think) Meriden, Connecticut— a single cave in which had been found a specimen of almost every known precious stone. It was a kind of omnibus geode, and with a boy's imagination, we speculated endlessly on how so many rare gems could have chanced to have come together in this world of loose distribution. We have come, now, however, to the astounding knowledge of a geode of poetesses — the centre of which is Fanny Forester— and though there are astonishing resemblances between the material and spiritual world, we were not prepared for this ! Fanny herself, as a prose writer and poetess, has now an assured fame. But, on St. Valentine's day, we received an original Valentine from one of her in- timate friends, which was as beautiful poetry as fame wants in her trumpet, and two or three weeks ago we published a most delicious poem from another friend of Fanny Forester's, and here comes a fourth gem which seems to hint (and this is too sad a possibility to trjfle upon) that gifted Fanny Forester is beckoned to, from a better world. God send her health with this coming spring — thousands will pray fervently. Here follows a prayer for it, expressed in touching verse by one who seems a familiar friend : — " TO « FANNY FORESTER.' " BY MISS MARY FLORENCE NOBLE. " Saw you ever a purer light More still and fair than the harvest moon When day has died in a shadowless night ? And the air is still as a summer's noon? No ? — Ah , sweet one, your eyelids shrine A light far purer, and more divine. " Heard you ever the silvery gush Of a brook, far down in, its rocky dell ; And stilled your breath with a tremulous hush, As its mystic murmurs rose and fell ? 'Tis thus I list to the liquid flow Of your silvery accents, soft and low. " Yet, sweet ' Fanny,' the light that gleams 'Neath the sweeping fringe of your radiant eyes, Too purely chaste, and too heavenly seems To dwell in the glare of our earthly skies ; And, too soft and low your tones have birth To linger long mid the din of earth " The sweet brow shrined in your clustering hair Has gathered a shadow wan, and deep, And the veins a darker violet wear, Which over your hollow temples creep ; And your fairy foot falls faint and slow, As the feathery flakes of the drifting snow. " 'Tis said the eods send swift decay To the bright ones they love, of mortal birth ; And your angel ' Dora' passed away In her youth's sweet spring-time, from the earth, Yet stay, sweet ' Fanny ." your pinions fold, ' Till the liearts that love you now, are cold." 778 EPHEMERA. Yankee-Parisian Aristocracy. — Our agreeabfe neighbor of the " Etats-Unis" gives a letter from Paris which states that " another rich American is about taking the place of the retiring Col. Thorn. Mr. Macnamara has opened a superb house in the rue de la Madeleine, and is sending put invitations par milliers. In the commencement of a fashionable career as an entertainer, a thousand invitations will hardly bring persons enough to form a quadrille. Mr. Tudor, another American, is just nowin that stage where he has commenced iveeding his saloons !" The same agreeable letter states that two sisters of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Lady Seymour (the Queen of Beauty at Eglinton), and Lady Dufferin (the Mrs. Blackwood whose songs are well known in this coun- try), have been playing at the English embassy in private theatricals. The characters were nearly all personated by lords and ladies, yet one Baltimore belle sustained the part of " Mary Copp" in the play of Charles the Second — Miss Mactavish. The two sisters of Mrs. Norton and the " Undying One" herself, were by much the three most beautiful wo- men we saw abroad — magnificent graces between whom it was hard to choose the most beautiful. Newell's Patent Lock. — Mr. Newell's wonder- ful lock (one of which costs as much as a pianoforte) is not wholly original. On the world's first washing- day, Monday No. 1, a human mind was created on precisely the same principle. Without going into the details either of this lock or a human mind (in either of which we should lose ourself of course) we will simply give the principle of Nature's patent and Mr. Newell's, viz : that the lock is constructed not only to be un-openable to all keys but the right one, but to become just what, that right one makes it. Newell's lock is a chaos of slides, wards, and joints, till the key turns in it ; and it then suddenly springs into order, simplicity, and beauty of construction. Another resemblance to Nature's plastic lock, is this feature of Newell's, that by the slightest change in the key (provided for by bits inserted at will) the whole interior responds differently ; so that a bank director, like a mind director, may change his key every day in the year, and (preserving only the harmony between lock and key) will find the lock every day responsive to the change. Fair dealing required, we think, that the proper credit should have been given to the original inventor, and that the patent should be called " New- elis, after Nature." Having shown the way the invention struck us, however, we copy by request what was said of it by the Journal of Commerce: — M Mr. Newell denominates this new masterpiece of ingenuity, the Parautoptic Toiken Permutation Lock. Parautoptic, being a Greek word, signifying preven- tive of an internal inspection, and toiken meaning walled, hence the name. This lock has been named after its peculiar properties. Phosphoric or other lis;ht may be introduced into it in vain in order to view its interior construction. The tumblers being separated from the essential actional parts of the lock, which constitute its safety, by a perpendicular wall of solid steel forming two distinct and separate chambers in the same, thus counteracting all burglarious designs. The front chamber will, on close inspection, either by phosphoric light or reflection, exhibit nothing but solid walls of steel or iron. This lock is susceptible of an infinity of changes from thousands to millions, ena- bling the possessor to change or vary it at pleasure, simply by transposing or altering the bits in the key, before using it to lock the door, in a manner which is truly surprising. It therefore follows that a person may make himself a different lock every moment of his life, if such be his disposition, thereby frustrating the skill of the maker, and placing him on a footing with the merest novice. We are, therefore, fully persuaded of its being the ultimatum of lockl making, and sincerely congratulate the inventor of this admirable contrivance, in thus being able to counteract so effectually the various plans and schemes of burglars and pick-locks, and we feel warranted in stating that after due inspection, all those connected with banking institutions, and the public generally, will adopt it at once as preferable to all others, for the safe-keeping and protection of their property." The New York "Rocher de Cancale."— To dine tete-a-tete with a friend, in Paris, or to give a din- ner party, you must go to the above-named renowned restaurant, where have dined, probably, all the gentle- men now existing. Private room, faultless dinner, apt and prompt service, and reasonable charges, con- stitute the charm, and all this we are to have (or so says that communicative " little bird in the air") at the corner of Reade st., in the new Maison Lafarge. That " unrecognised angel," Signor Bardotte, is to be the chef des details, and, in partnership with him, a gentleman well fatigued with travel and experience is to act as partner. Of course we would much rather record the establishment, at the same corner, of an asylum for unavoidable accomplishments, but since luxury will cut its swarth, we like to see the rake with a clean handle. The Misses Rice and the Bears. — The Port- land Advertiser states that in a secluded part of Ox- ford county, called " The Andover Surplus," there reside two female farmers, who occupy a few acres, and "do their own chores," hiring male help only for haying and harvesting. Out in the woods lately with the ox-team, cutting and drawing winter's wood, one of the Misses Rice was attracted by the barking of the dog at a hollow tree. One of the young ladies was absent for the moment, and the other chopped a hole in the tree and came to a bear-skin ! Nothing daunted at the sight, she gave a poke, and out scram- bled bruin, whom she knocked down and despatched. A second bear immediately made his appearance, and she despatched him ! A third bear then crept from the tree, and the same axe finished him! This, Miss Rice considered a good morning's work, for there is a two-dollar bounty on bears, and the skins and grease are worth five dollars, at least. We should like to see Miss Rice, of the " Andover Surplus !" Inconstancy made Romantic — " The Countess Faustina" (the new book now in everybody's hands) is the first novel we remember to have read, the whole burthen of which is a glorification of inconstancy in love ! The heroine is charmingly drawn — the model of divine women — but after quite innocently using up all that was most loveable in two men and deserting them, she gets tired of a third, and goes into a con- vent to finish the story ! The lovers are all described as worthy of a deathless passion, and the love on both sides, while it lasts, is of the loftiest lift and devotion, but the countess has the little peculiarity of liking no love except love in progress, and she deserts, of course, at the first premonishing of the halt of tranquillity. The following passage, descriptive of her enlightening her last love as to the coming break-off, will show how neatly she wrapped up the bitter pill : — "'Be silent,' she exclaimed, when I was about to answer her, • be silent ! Does not the water-lily EPHEMERA. r79 know its time, rises to blossom from the water, and then returns back into its depths, satisfied, tranquil, with a treasure of sweet recollections ? Flowers know when their time is passed, and man tries, all he can, not to be aware of it. This year with you, Mario, was the height of my blossoming !' '"You love me no longer,' I exclaimed bitterly. ♦"Fool!' she replied, with that ecstatic smile which I never saw on any brow but hers, 'have you not touched the tabernacle of my heart? Is not my son yours? No, Mario! I love you; I have loved nothing so much ; I shall never love anything after you — but, above you, God ! My soul has squandered itself in such transports of love and inspiration with yours, that all it can ever meet in this region will be but a repetition, and perhaps an insipid one. We have so broken up my heart in searching for its treas- ure, that the gold mines are probably exhausted, before the sad certainty comes upon us.' ♦"Faustina!' I know not in what tone I said this, but she sank trembling into my arms, and said very, very softly, "'Oh, if you are angry, I shall not have the cour- age to open my heart to you !' " I knew I ought not to alarm her, and I embraced her tenderly, and inquired what she thought of doing. "She replied, 'I will close the mine! If there is any valuable metal within, it may rest quietly in the depths. And above I will plant flowers.' "'But what can — what would you do?' I inquired with terrible anxiety. "'Belong entirely to God, and enter a convent!' she replied," &c, &c. Six months of convent-life sufficed to finish the Countess Faustina, who " discovered too late" (says the narrator) " that, during our life, we can but look, like Moses, toward the promised Canaan" (of a man worth being constant to) " but never reach it !" It strikes us this is a naughtyish book — at least, if, as we read in Spenser : — " there is no greater shame Than lightness or inconstancy in love." The book is a mark of the times, however. It makes no mention of Fourierism, but we doubt whether its sentiments would have been ventured upon in print, if Fourier principles had not insensibly opened the gates. It is no sign that principles are not spreading, because everybody writes against them, and because few will acknowledge them. We see by various symptoms in literature, that the mere peep into free-and-easy-dom given by the discussion of Fourier tenets, has left a leaning that way. There is no particular Fourierism, that we know of, in the two following pieces of poetry, but they fell from that same leaning, we rather fancy. We copy the first from our sober and exemplary neighbor, "The Al- bion" : — " No ! the heaven-enfranchised poet Must have no exclusive home, But (young ladies, you should know it) Wives in scores his hair to comb. When the dears were first invented, One a-piece Fate only gave us, Wiser far two kings demented — Solomon— and Hal Octavus. . " Doctors' Commons judge severely, My belief to reason stands ; Any dolt can prove it clearly, With ten fingers on his hands. Smiles and glances, sighs and kisses From one wife are sweet — what then ? That amount of wedlock's blisse Take, and multiply by ten. " Laughing Jane and sparkling Jessy Shall the morning's meal prepare, Brilliant Blanche and bright-eyed Bessy Mid-day's lunch shall spread and share ; Ann and Fan shall grace my dinner, Rose and Laura pour my tea ; Sue brew grog, while Kate, sweet sinner, Lights the bedroom wax for me. "Monk ! within thy lonely cell, What wouldst give to greet a bride ? Monckton bids thee forth to dwell With a dozen by thy side. Poet ! in your crown one wife Shines a jewel, past a doubt, But in ten times married life, Mind your jewels don't fall out!" The next instance comes from the very heart oT holier-than-thou-dom — the exemplary state of Maine The St. Louis Reveille declares it to be a "well-au- thenticated fact which occurred at Holton, in Maine." " In old New England, long ago, When all creation travelled slow, And naught but trackless deserts lay, Before the early settlers' way, A youth and damsel, bold and fair, Had cause to take a journey where Through night and day, and day and night, No house would greet their wearied sight ; And, thinking Hymen's altar should Precede their journey through the wood, They straightway to a justice went, By love and circumstatices sent ! The justice — good old honest pate — Said it was quite unfortunate, But at that time he could not bind These two young folks of willing mind, For his commission — sad to say — Had just expired — but yesterday ! Yet, after all, he would not say That single they should go away : And so he bade them join their hands In holy wedlock's happy bands, And 'just a little' he would marry — Enough, perhaps, to safely carry — As they were in connubial mood — ' Enough to do them through the wood." " Missionary Eyelids. — At No. 75, Fulton street, a large emporium has lately been opened for the sale of the plant propagated from the cut-off eyelids of the first Christian missionary to China — in other words, for the sale of tea ! One of the partners of this es- tablishment (the Pekin tea company) has written a charming little pamphlet, called a " Guide to Tea- Drinkers," in which he gives the following true origin of the wakeful properties of tea: — " Darma, the son of an Indian king, is said to have landed in China in the year 510 of the Christian era. He employed all his care and time to spread through the country a knowledge of God and religion, and, to stimulate others by his example, imposed on himself privations of every kind, living in the open air, in fast- ing and prayer. On one occasion, being worn out with fatigue, he fell asleep against his will, and that he might thereafter observe his oath, which he had thus violated, he cut off his eyelids, and threw them on the ground. The next day passing the same way, he found them changed to a shrub (tea) which the earth never before produced. Having eaten some of its leaves he felt his spirits much exhilarated, and his strength restored. He recommended this aliment to his disciples and followers. The reputation of tea in- creased, and from that time it continued to be gener- ally used." The pamphlet goes on to state the properties of the different kinds of tea, describing Pekoe as the best ot teas (qu? — hence the prevailing of the Pico tease over Borghese's), and declares it to be peculiarly agreeable (Pekoe tea) to poets and ladies— as follows : — "The warmth conveyed to the stomach of man by tea-drinking at his various meals, becomes essential to him, nor would the crystal steam of the poet suffice for the healthy powers of digestion in the artificial state of existence in which we are placed. A learned 780 EPHEMERA. writer declares that tea is particularly adapted for the ordinary beverage of young women, and the individual who, until the day of her marriage, has never tasted wine or any fermented liquor, is the one who is most likely to fulfil the great end of her existence — the handing down to posterity a strong and well-or- ganized offspring." A visit to this emporium is well worth curiosity's while, and tea can there be bought in large or small quantities, and in prices much below those of grocers. Women in their June. — The early decay of fe- male beauty, consequent on neglect of physical edu- cation and the corroding dryness of our climate, has given an American value to the immature April and May of female seasons, and a corresponding depreci- ation to the riper June. The article which we copy below, from the Brooklyn Star, expresses, we believe, the opinion of the best judges of these exotics from a better world, and emboldens us to express a long- entertained belief that the most loveable age of un- married woman's life commences, at the earliest, at twenty-jive, and lasts as long after as she shows no dim- inution of sensibility, and no ravages of time. Women improve so much longer than men (improve by the loving and suffering that spoils men), that we wonder they have never found an historic anatomist of their later stages. We suggest it to pens at a loss. Here follow our contemporary's opinions : — " My dear sir, if you ever marry, marry an old maid — a good old maid — who is serious, and simple, and true. I hate these double-minded misses, who are all the time hunting after a husband. I tell you that when a woman gets to be twenty-eight, she settles into a calm — rather she " anchors in deep wa- ters, and safe from shore." There never was a set, or class, or community of persons, so belied as these ancient ladies. Look upon it as no reproach to a woman that she is not married at thirty or thirty-five. Above all, fall not into the vulgar notion of romances, and shallow wils — unlearned in women's hearts, be- cause they never had the love of a true woman — that these are continually lying in wait to catch bachelors' hearts. For one woman who has floated into the calm of her years, who is anxious to fix you, I will find you fifty maidens in their teens, and just out, who lay a thousand snares to entrap you, and with more cold-blooded intent — for whether is worse, that one of singleness of purpose should seek to lean on you for life, or that one should seek you as a lover, to excite jealousy in others, or as a last resort. " Marry a healthy, well-bred woman, between twenty-eight and thirty-five, who is inclined to love you, and never bewilder your brains with suspicions about whether she has intentions on you or not. This is the rock of vanity upon which many a man has wrecked his best feelings and truest inclinations. Our falseness, and the falseness of society, and more than all, the false and hollow tone of language upon this subject, leave very little courage for a straightforward and independent course in the matter. What matter if a woman likes you, and shows that she does, hon- estly, and wishes to marry you ? — the more reason for self-congratulation but not for vanity. What matter if she be young or not, so she be loveable? I won't say what matter if she be plain or not — for everybody knows that that is no matter where love is, though it may have some business in determining the senti- ment. I don't know what has led me into this course of remark. The last thing I should have expected on sitting down to write, is, that I should have fallen into a lecture on matrimony. I am not an old maid myself, yet ; but I have a clearer eye to their virtues than I have had, and begin to feel how dignified a woman may be ' in her loneness — in her loneness — and the fairer for that loneness.' You may think it is bespeaking favor and patience with a vengeance." Refined Charities. — Our readers were made aware, a (ew days since, that we had received very great pleasure from a visit to an institution hitherto unknown to us — the "Asylum for Aged and Indigent Ladies." That so beautiful a charity, conducted with so happy a method, should never have come to our knowledge, struck us as probably a singular chance in our own hearsay — but we find that others, as likely to be interested in it as ourself, were equally in the dark, and one lady (quite the most active Dor- cas of our acquaintance) took our account to be an ingenious device to suggest such an institution ! That a large two-winged building, with a sculptured tablet set in front, stating its purpose, and so filled that it might be taken up to heaven by its "knit corners," like the sheet full of living things let down to the apostle on the housetop — that such a building, with such a purpose, should exist unsuspected in one of the streets of New York, is somewhat a marvel. But we were not prepared for two such surprises ! We have since discovered another charity that was wholly unknown to us, as delicate, if not as poetically beau- tiful, and we begin to think that the old saying is true — ministering spirits do walk the earth, unrecog- nised in their tender ministrations, and '• The tears that we forget to note, the angels wipe away." Our second discovery is of an institution called the " Ladies' Depository — intended for the benefit of those persons who have experienced a reverse of fortune, and who can not come before the public, while, at the same time, they may, from necessity, tvish to dispose of useful and ornamental ivork, if it could be done pri- vately, and to advantage." The institution supports a store for the sale of needlework, &c, and any one of its twenty-five managers may receive an application and give a " permit" to the lady in want — this one manager alone the possessor of the secret of the lady's wants and mode of supplying them. Work, drawings, &c, are thus purchased by the society's funds, and sold by the hired saleswoman of the society, and a veil is thus hung between delicacy and the rude con- tact of open want — a veil which prevents more pain, probably, than the food which prevents only bodily suffering. This beautiful charity has now been in existence twelve years, and by its tenth report (we have no later one) we find that fourteen hundred dollars were paid out for work in the twelve months preceding. This sum is not large, and it shows that the subscriptions to the funds of the society are less liberal than could be desired. We should think that the bare knowledge of the existence of such societies as this and the one beforementioned, would start streams of gift-laden sympathy toward them, and we think they but need wider publicity. We are not authorized to mention in print the names of the treasurer or directresses, but the report lies on our table, and we shall be happy to give the information to any individual applying at our office. We copy the following astounding intelligence from a Montreal paper: — "Annexation of the State of Maine. — After all that has been said of Texas and Oregon, and the desire entertained by the people of tile United States to enlarge their territory by the acquisition of im- mense tracts, it will surprise many, and add much to the protocols that will be issued, to learn that the state EPHEMERA. 781 of Maine, disgusted with slavery and repudiation, and feeling a community of interests with those of north of forty-Jive degrees, 'has petitioned her majesty Queen Victoria to readmit her to the old family circle of John Bull, where property is respected, and where there is neither vote by ballot, Lynch law, slavery, nor repudia- tion. " It 19 generally surmised that his honor, Judge Preble is charged with this delicate mission, and that the petition will be sent through his excellency Lord Metcalfe, by the next steamer, though the ostensible ground of his honor's visit to Montreal is the railroad to Portland ; and it is evident that if the admission is agreed on, and is prompt and immediate, all the stock will be at once subscribed by the home government, and presented to the new confederation. " Part of New Hampshire, Vermont, and that por- tion of New York bordering on the St. Lawrence, will, it is thought, follow this laudable example. " N. B. No STATE THAT HAS REPUDIATED NEED APPLY." We were born in Portland, and by annexation, as above, are likely to turn out a "a Britisher from the provinces!" President Polk is to lose us — Queen Victoria is to have us ! Lucky we were presented to her majesty while we were a republican court-eligible — before we sank, that is to say, from a " distinguished foreigner" into a provincial editor! We should never have had formal certainty of having lodged exclu- sively for the space of a minute, in the queen's eye, had Maine annexed herself before we were brought to the notice of " Gold Stick in Waiting." So much, at least, it was better to have been temporarily a Yankee ! There is one other difference to be considered, while we are measuring the matter at the top — we cease to be a competitor for the presidency ! Our glorious fifteen millionth of capability for "No. 1" drops from us as treason to Victoria! We are re- duced to the prospect of dying the inferior of Louis Philippe (!) without the benefit of a doubt. We be- come also, doubtless, the inferior of all the titled gen- tlemen catalogued in the " red book," many of whom, till Maine was annexed, welcomed us to walk into their houses, without mentally seeing us pass under the yoke over the door. We are to unlearn " Yan- kee Doodle," and learn "God save the Queen." We are to call this half-savage country " The States," and keep the birthdays of the queen's annuals. We are to glory in standing armies, national debt, and London fog and porter, and begin to hesitate in our speech, and wear short whiskers. The change in our prayer-book is not much. We are to do our ci- phering in pounds, and that will plague us ! We are to be interested in Canada politics and Lord Met- calfe's erysipelas. We are to belong to a country where births are published, as the first sign that peo- ple know all about you, and that you must stay put. (This last strikes us as the worst part of it.) AVe are to pass for an Englishman on our travels, in the states and elsewhere, and that is agreeable, because our suavity will be unexpected. The larger features of our metamorphosis we omit for future consideration — but, as far as these personal ones go, we fear we had a better chance as a Yankee ! We were what we could make ourselves — we are to be what others make us. Queen Victoria, on the whole, will oblige us by not laying her hands on our Maine! A Future Passion, in the Egg. — We have had a book for some time, that is destined to be an Ameri- can passion. Once read, it infatuates — for it expres- ses in a brief and beautiful figure every possible poetic feeling, and will do for the heart, what the single japonica does to the dress — give the finishing expression, no way else so felicitously effective. Those who make love before this book gets into use, will work like savages with arrows before the discove- ry of gunpowder. Those whose best thoughts die in birth, for lack of recognition and ready-made cloth ing, will wonder how they were ever comfortable without it. Our Cumberland correspondent spent a whole letter, wondering why we, who were constantly quoting the book, had never written a critique upon it. Our reason for not doing so — or rather for first making our readers thoroughly alive to its beauty by extract — is indirectly given in the book itself, in the chapter called " Indirect Influences." See how ex- quisitely it is done : — Behold those broken arches, that oriel all unglazed, That crippled line of columns creeping in the sun, The delicate shaft stricken midway, and the flying buttress, Idly stretching forth to hold up tufted ivy : Thinkest thou the thousand eyes that shi/ie with rapture on a ruin, Would have looked with half their wonder on the perfect pile ? And wherefore not— but that light hints, suggesting unseen beauties, Fill the complacent gazer with self-grown conceits ? And so, the rapid sketch winneth more praise to the painter, Than the consummate work elaborated on his easel : And so, the Helvetic lion cavemed in the living rock Hath more of majesty and force, than if upon a marble pedestal. 1 Tell me, daughter of taste, what hath charmed thine ear in music ? Is it the labored theme, the curious fugue or cento — Nay— rather the sparkles of intelligence flashing from some strange note, Or the soft melody of sounds far sweeter for simplicity ? Tell me, thou son of science, what hath filled thy mind in reading ? Is it the volume of detail where all is orderly set down And they that read may run, nor need to stop and think ; The book carefully accurate, that counteth thee no better than a fool, Gorging the passive mind with annotated notes? — Nay— rather the half-suggested thoughts, the riddles thou mayst solve, The fair ideas, coyly peeping like young loves out of roses, The quaint arabesque conceptions, half-cherub and half- flower, The light analogy, or deep allusion, trusted to thy learn- ing, The confidence implied in thy skill to unravel meaning mysteries ! For ideas are ofttimes shy of the close furniture of words, And thought, wherein only is power, may be best conveyed by a suggestion : The flash that lighteth up a valley, amid the dark midnight of a storm, Cometh the mind with that scene sharper than fifty sum- The book of which this exquisite passage is a part, is called "proverbial philosophy." It is by Martin Farquhar Tupper, of Christ church, Oxford, and an American edition of it has lain in the bookstores for two years, wholly unsaleable ! It can afford to " bide its time," and mean-time, we shall enrich our readers with it, bit by bit. ARGUMENT FOR SEDAN CHAIRS. " Mr Editor : You stand accredited as the ready friend of luxurious elegance, the happy mingler of those foreign ingredients, the utile with the dulct. My dear sir, why have you never said a word in favor of the Sedan-chairs ? The very name carries one hack to the days of Pope and Addison ; to the routs, 782 EPHEMERA. and masquerades and Ranelagh of London, in the •reign of wits.' Even Cowper celebrates it: — " ' Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about In chariot and sedam, know no fatigue But that of idleness.' " It is an Italian seggietta ; and thus defined by an old writer : ' a kind of chaire used in Italy to carrie men and women up and downe.' It seems to have emigrated to London from Sedan, the birthplace of Turenne. Dryden used it for the lectica of the Ro- mans : — " ' Some beg for absent persons, feign them sick, Close mewed in their sedans for want of air, And for their wives present an empty chair.' •« Were you ever in one'? Then you will agree that it is as necessary in Broadway as a gondola in Venice. Think of Pope's ' two pages and a chair.' Our thousand and one idlers, who are too ragged to beg, and too poor to keep a cab, might flourish their poles to some purpose in front of St. Paul's — a better class of chairmen than some we wot of. — They need not have so heavy a load, nor so great a peril, as those who, according to Swift, helped in the Trojan horse: — " ' Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed, Tho^e bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do. Instead of paying chairmen, run them through.' " The new police would defend the glass from any roystering blood, who, as Prior sings : — " ' Breaks watchmen's heads and chairmen's glasses And thence proceeds to nicking sashes.' Opposition may be expected : there was such at the cab-epocha. But who can even name a cab, without ignominy. Think of a trundling box — a packing-case on wheels — surmounted by a top-heavy Milesian, enthroned on a remnant of Chatham-street-great-coat, forcing you along sidewise by a series of thumps, and then, with a paroxysm that tries every ball and socket, dumping you on the trottoir! Our semi-tropical climate demands a protection from the sun : some- thing emulating the oriental palanquin ; a parasol which shall preclude fatigue and dust, as well as sun- light — which shall transport the delicate woman with the gentlest conceivable carriage, and into the very hall of the stately mansion. What, prithee, can answer these conditions but the sedan-chair ? I al- ready see you in one, peering through the sky-blue curtain, as you swim through your evening survey. The corporation will at once adjust a bill of rates ; the thing is done. " Lunarius." " We have been but in one city where sedans were in use — Dublin. What struck us, in using them (and that is what the reader cares most to know, we pre- sume) was the being shut up where it was warm and dry, and let out where it was warm and dry. The sedan is a small close carriage — an easy chair en- closed by windows — carried on poles by two men. They come into your drawing-room if you wish, shut you up in a carriage by the fireside, and carry you, without the slightest jar or contact with out-of-doors, into the house where you are to dine or dance — no wet sidewalk and no gust of cold wind, snow, or rain ! They are cheaper than carriages because men are easier kept than horses, and as a sedan-chairman can also follow some other trade in the daytime, we should think it would be good economy to introduce them to New York. Many a delicate woman might then go to parties or theatres with a quarter of the present risk — to lungs or head-dress ! Prince's Gardens. — We have received an im- mense catalogue of the fruit-trees, plants, flowers, vines, and berries, comprised in this ark of vegetation at Flushing, and we should think from the account of Prince's gardens, and the prodigal variety of this catalogue, that the establishment would be better worth visiting than any object of curiosity in the neighborhood. It is now in the hands of the third generation of descendants from the original founder — no slight marvel of constancy of pursuit in this country ! But we have found a singular pleasure in this cata- logue — no less than a perfect feast upon the names and descriptions of the fruits and flowers ! It reads like a directory of some city of fairies, with a description of the fairy-citizens written out against their names. We can fancy a delightful visiting-list of people an- swering to these descriptions of fruits and flowers. Here are a few of the characters : — Different apples are described as — " flesh stained with red, perfumed;" "snow-white flesh, musky sweet ;" " fair, beautiful, pleasant flavor, sprightly ;" "tender, juicy, keeps well;" "remains juicy till late;" "red flesh, a curiosity," etc., etc. Different pears are described as — " rich, sugary, delicious aroma ;" " most splendid, extra delicious, none more estimable, grows vigorously, bears soon ;" " beautiful, aromatic, bears young, greatly esteemed ;" " rich, musky ;" " excellent, slow to yield fruit ;" " thin skin, sweet, very good ;" " new native variety, estimable, handsome;" "very large, skin shining, flesh crisp, agreeable flavor, excellent," &c. Different peaches are described as — " oval, splendid, luscious;" "estima- ble, foliage curled, peculiar ;" " waxen appearance, globular, delicious flavor," &c. Different grapes are described as — " large, estimable, vigorous;" "sweet, firm, thick skin, hangs long, monstrous clusters ;" " monstrous fox variety;" " Willis's large black ;" (?) " sprightly, pure for wine," etc. Different roses are called by name and described — "formidable red;" "glory of the reds;" "insurmountable beauty;" " new Dutch virgin's blush ;" " sombre agreeable ;" " Watson's blush;" " red prolific ;" " pale rose, deep centre;" "deep rose, very robust;" "bluish violet, superb, singular;" "bright pink, flaked with scarlet;*' "pubescent yellow flowering;" "white quilled;" "extra magnificent;" " splendid, full, double-shaded blush, monstrous size," etc., etc. Such names and definitions, of anything, were enough to bring one to Flushing, and Mr. Prince may look out for us very early in May, catalogue in hand, to see beauties he has described so glowingly ! We trust the list of adjectives we have put so venture- somely close together in our cool columns will not explode in type, with spontaneous combustion! Letters of Introduction. — The following query may be answered briefly enough by quoting only Eu- ropean usage, but the propriety of an American varia- tion occurs to us, and we will write a line on the sub- ject — first giving the suggestive note : — " Sir : My friend N., usually a well-informed, though rather an obstinate individual, is about to travel, and asked me for a letter of introduction to a friend abroad. The letter is written, and is submit- ted to his perusal, after which he hands it back to be sealed, insisting that the rule is inflexible that all let- ters should be sealed. I refuse to affix the wax, holding that a letter of introduction should be open. " We leave the question to your decision. As my friend N. can not sail until the question is decided, an early decision will oblige him and your humble ser- vant, " B." With very ceremonious people, and ceremonious notes of introduction, it is usual to affix a seal upon the outside of the letter, leaving it to be read and EPHEMERA. 783 fastened by the bearer, before delivery. If the let- ter extends beyond the mere stating of who the bearer is, and the desire that he should be kindly re- ceived, or if it treats of other matters, it is given sealed. Either mode is perfectly allowable, for if the bearer objects to a sealed letter, he can ask the con- tents when he receives it. It is more common, how- ever, to give it unsealed. Briefly, now, to the point we are coming to : let- ters of introduction, in this country, should be ad- dressed to the women and not to the men, and should go more into details of what the bearer is and what is his errand of travel, and therefore should be sealed. We have long been aware of a prevailing impression that Americans treat letters of introduction with a very uncivilized inattention, and so they do — because the etiqnetical and hospitable cares of American families are in charge of the icife, and the husband is very likely to stick the letter into a pigeon-hole of his desk, and forget all about it. The wife in America does all the ornamental. To see a rich man come down the steps of his own house (almost anywhere "up town") you would take him to be a tradesman who had been in to collect a bill. To see the wife follow, you would at once acknowledge that she looked as though she lived in the house, and fancy that she was probably an- noyed to see that man pass out by the front door ! From making himself a slave to keep his wife a god- dess, the American loses all idea of the propriety of looking like a mate for his wife, and he unconsciously ceases to take any care of the civilities to which his own manners give so little value, and neglects all persons who have not had the tact to be presented first to the ornamental moiety. It should be an American usage, therefore, crowing out of the inferi- ority of the husband's breeding to the wife's, that let- ters of introduction should be addressed to the woman. Of course, as she has no opportunity to inquire into the bearer's position or habits, these should be more minutely set down, and the letter should he sealed. | character of the ' ten thousand other workies' whom Mr. Willis ' could name.' Some think that he means to be witty, and alludes ironically to the "up- i per teny This is a great mystery. "The constituent elements of ' japonica-dom' and 'dandy-dom' may be seen daily in Broadway, between the hours of twelve and three. All the beauty above Bleecker street wanders at that time down as far as the Park, hazarding even the contamination of the i vulgar crowd, in the hope of securing an appetite for (dinner. The liveried lacqueys, who oscillate upon a black board behind the carriages of our republican nabobs, sport their gayest trappings: I had the pleas- ure of seeing one yesterday in a drab ' cut-away' with gold lace and yellow facings, and white silk stockings with purple velvet smalls! What is this great coun- try coming to ? We Gothamites do sometimes make ourselves ridiculous, by aping what as a people we profess to despise. It is rumored that a deputation of English 'small-potato' baronets may be expected in this city next summer; and that the object of their transatlantic mission is, to establish an aristocratic nucleus among our '■upper ten thousand.' A 'her- ald's college' has already been set on foot; and I have heard that it enjoys considerable patronage. It is proposed to build wings on either side of ' the up-town opera-house' — the one to be assigned to this ' herald's college,' and the other to the 'university of fashion,' of which Mr. Willis is to be president. Some say j that Colonel Webb has applied for the vice-presiden- cy, but I can not vouch for this. I "The chief feature of the Broadway Journal is a ! defence by Mr. Poe of his attack upon Longfellow, &c. It is as stupid as might be expected from a man who used to 'do up' such very small prosodial criti cisms for Graham's Magazine. Mr. Poe comes down rather severely on Willis — he therefore has probably discontinued his services at the Mirror office." One mistake in the above : Mr. Poe left us some time before writing in the Broadway Journal, and to edit that journal ; and he never offended us by a criti- cism, nor could he, except by personalities, in which he never indulges. " Findings." — We see advertised continually cer- tain commodities called "findings," which we under- stand are what hatters and shoemakers require be- sides peltry and leather. There are findings for newspapers, too — what the editors require besides leaders and news — and it may gratify our subscribers to know, that out of the weary slip-slop which we commonly scribble after making up the Mirror's lead- ers and news, our contemporaries supply themselves with the greater part of their ornamental " findings." Like every other editor, we are in the habit of giving a line or two occasionally, in the body of our paper, to the wares of our most liberal advertisers, and it ap- pears that even this wastage of business notices is considered spice enough for other papers to be sea- soned with. The Boston Transcript spices its little sheet very often with these parings of our daily apple. Here is part of a letter which contains a touch : — "The leading articles in the Mirror and Commer- cial Advertiser for the last day or two have been de- voted to the all-engrossing topic, the spring style of hats. After admitting that ' knowingness could no further go' than Beebe & Costar went, Willis winds up thus : ' For ourself and ten thousand other workies whom we could name, the sadder model of Orlando Fish — timid, proper, and thoughtful — is perhaps more appropriate.' This passage has produced a great sensation in dandy-dom. The Fish party are in rap- tures, and could hug Willis to their very bosoms; •the opposition' is in a fury. Nobody can tell what the result may be. Willis dare not venture out, it is thought without a body-guard of Fishites. There! are. moreover, manv surmises with regard to the ' Schiller and Goethe.— Mr. Calvert of Balti- more has given us, as translator, a most agreeable collection of gossippy letters— the undress of two great minds, of the age just closed behind us. What we most wish to comment on, however (the book speaks for itself), i3 Mr. Calvert's own— the preface, in which he indignantly and most properly rebukes the last orator of the " Phi Beta Kappa Society," for a short-sighted and illiberal attack on the memory of Goethe. We found it difficult, at the time, to restrain an outbreak of disgust, but the oration was not pub- lished for some time, and we were unwilling to take ground upon a newspaper report of it. Meantime, our natural alacrity at forgetting disagreeable things dropped it out of memory. We are not sorry that a condemnation of it is now recorded in a book that must live. Mr. Calvert puts the truth thus forcibly : " How i little outward testimony survives about Shakspere ; but whoso can read his poetry, may get a knowledge i of the man surer and more absolute than could have j been gotten even from the fullest contemporaneous opin- ions. As the tree is known by its fruit, we know that the parent of the Shaksperian progeny must have been a man in whom, in close alliance with a kingly intellect dwelt, as well the virtues that ennoble, as the graces that beautify and the affections that sweeten life. Into whatever errors an ardent temperament may have drawn him, they dim not the lucent image of him, fixed in our minds by study of his works; nav. we' presume not to with them uncommitted, test 784 EPHEMERA. an attempt to better such a bounteous gift from God, should mar, but by a tittle, the original proportions of one, the sum of ivhose life has been to the world an un- measurable benefaction. When a bad man's brain shall give birth to an Iphiginea, a Clara, a Mignon, you may pluck pomegranates from Plymouth rock, and reap corn on the sands of Sahara. "On a formal public occasion (the Phi Beta Kap- pa oration at Cambridge in 1844), a blind and most rude assault has been made on one of the mightiest of the dead, whose soul lives on earth, and will for ages live in the exaltation of the loftiest minds. Out of stale German gossip, out of shallmo waitings of prosaic critics, shallower clamors of pseudo- patriots, uncharitable magnification of common failings, were compounded calumny against one of the fore- most men of the world, and the most honored man of a people rich in virtue and genius." Quite aside from the defence of Goethe, we think there is an obvious presentment here of the continual manner of treating all kinds of eminence and celeb- rity, here, in our own country, and at this present hour. As the proverb says : — " Thankfully take refuge in obscurity, For, if thou claimest merit, thy sin shall be proclaimed upon the housetops ! Consider them of old, the great, the good, the learned ; Did those speed in favor ? were they loved and admired? Was every prophet had in honor ? and every deserving one remembered to his praise? It were weariness to count up noble names neglected in their lives, The scorned, defamed, insulted, but the excellent of the earth. For good men are the health of the world, valued only when it perisheth. Living genius is seen among infirmities wherefrom the com- moner are free, And there be many cares, and man knoweth little of his brother .' Feebly we appreciate a motive, and slowly keep pace with a feeling. Yet, once more, griever at neglect, hear me to thy comfort : Neglect ? O libel on a world, where half that world is woman ! No man yet deserved, who found not some to love him ! O, woman ! self-forgetting woman ! poetry of human life ! Many a word of comfort, many a deed of magnanimity, Many a stream of milk and honey pour ye freely on the earth I" Stewart's Stable Economy. — We covet three things in the Arab's condition — his loose trousers, his country without fences, and his freedom to live with his horse. That we have once had the centaur variety in the human race, men-quadrupeds, and have once known horseflesh as "flesh of our flesh," the natural longing to prance, when we first get into the open air after long confinement, is but one of many evidences. In a mere notice of a book, however, we have no leisure to trace back a problem of physiology. We merely wish to convey to such of our enviable readers as can resume the centaur (by loving and living with a horse in the country), the treasure they have in a book which shows them how to make their life (the horse half of it) a luxury instead of an endurance, and to give our own five years' enjoyment in breaking, petting, and improving horses, by aid of this same book, as expe- rienced commendation. We had the English edition of Stewart's books on horses, but the Appletons have republished the " Stable Economy," with " notes adapting it to American food and climate," by Mr. Allen, the able editor of the Agriculturist, and it is now an invaluable vade-mecum, for all men who have the luxury of a stable. We can not help repeating that a visitable stable, with friends in it in the shape of horses— with horses in it one has himself broken and trained— a stable to which the ladies like to go after breakfast, and where a gentleman can throw on his own saddle and bridle, and gallop off", without needing first to find his groom that this is the next best luxury our country affords, after ladies' society. (Horses, that is to say, before politics or stocks, under male discussion.) The stable at Gordon castle (approachable by a covered passage, from the principal hall) was a fre- quent resort for the ladies after breakfast ; and we have seen women, the highest in rank at the English court, going in and out of the stalls, patting the favor- ites they were to ride later in the day, and discussing their beauty with the simplicity and frankness of Arabs in the desert. While we are building country- houses and forming habits in America, it is well to know all the luxury we can enjoy in rural life, and no one should build stable, or own horse, without con- sulting the excellent directions for stabling and using the horse, in this book of Stewart's. Grund's Letters from Europe. — In Godey's Lady's Book for April we find one of these best epistles of the day, and (to tell the truth) we read them with very little satisfaction, for they leave us with a want to go where they are written. The April number of Godey is principally the work of unwedded quills (no less than ten misses numbered among the contributors !), but we have read it with great satis- faction, and felicitate our old friend upon the bril- liancy of his maiden troop. Godey is the pioneer of magazines, and he has a tact at collection and selec- tion, which has put him where he is — safe at high- water mark in enduring prosperity. Success to him. By-the-way — though we have no room to expatiate on the several papers in this number — the " Sketch of Joseph Bonaparte" is capital. Is that by a " miss" too? And apropos, Godey ! What a vile word " miss" is, to express the sweetest thing in nature! Why should the idol of mankind be called a "miss?" Why should the charming word heifer be degraded to the use of kine? We say "degraded," for it once served ladies as a synonym for the proudest of virgin sweethearts. Ben Jonson, in his play of the "Silent Woman," thus writes a speech for his hero : — " But heare me, faire lady, I do also love her whom I shall choose for my heifer, to be the first and prin- cipal in all fashions." The derivation of the word heifer is so complimen- tary ! It comes from two Anglo-Saxon words, which signify "to step superbly," as a young creature who has borne no burthens. With this explanation, we trust our friend Godey will no longer hesitate to ad- vertise his fair contributors as the bright lights of heiferdom — disusing henceforth, forever, the dispar- aging epithet of misses. LETTER FROM THE EDITOR'S ROOM. New York, Friday, March 21. To a lady-friend in the country : I am up to the knees in newspapers, and write to you under the stare of nine pigeon-holes, stuffed with literary portent. Were there such a thing (in this world of everythings) as papyral magnetism, you would get a letter, not only typical in itself, but typical of a flood in which my identity is fast drowning. Oh, the drown of news, weighed unceasingly — little events and great ones — against little more than the trouble of snipping round with scissors ! To a horrid death — to a miraculous preservation — to a heart-gush of poesy — to a marriage — to a crime — to the turn of a political crisis — to flashing wit and storied agonies — giving but the one EPHEMERA. 785 invariable first thought—" Shall I cut it out ?" Alas, dear beauty-monarch of all you survey ! — your own obituary, were I to read it in a newspaper of to-mor- row, would speak scarce quicker to my heart than to those scissors of undiscriminating circum-cision ! With the knowledge that the sky above me was en- riched, as Florence once was, by the return of its long-lost and best model of beauty, I should ask, with be-paragraphed grief — "will her death do for the Mirror ?" But you are alive to laugh at me — alive to be (is your lip all ready for a curl ?) the "straw" for me, drowning, to catch at ! I write to you, to-day, to vary routine ! Happy they who can see but one face when they write ! 1 am trying hard to see only yours — trying hard, by mental recapitulation of eyes like fringed inkstands, passionate nostrils, and chin of in- domitable calm, to forget the vague features of my many-nosed public. Oh, the dread loss of one-at-a- time-ativeness ! Oh, the exile to the sad land of nominative plural! Oh, the unprized luxury of see- ing but little, and seeing that little for yourself! But — this is a letter from town, and you want the gossip. Spring is here — getting ready to go into the country. The dust and shutter-banging of the tem- pestuous equinox, have, for three days, banished the damageables from Broadway, and I know not the complexion of the spring fashions, now four days old. I was in a gay circle last night where some things were talked of — hm ! — let me remember — Mrs. Mow- att's forthcoming comedy was one topic. Do you know this Corinne of the temperate latitudes? An exact copy, in marble, of her neck and head, would show you a Sapphic bust of most meaning and clear- lined beauty, and there is inspiration in the color of her living eyes and in the prodigal abundance of her floral hair. All this beauty she wastes and thinks nothing of — busied only with the lining of a head, which some tropical angel fashioned as he would have turned out a magnolia. She has genius, and her lamp burns within. But it takes more than genius to write comedy, and more than beauty (though it should not) to give it success, and I tremble for the lovely dramatist. The excitement about it is great — the actors all like their roles — the stage-manager says it is good — the public are wishing to be pleased and will flock to the experiment — and with all my heart, I pray for a "house" continually "brought down." I enclose you a sketch of the plot from the New World of this morning : — " The subject is well chosen. Fashion — that is, the eifort to show off dazzlingly in society — is, in this country, a fact of sufficient body and consistence to afford material for an original comedy — and the inci- dents and peculiarities of manner and character at- tending; the effort, are often abundantly ludicrous and grotesque to make the comedy laughable. The 'glass of fashion,' held fairly up in New York, will show some amusing scenes, quite new to the stage. "The characters of the piece are selected and group- ed, we think, with character and judgment. An un- educated woman of fashion, driving her husband into dishonesty and crime by her crime and extravagance — a pretended French count, who knows, at least, all the police courts of Europe very thoroughly — a clever French waiting maid, who finds in the said count an old acquaintance — a negro valet of all work rejoicing in a scarlet livery, and much inclined to grandilo- quence — a rich old farmer, from Cattaraugus, carry- ing the moral of the piece, and no small part of its humor, stoutly on upon his broad shoulders — a Fanny- Forester-like country girl, transplanted into the city from Geneva, to work out the plot, and get the good luck of the catastrophe — these are the main person- ages. An old maid — a small poet — a solemn dandy, styled Fogg — a confidential clerk called Snobson, and 50 clearly belonging to the large family of Snobs— a walk- ing gentleman, and a young coquette, are thrown in as make-weights. Here is certainly a goodly drama- tic array. "The dialogue is written with taste and spirit. It has few passages of what is called ' fine writing,' but it embodies enough of wit, and fancy, and observa- tion, to keep the attention of the reader constantly and pleasurably excited. A riged criticism, resolved upon fault-finding, might say that the conclusion of this piece is too clearly apparent from its commencement, and that the action moves too slowly through the first three acts. But admitting all this, the comedy certainly has great merit, and, if well brought out, will have a run. We believe that its first night will be greeted by a large audience, and we most cotdially bespeak for it the favorable consideration to which it is, in every regard, entitled." Forrest's fate among the London Philistines is another matter of chat. The Macready critics are down upon him — Foster of the Examiner, Macready's bull-dog, heaviest and foremost. This was to have been expected, of course. The gravelly bottom of Macready's throat has been forced upon the English, for so long, as the only sarcophagus of Shakspere, that the bringing of the dry bones to life, in an open mouth, and the marring of the sexton's vocation, was not submitted to without a grumble. An English critic predicts that Forrest "will play down the grum- blers yet," and I trust he will do so. He is the kind of man to say with old Chapman : — " Give me the spirit that on life's rough sea Would have his sails filled with lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air." He is twenty times the man, and the actor, that Mac- ready is, and the English will find out his mark if he stay long enough. Meantime they are enchanted with Miss Cushman, who, the Examiner says, is a " feminized caricature of Macready's physiognomy." I like her, by the way, and rejoice in her success as much as I wish a better appreciation of Forrest. What else shall I tell you? The Mirror's won- drous " rise and progress," profitably and firmly seated, after less than six months of industrious existence, is a marvel that even your beauty may rejoice in — for it will bring me to your feet (by paying the expenses of transit) when the summer comes over us. Where are you going to Baden it this summer? At Sara- toga? 1 like that place, because you can there, and there alone, be an island in a sea of people. Where there are fewer, you are added to the continent of sociability, and have no privileges. Shall we say the last week in August ? Bottom of the page. Scarce room to write my- self Yours - An Idea fob Tattersall's.— There are luxuries which rich men forego, not for the money but for the mind they cost. Hundreds of people in this city for instance, could very well afford a carriage, but they can not afford the trouble of buying horses, the care of looking after grooms, nor the anxieties inseparable from horse-owning in this country of perpetual new servants. In England this want is provided for by the system the livery-stable keepers call jobbing. Lady Blessiugton-s two or three different equipages for in- stance, are allowed to be the prettiest and best ap- pointed in London. Yet she owns ne.ther carnages, horses, nor harness. She pays a certa.n sum per annum to be provided with what she wants in the way of equipages, and keeps only her own coachman 786 EPHEMERA. and footmen. A new carriage is furnished whenever wanted, and of whatever style is wanted (the jobber finding no trouble probably in disposing of the one given up) and a sick or lame horse is replaced imme- diately from a stable where the first blood and shape are alone kept. Her ladyship thus knows precisely what her driving is to cost her for the year, and transfers to the jobber all the risk, anxiety, and trouble. A wealthy New-Yorker, a day or two since, made a very handsome offer to a livery-stable keeper to furnish him a carriage on this same plan, and the of- fer was refused. But, though a single customer of this kind might be troublesome, combination (that great secret of luxurious economies) might " make it an- swer." Twenty nice carriages, let out to private gentlemen at $1,000, or Si, 500 a year each, might be looked after by one jobber well versed in horseflesh, and his taste and experience would turn out better equipages than could be got up by private individuals. The twenty stables now kept up would be combined in one (this in itself, no small saving) and the rich man might be driven in better style, for less money than it now costs him, and — better than all — without the vexatious care, vigilance and anxiety of keeping a private carriage. P. S. We can safely say that we are entirely disin- terested in the proposed arrangement ! Graham for April. — The equinox brought us such detestable weather, that instead of our usual two hours' airing of brains under a hat, we lay on our back yesterday afternoon and read "Graham." How does the man get so many good things! Grund, Fanny Forester, Mrs. C. H. Butler, Win. Lander, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Osgood, Mr. Peterson — all have written their best for this number. Our friend Fanny's story of "Nickie Ben" seems to us particularly fresh, bright, and original. Mr. Grund's letter from Paris is full of intelligence, and among other things, he thus speaks of Eugene Sue and his two tasters : — "He lives now, by the product of his industry, in princely style ; but his enjoyments are troubled by the constant fear of being poisoned by his political and religious adversaries. He has, therefore, con- tracted an intimate friendship with two large, beautiful Newfoundland dogs, who are his constant dinner and breakfast companions, and who always eat first of every dish that is brought on the table. If these judges of gastronomy pronounce in favor of it, by first eating a large quantity, with apparent relish, the author of " The Mysteries" and " The Wandering Jew" him- self partakes of it without farther scruple. He be- lieves dogs much more faithful than men, and the sagacious instincts of a regular Newfoundlander su- perior to the science of chymists and physicians." Poor dogs ! Considering that they would doubtless have been wagging iheir tails in Paradise, but for Adam's transgression, it seems hard to make them die, for a human master, besides! But, to turn to the first leaf— lo! the brigadier ! There he stands, looking as amiable as if he had just nabbed a flying thought for a song, his smile a little more rigid, however, and his phiz a little thinner than his accommodating wont. The picture is enough like him, notwithstanding, for all " business purposes." We think him better looking than the artist has '■'done" him, and this we request the ladies (who sing his songs) to allow for. The magazine opens with a critical biography, exceedingly well done, and (the brigadier below stairs playing salesman) we see noth- ing to prevent our quoting a note of our own to the writer : — New York, Feb. J, 1845. My Dear Sir: To ask me for my idea of General Morris is like asking the left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the " brigadier," known him so intimately, worked so con- stantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance — hard to shut my own par- tial eyes, and look at him through other people's. I will try, however, and as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill of my ceaseless vocation, you will excuse both abruptness and brevity. Morris is the best known poet of the country by acclamation, not by criticism. He is just what poets would be if they sung, like birds, without criticism ; and it is a peculiarity of bis fame, that it seems as regardless of criticism as a bird in the air. Nothing can stop a song of his. It is very easy to say that they are easy to do. They have a momentum, some- how, that is difficult for others to give, and that speeds them to the far goal of popularity — the best proof consisting in the fact that he can, at any moment, get fifty dollars for a song, unread, when the whole remainder of the American Parnassus could not sell one to the same buyer for a shilling. It may, or may not, be one secret of his popularity, but it is a truth — that Morris's heart is at the level of most other people's, and his poetry flows out by that door. He stands breast high in the common stream of sympathy, and the fine oil of his poetic feeling goes from him upon an element it is its nature to float upon, and which carries it safe to other bosoms, with little need of deep diving or high flying. His senti- ments are simple, honest, truthful, and familiar; his language is pure and eminently musical, and he is prodigally full of the poetry of everyday feeling. These are days when poets try experiments ; and while others succeed by taking the world's breath away with flights and plunges, Morris uses his feet to walk quietly with nature. Ninety-nine people in a hundred, taken as they come in the census, would find more to admire in Morris's songs than in the writings of any other American poet ; and that is a parish in the poetical episcopate, well worthy a wise man's nur- ture and prizing. As to the man — Morris my friend — I can hardly venture to "burn incense on his mustache," as the French say — write his praises under his very nose — but, as far off as Philadelphia, you may pay the prop- er tribute to his loyal nature and manly excellences. His persona) qualities have made him universally pop- ular, but this overflow upon the world does not impov- erish him for his friends. I have outlined a true poet, and a fine fellow — fill up the picture to your liking. Yours, very truly, N. P. Willis. We get, from literary fledglings, at least one letter per diem, requesting detailed advice on the quo modo of a first flight in prose or poesy. We really suppose we have, or are to have, an end to our life, and we like to economise time. So we publish a letter, which we once had occasion to write, and which must serve as a circular — a letter which we recorded in our diary when it was written — recorded with the following preface : — There lies before me now, upon my table, a letter of three tolerably compact pages, addressed to a young gentleman of college, who is " bit by the dipsas" of authorship. His mother, a sensible, plain, farmer's widow, chanced to be my companion for a couple of days, in a stage-coach, and while creeping over the mountains between the Hudson and the Sus- quehannah, she paid my common sense the compli- EPHEMERA. 787 ment of unburthening a very stout heart to me. Since her husband's death, she has herself managed the farm, and by active, personal oversight, has con- trived •« to make both ends so far lap" (to use her own expression), as to keep her only boy at college. By her description, he is a slenderish lad in his constitu- tion, fond of poetry, and bent on trying his fortune with his pen, as soon as he has closed his thumb and finger on his degree. The good dame wished for the best advice I could give him on the subject, leaving it to me (after producing a piece of his poetry from her pocket, published in one of the city papers) to en- courage or dissuade. I apprehended a troublesome job of it, but after a very genial conversation (on the subject of raising turkeys, in which she quite agreed i with me, that they were cheaper bought than raised, when corn was fifty cents a bushel — greedy gobblers !), I reverted to the topic of poetry, and promised to write the inspired sophomore my views as to his pros- pects. Need I record it ? — that long letter affects me j like an unsigned bank-note — like something which might so easily have been money — like a leak in the beer-barrel— like a hole in the meal-bag! It irks me to lose them — three fair pages— a league's drift to lee- ward — a mortal morning's work, and no odor lucri thence arising ! I can not stand it, Mrs. , and | Mr. Sophomore ! You are welcome to the autograph copy, but faith ! I must print it. There is a superfluity of adjectives (intended, as it was, for private perusal), but I will leave them out in the copy. Thus runs the letter: — Dear Sir: You will probably not recognise the handwriting in which you are addressed, but by cast- ing your eye to the conclusion of the letter, you will see that it comes from an old stager in periodical lit- erature; and of that, as a profession, I am requested by your mother to give you, as she phrases it, " the cost and yield." You will allow what right you please to my opinions, and it is only with the authority of having lived by the pen, that I pretend to offer any hints on the subject for your guidance. As "the farm" can afford you nothing beyond your education, you will excuse me for presuming that you need in- formation mainly as to the livelihood to be got from literature. Your mother thinks it is a poor market for pota- toes, where potatoes are to be had for nothing, and that is simply the condition of American literature (as protected by law). The contributors to the numer- ous periodicals of England, are the picked men of thousands— the accepted of hosts rejected— the flower of a highly-educated and refined people— soldiers, sailors, lords, ladies, and lawyers — all at leisure, all anxious to turn a penny, all ambitious of print and profit ; and this great army, in addition to the hun- dreds urged by need and pure literary zeal — this great army, I say, are before you in the market, offering their wares to your natural customer, at a price for which you can not afford to sell — nothing ! It is true that by this state of the literary market, you have fewer competitors among your countrymen — the best talent of the country being driven, by necessity, into less congenial and more profitable pursuits ; but even with this advantage (none but doomed authors in the field) you would probably find it difficult, within five years after you graduated, to convert your best piece of poetry into a genuine dollar. I allow you, at the same time, full credit for your undoubted genius. You naturally inquire how American authors live. I answer, by being English authors. There is no American author who lives by his pen, for whom Lon- don is not the chief market. Those whose books sell only in this country, make scarce the wages of a day- laborer — always excepting religious writers, and the authors of school-books, and such works as owe their popularity to extrinsic causes. To begin on leaving college, with legitimate book-making — writing novels, tales, volumes of poetry, &c, you must have at least five years support from some other source, for until you get a name, nothing you could write would pay "board and lodging;" and "getting a name" in America, implies having first got a name in England. Then we have almost no professed, mere authors. They have vocations of some other character, "also. Men like Dana, Bryant, Sprague, Halleck, Kennedy, Wetmore, though, no doubt, it is the first wish of their hearts to devote all their time to literature, are kept, by our atrocious laws of copyright, in paths less honorable to their country, but more profitable to themselves, and by far the greatest number of discour- aged authors are " broken on the wheel" of the pub- lic press. Gales, Walsh, Chandler, Buckingham, and other editors of that stamp, are men driven aside from authorship, their proper vocation. Periodical writing seems the natural novitiate to literary fame in our country, and I understand from your mother that through this lies your choseji way. I must try to give you as clear an idea as possible of the length and breadth of it, and perhaps I can best do so by contrasting it with another career, which (if advice were not always useless) I should sooner advise. Your mother's farm, then, consisting of near a hun- dred acres, gives a net produce of about five hundred dollars a year — hands paid, I mean, and seed, wear and i tear of tools, team, &c, first subtracted. She has lived as comfortable as usual for the last three or four I years, and still contrived to lay by the two hundred and fifty dollars expended annually on your educa- tion. Were you at home, your own labor and over- sight would add rather more than two hundred dollars to the income, and with good luck you might call | yourself a farmer with five hundred dollars, as the I Irish say, "to the fore." Your vocation, at the same ;| time, is dignified, and such as would reflect favorably | j on your reputation, should you hereafter become in j any way eminent. During six months in the year, you would scarce find more than an hour or two in the twenty-four to spare from sleep or labor; but in the winter months, with every necessary attention to your affairs out of doors, still find as much leisure for study and composition as most literary men devote to those purposes. I say nothing of the pabuluin of rural influences on your mind, but will just hint at another incidental advantage you may not have thought of. viz. : that the public show much more alacrity in crowning an author, if he does not make bread and butter of the laurels ! In other words, if you are a farmer, you are supposed (by a world not very brilliant in its conclusions) to expend the most of your mental energies (as they do) in making your living; and your literature goes for an "aside"— waste-water, as the millers phrase it— a very material premise in both criticism and public estimation. At your age, the above picture would have been thrown away on myself, and I presume (inviting as it seems to my world-weary eyes) it is thrown away now upon you. I shall therefore try to present to you the lights and shadows of the picture which seem to you more attractive. Your first step will be to select New York as the city which is to be illustrated by your residence, and to commence a search after some literary occupation. You have a volume of poetry which has been returned to you by your " literary agent," with a heavy charge for procuring the refusal of every pubhsher to under- take it, and with your pride quite taken out of you, vou are willing to devote your Latin and Greek, your acquaintance with prosody and punctuation, and a very middling proficiency in chicography (no offence— your mother showed me your autograph list ot bills for the winter term)— all this store of accomplishment 788 EPHEMERA. you offer to employ for a trifle besides meat, lodging, and apparel. These, you say, are surely moderate expectations for an educated man, and such wares, so cheap, must find a ready market. Of such stuff, you know that editors are made, and in the hope of finding a vacant editorial chair, you pocket your MSS., and commence inquiry. At the end of the mouth, you begin to think yourself the one person on earth for whom there seems no room. There is no editor wanted, no sub-editor wanted, no reporter, no proof- reader, no poet ! There are passable paragraphists by scores— educated young men, of every kind, of prom- ising talent, who, for twenty dollars a month, would joyfully do twice what you propose— give twice as much time, and furnish twice as much "copy." But as you design, of course, to "go into society," and gatner your laurels as they blossom, you can not see your way very clearly with less than a hay- maker's wages. You proceed with your inquiries, however, and are, at last, quite convinced that few things are more difficult than to coin uncelebrated brains into current money — that the avenues for the employment of the head, only, are emulously crowd- ed — that there are many more than you had supposed who have the same object as yourself, and that, what- ever fame may be in its meridian and close, its morn- ing is mortification and starvation. The "small end of the horn" has a hole in it, how- ever, and the bitter stage of experience T have just described, might be omitted in your history, if, by any other means, you could be made small enough to go in. The most considerable diminution of size, per- haps, is the getting rid, for the time, of all idea of "living like a gentleman" (according to the common acceptation of the phrase). To be willing to satisfy hunger in any clean and honest way, to sleep in any clean and honest place, and to wear anything clean and honestly paid for, are phases of the crescent moon of fame, not very prominently hud down in our imaginary chart; but they are, nevertheless, the first indication of that moon's waxing. I see by the advertisements, that there are facilities now for cheap living, which did not exist "when George the Third was king." A dinner (of beef, bread, and potatoes, with a bottle of wine) is offered, by an advertiser, of the savory name of G for a shilling, and a breakfast, most invi- tingly described, is offered for sixpence. I have no doubt a lodging might be procured at the same mod- est rate of charge. " Society" does not move on this plane, it is true, but society is not worth seeking at any great cost, while you are obscure, and if you'll wait till the first moment when it would be agreeable (the moment when it thinks it worth while to caress you), it will come to you, like Mohammed to the moun- tain. And like the mountain's moving to Mohammed, you will find any premature ambition on the subject. Giving up the expectation of finding employment suited to your taste, you will, of course, be " open to offers," and I should counsel you to take any that would pay, which did not positively shut the door upon literature. At the same wages you had better direct covers in a newspaper office, than contribute original matter which costs you thought, yet is not appreciated ; and in fact, as I said before with refer- ence to farming, a subsistence not directly obtained by brain-work, is a material advantage to an author. Eight hours of mere mechanical copying, and two hours of leisurely composition, will tire you less, and produce more for your reputation than twelve hours of intellectual drudgery. The publishers and book- sellers have a good deal of work for educated men — proof-reading, compiling, corresponding, &c, and this is a good step to higher occupation. As you moder- ate your wants, of course you enlarge your chances for employment. Getting up in the world is like walking through a mist — your way opens as you get on. I should say, that with tolerable good fortune, you might make by your pen, two hundred dollars the first year, and in- crease your income a hundred dollars annually, for "^ five years. This, as a literary "operative." After that period, you would either remain" stationary, a mere " workey," or your genius would discover "by the dip of the divining rod," where, in the well- searched bowels of literature, lay an unworked vein of ore. In the latter case, you would draw that one prize in a thousand blanks of which the other com- petitors in the lottery of fame feel as sure as yourself. As a "stock" or "starring" player upon the liter- ary stage, of course you desire a crowded audience, and it is worth your while, perhaps, to inquire (more curiously than is laid down in most advices to authors) what is the number and influence of the judicious, and what nuts it is politic to throw to the groundlings. Abuse is, in criticism, what shade is in a picture, dis- cord in harmony, acid in punch, salt in seasoning. Unqualified praise is the death of Tarpeia. and to be neither praised nor abused is more than death — it is inanition. Query — how to procure yourself to be abused ? In your chymical course next year, you will probably give a morning's attention to the analysis of the pearl, among other precious substances, and you will be told by the professor, that it is the consequence of an excess of carbonate of lime in the flesh of the oyster — in other words, the disease of the sub-aque- ous animal who produces it. Now, to copy this poli- tic invalid — to learn wisdom of an oyster — find out what is the most pungent disease of your style, and hug it 'till it becomes a pearl. A fault carefully studied is the germ of a peculiarity, and a peculiarity is a pearl of great price to an author. The critics begin very justly by hammering at it as a fault, and after it is polished into a peculiarity, they still ham- mer at it as a fault, and the noise they make attracts attention to the pearl, and up you come from the deep sea of obscurity, not the less intoxicated with the sun- shine, because, but for your disease, you would never have seen it. With one more very plain piece of counsel, I have done. Never take the note of any man connected with literature, if he will cash it for fifty per cent. Breakfasts and the Quarterly. — Mr. Lock- hart can never do harm except indirectly. His asser- tions and his criticisms are taken with more than the "grain of salt." Mr. Cooper may have a private quarrel with him for some of his ungentlemanly phraseology, but for the literary part of the criticism on " England," it will stand in the place of a good ad- vertisement to the book, and there ends all its good and evil. In the following passage, however, a blow (most unwise and most injurious) is struck at one of the pleasantest usages of English hospitality : — " We suspect that Mr. Cooper will not think Mr. Rogers's breakfasts quite so admirable, nor the other twenty so transcendantly agreeable, when he learns that it is by no means usual to invite strangers to breakfast in London, and that such breakfasts are generally given when the guest is one about whose manners, character, or social position, there is some uncertainty — a breakfast is a kind of mezzo-termine, between a mere visit and the more intimate hospitality of a dinner. It is, as it were, a state of probation." — Quarterly Review for October. As the great organ of the tory party in England, the Quarterly might fairly be taken by a foreigner as an authority upon a point of English manners. The consequence follows, that he can not be invited to break- fast without fair ground to presume it an insult. Shots have been exchanged upon slighter ground. At the EPHEMERA. 789 best, a suspicion is thrown upon this mode of hospi- tality which deprives it entirely of its easy and confi- dential character; and that it is an injury to society which could only be corrected by the publication of a correct portrait of Mr. Lockhart. No one after seeing it would credit any assertion he might make upon a subject involving a knowledge of good-fellow- ship. The editor of the Quarterly looks his vocation bet- ter than any man it has been my fortune to see. In his gait and voice there is a feline resemblance which is remarkable. It is impossible for a human being to be more like a cat. To aid the likeness, he is slightly parry-toed, and when you see him creeping along Pall Mall on his way to the club, you can not avoid the impression that he is mousing. In his person he is extremely thin, and, but for his mouth, Lockhart would look like a gentleman. In that feature lies a whole epitome of the man. The lips are short, and of barely the thickness of the skin, and habitually drawn in close against the teeth. To this feature, which resembles somewhat the mouth of a small purse, all the countenance seems subordinate. The contraction pulls upon every muscle of his face, and upon every muscle is stamped the malice of which his mouth is the living and most legible type. This description of the man is very apropos of his opinions of breakfast. I presume he was never asked to an unceremonious breakfast in his life. Would any one in his senses begin his day by sitting down opposite to such a face for a couple of hours ? Not willingly, I should think. I presume every Englishman except the editor of the Quarterly will agree that to ask a stranger to breakfast is much more flattering than to invite him to dinner. Engagements to breakfast, indeed, are almost always made at dinner. The reply to a letter of introduction is usually a card and an invitation to dine. If your host is pleased with you, nothing is more common than for him to say at parting, " You have been so engrossed that I have scarce spoken to you — come and breakfast with me to-morrow at nine." You accept, and you improve on acquaintance into a friend. In a snug library, all ceremony put off, the mind tranquil and sincere, you enter upon a different class of subjects, more familiar, more confidential. The attention of your host is more undivided, and your conversation leads you to make engagements for the day, or the evening ; and thus a man with whom you might have discussed the corn-laws or the new opera, forty times, across the glare of a dinner-table, and only known at last as a talker of commonplaces, becomes a pleasant friend, perhaps an intimate com- panion. I have not the Quarterly Review by me at this mo- ment, but, if I do not mistake, the breakfasts with the poet Rogers, described by Mr. Cooper, furnish the text for Mr. Lockhart's " new light" upon this sub- ject. I am happy to have it in my power to set our countrymen right upon the estimation in which Cooper is held by that polished and venerable amphyt- rion. It was kindly and complimentarily done of Mr. Rogers to talk a great deal of a compatriot, of whose talents he justly supposed every American should be proud. I was enjoying (according to Mr. Lockhart) the equivocal honor of breakfast- ing with him — an honor which, questionable or not, I shared with one of the most distinguished for- eigners then in England. This latter gentleman pro- fessed the highest enthusiasm for the works of Cooper, and took pains to draw out the venerable poet on the subject of his personal manners, conversation, &c. A handsomer eulogium of an absent author I never heard. Mr. Rogers admired the bold independence of his cast of mind, and spoke in the highest terms of him as a gentleman and a friend. I can not, if it were proper, quote the exact words he used ; but, subtract from this praise all you please to fancy might have been said in kindness or compliment to a com- patriot, there was still enough left to gratify the self- love of the most exacting. If Mr. Lockhart had ever been similarly honored, he would have excused Mr. Cooper for dwelling com- placently on the " breakfasts in St. James's Place." Rogers has lived in the very core of all that is pre- cious or memorable of two ages of English wit, liter- ature, and politics, himself oftenest the bright centre around which it gathered. His manners are amenity itself, his wit is celebrated, his powers of narration delightful. With all this he seems to forget his own fame and himself, and never to have known envy or ill-will. As he sits at that small breakfast-table, his head silvery white, the bland smile of intellectual en- joyment upon his lips, talking or listening with equal pleasure, and with the greatest tact and delicacy, al- ternately drawing out the resources of his guests, and exhibiting modestly his own, he is a picture of tran- quil, dignified, and green old age, which it were a pity to have travelled far and not seen. I felicitate Mr. Cooper on the possession of his esteem and friend- ship. I please myself with remembering that I have seen him. I pity Mr. Lockhart that the class of en- tertainments of which this is one, is reserved for those whose faces will not "spoil the cream." Between butchering for Fraser and dissecting for the Quarterly, Mr. Lockhart may have derived a suf- ficient revenue to " give dinners ;" but he forgets that more amiable literature is not so saleable, and that his brother authors are compelled to entertain strangers at breakfast. Taboo that meal, and, good heavens ! what becomes of the " great army of writers" in Lon- don, who, over " tea and toast," in their quiet lodg- ings, give the admiring pilgrim of literature a feast of reason — one alone worth all the dinners of May fair ? What becomes of younger sons, and callow orators, and lawyers in the temple, who, over red herrings and coffee, let the amused guest into the secrets of their menus-plaisirs, and trenching a half-crown, at the most, upon their slender pockets, send him away de- lighted with their gay hospitality. Breakfasts! What would you know of authors and artists without breakfasts ? You see but half the man in his works. Would you rather breakfast with Chantrey in his stu- dio, and hear him criticise his own marble, or dine with him at Lord Lansdowne's, and listen to his bavar- dagc upon fly-fishing? Would you rather see gentle Barry Cornwall, smothered and silent, among wits and lordlings at " miladi's," or breakfast with him in his crammed library in St. John's Wood, and hear him read one of his unpublished songs, with the tears in his eyes, and the children at his knee, breathless with listening ? Would you rather meet Moore, over a cup of tea, in the shop-parlor at Longman's, in Pat- ernoster row, or see him at one of the show-dinners of this publishing Mecenas, at his villa in Hamp- stead ? Out upon the malicious hand that would sow distrust and suspicion in these delightful by-paths of hospitality ! An author is always a double existence, and it is astonishing how different may be the intellectual man from his everyday representative. Lockhart, the au- thor of Valerius, Adam Blair, and the Life of Sir Walter Scott, is a splendid and delightful intellect- no one can deny it. Mr. Lockhart, the gentleman who looks as if he had a perpetual inclination to whistle, and who does the bourreau for the Quarterly, is an individual I should rather meet anywhere than— at breakfast. Heaven send him a relaxation of his facial muscles, and a little charity tc leave the world with. 790 EPHEMERA. A Spring Day in Winter. — A spring day some- times bursts upon us in December. One scarcely knows whether the constant warmth of the fire, or the fresh sunny breathings from the open window, are the most welcome. At such a time, the curtains swing lazily to the mild wind as it enters, and the light green leaves of the sheltered flowers stir and erect them- selves with an out-of-door vigor, and the shuffled steps and continued voices of the children in the street, have the loitering and summer-like sound of June. I do not know whether it is not a cockney feeling, but with all my love for the country, fixed as it is by the recollections of a life mostly spent in the "green fields" I sometimes "babble of," there is something in a summer morning in the city, which the wet, warm woods, and the solitary, though lonely haunts of the country do not, after all the poetry that has been "spilt upon them" (as Neal would say), at all equal. Whether it is that we find so much sympathy in the many faces that we meet, made happy by the same sweet influences, or whatever else may be the reason, certes, I never take my morning walk on such a day, without a leaping in my heart, which, from all I can gather by dream or revelation, has a touch in it of Paradise. I returned once, on such a day, from an hour's ramble after breakfast. The air rushed past my temples with the grateful softness of spring, and every face that passed had the open, inhaling expres- sion which is given by the simple joy of existence. The sky had the deep clearness of noon. The clouds were winnowed in light parallel curves, looking like white shells inlaid on the arched heavens ; the smooth, glassy bay was like a transparent abyss opening to the earth's centre, and edging away underneath, with a slope of hills, and spires, and leafless woods, copied minutely and perfectly from the upper landscape, and the naked elms seemed almost clothed as the teeming eye looked on them, and the brown hills took a teint of green — so freshly did the summer fancies crowd into the brain with the summer softness of the sun- shine and air. The mood is rare in which the sight of human faces does not give us pleasure. It is a curious occupation to look on them as they pass, and study their look and meaning, and wonder at the providence of God, which can provide, in this crowded world, an object and an interest for all. With what a singular harmony the great machine of society goes on ! So many thousand minds, and each with its peculiar cast and its positive difference from its fellow, and yet no dangerous interference, and no discord audible above the hum of its daily revolution. I could not help feeling a religious thrill, as I passed face after face, with this thought in my mind, and saw each one earnest and cheerful, each one pressing on with its own object, without waiting or caring for the equally engrossing object of the other. The man of business went on with an absorbed look, caring only to thread his way rapidly along the street. The stu- dent strided by with the step of exercise, his lips parted to admit the pleasant air to his refreshed lungs, and his eye wandering with bewildered pleasure from object to object. The schoolboy looked wistfully up and down the street, and lingered till the last stroke of the bell summoned him tardily in. The woman- ish school-girl, with her veil coquettishly drawn, still flirted with her boyish admirer, though it was " after nine," and the child, with its soiled satchel and shining face, loitered seriously along the sidewalk, making acquaintance with every dog, and picking up every stone on its unwilling way. The spell of the atmo- sphere was universal, and yet all kept on their several courses, and the busy harmony of employment went steadily and unl rokenly on. How rarely we turn upon ourselves, and remember how wonderfully we are made and governed! Evanescent Impressions. — I have very often, in the fine passages of society — such as occur some- times in the end of an evening, or when a dinner- party has dwindled to an unbroken circle of choice and congenial spirits, or at any of those times when conversation, stripped of all reserve or check, is poured out in the glowing and unfettered enthusiasm to which convivial excitement alone gives the confi- dence necessary to its flow— I have often wished, at such times, that the voice and manner of the chance and fleeting eloquence about us could be arrested and written down for others beside ourselves to see and admire. In a chance conversation at a party, in the bagatelle rattle of a dance, in a gay hour over coffee and sandwiches en famille, wherever you meet those whom you love or value, there will occur pieces of dialogue, jeux d'esprit, passages of feeling or fun — trifles, it is true, but still such trifles as make eras in the calendar of happiness — which you would give the world to rescue from their ephemeral destiny. They are, perhaps, the soundings of a spirit too deep for ordinary life to fathom, or the gracefulness of a fancy linked with too feminine a nature to bear the eye of the world, or the melting of a frost of reserve from the diffident genius— they are traces of that which is fleeting, or struck out like phosphorus from the sea by it regular chance — and you want something quicker and rarer than formal description to arrest it warm and natural, and detain it in its place till it can be looked upon. The First Feeling of Winter. — How delight- fully the first ,feeling of winter comes on the mind! What a throng of tranquillizing and affectionate thoughts accompany its first bright fires, and the sound, out of doors, of its first chilling winds. Oh, when the leaves are driven in troops through the streets, at nightfall, and the figures of the passers-by hurry on, cloaked and stooping with the cold, is there a pleasanter feeling in the world than to enter the closed and carpeted room, with its shaded lamps, and its genial warmth, and its cheerful faces about the evening table ! I hope that I speak your own senti- ment, dear reader, when I prefer to every place and time, in the whole calendar of pleasure, a winter evening at home — the "sweet, sweet home" of child- hood, with its unreserved love and its unchanged and unmeasured endearments. We need not love gayety the less. The light and music and beauty of the dance will always breed a floating delight in the brain that has not grown dull to life's finer influences ; yet the pleasures of home, though serener are deeper, and I am sure that the world may be searched over in vain for a sense of joy so even and unmingled. It is a beautiful trait of Providence that the balance is kept so truly between our many and different bles- sings. It were a melancholy thing to see the sum- mer depart with its superb beauty, if the heart did not freshen as it turned in from its decay to brood upon its own treasures. The affections wander under the enticement of all the outward loveliness of nature, and it is necessary to unwind the spell, that their rich kindness may not become scattered and visionary. 1 have a passion for these simple theories, which I trust will be forgiven. I indulge in them as people pun. They are too shadowy for logic, it is true — like the wings of the glendoveer, in. Kehama, gauze-like and filmy, but flying high withal. You may not grow learned, but you surely will grow poetical upon them. I would as lief be praised by a blockhead as be asked the reason. The Poet Shelley. — Shelley has a private nook in my affections. He is so unlike all other poets that EPHEMERA. 791 I can not mate him. He is like his own " skylark" among birds. He does not keep ever up in the thin air with Byron, like the eagle, nor sing with Keats low and sweetly like the thrush, nor, like the dove sitting always upon her nest, brood with Wordsworth over the affections. He begins to sing when the morning wakes him, and as he grows wild with his own song, he mounts upward, " And singing ever soars, and soaring ever singeth ;" and it is wonderful how he loses himself, like the delirious bird in the sky, and with a verse which may be well compared for its fine delicacy with her little wings, penetrates its far depths fearlessly and full of joy. There is something very new in this mingled trait of fineness and sublimity. Milton and Byron seem made for the sky. Their broad wings always strike the air with the same solemn majesty. But Shelley, near the ground, is a very " bird in a bower,'' running through his merry compass as if he never dreamed of the upward and invisible heavens. Withal, Shelley's genius is too fiery to be moody. He was a melancholy man, but it was because he was crossed in the daily walk of life, and such anxieties did not touch his imagination. It was above — far, far above them. His poetry was not, like that of other poets, linked with his common interests; and if it "un- bound (he serpent of care from his heart," as doubt- less it did, it was by making him forget that it was there. He conceived and wrote in a wizard circle. The illiberal world was the last thing remembered, and its annoying prejudices, gall him as they might in the exercise of his social duties, never followed over the fiery limit of his fancy. Never have we seen such pure abstraction from earlhliness as in the tem- per of his poetry. It is the clear, intellectual lymph, unalloyed and unpolluted. , An Author's Judgment of his own Works. — It is a false notion that the writer is no judge of his own book. Verses in manuscript and verses in print, in the first place, are very different things, and the mood of writing and the mood of reading what one lias written, are very different moods. We do not know how it is with others, but we open our own volume with the same impression of strangeness and novelty that we do another's. The faults strike us at once, and so do the beauties, if there are any, and we read coolly in a new garb, the same things which upon paper recalled the fever of composition, and rendered us incapable of judgment. As far as I can discover by others' experience and my own, no writer understands the phenomena of composition. It is impossible to realize, in reading, that which is to him impassioned, the state of feeling which produced it. His own mind is to himself a mystery and a wonder. The thought stands before him, visible to his outward eye, which he does not remember has ever haunted him. The illustration from nature is often one which he does not remember to have noticed — the trait of character, or the peculiar pencilling of a line in beauty altogether new and startling. He is affected to tears or mirth, his taste is gratified or shocked, his fancy amused or his cares beguiled, as if he had never be- fore seen it. It is his own mind, but he does not rec- ognise it. He is like the peasant-child taken and dressed richly ; he does not know himself in his new adornments. There is a wonderful metamorphosis in print. The author has written under strong excite- ment, and with a development and reach of his own powers which would amuse him were he conscious of the process. There are dim and far chambers in the mind which are never explored by reason. Ima- gination in her rapt phrensy wanders blindly there sometimes, and brings out their treasures to the light — ignorant of their value, and almost believing that the dreams when they glitter are admired. There are phantoms which haunt the perpetual twilight of the inner mind, which are arrested only by the daring hand of an overwrought fancy, and like a need done in a dream, the difficult steps are afterward but faintly remembered. It is wonderful how the mind accumu- lates by unconscious observation — how the teint of a cloud, or the expression of an eye, or the betrayal of character by a word, will lie for years forgotten in the memory till it is brought out by some searching thought to its owner's wonder. Frost. — It is winter — veritable winter — with bona^ fide frost, and cramping cold, and a sun as clear and powerless as moonlight. The windows glitter with the most fantastic frost-work. Cities, with their spires and turrets, ranks of spears, files of horsemen — every gorgeous and brilliant array told of in ro- mance or song, start out of that mass of silvery trace- ry, like the processions of a magic mirror. What a miraculous beauty there is in frost ! What fine work in its radiant crystals ! What mystery in its exact proportions and its maniform varieties ! The feathery snow-flake, the delicate rime, the transparent and sheeted ice, the magnificent ice-berg moving down the sea like a mountain of light — how beautiful are they all, and how wonderful is it, that, break and scatter them as you will, you find under every form the same faultless angles, the same crystalline and sparkling radiation. It sometimes grows suddenly cold at noon. There has been a heavy rnist all the morning, and as the north wind comes sharply in, the air clears and leaves it frozen upon everything, with the thinness of palpable air. The trees are clothed with a fine white vapor, as if a cloud had been arrested and fixed motionless in the branches. They look, in the twilight, like gigantic spirits, standing in broad ranks, and clothed in drapery of supernatural white- ness and texture. On close examination, the crystals are as fine as needles, and standing in perfect parallel- ism, pointing in the direction of the wind. They are like fringes of the most minute threads, edging every twig and filament of the tree, so that the branches are thickened by them, and have a shadowy and mysteri- ous look, as if a spirit foliage had started out from the naked limbs. It is not so brilliant as the common rime seen upon the trees after a frozen rain, but it is infinitely more delicate and spiritual, and to me seems a phenomenon of exquisite novelty and beauty. The Closing Year. — It is a melancholy task to reckon with the departed year. To trace back the curious threads of affection through its many-colored woof, and knot anew its broken places — to number the missing objects of interest, the dead and the neg- lected — to sum up the broken resolutions, the defer- red hopes, the dissolved phantoms of anticipation, and the many wanderings from the leading star of duty —this is indeed a melancholy task, but, withal, a profitable, and, it may sometimes be, a pleasant and a soothing one. It is wonderful in what short courses the objects of this world move. They are like arrows feebly shot. A year— a brief year, is full of things dwindled and finished and forgotten. Nothipg keeps evenly on. What is there in the running calendar of the year that has departed, which has kept its place and its magnitude ? Here and there an aspirant for fame still stretches after his eluding shadow — here and there an enthusiast still clings to his golden dream- here and there (and alas ! how rarely) a friend keeps 792 EPHEMERA. his truth, and a lover his fervor — but how many more, that were as ambitious, as enthusiastic, as loving as these, when this year began, are now sluggish, and cold, and false ? You may keep a record of life, and as surely as it is human, it will be a fragmented and disjointed history, crowded with unaccountableness and change. There is nothing constant. The links of life are for ever breaking, but we rush on still. A fellow-traveller drops from our side into the grave — a guiding star of hope vanishes from the sky — a creature of our affections, a child or an idol, is snatched from us — perhaps nothing with which we began the race is left to us, and yet we do not halt. " Onward — still onward" is the eternal cry, and as the past recedes, the broken ties are forgotten, and the present and future occupy us alone. There are bright chapters in the past, however. If our lot is capricious and broken, it is also new and various. One friend has grown cool, but we have won another. One chance was less fortunate than we expected, but another was better. We have en- countered one man's prejudices, but, in so doing, we have unexpectedly flattered the partialities of his neighbor. We have neglected a recorded duty, but a deed of charity done upon impulse, has brought up the balance. In an equable temper of mind, memory, to a man of ordinary goodness of heart, is pleasant company. A careless rhymer, whose heart is better than his head, says • — " I would not escape from memory's land, For all the eye can view ; For there's dearer dust in memory's land, Than the ore of rich Peru. I clasp the fetter by memory twined, The wanderer's heart and soul to bind." It was a good thought suggested by an ingenious friend of mine, to make one's will annually, and re- member all whom we love in it in the degree of their deservings. I have acted upon the hint since, and truly it is keeping a calendar of one's life. I have little to bequeath, indeed — a manuscript or two, some* half dozen pictures, and a score or two of much- thumbed and choice authors — but, slight as these poor mementoes are, it is pleasant to rate their differ- ence, and write against them the names of our friends, as we should wish them left if we knew we were pres- ently to die. It would be a satisfying thought in sick- ness, that one's friends would have a memorial to suggest us when we were gone — that they would know we wished to be remembered by them, and re- membered them among the first. And it is pleasant, too, while alive, to change the order of appropriation with the ever-varying evidences of affection. It is a relief to vexation and mortified pride to erase the name of one unworthy or false, and it is delightful, as another gets nearer to your heart, with the gradual and sure test of intimacy, to prefer him in your secret register. If I should live to be old, I doubt not it will be a pleasant thing to look over these little testaments. It is difficult, now, with their kind offices and pleasant faces ever about one, to realize the changes of feeling between the first and the last — more difficult still to imagine, against any of those familiar names, the significant asterisk which marks the dead — yet if the common chances of human truth, and the still more desperate changes of human life, continue — it is melancholy to think what a miracle it would be if even half this list, brief and youthful as it is, should be, twenty years hence, living and unchanged. The festivities of this part of the year always seem- ed to me mistimed and revolting. I know not what color the reflections of others take, but to me it is simply the feeling of escape — the released breath of fear after a period of suspense and danger. Accident, misery, death, have been about us in their invisible shapes, and while one is tortured with pain, and another reduced to wretchedness, and another struck into the grave beside us, we know not why orhow, we are still living and prosperous. It is next to a miracle that we are so. We have been on the edge of chasms con- tinually. Our feet have tottered, our bosoms have been grazed by the thick shafts of disease — had our eyes been spirit-keen we should have been dumb with fear at our peril. If every tenth sunbeam were a deadly arrow — if the earth were full of invisible abysses — if poisons were sown thickly in the air, life would hardly be more insecure. We can stand upon our threshold and see it. The vigorous are stricken down by an invisible hand — the active and busy suddenly j disappear — death is caught in the breath of the night j wind, in the dropping of the dew. There is no place I or moment in which that horrible phantom is not | gliding among us. It is natural at each period of | escape to rejoice fervently and from the heart ; but I know not, if others look upon death with the same irrepressible horror that I do, how their joy can be so I thoughtlessly trifling. It seems to me, matter for i deep, and almost fearful congratulation. It should be expressed in religious places and with the solemn I voice of worship ; and when the period has thus been j marked, it should be speedily forgotten lest its cloud I become depressing. I am an advocate for all the I gayety that the spirits will bear. I would reserve no ! particle of the treasure of happiness. The world is | dull enough at the best. But do not mistake its ! temper. Do not press into the service of gay pleasure j the thrilling solemnities of life. I think anything which reminds me of death, solemn ; any time, when j our escape from it is thrust irresistibly upon the mind, I a solemn time; and such is the season of the new year. It should be occupied by serious thoughts. I It is the time to reckon with one's heart — to renew and form resolutions — to forgive and reconcile and redeem. Midnight. — The bell struck as the word was writ- ten ! Twelve — and how many-toned in the human ear are the measured strokes that have proclaimed it. The well and contemplative, the sick and restless, the reveller hailing it as the empress of the hours, and the patient and solemn watcher by the dead, counting it on his vigil, and shuddering at the dreadful silence it makes audible — sleepless ambition starting from its waking dream, and sleeping guilt blessedly aroused from its nightmare of detection — with what a different voice and meaning do the tremulous and lengthened cadences of that same bell fall upon the different ears that listen to them ! Yet it is so with everything about us — and the boldest and best lesson of philoso- phy is that which teaches us that outward circum- stances have no color of their own — that the universe is within us — that the eye sees no light or shadow, and the ear hears no music or jar, and the senses re- ceive no impression of pain or pleasure, but as the inward eye is light or shaded, the inward ear attuned or discordant, and the inward sense painful or pleas- urable. It is a glorious creed — for by it, he who governs his own soul holds the key of the universe. Its colors are put on at his bidding, its music wakes at his desire, and its magnificent changes, arbitrary and omnipotent as they seem, take form and pressure from the small, still thought in his bosom ! Yet how difficult it is! How true, that "he who ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." To put down at will the maniform spectres of thought — to suppress fear and discouragement, and sadness that comes up uncalled — to lay a finger on the lip of complaint, and seal up a tear in its cell, and press down, with a stern fetter, the ungovernable nerve of unrest — to " lay commandment" on a throb- EPHEMERA. 793 bing pulse, and break the wings of a too earnest ima- gination, and smother, in their first rising, the thou- sand impatient feelings that come out of time and season — this it is that the anchorite in his cell, and the master spirit in his career, and the student, wast- ing over his lamp, may pray, and wrestle, and search into many mysteries for — in vain ! In my days of idleness (a habit, by-the-by, which should be put down as a nervous complaint in the books) I occupied, for some nine hours in the day, a window opposite a city-clock. It was a tolerable amusement, between breakfast and recitation, to watch the passing of the hours, " hand over hand." 1 thought j then, as I think now, that the great deficiency in the con- i struction of the human mind, is the want of something on the principle of the stop-watch, to suspend its ope- rations at will — but it is no slight relief, since I must think, to have a dial-plate, or a nail in the wall, or any object that it is no trouble to see, to serve as a nu- cleus to thou«ht. By-and-by, with the force of hab- it, the dial became necessary. I could not think tranquilly without it. My pulses beat sixty in the minute. My imagination built by the hour — nine — ten — twelve castles a day, as the lectures interfered more or less with my repose. In the course of time, I fell into the habit of mu- sing on the circumstances dependant on the arrival of the hours, and as my mood happened to be gay or gloomy, I pondered, with the strong sympathy of un- occupied feelings, on the happiness or misery they brought. If it was a bright sunny forenoon in May, and the eggs had been well boiled at breakfast, the striking of the clock — say twelve — stirred a thousand images of pleasure. The boys just leaping out of school, the laborer released from his toil, the belle stepping forth for a promenade, the patient in the in- terval of his fever — all came up in my imagination, and their several feelings, with all the heightening of imagination, became my own. If the weather was hot, on the contrary, or the professor had bored me at lecture, or if my claret was pricked at dinner, I Buffered the miseries of an hospital. There goes the clock — say four! Some poor fellow now, at this very moment, is baring his limb to the surgeon — the after- noon is at the hottest, and the sick are getting restless and weary — some hectic consumptive, fallen, per- haps, into a chance sleep, is waked, by the trouble- Bome punctuality of his nurse, to take his potion — it is the hour the dying man is told he can not survive. Every misery imaginable under the sun rose in phan- toms around me, and I suffered and groaned under the concentrated horrors of them all. It serves to show how the mind is its own slave or its own master. And so, having arrived at the moral, with your leave, dear reader, for it is " past one," I will to bed. Good night! S.vow. — The black, unsightly pavement, every stone of which you know with as cursed a particular- ity as the chinks in the back of your fireplace, cov- ered with white. The heavy-wheeled carts, which the day before shook the ground under you, and split your ears with their merciless noise, replaced by sleds with musical bells, driven swiftly and skilfully past. The smoked houses, with their provokingly-regular windows and mean doors, that have disturbed the sen- timent of grace in your fancy every walk you have taken for months, all laden, and tipped, and frosted into lines and surfaces of beauty ; faultless icicles hanging from the eaves of the shutters, and sparkling crystals of snow edging every projecting stone — magic could not exceed it ! If the horn of Astol- pho had been blown from the cupola of the state- house, and the whole city had run mad, things could j not have looked more strangely new and delightful. And the sleighing— other people like it, and for their sake I blessed Providence for another item. I like it myself— for the first mile. But with the loss of sen- sation in our feet and hands, I have a trick of grow- ing very unhappy. I am content, after one ride, with seeing a sleigh through a parlor-window. Eight o'clock — how merrily the sleigh-bells ring to-night! One comes into hearing as another is lost, and the loud, laughing, and merry voices of the gay riders come up to my retired room in the veriest con- trast to my own quiet occupation. How more than solitude it separates one from humanity, to live in the midst of the gay world and take no part in its enjoy- ments ! An eremite in the crowd is the only con- tented solitary. In the midst of the heaviest sadness the heart feels in this wretched world, the form of distant pleasure is beautiful. We must live near that treacherous dame to know how sorrows lurk in her shadow. Break down the imagination as you will, and bind it by the most relentless memories to your sick heart, it will steal away to scenes you had thought forgotten, and come back fired with their false beau- ty, to tempt you to try their winning flatteries once more. It is only by knowing that you can call gay- ety at any moment to your side, that you can quite forget it ; and the studious tenant of a garret, to whose solitude the mingled murmur of a city comes constantly up — who can abandon his books whenever the fancy takes him, for the crowd, and enter and throng on with it after its fleeting lure — is the only man who, with youth and the common gifts of Provi- dence, can heartily despise it. And he — if contrast is (as who will deny that has followed after the impossible spirit of contentment, till hope is dead within him) — if contrast is, I say, the only bliss in life — then does he, the scholar in the crowd, live with a most excellent wisdom. He is roused from communion with a spirit whose immor- tal greatness has outlived twenty generations, by the passing mirth of a fool whose best deed will not live in the world's memory an hour. He sits and pores upon an eternal truth, or fires his fancy with heavenly poetry, or winds about him the enchantments of truth- woven fiction, or searches the depths of his own suffi- cient heart for the sublime wisdom of human nature, and from the very midst he is plucked back to this every-day world, and compelled to the use of faculties in which a brute animal equals or surpasses him ! One moment following the employment of an angel, the next contending with meanness and cunning for his daily bread — now kindled to rapture with some new form of beauty, and now disgusted to loathing with some new-developed and unredeemable baseness in his fellow-men. What contrast is there like this ? Who knows so well as a scholar the true sweetness of surprise ? the delightful and only spice of this oth- erwise contemptible life — novel sensation ? Change. — How natural it is, like the host in the rhyme, to " Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest !" How true a similitude it is of every change, not only of time and season, but of feeling and fancy. I have just walked from the window where I stood looking upon the two elms that have refreshed my eye with their lively verdure the summer long, and the adven- turous vine, overtopping our neighbor's chimneys, that was covered but a week ago with masses of splendid crimson and scarlet, and with the irresistible regret I feel always at the decay of nature powerful within me, I have seated myself at the fire, with a gladness in the sup- planting pleasures of winter, that bring9 with it, not only a consolation for the loss, but an immediate for- 794 EPHEMERA. getfulness of the past. " Nothing," says Goethe, "is more delightful than to feel a new passion rising when the flame that burned before is not quite extin- guished, as, when the sun sets, we turn with pleasure to the rising moon." Who would give a fig for friendship ! Who would waste golden hours in win- ning regard ! Who, with this lesson before him, would do aught but look well to his reckoning with heaven, and turn in upon his own soul what time and talents are left to him after ! It is a bitter philosophy to learn. The outward world is my first love, and, with all my disappointment, it is difficult at first to set up a new altar for the inner. I would not be as- cetic ; neither would I be so happy that, like Poly- crates, I must throw my ring into the sea that I may have something to lament; but I believe he has the true savoir vivre, who, believing fully in the world's unprofitableness, is willing to be amused by it, and who, conversant with its paths and people, has better places and friends (solitude and his books) to which he can enter and shut the door to be at peace. Winter Trip to Nahant. — The old chronicler, Time, strides on over the holyday seasons as if noth- ing could make him loiter. It may be a hallucina- tion, but a winter's day, spite of the calendar, is as long to me as two summer ones. I do not feel the scene pass. There is no measure kept on my senses by its evenly-told pulse. The damp morning, and the silent noon, and the golden twilight, come and go ; and if I breathe the freshness of the one, and sleep under the repose of the other, and gaze upon the beauties of the third, why, the end of existence seems answered. Labor is not in harmony with it. The thought that disturbs a nerve is an intrusion. Life's rapid torrent loiters in a pool, and its bubbles all break and are forgotten. Indolence is the mother of phi- losophy, and I " let the world slide." I think with Rousseau, that " the best book does but little good to the world, and much harm to the author." I remem- ber Colton's three difficulties of authorship, and Pel- ham's flattering unction to idleness, that " learning is the bane of a poet." The " mossy cell of peace," with its % " Dreams that move before the half-shut eye, And its gay castles in the clouds that pass," is a very Eden ; and, of all the flowers of the field, that which has the most meaning is your lily that "toils not, neither does it spin;" and of all the herbs of the valley, the " Yellow lysimacha that gives sweet rest," has the most medicinal balm. I am of the school of Epicurus. I no longer think the "judicious voluptu- ousness" of Godwin dangerous. Like the witch of Atlas, I could " pitch my tent upon the plain of the calm Mere," and rise and fall for ever to its indolent swell. And speaking of idleness (I admire Mochin- go's talent for digression — "Now thou speakest of immortality, how is thy wife, Andrew") — one of the pleasantest ways of indulging that cardinal virtue used to be by an excursion to Nahant. Establishing myself unostentatiously upon the windward quarter of the boat, to avoid the vile volatile oils from the machinery — Shelley in one hand, perhaps, or Elia, or quaint Burton — (English editions, redolent in Russia, and printed as with types of silver) — with one of these, I say, to refresh the eye and keep the philosophic vein breathing freely, the panorama of the bay passes silently before my eye — island after island, sail after sail, like the conjurations of a magic mirror. And this is all quiet, let me tell you — all in harmony with the Socratic humor — for the reputable steamer Ousa- tonic (it distresses me daily that it was not spelt with an H) is none of your fifteen-milers — none of your high-pressure cut-waters, driving you through the air, breathless with its unbecoming velocity, and with the fear of the boiler before your eyes — but with a dignified moderation, consistent with a rational doubt of the integrity of a copper-kettle, and a natural ab- horrence of hot water, she glides safely and softly over her half-dozen miles an hour, and lands you, cool and good-humored, upon the rocky peninsula, for a consideration too trifling to be mentioned in a well-bred period. And then if the fates will me an agreeable companion (I wish we had time to describe my beau-ideal), how delightful, as Apple island is neared, with its sweep of green banks and its magnifi- cent elms — every foot of its tiny territory green and beautiful — how delightful to speculate upon the char- acter of its eccentric occupant, and repeat the thou- sand stories told of him, and peer about his solitary cottage to catch a glimpse of his erect figure, and draw fanciful portraits of his daughter, who, the world says, for the sixteen years of her sweet life, has had only the range of those limited lawns, which she may ramble over in an hour — and, as the boat glides by, to watch the fairy isle sleeping, if the bay is calm, with its definite shadow, and looking like a sphere, floating past in the air, covered with luxuriant verdure. It is but a brief twelve miles from Boston to Nahant, and the last four stretch out beyond the chain of islands, upon the open sea. To a city-bred eye and fancy there is a refreshing novelty, added to the expanding influence of so broad a scene, which has in it a vigor- ous and delightful stimulus. The mind gets out of its old track. The back-ground of the mental picture is changed, and it affects the whole. The illimitable sky and water draw out the imagination to its remo- test link, and the far apart and shining sails, each cov- ering its little and peculiar world, and sped with the thousand hopes of those for whom its lonely adven- turers are tracking the uncertain sea, win on the mind to follow them upon their perilous way, and breathe for them the " God speed" of unconscious interest. It is a beautiful and magic sight to see them gliding past each other on their different courses, impelled by the same invisible wind, now dark with shadow, and now turning full to the light, and specking the horizon, like the white birds careering along the edge of its definite line. The sea grows upon you as you see it more. The disappointment felt at first in its extent wears away, as you remember its vast stretch under those blue depths, which your eye can not search ; and the waste of its " untrampled floor," and the different depths at which the different spoils of the sunk ships have balanced and hung, and the innu- merable tribes who range their own various regions of pressure, from the darkest caverns to the thin and lighted chambers at its surface, all come step by step upon the mind, and crowd it with a world of wonder- ing speculation. It is delightful to sit with the agreeable companion spoken of, and with the green waves heaving about us, to indulge in these wayward and unprofitable imaginations. It is a splendid range for a wild-winged thought — that measureless sea ! I love to talk of its strange mysteries. I love to go down with one who will not check me with cold ob- jections, and number and shape out its inhabitants. With such a fellow-wanderer, I have found palaces that surpass Aladdin's, and beings to whom the upper and uncondensed water has a suffocating thinness. But these are idle speculations to the world's eye, gentle reader, and should be reserved for your private ear. We will go, some summer afternoon, and talk them over together on the deck of that same delib- erate steamer. You have no idea how many things are untold of the deep sea — how many dreams of it EPHEMERA. 795 an idler man than yourself will weave out of its green depths in his after-dinner musings. Sir Philip Sidney. — " Gentle Sir Philip Sid- ney," says Tom Nash, in two sweetly-flowing senten- ces of his Pierce Penniless, " thou knewest what be- longed to a scholar ; thou knewest what pains, what toil, what travel, conduct to perfection ; well couldst thou give every virtue his encouragement, every art his due, every writer his desert, 'cause none more virtuous, witty, or learned, than thyself. But thou art dead in thy grave, and hast left too few successors of thy glory; too few to cherish the sons of the mu- ses, or water those budding hopes with their plenty, which thy bounty erst planted." — "He was not only of an excellent wit," relates, in his own confused and rambling way, the eminent antiquarian John Aubrey, who was born not more than forty years after Sidney's decease, " but extremely beautiful ; he much resembled his sister, but his hair was not red, but a little incli- ning, viz., a dark amber color. If I were to find fault in it, methinks it is not masculine enough; yet he was a person of great courage."* " He was, if ever there was one," says another writer, " a gentleman finished and complete, in whom mildness was associa- ted with courage, erudilion mollified by refinement, and courtliness dignified by truth. England will ever place him among the noblest of her sons ; and the light of chivalry, which was his guide and beacon, will ever lend its radiance to illume his memory. He died at the age of thirty-two, and if the lives of Mil- ton and Dryden had not been prolonged beyond that period, where would have been their renown?" Glorious Sidney ! It stirs the blood warmly about one's heart to think of him. It is somewhat late in the day, I know, to eulogize him ; but his bright honor and his beautiful career, are among my earliest historical recollections, and I have remembered it since with the passionate interest that in every one's mind burns in, with an enamel of love, some one of the bright images presented in boyhood. You have some such idol of fancy, I dare answer for it, reader of mine — some young (for young he must be, or af- fection stiffens into respect) — some young and famous, and withal courtly, and perhaps " beautiful," winner of a name. It is Gaston de Foix, perhaps, with his fierce thirst for glory (the pictures of him by the old masters are models of manly beauty), or the fourth Henry, with his temper of romance (the handsomest man in his kingdom), or (if you loved your classics) Alcibiades (you forget, of course, that he was a volup- tuary), or the generous Antony (" Shakspere's" rather than the historian's), or Hylas, or Endymion, or Phaeton (he cleared the first few planets in fine style), or some other formosus puer adored and sung by the glorious old bards upon the shores of Tiber or Ilissus. He rises to your mind as I mention it — a figure of graceful youth, the slight and elegant proportions of the boy, just ripening into the muscular fulness of manhood — his neck rising with a free majesty from his shoulders, and his eye kindling with some passing thought of glory, answered by the proud and deliber- ate curving of his lip, and the animated expansion of his nostril. You see him with your mind's eye — the classic model and classic dream of your scholar-days, when the sound of the leaves in the tree over you had the swell of an hexameter in your ear, and your thoughts came in Latin, and a line of Homer sprung to your lips in your involuntary soliloquies. Ah ! those were days for dreams ! Who would not let slip the straining grasp of manhood — be it at wealth, fame, power — anything for which he is flinging his youth and gladness, and all his best treasures, behind • Very much the description of Shelley. him — to be once more the careless dreamer that he was — to lie once more upon a hill-side, and forget everything in the unquestioned and unshadowed bles- sedness of a boy ! Death-Love and Warning. — It was getting tow- ard midnight when a party of young noblemen came out from one of the clubs of St. James street. The servant of each, as he stepped upon the pavement, threw up the wooden apron of the cabriolet, and sprung to the head of the horse; but, as to the des- tination of the equipages for the evening, there seem- ed to be some dissensions among the noble masters. Between the line of coroneted vehicles, stood a hackney-coach, and a person in an attitude of expectan- cy pressed as near the exhilarated group as he could without exciting immediate attention. " Which way?" said he whose vehicle was nearest, standing with his foot on the step. " All together, of course," said another. " Let's make a night of it." " Pardon me," said the clear and sweet voice of the last out from the club ; " I secede for one. Go your ways, gentlemen !" " Now, what the deuse is afoot ?" said the fore- most, again stepping back on the sidewalk. " Don't let him off, Fitz ! Is your cab here, Byron, or will you let me drive you? By Jove, you sha'n't leave us!" " But you shall leave me, and so you are not for- sworn, my friend ! In plain phrase, I won't go with you ! And I don't know where I shall go ; so spare yourcuriosity the trouble of asking. I have a presenti- ment that I am wanted — by devil or angel — ' I see a hand you can not see.' " " And a very pretty hand it is, I dare swear," said the former speaker, jumping into his cab and starting off with a spring of his blood horse, followed by all the vehicles at the club-door, save one. Byron stood looking after them a moment, and raised his hat and pressed his hand hard on his fore- head. The unknown person who had been lurking near, seemed willing to leave him for a moment to his thoughts, or was embarrassed at approaching a stran- ger. As Byron turned with his halting step to descend the steps, however, he came suddenly to his side. " My lord !" he said, and was silent, as if waiting for permission to go on. " Well," replied Byron, turning to him without the least surprise, and lookingly closely into his face by the light of the street-lamp. " I come to you with an errand which perhaps — " " A strange one, I am sure ; but I am prepared for it — I have been forewarned of it. What do you re- quire of me ? for I am ready !" •• This is strange!" exclaimed the man. — "Has another messenger, then — " " None except a spirit — for my heart alone told me I should be wanted at this hour. Speak at once." '* My lord, a dying girl has sent for you .'" " Do I know her ?" " She has never seen you. Will you come at once — and on the way I will explain to you what I can of this singular errand ; though, indeed, when it is told you, you know all that I comprehend." They were at the door of the hackney-coach, and Byron entered it without further remark. "Back again!" said the stranger, as the coachman closed the door, " and drive for dear life, for we shall scarce be in time, I fear !" The heavy tongue of St. Paul's church struck twelve as the rolling vehicle hurried on through the now lonely street, and though so far from the place whence they started, neither of the two occupants 796 EPHEMERA. had spoken. Byron sat with bare head and folded arms in the corner of the coacli ; and the stranger, with his hat crowded over his eyes, seemed repressing some violet emotion ; and it was only when they stopped before a low door in a street close upon the river, that the latter found utterance. " Is she alive ?" he hurriedly asked of a woman who came out at the sound of the carriage-wheels. " She was — a moment since — but be quick !" Byron followed quickly on the heels of his com- panion, and passing through a dimly lighted entry to the door of a back-room, they entered. A lamp, shaded by a curtain of spotless purity, threw a faint light upon a bed, upon which lay a girl, watched by a physician and a nurse. The physician had just re- moved a small mirror from her lips, and holding it to the light, he whispered that she still breathed. As Byron passed the edge of the curtain, however, the dying girl moved the fingers of the hand lying on the coverlet, and slowly opened on him her languid eyes — eyes of inexpressible depth and lustre. No one had spoken. "Here he is," she murmured. "Raise me, mother, while I have time to speak to him." Byron looked around the small chamber, trying in vain to break the spell of awe which the scene threw over him. An apparition from the other world could not have checked more fearfully and completely the worldly and scornful under-current of his nature. He stood with his heart beating almost audibly, and his knees trembled beneath him, awaiting what he prophetically felt to be a warning from the very gate of heaven. Propped with pillows, and left by her attendants, the dying girl turned her head toward the proud, noble poet, standing by her bedside, and a slight blush overspread her features, while a smile of angelic beauty stole through her lips. In that smile the face reawakened to its former loveliness, and seldom had he who now gazed breathlessly upon her, looked on such spiritual and incomparable beauty. The spacious forehead and noble contour, still visible, of the emaciated lips, bespoke genius impressed upon a tablet all feminine in its language ; and in the motion of her hand, and even in the slight movement of her graceful neck, there was something that still breathed of surpassing elegance. It was the shadowy wreck of no ordinary mortal passing away — humble as were the surroundings, and strange as had been his sum- mons to her bedside. " And this is Byron ?" she said at last, in a voice bewilderingly sweet even through its weakness. "My lord! I could not die without seeing you — without relieving my soul of a mission with which it has long been burthened. Come nearer — for I have no time left for ceremony, and I must say what I have to say — and die! Beautiful," she said, "beauti- ful as the dream of him which has so long haunted me ! the intellect and the person of a spirit of light ! Pardon me, my lord, that, at a moment so important to yourself, the remembrance of an earthly feeling has been betrayed into expression." She paused a moment, and the bright color that had shot through her cheek and brow faded, and her countenance resumed its heavenly serenity. " I am near enough to death," she resumed — "near enough to point you almost to heaven from where I am ; and it is on my heart like the one errand of my life — like the bidding of God — to implore you to prepare for judgment. Oh, my lord ! with your glorious powers, with your wondrous gifts, be not lost! Do not, for the poor pleasures of a world like this, lose an eternity in which your great mind will outstrip the intelligence of angels. Measure this thought — scan the worth of angelic bliss with the intellect which has ranged so gloriously through the universe; do not, on this one momentous subject of human interest — on this alone be not short- sighted !" "What shall I do ?" suddenly burst from Byron's lips in a tone of agony. But with an effort, as if struggling with a death-pang, he again drew up his form and resumed the marble calmness of his counte- nance. The dying girl, meantime, seemed to have lost herself in prayer. With her wasted hands clasped on her bosom, and her eyes turned upward, the slight motion of her lips betrayed to those around her that | she was pleading at the throne of mercy. The physi- cian crept close to her bedside, but with his hand in his breast, and his head bowed, he seemed but watch- ing for the moment when the soul should take its flight. She suddenly raised herself on the pillow. Her long brown tresses fell over her shoulders, and a brightness unnatural and almost fearful kindled in her eyes. She seemed endeavoring to speak, and gazed steadfastly at Byron. Slowly, then, and tranquilly she sank back again upon her pillow, and as her hands fell apart, and her eyelids dropped, she murmured, "Come to Heaven !" and the stillness of death was in the room. The spirit had fled. The breaking of the silver cord is the first tone from the life-strings of genius, which is answered only in vibrations of affection. This truth, indeed, is touch- ingly shadowed forth in the accompaniments of death. The dark colors in the drapery of life, are dropped in the weaving of the shroud. The discords of music are rejected in the melody of the dirge. The praise upon the marble is the first tribute written without disparagement, and the first suffered without dissent. It is this new relation of the public to a great name — this completed and lucent phase of a light in litera- ture — which seems to make a posthumous recast of criticism oneof the legitimate departments of a review. Like the public feeling, the condition and powers of criticism toward an author's fame, are essentially changed by his death. His personal character, and the events of his life — the foreground, so to speak, in the picture of his mind, are, till this event, wanting to the critical perspective; and when the hand to cor- rect is cold, and the ear to be caressed and wounded is sealed, some of the uses of censure, and all reserve in comparison and final estimate, are done way. It is time for the reviews to take up, on this ground, the character and writingsof Hillhouse. The author of Hadad, the most finished and lofty poem of its time, should have been followed, within a year after his death, by a new and reverential appreciation, and living, as he did, in a learned and literary circle of friends, a biography, at least, was looked for, out of which criticism might shape a fresh monument to his genius. Such men as Hillhouse are not common, even in these days of universal authorship. In ac- complishment of mind and person, he was probably second to no man. His poems show the first. They are fully conceived, nicely balanced, exquisitely finish- ed — works for the highest taste to relish, and for the severest student in dramatic style to erect into a model. Hadad was published in 1825, during my second yearin college, and to me it was the opening of a new heaven of imagination. The leading characters possessed me for months, and the bright, clear, harmonious lan- guage was, for a long time, constantly in my ears. The author was pointed out to me, soon after, and for once, I saw a poet whose mind was well imaged in his person. In no part of the world have I seen a man of more distinguished mien, or of a more inborn dignity and elegance of address. His person was very EPHEMERA. 797 finely proportioned, his carriage chivalric and high- bred, and his countenance purely and brightly intel- lectual. Add to this a sweet voice, a stamp of high courtesy on everything he uttered, and singular sim- plicity and taste in dress, and you have the portrait of one who. in other days, would have been the mir- ror of chivalry, and the flower of nobles and trou- badors. Hillhouse was no less distinguished in oratory. There was still remembered, at the time of the pub- lication of Hadad, an oration pronounced by him at the taking of his second degree — an oration upon "the Education of a Poet," gloriously written, and most eloquently delivered. His poem of "the Judge- ment," delivered before the " Phi Beta Kappa Socie- ty," added in the same way to his renown, as did a subsequent noble effort of eloquence, to which I listen- ed myself, with irresistible enchantment. Hillhouse had fallen upon days of thrift, and many years of his life which he should have passed either in his study, or in the councils of the nation, were enslaved to the drudgery of business. His constitu- tion seemed to promise him a vigorous manhood, however, and an old age of undiminished fire, and when he left his mercantile pursuits, and retired to the beautiful and poetic home of " Sachem's Wood," his friends looked upon it as the commencement of a ripe and long enduring career of literature. In har- mony with such a life were all his surroundings — 6cenery, society, domestic refinement, and companion- ship — and never looked promise fairer for the realiza- tion of a dream of glory. That he had laid out some- thing of such a field in the future, I chance to know, for, though my acquaintance with him was slight, he confided to me in a casual conversation, the plan of a series of dramas, different from all he had attempted, upon which he designed to work with the first mood and leisure he could command. And with his high scholarship, knowledge of life, taste and genius, what might not have been expected from its fulfilment ? But his hand is cold, and his lips still, and his light, just rising to its meridian, is lost now to the world. Love and honor to the memory of such a man. BACHELOR BOB'S DISCOVERIES. " Sad were the lays of merry days, And sweet the songs of sadness." " Come !" said Bachelor Bob, as he hitched his chair closer to the table, " quite alone, half past twelve, and two tumblers of toddy for heart-openers, what say you to a little friendly inquisition into your mortal felicity ? You were the gayest man of my acquaintance ten years ago ; you are the gravest now ! Yet you swear by your Lares and Penates, that (up to the lips as you are in care and trouble) you never were so happy as in these latter days. Do you swear this to me from a 4 way you have' of hang- ing out trap for the world, or are you under a little in- nocent delusion ?" Bob's hobby is the theory of happiness. Riches and poverty, matrimony and celibacy, youth and age, are subjects of contemplation to Bob, solely with ref- erence to their comparative capacity for bliss. He speculates and talks about little else, indeed, and his intercourse with his friends seems to have no other end or aim than to collect evidence as to their happi- ness and its causes. On this occasion he was addres- sing a friend of mine, Smith, who had been a gay man in his youth (a merry man, truth to say, for he was in a perpetual breeze of high spirits), but who had married, and fallen behindhand in his worldly affairs, and so grown careworn and thoughtful. Smith was rather a poet in a quiet way, though he only used po- etry as a sort of longer plummet when his heart got off soundings. I am indebted to Bob for the speci- mens of his verse-making which I am about to give, as well as for the conversation which brought them to light. "Why," said Smith, "you have stated a dilemma with two such inevitable horns that argument would scarcely help me out of it. Let me see, what proof can I give you that I am a happier man than I used to be, spite of my chapfallen visage ?" Smith mused a moment, and reaching over to a desk near his elbow, drew from its private drawer a book with locked covers. It was a well-filled manu- script volume, and seemed a collection of prose and verse intermixed. The last page was still covered with blotting-paper, and seemed recently written. " I am no poet," said Smith, coloring slightly, " but it has been a habit of mine, ever since my cal- low days, to record in verse all feelings that were too warm for prose ; sometimes in the fashion of a solilo- quy {scripta verba), sometimes in verses to the dame or damsel to whom I was indebted for my ignition. Let me see, Bob! we met in Florence, I think ?" " For the first time abroad, yes !" " Well, perhaps that was my gayest time; certainly I do not remember to have been anywhere more gay or reckless. Florence, 1832, um — here are some lines written that summer : do you remember the beautiful Irish widow you saw at one of the casino balls ? ad- dressed to her, flirt that she was ! But she began all her flirtations with talking of her sorrows, and, if she tried you on, at all — " " She didn't !" interrupted Bob. " Well, if she had you would have been humbug- ged with her tender melancholy, as I was. Here are the verses, and if ever I 4 turned out my lining to the moon,' thev are true to my inner soul in those days of frolic. Read these, and then turn to the last page and you will find as true a daguerreotype of the inner light of my moping days, written only yesterday." 'Tis late— San Marc is beating three As I look forth upon the night ; The stars are shining tranquilly, And heaven is full of silver light ; The air blows freshly on my brow — Yet why should I be waking now ! I've listened, lady, to thy tone, Till in my ear it will not die ; I've felt for sorrows not my own, Till now I can not put them by ; And those sad words and thoughts of thine Have breathed their sadness into mine. 'Tis long— though reckoned not by years— Since, with affections chilled and shocked, I dried a boy's impassioned tears, And from the world my feelings locked — The work of but one bitter day, In which were crowded years of pain ; And then I was as gay, again, And thought that I should be for aye ! The world lay open wide and bright, And I became its lightest minion, And flew the wordling's giddy height With reckless and impetuous pinion — Life's tide, with me, had turned from shore Ere yet my summers told a score. And years have passed, and I have seemed Happy to every eye but thine, And they whom most I loved have deemed There was no lighter heart than mine ; And, save when some wild passion-tone Of music reached the sleeping nerve, Or when in illness and alone My spirit from its bent would swerve, My heart uw.» light, my thoughts were free, I was the thing I seemed to be. I came to this bright land, and here, Where I had thought to nerve my wings To soar to a more lofty sphere, And train myself for sterner things— The land where I had thought to find No spell but beauty hreathed in stone — 798 EPHEMERA. To learn idolatries of mind, And leave the heart to slumber on — Here find I one whose voice awakes The sad, dumb angel of my breast, And, as the long, long silence breaks Of a strong inward lip suppressed, It seems to me as if a madness Had been upon my brain alway — As if 'twere phrensy to be gay, And life were only sweet in sadness ! Words from my lips to-night have come That have for years been sealed and dumb. It was but yesterday we met, We part to-morrow. I would fain With thy departing voice forget Its low, deep tone, and seal again My feelings from the light of day, To be to-morrow only gay ! But days will pass, and nights will creep, And I shall hear that voice of sadness With dreams, as now, untouched by sleep, And spirits out of tune with gladness ; And time must wear, and fame spur on ; Before that victory is re-won ! And so farewell ! I would not be Forgotten by the only heart To which my own breathes calm and free, And let us not as strangers part ! And we shall meet again, perhaps, More gayly than we're parting now ; For time has, in its briefest lapse, A something which clears up the brow, And makes the spirits calm and bright — And now to my sad dreams ! Good night ! " What a precious hypocrite you were for the mer- riest dog in Florence !" exclaimed Bob, as he laid the book open on its back, after reading these lines. " You feel that way ! credat Judeeus ! "But there are some other poetical lies here — what do you mean by ' we met but yesterday, and we part to-morrow,' when I know you dangled after that widow a whole season at the baths ?" " Why," said Smith, with one of his old laughs, " there was a supplement to such an outpouring, of course. The reply to my verses was an invitation to join their party the next morning in a pilgrimage to Vallambrosa, and once attached to that lady's suite — va pour toujours ! or as long as she chose to keep you. Turn to the next page. Before coming to the verses of my more sober days, you may like to read one more flourish like the last. Those were addressed to the same belle dame, and under a continuance of the same hallucination." Bob gravely read : — My heart's a heavy one to-night, Dear Mary, thinking upon thee — I know not if my brain is right, But everything looks dark to me ! I parted from thy side but now, I listened to thy mournful tone, I gazed by starlight on thy brow, And we were there unseen — alone^ Yet proud as I should be. and blest, I can not set my heart at' rest ! Thou lov'st me. Thanks, oh God, for this ! If I should never sleep again — If hope is all a mock of bliss — I shall not now have lived in vain ! I care not that my eyes are aching With this dull fever in my lids — I care not that my heart is breaking For happiness that Fate forbids — The one sweet word that thou hast spoken, The one sweet look I met and blessed, Would cheer me if my heart were broken— Would put my wildest thoughts to rest ! I know that I have pressed thy fingers Upon my warm lips unforbid— I know that in thy memory lingers A thought of me, like treasure hid — Though to my breast I may not press thee, Though I may never call thee mine, I know— and, God, I therefore bless thee ? — No other fills that heart of thine ! And this shall light my shadowed track ! I take my words of sadness back ! " What had that flirting widow to do with the gen- tle name of Mary ?" exclaimed Bob, after laughing very heartily at the point blank take-in confessed in these very solemn verses. " Enough of love-melan- choly, however, my dear Smith ! Let's have a look now at the poetical side of care and trouble. What do you call it ?" — THE INVOLUNTARY PRAYER OF HAPPINESS. - I have enough, oh God ! My heart, to-night, Runs over with the fulness of content j As I look out on the fragrant stars, And from the beauty of the night take in My priceless portion— yet myself no more Than in the universe a grain of sand — I feel His glory who could make a world, Yet, in the lost depths of the wilderness Leave not a flower imperfect ! Rich, though poor ! My low-roofed cottage is, this hour, a heaven ! Music is in it — and the song she sings, That sweet-voiced wife of mine, arrests the ear Of my young child, awake upon her knee ; And, with his calm eye on his master's face, My noble hound lies couchant ; and all here — All in this little home, yet boundless heaven — Are, in such love as I have power to give, Blessed to overflowing ! Thou, who look'st Upon my brimming heart this tranquil eve, Knowest its fulness, as thou dost the dew Sent to the hidden violet by Thee ! And, as that flower from its unseen abode Sends its sweet breath up duly to the sky, Changing its gift to incense— so, oh God ! May the sweet drops that to my humble cup Find their far way from Heaven, send back, in prayer, Fragrance at thy throne welcome ! Bob paused a moment after reading these lines. " They seem in earnest," he said, " and I will sooner believe you were happy when you wrote these, than that you were sad when you wrote the others. But one thing I remark," added Bob, " the devout feeling in these lines written when you are happiest ; for it is commonly thought that tribulation and sadness give the first religious tinge to the ima- gination. Yours is but the happiness of Christian resignation, after all." " On the contrary," said Smith, " nothing makes me so wicked as care and trouble. I always had, from childhood, a disposition to fall down on my knees and thank God for everything which made me happy, while sorrows of all descriptions stir up my antagonism, and make me feel rather like a devil than a Christian." " In that case," said Bob, taking up his hat, " good night, and God prosper you ! And as to your happi- ness?" " Well, what is the secret of my happiness, think you"" "Matrimony," replied Bob. LECTURE ON FASHION: DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK LYCEUM, I had thought — as is thought, perhaps, by many who are now before me — that the subject of fashion was one susceptible only of very light handling — to be treated with humor, anecdote, satire, and possibly some moralizing upon its whims and follies. I commenced the preparation of my lecture with scarce more design than this. It was suggested, very sensibly, I thought, by one of the gentlemen who waited on me with the invitation to lecture, that the sub- jects were usually too dry; — that it would be worth while to start a new range of popular addresses — if not upon trifling to- pics, at least upon such, as, conveying information, would still bear embroidering with trifles. The subject of fashion was instanced and approved. I thought I might easily enter- tain an audience with a history of the follies of fashion in different countries and times, and that in the hearer's keener appreciation of the absurdity of fashionable extremes, from seeing them in the ludicrous light of disuse and distance, might lie the utility of such a lecture. Those who are familiar with the literature of the sixteenth century will remember that the fashions were, at that day, the great target of pulpit eloquence — that, with a vein half humorous, though with violent denunciation, the clergy de- tailed the follies of fashion, and dwelt upon their sinfulness ; and that more particularly in New England, in the Puritan days of Cotton Mather, this great Divine, and others, held forth on this subject with the very extremity of wrathful fervor. A reference to the serious books and to the sermons of that period would sufficiently show, that, had I followed out my original intention, and taken the fashions themselves for the text and burthen of my lecture, I should not have lacked for grave precedent, nor for material and inference, worth the while of both speaker and hearer. The fashions are not my theme, however. Fash- ion is — and betweenyWaon and the fashions you will at once comprehend the distinc- tion. Of the importance of the subject, in the light in which I view it, you will be the judges when you have heard me to the end — but I may say, by way of bespeaking your favorable attention, that I am inclined to believe few topics — short of religion and constitutional law — to be, at this period of our country's history, of greater importance to us. Before entering upon this generali zing view, however, let me say a few words on the fashions, as to the degree with which they affect the standard of true taste — in this same degree, giving weight and color to fashion, in which taste and elegance are of course prominent features. The origin of fashion would probably start even with the history of taste. The fust hour of a community's existence— if created full grown, like the family of Deu calion and Pyrrha— would betray differen- ces in the demeanor of men ; and the most graceful and showy would probably be "the 800 LECTURE ON FASHION. fashion," by acclamation. Taste is instinc- tive, and homage is paid irresistibly, by all human beings, to supremacy in elegance. The rise and progress of fashion up to its present condition, however, is not uniform- ly a history of taste. What are more con- tradictory than the caprices of fashion 1 There are certain standards of beauty, deci- ded upon by the common instinct — stand- ards which artists irresistibly follow, and which the eye invariably acknowledges true, and these standards are as often vio- lated as adhered to, by the votaries of fash- ion. The ladies very well know, that, be their faces long or short — be their forms queenly or fairy-like, — there is but one in- exorable size and shape for a fashionable bonnet; and, of course, if one style of beauty is favored, all others are unbecom- ingly marred. The male figure, it has been decided by centuries of progressive art, has its laws of beauty, — but in the fashions, of what age of civilized Europe have not these laws been violated. Strange to say, and worth speculating on, if we had time for a digression, it is only in the semi-barbarous nations — in modern Greece and Turkey, and among the indolent and unthinking tribes of the Asiatics, that costume, once regulated by art, remains in unchangeable good taste — comfortable and convenient, as well as picturesque and be- coming. But look at the fashions of Eu- rope. Positively the most incredible true books with which I am acquainted are the amusing records of the fashions of the last two hundred years in England. White periwigs of enormous bulk, were, for in- stance, the fashion for ladies in the begin- ning of the seventeenth century. It is an accredited fact, that there died in London in 1756, a white-headed old woman of great age, whose hoary hair, cut off after her death, sold for fifty pounds to a ladies' peri- wig maker. Black patches on the faces of court beauties were the fashion in the same age, and hoops and high heels — utter de- struction 10 grace of form and movement — were worn by all ladies with any pretension to quality the male figure, the shoulders should be broad, for beauty, and the hips narrow, and it has been said in support of this standard that it is an aristocratic forma- tion — as those whose ancestors had carried burthens would naturally have large hips, while those whose forefathers had been of warlike habits and taken exercise princi- pally in the saddle, would be more devel- oped in the chest and shoulders. In the teeth of the arts, however, and of these aristocratic objections, padded hips were the fashion in King James's time, while the collarless coat, with seams converging to the throat, narrowed the chest and shoul- ders and gave to the male figure the outline of the female. Ridiculous as most fashions, when not based upon legitimate principles of art, seem at a distance, however, it is astonishing how unaware the excesses creep upon us, and how easily and unsuspectingly men of sense pass, from ridiculing a new fashion, to ap- proving and adopting it. It would puz- zle any one present, except perhaps an artist, to tell, in a moment, what are the absurdities of the present fashions. Yet absurdities there are, that will be laugh- ed at fifty years hence, and you can easily detect them, by applying to the present modes the severe test of their utility as heighteners of natural beauty. And here let me, in passing, throw a pebble into the scale of art — hinting at the importance of keeping in view the principles of art and true elegance in adopting the changes of the fashions. If the portraits of men of mark and women of great beauty, in our age, are to be painted for posterity, let it be within the painter's power to make an ar- tistic disposition of drapery, without painting his sitters in the unfitting costume of a clas- sic age, floating them in clouds, or disguis- ing them with cloaks and mantles. We have all laughed at the portraits that have descended to us from the days of periwigs and red-heeled shoes. There have been celebrated painters, who have followed the fashions of the time even in historical pic- tures — gravely representing the apostles and LECTURE ON FASHION. 801 martyrs in bag- wigs, and the Virgin Mary in hoop and farthingale. There is no know- ing how far the habituation of monstrosities in common wear may corrupt the taste even of artists. I am not sure, by the way, that the national style of dress may not have something to do with the heroic in national character. There was pride of country in a Roman toga, that hardly appertains to a hat and frock coat; and Cesar's death might not have descended so dramatically to posterity, if, instead of wrapping his head majestically in his mantle, he had fallen at the base of Pompey's statue — with his overcoat pulled over him ! Leaving the fashions with thus much of notice, I come now to the subject of fashion — a term of most elusive and changeable import, and expressive of a condition of life, which it is next to impossible to analyze or define. Fashion is a position in society — attained by different avenues in different countries — but, however arrived at, giving its possessor consequence in common re- port, value in private life, authority in all matters of taste, and influence in every thing. Rightly to appreciate what fashion is, or rather what it is likely to be hereafter in our own country, let us, without denning it further, look a little into what it is abroad. Let us see what fashion is in France, and what it is in England — for it is from these two countries, only, that we borrow any thing in the way of social distinctions — and by contrast with our future models, we can the more easily make out what fashion is in the great metropolis of our own country, if not as to which way it is tending. There is wonderful activity of amusement in all the grades of society in Paris, and no one class, or grade, wastes much time in thinking about the other— differing in this respect, (I may say in passing), from Eng- land, where all classes that pretend to socie- ty at all, occupy themselves to any uncom- fortable degree with gazing enviously at the highest. Of necessity, in a monarchical country, rank has its weight, and the an- cient nobility of France can scarcely be said to be out of fashion, though the verbal ho- 51 mage and high consideration with which per- sons of noble family are invariably named, is merely nominal and ceremonious, and the old families, unless fashionable from intrin- sic causes, are practically shelved and for- gotten in the celebrated Faubourg where they reside. Wealth, too, as in all coun- tries, has its weight, and the rich man in Paris may soar, on wings of lavish expense, to the acquaintance of fashionable people ; though, like Icarus with his wings of wax, he drops like a clod when his wings are melted. The court-circle — those who are officially or amicably in habits of inter- course with the family of the king, are not necessarily, the fashion. But beyond the control of either of these three pow- erful grades of society, — rank, wealth and court favor — there exists in Paris a sphere of fashion ; and whatever else may purchase admission to it by outlay of splendor, or come into temporary contact with it by caprice or accident, there is but one homo- geneous and predominating principle in it — but one invariable " open sesame," and that is, intellect! Personal beauty goes far in France, but it must be accompanied by the tact of being agreeable, or, if it were Venus herself, the beauty would soon be ridiculed and neglected. Celebrity, of every description, is a passport to fashion. Cele- brated players and singers, travellers, sol- diers, artists, scholars, statesmen and diplo- matists, range freely through the penetralia of Parisian fashion. Nothing is excluded that is eminent — that is distinguished, that can amuse. All manner of mental superi- ority is unhesitatingly acknowledged. And, intellect being the constituency of this legis- lature of fashion, who are its leaders. The manifest controllers of the tide of thought and of the great interests of the present hour — the living authors, the editors of newspa- pers, active politicians, resident diplomatists, and talented clergy — these are the influen- tial leaders of fashionable society in Paris, and the indispensable guests at all fashion- able entertainments. With all the French passion for dress and elegance, they exact nothing ornamental in the persons of their 802 LECTURE ON FASHION. intellectual favorites — in their admired po- ets, and artists. They appreciate eminence in dress and personal accomplishment, for it is a shape of talent, and the consummate dandy has commonly a passport in his tact and wit — but the lions of Paris are as often ill-dressed and awkward as the contrary, and the mere exteriors of men have little to do with making them permanently fash- ionable. A sphere of society so constituted is teeming with power, for, besides standing at the very fountain of respect, which is in- tellect, it is contributed to by all the differ- ent levels of life in that great metropolis — taking to itself the ambitious core and spirit of every class, rank and condition. Its power, too, goes farther than mere opinion. The most conspicuous members of the pre- sent government of France, were first the idols of its fashionable society — as editors of newspapers, poets and men of science. In- tellect like theirs, however manifested, is the road to fashion, and, driven onward by fashionable influence and eclat, it is the easy and flowery road to every thing desi- rable in position and power. Without di- gressing to look for the causes of this in the political and moral revolutions of France, let me say simply of the present hour, that if there be in the world an indisputable re- public of intellect, it is the fashionable so- ciety of witty and giddy Paris ! Let us glance now at fashion in England — differing from that of France in some very essential particulars. Rank, is more highly prized in England. A man who is noble- born is already three fourths fashionable — the remaining fourth depending not at all on his fortune, but wholly on his appear- ance and manners. A clownish young lord, or a girl who is Right Honorably plain and awkward, though presentable at court, and invited for form's sake to the sweeping entertainments which embrace the giver's entire acquaintance, can never be fashion- able, and is pointedly overlooked in the invitations to parties more select, and very soon discouraged and mortified out of soci- ety. Wealth has much less influence than in France, in making its possessor fashiona- ble. A person who is merely wealthy — not ornamental to society in his own person, is hopelessly shut out from the sphere of the exclusives. A certain competency, it is true, is necessary to fashion. A stylish man in London must spend three times as much as would serve his purpose in France, in hav- ing about him the appointments of a gentle- man, including an equipage. But, beyond what is necessary for his own personal ele- gance, and convenience, he requires no riches to pass freely through all the favor- itism of fashion. The immense number of wealthy people in England has neutrali- zed the distinction of wealth ; and money, nowhere in the world, I think, goes so little way as in that country, beyond providing for personal luxury and comfort. Rank and wealth, then, not being inva- riable passports to fashion in London, we come next to the third social estate — that of intellect. Your mind immediately passes in review the politicians, the men of sci- ence, the authors, dramatists, artists — whose names — written at the height they have attained to, are legible at the distance at which we read them — the breadth of the Atlantic ! You ask — has the genius that makes these men immortal, made them the favorites of the hour they illuminate — the fashion in the country on which they shed lustre ! When they are down from the height of inspiration in which their wings were visible to the universe, do the choicest of fair women and nobte men, contend, as in France, to do them honor and give them pleasure 1 No ! The exclusive sphere in England has no such class in its confidence, as men of genius. A man whose star has culminated — who has forced the world to hear of him by some undeniable burst of intellect — finds his way open, it is true, into the houses of the nobility, and into the more common resorts of the fashion- ables. He is the "lion of the season" — and what the position is, of the merely intel- lectual lion in the fashionable circle of England, English writers have honestly enough put down ! It is a hell of in- visible humiliations! Not to offend any LECTURE ON FASHION. 803 living author by sketching his position, suppose Keats, the apothecary's boy, to have returned from Italy, where he died ; and, having outlived the sneer of the high- born critic who counselled him to " return to his gallipots," to have become a lion in London society. He had nothing in birth, or personal appearance, to give him value —nothing but incomparable genius — that which, in all theories and essays on the distinctions of life, is put down as the no- blest aristocracy. He would have been invited every where ! He would have dined and supped and danced, if he liked, in every nobleman's house in London, and would have been, for a season or two, constantly in the presence of the exclusives, male and female. But the entrance to the noble- man's house, and the nobleman's conde- scension at dinner, and the attentive listen- ing of the entire company to his eloquent conversation, would never have broken down the wall of glass between him and the ladies of his host's family and circle ! The belles of Almack's would never have known Mr. Keats. The beauties familiar with the dandies of St. James street, would as soon have thought of feeling a tender- ness for a Chinese juggler who had amused them, as for the literary lion they had list- ened to at dinner. There is an invariable manner of uninterested and polite suffer- ance, cultivated for the express use of a non-conductor between the exclusives and the unprivileged who may have access to their resorts. This has been felt by every self-made celebrated man in England, and as most of them have been content with one or two seasons of such life, men of genius, unless newly risen, are seldom to be found in vogue among the exclusives. But the sphere exists — powerful, splen- did, and dazzling to all eyes, — the sphere of high fashion in England, — and what is the key to it, and for whom are its intoxi- cating triumphs 1 In civilization, as in many other things, extremes meet. The highest possible cul- tivation approaches nearest to the simpli- city of nature, and England, which, at this moment, probably, is at a higher point of civilization than was ever before attained, shows, in its most accomplished circle, the nearest approach to nature. The passport to fashion in England is that which would be a passport to pre-eminence in an Indian tribe — beauty of person combined with assu- rance and a natural air of superiority. With a mien of graceful boldness, and such a face and form as would suit a sculptor, or grace a chief, the son of a country curate in Eng. land may pluck fashion from an earl. And the same with the other sex. With no pre- tension to parentage or position, above re- spectability, a girl of remarkable beauty, let it be only such beauty as would sit gracefully upon title, and bear itself proudly among the proud, is marked from her child- hood for high connection. She attracts the regard of her titled neighbors, is taken up as a guest to London, and made the belle of the season, and, if an attachment spring up between her and a man of rank, the passion is fanned and favored by generous acclamation. The exclusives rejoice in an addition of beauty to their set, and the coro- net is more graced from being worn even by plebeian blood, more gracefully. I am not sure that this is not a commen- dable aristocracy — at least not sure that the acknowledging and adopting of nature's stamp of superiority is not the best se- cret for the securing of power and in- fluence to the most elevated class. The finest race in the eastern hemisphere — the most gallant and manly in its men, and the most beautiful and high-born looking in its women — is the fashionable aristocracy of England. The requisite loftiness of bearing which accompanies the beauty admired by this class, is not attained without superiority in the natu- ral character, and the successful fashiona- bles of England are the best stuff, I believe — the men for action, and the women for the maternity of nature's noblemen. I am inclined to think, I repeat, that nature's mark of superiority is well and wisely ac knowledged. The balance of the physical and intellectual endowments — the power 804 LECTURE ON FASHION. of bold action on a level with other men, and with a superiority that all men can ap- preciate — may be, to the eye of nature, su- perior to what we call genius — superior to the concentration of the whole force upon par- ticular qualities of the brain. There are, doubtless, many men, wholly undistin- guished, who yet, in the harmonious pro- portion of their persons and character — in their sufficiency of brain for all the exi- gences of action, and of spirit and dignity to carry out all the desirable purposes of the brain, are superior to geniuses, born for nothing but to write books of fancy, or made immortal by a disproportioned devel- opment of one faculty only. Upon such men, — upon poets and novelists, artists and musicians — nature has rarely put her legible stamp of u first quality." It has been the complaint of genius, through all ages, that its superiority has not been acknowledged; and it seems to be an invariable instinct in human nature not to acknowledge it, where the writer and his personal qualities are known. May it not be natural therefore, to revolt against disproportion in endow- ment — and may not our great admiration for authors at a distance, and our diminish- ed homage when we know them, lie in the disappointment we feel that they are not as remarkable in other respects as in power of fancy — an instinc.tive feeling that the ex- cess of this quality is at the expense of others as desirable 1 This is something of a digression — but before leaving the subject of English fash- ion, let me remark upon the prodigious in- fluence of the fashionable class in England, and the likelihood that it works as an im- portant weight in the balance of power in that country. It is time, I think, that like the addition in France, of the Tiers Etat to the political divisions of Church and State. Fashion, in England, should be named as a power, after King, Lords and Commons. It is a combination — a class — an order — form- ed exclusively from no other class — capable, as was shown in Brummel's time, of giving a slight to the blood royal, and in the con- stant habit of putting down rank that does mind and person marriage of noble not look like rank, and selecting nature's favorites from the people. The Queen fears it — the nobility courts it — the people worship it. It makes and unmakes popu- lar idols. It rules the stage. It puts down pretension. It is always elegant and lofty, even in its oppressions. It fosters taste. It maintains the beautiful against the costly, — and it has for its exclusive use, and with power to direct them alike against over- bearing authority and vulgar wealth, the formidable weapons of contempt and ridi- cule. In all monarchies that ever existed aristocracy have dwindled in by the exclusive inter- blood. England is the first that has made tributary the nobili- ty of nature, taking grafts from the strong and beautiful, wherever grew strength and beauty in the capricious garden of supe- riority. A revolution cannot put down such a class ! There is a natural homage in the high and low-born alike, paid, without stint or scruple, to the stamp of God. The aristocracy of England, with all their pride and superciliousness towards those who crowd upon their skirts, is acknowledged and admired, by the mass of the people, as was never another aristocracy by its plebe- ian countrymen. The existence of such a class, I repeat, is important to the balance of power in England. The tides of opin- ion, that would meet, embattled in oppo- sing floods — the arbitrary dictates of the court on the one hand, and the rebellious spirit of a people never consulted, on the other, — find, in this intermediate class, a break- water, that is a continual check to overflow and devastation. The next step in my argument is to get, if possible, the same generalizing view of the great metropolis of this country — to see what it is that gives fashion and conse- quence in New York. Let me premise, however, that my remarks will apply to no other city in this country, nor would they have been true of New York forty years ago. In cities of a certain size — cities with the population of Boston, Phi- ladelphia and Albany — the natural claims LECTURE ON FASHION. 805 to aristocracy have, at least, a hearing ; and combined with wealth and personal worth, they take rank with little opposi- tion. In a metropolis of four hundred thousand inhabitants, these same distinc- tions are lost in the number of claimants ; and, in what I have to say of New York, I confine myself to the period since this state of things has existed — the last fif- teen or twenty years, during which the old aristocracy of the Knickerbockers has been shoved aside, by the enormous in- crease of wealthy and pretentious popu- lation. In the particular period at which we live, our country differs from all the nations of the earth in one remarkable feature — that of being in a state of social transition unex- ampled for extent and rapidity — passing, that is to say, by lightning leaps of ambi- tious imitation, from plain to sumptuous, from primitive to luxurious. Study the pro- gresss of innovations upon the manners of older countries. See with what reluctant advance, one by one, the few foreign usages that prevail in England and France have crept respectively upon those compla- cent countries. How little that is French there is in England — how little that is Eng- lish in France! And with what an unnatu- ralized strangeness these few outlandish features are incorrigibly worn. Here, on the contrary, in the cities of America, cus- toms that would be twenty years obtaining foothold in Europe, are adopted at sight — domesticated and made universal in a single season. Our commerce is on the alert, our merchants are novelty-seeking travellers, ready to freight ships with any thing they find that would be new at home, and we have not a single prejudice in our national character which shuts the door upon an innovation. Nothing appears abroad — in dress, equipage, usage of society, style of furniture or mode of amusement, that is not conjured over the water with aeriel quick- ness, copied with marvellous fidelity in New York, and incorporated at once into national habituation. The drawing-rooms of our wealthy classes are types, neither faint nor imperfect, of the sumptuous inte- riors of May Fair, and of the exclusive saloons of France. Our ladies are scarce thirty days behind the fashions of Paris. A change in men's dress in St. James street, is adopted in New York before it is detect- ed east of Temple Bar. The stained glass of Bohemia, while still a curiosity in Eng- land, had grown common upon our dinner- tables. The toys of the age of Louis the Fourteenth, Egyptian couches, and the carved furniture of the age of Elizabeth, have been in turn the fashion abroad, and, of either style, there were profuse speci- mens in common wear among us, while the novelty was still fresh in the capitals of Eu- rope. We copy every thing we can hear of — import and imitate instantly every new model of equipage — follow every whim of society, take the new dance, the new by- word, the new public amusement, — and enter heart and soul into every rage that is handed over to us, dramatic, operatic, sump- tuary, and literary. This daguerreotype im- itation is no less improving in its results, however, than it is miraculous for its facile rapidity. We have beaten England and France in progressive civilization and eleva- tion, three centuries in one. At this rate, and with the increasing facilities of com- merce, we shall soon have nothing to learn from Europe, but what transpires between the traverses of packets — and when that period arrives, we shall be, of all countries the most cosmopolite — comparing with other nations as the enlightened and liberal tra- veller compares with the home-keeping vil- lager. I am anticipating, however. Be- fore saying more of the future, let us take our proposed view of the present — as shown in the fashion of this great metropolis. Though there is probably a greater mar- ket for the fashions in New- York than in any other capital in the world, (from the fact that all classes, above the lowest, dress as extravagantly here as only the first class does abroad) there is still very little of what can be fairly fixed upon as fashion. No one circle confessedly holds the power. Of rank, we can hardly name the value in 806 LECTURE ON FASHION. New York, for, coming to us from abroad, it has the exaggerated value of an exotic — much more worshipped here than where it comes from. It does not strike me, how- ever, that we show any symptoms of relish for the indigenous rank that would natu- rally be now taking root in the families among us most honorably descended. It would require some research to discover, in New York, even the residences of those whose fathers' names are in the page of our history. Wherever they are, they get little position, consequence, or fashion, from the mere eminence of their forefathers — few of them it is certain, being even what the most conspicuous people would call " in socie- ty." I think this will bear putting still more strongly, and that I may venture to say there is an instinctive hostility to the assumption of consequence by old families and somewhat, perhaps, from a feeling on the part of the undistinguished, that there is still a chance for competition with dignities of so recent date, but more from the application of that exacting standard, by which merit in the inheritor alone makes valid an inheritance of glory. In the absence of rank, and particularly IB a republic, you would naturally suppose that official power — the appointment by public honor to the highest dignities of the State — would give, to the family of the holder, a deference that would make them the fashion. Yet you all know the value of this claim to consequence ! The Gov- ernor, Secretary, Treasurer of the State, the Senators and Representatives of the Sov- reign People, come and go with no more eclat than other men, and their families are no more sought, imitated or caressed, for their official dignity. It neither makes a man nor his family particularly the fashion in New York, if he be Mayor of the city ; though, in the administration of his office, he exercises a sway as powerful for the time being, as many a crowned head of feudal Europe. Instead of fashionable ho- mage, paid to such dignity as we had a nand in making, we seem on the contrary to feel for it a fashionable indifference. Is it here as in France, and does intel- lect give consequence in New York ? Does wit in man, or conversational talent in wo- man, make the possessor an indispensable acquaintance to all givers of fashionable parties. Are the powerful controllers of public opinion, the gentlemen of the press — keepers as they are, or might be, of the key of each momentous to-morrow — are they, in a country where the press, far more than in France, is the citadel of power — are they, as in France, courted for their intellect, and for the influence they could give to the class they particularly belonged to. Are the gentlemen of the bar — the gla- diators of intellect — who, in society, as in courts of justice, have on their armor of wit, and in the absence of any class possessing the leisure to be conversationists only, are the most amusing as well as the most im- proving members of society — are they sought for by the ambitious, and are their houses and resorts made fashionable by their intel- lect'? Are men of science, distinguished artists, poets, authors, politicians and native celebrities generally — is this varied body of men, representing certainly the intellect of the day, sought out for fashionable enter- tainments, courted, and made friends and favorites of, by fashionable women 1 These questions are answered by the reasonable- ness of a doubt — whether one in ten of the most pretentious fashionables of New York, have any definite idea who are the intellectual masters and controllers of that grand vehicle of society to which they themselves are — the incomparable varnish ! Is it then as in England 7 Does fashion- able society take pains to secure to itself Nature's mark of aristocracy ? Are the rare accidents of mingled grace and beauty — the lovely and admirable women who do live sometimes in unfashionable neighborhoods, and do belong to families that are only re- spectable, — are such ornaments of their sex sought out for embellishment to fashionable parties, or would they find the way easy if they attempted to rise, by their own exer- tions, to spheres more suitably ornamental 1 Is masculine beauty — combined with a look LECTURE ON FASHION. 807 of spirit, and a mien of natural chivalry and superiority — are these attractions, in a youth of unknown family and of no fortune, suffi- cient to give him, in New York as in Eng- land, easy access to fashionable circles, and consequence and influence, the town over, in all matters of taste and elegance 1 These questions, too, are easily answered by a rea- sonable doubt — whether a well-bred stran- ger, thrown into a mixed assembly in New York, would not make blunders, (as he hardly could do in England), in an attempt, to pick out the fashionables by their look of aristocracy. Nature's stamp of nobility, then, not be- ing a passport to fashion in New York — nor family name and descent — nor intellect —nor that official dignity, which in theory, you would say, should give rank in a re- public—what is the predominating princi- ple of fashion ? What is it that gives con- sequence and enviable station 1 There is a condition of life in that city, which without forming a definite and com- bined class, as in France and England, may still be called " the fashion" — a kind of quicksand of conspicuousness and conse- quence, stable hitherto for no footing, but crowded successively by exclusives, few of whom have ever kept their place long enough to be identified by public rumor. The uncertainty as to who the fashiona- bles are, is somewhat increased, too, by their great number, as no recognizable cir- cle ever comes twice together, and no twenty fashionables would agree as to the fashionableness of twenty more. The great secret of vogue in this upper sphere — the passport to its conspicuousness and conse- quence, — is not exactly money — not ex- actly the being rich — but expense, and the dressing, driving and entertaining with lavish expensiveness. Extravagance, here, takes the place that, in France, is given to intellect, and in England, to the nobility of nature. It is true, that even under this dynasty, it has not invariably been as diffi- cult as now to tell who were the leading fashionables of New York. Fashion, from time to time, has made head and taken a stand, and within my own memory of New York society, fifteen or twenty years, there have been eight or ten confident and estab- lished aristocracies. They have risen and fallen, duly, with " the stocks" — but never before, after the break up of a Board of Fashionable Directors, has there been so prolonged a state of anarchy as exists at this moment. The great convulsion in Wall street in '36, scattered the last defi- nite combination of " people necessary to know;" and since that time there has never been a circle that was not rivalled by twenty others, nor have there been any leaders of fashion, nameable without a smile to two consecutive believers. Fashion there is — the fashion as I said before of conspicuousness in expense — but it is a commonwealth without govern- ment or centre — without limits or barriers. Any body belongs to it who spends up to the mark, and if there are any two who have combined to be exclusive, or make " a set" — it is by no means generally suspected' This state of promiscuous pomp, how- ever, cannot long exist. It would not have existed till now, if money alone could make, again, a potentate among fashion- ables. The ambition to be, as the French say, "the cream of the cream" is not wanting. It never sleeps. But money — mere money — is omnipotent no more ! The setting up of an equipage, the adopting of crest and livery, and the giving of balls and dinners, can but make a man — now — one of five hundred. Not till this five hundred is decimated to fifty, by some other superi- ority, that, with the aid of money, can make itself paramount, and not till that fifty is decimated, still again, to five, who, by the consent of the fifty, shall be their lea- ders and rulers, will there be a fashion in New York, worth courting or fearing. Is this a consummation to be wished ? I think I can show you that it is ! The very core and essence of that which constitutes a republic is the first principle in fashion— rebellion against unnatural au thority. What would be the state of Eng- land at this enlightened day, with no coun- 808 LECTURE ON FASHION. terpoise to that nobility which is an acci- dent of birth, and no asylum in society from the overbearing 1 haughtiness of offi- cial and court privilege 1 There would be a tyranny of ill-endowed aristocrats — the more tyrannical in proportion as they were more brutal ; — and a chasm between them and the people — between them and hum- ble-born merit, which, if not crossed by the bridge of a revolution, would engulf them in the darkness of feudal barbarism. Now, there is a republic in the heart of monarchical England— -fashion, ruled by the manifest stamp of superiority. There is a republic in the heart of monarchical France —fashion, ruled by wit and intellect. These are intermediate powers inseparable from a state of high civilization, let the govern- ment be what it will. Under the two hoary monarchies just named, they are a check to the tyranny of rank, the inso- lence of wealth and the pomposity of the court — to all of which intolerable evils the smile or frown of fashion is wholesomely and triumphantly paramount. But have we no work for Fashion to do in America 1 Are there no monsters to be put down by a combination of refinement and intellect ? Have we no evils in our system of society, no oppressions, likely to get the upper hand of a republic, and for which we need therefore the well-tried countercheck of fashion 1 Rank — we have none to contend against. Court favor, as dispensed at Washington, makes no man formidable. The influence of mere wealth, as I have already said, is evidently on the wane — though were it not so, the tyranny of a sordid aristocracy of money might indeed call for a well-armed antagonist. A monster there is, however, reigning over this country, strange to say, in the shape of its greatest blessing— a monster it would scarce be safe to name, without first unmasking and showing his deformity, and, for this monster, we require the check that can alone be given by the combination I speak of as fashion, for it is the only shape and mouth-piece he will not himself usurp and turn to his tyranni- cal uses. Look a little into his anatomy. To how many men in a hundred, taken indiscriminately from the miscellaneous population of New York, would you en- trust a decision upon any question that affected your personal position or happi- ness. Count among them the vicious, the wilful, the ignorant and short-sighted, — who are, and must necessarily be, in a great metropolis like this, the majority in numbers. In the capitals of other coun- tries the ignorant and vicious classes have little or no moral power — no power at all, except in the hand to hand conflict of a revolution. In this country every one of them forms part of the constituency of a newspaper and has a voice as loud as your own on all questions that can come to the threshold of public notice. With such a population as America had in '76, this level suffrage of opinion was the heaven of liberty. Taking the country, now, from ocean to ocean, it is so still. But in our great cities — more especially in our great- est city — the proportion of evil in the popu- lation gives danger to its sovereign impulse Free discussion and the vigilance of patri- ots, may control it on great questions, and if every so-called popular impulse were fairly dragged to light, and known by honest counting to be the wish of the ma- jority, it would be still more effectually bridled. But no ! The oracle of the peo- ple finds utterance when the people are asleep. The monster I have not yet na- med is enthroned within it, and it is he, and not the people, speaking oftenest in its voice of thunder. The laws are palsied by his threat — private character trembles in its sanctuary — the arts and all the interests of taste and elegance are benumbed and discouraged, and while the public is a u chartered libertine," the individual is a slave, for no man dare do otherwise than as the mass approve, for fear of detraction and outcry. It is in this monster that envy and ill-will, and the natural hatred of the low and vicious for those above them, find a ready weapon for their malice. Desperate men who have seen better days, and ty- LECTURE ON FASHION. 809 rants without thrones, of whom there is never a lack in any community of the earth, are the ready trumpeters of the will of this many-eyed monster. And now shall I tell you his false name ? Shall I tell you what lurks in the shadow of liberty, like oppression behind a throne of a monarch 1 You have anticipated it by my description. It is unexamined, unauthorized, uncontrol- led public opinion — the monster whose false throat claims utterance for the people. The judge on the bench thinks of him in his ! verdict. The criminal at the bar trusts him more than his lawyer. He points his fin- ger, and the representative of the people turns bully in the halls of legislation. 'He stands before the statesman — hiding from him the page of history and posterity's con- \ tempt. Women dreads him on her pillow — for detraction is his most appetizing food. Religion trembles at her altar — for, on the ashes of the house of God he avenges an insult to his myrmidons. But it is not alone in shapes so palpable to view that this black shadow of freedom stalks through a republic. There is a tyr- ranny of public opinion, in every grade and hiding-place of this country — worn so ha- bitually as to be thought an inseparable evil of human society — worn like the hair shirt of penance till its irritation has be- come a habit of second nature. It takes twice as bold a man here as in Europe, to be economical — twice as bold a man to pre- fer paying a debt to putting his name to a subscription. We put ourselves to twice the inconvenience here, that people in Eu- rope do, to seem what we are expected to be by our neighbors. The pain and morti- fication of reducing our style of living to suit a reduced prosperity in business, is twice, here, what it is abroad — thrice what it need be. And on the other hand, look at the invidious criticism and malice drawn upon men or women, by any step, however well it can be afforded, toward embellishing their condition of life. We do not live in liberty, here — we do not spend our money or enjoy our firesides in rational freedom. The country is free, the press is free, reli- gion is free, and public opinion remarkably free — but the individual is a slave ! The stab of Brutus was struck at nothing half so tyrannical in the bosom of Cesar as our des- potism — despotism of the public of which we, who suffer, severally make one. Since government was first invented, the most dreaded evil has been tyranny in the sove- reign power. In a monarchy the king holds the power, and the people and pri- vate life are to be protected against the king. In a republic the people are the sovereign, and the laws and private life are to be protected against the people. The President is but the subservient prime minister of the sovereign people. His many- headed master never loses him from his sight one hour : and while in a monar- chy there is an appeal, from the oppression of the king to the vengeance of the people, in a republic there is no appeal from op- pression but to God — for who can impeach the sovereign people ! You may think, if you have not given me your close attention that I have wan- dered from my subject. But no. It is in my subject — in the influence of a circle of acknowledged fashion — that I see a release from this invisible monster. As Leather- stocking said when the Prairie was burn- ing, " fire shall fight fire." Opinion from a more authentic source, shall stem and countercheck opinion. We are awed, now, by what we vaguely suppose the public to think. Give us a class whose opinion is entitled to undeniable weight — a class whose judgment is made up from elevated standards — a class whose favor is alike valu- able to the ambitious of both sexes — a class it is important to know and propitiate if possible, but at any rate to quote as un- questionable authority — and the evil is at once abated. The most radiant feature as well as the most salutary principle of mo dern civilization is the organizing in France and England of the classes I have descri- bed — umpires between tyranny and the people, — arbiters, that with right on their side are stronger than the despot. As I have endeavored to show, this umpire in 810 LECTURE ON FASHION. England is fashion, made potent by the up- holding of nature's aristocracy. In France it is fashion, made all but sovereign in its influence, by the enlisting of intellect. In our country, as you all know, the class that is destined to protect us against our shape of the tyranny universal on earth, is still unorganized, and the locum tenens, the temporary key of fashionable superiority, is showy expensiveness. But this anar- chy is not to last — nor, (I trust you are prepared to agree with me,) is it desirable that it should. I may venture, I think, to predict, by shadows cast before, that it is on the eve, now, of a new and lasting for- mation. But, of what stuff is to be built our inner republic 1 Who, in our great metropolis, is to be eligible to that privileged class whose judgment shall rebuke the un weighed opin- ions of the mass, as well as the insolence of overbearing wealth and authority. The material lies about us in prodigal abun- dance. We have intellect, of God's purest kindling, burning before our eyes like stars before our closed windows in the last watch before morning. We have nature's nobility — men of such spirit and bearing, and wo- men of such talent and beauty, as would draw homage alike from the Indian on the Prairie, or the exclusives at Almack's. We have master-spirits — men who possess the unaccountable, but lordly, power of control over popular masses — capable of swaying the most important flood-tides of the politi- cal sea, yet not capable of giving influence or fashion to their families, or the circles they live in. We have every degree, range, and quality, of material for fashion, in as great abundance as any country on earth. And now, of what stuff, I ask again, is to be moulded our fashionable republic — what class of superiority is to be set up for our umpire — counterpoise, to protect the sub- ject individual against the sovereign people 1 In this question the whole country has a voice. With the rapid and facile inter- course between our cities, and with our singularly gregarious habits— the distin- guished of all the cities of the union, com- ing frequently together — every society in the country can influence the character of aristocracy in the metropolis. That me- tropolis is the great throbbing heart in whose pulsations the distant hand and foot have sympathy and influence. It was time — high time — that attention was called to the quality of the blood at this heart of our country. We have kept our vigils on all other subjects — we have slept at our watch over this ! The first beat of this chronic pulse may be regulated, easily and irresistibly, by public volition. The fear is that the wrong elements may creep in- sensibly uppermost, and ossify into power without moulding or controlling! It was time, I say, that it should become a ques- tion of lively agitation, — in the metropolis and in every city in the Union — of what stuff is to be formed the coming American aristocracy? Discussion, enquiry, active ridicule of false pretension, and generous approbation of that which is truly admi- rable, are means — ample means — in our hands, to make it what we will. Let us beware, however — for, choose what we will — do homage to what we may, as worthy of privilege and distinction — whatever we do choose — whatever becomes the fashion, with the consequence that fashion is destined to have, — accumulates power from the mo- ment of taking the lead, and is elevated in character, as well as hedged about with protection and aggrandizement! It is for the general vigilance — for you, on your part — to say, whether high morality shall be indispensable to fashion. It is for you to say, (and these are important questions) whether political rectitude shall give con- sequence to a man in the highest circle, or whether men who value consequence and position, shall dare to meddle with politics at all. In short, whether the "al- mighty dollar" — whether intellect, as shown in wit or conversation, or as shown in the arts, the press and the professions — whether official rank, or manifest superi- ority, as stamped by nature on strength and beauty — whether one, or any com- bination of these, is to be the confessed LECTURE ON FASHION. 811 title to American aristocracy, is yet to be decided. I have discoursed more gravely of fashion than was perhaps anticipated — less amuse - mgly and more gravely than I might have done, it is certain. Fashion is a trifling word, and there are those to whom words never change meaning or value. Import- ant as it may become, too, in the aggre- gate, fashion is known, and contributed to, by what the wise call trifles. Trifles they are — and so are the foam-bubbles on the ad- vancing wave ! But that glittering crest is no more certain to be the rider upon a tide, fetterless and resistless, than are the trifles of fashion the precursors of a powerful ele- ment, surging in, at this hour, upon the yet incomplete character of our country. Shall we be indifferent to the beauty or the de- formity, the viciousness or the healthful- ness of this impending aristocracy 1 Is it not worth while — momentously worth while — to arrest its presuming avatar, outside the citadel of power, and challenge its authori- ty from God and reason ! I may give it you as my opinion, that aristocracy in a re- public must needs be more powerful than those of monarchies, limited or despotic — for it must fight the whole battle of superi- ority, unaided by rank, prejudice or long usage. Its formation were inevitable at this stage of our progress, even were we alone in the world — for there is no high civilization without it — but we are borrow- ing, as I said before, the social usages, as well as the fashions and luxuries, of the countries over the water — borrowing forms and laws of aristocracy faster than fashions or luxuries. And is not this a matter of interest to the public 1 " Where lies pow- er?" "Where are the combinations that hold power?" are questions for the patriot and statesman — questions answered, wide of the mark, by the hackneyed divisions of political economy. "Church and state," " rich and poor," " King, Lords and Com- mons," give no clue to the power para- mount in England — the well-organized mastery of fashion ! Let no man think it impossible that a class designated by so trifling a word as fashion, may soon crowd mammon from our altars, and become the antagonists of ill-begotten, public opinion, and the oracle of all that affects the indi- vidual. This, I repeat again, is the coming epoch in our social history. Thus far — to this level of preparation for an aristocracy — America has built her pyamid of civiliza- tion — overtaking astonished Europe, cen- turies in a day. To top this pyramid — to complete our broad-based and towering republic, we have a class to create — a summit-stone to lay — to which we can point without shame or hesitation, when it is lifted to the scrutiny of the world. Thank God, we have yet the time and opportunity to decide, from what quarry it shall be hewn, and to what mortar of public sentiment it shall owe its stability! NOTE. It may amuse the reader to quote a chap- ter from one of the serious works on the fashions referred to in the beginning of the Lecture. « THE SIMPLE COBBLER OF AG AW AM," the work from which it was taken, was a classic of the sixteenth century, written by a New England emigrant clergy- man, Rev. Nathaniel Ward. He thus dis- courses of the lady- fashions of New-England of that day : — " Should I not keepe promise in speaking a little to Womens fashions, they would take it unkindly : I was loath to pester bet- ter matter with such stuffe ; I rather thought it meet to let them stand by themselves, like the Qua Genus in the Grammar, being Defi- jcients, or Redundants, not to be brought under any Rule : I shall therefore make bold for this once, to borrow a little of their loose tongued Liberty, and mispend a word or two upon their long-wasted, but short-skirted 812 LECTURE ON FASHION. patience : a little use of my stirrup will do no harme. Ridentem dicere verum, quid prohibet ? Gray Gravity it selfe can well beteam, That Language be adapted to the Theme He that to Parrots speaks, must parrotize : He that instructs a foole, may act th' unwise. It is known more then enough that I am neither Nigard, nor Cinick, to the due bravery of the true Gentry : if any man mis- likes a bully mong drossock more then I, let him take her for his labour : I honour the woman that can honour her selfe with her attire ; a good Text alwayes deserves a fair Margent : I am not much offended if I see a trimme, far trimmer than she that wears it : in a word, whatever Christianity or Civility will allow, I can afford with London mea- sure : but when I heare a nugiperous Gentle- dame inquire what dresse the Queen is in this week : what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court is ; I meane the very newest : with egge to be in it in all haste, what ever it be ; I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if shee were of a kickable substance, than either honour'd or humour'd. To speak moderately, I truly confesse, it ie beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive, how those women should have any true grace, or valuable vertue, that have so little wit, as to disfigure themselves with euch exotick garbes, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant bar-geese, ill-shapen-shotten- shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphicks, or at the best into French flurts of the pastery, which a proper English woman should scorne with her heels : it is no marvell they weare drailes on the hinder part of their heads, having nothing as it seems in the fore-part, but a few Squirrils brains to help them frisk from one ill-favour'd fashion to another. These whimm' Crown'd shees, these fashion-fancying wits, Are empty thin brain'd shells, and fiddling Kits. The very troublers and impoverishers of mankind, I can hardly forbear to commend to the world a saying of a Lady living some- time with the Queen of Bohemia, I know not where shee found it, but it is pitty it should be lost. The World is full of care, much like unto a bubble , Women and care, and care and women, and women ana care and trouble. The Verses are even enough for such odde pegma's. I can make my selfe sicke at any time, with comparing the dazzling splender wherewith our Gentlewomen were embel- lished in some former habits, with the gut- foundred goosdom, wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched. Wee have about five or six of them in our Colony : if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for a moneth after. I have been a solitary widdower almost twelve yeares, purposed lately to make a step over to my Native Country for a yoke-fellow : but when I consider how women there have tripe-wifed themselves with their cladments, I have no heart to the voyage, least their nauseous shapes and the Sea, should work too sorely upon my stomach. I speak sad- ly; me thinkes it should breake the hearts of Englishmen to see so many goodly Eng- lish-women imprisoned in French Cages, peering out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and no body relieves them. It is a more common then convenient saying, that nine Taylors make a man : it were well if nineteene could make a woman to her minde : if Taylors were men indeed, well furnished but with meer morall princi- ples, they would disdain to be led about like Apes, by such mymick Marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing, for men that have bones in them, to spend their lives in making fidle-cases for futilous womens phan- sies ; which are the very pettitoes of infirmi- ty, the gyblets of perquisquilian to)^es. I am so charitable to think, that most of that mystery would worke the cheerfuller while they live, if they might bee well discharged of the tyring slavery of mis-tyring wome-n : it is no little labour to be continually putting up English-women into Out-landish caskes : who if they be not shifted anew, once in a few moneths, grow too sowre for their Hus- LECTURE ON FASHION. 813 bands. What this Trade will answer for themselves when God shall take measure of Taylors consciences is beyond my skill to imagine. There was a time when The joyning of the Red-Rose with the White, Did set our State into a Damask plight. But now our Roses are turned to Flore de lices, our Carnations to Tulips, our Gilli- flowers to Dayzes, our City-Dames, to an indenominable Quaemalry of overturcas'd things. Hee that makes Coates for the Moone, had need take measure every noone ; and he that makes for women, as often, to keepe them from Lunacy. I have often heard divers Ladies vent loud feminine complaints of the wearisome varieties and chargable changes of fashions : I marvell themselves preferre not a Bill of redresse. I would Essex Ladies would lead the Chore, for the honour of their County and persons ; or rather the thrice honoura- ble Ladies of the Court, whom it best be- seemes : who may well presume of a Le Roy le veult from our sober King, a Les Seigneurs ont Assentus from our prudent Peers, and the like Jissentus from our considerate, I dare not say wife-worne Commons: who I believe had much rather passe one such Bill, than pay so many Taylors Bills as they are forced to doe. Most deare and unparallel'd Ladies, be i pleased to attempt it : as you have the pre- cellency of the women of the world for beauty and feature ; so assume the honour to give, and not take Law from any, in mat- ter of attire : if ye can transact so faire a motion among yourselves unanimously, I dare say, they that most renite, will least repent. What greater honour can your Honors desire, then to build a Promontory president to all foraigne Ladies, to deserve so eminently at the hands of all the English Gentry present and to come : and to confute the opinion of all the wise men in the world ; who never thought it possible for women to doe so good a work 1 If any man think I have spoken rather merrily than seriously he is much mistaken, I have written what I write with all the indignation I can, and no more than I ought. I confesse I veer'd my tongue to this kinde of Language de induslria though unwill- ingly, supposing those I speak to are unca- pable of grave and rationall arguments. I desire all Ladies and Gentlewomen to understand that all this while I intend not such as through necessary modesty to avoyd morose singularity, follow fashions slowly, a flight shot or two off, shewing by their mo- deration, that they rather draw counter- mont with their hearts, then put on by their examples. I point my pen only against the light- heel'd beagles that lead the chase so fast, that they run all civility out of breath, against these Ape-headed pullets, which invent Antique foole-fangles, meerly foi fashion and novelty sake. In a word, if I begin once to declaime against fashions, let men and women look well about them, there is somewhat in the businesse ; I confesse to the world, I never had grace enough to be strict in that kinde ; and of late years, I have found syrrope of pride very wholesome in a due Dos, which makes mee keep such a store of that drugge by me, that if any body comes to me for a question-full or two about fashions, they never complain of me for giving them hard measure, or under- weight. But I addresse my selfe to those who can both hear and mend all if they please : I seriously feare, if the pious Parliament doe not find a time to state fashions, as ancient Parliaments have done in some part, God will hardly finde a time to state Religion or Peace : They are the surquedryes of pride, the wantonnesse of idlenesse, provoking sins, the certain prodormies of assured judge- ment, Zeph. 1. 7, 8. It is beyond all account, how many Gen- tlemens and Citizens estates are deplumed by their feather-headed wives, what usefull supplies the pannage of England would afford other Countries, what rich returnes to it selfe, if it were not slic'd out into male and female fripperies: and what a multi- tude of misimploy'd hands, might be better improv'd in some more manly Manufactures for the publique weale : it is not easily ere- 814 LECTURE ON FASHION. dible, what may be said of the preterplural- ities of Taylors in London : I have heard an honest man say, that not long since there were numbered between Temple-barre and Charing-Crosse, eight thousand of that Trade : let it be conjectured by that propor- tion how many there are in and about Lon- don, and in all England, they will appeare to be very numerous. If the Parliament would please to mend women, which their Husbands dare not doe, there need not so many men to make and mend as there are. I hope the present dolefull estate of the Realme, will perswade more strongly to some considerate course herein, than I now can. Knew I how to bring it in, I would speak a word to long haire, whereof I will say no more but this : if God proves not such a Barbor to it as he threatens, unlesse it be amended, Esa. 7. 20. before the Peace of the State and Church be well setled, then let my prophesie be scorned, as a sound minde scornes the ryot of that sin, and more it needs not. If those who are termed Rat- tle-heads and Impuritans, would take up a Resolution to begin in moderation of haire, to the just reproach of those that are called Puritans and Round-heads, I would honour their manlinesse, as much as the others god- linesse, so long as I knew what man or honour meant: if neither can find a Bar- bours shop, let them turne in, to Psal. 68. 21. Jer. 7. 29. 1 Cor. 11. 14. if it be thought no wisdome in men to distinguish them- selves in the field by the Scissers, let it bee thought no injustice in God, not to distin- guish them by the Sword. I had rather God should know me by my sobriety, than mine enemy not know me by my vanity. He is ill kept, that is kept by his owne sin. A short promise is a farre safer guard than a long lock : it is an ill distinction which God is loth to looke at, and his Angels cannot know his Saints by. Though it be not the mark of the Beast, yet it may be the mark of a beast prepared to slaughter. I am sure men use not to weare such manes ; I am also sure Souldiers use to weare other mark- lets or notadoes in time of battell. POETICAL WORKS N. P. WILLIS. I. SACRED POEMS. II. POEMS OF PASSION. III. LADY JANE. IV. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. V. TORTESA, THE USURER. VI. BIANCA VISCONTI. SACRED POEMS. PREFACE. The author puts these poems to press with the knowledge that they should all be rewritten, and with a painful regret that he has no leisure to rewrite them before extending their publicity in a new reprint. The subjects of the poems, and the feelings expressed in them, have given them a popularity independent of criticism, and to that tide he again commits them — to flow as far as they will. He rests his hope of reputation on having the leisure to overtake and pass them at some future day. THE HEALING OF THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS. Freshly the cool breath of the coming eve Stole through the lattice, and the dying girl Felt it upon her forehead. She had lain Since the hot noontide in a breathless trance — Her thin pale fingers clasp'd within the hand Of the heart-broken Ruler, and her breast, Like the dead marble, white and motionless. The shadow of a leaf lay on her lips, And, as it stirr'd with the awakening wind, The dark lids lifted from her languid eyes, And her slight fingers moved, and heavily She turned upon her pillow. He was there — The same loved, tireless watcher, and she look'd Into his face until her sight grew dim With the fast-falling tears ; and, with a sigh Of tremulous weakness murmuring his name, She gently drew his hand upon her lips, And kiss'd it as she wept. The old man sunk Upon his knees, and in the drapery Of the rich curtains buried up his face ; And when the twilight fell, the silken folds Stirr'd with his prayer, but the slight hand he held Had ceased its pressure — and he could not hear, In the dead, utter silence, that a breath Came through her nostrils — and her temples gave To his nice touch no pulse — and, at her mouth, He held the lightest curl that on her neck Lay with a mocking beauty, and his gaze Ached with its deathly stillness. * • • • • ****** It was night — And, softly, o'er the Sea of Galilee, Danced the breeze-ridden ripples to the shore, Tipp'd with the silver sparkles of the moon. The breaking waves play'd low upon the beach Their constant music, but the air beside Was still as starlight, and the Saviour's voice, In its rich cadences unearthly sweet, Seem'd like some just-born harmony in the air, Waked by the power of wisdom. On a rock, With the broad moonlight falling on his brow, 52 He stood and taught the people. At his feet Lay his small scrip, and pilgrim's scallop-shell, And staff — for they had waited by the sea Till he came o'er from Gadarene, and pray'd For his wont teachings as he came to land. His hair was parted meekly on his brow, And the long curls from off his shoulders fell, As he lean'd forward earnestly, and still The same calm cadence, passionless and deep — And in his looks the same mild majesty — And in his mien the sadness mix'd with power — Fill'd them with love and wonder. Suddenly, As on his words entrancedly they hung, The crowd divided, and among them stood Jairus the Ruler. With his flowing robe Gather'd in haste about his loins, he came, And fix'd his eyes on Jesus. Closer drew The twelve disciples to their Master's side; And silently the people shrunk away, And left the haughty Ruler in the midst Alone. A moment longer on the face Of the meek Nazarene he kept hi3 gaze, And, as the twelve look'd on him, by the light Of the clear moon they saw a glistening tear Steal to his silver beard; and, drawing nigh Unto the Saviour's feet, he took the hem Of his coarse mantle, and with trembling hands Press'd it upon his lips, and murmur'd low, " Master ! my daughter !" — •••••• ****** T ne same silvery light, That shone upon the lone rock by the sea, Slept on the Ruler's lofty capitals, As at the door he stood, and welcomed in Jesus and his disciples. All was still. The echoing vestibule gave back the slide Of their loose sandab, and the arrowy beam Of moonlight, slanting to the marble floor, Lay like a spell of silence in the rooms, As Jairus led them on. With hushing slept He trod the winding stair ; but ere he touch'd The latchet, from within a whisper came, " Trouble the Master not— for she is dead!" 818 SACRED POEMS. And his faint hand fell nerveless at his side, And his steps falter'd, and his broken voice Choked in its utterance ; — but a gentle hand Was laid upon his arm, and in his ear The Saviour's voice sank thrillingly and low, " She is not dead — but slcepeth." They pass'd in. The spice-lamps in the alabaster urns Burn'd dimly, and the white and fragrant smoke Curl'd indolently on the chamber walls. The silken curtains slumber'd in their folds — Not even a tassel stirring in the air — And as the Saviour stood beside the bed, And pray'd inaudibly, the Ruler heard The quickening division of his breath As he grew earnest inwardly. There came A gradual brightness o'er his calm, sad face; And, drawing nearer to the bed, he moved The silken curtains silently apart, And look'd upon the maiden. Like a form Of matchless sculpture in her sleep she lay — The linen vesture folded on her breast, And over it her white transparent hands, The blood still rosy in their tapering nails. A line of pearl ran through her parted lips, And in her nostrils, spiritually thin, The breathing curve was mockingly like life; And round beneath the faintly tinted skin Ran the light branches of the azure veins; And on her cheek the jet lash overlay, Matching the arches pencill'd on her brow. Her hair had been unbound, and falling loose Upon her pillow, hid her small round ears In curls of glossy blackness, and about Her polish'd neck, scarce touching it, they hung, Like airy shadows floating as they slept. 'Twas heavenly beautiful. The Saviour raised Her hand from oft' her bosom, and spread out The snowy fingers in his palm, and said, " Maiden ! Jlrise .'" — and suddenly a flush Shot o'er her forehead, and along her lips And through her cheek the rallied color ran; And the still outline of her graceful form Stirr'd in the linen vesture; and she clasp'd The Saviour's hand, and fixing her dark eyes Full on his beaming countenance — arose ! THE LEPER. " Room for the leper ! Room !" And, as he came, The cry pass'd on — " Room for the leper ! Room !" Sunrise was slanting on the city gates Rosy and beautiful, and from the hills The early risen poor were coming in, Duly and cheerfully to their toil, and up Rose the sharp hammer's clink, and the far hum Of moving wheels and multitudes astir, And all that in a city murmur swells — Unheard but by the watcher's weary ear, Aching with night's dull silence, or the sick Hailing the welcome light and sounds that chase The death-like images of the dark away. " Room for the leper !" And aside they stood — Matron, and child, and pitiless manhood — all Who met him on his way — and let him pass. And onward through the open gate he came, A leper with the ashes on his brow, Sackcloth about his loins, and on his lip A covering, stepping painfully and slow, And with a difficult utterance, like one Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down, Crying, " Unclean ! Unclean !" 'Twas now the first Of the Judean autumn, and the leaves, Whose shadows lay so still upon his path, Had put their beauty forth beneath the eye Of Judah's loftiest noble. He was young, And eminently beautiful, and life Mantled in eloquent fulness on his lip, And sparkled in his glance ; and in his mien There was a gracious pride that every eye Followed with benisons — and this was he ! With the soft airs of summer there had come A torpor on his frame, which not the speed Of his best barb, nor music, nor the blast Of the bold huntsman's horn, nor aught that stirs The spirit to its bent, might drive away. The blood beat not as wont within his veins; Dimness crept o'er his eye ; a drowsy sloth Fetter'd his limbs like palsy, and his mien, With all its loftiness, seem'd struck with eld. Even his voice was changed — a languid moan Taking the place of the clear silver key ; And brain and sense grew faint, as if the light And very air were steep'd in sluggishness. He strove with it a while, as manhood will, Ever too proud for weakness, till the rein Slackened within his grasp, and in its poise The arrowy jereed like an aspen shook. Day after day, he lay as if in sleep. His skin grew dry and bloodless, and white scales, Circled with livid purple, covered him, And then his nails grew black, and fell away From the dull flesh about them, and the hues Deepen'd beneath the hard unmoisten'd scales, And from their edges grew the rank white hair, — And Helon was a leper ! Day was breaking, When at the altar of the temple stood The holy priest of God. The incense lamp Burn'd with a struggling light, and a low chant Swell'd through the holiow arches of the roof Like an articulate wail, and there, alone, Wasted to ghastly thinness, Helon knelt. The echoes of the melancholy strain Died in the distant aisles, and he rose up, Struggling with weakness, and bow'd down his head Unto the sprinkled ashes, and put oft' His costly raiment for the leper's garb ; And with the sackcloth round him, and his lip Hid in a loathsome covering, stood still, Waiting to hear his doom : Depart ! depart, child Of Israel, from the temple of thy God ! For He has smote thee with his chastening rod ; And to the desert-wild, From all thou lov'st, away thy feet must, flee, That from thy plague His people may be free. Depart ! and come not near The busy mart, the crowded city, more; Nor set thy foot a human threshold o'er; And stay thou not to hear Voices that call thee in the way ; and fly From all who in the wilderness pass by. Wet not thy burning lip In streams that to a human dwelling glide; Nor rest thee where the covert fountains hide, Nor kneel thee down to dip The water where the pilgrim bends to drink, By desert well or river's grassy brink ; And pass thou not between The weary traveller and the cooling breeze; And lie not down to sleep beneath the trees Where human tracks are seen; Nor milk the goat that browseth on the plain, Nor pluck the standing corn, or yellow grain. And now depart ! and when Thy heart is heavy, and thine eyes are dim, Lift up thy prayer beseechingly to Him Who, from the tribes of men, Selected thee to feel His chastening rod. Depart ! O leper ! and forget not God ! And he went forth — alone ! not one of all The many whom he loved, nor she whose name Was woven in the fibres of the heart SACRED POEMS. 819 Breaking within him now, to come and speak Comfort unto him. Yea — he went his way, Sick, and heart-broken, and alone — to die! For God had cursed the leper ! It was noon, And Helon knelt beside a stagnant pool In the lone wilderness, and bathed his brow, Hot with the burning leprosy, and touch'd The loathsome water to his fever'd lips, Praying that he might be so blest— to die ! Footsteps approach'd, and, with no strength to flee, He drew the covering closer on his lip, Crying, "Unclean! unclean!" and in the folds Of the coarse sackcloth shrouding up his face, He fell upon the earth till they should pass. Nearer the Stranger came, and bending o'er The leper's prostrate form, pronounced his name — " Helon !" The voice was like the master-tone Of a rich instrument — most strangely sweet ; And the dull pulses of disease awoke, And for a moment beat beneath the hot And leprous scales with a restoring thrill. " Helon ! arise !" and he forgot his curse, And rose and stood before Him. Love and awe Mingled in the regard of Helon's eye As he beheld the Stranger. He was not In costly raiment clad, nor on his brow The symbol of a princely lineage wore ; No followers at His back, nor in His hand Buckler, or sword, or spear, — yet in his mien Command sat throned serene, and if He smiled, A kingly condescension graced His lips, The lion would have crouch'd to in his lair. His garb was simple, and His sandals worn; His stature modell'd with a perfect grace ; His countenance the impress of a God, Touch'd with the opening innocence of a child; His eye was blue and calm, as is the sky In the serenest noon; His hair unshorn Fell to His shoulders; and His curling beard The fulness of perfected manhood bore. He look'd on Helon earnestly awhile, As if His heart were moved, and, stooping down, He took a little water in His hand And laid it on his brow, and said, " Be clean !" And lo ! the scales fell from him, and his blood Coursed with delicious coolness through his veins, And his dry palms grew moist, and on his brow The dewy softness of an infant's stole. His leprosy was cleansed, and he fell down Prostrate at Jesus' feet and worshipp'd Him. DAVID'S GRIEF FOR HIS CHILD. Twas daybreak, and the fingers of the dawn Drew the night's curtain, and touch'd silently The eyelids of the King. And David woke, And robed himself, and pray'd. The inmates, now, Of the vast palace were astir, and feet Glided along the tesselated floors With a pervading murmur, and the fount Whose music had been all the night unheard, Plav'd as if light had made it audible; And each one, waking, bless'd it unaware. The fragrant strife of sunshine with the morn Sweeten'd the air to ecstasy ! and now The king's wont was to lie upon his couch Beneath the sky-roof of the inner court, And, shut in from the world, but not from heaven, Play with his loved son by the fountain's lip ; For, with idolatry confess'd alone To the rapt wires of his reproofless harp, He loved the child of Bathsheba. And when The golden selvedge of his robe was heard Sweeping the marble pavement, from within Broke forth a child's laugh suddenlv, and words- Articulate, perhaps, to his heart onlv— Pleading to come to him. They brought the boy— An infant cherub, leaping as if "used To hover with that motion upon wings, And marvellously beautiful ! His brow Had the inspired up-lift of the king's, And kingly was his infantine regard ; But his ripe mouth was of the ravishing mould Of Bathsheba's— the hue and type of love, Rosy and passionate — and oh, the moist Unfathomable blue of his large eyes Gave out its light as twilight shows a star, And drew the heart of the beholder in ! — And this was like his mother. David's lips Moved with unutter'd blessings, and awhile He closed the lids upon his moisten'd eyes, And, with the round cheek of the nestling boy Press'd to his bosom, sat as if afraid That but the lifting of his lids might jar His heart's cup from its fulness. Unobserved. A servant of the outer court had knelt Waiting before him ; and a cloud the while Had rapidly spread o'er the summer heaven; And, as the chill of the withdrawing sun Fell on the king, he lifted up his eyes And frown'd upon the servant — for that hour Was hallow'd to his heart and his fair child, And none might seek him. And the king arose. And with a troubled countenance look'd up To the fast-gathering darkness; and, behold, The servant bow'd himself to earth, and said, " Nathan the prophet cometh from the Lord !" And David's lips grew white, and with a clasp Which wrung a murmur from the frighted child, He drew him to his breast, and cover'd him With the long foldings of his robe, and said, " I will come forth. Go now !" And lingeringly, With kisses on the fair uplifted brow, And mingled words of tenderness and prayer Breaking in tremulous accents from his lips, He gave to them the child, and bow'd his head Upon his breast with agony. And so, To hear the errand of the man of God, He fearfully went forth. ****** It was the morning of the seventh day. A hush was in the palace, for all eyes Had woke before the morn ; and they who drew The curtains to let in the welcome light, Moved in their chambers with unslipper'd feet, And listen'd breathlessly. And still no stir ! The servants who kept watch without the door Sat motionless; the purple casement-shades From the low windows had been roll'd away. To give the child air; and the flickering light That, all the night, within the spacious court, Had drawn the watcher's eyes to one spot only. Paled with the sunrise and fled in. And hush'd With more than stillness was the room where lay The king's son on his mother's breast. His locks Slept at the lips of Bathsheba unstirr'd — So fearfully, with heart and pulse kept down, She watch'd his breathless slumber. The low moan That from his lips all night broke fitfully, Had silenced with the daybreak ; and a smile — Or something that would fain have been a smile — Play'd in his parted mouth; and though his lids Hid not the blue of his unconscious eyes, His senses seem'd all peacefully asleep, And Bathsheba in silence bless'd the morn — That brought back hope to her ! But when the kin* Heard not the voice of the complaining child, Nor breath from out the room, nor foot astir — But morning there — so welcomeless and still- He groan'd and turn'd upon his face. The nights Had wasted; and the mornings come; and days Crept through the sky, unnumber'd by the king, Since the child sicken'd; and, without the door, Upon the bare earth prostrate, he had Iain- Listening onlv to the moans that brought Their inarticulate tidings, and the voice Of Bathsheba, whose pity and caress, 820 SACRED POEMS. In loving utterance all broke with tears, Spoke as his heart would sneak if he were there, And fill'd nis prayer with <tgony. Oh God! To thy bright mercy-seat the way is far ! How fail the weak words while the heart keeps on ! And when the spirit, mournfully, at last, Kneels at thy throne, how cold, how distantly The comforting of friends falls on the ear — The anguish they would speak to, gone to Thee ! But suddenly the watchers at the door Rose up, and they who minister'd within Crept to the threshold and look'd earnestly Where the king lay. And still, while Bathsheba Held the unmoving child upon her knees, The curtains were let down, and all came forth, And, gathering with fearful looks apart, Whisper'd together. And the king arose And gazed on them a moment, and with voice Of quick, uncertain utterance, he ask'd, " Is the child dead ?" They answer'd, " he is dead." But when they look'd to see him fall again Upon his face, and rend himself and weep — For, while the child was sick, his agony Would bear no comforters, and they had thought His heartstrings with the tidings must give way — Behold ! his face grew calm, and, with his robe Gather'd together like his kingly wont, He silently went in. And David came, Robed and annointed, forth, and to the house Of God went up to pray. And he return'd, And they set bread before him, and he ate — And when they marvell'd, he said, " Wherefore mourn? The child is dead, and 1 shall go to him — But he will not return to me." THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. Morn breaketh in the east. The purple clouds Are putting on their gold and violet, To look the meeter for the sun's bright coming. Sleep is upon the waters and the wind ; And nature, from the wavy forest-leaf To her majestic master, sleeps. As yet There is no mist upon the deep blue sky, And the clear dew is on the blushing bosoms Of crimson roses in a holy rest. How hallow'd is the hour of morning ! meet — Ay, beautifully meet — for the pure prayer. The patriarch standeth art: his tented door, With his white locks ur.cover'd. 'Tis his wont To gaze upon that gorgeous Orient; And at that hour the awful majesty Of man who talketh often with his God, Is wont to come again, and clothe his brow As at his fourscore strength. But now, he seemeth To be forgetful of his vigorous frame, And boweth to his staff as at the hour Of noontide sultriness. And that bright sun — He looketh at its pencill'd messengers, Coming in golden raiment, as if all Were but a graven scroll of fearfulness. Ah, he is waiting till it herald in The hour to sacrifice his much-loved son ! Light poureth on the world. And Sarah stands Watching the steps of Abraham and her child Along the dewy sides of the far hills, And praying that her sunny boy faint not. Would she have watch'd their path so silently, If she had known that he was going up, E'en in his fair-hair'd beauty, to be slain As a white lamb for sacrifice ? They trod Together onward, patriarch and child — The bright sun throwing back the old man's shade In straight and fair proportions, as of one Whose years were freshly number'd. He stood up, Tall in his vigorous strength ; and, like a tree Rooted in Lebanon, his frame bent not. His thin white hairs had yielded to the wind, And left his brow uncover'd ; and his face, Impress'd with the stern majesty of grict" Nerved to a solemn duty, now stood forth Like a rent rock, submissive, yet sublime. But the young boy — he of the laughing eye And ruby lip — the pride of life was on him. He seem'd to drink the morning. Sun and dew, And the aroma of the spicy trees, And all that giveth the delicious East Its fitness for an Eden, stole like light Into his spirit, ravishing his thoughts With love and beauty. Every thing he met, Buoyant or beautiful, the lightest wing Of bird or insect, or the palest dye Of the fresh flowers, won him from his path; And joyously broke forth his tiny shout, As he flung back his silken hair, and sprung Away to some green spot or clustering vine, To pluck his infant trophies. Every tree And fragrant shrub was a new hiding-place; And he would crouch till the old man came by, Then bound before him with his childish laugh, Stealing a look behind him playfully, To see if he had made his father smile. The sun rode on in heaven. The dew stole up From the fresh daughters of the earth, and heat Came like a sleep upon the delicate leaves, And bent them with the blossoms to their dreams Still trod the patriarch on, with that same step, Firm and unfaltering; turning not aside To seek the olive shades, or lave their lips In the sweet waters of the Syrian wells, Whose gush hath so much music. Weariness Stole on the gentle boy, and he forgot To toss his sunny hair from off his brow, And spring for the fresh flowers and light wings As in the early morning ; but he kept Close by his father's side, and bent his head Upon his bosom like a drooping bud, Lifting it not, save now and then to steal A look up to the face whose sternness awed His childishness to silence. It was noon — And Abraham on Moriah bow'd himself, And buried up his face, and pray'd for strength He could not look upon his son, and pray; But, with his hand upon the clustering curls Of the fair, kneeling boy, he pray'd that God Would nerve him for that hour. Oh ! man was made For the stern conflict. In a mother's love There is more tenderness; the thousand chords, Woven with every fibre of her heart, Complain, like delicate harp-strings, at a breath; But love in man is one deep principle, Which, like a root grown in a rifted rock, Abides the tempest. He rose up, and laid The wood upon the altar. All was done. He stood a moment — and a deep, quick flush Pass'd o'er his countenance ; and then he nerved His spirit with a bitter strength, and spoke — " Isaac ! my only son !" — The boy look'd up, And Abraham turn'd his face away, and wept. " Where is the lamb, my father ?" — Oh the tones The sweet, the thrilling music of a child ! — How it doth agonize at such an hour ! — It was the last deep struggle. Abraham held His loved, his beautiful, his only son, And lifted up his arm, and call'd on God — And lo ! God's angel staid him — and he fell Upon his face, and wept. THE SHUNAMITE. It was a sultry day of summer time. The sun pour'd down upon the ripen'd grain With quivering heat, and the suspended leaves Hung motionless. The cattle on the hills Stood still, and the divided flock were all Laying their nostrils to the cooling roots, SACRED POEMS. 821 And the sky look'd like silver, and it seem'd As if the air had fainted, and the pulse Of nature had run down, and ceased to beat " Haste thee, my child ! " the Syrian mother said, *• Thy father is athirst" — and, from the depths Of the cool well under the leaning tree, She drew refreshing water, and with thoughts Of God's sweet goodness stirring at her heart, She bless'd her beautiful hoy, and to his way Committed him. And h<> went lightly on, With his soft hands press'd closely to the cool Stone vessel, and his littlo naked feet Lifted with watchful care; and o'er the hills, And through the light gretn hollows where the lambs Go for the tender grass, he kept his way, Wiling its distance with his simple thoughts, Till, in the wilderness of sheaves, with brows Throbbing with heat, he » * his burden down. Childhood is restless ever, and the boy Stay'd not within the shadow of the tree, But with a joyous industry wont forth Into the reaper's places, and bound up His tiny sheaves, and plaited cunningly The pliant withs out of the shi.iing straw- Cheering their labor on, till they forgot The heat and weariness of their -stooping toil In the beguiling of his playful niirth. Presently he was silent, and his eye Closed as with dizzy pain, and wi h his hand Press'd hard upon his forehead, aiht his breast Heaving with the suppression of a cry, He utter'd a faint murmur, and fell tack Upon the loosen'd sheaf, insonsible They bore him to his mother, and he lay Upon her knees till noon — and then I.e died ! She had watch'd every breath, and kept her hand Soft on his forehead, and gazed in upoi\ The dreamy languor of his listless eye, And she had laid back all his sunny curls And kiss'd his delicate lip, and lifted him Into her bosom, till her heart grew strong — His beauty was so unlike death ! She lean'd Over him now, that she might catch the ,'w Sweet music of his breath, that she ha 1 iearn'd To love when he was slumbering at h& - side In his unconscious infancy — " —So still ! 'Tis a soft sleep ! How beautiful he He*, With his fair forehead, and the rosy veau Playing so freshly in his sunny cheek ! How could they say that he would die ! Ot> Qod ' I could not lose him ! I have treasured ail His childhood in my heart, and even now As he has slept, my memory has been there Counting like treasures all his winning ways— His unforgotten sweetness : — " — Yet so still • - How like this breathless slumber is to death I I could believe that in that bosom now There were no pulse — it beats so languidly ! I cannot see it stir ; but his red lip ! Death would not be so very beautiful ! And that half smile — would death have left that U ere t -And should I not have felt that he would die? And have I not wept over him ? — and pray'd Morning and night for him? And could he die? No— God will keep him ! He will be my pride Many long years to come, and his fair hair Will darken like his father's, and his eye Be of a deeper blue when he is grown ; And he will be so tall, and I shall look With such a pride upon him ! — He to die !" And the fond mother lifted his soft curls, And smiled, as if 'twere mockery to think That such fair things could perish — — Suddenly Her hand shrunk from him, and the color fled From her fix'd lip, and her supporting knees Were shook beneath her child. Her hand had touch'd His forehead, as she dallied with his hair — And it was cold— like clay ! Slow, verv slow, Came the misgiving that her child was dead. She sat a moment, and her eyes were closed In a dumb prayer for strength, and then she took His little hand and press'd it earnestly And put her lip to his— and look'd aiain Fearfully on him— and, then bending low, She whisper'd in his ear, « My son !— my son !" And as the echo died, and not a sound Broke on the stillness, and he lay there still Motionless on her knee — The truth would come ! And with a sharp, quick cry, as if her heart Were crush'd, she lifted him and held him close Into her bosom — with a mother's thought — As if death had no power to touch him there ! The man of God came forth, and led the child Unto his mother, and went on his way. And he was there — her beautiful — her own — Living and smiling on her — with his arms Folded about her neck, and his warm breath Breathing upon her lips, and in her ear The music of his gentle voice once more I JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER. She stood before her father's gorgeous tent, To listen for his coming. Her loose hair Was resting on her shoulders, like a cloud Floating around a statue, and the wind, Just swaying her light robe, reveal'd a shape Praxiteles might worship. She had clasp'd Her hands upon her bosom, and had raised Her beautiful, dark, Jewish eyes to heaven. Till the long lashes lay upon her brow. Her lip was slightly parted, like the cleft Of a pomegranate blossom ; and her neck, Just where the cheek was melting to its curve With the unearthly beauty sometimes there, Was shaded, as if light had fallen off", Its surface was so polish'd. She was stilling Her light, quick breath, to hear; and the white rose Scarce moved upon her bosom, as it swell'd, Like nothing but a lovely wave of light, To meet the arching of her queenly neck. Her countenance was radiant with love. She look'd like one to die for it — a being Whose whole existence was the pouring out Of rich and deep affections. I have thought A brother's and a sister's love were much ; I know a brother's is — for I have been A sister's idol — and I know how full The heart may be of tenderness to her ! But the affection of a delicate child For a fond father, gushing, as it does, With the sweet springs of life, and pouring on, Through all earth's changes, like a river's course- Chasten'd with reverence, and made more purs By the world's discipline of light and shade— 'Tis deeper — holier. The wind bore on The leaden tramp of thousands. Clarion notes Rang sharply on the ear at intervals ; And the low, mingled din of mighty hosts Returning from the battle, pour'd from far, Like the deep murmur of a restless sea. They came, as earthly conquerors always come, With blood and splendor, revelry and wo. The stately horse treads proudly — he hath trod The brow "of death, as well, the chariot-wheels Of warriors roll magnificentlv on — Their weight hath crush'd the fallen. Man is there- Majestic, lordly man— with his sublime And elevated brow, and godlike frame ; Lifting his crest in triumph— for his heel Hath trod the dying like a wine-press down ! The mighty Jephthah led his warriors on Through Mizpeh's streets. His helm was proudly set. And his stern lip curl'd slightly, as if praise Were for the hero's scorn. His step was firm, But free as India's leopard ; and his mail, 822 SACRED POEMS Whose shekels none in Israel might Lear, Was like a cedar's tassel on his frame. His crest was Judah's kingliest; and the look Of his dark, lofty eye, and bended brow, Might quell the lion. He led on ; but thoughts Seem'd gathering round which troubled him. The veins Grew visible upon his swarthy brow, And his proud lip was press'd as if with pain. He trod less firmly; and his restless eye Glanced forward frequently, as if some ill He dared not meet, were there. His home was near; And men were thronging, with that strange delight They have in human passions, to observe The struggle of his feelings with his pride. He gazed intensely forward. The tall firs Before his tent were motionless. The leaves Of the sweet aloe, and the clustering vines Which half conceal'd his threshold, met his eye, Unchanged and beautiful ; and one by one, The balsam, with its sweet-distilling stems, And the Circassian rose, and all the crowd Of silent and familiar things, stole up, Like the recover'd passages of dreams. He strode on rapidly. A moment more, And he had reach'd his home ; when lo ! there sprang One with a bounding footstep, and a brow Of light, to meet him. Oh how beautiful ! — Her dark eye flashing like a sun-lit gem — And her luxuriant hair ! — 'twas like the sweep Of a swift wing in visions. He stood still, As if the sight had wither'd him. She threw Her arms about his neck — he heeded not. She call'd him •« Father" — but he answer'd not. She stood and gazed upon him. Was he wroth ? There was no anger in that blood-shot eye. Had sickness seized him? She unclasp'd his helm And laid her white hand gently on his brow, And the large veins felt stiff' and hard, like cords. The touch aroused him. He raised up his hands, And spoke the name of God, in agony. She knew that he was stricken, then ; and rush'd Again into his arms; and, with a flood Of tears she could not bridle, sobb'd a prayer That he would breathe his agony in words. He told her — and a momentary flush Shot o'er her countenance ; and then the soul Of Jephthah's daughter waken'd ; and she stood Calmly and nobly up, and said 'twas well — And she would die. * * * * * The sun had well nigh set. The fire was on the altar; and the priest Of the High God was there. A pallid man Was stretching out his trembling hands to Heaven, As if he would have pray'd, but had no words — And she who was to die, the calmest one In Israel at that hour, stood up alone, And waited for the sun to set. Her face Was pale, but very beautiful — her lip Had a more delicate outline, and the tint Was deeper ; but her countenance was like The majesty of angels. The sun set — And she was dead— but not by violence. ABSALOM. The waters slept. Night's silvery veil hung low On Jordan's bosom, and the eddies curl'd Their glassy rings beneath it, like the still, Unbroken beating of the^leeper's pulse. The reeds bent down the stream ; the willow leaves, With a soft cheek upon the lulling tide, Forgot the lifting winds; and the long 'stems, Whose flowers the water, like a gentle nurse, Bears on its bosom, quietly gave way, And lean'd, in graceful attitudes, to rest. How strikingly the course of nature tells, By its light heed of human suffering, That it was fashion'd for a happier world ! King David's limbs were weary. He had fled From far Jerusalem ; and now he stood. With his faint people, for a little rest Upon the shore of Jordan. The light wind Of morn was stirring, and he bared his brow To its refreshing breath ; for he had worn The mourner's covering, and he had not felt That he could see his people until now. They gather'd round him on the fresh green bank, And spoke their kindly words ; and, as the sun Rose up in heaven, he knelt among them there, And bow'd his head upon his hands to pray. Oh ! when the heart is full — when bitter thoughts Come crowding thickly up for utterance, And the poor common words of courtesy Are such a very mockery — how much The bursting heart may pour itself in prayer ! ' He pray'd for Israel — and his voice went up Strongly and fervently. He pray'd for those Whose love had been his shield — and his deep tones Grew tremulous. But, oh ! for Absalom — For his estranged, misguided Absalom — The proud, bright being, who had burst away In all his princely beauty, to defy The heart that cherish'd him — for him he pour'd, In agony that would not be controll'd, Strong supplication, and forgave him there, Before his God, for his deep sinfulness. The pall was settled. He who slept beneath Was straighten'd for the grave ; and, as the folds Sunk to the still proportions, they betray'd The matchless symmetry of Absalom. His hair was yet unshorn, and silken curls Were floating round the tassels as they sway'd To the admitted air, as glossy now As when, in hours of gentle dalliance, bathing The snowy fingers of Judea's daughters. His helm was at his feet : his banner, soil'd With trailing through Jerusalem, was laid, Reversed, beside him : and the jewell'd hilt, Whose diamonds lit the passage of his blade, Rested, like mockery, on his cover'd brow. The soldiers of the king trod to and fro, Clad in the garb of battle ; and their chief, The mighty Joab, stood beside the bier, And gazed upon the dark pall steadfastly, As if he fear'd the slumberer might stir. A slow step startled him. He grasp'd his blade As if a trumpet rang; but the bent form Of David enter'd, and he gave command, In a low tone, to his few followers, And left him with his dead. The king stood still Till the last echo died ; then, throwing off The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back The pall from the still features of his child, He bow'd his head upon him, and broke forth In the resistless eloquence of wo : " Alas ! my noble boy ! that thou should'st die ! Thou, who wert made so beautifully fair! That death should settle in thy glorious eye, And leave his stillness in this clustering hair! How could he mark thee for the silent tomb ! My proud boy, Absalom ! " Cold is thy brow, my son ! and I am chill, As to my bosom I have tried to press thee ! How was I wont to feel my pulses thrill, Like a rich harp-string, yearning to caress thee, And hear thy sweet ' my father f from these dumb And cold lips, Absalom ! " But death is on thee. I shall hear the gush Of music, and the voices of the young ; And life will pass me in the mantling blush, And the dark tresses to the soft winds flung ; — But thou no more, with thy sweet voice, shalt come To meet me, Absalom ! " And oh ! when I am stricken, and my heart, Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken, How will its love for thee, as I depart, Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token ! It were so sweet, amid death's gathering gloom, To see thee, Absalom ! SACRED POEMS. 823 «« And now, farewell ! 'Tis hard to give thee up, With death so like a gentle slumber on thee ; — And thy dark sin ! — Oh! I could drink the cup, If from this wo its bitterness had won thee. May God have call'd thee, like a wanderer, home, My lost boy Absalom !" He cover'd up his face, and bow'd himself A moment on his child: then, giving him A look of melting tenderness, he clasp'd His hands convulsively, as if in prayer; And, as if strength were given him of God, He rose up calmly, and composed the pall Firmly and decently — and left him there — As if his rest had been a breathing sleep. CHRIST'S ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM He sat upon the "ass's foal" and rode Toward Jerusalem. Beside him walk'd, Closely and silently, the faithful twelve, And on before him went a multitude Shouting Hosannas, and with eager hands Strewing their garments thickly in his way. Th' unbroken foal beneath him gently stepp'd, Tame as its patient dam ; and as the song Of " welcome to the Son of David" burst Forth from a thousand children, and the leaves Of the waved branches touch'd its silken ears, It turn'd its wild eye for a moment back, And then, subdued by an invisible hand, Meekly trode onward" with its slender feet. The dew's last sparkle from the grass had gone As he rode up Mount Olivet. The woods Threw their cool shadows freshly to the west, And the light foal, with quick and toiling step, And head bent low, kept its unslacken'd way Till its soft mane was lifted by the wind Sent o'er the mount from Jordan. As he reach'd The summit's breezy pitch, the Saviour raised His calm blue eye — there stood Jerusalem ! Eagerly he bent forward, and beneath His mantle's passive folds, a bolder line Than the wont slightness of his perfect limbs Betray'd the swelling fulness of his heart. There stood Jerusalem ! How fair she lookM — The silver sun on all her palaces, And her fair daughters 'mid the golden spires Tending their terrace flowers, and Kedron's stream Lacing the meadows with its silver band, And wreathing its mist-mantle on the sky With the morn's exhalations. There she stood — Jerusalem — the city of his love, Chosen from all the earth ; Jerusalem — That knew him not — and had rejected him ; Jerusalem — for whom he came to die ! The shouts redoubled from a thousand lips At the fair sight ; the children leap'd and sang Louder Hosannas ; the clear air was fill'd With odor from the trampled olive-leaves — But " Jesus wept." The loved disciple saw His Master's tears, and closer to his side He came with yearning looks, and on his neck The Saviour leant with heavenly tenderness, And mourn'd — " How oft, Jerusalem ! would 1 Have gather'd you, as gathereth a hen Her brood beneath her wings — but ye would not !" He thought not of the death that he should die — He thought not of the thorns he knew must pierce His forehead — of the buffet on the cheek — The scourge, the mocking homage, the foul scorn '.— Gethsemane stood out beneath his eye Clear in the morning sun, and there, he knew, While they who " could not watch with him one hour' Were sleeping, he should sweat great drops of blood, Praying the "cup might pass." And Golgotha Stood bare and desert by the city wall, And in its midst, to his prophetic eye, Rose the rough cross, and its keen agonies Were number'd all — the nails were in his feet — Th' insulting sponge was pressing on his lips — The blooxi and water gushing from his side — ■ The dizzy faintness swimming in his brain— And, while his own disciples tied in fear, A world's death-agonies all mix'd in his ! Ay ! — he forgot all this. He only saw Jerusalem, — the chos'n — the loved — the lost! He only felt that for her sake his life Was vainly giv'n, and, in his pitying love, The sufferings that would clothe "the Heavens in black Were quite forgotten. Was there ever love, In earth or heaven, equal unto this ? BAPTISM OF CHRIST. It was a green spot in the wilderness, Touch'd by the river Jordan. The dark pine Never had dropp'd its tassels on the moss Tufting the leaning bank, nor on the gras3 Of the broad circle stretching evenly To the straight larches, had a heavier foot Than the wild heron's trodden. Softly in Through a long aisle of willows, dim and cool, Stole the clear waters with their muffled feet, And, hushing as they spread into the light, Circled the edsjes of the pebbled tank Slowly, then rippled through the woods away Hither had come th' Apostle of the wild, Winding the river's course. 'Twas near the flush Of eve, and, with a multitude around, Who from the cities had come out to hear, He stood breast-high amid the running stream, Baptizing as the Spirit gave him power. His simple raiment was of camel's hair, A leathern girdle close about his loins, His beard unshorn, and for his daily meat The locust and wild honey of the wood- But like the face of Moses on the mount Shone his rapt countenance, and in his eye Burn'd the mild fire of love— and a3 he spoke The ear lean'd to him, and persuasion swift To the chain'd spirit of the listener stole. Silent upon the green and sloping bank The people sat, and while the leaves were shook With the birds dropping early to theii nests, And the gray eve came on, within theiv hearts They mused if he were Christ. The rippling stream Still turn'd its silver courses from his breast As he divined their thought. " I but baptize," He said, "with water; but there cometh One, The latchet of whose shoes I may not dare E'en to unloose. He will baptize with fire And with the Holy Ghost." And lo ! while yet The words were on his lips, he raised his eyes, And on the bank stood Jesus. He had laid His raiment off, and with his loins alone Girt with a mantle, and his perfect limbs, In their angelic slightness, meek and bare, He waited to go in. But John forbade, And hurried to his feet and stay'd him there, And said, " Nay, Master ! I have need of thine, Not thou of mine.'" And Jesus, with a smile Of heavenly sadness, met his earnest looks, And answer'd, " Suffer it to be so now; For thus it doth become me to fulfil All righteousness." And, leaning to the stream, He took around him the Apostle's arm, And drew him gentlv to the midst. The wood Was thick with the dim twilight as they came Up from the water. With his clasped hands Laid on his breast, th' Apostle silently Follow'd his Master's steps— when lo! a light. Bright as the tenfold glory of the sun, Yet lambent as the softly burning stars, Envelop'd them, and from the heavens away Parted the dim blue ether like a veil; And as a voice, fearful exceedingly, Broke from the midst, " This is my much mvedSon Ikt whom I am well pleased," a snow-white dove. Floating upon its wings, descended through; And shedding a swift music from its plumes, Circled, and flutter'd to the Saviour's breast 824 SACRED POEMS. SCENE IN GETHSEMANE. The moon was shining yet. The Orient's brow, Set with the morning-star, was not yet dim ; And the deep silence which subdues the breath Like a strong feeling, hung upon the world As sleep upon the pulses of a child. 'Twas the last watch of night. Gethsemane, With its bathed leaves of silver, seem'd dissolved In visible stillness; and as Jesus' voice, With its bewildering sweetness, met the ear Of his disciples, it vibrated on Like the first whisper in a silent world. They came on slowly. Heaviness oppress'd The Saviour's heart, and when the kindnesses Of his deep love were pour'd, he felt the need Of near communion, for his gift of strength Was wasted by the spirit's weariness. He left them there, and went a little on, And in the depth of that hush'd silentness, Alone with God, he fell upon his face, And as his heart was broken with the rush Of his surpassing agony, and death, Wrung to him from a dying universe, Was mightier than the Son of man could bear, He gave his sorrows way — and in the deep Prostration of his soul, breathed out the prayer, " Father, if it be possible with thee, Let this cup pass from me." Oh, how a word, Like the forced drop before the fountain breaks, Stilleth the press of human agony ! The Saviour felt its quiet in his soul ; And though his strength was weakness, and the light Which led him on till now was sorely dim, He breathed a new submission — " Not my will, But thine be done, oh Father !" As he spoke, Voices were heard in heaven, and music stole Out from the chambers of the vaulted sky As if the stars were swept like instruments. No cloud was visible, but radiant wings Were coming with a silvery rush to earth, And as the Saviour rose, a glorious one, With an illumined forehead, and the light Whose fountain is the mystery of God, Encalm'd within his eye, bow'd down to him, And nerv'd him with a ministry of strength. It was enough — and with his godlike brow Rewritten of his Father's messenger, With meekness, whose divinity is more Than power and glory, he return'd again To his disciples, and awaked their sleep, For " he that should betray him was at hand." THE WIDOW OF NAIN. The Roman sentinel stood helm'd and tall Beside the gate of Nain. The busy tread Of comers to the city mart was done, For it was almost noon, and a dead heat Quiver'd upon the fine and sleeping dust, And the cold snake crept panting from the wall, And bask'd his scaly circles in the sun. Upon his spear the soldier lean'd, and kept His idle watch, and, as his drowsy dream Was broken by the solitary foot Of some poor mendicant, he raised his head To curse him for a tributary Jew, And slumberously dozed on. 'Twas now high noon. The dull, low murmur of a funeral Went through the city— the sad sound of feet Unmix'd with voices — and the sentinel Shook off his slumber, and gazed earnestly Up the wide streets along whose paved way The silent throng crept slowly. They came on, Bearing a body heavily on its bier, And by the crowd that in the burning sun, Walk'd with forgetful sadness, 'twas of one Mourn'd with uncommon sorrow. The broad gat Swung on its hinges, and the Roman bent His spear-point downwards as the bearers pass'd, Bending beneath their burden- There was one- Only one mourner. Close behind the bier, Crumpling the pall up in her wither'd hands, Follow'd an aged woman. Her short steps Falter'd with weakness, and a broken moan Fell from her lips, thicken'd convulsively As her heart bled afresh. The pitying crowd Follow'd apart, but no one spoke to her. She had no kinsmen. She had lived alone — A widow with one son. He was her all — The only tie she had in the wide world — And he was dead. They could not comfort her. Jesus drew near to Nain as from the gate The funeral came forth. His lips were pale With the noon's sultry heat. The beaded sweat Stood thickly on his brow, and on the worn And simple latchets of his sandals lay, Thick, the white dust of travel. He had come Since sunrise from Capernaum, staying not To wet his lips by green Bethsaida's pool, Nor wash his feet in Kishon's silver springs, Nor turn him southward upon Tabor's side To catch Gilboa's light and spicy breeze. Genesareth stood cool upon the East, Fast by the Sea of Galilee, and there The weary traveller might bide till eve ; And on the alders of Bethulia's plains The grapes of Palestine hung ripe and wild ; Yet turn'd he not aside, but, gazing on, From every swelling mount he saw afar, Amid the hills, the humble spires of Nain, The place of his next errand ; and the path Touch'd not Bethulia, and a league away Upon the East lay pleasant Galilee. Forth from the city-gate the pitying crowd Follow'd the stricken mourner. They came near The place of burial, and, with straining hands, Closer upon her breast she clasp'd the pall, And with a gasping sob, quick as a child's, And an inquiring wildness flashing through The thin gray lashes of her feve^d eyes, She came where Jesus stood beside the way. He look'd upon her, and his heart was moved. " Weep not ! " he said ; and as they stay'd the bier, And at his bidding laid it at his feet, He gently drew the pall from out her grasp, And laid it back in silence from the dead. With troubled wonder the mute throng drew near, And gazed on his calm looks. A minute's space He stood and pray'd. Then, taking the cold hand, He said, " Arise !" And instantly the breast Heaved in its cerements, and a sudden flush Ran through the lines of the divided lips, And with a murmur of his mother's name, He trembled and sat upright in his shroud. And, while the mourner hung upon his neck, Jesus went calmly on his way to Nain. HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. The morning broke. Light stole upon the clouds With a strange beauty. Earth received again Its garment of a thousand dyes ; and leaves, And delicate blossoms, and the painted flowers, And every thing that bendeth to the dew, And stirreth with the daylight, lifted up Its beauty to the breath of that sweet morn. All things are dark to sorrow; and the light And loveliness, and fragrant air were sad To the dejected Hagar. The moist earth Was pouring odors from its spicy pores, And the young birds were singing as if life Were a new thing to them ; but oh ! it came Upon her heart like discord, and she felt How cruelly it tries a broken heart, To see a mirth in any thing it loves. She stood at Abraham's tent. Her lips were press'd Till the blood started ; and the wandering veins Of her transparent forehead were swell'd out, As if her pride would burst them. Her dark eye Was clear and tearless, and the light of heaven, Which made its language legible, shot back, SACRED POEMS. 825 From her long lashes, as it had been flame. Her noble boy stood by her, with his hand Clasp'd in her own, and his round, delicate feet, Scarce train'd to balance on the tented floor, Sandall'd for journeying. He had look'd up Into his mother's face until he caught The spirit there, and his young heart was swelling Beneath his dimpled bosom, and his form Straighten'd up proudly in his tiny wrath, As if his light proportions would have swell'd, Had they but match'd his spirit, to the man. Why bends the patriarch as he cometh now Upon his staff* so wearily ? His beard Is low upon his breast, and his high brow, So written with the converse of his God, Beareth the swollen vein of agony. His lip is quivering, and his wonted step Of vigor is not there; and, though the morn Is passing fair and beautiful, he breathes Its freshness as it were a pestilence. Oh ! man may bear with suffering : his heart Is a strong thing, and godlike, in the grasp Of pain that wrings mortality ; but tear One chord affection clings to — part one tie That binds him to a woman's delicate love — And his great spirit yieldeth like a reed. He gave to her the water and the bread, But spoke no word, and trusted not himself To look upon her face, but laid his hand In silent blessing on the fair-hair'd boy, And left her to her lot of loneliness. Should Hagar weep ? May slighted woman turn, And, as a vine the oak hath shaken off", Bend lightly to her leaning trust again ? no ! by all her loveliness — by all That makes life poetry and beauty, no ! Make her a slave ; steal from her rosy cheek By needless jealousies ; let the last star Leave her a watcher by your couch of pain ; Wrong her by petulance, suspicion, all That makes her cup a bitterness — yet give One evidence of love, and earth has not An emblem of devotedness like hers. But oh ! estrange her once — it boots not how — By wrong or silence — any thing that tells A change has come upon your tenderness, — And there is not a feeling out of heaven Her pride o'ermastereth not. She went her way with a strong step and slow — Her press'd lip arch'd, and her clear eye undimm'd, As if it were a diamond, and her form Borne proudly up, as if her heart breathed through. Her child kept on in silence, though she press'd His hand till it was pain'd ; for he had caught, As I have said, her spirit, and the seed Of a stern nation had been breathed upon. The morning pass'd, and Asia's sun rode up In the clear heaven, and every beam was heat. The cattle of the hills were in the shade, And the bright plumage of the Orient lay On beating bosoms in her spicy trees. It was an hour of re3t ! but Hagar found No shelter in the wilderness, and on She kept her weary way, until the boy Hung down his head, and open'd his parch'd lips For water; but she could not give it him. She laid him down beneath the sultry sky, — For it was better than the close, hot breath Of the thick pines, — and tried to comfort him ; But he was sore athirst, and his blue eyes Were dim and blood-shot, and he could not know Why God denied him water in the wild. She sat a little longer, and he grew Ghastly and faint, as if he would have died. It was too much for her. She lifted him, And bore him further on, and laid his head Beneath the shadow of a desert shrub ; And, shrouding up her face, she went away, And sat to watch, where he could see her not, Till he should die; and, watching him, shemourn'd: — " God stay thee in thine agony, my boy ! I cannot see thee die; I cannot brook Upon thy brow to look, And see death settle on my cradle joy. How have I drunk the light of thy blue eye ' And could I see thee die 1 " I did not dream of this when thou wast straying. Like an unbound gazelle, among the flowers; Or wiling the soft hours, By the rich gush of water-sources playing, Then sinking weary to thy smiling sleep, So beautiful and deep. " Oh no ! and when I watch'd by thee the while. And saw thy bright lip curling in thy dream, And thought of the dark stream In my own land of Egypt, the far Nile, How pray'd I that my father's land might be An heritage for thee ! " And now the grave for its cold breast hath won thee ! And thy white, delicate limbs the earth will press; And oh ! my last caress Must feel thee cold, for a chill hand is on thee. How can I leave my boy, so pillow'd there Upon his clustering hair !" She stood beside the well her God had given To gush in that deep wilderness, and bathed The forehead of her child until he laugh'd In his reviving happiness, and lisp'd His infant thought of gladness at the sight Of the cool plashing of his mother's hand. RIZPAH WITH HER SONS, (The day before they were hanged on Gibeah.) " Bread for my mother !" said the voice of one Darkening the door of Rizpah. She look'd up- And lo ! the princely countenance and mien Of dark-brow'd Armoni. The eye of Saul — The very voice and presence of the king — Limb, port, and majesty, — were present there, Mock'd like an apparition in her son. Yet, as he stoop'd his forehead to her hand With a kind smile, a something of his mother Unbent the haughty arching of his lip, And, through the darkness of the widow's heart Trembled a nerve of tenderness that shook Her thought of pride all suddenly to tears. " Whence comest thou ?" said Rizpah. " From the house Of David. In his gate there stood a soldier — This in his hand. I pluck'd it, and I said, « A /ring's son takes it for his hungry mother '* God stay the famine !" ****** As he spoke, a step, Light as an antelope's, the threshold press'd. And like a beam of light into the room Enter'd Mephibosheth. What bird of heaven Or creature of the wild — what flower of earth — Was like this fairest of the sons of Saul ! The violet's cup was harsh to his blue eye. Less agile was the fierce barb's fiery step. His voice drew hearts to him. His smile was like The incarnation of some blessed dream — Its joyousness so sunn'd the gazer's eye ! Fair were his locks. His snowy teeth divided A bow of Love, drawn with a scarlet thread- His cheek was like the moist heart of the rose, And, but for nostrils of that breathing fire That turns the lion back, and limbs as lithe As is the velvet muscle of the pard, Mephibosheth had been too fair for man As if he were a vision that would fade, Rizpah gazed on him. Never, to her eye, Grew his bright form familiar ; but, like stars, That seem'd each night new lit in a new heaven. He was each morn's sweet gift to her. She loved Her firstborn, as a mother loves her child, Tenderly, fondly. But for him— the last— 826 SACRED POEMS. What had she done for heaven to be his mother! Her heart rose in her throat to hear his voice; She look'd at him forever through her tears ; Her utterance, when she spoke to him, sank down, As if the lightest thought of him had lain In an unfathom'd cavern of her soul. The morning light was part of him, to her — What broke the day for, but to show his beauty ? The hours but measured time till he should come ; Too tardy sang the bird when he was gone; She would have shut the flow'rs — and call'd the star Back to the mountain-top — and bade the sun Pause at Eve's golden door — to wait for him ! Was this a heart gone wild ? — or is the love Of mothers like a madness ? Such as this Is many a poor one in her humble home, Who silently and sweetly sits alone, Pouring her life all out upon her child. What cares she that he does not feel how close Her heart beats after his — that all unseen Are the fond thoughts that follow him by day, And watch his sleep like angels ? And, when moved By some sore needed Providence, he stops In his wild path and lifts a thought to heaven, What cares the mother that he does not see The link between the blessing and her prayer ! He who once wept with Mary — angels keeping Their unthank'd watch — are a foreshadowing Of what love is in heaven. We may believe That we shall know each other's forms hereafter, And, in the bright fields of the better land, Call the lost dead to us. conscious heart ! That in the lone paths of this shadowy world Hast bless'd all light, however dimly shining, That broke upon the darkness of thy way — Number thy lamps of love, and tell me, now, How many canst thou re-light at the stars And blush not at their burning ? One — one only — Lit while your pulses by one heart kept time, And fed with faithful fondness to your grave — (Tho' sometimes with a hand stretch'd back from heaven,) Steadfast thro' all things — near, when most forgot — And with its finger of unerring truth Pointing the lost way in thy darkest hour — One lamp — thy mother's love — amid the stars Shall lift its pure flame changeless, and, before The throne of God, burn through eternity — Holy — as it was lit and lent thee here. The hand in salutation gently raised To the bow'd forehead of the princely boy, Linger'd amid his locks. " I sold," he said, " My Lybian barb for but a cake of meal — Lo ! this — my mother ! As I pass'd the street, I hid it in my mantle, for there stand Famishing mother's, with their starving babes, At every threshold ; and wild, desperate men Prowl, with the eyes of tigers, up and down, Watching to rob those who, from house to house, Beg for the dying. Fear not thou, my mother! Thy sons will be Elijah's ravens to thee !" [unfinished.] LAZARUS AND MARY. Jesus was there but yesterday. The prints Of his departing feet were at the door ; His " Peace be with you !" was yet audible In the rapt porch of Mary's charmed ear ; And, in the low rooms, 'twas as if the air, Hush'd with his going forth, had been the breath Of angels left on watch — so conscious still The place seem'd of his presence ! Yet, within, The family by Jesus loved were weeping, For Lazarus lay dead. And Mary sat By the pale sleeper. He was young to die. The countenance whereon the Saviour dwelt With his benignant smile — the soft fair lines Breathing of hope — were still all eloquent, Like life well mock'd in marble. That the voice, Gone from those pallid lips, was heard in heaven, Toned with unearthly sweetness — that the light, Quench'd in the closing of those stirless lids, Was veiling before God its timid fire, New-lit, and brightening like a star at eve — That Lazarus, her brother, was in bliss, Not with this cold clay sleeping — Mary knew. Her heaviness of heart was not for him ! But close had been the tie by death divided. The intertwining locks of that bright hair That wiped the feet of Jesus — the fair hands Clasp d in her breathless wonder while He taught-~ Scarce to one pulse thrill'd more in unison, Than with one soul this sister and her brother Had lock'd their lives together. In this love, Hallow'd from stain, the woman's heart of Mary Was, with its rich affections, all bound up. Of an unblemish'd beauty, as became An office by archangels fill'd till now, She walk'd with a celestial halo clad ; And while, to the Apostles' eyes, it seem'd She but fulfilPd her errand out of heaven — Sharing her low roof with the Son of God — She was a woman, fond and mortal still ; And the deep fervor, lost to passion's fire, Breathed through the sister's tenderness. In vain Knew Mary, gazing on that face of clay, That it was not her brother. He was there — Swathed in that linen vesture for the grave — The same lov'd one in all his comeliness — And with him to the grave her heart must go. What though he talk'd of her to Angels ? nay — Hover'd in spirit near her? — 'twas that arm, Palsied in death, whose fond caress she knew! It was that lip of marble with whose kiss, Morning and eve, love hemm'd the sweet day in This was the form by the Judean maids Prais'd for its palm-like stature, as he walk'd With her by Kedron in the eventide — The dead was Lazarus ! * * * * * The burial was over, and the night Fell upon Bethany — and morn — and noon. And comforters and mourners went their way— But death stay'd on ! They had been oft alone When Lazarus had follow'd Christ to hear His teachings in Jerusalem ; but this Was more than solitude. The silence now Was void of expectation. Something felt Always before, and lov'd without a name, — Joy from the air, hope from the opening door, Welcome and life from off the very walls, — Seem'd gone — and in the chamber where he lay There was a fearful and unbreathing hush, * Stiller than night's last hour. So fell on Mary The shadows all have known, who, from their hearts, Have released friends to heaven. The parting soul Spreads wing betwixt the mourner and the sky ! As if its path lay, from the tie last broken, Straight through the cheering gateway of the sun ; And, to the eye strain'd after, 'tis a cloud That bars the light from all things. Now as Christ Drew near to Bethany, the Jews went forth With Martha, mourning Lazarus. But Mary Sat in the house. She knew the hour was nigh When He would go again, as He had said, Unto his Father ; and she felt that He, Who loved her brother Lazarus in life, Had chose the hour to bring him home thro' Death In no unkind forgetful ness. Alone — She could lift up the bitter prayer to heaven, " Thy will be done, O God !"— but that dear brother Had fill'd the cup and broke the bread for Christ; And ever, at the morn, when she had knelt And wash'd those holy feet, came Lazarus To bind his sandals on, and follow forth With dropp'd eyes, like an angel, sad and fair- Intent upon the Master's needalone. Indissolubly link'd were they ! And now, SACRED POEMS. 827 To go to meet him — Lazarus not there — And to his greeting answer " It is well !" And without tears, (since grief would trouble Him Whose soul was alway sorrowful,) to kneel And minister alone — her heart gave way ! She cover'd up her face and turn'd again To wait within for Jesus But once more Came Martha, saying, " Lo ! the Lord is here And calleth for thee, Mary ! " Then arose The mourner from the ground, whereon she sate Shrouded in sackcloth, and bound quickly up The golden locks of her dishevell'd hair, And o'er her ashy garments drew a veil Hiding the eyes she could not trust. And still, As she made ready to go forth, a calm As in a dream fell on her. At a fount Hard by the sepulchre, without the wall, Jesus awaited Mary. Seated near Were the way-worn disciples in the shade; But, of himself forgetful, Jesus lean'd Upon his staff, and watch'd where she should come To whose one sorrow — but a sparrow's falling — The pity that redeem'd a world could bleed ! And as she came, with that uncertain step, — Eager, yet weak, — her hands upon her breast, — And they who follow'd her all fallen back To leave her with her sacred grief alone, — The heart of Christ was troubled. She drew near, And the disciples rose up from the fount, Moved by her look of wo, and gather'd round; And Mary — for a moment — ere she look'd Upon the Saviour, stay'd her faltering feet,— And straighten'd her veil'd form, and tighter drew Her clasp upon the folds across her breast ; Then, with a vain strife to control her tears, She stagger'd to their midst, and at His feet Fell prostrate, saying, " Lord ! hadst thou been here, My brother had not died !" The Saviour groan'd In spirit, and stoop'd tenderly, and raised The mourner from the ground, and in a voice, Broke in its utterance like her own, He said, " Where have ye laid him ?" Then the Jews who came, Following Mary, answer'd through their tears, " Lord ! come and see !" But lo ! the mighty heart That in Gethsemane sweat drops of blood, Taking for us the cup that might not pass — The heart whose breaking cord upon the cross Made the earth tremble, and the sun afraid To look upon his agony — the heart Of a lost world's Redeemer — overflow^, Touch'd by a mourner's sorrow ! Jesus wept. Calm'd by those pitying tears, and fondly brooding Upon the thought that Christ so loved her brother, Stood Mary there; but that lost burden now Lay on His heart who pitied her; and Christ, Following slow, and groaning in Himself, Came to the sepulchre. It was a cave, And a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, " Take ye away the stone !" Then lifted He His moisten'd eyes to heaven, and while the Jews And the disciples bent their heads in awe, And trembling Mary sank upon her knees, The Son of God pray'd audibly. He ceased, And for a minute's space there was a hush, As if th' angelic watchers of the world Had stay'd the pulses of all breathing things, To listen to that prayer. The face of Christ Shone as He stood, and over Him there came Command, as 'twere the living face of God, And with a loud voice, He cried, " Lazarus ! Come forth !" And instantly, bound hand and foot, And borne by unseen angels from the cave, He that was dead stood with them. At the word Of Jesus, the fear-stricken Jews unloosed The bands from off the foldings of his shroud; And Mary, with her dark veil thrown aside, Ban to him swiftly, and cried, " Lazarus ! My brother, Lazarus!" and tore away The napkin she had bound about his head— And touchM the warm lips with her fearful hand— And on his neck fell weeping. And while all Lay on their faces prostrate, Lazarus Took Mary by the hand, and they knelt down And worshipp'd Him who loved them. THOUGHTS WHILE MAKING THE GRAVE OF A NEW-BORN CHILD. Room, gentle flowers ! my child would pass to heaven! Ye look'd not for her yet with your soft eyes, watchful ushers at Death's narrow door 1 But lo ! while you delay to let her forth, Angels, beyond, stay for her ! One long kiss From lips all pale with agony, and tears, Wrung after anguish had dried up with fire The eyes that wept them, were the cup of life Held as a welcome to her. Weep ! oh mother ! But not that from this cup of bitterness A cherub of the sky has turn'd away. One look upon thy face ere thou depart ! My daughter ! It is soon to let thee go ! My daughter ! With thy birth has gush'd a spring 1 knew not of — filling my heart with tears, And turning with strange tenderness to thee— A love— oh God ! it seems so— that must flow Far as thou fleest, and 'twixt heaven and me, Henceforward, be a bright and yearning chain Drawing me after thee ! And so, farewell ! 'Tis a harsh world, in which affection knows No place to treasure up its loved and lost But the foul grave ! Thou, who so late wast sleeping Warm in the close fold of a mother's heart, Scarce from her breast a single pulse receiving But it was sent thee with some tender thought, How can I leave thee— here.' Alas for man ! Tne herb in its humility may fall And waste into the bright and genial air, While we — by hands that minister'd in life Nothing but love to us — are thrust away — The earth flung in upon our just cold bosoms, And the warm sunshine trodden out forever ! Yet have I chosen for thy grave, my child, A bank where I have lain in summer hours, And thought how little it would seem like death To sleep amid such loveliness. The brook, Tripping with laughter down the rocky steps That lead up to thy bed, would still trip on, Breaking the dread hush of the mourners gone; The birds are never silent that build here, Trying to sing down the more vocal waters : The slope is beautiful with moss and flowers, And far below, seen under arching leaves, Glitters the warm sun on rhe village spire, Pointing the living after thee. And this Seems like a comfort; and, replacing now The flowers that have made room for thee, I go To whisper the same peace to her who lies — Robb'd of her child and lonely. 'Tis the work Of many a dark hour, and of many a prayer, To bring the heart back from an infant gone. Hope must give o'er, and busy fancy blot The images from all the silent rooms, And every sight and sound familiar to her Undo its sweetest link— and so at last The fountain— that, once struck, must flow forever - Will hide and waste in silence. When the smile Steals to her pallid lip again, and spring Wakens the buds above thee, we will come, And, standing by thy music-haunted grave, Look on each other cheerfully, and say: A child that we have loved is gone to heaven, And by this gate of flowers she pass'd away! ON THE DEPARTURE OF REV. MR. WHITE FROM HIS PASI9H, WHEN CHOSEIT PRESIDENT OF WABASH COLLEOB Leave us not, man of prayer ! Like Paul, hast thot " Serv'd God with all humility of mind," Dwelling among us, and ** with many tears," 828 SACRED POEMS. " From house to house," "by night and day not ceasing," Hast pleaded thy blest errand. Leave us not ! Leave us not now ! The Sabbath-bell, so long Lirik'd with thy voice — the prelude to thy prayer — The call to us from heaven to come with thee Into the house of God, and, from thy lips, Hear what had fall'n upon thy heart — will sound Lonely and mournfully when thou art gone! Our prayers are in thy words — our hope in Christ Warm'd on thy lips — our darkling thoughts of God Follow'd thy loved call upward — and so knit Is all our worship with those outspread hands, And the imploring voice, which, well we knew, Sank in the ear of Jesus — that, with thee, The angel's ladder seems removed from sight, And we astray in darkness ! Leave us not ! Leave not the dead! They have lain calmly down — Thy comfort in their ears — believing well That when thine own more holy work was done, Thou wouldst lie down beside them, and be near When the last trump shall summon, to fold up Thy flock affrighted, and, with that same voice Whose whisper'd promises could sweeten death, Take up once more the interrupted strain, And wait Christ's coming, saying, " Here am I, And those whom thou hast given me ! " Leave not The old, who, 'mid the gathering shadows, cling To their accustom'd staff, and know not how To lose thee, and so near the darkest hour ! Leave not the penitent, whose soul may be Deaf to the strange voice, but awake to thine ! Leave not the mourner thou hast sooth'd— the heart Turns to its comforter again ! Leave not The child thou hast baptized ! another's care May not keep bright, upon the mother's heart, The covenant seal ; the infant's ear has caught Words it has strangely ponder'd from thy lips, And the remember'd tone may find again, And quicken for the harvest, the first seed Sown for eternity ! Leave not the child ! Yet if thou wilt— if, " bound in spirit," thou Must go, and we shall see thy face no more, " The will of God be done ! " We do not say Remember us — thou wilt — in love and prayer ! And thou wilt be remember'd — by the dead, When the last trump awakes them — by the old, When, of the "silver cord" whose strength thou knowest, The last thread fails— by the bereav'd and stricken, When the dark cloud, wherein thou found'st a spot Broke by the light of mercy, lowers again — By the sad mother, pleading for her child, In murmurs difficult, since thou art gone— By all thou leavest, when the Sabbath-bell Brings us together, and the closing hymn Hushes our hearts to pray, and thy loved voice, That all our wants had grown to, (only thus, 'Twould seem, articulate to God,) falls not Upon our listening ears — remember'd thus — Remember'd well — in all our holiest hours — Will be the faithful shepherd we have lost ! And ever with one prayer, for which our love Will find the pleading words,— that in the light Of heaven we may behold his face once more ! BIRTH-DAY VERSES. " The heart that we have lain near before our birth, is the only one that cannot forget that it has loved us." — Philip SLmGSBr. Mi! birth-day ! — Oh beloved mother ! My heart is with thee o'er the seas. I did not think to count another Before I wept upon thy knees — Before this scroll of absent years Was blotted with thy streaming tears. My own I do not care to check. I weep — albeit here alone — As if I hung upon thy neck, As if thy lips were on my own, As if this full sad heart of mine, Were beatiwr closely upon thine. Four weary years ! How looks she now ? What light is in those tender eyes ? What trace of time hath touch'd the brow Whose look is borrow'd of the skies That listen to her nightly prayer ? How is she changed since he was there Who sleeps upon her heart alway — Whose name upon her lips is worn — For whom the night seems made to pray — For whom she wakes to pray at morn — Whose sight is dim, whose heart-strings stir, Who weeps these tears — to think of her! I know not if my mother's eyes Would find me changed in slighter things ; I've wander'd beneath many skies, And tasted of some bitter springs ; And many leaves, once fair and gay, From youth's full flower have dropp'd away — But, as these looser leaves depart, The lessen'd flower gets near the core, And, when deserted quite, the heart Takes closer what was dear of yore — And yearns to those who lov'd it first — The sunshine and the dew by which its bud was nursed. Dear mother ! dost thou love me yet ? Am I remember'd in my home ? When those I. love for joy are met, Does some one wish that I would come t Thou dost — I am beloved of these ! But, as the schoolboy numbers o'er Night after night the Pleiades And finds the stars he found before- As turns the maiden oft her token — As counts the miser aye his gold — So, till life's silver cord is broken, Would I of thy fond love be told. My heart is full, mine eyes are wet — Dear mother ! dost thou love thy long-lost wanderer yet • Oh ! when the hour to meet again Creeps on — and, speeding o'er the sea. My heart takes up its lengthen'd chain, And, link by link, draws nearer thee — When land is hail'd, and, from the shore, Comes off the blessed breath of home, With fragrance from my mother's door Of flowers forgotten when I come- When port is gain'd, and, slowly now, The old familiar paths are pass'd, And, entering — unconscious how — I gaze upon thy face at last, And run to thee, all faint and weak, And feel thy tears upon my cheek — Oh ! if my heart break not with joy, The light of heaven will fairer seem ; And I shall grow once more a boy : And, mother ! — 'twill be like a dream That we were parted thus for years — And once that we have dried our tears, How will the days seem long and bright — To meet thee always with the morn, And hear thy blessing every night — Thy " dearest," thy " first-born ! " — And be no more, as now, in a strange land, forlorn TO MY MOTHER FROM THE APPENINES Mother! dear mother! the feelings nurst As I hung at thy bosom, clung round theejirst. 'Twas the earliest link in love's warm chain — 'Tis the only one that will long remain : And as year by year, and day by day, Some friend still trusted drops away, Mother ! dear mother ! oh dt,st thou see How the shorten'd chain brings me nearer thee ! Early Poem*. 'Tis midnight the lone mountains on — The East is fleck'd with cloudy bars, And, gliding through them one by one, The moon walks up her path of stars — The light upon her placid brow Received from fountains unseen now SACRED POEMS. 829 And happiness is mine to-night, Thus springing from an unseen fount; And broast and brain are warm with light, With midnight round me on the mount — Its rays, like thine, fair Dian, flow From far that Western star below. Dear mother ! in thy love I live; The life thou gav'st flows yet from thee — And, sun-like, thou hast power to give Life to the earth, air, sea, for me! Though wandering, as this moon above, I'm dark without thy constant love. LINES ON LEAVING EUROPE. Bright flag at yonder tapering mast ! Fling out your field of azure blue; Let star and stripe be westward cast, And point as Freedom's eagle flew ! Strain home ! oh lithe and quivering spars ' Point home, my country's flag of stars ! The wind blows fair ! the vessel feels The pressure of the rising breeze, And, swiftest of a thousand keels, She leaps to the careering sea3 ! Oh, fair, fair cloud of snowy sail, In whose white breast 1 seem to lie, How oft, when blew this eastern gale, I've seen your semblance in the sky, And long'd with breaking heart to flee On cloud-like pinions o'er the sea! Adieu, oh lands of fame and eld ! I turn to watch our foamy track, And thoughts with which I first beheld Yon clouded line, come hurrying back ; My lips are dry with vague desire, — My cheek once more is hot with joy — My pulse, my brain, my soul on fire ! — Oh, what has changed that traveller-boy ! As leaves the ship this dying foam, His visions fade behind — his weary heart speeds home ! Adieu, oh soft and southern shore, Where dwelt the stars long miss'd in heaven! — Those forms of beauty seen no more, Yet once to Art's rapt vision given ! Oh, still th' enamored sun delays, And pries through fount and crumbling fane, To win to his adoring gaze Those children of the sky again ! Irradiate beauty, such as never That light on other earth hath shone, Hath made this land her home for ever; And could I live for this alone — Were not my birthright brighter far Than such voluptuous slaves' can be — Held not the West one glorious star New-born and blazing for the free — Soar'd not to heaven our eagle yet — Rome, with her Helot sons, should teach me to forget ! Adieu, oh fatherland ! I see Your white cliffs on th' horizon's rim, And though to freer skies I flee, My heart swells, and my eyes are dim ! As knows the dove the task you give her, When loosed upon a foreign shore — As spreads the rain-drop in the river In which it may have flowed before — To England, over vale and mountain, My fancy flew from climes more fair — My blood, that knew its parent-fountain, Ran warm and fast in England's air. Dear mother ! in thy prayer, to-night, There come new words and warmer tears ! On long, long darkness breaks the light — Comes home the loved, the lost for years ! Sleep safe, oh wave-worn mariner ! Fear not, to-night, or storm or sea ! The ear of heaven bends low to her ! He comes to shore who sails with me ! The spider knows the roof unriven, While swings his web, though lightnings blaze And by a thread still fast on Heaven, I know my mother lives and prays ! Dear mother ! when our lips can speak • When first our tears will let us see- - When I can gaze upon thy cheek, And thou, with thy dear eyes, on me — 'Twill be a pastime little sad To trace what weight time's heavy fingers Upon each other's forms have had — For all may flee, so feeling lingers ! But there's a change, beloved mother ! To stir far deeper thoughts of thine, I come — but with me comes another To share the heart once only mine ! Thou, on whose thoughts, when sad and lonely, One star arose in memory's heaven — Thou, who hast watch'd one treasure only- Watered one flower with tears at even- Room in thy heart ! The hearth she left Is darken'd to lend light to ours ! There are bright flowers of care bereft, And hearts — that languigh more than flowers ! She was their light — their very air — Room, mother! in thy heart! place for her in thy prayer ! A TRUE INCIDENT. Upon a summer's morn, a southern mother Sat at the curtain'd window of an inn. She rested from long travel, and with hand Upon her cheek in tranquil happiness, Look'd where the busy travellers went and came And, like the shadows of the swallows flying Over the bosom of unruffled water, Pass'd from her thoughts all objects, leaving there, As in the water's breast, a mirror'd heaven— For, in the porch beneath her, to and fro, A nurse walk'd singing with her babe in arms And many a passer-by look'd on the child And praised its wondrous beauty, but still on The old nurse troll'd her lullaby, and still, Blest through her depths of soul by light there shining. The mother in her reverie mused on. But lo ! another traveller alighted ! And now, no more indifferent or calm, The mother's breath comes quick, and with the blood Warm in her cheek and brow, she murmurs low " Now, God be praised ! I am no more alone In knowing I've an angel for my child, — Chance he to look on't only !" With a smile - The tribute of a beauty-loving heart To things from God new-moulded — would have pass d The poet, as the infant caught his eye; But suddenly he turn'd, and, with his hand Upon the nurse's arm, he stay'd her steps, And gazed upon her burthen. 'Twas a child In whose large eyes of blue there shone, indeed, Something to waken wonder. Never sky In noontide depth, or softly-breaking dawn — Never the dew in new-born violet's cup, Lay so entranced in purity ! Not calm, With the mere hush of infancy at rest, The ample forehead, but serene with thought ; And by the rapt expression of the lips, They seem'd scarce still from a cherubic hymn, And over all its countenance there breath'd Benignity, majestic as wc dream Angels wear ever, before God. With gaze Earnest and mournful, and his eyelids warm With tears kept back, the poet kiss'd the child; And chasten'd at his heart, as having pass'd Close to an angel, went upon his way. Soon after, to the broken choir in heaven This cherub was recalled, and now the mother Bethought her, in her anguish, of the bard — (Herself a far-off stranger, but his heart Familiar to the world,) — and wrote to tell him, The angel he had recognized that morn, Had fled to bliss again. The poet well 830 SACRED POEMS. Remember'd that child's ministry to him ; And of the only fountain that he knew For healing, he sought comfort for the mother. And thus he wrote: — Mourn not for the child from thy tenderness riven, Ere stain on its purity fell! To thy questioning heart, lo ! an answer from heaven: " Is IT WELL WITH THE CHILD ?" " It IS WELL !" THE MOTHER TO HER CHILD. They tell me thou art come from a far world, Babe of my bosom ! that these little arms, Whose restlessness is like the spread of wings, Move with the memory of flights scarce o'er — That through these fringed lids we see the soul Steeped in the blue of its remembered home; And while thou sleep'st come messengers, they say, Whispering to thee — and 'tis then I see Upon thy baby lips that smile of heaven ! And what is thy far errand, my fair child? Why away, wandering from a home of bliss, To find thy way through darkness home again ' Wert thou an untried dweller in the sky ? Is there, betwixt the cherub that thou wert, The cherub and the angel thou mayst be, A life's probation in this sadder world? Art thou, with memory of two things only, Music and light, left upon earth astray, And, by the watchers at the gate of heaven, Looked for with fear and trembling ? God ! who gavest Into my guiding hand this wanderer, To lead her through a world whose darkling paths I tread with steps so faltering — leave not me To bring her to the gates of heaven, alone ! I feel my feebleness. Let these stay on— The angels who now visit her in dreams ! Bid them be near her pillow till in death The closed eyes look upon Thy face once more! And let the light and music, which the world Borrows of heaven, and which her infant sense Hails with sweet recognition, be to her A voice to call her upward, and a lamp To lead her steps unto Thee ! THIRTY-FIVE. " The years of a man's life are threescore and ten." Oh, weary heart! thou'rt half way home ! We stand on Life's meridian height — As far from childhood's morning come, As to the grave's forgetful night. Give Youth and Hope a parting tear — Look onward with a placid brow — Hope promised but to bring us here, And Reason takes the guidance now — One backward look— the'last— the last ! One silent tear — for Youth is past ! Who goes with Hope and Passion back? Who comes with me and Memory on? Oh, lonely looks the downward track — Joy's music hush'd— Hope's roses gone ! To Pleasure and her giddy troop Farewell, without a sigh or tear! But heart gives way, and spirits droop, To think that Love may leave us here ! Have we no charm whenYouth is flown Midway to death left sad and lone ! Yet stay !— as 'twere a twilight star That sends its thread across the wave, I see a brightening light, from far, Steal down a path beyond the grave ! And now — bless God ! — its golden line Comes o'er — and lights my shadowy way — And shows the dear hand clasp'd in mine ! But list ! what those sweet voices say! The better land's in sight, And, by its chastening light, All love from life's midicay is driven Sane.hers whose clasped hand will bring thee on to Heaven . A THOUGHT OVER A CRADLE. I sadden when thou smilest to my smile Child of my love ! I tremble to believe That o'er the mirror of that eye of blue The shadow of my heart will always pass;- A heart that from its struggle with the world, Comes nightly to thy guarded cradle home, And, careless of the staining dust it brings, Asks for its idol ! Strange, that flowers of earth Are visited by every air that stirs, And drink in sweetness only, while the child That shuts within its breast a bloom for heaven, May take a blemish from the breath of love, And bear the blight for ever. I have wept With gladness at the gift of this fair child ! My life is bound up in her. But, oh God ! Thou knowest how heavily my heart at times Bears its sweet burthen ; and if thou hast given To nurture such as mine thi3 spotless flower, To bring it unpolluted unto thee, Take thou its love, I pray thee ! Give it light — Though, following the sun, it turn from me ! — But, by the chord thus wrung, and by the light Shining about her, draw me to my child ! And link us close, oh God, when near to heaven ! CONTEMPLATION. " They are all up — the innumerable stars — And hold their place in Heaven. My eyes have been Searching the pearly depths through which they spring Like beautiful creations, till I feel As if it were a new and perfect world, Waiting in silence for the word of God To breathe it into motion. There they stand, Shining in order, like a living hymn Written in light, awaking at the breath Of the celestial dawn, and praising Him Who made them, with the harmony of spheres. I would I had an angel's ear to list That melody. I would that I might float Up in that boundless element, and feel Its ravishing vibrations, like the pulse Beating in Heaven ! My spirit is athirst For music — rarer music ! I would bathe My soul in a serener atmosphere Than this ; I long to mingle with the flock Led by the • living waters,' and to stray In the « green pastures' of the better land ! When wilt thou break, dull fetter ! When shall I Gather my wings, and like a rushing thought Stretch onward, star by star, up into Heaven!" Thus mused Alethe. She was one to whom Life had been like the witching of a dream, Of an untroubled sweetness. She was born Of a high race, and lay upon the knee, With her soft eyes perusing listlessly The fretted roof, or, on Mosaic floors, Grasped at the tesselated squares inwrought With metals curiously. Her childhood passed Like faery — amid fountains and green haunts — Trying her little feet upon a lawn Of velvet evenness, and hiding flowers In her sweet breast, as if it were a fair And pearly altar to crush incense on. Her youth — oh ! that was queenly ! She was like A dream of poetry that may not be Written or told— exceeding beautiful ! And so came worshippers; and rank bowed down And breathed upon her heart strings with the breath Of pride, and bound her forehead gorgeously With dazzling scorn, and gave unto her step A majesty as if she trod the sea, And the proud waves, unbidden, lifted her! And so she grew to woman — her mere look Strong as a monarch's signet, and her hand The ambition of a kingdom. From all this Turned her high heart away ! She had a mind, Deep, and immortal, and it would not feed On pageantry. She thirsted for a spring SACRED POEMS. 831 Of a serener element, and drank Philosophy, and for a little while She was allayed,— till, presently, it turned Bitter within her, and her spirit grew Faint for undying waters. Then she came To the pure fount of God, and is athirst No more— save when the fever of the world Falleth upon her, she will go, sometimes, Out in the star-light quietness, and breathe A holy aspiration after Heaven. ON THE DEATH OF A MISSIONARY. How beautiful it is, for man to die Upon the walls of Zion ! to be call'd, Like a watch-worn, and weary sentinel, To put his armour off, and rest — in heaven! The sun was setting on Jerusalem, The deep blue sky had not a cloud, and light Was pouring on the dome of Omar's mosque, Like molten silver. Everything was fair; And beauty hung upon the painted fanes ; Like a grieved spirit, lingering ere she gave Her wing to air, for heaven. The crowds of men Were in the busy streets, and nothing look'd Like woe or suffering, save one small train Bearing the dead to burial. It pass'd by, And left no trace upon the busy throng. The sun was just as beautiful; the shout Of joyous revelry, and the low hum Of stirring thousands rose as constantly ! Life look'd as winning; and the earth and sky, And everything, seem'd strangely bent to make A contrast to that comment upon life. How wonderful it is that human pride Can pass that touching moral as it does — Pass it so frequently, in all the force Of mournful and most simple eloquence— And learn no lesson ! They bore on the dead, With the slow step of sorrow, troubled not By the rude multitude, save, here and there, A look of vague inquiry, or a curse Half muttered by some haughty Turk whose sleeve Had touch'd the tassel of the Christian's pall. And Israel too passed on— the trampled Jew '. Israel '.—who made Jerusalem a throne For the wide world — pass'd on as carelessly ; Giving no look of interest to tell The shrouded dead was anything to her. Oh that they would be gather'd as a brood Is gather'd by a parent's sheltering wings !— They laid him down with strangers; for his home Was with the setting sun, and they who stood And look'd so steadfastly upon his grave, Were not his kindred ; but they found him there, And lov'd him for his ministry of Christ. He had died young. But there are silver'd heads, Whose race of duty is less nobly run. His heart was with Jerusalem; and strong As was a mother's love, and the sweet ties Religion makes so beautiful at home, He flung them from him in his eager race, And sought the broken people of his God, To preach to them of Jesus. There was one, Who was his friend and helper. One who went And knelt beside him at the sepulchre Where Jesus slept, to pray for Israel. They had one spirit, and their hearts were knit With more than human love. God call'd him home And he of whom I speak stood up alone, And in his broken-heartedness wrought on Until his Master call'd him. Oh is it not a noble thing to die As dies the Christian with his armour on! — What is the hero's clarion, tho' it3 blast Ring with the mastery of a world, to this? — What are the searching victories of mind — The lore of vanish'd ages? — What are all The trumpetings of proud humanity, To the short history of him who made His sepulchre beside the King of kings ? ON THE PICTURE OF A " CHILD TIRED OF PLAY ' Tired of play ! Tired of play ! What hast thou done this livelong day ? The birds are silent, and so is the bee ; The sun is creeping up steeple and tree; The doves have flown to the sheltering eaves, And the nests are dark with the drooping leaves; Twilight gathers, and day is done — How hast thou spent it — restless one ! Playing ? But what hast thou done beside To tell thy mother at even tide ? What promise of morn is left unbroken ? What kind word to thy playmate spoken? Whom hast thou pitied, and whom forgiven? How with thy faults has duty striven ? What hast thou learned by field and hill, By greenwood path, and by singing rill? There will come an eve to a longer day, That will find thee tired— but not of play! And thou wilt lean, as thou leanest now, With drooping limbs and aching brow, And wish the shadows would faster creep, And long to go to thy quiet sleep. Well were it^then if thine aching brow Were as free from sin and shame as now ! Well for thee, if thy lip could tell A tale like this, of a day spent well. If thine open hand hath reliev'd distress — If thy pity hath sprung to wretchedness— If thou hast forgiven the sore offence, And humbled thy heart with penitence — If Nature's voices have spoken to thee With their holy meanings eloquently — If every creature hath won thy love, From the creeping worm to the brooding dove — If never a sad, low-spoken word Hath plead with thy human heart unheard — Then, when the night steals on, as now, It will bring relief to thine aching brow, And, with joy and peace, at the thought of rest, Thou wilt sink to sleep on thy mother's breast A CHILD'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF A STAR She had been told that God made all the stars That twinkled up in heaven, and now she stood Watching the coming of the twilight on, As if it were a new and perfect world, And this were its first eve. She stood alone By the low window, with the silken lash Of her soft eye upraised, and her sweet mouth Half parted with the new and strange delight Of beauty that she could not comprehend, And had not seen before. The purple folds Of the low sunset clouds, and the blue sky That looked so still and delicate above, Filled her young heart with gladness, and the eve Stole on with its deep shadows, and she still Stood looking at the west with that half-smile, As if a pleasant thought were at her heart Presently, in the edge of the last tint Of sunset, where the blue was melted in To the faint golden mellowness, a star Stood suddenly. A laugh of wild delight Burst from her lips, and putting up her hands, Her simple thought broke forth expressively — «« Father ! dear father ! God has made a star '" ON WITNESSING A BAPTISM. She stood up in the meekness of a heart Resting on God, and held her fair young child Upon her bosom, with its gentle eyes Folded in sleep, as if its soul had gone To whisper the baptismal vow in heaven. The praver went up devoutly, and the lips Of the good man glowed fervently with taith That it would be, even as he had pray'd, And the sweet child be gather'd to the fold Of Jesus. As the holy words went on 832 SACRED POEMS. Her lips mov'd silently, and tears, fast tears, Stole from beneath her lashes, and upon The forehead of the beautiful child lay soft With the baptismal water. Then I thought That, to the eye of God, that mother's tears Would be a deeper covenant — which sin And the temptations of the world, and death, Would leave unbroken — and that she would know In the clear light of heaven, how very strong The prayer which press'd them from her heart had been In leading its young spirit up to God. REVERY AT GLENMARY. I have enough, O God ! My heart to-night Runs over with its fulness of content ; And as I look out on the fragrant stars, And from the beauty of the night take in My priceless portion — yet myself no more Than in the universe a grain of sand — I feel His glory who could make a world, Yet in the lost depths of the wilderness Leave not a flower unfinish'd ! Rich, though poor! My low-roofd cottage is this hour a heaven. Music is in it — and the song she sings, That sweet-voic'd wife of mine, arrests the ear Of my young child awake upon her knee ; And, with his calm eyes on his master's face, My noble hound lies couchant — and all here — All in this little home, yet boundless heaven — Are, in such love as I have power to give, Blessed to overflowing. Thou, who look'st Upon my brimming heart this tranquil eve, Knowest its fulness, as thou dost the dew Sent to the hidden violet by Thee; And, as that flower, from its unseen abode, Sends its sweet breath up, duly, to the sky, Changing its gift to incense, so, oh God, May the sweet drops that to my humble cup Find their far way from heaven, send up to Thee Fragrance at thy throne welcome ! THE BELFRY PIGEON. On the cross beam under the Old South bell The nest of a pigeon is builded well. In summer and winter that bird is there, Out and in with the morning air : I love to see him track the street, With his wary eye and active feet ; And I often watch him as he springs, Circling the steeple with easy wings, Till across the dial his shade has passed, And the belfry edge is gained at last. 'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note, And the trembling throb in its mottled throat; There's a human look in its swelling breast, And the gentle curve of its lowly crest; And I often stop with the fear I feel — He runs so close to the rapid wheel. Whatever is rung on that noisy bell — Chime of the hour or funeral knell — The dove in the belfry must hear it well. When the tongue swings out to the midnight moon- When the sexton cheerily rings for noon — When the clock strikes clear at morning light — When the child is waked with " nine at night" — When the chimes play soft in the Sabbath air, Filling the spirit with tones of prayer — Whatever tale in the bell is heard, He broods on his folded feet unstirred, Or rising half in his rounded nest, He takes the time to smooth his breast, Then drops again with filmed eyes, And sleeps as the last vibration dies. Sweet bird ! I would that I could be A hermit in the crowd like thee ! With wings to fly to wood and gten, Thy lot, like mine, is cast with men ; And daily, with unwilling feet, I tread, like thee, the crowded street; But, unlike me, when day is o'er, Thou canst dismiss the world and soar, Or, at a half felt wish for rest, Canst smooth the feathers on thy breast, And drop, forgetful, to thy nest. I would that in such wings of gold I could my weary heart upfold; And while the world throngs on beneath, Smooth down my cares and calmly breathe ; And only sad with others' sadness, And only glad with others' gladness, Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime, And, lapt in quiet, bide my time. THE SABBATH. It was a pleasant morning, in the time When the leaves fall — and the bright sun shone out As when the morning stars first sang together — So quietly and calmly fell his light Upon a world at rest. There was no leaf In motion, and the loud winds slept, and all Was still. The lab'ring herd was grazing Upon the hill-side quietly — uncall'd By the harsh voice of man, and distant sound, Save from the murmuring waterfall, came not As usual on the ear. One hour stole on, And then another of the morning, calm And still as Eden ere the birth of man, And then broke in the Sabbath chime of bells — And the old man, and his descendants, went Together to the house of God. I join'd The well-apparell'd crowd. The holy man Rose solemnly, and breath'd the prayer of faith — And the gray saint, just on the wing for heaven — And the fair maid — and the bright- haired young man- And child of curling locks, just taught to close The lash of its blue eye the while ; — all knelt In attitude of prayer — and then the hymn, Sincere in its low melody, went up To worship God. The white-haired pastor rose And look'd upon his flock — and with an eye That told his interest, and voice that spoke In tremulous accents, eloquence like Paul's, He lent Isaiah's fire to the truths Of revelation, and persuasion came Like gushing waters from his lips, till hearts Unus'd to bend were soften'd, and the eye Unwont to weep sent forth the willing tear. I went my way — but as I went, I thought How holy was the Sabbath-day of God DEDICATION HYMN. [Written to be sung at the consecration of Hanover-street Church, Boston J The perfect world by Adam trod, Was the first temple — built by God — His fiat laid the corner stone, And heav'd its pillars, one by one He hung its starry roof on high The broad illimitable sky ; He spread its pavement, green and bright. And curtain'd it with morning light. The mountains in their places stood — The sea — the sky — and " all was good ;" And, when its first pure praises rang, The " morning stai-3 together sang." Lord ! 'tis not ours to make the sea And earth and sky a house for thee; But in thy sight our ofT'ring stands — A humbler temple, " made with hands " POEMS OF PASSION. THE DYING ALCHYMIST. The night wind with a desolate moan swept by; And the old shutters of the turret swung Screaming upon their hinges ; and the moon, As the torn edges of the clouds flew past, Struggled aslant the stained and broken panes So dimly, that the watchful eye of death Scarcely was conscious when it went and came. • •••**• The fire beneath his crucible was low ; Yet still it burned ; and ever as his thoughts Grew insupportable, he raised himself Upon his wasted arm, and stirred the coals With difficult energy, and when the rod Fell from his nerveless fingers, and his eye Felt faint within its socket, he shrunk back Upon his pallet, and with unclosed lips Muttered a curse on death ! The silent room, From its dim corners, mockingly gave back His rattling breath ; the humming in the fire Had the distinctness of a knell ; and when Duly the antique horologe beat one, He drew a phial from beneath his head, And drank. And instantly his lips compressed, And, with a shudder in his skeleton frame, He rose with supernatural strength, and sat Upright, and communed with himself: — I did not think to die Till I had finished what I had to do ; I thought to pierce th' eternal secret through With this my mortal eye ; I felt — Oh God ! it seemeth even now This can not be the death-dew on my brow ! And yet it is — I feel, Of this dull sickness at my heart, afraid ; And in my eyes the death-sparks flash and fade ; And something seems to steal Over my bosom like a frozen hand — Binding its pulses with an icy band. And this is death ! But why Feel I this wild recoil ? It can not be Th' immortal spirit shuddereth to be free ! Would it not leap to fly, Like a chained eaglet at its parent's call ? I feaf — I fear— that this poor life is all ! Yet thus to pass away ! — To live but for a hope that mocks at last — To agonize, to strive, to watch, to fast, To waste the light of day, Night's better beauty, feeling, fancy, thought — All that we have and are — for this— for naught ! Grant me another year God of my spirit ! — but a day — to win Something to satisfy this thirst within ! I would know something here ! Break for me but one seal that is unbroken ! Speak for me but one word that is unspoken ! Vain — vain ! — my brain is turning With a swift dizziness, and my heart grows sick, And these hot temple-throbs come fast and thick, And I am freezing — burning — 53 Dying ! Oh God ! if I might only live ! My phial - Ha ! it thrills me— I revive. Ay — were not man to die He were too mighty for this narrow sphere ! Had he but time to brood on knowledge here — Could he but train his eye — Might he but wait the mystic word and hour — Only his Maker would transcend his power ! Earth has no mineral strange — Th' illimitable air no hidden wings — Water no quality in covert springs, And fire no power to change — Seasons no mystery, and stars no spell, Which the unwasting soul might not compel. Oh, but for time to track The upper stars into the pathless sky — To see th' invisible spirits, eye to eye — To hurl the lightning back — To tread unhurt the sea's dim-lighted halls — To chase Day's chariot to the horizon-walls — And more, much more — for now The life-sealed fountains of my nature move — To nurse and purify this human love — To clear the god-like brow Of weakness and mistrust, and bow it down Worthy and beautiful, to the much-loved one : This were indeed to feel The soul-thirst slaken at the living stream- To live— Oh God ! that life is but a dream ! And death Aha ! I reel — Dim — dim — I faint— darkness comes o'er my eye — Cover me ! save me ! God of heaven ! I die ! 'Twas morninsr, and the old man lay alone. No friend had closed his eyelids, and his lips, Open and ashy pale, th' expression wore Of his death-struggle. His long silvery hair Lay on his hollow temples thin and wild, His frame was wasted, and his features wan And haggard as with want, and in his palm His nails were driven deep, as if the throe Of the last agony had wrung him sore. The storm was raging still. The shutters swung Screaming as harshly in the fitful wind, And all without went on — as aye it will, Sunshine or tempest, reckless that a heart Is breaking, or has broken, in its change. The fire beneath the crucible was out ; The vessels of his mystic art lay round, Useless and cold as the ambitious hand That fashioned them, and the small rod, Familiar to his touch for threescore years, Lay on th' alembic's rim, as if it still Might vex the elements at its master's will. And thus had passed from its unequal frame A soul of fire— a sun-bent eagle stricken From his high soaring down— an instrument Broken with its own compass. Oh how poor Seems the rich eift of genius, when it lies, 834 POEMS OF PASSION. Like the adventurous bird that hath out-flown His strength upon the sea, ambition-wrecked— A thing the thrush might pity, as she sits Brooding in quiet on her lowly nest. PARRHASIUS. "Parrhasius. a painter of Athens, among those Olynthian captives Fhilip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man ; and when he had him at his house, put him to death with extreme torture and torment, the better, by his example, to express the pains and passions of his J-rornetheus, whom he was then about to paint." —Burton's Anat. of Mel, There stood an unsold captive in the mart, A grayhaired and majestical old man, Chained to a pillar. It was almost night, And the last seller from his place had gone, And not a sound was heard but of a dog Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone, Or the dull echo from the pavement rung, As the faint captive changed his weary "feet. He had stood there since morning, and borne From every eye in Athens the cold gaze Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came, And roughly struck his palm upon his breast, And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer Passed on ; and when, with weariness o'erspent, He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep, Th' inhuman soldier smote him. and, with threats Of torture to his children, summoned back The ebbing blood into his pallid face. 'Twas evening, and the half-descended sun Tipped with a golden fire the many domes Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up With a stout heart that long and weary day, Haughtily patient of his many wrongs; But now he was alone, and from his^nerves The needless strength departed, and he leaned Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of him, Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood, Gazing upon his grief. Th' Athenian's cheek Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye The moving picture. The abandoned limbs, Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins Swollen to purple fulness ; the gray hair, Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes ; And as a thought of wilder bitterness Rose in his memory, his lips grew white, And the fast workings of his bloodless face Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart. The golden light into the painter's room Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole From the dark pictures radiantly forth, And in the soft and dewy atmosphere Like forms and landscapes magical they lay. The walls were hung with armor, and about In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms Of Cythens, and Dian, and stern Jove, And from the casement soberly away Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true, And, like a veil of filmy mellowness, The lint-specks floated in the twilight air. Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully Upon his canvass. There Prometheus lay, Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus— The vulture at his vitals, and the links Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh ; And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim, Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth With its far-reaching fancy, and with form And color clad them, his fine earnest eye Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip, Were like the winged God's, breathing from his flight. " Bring me the captive now ! My hands feel skilful, and the shadows lift From my waked spirit airily and swift, And I could paint the bow Upon the bended heavens — around me play Colors of such divinity to-day. " Ha ! bind him on his back ! Look ! — as Prometheus in my picture here ! Quick — or he faints I — stand with the cordial near ! Now — bend him to the rack I Press down the poisoned links into his flesh ! And tear agape that healing wound afresh ! " So — let him writhe ! How long Will he live thus ? Quick, my good pencil, now ! What a fine agony works upon his brow ! Ha ! grayhaired and so strong ! How fearfully he stifles that short moan ! Gods ! if I could but paint a dying groan ! " ' Pity' thee ! So I do ! I pity the dumb victim at the altar — But does the robed priest for his pity falter ? I'd rack thee though I knew A thousand lives were perishing in thine — What were ten thousand to a fame like mine ? " < Hereafter !' Ay— hereafter ! A whip to keep a coward to his track ! What gave death ever from his kingdom back To check the skeptic's laughter ? Come from the grave to-morrow with that story. And I may take some softer path to glory. " No, no, old man ! we die E'en as the flowers, and we shall breathe away Our life upon the chance wind, even as they ! Strain well thy fainting eye — For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er, The light of heaven will never reach thee more. " Yet there's a deathless name ! A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn, And like a steadfast planet mount and burn ; And though its crown of flame Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone, By all the fiery stars ! I'd bind it on ! " Ay— though it bid me rifle My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst — Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first Though it should bid me stifle The yearning in my throat for my sweet child, And taunt its mother till my brain went wild — " All— I would do it ail- Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot — Thrust foully into earth to be forgot ! Oh heavens — but I appal Your heart, old man ! forgive ha ! on your lives Let him not faint ! — rack him till he revives ! "Vain — vain — give o'er ! His eye Glazes apace. He does not feel you now — Stand back I I'll paint the death-dew on his brow ! Gods ! if he do not die But for one moment— one — till I eclipse Conception with the scorn of those calm lips ! " Shivering ! Hark ! he mutters Brokenly now— that was a difficult breath — Another ? Wilt thou never come, oh Death ! Look ! how his temple flutters ! Is his heart still ? Aha ! lift up his head ! He shudders — gasps — Jove help him ! — so — he's dead.'* How like a mounting devil in the heart Rules the unreined ambition ! Let it once But play the monarch, and its haughty brow Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought And unthrones peace for ever. Putting on The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns The heart to ashes, and with not a spring Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip, We look upon our splendor and forget The thirst of which we perish ! Yet hath life Many a falser idol. There are hopes Promising well, and love-touched dreams for some, And passions, many a wild one, and fair schemes For gold and pleasure — yet will only this POExMS OF PASSION. 835 Balk not the soul — Ambition only, gives, Even of bitterness, a beaker full ! Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream, Troubled at best — Love is a lamp unseen, Burning to waste, or, if its light is found, Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken — Gain is a grovelling care, and Folly tires, And Quiet is a hunger never fed — And from Love's very bosom, and from Gain, Or Folly, or a Friend, or from Repose — From all but keen Ambition — will the soul Snatch the first moment of forgetfulness To wander like a restless child away. Oh, if there were not better hopes than these — Were there no palm beyond a feverish fame — If the proud wealth flung back upon the heart Must canker in its coffers — if the links Falsehood hath broken will unite no more — If the deep-yearning love, that hath not found Its like in the cold world, must waste in tears — If truth, and fervor, and devotedness, Finding no worthy altar, must return And die of their own fulness — if beyond The grave there is no heaven in whose wide air The spirits may find room, and in the love Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart May spend itself — what thrice-mocked fools are we ! THE SCHOLAR OF THEBET BEX KHORAT.' " Influentia cceli morbum hunc movet, interdum omnibus aliis amotis." — Melancthon de Anirna, Cap. de Humoribus. Night in Arabia. An hour ago, Pale Dian had descended from the sky, Flinging her cestus out upon the sea, And at their watches now the solemn stars Stood vigilant and lone ; and, dead asleep, With not a shadow moving on its breast, The breathing earth lay in its silver dew, And, trembling on their myriad viewless wings, Th' imprisoned odors left the flowers to dream, And stole away upon the yielding air. Ben Khorat's tower stands shadowy and tall In Mecca's loneliest street ; and ever there, When night is at the deepest, burns his lamp As constant as the Cynosure, and forth From his looped window stretch the brazen tubes, Pointing for ever at the central star Of that dim nebula just lifting now Over Mount Arafat. The sky to-night Is of a clearer blackness than is wont, And far within its depths the colored starsf Sparkle like gems — capricious Antaresf Flushing and paling in the southern arch ; And azure Lyra, like a woman's eye, Burning with soft blue lustre ; and away Over the desert the bright Polar-star, White as a flashing icicle; and here, Hung like a lamp above th' Arabian sea, Mars with his dusky glow; and, fairer yet, Mild Sirius,§ tinct with dewy violet, Set like a flower upon the breast of Eve; And in the zenith the sweet Pleiades, || " A famous Arabian astrologer, who is said to have spent forty years in discovering- the motion of the eighth sphere. He had a scholar, a young Bedouin Arab, who, with a singular passion for knowledge, abandoned his wandering tribe, and, applying himself too closely to astrology, lost his reason and died. t " Even to the naked eye. the stars appear of palpably different colors ; but when viewed with a prismatic glass, they may be very accurately classed into the red, the yellow, the brilliant white, the dull white, and the anomalous. This is true aUo of the planets, which shine by reflected light ; and of course the difference of color must be supposed to arise from their different powers to absorb and reflect the -ays of the sun. The original composition of the stars, and the diffeient dispersive powers of their different atmospheres, may be supposed to account also for this phenomenon " t This star exhibits a peculiar quality— a rapid and beautiful change in the color of its light ; every alternate twinkling being of an intense reddish crimson color, and the answering one of a bril- liant white. i When seen with a prismatic glass, Sirius shows a large brush of exceedingly beautiful rays. 1 The Pleiades are vertical in Arabia (Alas— that ev'n a star may pass from heaven And not be missed !)— the linked Pleiades Undimned are there, though from the sister band The fairest has gone down ; and, south away, Hirundo* with its little company ; And white-browed Vesta, lamping on her path Lonely and planet-calm, and, all through heaven, Articulate almost, they troop to-night, Like unrobed angels in a prophet's trance. Ben Khorat knelt before his telescope,f Gazing with earnest stillness on the stars. The gray hairs, struggling from his turban folds, Played with the entering wind upon his cheeks, And on his breast his venerable beard With supernatural whiteness loosely fell. The black flesh swelled about his sandal thongs, Tight with his painful posture, and his lean And withered fingers to his knees were clenched, And the thin lashes of his straining eye Lay with unwinking closeness to the lens, Stiffened with tense up-turning. Hour by hour, Till the stars melted in the flush of morn, The old astrologer knelt moveless there, Ravished past pain with the bewildering spheres, And, hour by hour, with the same patient thought, Pored his pale scholar on the characters Of Chaldee writ, or, as his gaze grew dim With weariness, the dark-eyed Arab laid His head upon the window and looked forth Upon the heavens awhile, until the dews And the soft beauty of the silent night Cooled his flushed eyelids, and then patiently He turned unto his constant task again. The sparry glinting of the Morning Star Shot through the leaves of a majestic palm Fringing Mount Arafat ; and, as it caught The eye of the rapt scholar, he arose And clasped the volume with an eager haste, And as the glorious planet mounted on, Melting her way into the upper sky, He breathlessly gazed on her : — " Star of the silver ray ! Bright as a god, but punctual as a slave — What spirit the eternal canon gave That bends thee to thy way ? What is the soul that on thine arrowy light Is walking earth and heaven in pride to-night ? "We know when thou wilt soar Over the mount — thy change, and place, and time — 'Tis written in the Chaldee's mystic rhyme As 'twere a priceless lore ! I knew as much in my Bedouin garb — Coursing the desert on my flying barb ! " How oft amid the tents Upon Sahara's sands I've walked alone, Waiting all night for thee, resplendent one ! With what magnificence, In the last walches, to my thirsting eye, Thy passionate beauty flushed into the sky ! " Oh, God ! how flew my soul Out to thy glory — upward on thy ray — Panting as thou ascendedst on thy way, As if thine own control — This searchless spirit that I can not find — Had set its radiant law upon my mind ! " More than all stars in heaven I felt thee in my heart ! my love became A phrensy, and consumed me with its flame. Ay, in the desert even — My dark-eyed Abra coursing at my side — The star, not Abra, was my spirit's bride ! * An Arabic constellation placed instead of the Piscls Australls, because the swallow arrives in Arabia about the time of the heli- acal rising of the Fishes. t An anachronism, the author is aware. The telescope was not invented for a century or two aft«r the time of Ben Khorat 836 POEMS OF PASSION. "My Abra is no more ! My * desert-bird' is in a stranger's stall — My tribe, my tent — I sacrificed them all For this heart-wasting lore ! — Yet, than all these, the thought is sweeter far — Thou wert ascendant at my birth, bright star ! "The Chaldee calls me thine— And in this breast, that I must rend to be A spirit upon wings of light like thee, I feel that thou art mine ! Oh, God ! that these dull fetters would give way And let me forth to track thy silver ray !" * * * Ben Khorat rose And silently looked forth upon the East. The dawn was stealing up into the sky On its gray feet, the stars grew dim apace, And faded, till the Morning Star alone, Soft as a molten diamond's liquid fire, Burned in the heavens. The morn grew freshlier- The upper clouds were faintly touched with gold ; The fan palms rustled in the early air ; Daylight spread cool and broadly to the hills ; And still the star was visible, and still The young Bedouin with a straining eye Drank its departing light into his soul. It faded— melted — and the fiery rim Of the clear sun came up, and painfully The passionate scholar pressed upon his eyes His dusky fingers, and with limbs as weak As a sick child's, turned fainting to his couch, And slept. * * * * * * It was the morning watch once more, The clouds were drifting rapidly above, And dim and fast the glimmering stars flew through ; And as the fitful gust soughed mournfully, The shutters shook, and on the sloping roof Plashed, heavily, large, single drops of rain — And all was still again. Ben Khorat sat By the dim lamp, and, while his scholar slept, Pored on the Chaldee wisdom. At his feet, Stretched on a pallet, lay the Arab boy, Muttering fast in his unquiet sleep, And working his dark fingers in his palms Convulsively. His sallow lips were pale, And, as they moved, his teeth showed ghastly through White as a charnel bone, and — closely drawn Upon his sunken eyes, as if to press Some frightful image from the bloodshot balls — His lids a moment quivered, and again Relaxed, half open, in a calmer sleep. Ben Khorat gazed upon the dropping sands Of the departing hour. The last white grain Fell through, and with the tremulous hand of age The old astrologer reversed the glass ; And, as the voiceless monitor went on, Wasting and wasting with the precious hour, He looked upon it with a moving lip, And, starting, turned his gaze upon the heavens, Cursing the clouds impatiently. " 'Tis time !" Muttered the dying scholar, and he dashed The tangled hair from his black eyes away, And, seizing on Ben Khorat's mantle-folds, He struggled to his feet, and falling prone Upon the window-ledge, gazed steadfastly Into the East :— " There is a cloud between — She sits this instant on the mountain's brow, And that dusk veil hides all her glory now — Yet floats she as serene Into the heavens ! Oh, God ! than even so I could o'ermount my spirit cloud, and go ! "The cloud begins to drift ! Aha ! Fling open ! 'tis the star — the sky ! Touch me, immortal mother ! and I fly ! Wider ! thou cloudy rift ! Let through ! — such glory should have radiant room ! Let through ! — a star-child on its light goes home ! "Speak to me, brethren bright ! Ye who are floating in these living beams ! Ye who have come to me in starry dreams ! Ye who have winged the light , Of our bright mother with its thoughts of flame — (I knew it passed through spirits as it came) — " Tell me ! what power have ye ? What are the heights ye reach upon your wings ? What know ye of the myriad wondrous things I perish but to see ? Are ye thought-rapid ? — Can ye fly as far — As instant as a thought, from star to star ? " Where has the Pleiad gone ? Where have all missing stars* found light and home ? Who bids the Stella Miraf go and come ? Why sits the Pole-star lone ? And why, like banded sisters, through the air Go in bright troops the constellations fair ? " Ben Khorat ! dost thou mark ? The star! the star? By heaven! the cloud drifts o'er ! Gone — and I live ! nay^will my heart beat more ? Look ! master ! 'tis all dark ! Not a clear speck in heaven ? — my eye-balls smother ! Break through the clouds once more ! oh, starry mother ! " I will lie down ! Yet stay, The rain beats out the odor from the gums, And strangely soft to-night the spice-wind comes ! I am a child alway When it is on my forehead ! Abra sweet ! Would I were in the desert at thy feet ! " My barb ! my glorious steed ! Methinks my soul would mount upon its track More fleetly, could I die upon thy back ! How would thy thrilling speed Quicken my pulse ! — Oh, Allah ! I get wild ! Would that I were once more a desert-child ! " Nay — nay — I had forgot ! My mother ! my star mother ! — Ha ! my breath Stifles ! more air ! Ben Khorat ! this is — death! Touch me ! 1 feel you not ! Dying ! — Farewell ! good master ! — room ! more room ! Abra ! I loved thee ! star — bright star ! I come !" How idly of the human heart we speak, Giving it gods of clay ! How worse than vain Is the school homily, that Eden's fruit Can not be plucked too freely from " the tree Of good and evil." Wisdom sits alone, Topmost in heaven ; — she is its light — its God ! And in the heart of man she sits as high — Though grovelling eyes forget her oftentimes, Seeing but this world's idols. The pure mind Sees her for ever : and in youth we come Filled with her sainted ravishment, and kneel, Worshipping God through her sweet altar-fires, And then is knowledge " good." We come too oft — The heart grows proud with fulness, and we soon Look with licentious freedom on the maid Throned in celestial beauty. There she sits, Robed in her soft and seraph loveliness, Instructing and forgiving, and we gaze Until desire grows wild, and, with our hands Upon her very garments, are struck down, Blasted with a consuming fire from heaven ! * " Missing stars" are often spoken of in the old books of astron omy. Hipparchus mentions one that appeared and vanished very suddenly; and in the beginning of the sixteenth century Kepler discovered a new star near the heel of the right foot of Serpenta- rius, "so bright and sparkling that it exceeded anything he had ever seen before." He " took notice that it was every moment changing into some of the colors of the rainbow, except when it was near the horizon, when it was generally white." It disap- peared in the following year, and has not been^een since. t A wonderful star in the neck of the Whale, discovered by Fa- bricius in the fifteenth century. It appears and disappears seven times in six years, and continues in the greatest lustre for fifteen days together. POEMS OF PASSION. 837 Yet, oh ! how full of music from her lips Breathe the calm tones of wisdom ! Human praise Is sweet — till envy mars it, and the touch Of new- won gold stirs up the pulses well; And woman's love, if in a beggar's lamp 'T would burn, might light us clearly through theworld; But Knowledge hath a far more 'wildering tongue, And she will stoop and lead you to the stars, And witch you with her mysteries — till gold Is a forgotten dross, and power and fame Toys of an hour, and woman's careless love, Light as the breath that breaks it. He who binds His soul to knowledge steals the key of heaven — But 'tis a bitter mockery that the fruit May hang within his reach, and when, with thirst Wrought to a maddening phrensy, he would taste- It burns his lips to ashes ! THE WIFE'S APPEAL. " Love borrows greatly from opinion. Pride above all things strengthens affection."— £. L. Bulwer. He sat and read. A book with silver clasps, All gorgeous with illuminated lines Of gold and crimson, lay upon a frame Before him. 'Twas a volume of old time ; And in it were fine mysteries of the stars Solved with a cunning wisdom, and strange thoughts, Half prophecy, half poetry, and dreams Clearer than truth, and speculations wild That touched the secrets of your very soul, They were so based on Nature. With a face Glowing with thought, he pored upon the book. The cushions of an Indian loom lay soft Beneath his limbs, and, as he turned the page, The sunlifht, streaming through the curtain's fold, Fell with a rose-teint on his jewelled hand ; And the rich woods of the quaint furniture Lay deepening their veined colors in the sun, And the stained marbles on the pedestals Stood like a silent company— Voltaire, With an infernal sneer upon his lips ; And Socrates, with godlike human love Stamped on his countenance ; and orators, Of times gone by that made them ; and old bards, And Medicean Venus, half divine. Around the room were shelves of dainty lore, And rich old pictures hung upon the walls Where the slant light fell on them ; and wrought gems. Medallions, rare mosaics, and antiques From Herculaneum, the niches filled ; And on a table of enamel, wrought With a lost art in Italy, there lay Prints of fair women, and engravings rare, And a new poem, and a costly toy ; And in their midst a massive lamp of bronze Burning sweet spices constantly. Asleep Upon the carpet couched a graceful hound, Of a rare breed, and, as his master gave A murmur of delight at some sweet line, He raised his slender head, and kept his eye Upon him till the pleasant smile had passed From his mild lips, and then he slept again. The light beyond the crimson folds grew dusk, And the clear letters of the pleasant book Mingled and blurred, and the lithe hound rose up, And, with his earnest eye upon the door, Listened attentively. It came as wont — The fall of a light foot upon the stair— And the fond animal sprang out to meet His mistress, and caress the ungloved hand, He seemed to know was beautiful. She stooped Gracefully down and touched his silken ears As she passed in — then, with a tenderness, Half playful and half serious, she knelt Upon the ottoman and pressed her lips Upon her husband's forehead. • • • • • She rose and put the curtain-folds aside From the high window, and looked out upon The shining stars in silence. " Look they not Like Paradises to thine eye ?" he said — But, as he spoke, a tear fell through the light — And — starting from his seat — he folded her Close to his heart, and — with unsteady voice — Asked — if she was not happy. A faint smile Broke through her tears ; and pushing off the hair From his broad forehead, she held back his head With her white hand, and, gazing on his face, Gave to her heart free utterance : — Happy ? — yes, dearest ! — blest Beyond the limit of my wildest dream — Too bright indeed, my blessings ever seem ; There lives not in my breast, One of Hope's promises by Love unkept, And yet — forgive me, Ernest — I have wept. How shall I speak of sadness, And seem not thankless to my God and thee ? How can the lightest wish but seem to be The very whim of madness ? Yet, oh, there is a boon thy love beside — And I will ask it of thee— in my pride ! List, while my boldness lingers ! If thou hadst won yon twinkling star to hear thee — If thou couldst bid the rainbow's curve bend near thee — If thou couldst charm thy fingers To weave for thee the Sunset's tent of gold — Wouldst in thine own heart treasure it untold ? If thou hadst Ariel's gift, To course the veined metals of the earth — If thou couldst wind a fountain to its birth — If thou couldst know the drift Of the lost cloud that sailed into the sky — Wouldst keep it for thine own unanswered eye ? It is thy life and mine ! Thou, in thyself— and I, in thee— misprison Gifts like a circle of bright stars unrisen— For thou whose mind should shine, Eminent as a planet's light, art here — Moved with the starting of a woman's tear ! I have told o'er thy powers In secret, as a miser tells his gold ; I know thy spirit calm, and true and bold : I've watched thy lightest hours, And seen thee, in the wildest flush of youth, Touched with the instinct ravishment of truth. Thou hast the secret strange To read that hidden book, the human heart ; Thou hast the ready writer's practised art ; Thou hast the thought to range The broadest circles Intellect hath ran — And thou art God's best work— an honest man ! And yet thou slumberest here Like a caged bird that never knew its pinions, And others track in glory the dominions Where thou hast not thy peer- Setting their weaker eyes unto the sun, And plucking honor that thou shouldst have won. Oh, if thou lovedst me ever, Ernest, my husband ! If th' idolatry That lets go heaven to fling its all on thee— If to dismiss thee never . In dream or praver, have given me aught to claim- Heed me-oh, heed me ! and awake to lame ! Her lips Closed with an earnest sweetness and she sat Gazing into his eyes as if her look . Searched their dark orbs for answer. The warm blood Into his temples mounted, and across His countenance the flush of passionate thoughts Passed with irresolute quickness. He rose up And paced the dim room rapidly awhile, Calmin- his troubled mind ; and then he cam* And laid his hand upon her orbed brow, And in a voice of heavenly tenderness Answered her : — 838 POEMS OF PASSION Before I knew thee, Mary, Ambition was my angel. I did hear For ever its witched voices in mine ear ; My days were visionary — My nights were like the slumbers of the mad — And every dream swept o'er me glory clad. I read the burning letters Of warlike pomp, on History's page, alone ; I counted nothing the struck widow's moan ; I heard no clank of fetters ; I only felt the trumpet's stirring blast, And lean-eyed Famine stalked unchallenged past ! I heard with veins of lightning, The utterance of the Statesman's word of power — Binding and loosing nations in an hour — But, while my eye was brightening, A masked detraction breathed upon his fame, And a curst serpent slimed his written name. The poet rapt mine ears With the transporting music that he sung. With fibres from his life his lyre he strung, And bathed the world in tears — And then he turned away to some muse apart, And Scorn stole after him — and broke his heart ! Yet here and there I saw One who did set the world at calm defiance. And press right onward with a bold reliance ; And he did seem to awe The very Shadows pressing on his breast, And, with a strong heart, held himself at rest. And then I looked again — And he had shut the door upon the crowd, And on his face he lay and groaned aloud — Wrestling with hidden pain; And in her chamber sat his wife in tears, And his sweet babes grew sad with whispered fears. And so I turned sick-hearted From the bright cup away, and, in my sadness, Searched mine own bosom for some spring of gladness ; And lo! a fountain started Whose waters even in death flow calm and fast, And my wild fever-thirst was slaked at last. And then I met thee, Mary, And felt how love may into fulness pour, Like light into a fountain running o'er : And I did hope to vary My life but with surprises sweet as this — A dream — but for thy waking — filled with bliss. Yet now I feel my spirit Bitterly stirred, and — nay, lift up thy brow ! It is thine own voice echoing to thee now, And thou didst pray to hear it — I must unto my work and my stern hours ! Take from my room thy harp, and books, and flowers ! • • » » • * * * * A year — And in his room again he sat alone. His frame had lost its fulness in that time ; His manly features had grown sharp and thin, And from his lips the constant smile had faded. Wild fires had burned the languor from his eye : The lids looked fevered, and the brow was bent With an habitual frown. He was much changed. His chin was resting on his clenched hand, And with his foot he beat upon the floor, Unconsciously, the time of a sad tune. Thoughts of the past preyed on him bitterly. He had won power and held it. He had walked Steadily upward in the eye of Fame, And kept his truth unsullied — but his home Had been invaded by envenomed tongues ; His wife — his spotless wife — had been assailed By slander, and his child had grown afraid To come to him — his manner was so stern. He could not speak beside his own hearth freely. His friends were half estranged, and vulgar men Presumed upon their services and grew Familiar with him. He'd small time to sleep, And none to pray ; and, with his heart in fetters, He bore deep insults silently, and bowed Respectfully to men who knew he loathed them ! And, when his heart was eloquent with truth, And love of country, and an honest zeal Burned for expression, he could find no words They would not misinterpret with their lies. What were his many honors to him now ? The good half doubted, falsehood was so strong— His home was hateful with its cautious fears — His wife lay trembling on his very breast Frighted with calumny ! — And this is FAME. MELANIE. I stood on yonder rocky brow,* And marvelled at the Sibyl's fane, When I was not what I am now. My life was then untouched of pain; And, as the breeze that stirred my hair, My spirit freshened in the sky, And all things that were true and fair Lay closely to my loving eye, With nothing shadowy between — I was a boy of seventeen. Yon wond'rous temple crests the rock — As light upon its giddy base, As stirless with the torrent's shock, As pure in its proportioned grace, And seems a thing of air — as then, Afloat above this fairy glen ; But though mine eye will kindle still In looking on the shapes of art, • The link is lost that sent the thrill, Like lightning, instant to my heart. And thus may break before we die, Th' electric chain 'twixt soul and eye ! Ten years — like yon bright valley, sown Alternately with weeds and flowers — Had swiftly, if not gayly, flown, And still I loved the rosy Hours ; And if there lurked within my breast Some nerve that had been overstrung And quivered in my hours of rest, Like bells by their own echo rung, I was with hope a masquer yet, And well could hide the look of sadness ; And, if my heart would not forget, I knew, at least, the trick of gladness ; And when another sang the strain, I mingled in the old refrain. 'Twere idle to remember now, Had I the heart, my thwarted schemes. I bear beneath this altered brow The ashes of a thousand dreams — Some wrought of wild Ambition's fingers, Some colored of Love's pencil well — But none of which a shadow lingers, And none whose story I could tell. Enough, that when I climbed again To Tivoli's romantic steep, Life had no joy, and scarce a pain, Whose wells I had not tasted deep ; And from my lips the thirst had passed For every fount save one — the sweetest — and the last. The last — the last ! My friends were dead, Or false ; my mother in her grave ; Above my father's honored head The sea had locked its hiding wave ; Ambition had but foiled my grasp, And love had perished in my clasp ; And still, I say, I did not slack My love of life, and hope of pleasure, But gathered my affections back ; And, as the miser hugs his treasure When plague and ruin bid him flee, I closer clung to mine — my loved, lost Melanie ! *The story is told dnrinsr a walk around the Cascatolles of Tivoli POEMS OF PASSION. 839 The last of the De Brevern race, My sister claimed no kinsman's care ; And, looking from each other's face, The eye stole upward unaware — For there was naught whereon to lean Each other's heart and heaven between — Yet that was world enough for me ; And, for a brief but blessed while, There seemed no care for Melanie If she could see her brother smile I But life with her was at the flow, And every wave went sparkling higher, While mine was ebbing, fast and low, From the same shore of vain desire; And knew I, with prophetic heart, That we were wearing, aye, insensibly apart. We came to Italy. I felt A yearning for its sunny sky; My very spirit seemed to melt As swept its first warm breezes by. From lip and cheek a chilling mist, From life and soul a frozen rime, By every breath seemed softly kissed — God's blessing on its radiant clime ! It was an endless joy to me To see my sister's new delight; . From Venice in its golden sea To Paestum in its purple light — By sweet Val d'Arno's teinted hills — In Vallombrosa's convent gloom — Mid Terni's vale of singing rills — By deathless lairs in solemn Rome — In gay Palermo's " Golden Shell" — At Arethusa's hidden well — We loitered like th' impassioned sun That slept so lovingly on all, And made a home of every one — Ruin, and fane, and waterfall — And crowned the dying day with glory If we had seen, since morn, but one old haunt of story. We came with Spring to Tivoli. My sister loved its laughing air And merry waters, though, for me, My heart was in another key ; And sometimes I could scarcely bear The mirth of their eternal play, And, like a child that longs for home When weary of its holyday, I sighed for melancholy Rome. Perhaps — the fancy haunts me still — 'Twas but a boding sense of ill. It was a morn, of such a day As might have dawned on Eden first, Early in the Italian May. Vine-leaf and flower had newly burst, And on the burthen of the air The breath of buds came faint and rare ; And far in the transparent sky The small, earth-keeping birds were seen Soaring deliriously high ; And through the clefts of newer green Yon waters dashed their living pearls; And with a gayer smile and bow Trooped on the merry village-girls ; And from the contadino's brow The low-slouched hat was backward thrown, With air that scarcely seemed his own ; And Melanie, with lips apart, And clasped hands upon my arm, Flung open her impassioned heart, And blessed life's mere and breathing charm ; And sang old songs, and gathered flowers, And passionately bless'd once more life's thrilling hours, In happiness and idleness We wandered down yon sunny vale — Oh mocking eyes ! — a golden tress Floats back upon this summer gale ! A foot is tripping on the grass ! A laugh rings merry in mine ear ! I see a bounding shadow pass ! — God ! my sister once was here 1 Come with me, friend.— We rested yon ! There grew a flower she plucked and wore ! She sat upon this mossy stone — That broken fountain running o'er With the same ring, like silver bells. She listened to its babbling flow, And said, " Perhaps the gossip tells Some fountain-nymph's love-story now !" And as her laugh ran clear and wild, A youth — a painter — passed and smiled. He gave the greeting of the morn With voice that lingered in mine ear. I knew him sad and gentle born By those two words — so calm and clear. His frame was slight, his forehead high And swept by threads of raven hair, The fire of thought was in his eye, And he was pale and marble fair, And Grecian chisel never caught The soul in those slight features wrought. 1 watched his graceful step of pride, Till hidden by yon leaning tree, And loved him ere the echo died ; And so, alas ! did Melanie ! We sat and watched the fount awhile In silence, but our thoughts were one; And then arose, and, with a smile Of sympathy, we sauntered on; And she by sudden fits was gay, And then her laughter died away, And in this changefulness of mood (Forgotten now those May-day spells) We turned where Varro's villa stood, And gazing on the Cascatelles, (Whose hurrying waters wild and white Seemed maddened as they burst to light,) I chanced to turn my eyes away, And lo ! upon a bank, alone, The youthful painter, sleeping, lay ! His pencils on the grass were thrown And by his side a sketch was flung, And near him as I lightly crept, To see the picture as he slept, Upon his feet he lightly sprung; And, gazing with a wild surprise Upon the face of Melanie, He said — and dropped his earnest eyes- " Forgive me ! but I dreamed of thee !" His sketch, the while, was in my hand, And, for the lines I looked to trace — A torrent by a palace spanned, Half-classic and half fairy-land — I only found — my sister's face ! Our life was changed. Another love In its lone woof began to twine : But ah ! the golden thread was wove Between my sister's heart and mine ! She who had lived for me before — She who had smiled for me alone — Would live and smile for me no more ! The echo to my heart was gone ! It seemed to me the very skies Had shone through those averted eyes ; The air had breathed of balm — the flower Of radiant beauty seemed to be- But as she loved them, hour by hour, And murmured of that love to me ! Oh, though it be so heavenly high The selfishness of earth above, That, of the watchers in the sky, He sleeps who guards a brother's love — Though to a sister's present weal The deep devotion far transcends The utmost that the soul can feel For even its own higher ends — 840 POEMS OF PASSION. Though next to God, and more than heaven For his own sake, he loves her, even — 'Tis difficult to see another, A passing stranger of a day Who never hath been friend or brother, Pluck with a look her heart away — To see the fair, unsullied brow Ne'er kissed before without a prayer, Upon a stranger's bosom now, Who for the boon took little care — Who is enriched, he knows not why — Who suddenly hath found a treasure Golconda were too poor to buy, And he perhaps, too cold to measure — (Albeit, in her forgetful dream, Th' unconscious idol happier seem), 'Tis difficult at once to crush The rebel mourner in the breast, To press the heart to earth and hush Its bitter jealousy to rest — And difficult— the eye gets dim, The lip wants power — to smile on him ! I thank sweet Mary Mother now, Who gave me strength those pangs to hide- And touched mine eyes and lit my brow With sunshine that my heart belied. I never spoke of wealth or race To one who asked so much from me — I looked but in my sister's face, And mused if she would happier be ; And hour by hour, and day by day, I loved the gentle painter more, And, in the same soft measure, wore My selfish jealousy away : And I began to watch his mood, And feel, with her, love's trembling care, And bade God bless him as he wooed That loving girl so fond and fair. And on my mind would sometimes press A fear that she might love him less. But Melanie — I little dreamed What spells the stirring heart may move — Pygmalion's statue never seemed More changed with life, than she with love ! The pearl teint of the early dawn Flushed into day-spring's rosy hue — The meek, moss-folded bud of morn Flung open to the light and dew — The first and half-seen star of even Waxed clear amid the deepening heaven — Similitudes perchance may be ! But these are changes oftener seen, And do not image half to me My sister's change of face and mein. 'Twas written in her very air That Love had passed and entered there. A calm and lovely paradise Is Italy, for minds at ease. The sadness of its sunny skies Weighs not upon the lives of these. The ruined aisle, the crumbling fane, The broken column, vast and prone — It may be joy — it may be pain — Amid such wrecks to walk alone ! The saddest man will sadder be, The gentlest lover gentler there — As if, whate'er the spirit's key, It strengthened in that solemn air. The heart soon grows to mournful things, . And Italy has not a breeze „'", t comes on melancholy wings ; „?■ \.nd even her majestic trees B 1S |id ghost-like in the Ccesars' home, rJ s 'a if their conscious roots were set T, he old graves of giant Rome, w ? "jf.id drew their sap all kingly yet ! And every stone your feet beneath Is broken from some mighty thought 5 And sculptures in the dust still breathe The fire with which their lines were wrought ; And sundered arch, and plundered tomb, Still thunder back the echo, " Rome !" Yet, gayly o'er Egeria's fount The ivy flings its emerald veil, And flowers grow fair on Numa's mount, And light-sprung arches span the dale ; And soft, from Caracalla's Baths, The herdsman's song comes down the breeze While climb his goats the giddy paths To grass-grown architrave and frieze ; And gracefully Albano's hill Curves into the horizon's line ; And sweetly sings that classic rill ; And fairly stands that nameless shrine ; And here, oh, many a sultry noon And starry eve, that happy June, Came Angelo and Melanie ! And earth for us was all in tune — For while Love talked with them, Hope walked apart with me! v. I shrink from the embittered close Of my own melancholy tale. 'Tis long since I have waked my woes — And nerve and voice together fail, The throb beats faster at my brow, My brain feels warm with starting tears, And I shall weep — but heed not thou ! 'Twill sooth awhile the ache of years ! The heart transfixed — worn out with grief- Will turn the arrow for relief. The painter was a child of shame ! It stirred my pride to know it first, For I had questioned but his name, And, thought, alas ! I knew the worst, Believing him unknown and poor. His blood, indeed, was not obscure ; A high-born Conti was his mother, But, though he knew one parent's face, He never had beheld the other, Nor knew his country or his race. The Roman hid his daughter's shame Within St. Mona's convent wall, And gave the boy a painter's name — And little else to live withal ! And with a noble's high desires For ever mounting in his heart, The boy consumed with hidden fires, But wrought in silence at his art ; And sometimes at St. Mona's shrine, Worn thin with penance harsh and long, He saw his mother's form divine, And loved her for their mutual wrong. I said my pride was stirred — but no ! The voice that told its bitter tale Was touched so mournfully with wo, And, as he ceased, all deathly pale, He loosed the hand of Melanie, And gazed so gaspingly on me — The demon in my bosom died ! " Not thine," I said, " another's guilt ; I break no hearts for silly pride; So, kiss yon weeper if thou wilt !" VI. St. Mona's morning mass was done, The shrine-lamps struggled with the day ; And rising slowly, one by one, Stole the last worshippers away. The organist played out the hymn, The incense, to St. Mary swung, Had mounted to the cherubim, Or to the pillars thinly clung; And boyish chorister replaced The missal that was read no more, And closed, with half irreverent haste, Confessional and chancel door j POEMS OF PASSION. 841 And as, through aisle and oriel pane, The sun wore round his slanting beam, The dying martyr stirred again, And warriors battled in its gleam ; And costly tomb and sculptured knight Showed warm and wondrous in the light. I have not said that Melanie Was radiantly fair — This earth again may never see A loveliness so rare ! She glided up St. Mona's aisle That morning as a bride, And, full as was my heart the while, I blessed her in my pride ! The fountain may not fail the less Whose sands are golden ore, And a sister for her loveliness, May not be loved the more; But as, the fount's full heart beneath, Those golden sparkles shine, My sister's beauty seemed to breathe Its brightness over mine ! St. Mona has a chapel dim Within the altar's fretted pale, Where faintly comes the swelling hymn, And dies half lost the anthem's wail. And here, in twilight meet for prayer, A single lamp hangs o'er the shrine, And Raphael's Mary, soft and fair, Looks down with sweetness half divine, And here St. Mona's nuns alway Through latticed bars are seen to pray. Ave and sacrament were o'er, And Angelo and Melanie Still knelt the holy shrine before : But prayer, that morn was not for me ! My heart was locked f The lip might stir, The frame might agonize — and yet, Oh God ! I could not pray for her ! A seal upon my brow was set — My brow was hot — my brain opprest — And fiends seemed muttering round, " Your bridal is unblest !" With forehead to the lattice laid, And thin, white fingers straining through, A nun the while had softly prayed. Oh, even in prayer that voice I knew ! Each faltering word — each mournful tone — Each pleadins; cadence, half-suppressed — Such music had its like alone On lips that stole it at her breast ! And ere the orison was done I loved the mother as the son ! And now, the marriage vows to hear, The nun unveiled her brow — When, sudden, to my startled ear, There crept a whisper, hoarse like fear, " De Brevern ! is it thou /" The priest let fall the golden ring, The bridegroom stood aghast, While, like some weird and frantic thing, The nun was muttering fast ; And as, in dread, I nearer drew, She thrust her arms the lattice through, And held me to her straining view — But suddenly begun To steal upon her brain a light That staggered soul, and sense, and sight, And, with a mouth all ashy white, She shrieked, " It is his son .' The bridegroom is thy blood— thy brother ! Rodolph de Brevern wronged his mother ! And, as that doom of love was heard, My sister sunk — and died — without a sign or word ! I shed no tear for her. She died With her last sunshine in her eyes. Earth held for her no joy beside The hope just shattered— and she lie* In a green nook of yonder dell ; And near her, in a newer bed, Her lover — brother — sleeps as well ! Peace to the broken-hearted dead ! LORD IVON AND HIS DAUGHTER. " Dost thou despise A love like this ! A lady should not scorn One soul that loves her, howe'er lowly it be." LORD IVON. How beautiful it is ! Come here, my daughter ! Is't not a face of most bewildering brightness ? ISIDORE. The features are all fair, sir, but so cold — I could not love such beauty ! LORD IVON. Yet, e'en so Looked thy lost mother, Isidore ! Her brow Lofty like this— her lips thus delicate, Yet icy cold in their slight vermeil threads — Her neck thus queenly, and the sweeping curve Thus matchless, from the small and " pearl round ear" To the o'er-polished shoulder. Never swan Dreamed on the water with a grace so calm ! ISIDORE. And was she proud, sir ? LORD IVON. Or I had not loved her. ISIDORE. Then runs my lesson wrong. I ever read Pride was unlovely. LORD IVON. Dost thou prate already Of books, my little one ? Nay, then, 'tis time That a sad tale were told thee. Is thy bird Fed for the day ? Canst thou forget the rein Of thy beloved Arabian for an hour, And, the first time in all thy sunny life, Take sadness to thy heart ? Wilt listen, sweet ? ISIDORE. Hang I not ever on thy lips, dear father ? LORD IVON. As thou didst enter, I was musing here Upon this picture. 'Tis the face of one I never knew; but, for its glorious pride, I bought it of the painter. There has hung Ever the cunning curse upon my soul To love this look in woman. Not the flower Of all Arcadia, in the Age of Gold, Looked she a shepherdess, would be to me More than the birds are. As the astrologer Worships the half-seen star that in its sphere Dreams not of him, and tramples on the lily That flings, unasked, its fragrance in his way, Yet both (as the high-born and the low) Wrought of the same fine Hand — so, daringly, Flew my boy-hopes beyond me. You are here In a brave palace, Isidore ! The gem That sparkles in your hair, imprisons light Drunk in the flaming Orient ; and gold Waits on the bidding of those girlish lips In measures that Aladdin never knew — Yet was I — lowly born ! ISIDORE. Lord Ivon ! LORD IVON. Ay, You wonder; but I tell you that the Lord Of this tall palace was a peasants child ! And, lookin? sometimes on his fair domain, Thy 'sire bethinks him of a sickly boy, Nursed by his mother on a mountain side, His onlv wealth a book of poetry, With which he daily crept into the sun, 842 POEMS OF PASSION. To cheat sharp pains with the bewildering dream Of beauty he had only read of there. ISIDORE. Have you the volume still, sir 1 LORD IVON. 'Twas the gift Of a poor scholar wandering in the hills, Who pitied my sick idleness. I fed My inmost soul upon the witching rhyme — A silly tale of a low minstrel boy, Who broke his heart in singing at a bridal. Loved he the ISIDORE. J, sir? LORD IVON. So ran the tale. How well I do remember it ! Poor youth ! ISIDORE. Alas! LORD IVON. I never thought to pity him. The bride was a duke's sister ; and I mused Upon the wonder of his daring love, Till my heart changed within me. I became Restless and sad; and in my sleep I saw Beautiful dames all scornfully go by ; And one o'er weary morn I crept away Into the glen, and, flung upon a rock, Over a torrent whose swift, giddy waters Filled me with energy, I swore my soul To better that false vision, if there were Manhood or fire within my wretched frame. I turned me homeward with the sunset hour, Changed — for the thought had conquered even disease ; And my poor mother checked her busy wheel To wonder at the step with which I came. Oh, heavens ! that soft and dewy April eve, When, in a minstrel's garb, but with a heart As lofty as the marble shafts upreared Beneath the stately portico, I stood At this same palace door ! t A minstrel boy ISIDORE. Our own ! and you LORD IVON. Yes — I had wandered far Since I shook off my sickness in the hills, And, with some cunning on the lute, had learned A subtler lesson than humility In the quick school of want. A menial stood By the Egyptian sphinx ; and when I came And prayed to sing beneath the balcony A song of love for a fair lady's ear, He insolently bade me to begone. Listening not, I swept my fingers o'er The strings in prelude, when the base-born slave Struck me ! ISIDORE. Impossible ! LORD IVON. I dashed my lute Into his face, and o'er the threshold flew ; And threading rapidly the lofty rooms, Sought vainly for his master. Suddenly A wing rushed o'er me, and a radiant girl, Young as myself, but fairer than the dream Of my most wild imagining, sprang forth, Chasing a dove, that, 'wildered with pursuit, Dropt breathless on my bosom. ISIDORE. Nay, dear father ! Was't so indeed ? LORD IVON. I thanked my blessed star ! And, as the fair, transcendent creature stood Silent with wonder, I resigned the bird To her white hands ; and, with a rapid thought, And lips already eloquent of love, Turned the strange chance to a similitude Of my own story. Her slight, haughty lip Curled at the warm recital of my wrong, And on the ivory oval of her cheek The rose flushed outward with a deeper red ; And from that hour the minstrel was at home, And horse and hound were his, and none might cross The minion of the noble Lady Clare. Art weary of my tale ? ISIDORE. Dear father ! LORD IVON. Well! A summer, and a winter, and a spring, Went over me like brief and noteless hours. For ever at the side of one who grew With every morn more beautiful ; the slave, Willing and quick, of every idle whim ; Singing for no one's bidding but her own, And then a song from my own passionate heart, Sung with a lip of fire, but ever named As an old rhyme that I had chanced to hear; Riding beside her, sleeping at her door, Doing her maddest bidding at the risk Of life — what marvel if at last I grew Presumptuous ? A messenger one morn Spurred through the gate—" A revel at the court ! And many minstrels, come from many lands, Will try their harps in presence of the king; And 'tis the royal pleasure that my lord Come with the young and lovely Lady Clare, Robed as the queen of Faery, who shall crown The victor with his bays." Pass over all To that bewildering day. She sat enthroned Amid the court ; and never twilight star Sprang with such sweet surprise upon the eye As she with her rare beauty on the gaze Of the gay multitude. The minstrels changed Their studied songs, and chose her for a theme; And ever at the pause all eyes upturned And fed upon her loveliness. The last Long lay was ended, and the silent crowd Waited the king's award — when suddenly The sharp strings of a lyre were swept without, And a clear voice claimed hearing for a bard Belated on his journey. Masked, and clad In a long stole, the herald led me in. A thousand eyes were on me ; but I saw The new-throned queen, in her high place, alone; And, kneeling at her feet, I pressed my brow Upon her footstool, till the images Of my past hours rushed thick upon my brain ; Then, rising hastily, I struck my lyre; And, in a story woven of my own, I so did paint her in her loveliness — Pouring my heart all out upon the lines I knew too faithfully, and lavishing The hoarded fire of a whole age of love Upon each passionate word, that, as I sunk Exhausted at the close, the ravished crowd Flung gold and flowers on my still quivering lyrt ; And the moved monarch in his gladness swore There was no boon beneath his kingly crown Too high for such a minstrel ! Did my star Speak in my fainting ear ? Heard I the king ? Or did the audible pulses of my heart Seem to me so articulate ? I rose, And tore my mask away ; and, as the stole Dropped from my shoulders, I glanced hurriedly A look upon the face of Lady Clare It was enough ! I saw that she was changed — That a brief hour had chilled the open child POEMS OF PASSION. 843 To calculating woman — that she read With cold displeasure my o'er-daring thought ; And on that brow, to me as legible As stars to the rapt Arab, I could trace The scorn that waited on me ! Sick of life, Yet, even then, with a half-rallied hope Prompting my faltering tongue, I blindly knelt, And claimed the king's fair promise — ISIDORE. For the hand Of Lady Clare? LORD IVON. No, sweet one — for a sword. ISIDORE. You surely spoke to her ? LORD IVON. I saw her face No more for years. I went unto the wars ; And when again I sought that palace door, A glory heralded the minstrel boy That monarchs might have envied. ISIDORE. Was she there ? LORD IVON. Yes— and, O God ! how beautiful ! The last, The ripest seal of loveliness, was set Upon her form ; and the all-glorious pride That I had worshipped on her girlish lip, When her scared dove fled to me, was matured Into a queenly grace ; and nobleness Was bound like a tiara to her brow, And every motion breathed of it. There lived Nothing on earth so ravishingly fair. ISIDORE. And you still loved her ? LORD IVON. I had periled life In every shape — had battled on the sea, And burnt upon the desert, and outgone Spirits most mad for glory, with this one O'ermastering hope upon me. Honor, fame, Gold, even, were as dust beneath my feet ; And war was my disgust, though I had sought Its horrors like a bloodhound — for her praise. My life was drunk up with the love of her. ISIDORE. And now she scorned you not ? LORD IVON. Worse, Isidore ! She pitied me ! I did not need a voice To tell my love. She knew her sometime minion- And felt that she should never be adoied With such idolatry as his, and sighed That hearts so true beat not in palaces — But I was poor, with all my bright renown, And lowly born : and she— the Lady Clare ! ISIDORE. She could not tell you this ? LORD IVON. She broke my heart As kindly as the fisher hooks the worm — Pitying me the while ! ISIDORE. And you — LORD IVON. Lived on ! But the remembrance irks me, and my throat Chokes with the utterance ! ISIDORE. Dear father ! LORD IVON. Nay- Thanks to sweet Mary Mother, it is past : And in this world I shall have no more need To speak of it. ISIDORE. But there were brighter days In store. My mother and this palace — LORD IVON. You outrun My tale, dear Isidore ! But 'tis as well, I would not linger on it. Twenty years From this heart-broken hour, I stood again An old man and a stranger, at the door Of this same palace. I had been a slave For gold that time ! My star had wrought with me 1 And I was richer than the wizard king Throned in the mines of Ind. I could not look On my innumerable gems, the glare Pained so my sun-struck eyes ! My gold was countless. ISIDORE. And Lady Clare ? LORD IVON. * I met upon the threshold Her very self — all youth, all loveliness — So like the fresh-kept picture in my brain, That for a moment I forgot all else, And staggered back and wept. She passed me by With a cold look — ISIDORE. Oh! not the Lady Clare I LORD IVON. Her daughter yet herself ! But what a change Waited me here ! My thin and grizzled locks Were fairer now than the young minstrel's curls; My sun-burnt visage and contracted eye Than the gay soldier in his gallant mien ; My words were wit, my looks interpreted ; And Lady Clare — I tell you, Lady Clare Leaned fondly — fondly! on my wasted arm. God ! how changed my nature with all this I I, that had been all love and tenderness — The truest and most gentle heart, till now, That ever beat — grew suddenly a devil ! 1 bought me lands, and titles, and received Men's homage with a smooth hypocrisy ; And — you will scarce believe me, Isidore — I suffered them to wile their peerless daughter, The image and the pride of Lady Clare, To wed me ! ISIDORE. Sir! you did not ! LORD IVON. Ay ! I saw The indignant anger when her mother first Broke the repulsive wish, and the degrees Of shuddering reluctance as her mind Admitted the intoxicating tales Of wealth unlimited. And when she looked On my age-stricken features, and my form, Wasted before its time, and turned away To hide from me her tears, her very mother Whispered the cursed comfort in her ear That made her what she is ! Knowing all this ISIDORE. You could not wed her, I felt that I had lost My life else. I had wrung, for forty years, My frame to its last withers ; I had flung My boyhood's fire away— the energy Of a most sinless youth— the toil, and fret, And agony of manhood. I had dared, Fought, suffered, slaved — and never for an hour Forgot or swerved from my resolve ; and now — With the delirious draught upon my lips — Dash down the cup ! 844 POEMS OF PASSION. Yet she never wronged you ! LORD IVON. Tliou'rt pleading for thy mother, my sweet child ! And angels hear thee. But, if she was wronged, The sin be on the pride that sells its blood Coldly and only for this damning gold. Had I not offered youth first ? Came I not, With my hands brimmed with glory, to buy love— And was I not denied ? Yet, dearest father, They forced her not to wed ? LORD IVON. I called her back Myself from the church threshold, and, before Her mother and her kinsmen, bade her swear It was her own free choice to marry me. I showed her my shrunk hand, and bade her think If that was like a bridegroom, and beware Of perjuring her chaste and spotless soul, If now she loved me not. ISIDORE. What said she, sir ? LORD IVON. Oh ! they had made her even as themselves : And her young heart was colder than the slab Unsunned beneath Pentelicus. She pressed My withered fingers in her dewy clasp, And smiled up in my face, and chid " my lord" For his wild fancies and led on ! And no Misgiving at the altar ? LORD IVON. None ! She swore To love and cherish me till death should part us, With a voice as clear as mine. In mercy tell me so ISIDORE. And kept it, father I LORD IVON. She lives, my daughter ! • ••••• • Long ere my babe was born, my pride had ebbed, And let my heart down to its better founts Of tenderness. I had no friends — not one I My love gushed to my wife. I racked my brain To find her a new pleasure every hour — Yet not with me— I feared to haunt her eye ! Only at night, when she was slumbering In all her beauty, I would put away The curtains till the pale night-lamp shone on her, And watch her through my tears. One night her lips Parted as I gazed on them, and the name Of a young noble, who had been my guest, Stole forth in broken murmurs. I let fall ' The curtains silently, and left her there To slumber and dream on ; and gliding forth Upon the terrace, knelt to my pale star, And swore, that if it pleased the God of light To let me look upon the unborn child Lying beneath her heart, I would but press One kiss upon its lips, and take away My life — that was a blight upon her years. I was that child ! LORD IVON. Yes — and I heard the cry Of thy small " piping mouth" as' twere a call From my remembering star. I waited only Thy mother's strength to bear the common shock Of death within the doors. She rose at last, And, oh ! so sweetly pale ! And thou, my child ! My heart misgave me as I looked upon thee ; But he was ever at her side whose name She murmured in her sleep ; and, lingering on To drink a little of thy sweetness more Before I died, I watched their stolen love As she had been my daughter, with a pure, Passionless joy that I should leave her soon To love him as she would. I know not how To tell thee more. * * * * Come, sweet ! she is not worthy Of tears like thine and mine. * * * * * She fled and left me The very night ! The poison was prepared — And she had been a widow with the morn Rich as Golconda. As the midnight chimed, My star rose. Gazing on its mounting orb, I raised the chalice — but a weakness came Over my heart ; and, taking up the lamp, I glided to her chamber, and removed The curtains for a last, a parting look Upon my child. * * * * * * Had she but taken thee, I could have felt she had a mother's heart, And drained the chalice still. I could not leave My babe alone in such a heartless world I ISIDORE. Thank God ! Thank God ! TO ERMENGARDE. I know not if the sunshine waste — The world is dark since thou art gone ! The hours are, oh ! so leadcn-paced ! The birds sing, and the stars float on, But sing not well, and look not fair — A weight is in the summer air, And sadness in the sight of flowers, And if I go where others smile, Their love but makes me think of ours, And heavier gets my heart the while. Like one upon a desert isle, I languish of the weary hours ; I never thought a life could be So flung upon one hope, as mine, dear love, on thee I I sit and watch the summer sky, There comes a clond through heaven alone ; A thousand stars are shining nigh — It feels no light, but darkles on ! Yet now it nears the lovelier moon ; And, flushing through its fringe of snow, There steals a rosier die, and soon Its bosom is one fiery glow ! The queen *of light within it lies ! Yet mark how lovers meet to part T The cloud already onward flies, And shadows sink into its heart, And (dost thou see them where thou art ?) Fade fast, fade all those glorious dies ! Its light, like mine, is seen no more, And, like my own, its heart seems darker than before Where press this hour those fairy feet, Where look this hour those eyes of blue ! What music in thine ear is sweet ! What odor breathes thy lattice through ! What word is on thy lip ? What tone — What look — replying to thine own ? Thy steps along the Danube stray — Alas it seeks an orient sea ! Thou wouldst not seem so far away Flowed but its waters back to me ? I bless the slowly coming moon Because its eye looked late in thine ! I envy the west wind of June Whose wings will bear it up the Rhine ; The flower I press upon my brow Were sweeter if its like perfumed thy chamber now! POEMS OF PASSION. 845 THE PITY OF THE PARK FOUNTAIN. 'Twas a summery day in the last of May — Pleasant in sun or shade ; And the hours went by as the poets say, Fragrant and fair on their flowery way; And a hearse crept slowly through Broadway; And the Fountain gayly played. The Fountain played right merrily, And the world looked bright and gay ; And a youth went by, with a restless eye, Whose heart was sick, and whose brain was dry, And he prayed to God that he might die — And the Fountain played away. Uprose the spray like a diamond throne, And the drops like music rang — And of those who marvelled how it shone, Was a proud man, left in his shame alone, And he shut his teeth with a smothered groan, And the Fountain sweetly sang. And a rainbow spanned it changefully, Like a bright ring broke in twain ; And the pale, fair girl, who stopped to see, Was sick with the pangs of poverty — And from hunger to guilt she chose to flee, As the rainbow smiled again. And all as gay, on another day, The morning will have shone ; And at noon, unmarked, through bright Broadway, A hearse will take its silent way ; And the bard who sings will have passed away — And the Fountain will play on ! "CHAMBER SCENE." (An exquisite picture in the studio of a young artist at Rome.) £he rose from her untroubled sleep, And put away her soft brown hair, And in a tone as low and deep As love's first whisper, breathed a prayer — Her snow-white hands together pressed, Her blue eyes sheltered in the lid, The folded linen on her breast Just swelling with the charms it hid — And from her long and flowing dress Escaped a bare and slender foot, Whose shape upoa the earth did press Like a new snow-flake, white and " mute ;" And there, from slumber pure and warm, Like a young spirit fresh from heaven, She bowed her slight and graceful form, And humbly prayed to be forgiven. Oh God ! if souls unsoiled as these Need daily mercy from thy throne — If she upon her bended knees — Our loveliest and our purest one — She, with a face so clear and bright We deem her some stray child of light — If she, with those soft eyes in tears, Day after day in her first years, Must kneel and pray for grace from thee — What far, far deeper need have we ? How hardly, if she win not heaven, Will our wild errors be forgiven ! TO A STOLEN RING. Oh for thy history now ! Hadst thou a tongue To whisper of thy secrets, I could lay Upon thy jewelled tracery mine ear, And dream myself in heaven. Thou hast been worn In that fair creature's pride, and thou hast felt The bounding of the haughtiest blood that e'er Sprang from the heart of woman ; and thy gold Has lain upon her forehead in the hour Of sadness, when the weary thoughts came fast, And life was but a bitterness with all Its vividness and beauty. She has gazed In her fair girlhood on thy snowy pearls, And mused away the hours, and she has bent On thee the downcast radiance of her eye When a deep tone was eloquent in her ear, And thou hast lain upon her cheek, and prest Back on her heart its beatings, and put by From her veined temples the luxuriant curls, And in her peaceful sleep, when she has lain In her unconscious beauty, and the dreams Of her high heart came goldenly and soft, Thou hast been there unchidden, and hast felt The swelling of the clear transparent veins As the rich blood rushed through them, warm and i I am impatient as I gaze on thee, Thou inarticulate jewel ! Thou hast heard With thy dull ear such music ! — the low tone Of a young sister's tenderness, when night Hath folded them together like one flower — The sudden snatch of a remembered song Warbled capriciously — the careless word Lightly betraying the inaudible thought Working within the heart; and more than all, Thou hast been lifted when the fervent prayer For a loved mother, or the sleeping one Lying beside her, trembled on her lip, And the warm tear that from her eye stole out As the soft lash fell over it, has lain Amid thy shining jewels like a star. TO HER WHO HAS HOPES FOR ME. Oh stern, yet lovely monitress ! Thine eye should be of colder hue, And on thy neck a paler tress Should toy among those veins of blue ! For thou art to thy mission true — An angel clad in human guise — But sinners sometimes have such eyes, And braid for love such tresses too ; And, while thou talkst to me of heaven, I sigh that thou hast not a sin to be forgiven ! Night comes, with love upon the breeze, And the calm clock strikes, stilly, "ten." I start to hear it beat, for then I know that thou art on thy knees — And, at that hour, where'er thou be, Ascends to heaven a prayer for me ! My heart drops to its bended knee — The mirth upon my lip is dumb — Yet, as a thought of heaven would come, There glides, before it, one of thee — Thou, in thy white dress, kneeling there ! — I fear I could leave heaven to see thee at thy prayer ! I follow up the sacred aisle, Thy light step on the Sabbath day, And — as perhaps thou pray'st the while — My light thoughts pass away ! As swells in air the holy hymn, My breath comes thick, my eyes are dim, And through my tears I pray ! I do not think my heart is stone — But, while for heaven it beats alone — In heaven would willing stay — One rustle of thy snow-white gown Sends all my thoughts astray ! The preaching dies upon my ear — What " is the better world" when thy dark eyes are here ! Yet pray ! my years have been but few — And many a wile the tempter weaves, And many a saint the sinner grieves Ere Mercy brings him through ! But oh, when Mercy sits serene And strives to bend to me, Pray, that the cloud which comes between May less resemble thee ! The world that would my soul beguile Teints all its roses with thy smile ! In heaven 'twere well to be ! But — to desire that blessed shore — Oh lady ! thy dark eyes must first have gone before f 846 POEMS OF PASSION. THE DEATH OF HARRISON. What ! soared the old eagle to die at the sun ! Lies he stiff with spread wings at the goal he had won ! Are there spirits, more blest than the "Planet of Even/' Who mount to their zenith, then melt into Heaven — No waning of fire, no quenching of ray, But. rising, still rising, when passing away ? Farewell, gallant eagle I thou'rt buried in light ! God-speed into Heaven, lost star of our night I Death ! Death in the White House ! Ah, never before, Trod his skeleton foot on the President's floor ! He is looked for in hovel, and dreaded in hall— The king in his closet keeps hatchment and pall— The youth in his birth-place, the old man at home, Make clean from the door-stone the path to the tomb ; — But the lord of this mansion was cradled not here — In a churchyard far off stands his beckoning bier ! He is here as the wave-crest heaves flashing on high — As the arrow is stopped by its prize in the sky — The arrow to earth, and the foam to the shore — Death finds them when swiftness and sparkle are o'er — But Harrison's death fills the climax of story- He went with his old stride — from glory to glory ! Lay his sword on his breast ! There's no spot on its blade In whose cankering breath his bright laurels will fade ! 'Twas the first to lead on at humanity's call — It was stayed with sweet mercy when " glory" was all ! As calm in the council as gallant in war, He fought for his country, and not its " hurrah !" In the path of the hero with pity he trod — Let him pass— with his sword— to the presence of God ! What more ! Shall we on, with his ashes ! Yet, stay ! He hath ruled the wide realm of a king, in his day ! At his word, like a monarch's, went treasure and land The bright gold of thousands has passed through his hand- Is there nothing to show of his glittering hoard ? No jewel to deck the rude hilt of his sword- No trappings— no horses ?— what had he, but now ? On !— on with his ashes ! — he left but his plough ! Brave old Cincinnatus ! Unwind ye his sheet ! Let him sleep as he lived — with his purse at his feet ! Follow now, as ye list ! The first mourner to-day Is the nation — whose father is taken away ! Wife, children, and neighbor, may moan at his knell- He was " lover and friend" to his country, as well ! For the stars on our banner, grown suddenly dim, Let us weep, in our darkness— but weep not for him ! Not for him— who, departing, leaves millions in tears ! Not for him— who has died full of honor and years ' Not for him— who ascended Fame's ladder so high From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky ! It is blessed to go when so ready to die ! "SHE WAS NOT THERE." T , , " The bird Let loose, to his far nest will flee, •nrni l °, vf L' thou S h breathed but on a word Will find thee, over land and sea." 'Tis midnight deep— I came but now From the close air of lighted halls ; And while I hold my aching brow I gaze upon my dim-lit walls ; And feeling here that I am free To wear the look that suits my mood, And let my thoughts flow back to thee, I bless my tranquil solitude, And bidding all thoughts else begone, I muse upon thy love alone. Yet was the music sweet to-night, And fragrant odors filled the air, And flowers were drooping in the light, And lovely women wandered there, And fruits and wines with lavish waste Were on the marble tables piled ; And all that tempts the eye and taste, And sets the haggard pulses wild, And wins from care, and deadens sadness, Were there— but yet I felt no gladness. I thought of thee— I thought of thee— Each cunning change the music played, Each fragrant breath that stole to me, My wandering thought more truant made. The lovely women passed me by, The wit fell pow'rless on mine ear, I looked on all with vacant eye, I did not see — I did not hear ! The skilled musician's master-tone Was sweet — thy voice were sweeter far ! They were soft eyes the lamps shone on — The eyes I worship gentler are ! The halls were broad, the mirrors tall, With silver lamps and costly wine — I only thought how poor was all To one low tone from lips like thine — I only felt how well forgot Were all the stars look on— and thy sweet eyes do not ! FAIL ME NOT THOU ! " Oh, by that little word How many thoughts are stirred !— The last, the last, the last !" The star may but a meteor be, That breaks upon the stormy night ; And I may err, believing thee A spark of heaven's own changeless light ! But if on earth beams aught so fair, It seems, of all the lights that shine, Serenest in its truth, 'tis there, Burning in those soft eyes of thine. Yet long-watched stars from heaven have rushed, And long-loved friends have dropped away, And mine — my very heart have crushed I And I have hoped this many a day, It lived no more for love or pain ! But thou hast stirred its depths again, And to its dull, out-wearied ear, Thy voice of melody has crept, In tones it can not choose but hear ; And now I feel it only slept, And know at ev'n thy lightest smile, It gathered fire and strength the while. Fail me not thou I This feeling past, My heart would never rouse again. Thou art the brightest— but the last ! And if this trust, this love is vain — If thou, all peerless as thou art, Be not less fair than true of heart — My loves are o'er I The sun will shine Upon no grave so hushed as this dark breast of mine. SPIRIT-WHISPERS. (Spirit-whisper in the poet's ear — morning.) Wake ! poet, wake .'—the morn has burst Through gates of stars and dew, And, winged by prayer since evening nursed, Has fled to kiss the steeples first, And now stoops low to you ! Oh poet of the loving eye For you is drest this morning sky ! (Second whisper— noon.) Oh, poet of the pen enchanted ! A lady sits beneath a tree ! At last, the flood for which she panted — The wild words for her anguish wanted, Have gushed in song from thee ! Her dark curls sweep her knees to pray : — " God bless the poet far away !" (Third whisper — MIDNIGHT.) King of the heart's deep mysteries ! Your words have wings like lightning wove ! This hour, o'er hills and distant seas, They fly like flower-seeds on the breeze, And sow the world with love ! King of a realm without a throne, Ruled by resistless tears alone ! POEMS OF PASSION. 847 TO M- FROM ABROAD. :< The desire of the moth for the star- Of the night for the morrow— The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow." As, gazing on the Pleiades, We count each fair and starry one, Yet wander from the light of these To muse upon the Pleiad gone — As, bending o'er fresh gathered flowers, The rose's most enchanting hue Reminds us but of other hours Whose roses were all lovely too — So, dearest, when I rove among The bright ones of this foreign sky, And mark the smile, and list the song, And watch the dancers gliding by, The fairer still they seem to be, The more it stirs a thought of thee ! The sad, sweet bells of twilight chime, Of many hearts may touch but one, And so this seeming careless rhyme Will whisper to thy heart alone. I give it to the winds ! The bird Let loose, to his far nest will flee, And love, though breathed but on a word, Will find thee, over land and sea. Though clouds across the sky have driven, We trust the star at last will shine, And like the very light of heaven I trust thy love. Trust thou in mine ! SUNRISE THOUGHTS AT THE CLOSE OF A BALL. Morn in the East ! How coldly fail It breaks upon my fevered eye ! How chides the calm and dewy air ! How chides the pure and pearly sky ! The stars melt in a brighter fire — The dew, in sunshine, leaves the flowers — They, from their watch, in light retire, While we, in sadness, pass from ours. I turn from the rebuking morn — The cold gray sky, a fading star — And listen to the harp and horn, And see the waltzers near and far — The lamps and flowers are bright as yet, And lips beneath more bright than they — How can a scene so fair beget The mournful thoughts we bear away ! 'Tis something that thou art not here Sweet lover of my lightest word ! 'Tis something that my mother's tear By these forgetful hours is stirred ! But I have long a loiterer been In haunts where joy is said to be, And though wifh Peace I enter in, The nymph comes never forth with me. TO A FACE BELOVED. The music of the wakened lyre Dies not upon the quivering strings, Nor burns alone the minstrel's fire Upon the lip that trembling sings ; Nor shines the moon in heaven unseen. Nor shuts the flower its fragrant cells, Nor sleeps the fountain's wealth, I ween, For ever in its sparry wells — The spells of the enchanter lie Not on his own lone heart — his own rapt ear and eye. I look upon a face as fair As ever made a lip of heaven Falter amid its music-prayer ! The first-lit star of summer even Springs not so softly on the eye, Nor grows, with watching half so bright, Nor mid its sisters of the sky, So seems of heaven the dearest light — Men murmur where that face is seen, My youth's angelic dream was of that look and mien. Yet though we deem the stars are blest, And envy, in our grief, the flower That bears but sweetness in its breast, And fear th' enchanter for his power, And love the minstrel for his spell, He winds out of his lyre so well — The stars are almoners of light, The lyrist of melodious air, The fountain of its waters bright And everything most sweet and fair Of that by which it charms the ear, The eye of him that passes near — A lamp is lit in woman's eye That souls, else lost on earth, remember angels by. UNSEEN SPIRITS. The shadows lay along Broadway, 'Twas near the twilight-tide — And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride. Alone walked she ; but, viewlessly, Walked spirits at her side. Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, And honor charmed the air ; And all astir looked kind on her, And called her good as fair — For all God ever gave to her She kept with chary care. She kept with care her beauties rare From lovers warm and true — For her heart was cold to all but gold, And the rich came not to woo — But honored well are charms to sell If priests the selling do. Now walking there was one more fair — A slight girl, lily-pale ; And she had unseen company To make the spirit quail — 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn, And nothing could avail. No mercy now can clear her brow For this world's peace to pray ; For as love's wild prayer dissolved in ail, Her woman's heart gave way ! But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven By man is curst alway ! BETTER MOMENTS. My mother's voice ! how often creeps Its cadence on my lonely hours ! Like healing sent on wings of sleep, Or dew to the unconscious flowers. I can forget her melting prayer While leaping pulses madly fly, But in the still, unbroken air, Her gentle tone comes stealing by — And years, and sin, and manhood flee, And leave me at my mother's knee. The book of nature, and the print Of beauty on the whispering sea Give aye to me some lineament Of what I have been taught to be. My heart is harder, and perhaps My manliness hath drank up tears; And there's a mildew in the lapse Of a few miserable years — But nature's book is even yet With all my mother's lessons writ. 848 POEMS OF PASSION. I have been out at eventide Beneath a moonlight sky of spring, When earth was garnished like a bride, And night had on her silver wing — When bursting leaves, and diamond grass, And waters leaping to the light, And all that make the pulses pass With wilder fleetness, thronged the night- When all was beauty — then have I With friends on whom my love is flung Like myrrh on wings of Araby, Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung, And when the beautiful spirit there Flung over me its golden chain, My mother's voice came on the air Like the light dropping of the rain — And resting on some silver star The spirit of a bended knee, I've poured out low and fervent prayer That our eternity might be To rise in heaven, like stars at night, And tread a living path of light. I have been on the dewy hills, When night was stealing from the dawn, And mist was on the waking rills, And teints were delicately drawn In the gray East — when birds were waking, With a low murmur in the trees, And melody by fits was breaking Upon the whisper of the breeze, And this when I was forth, perchance As a worn reveller from the dance — And when the sun sprang gloriously And freely up, and hill and river Were catching upon wave and tree The arrows from his subtle quiver — I say a voice has thrilled me then, Heard on the still and rushing light, Or, creeping from the silent glen, Like words from the departing night, Hath stricken me, and I have pressed On the wet grass my fevered brow, And pouring forth the earliest First prayer, with which I learned to bow, Have felt my mother's spirit rush Upon me as in by-past years, And, yielding to the blessed gush Of my ungovernable tears, Have risen up — the gay, the wild — As humble as a very child. THE ANNOYER. Love knoweth every form of air, And every shape of earth, And comes, unbidden, everywhere, Like thought's mysterious birth. The moonlit sea and the sunset sky Are written with Love's words, And you hear his voice unceasingly, Like song in the time of birds. He peeps into the warrior's heart From the tip of a stooping plume, And the serried spears, and the many men, May not deny him room. He'll come to his tent in the weary night, And be busy in his dream; And he'll float to his eye in morning light Like a fay on a silver beam. He hears the sound of the hunter's gun, And rides on the echo back, And sighs in his ear, like a stirring leaf, And flits in his woodland track. The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river, The cloud and the open sky- He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver, Like the light of your very eye. The fisher hangs over the leaning boat, And ponders the silver sea, For Love is under the surface hid, And a spell of thought has he ; He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet, And speaks in the ripple low, Till the bait is gone from the crafty line, And the hook hangs bare below. He blurs the print of the scholar's book, And intrudes in the maiden's prayer, And profanes the cell of the holy man, In the shape of a lady fair. In the darkest night, and the bright daylight, In earth, and sea, and sky, In every home of human thought, Will love be lurking nigh. ANDRE'S REQUEST TO WASHINGTON It is not the fear of death That damps my brow, It is not for another breath I ask thee now; I can die with a lip unstirred And a quiet heart — Let but this prayer be heard Ere I depart. I can give up my mother's look— My sister's kiss ; I can think of love — yet brook A death like this ! I can give up the young fame I burned to win — All — but the spotless name I glory in. Thine is the power to give, Thine to deny, Joy for the hour I live — Calmness to die. By all the brave should cherish, By my dying breath, I ask that I may perish By a soldier's death ! DAWN. 1 That line I learned not in the old sad song."— Charles Lamb. Throw up the window ! 'Tis a morn for life In its most subtle luxury. The air Is like a breathing from a rarer world ; And the south wind is like a gentle friend. Parting the hair so softly on my brow. It has come over gardens, and the flowers That kissed it are betrayed ; for as it parts, With its invisible fingers, my loose hair, I know it has been trifling with the rose, And stooping to the violet. There is joy For all God's creatures in it. The wet leaves Are stirring at its touch, and birds are singing As if to breathe were music, and the grass Sends up its modest odor with the dew, Like the small tribute of humility. I had awoke from an unpleasant dream, And light was welcome to me. I looked out To feel the common air, and when the breath Of the delicious morning met my brow Cooling its fever, and the pleasant sun Shone on familiar objects, it was like The feeling of the captive who comes forth From darkness to the cheerful light of day. Oh ! could we wake from sorrow ; were it all A troubled dream like this, to cast aside Like an untimely garment with the morn ; Could the long fever of the heart be cooled By a sweet breath from nature ; or the gloom Of a bereaved affection pass away With looking on the lively teint of flowers — How lightly were the spirit reconciled To make this beautiful, bright world its home » THE LADY JANE, AND OTHER POEMS. THE LADY JANE, A NOVEL IN RHYME. There was a lady fair, and forty too. There was a youth of scarcely two and twenty. The story of their loves is strange, yet true. I'll tell it you ! Romances are so plenty In prose, that you'll be glad of something new. And so (in rhyme) for " what the devil meant he ! You think he was too young ! — but tell me whether The moth and humming-bird grow old together ! II. Nature, that made the ivy-leaf and lily, Not of one warp and woof hath made us all ! Bent goes the careful, and erect the silly, And wear and tear make difference — not small ; And he that hath no money — will-he, nill-he — Is thrust like an old man against the wall ! Grief out of some the very life-blood washes ; Some shed it like ducks' backs and " Mackintoshes.' III. The Lady Jane was daughter of an Earl — Shut from approach like sea-nymph in her shell Never a rude breath stirr'd the floating curl Upon her marble temple, and naught fell Upon the ear of the patrician girl But pride-check'd syllables, all measured well Her suitors were her father's and not hers — So were her debts at " Storr-and-Mortimer's." IV. Her health was lady-like. No blood, in riot, Tangled the tracery of her veined cheek, Nor seem'd her exquisite repose the quiet Of one by suffering made sweet and meek. She ate and drank, and probably lived by it, And liked her cup of tea by no means weak ! Untroubled by debt, lovers, or affliction, Her pulse beat with extremely little friction. Yet was there fire within her soft gray eye, And room for pressure on her lip of rose ; And few who saw her gracefully move by, Imagined that her feelings slept, or froze. You may have seen the cunning florist tie A thread about a bud, which never blows, But, with shut chalice from the sun and rain, Hoards up the morn — and such the Lady Jane. VI. The old Lord had had offers for her hand, The which he answer'd — by his secretary. And, doubtless, some were for the lady's land, The men being old and valetudinary; But there were others who were all unmann'd, And fell into a life of wild vagary, In their despair. To tell his daughter of it, The cold Earl thought, would be but little profit. 54 VII. And so she bloom'd — all fenced around with care ; And none could find a way to win or woo her. When visible at home — the Earl was there ! Abroad — her chaperon stuck closely to her ! She was a sort of nun in open air, Known to but few, and intimate with fewer : And, always used to conversation guarded, She thought all men talk'd just as her papa did VIII. Pause while you read, oh, Broadway demoiselle ! And bless your stars that long before you marry, You are a judge of passion pleaded well ! For you have listen'd to Tom, Dick, and Harry, And, if kind Heaven endow'd you for a belle, At least your destiny did not miscarry ! "You've had your fling" — and now, all wise and steady, For matrimony's cares you're cool and ready ! IX. And yet the bloom upon the fruit is fair ! And " ignorance is bliss" in teaching love ! And guarding lips, when others have been there, Is apt uneasy reveries to move ! I really think mammas should have a care ! And though of nunneries I disapprove, 'Tis easier to make blushes hear to reason Than to unteach a " Saratoga Season." In France, where, it is said, they wiser are, Miss may not walk out, even with her cousin ; And when she is abroad from bolt and bar, A well-bred man should be to her quite frozen ; And so at last, like a high-priced attar Hermetically seal'd in silk and resin, She is deliver'd safe to him who loves her ; And then — with whom she will she's hand and glove, XI. I know this does not work well, and that ours Are the best wives on earth. They love their spouses, Who prize them — as you do centennial flowers, For having bloom'd, though not in your green-houses. 'Tis a bold wooer that dare talk of dowers. And where / live, the milking of the cows is Too rude a task for females! Well. 'Twould hurt you, Where women are so prized, to sneer at virtue. XII. " Free-born Americans," they must have freedom ! They'll stay — if they have leave to run away. They're ministering angels when you need 'em, But 'specially want credit in Broadway. French wives are more particular how you feed 'em. The English drag you oftener to the play. But ours we quite enslave — (more true than funny) — With " heav'n-born liberty," and trutt— or money ! 850 THE LADY JANE. XIII. Upon her thirtieth birth-day, Lady Jane Thought sadly on the twenties ! Ev'n the 'teens, That she had said farewell to, without pain — Leaves falling from a flower that nothing means — Seern'd worth re-gathering to live again ; But not like Ruth, fares Memory, who gleans After the careful Harvester of years : — The Lady Jane thought on't with bitter tears ! XIV. She glided to her mirror. From the air Glided to meet her, with its tearful eyes, A semblance sad, but beautifully fair ; And gradually there stole a sweet surprise Under her lids, and as she laid the hair Back from her snowy brow, Madonna-wise, " Time, after all," she said, " a harmless flirt is !" And from that hour took kindly to her thirties. XV. And, with his honors not at all unsteady, The Decimal elect stept coolly in ; And having all his nights and mornings ready, He'd very little trouble to begin. And Twenty was quite popular, — they said he Went out of office with so little din ! The old Earl did not celebrate (nor ought he) Her birth-days more. And like a dream came Forty. XVI. And on the morn of it she stood to dress, Mock'd by that flattering semblance, as before, And lifted with a smile the raven tress, That darkening her white shoulder, swept the floor. Time had not touch'd her dazzling loveliness ! " Yet is it time," she said, " that I give o'er — I'm an old maid .' — and tho' I suffer by it, I Must change my style and leave off gay society." XVII. And so she did. Her maid by her desire Comb'd her luxuriant locks behind her ears ; She had her dresses alter'd to come higher, Tho' it dissolved the dress-maker in tears ! And flung a new French hat into the fire, Which she had bought, " forgetful of her years." This t' anticipate " the world's dread laugh !" Most persons think too much of it, by half. XVIII. I do not mean to say that generally The " virtuous single" take too soon to tea ; But now and then you find one who could rally At forty, and go back to twenty-three — A handsome, plump, affectionate " Aunt Sally," With no taste for cats, flannel, and Bohea ! And I would have her, spite of " he or she says," Up heart, and pin her kerchief as she pleases. XIX. Some men, 'tis said, prefer a woman fat — Lord Byron did. Some like her very spare. Some like a lameness. (I have known one that Would go quite far enough for your despair, And halt in time.) Some like them delicate As lilies, and with some " the only wear" Is one whose sex has spoiled a midshipman. Some only like what pleased another man. XX. / like one that Wees me. But there's a kind Of women, very dangerous to poets, Whose hearts beat with a truth that seems like mind- A nature that, tho' passionate, will show its Devotion by not being rash or blind ; ^ But by sweet study grows to love. And so it's Not odd if they are counted cold, tho' handsome, And never meet a man who understands 'em. XXI. By never I mean late in life. But ah ! How exquisite their love and friendship then ! Perennial of soul such women are, And readers of the hearts of gifted men ; And as the deep well mourns the hidden star, And mirrors the first ray that beams again, They — be the lov'd light lost or dimly burning, Feel all its clouds, and trust its bright returning. XXII. In outward seeming tranquil and subdued, Their hearts beneath beat youthfully and fast. Time and imprison'd love make not a prude ; And warm the gift we know to be the last ; And pure is the devotion that must brood Upon your hopes alone — for hers are past ! Trust me, " a rising man" rose seldom higher, But some dear, sweet old maid has pull'd the wire. XXIII. The Lady Jane, (pray do not think that hers Was quite the character I've drawn above. Old maids, like young, have various calibres, And hers was moderate, tho' she was " a love,") The Lady Jane call'd on the Dowagers — Mainly her slight acquaintance to improve, But partly with a docile wish to know What solaces of age were comme il faut. XXIV. They stared at her plain hat and air demure, But answered her with some particularity; And she was edified you may be sure, And added vastly to her popularity. She found a dozen mad on furniture, Five on embroidery, and none on charity ; But her last call — the others were but short ones — Turn'd out to Lady Jane of some importance. XXV. The door was open'd by a Spanish page — A handsome lad in green with bullet buttons, Who look'd out like a trulian from a cage, And deign'd to glance at the tall menial but once, Then bent, with earnestness beyond his age, His eyes (you would have liked to see them shut once, The fringes were so long — ) on Lady Jane. The varlet clearly thought her not so plain. XXVI. And bounding up the flower-laden stair, He waited her ascent, then open flung A mirror, clear as 'twere a door of air, Which on its silver hinge with music swung — Contrived, that never foot should enter there Unheralded by that melodious tongue. This delicate alarum is worth while More 'specially with carpets of three-pile. XXVII. Beyond a gallery extended, cool, And softly lighted, and, from dome to floor, Hung pictures — mostly the Venetian school ; Each " worth a Jew's eye" — very likely more ; And drapery, gold-broider'd in Stamboul, Closed the extremity in lieu of door. This the page lifted, and disclosed to view The boudoir of the Countess Pasibleu. XXVIII. It was a small pavilion lined with pink, — Mirrors and silk all, save the door and sky-light, The latter of stain'd glass. (You would not think How juvenescent is a rosy high light !) Upon the table were seen pen and ink, (Two things I cannot say have stood in my light) Amid a host of trinkets, toys, and fans; The table in the style of Louis Quinze. THE LADY JANE. 851 XXIX. A singular and fragile little creature Upon the cushions indolently lay, With waning life in each transparent feature, But youth in her bright lips' etherial play ; In short, the kind of creature that would meet your Conception of a transmigrating fay — The dark eyes, not at all worn out or weary, Kindling for transfer to some bain' Peri 1 XXX. The rest used up, past mending. Yet her tones Were wildly, deeply, exquisitely clear ; Tho' voice is not a thing of flesh and bones, And probably goes up when they stay here. (I do not know how much of Smith and Jones Will bear translating to " the better sphere," But ladies, certainly, when they shall climb to't, Will get their dimples back — tho' not the rhyme to't.) XXXI. Her person was drcss'd very like her soul — In fine material most loosely worn. A cobweb cashmere struggled to control Ringlets that laugh'd the filmy folds to scorn, And, from the shawls in which she nestled, stole The smallest slipper ever soil'd or torn. You would not guess her age by looking at her, Nor, from my sketch, of course. We'll leave that matter. XXXII. " My dear !" the Countess said, (bj^ this time she Had ceased the Weather, poor old man, to hammer — He gets it, in these morning calls, pardie .' And Lady Jane hud hinted with a stammer Her errand — somewhat delicate, you see,) " My dear, how very odd ! I fear I am a " Poor judge of age — (who made that funny bonnet ?) " Indeed, I always turn'd my back upon it ! XXXIII. " Time has no business in one's house, my dear ! " I'm not at home to any of my creditors. " They send their nasty bills in, once a year, " And Time's are like Mortality's — mere ' dead letters. " Besides, what comfort is there living here, " If every stupid hour's to throw Death's head at us ? " (Lend me a pin, dear!) Time at last will stop us, " But, come to that — we're free by habeas corpus. XXXIV (" Fie, what a naughty shawl ! No expose, " I trust, love, eh >. Hold there, thou virtuous pin !) " And so you really have come out to-day " To look you up some suitable new sin !" " Oh, Countess !" " Did you never write a play ? " Nor novel ? Well, you really should begin ! " For, (hark, my dear !) the publishers are biters, " Not at the book's fine title — but the writer's. XXXV. " You're half an authoress ; for, as my maid says, " ' Begun's half done,' and you've your title writ. " I quote from Colburn, and as what ' the trade' says " Is paid for, it is well consider'd wit. " Genius, undoubtedly, of many grades is, " But as to us, we do not need a bit. " ' Three volumes,' says the bargain, ' not too thin.' " You don't suppose I'd throw him genius in !" XXXVI. " But fame, dear Countess !'' At the word there fiush'd A color to her cheek like fever's glow, And in her hand unconsciously she crush'd The fringes of her shawl, and bending low To hide the tears that suddenly had gush'd Into her large, dark eyes, she murmur'd " No ! " Th' inglorious agony of conquering pain " Has drunk that dream up. I have lived in vain ! XXXVII. " Yet have I set my soul upon the string, '' Tense with the energy of high desire, " And trembled, with the arrow's quivering spring, " To launch upon ambition's flight of fire! " And never lark so hush'd his heart to sing, " Or, as he sang, nerved wing to bear it higher, " As I have striven my wild heart to tame " And melt its love, pride, passion — into fame ! XXXVIII. " Oh, poor the flattery to call it mine " For trifles which beguiled an hour of pain, " Or, on the echoing heels of mirth and wine, " Crept thro' the chambers of a throbbing brain. " Worthily, have I never written line ! "And when they talk to me of fame I gain, " In very bitterness of soul I mock it, — " And put the nett proceeds into my pocket ! XXXIX. " And so, my dear, — let not the market vary, — " I bid the critics, pro and con, defiance ; " And then I'm fond of being literary, " And have a tenderness for ' sucking lions.' " My friend the Dutchess has a fancy dairy : — " Cheeses or poets, curds or men of science — " It comes to the same thing. But, truce to mocking — " Suppose you try my color in a stocking !" XL. I need not state the ratiocination By which the Lady Jane had so decided — Not quite upon the regular vocation — Of course you knew she was too rich, (or / did,) To care with Costard for " remuneration ;" But feeling that her life like Lethe glided, She thought 'twould be advisable to bag her a Few brace of rapids from her friend's Niagara. XLI. " Well, Countess ! what shall be my premier pas ? " Must I propitiate the penny-a-liners ? " Or would a ' sucking lion' stoop so far " As to be fed and petted by a dry nurse ? " I cannot shine — but I can see a star — " Are there not worshippers as well as shiners ? " I will be ruled implicitly by you :— " My stocking's innocent — how dye it blue ? XLII. The Countess number'd on her fingers, musing : — " I've several that I might make you over, " And not be inconsolable at losing ; " But, really, as you've neither spouse nor lover, " 'Most any of my pets would be amusing, " Particularly if you're not above a " Discreet flirtation. Are you ? How's the Earl ? " Does he still treat you like a little girl ? XLIII. " How do you see your visitors ? Alone ? " Does the Earl sleep at table after dinner ? " Have you had many lovers ? Dear me ! None ? " Was not your father something of a sinner ? " Who is the nicest man you've ever known ! " Pray does the butler bring your letters in, or " First take them to the Earl ? Is he not rather " A surly dog ?— the butler, not your father." XLIV. To these inquiries the Lady Jane Replied with nods, or something as laconic, For on the Countess rattled, might and main, With a rapidity Napoleonic ; Then mused and said, " 'Twill never do, it's plain— " The poet must be warranted Platonic ! « But, query — how to find you such an oddity ? " My dear, they all make love ! — it's their commodity 852 THE LADY JANE. XLV. " The poet's on the look-out for a scene — " The painter for a ' novel situation ;' " And either does much business between " The little pauses of a declaration — " Noting the way in which you sob, or lean, " Or use your handkerchief in agitation. " I've known one — making love like Roderick Random — " Get off his knees and make a memorandum ! XLVI. " You see they're always ready for their trade, " And have a speech as pat as a town-crier; " And so, my dear, I'm naturally afraid " To trust you with these gentlemen-on-fire. " I knew a most respectable old maid " A dramatist made love to — just to try her! " She hung herself, of course — but in that way " He got some pretty touches for his play. XLVII. " How shall we manage it ? I say with tears, " I've only two that are not rogues at bottom ; ' And one of these would soon be ' over ears' " In love with you, — but that he hasn't got 'em ! " They were cut off by the New Zealanders — " (As he invariably adds) ' 'od-rot-'em !' " (Meaning the savages.) He's quite a poet, " (He wears his hair so that you wouldn't know it,) XLVIII. " In his ideas, I mean. (I really am at a " Stand-still about you.) Well — this man, one day, " Took in his head to own the earth's diameter, " From zenith thro' to nadir .' (They do say " He kill'd his wife — or threw a ham at her — " Or something — so he had to go away — " That's neither here nor there.) His name is Wieland, " And under him exactly lies New Zealand. XLIX. " I am not certain if his ' seat' 's, or no, " In the Low Countries. But the sky above it " Of course is his ; and for some way below " He has a right to dig and to improve it ; " But under him, a million miles or so, " Lies land that's not his, — and the law can't move it. " It cut poor Wieland's nadir off, no doubt— " And so he sailed to buy the owner out. " I never quite made out the calculation — " But plump against his cellar floor, bin 2, " He found a tribe had built their habitation, " Whose food was foreigners and kangaroo. " They would sell out — but, to his consternation, " They charged him — all the fattest of his crew ! " At last they caught and roasted every one — " But he escaped by being under-done !" LI. That such a lion was well worth his feed, Confess'd with merry tears the Lady Jane ; But, that he answer'd to her present need, (A literary pet,) was not so plain. She thought she'd give the matter up, indeed, Or turn it over and so call again. However, as her friend had mention'd two, Perhaps the other might be made to do. LII. " I'm looking," said the Countess, " for a letter " From my old playmate, Isabella Gray. " 'Tis Heaven knows how long since I have met her ; " She ran away and married one fine day — " Poor girl ! She might have done a great deal better ! " The boy that she has sent to me, they say, " Is handsome, and has talents very striking. " So young, too — you can spoil him to your liking. LIII. " Her letter will amuse you. You must know " That, from her marriage-day, her lord has shut her " Securely up in an old French chateau ; " Where, with her children and no woman but her, "He plays the old-school gentleman ; and so " Her worldly knowledge stopp'd at bread and butter. " She thinks I may be changed by time — for, may be, " I've lost a tooth or got another baby. LIV. " Heigho ! — 'tis evident we're made of clay, " And harden unless kept in tears and shade; " This fashionable sunshine dries away " Much that we err in losing, I'm afraid' " I wonder what my guardian angels say " About the sort of woman I have made ! " I wish I could begin my life again ! " What think you of Pythagoras, Lady Jane ?" LV. The Countess, all this while, was running over The pages of a letter, closely cross'd : — " I wish," she said, my most devoted lover " Took half the trouble that this scrawl has cost! " Though some of it is quite a flight above a " Sane woman's comprehension. Tut! Where was't! " There is a passage here — the name's Beaulevres — " His chateau's in the neighborhood of Sevres LVT. " The boy's called Jules. Ah, here it is ! My child Brings you this letter. I've not much to say More than you know of him, if he has smiled When you have seen him. In his features play The light from which his soul has been beguiled — The blessed Heaven I lose with him to-day. I ask you not to love him — he is there ! And you have loved him — without ivish or praye* ' LVII. His father sends him forth for fame and gold — An angel, on this errand .' I have striven Against it — but he is not mine to hold, They say 'tis wrong to wish to stay him, even, And that my pride 's poor — my ambition cold .' Alas .' to get him only back to Heaven Is my one passionate prayer ! Think me not wild— 'Tis that I have an angel for my child .' LVIII. They say that he has genius. I but see That he gets wisdom as the fiow'r gets hue, While others hive it like the toiling bee ; That, with him, all things beautiful keep new, And every morn the first mum seems to be — So freshly look abroad his eyes of blue .' What he has written seems to me no more Than I have thought a thousand times before ! LIX. Yet not upon his gay career to Fame Broods my foreboding tear. I wish it won — My prayer speeds on his spirit to its aim — But in his chamber wait I for my son ! — When darken'd is ambition's star of fame — When the night's fever of unrest is on — With the unbidden sadness, the sharp care, I fly from his bright hours, to meet him there ! LX. Forgive me if I prate .' Is't much — is't wild — To hope — to pray — that you will sometimes creep To the dream-haunted pillow of my child, Keeping sweet watch above his fitful sleep? Blest lik" his mother, if in dream he smiled, Or, if he wept, still blest with him to weep; Rewarded — Oh, for how much more than this '. — By his awaking smile — his morning kiss ! THE LADY JANE. 853 LXI. J know not how to stop ! He leaves me well; Life, spirit, health, in all his features speak; His foot bounds with the spring of a gazelle ; [streak But watch him — stay ! well thought on '. — there's a Which the first faltering of his tongue will tell, Long ere the bright blood wavers on his cheek — A little bursted vein, that, near his heart, Looks like a crimson thread half torn apart. LXII. So, trusting not his cheek by morning light, When hope sits mantling on it, seek his bed In the more tranquil watches of the night, And ask this tell-tale how his heart has sped. If well — its branching tracery shows bright; But if its sanguine hue look cold and dead, Ah, Gertrude .' let your ministering be As you would answer it, in Heaven, to me .'" LXIII. Enter the page: — " Miladi's maid is waiting !" — A hint, (that it was tfme to dress for dinner,) Which puts a stop in London to all prating. As far as goes the letter, you're a winner, The rest of it to flannel shirts relating — When Jules should wear his thicker, when his thinner. The Countess laughed at Lady Jane's adieu : She thought the letter touching. Pray, don't you ? LXIV. I have observed that Heav'n, in answering prayer, (This is not meant to be a pious stanza — Only a fact that has a pious air.) (We're very sure, I think, to have an answer :) But I've observed, I would remark, that where Our plans are ill-contrived, as oft our plans are, Kind Providence goes quite another way To bring about the end for which we pray. LXV. In this connection I would also add, That a discreet young angel, (bona fide,) Accompanied our amiable lad ; And that he walk'd not out, nor stepp'd aside he, Nor met with an adventure, good or bad, (Although he enter'd London on a Friday,) Nor ate, nor drank, nor closed his eye a minute, Without this angel's guiding finger in it. LXVI. His mother, as her letter seems to show, Expected him, without delay or bother, — Portmanteau, carpet-bag, and all — to go [other !) Straight to her old friend's house — (forsooth! what The angel, who would seem the world to know, Advised the boy to drive to Mivart's rather. He did. The angel, (as I trust is plain,) Lodged in the vacant heart of Lady Jane. LXVII. A month in town these gentlemen had been At date of the commencement of my story. The angel's occupations you have seen, If you have read what I have laid before ye. Jules had seen Dan O'Connell and the Queen, And girded up his loins for fame and glory, And changed his old integuments for better ; And then he call'd and left his mother's letter. LXVIII. That female hearts grow never old, in towns — That taste grows rather young with dissipation — That dowagers dress not in high-neck'd gowns — Nor are, at fifty, proof against flirtation — That hospitality is left to clowns, Or elbow'd from the world by ostentation — That a " tried friend" should not be tried again — That boys at seventeen are partly men — LXIX. Arc truths, as pat as paving-stones, in cities. The contrary is true of country air ; (Where the mind rusts, which is a thousand pities, While still the cheek keeps fresh and debonnair.) But what I'm trying in this verse to hit is, That Heav'n, in answering Jules's mother's prayer, Began by thwarting all her plans and suavities ; As needs must — vide the just-named depravities. LXX. Some stanzas back, we left the ladies going, At six, to dress for dinner. Time to dine I always give in poetry, well knowing That,' to jump over it in half a line, Looks, (let us be sincere, dear muse !) like showing Contempt we do not feel, for meat and wine. Dinner! Ye Gods ! What is there more respectable ! For eating, who, save Byron, ever check'd a belle ? LXXI. 'Tis ten — say half-past. Lady Jane has dined, And dress'd as simply as a lady may. A card lies on her table ' To Remind' — 'Tis odd she never thought of it to-day. But she is pleasantly surprised to find 'Tis Friday night, the Countess's soiree. Back rolls the chariot to Berkely Square. If you have dined, dear reader, let's go there ! LXXII. We're early. In the cloak-room smokes the urn, The house-keeper behind it, fat and solemn ; Steady as stars the fresh-lit candles burn, And on the stairs the new-blown what d'ye-call 'em Their nodding cups of perfume overturn ; The page leans idly by a marble column, And stiffly a tall footman stands above, Looking between the fingers of his glove. LXXIII. All bright and silent, like a charmed palace — The spells wound up, the fays to come at twelve ; The house-keeper a witch, (cum grano salis;) The handsome page, perhaps, a royal elve Condemned to servitude by fairy malice ; (I wish the varlet had these rhymes to delve !) Some magic hall, it seems, for revel bright, And Lady Jane the spirit first alight. LXXIV. Alas ! here vanishes the foot of Pleasure ! She — like an early guest — goes in before, And comes, when all are gone, for Memory's treasure But is not found upon the crowded floor ; (Unless, indeed, some charming woman says you're A love, which makes close quarters less a bore.) I've seen her, down Anticipation's vista, As large as life — and walk'd straight on, and miss'd hei LXXV. With a declining taste for making friends, One's taste for the fatigue of pleasure's past ; And then, one sometimes wonders which transcende » The first hour of a gay night, or the last. (Beginners " burn the candle at both ends," And find the middle brightest— that is fast !) But a good rule at parties, (to keep up a Mercurial air,) is to come in at supper. LXXVI. I mean that you should go to bed at nine And sleep 'till twelve — take coffee or green tea, Dress and go out — (this was a way of mine When looking up the world in '33) — Sup at the ball— (it's not a place for wine) — Sleep, or not, after, as the case may be. You've the advantage, thus, when all are yawning Of growing rather fresher toward morning. 854 THE LADY JANE. LXXVII. But, after thirty, here's your best " Elixir :" Breakfast betimes. Do something worth your while By twelve or one — (this makes the blood run quick, Sir !) Dine with some man or woman who will smile. Have little cause to care how politics are, " Let not the sun go down upon your" bile ; And, if well-married, rich, and not too clever, I don't see why you shouldn't live for ever. LXXVIII. Short-lived is your " sad dog" — and yet, we hear, " Whom the gods love die young." Of course the ladies Are safe in loving what the gods hold dear ; And the result, I'm very much afraid, is, That if he " has his day," it's " neither here Nor there !" But it is time our hero made his Appearance on the carpet, Lady Jane — (I'll mend this vile pen, and begin again.) LXXIX. The Lady Jane walk'd thro' the bright rooms, breaking The glittering silence with her flowing dress, Whose pure folds seem'd a coy resistance making To the fond air ; while, to her loveliness The quick-eyed mirrors breathlessly awaking, Acknowledged not one radiant line the less That not on them she look'd before she faded ! Neglected gentlemen don't do as they did : — LXXX. No ! — for, 'twixt our quicksilver and a woman, Nature has put no glass, for non-conductor, And, while she's imaged in their bosoms, few men Can make a calm, cold mirror their instructor ; For, when beloved, we deify what's human — When piqued, we mock like devils ! But I've pluck'da Digression here. It's no use, my contending, — Fancy will ramble while the pen is mending ! LXXXI. A small room on the left, (I'll get on faster If you're impatient,) very softly lit By lamps conceal'd in bells of alabaster, Lipp'd like a lily, and " as white as it," With a sweet statue by a famous master, Just in the centre, (but not dress'd a bit !) — This dim room drew aside our early-comer, Who thought it like a moonlight night in summer. LXXXII. And so it was. For, thro' an opening door, Came the soft breath of a conservatory, And, bending its tall stem the threshold o'er, Swung in a crimson flower, the tropics' glory •, And, as you gazed, the vista lengthen'd more, And statues, lamps and flowers — but, to my story ! The room was cushion'd like a Bey's divan ; And in it — (Heav'n preserve us !) — sat a man ! LXXXIII. At least, as far as boots and pantaloons Are symptoms of a man, there seem'd one there — Whatever was the number of his Junes. She look'd again, and started ! In a chair, Sleeping as if his eyelids had been moons, Reclined, with flakes of sunshine in his hair, (Or, what look'd like it,) a fair youth, quite real, But of a beauty like the Greek ideal. LXXXIV. He slept, like Love by slumber overtaken, His bow unbent, his quiver thrown aside ; The lip might to a manlier arch awaken— The nostril, so serene, dilate with pride : But, now, he lay, of all his masks forsaken, And childhood's sleep was there, and naught And his bright lips lay smilingly apart, Like a torn crimson leaf with pearly heart. LXXXV. Now Jules Beaulevres, Esq. — (this was he — ) Had never been " put up" to London hours ; And thinking he was simply ask'd to tea, Had been, since seven, looking at the flowers — No doubt extremely pleasant, — but, you see, A great deal of it rather overpowers ; And possibly, that very fine exotic He sat just under, was a slight narcotic. LXXXVI. At any rate, when it was all admired, — As quite his notion of a Heav'n polite, (Minus the angels,) — he felt very tired — As one, who'd been all day sight-seeing, might! And having by the Countess been desired To make himself at home, he did so, quite. He begg'd his early coming might not fetter her And she went out to dine, the old — etcetera. LXXXVII. And thinking of his mother — and his bill At Mivart's — and of all the sights amazing Of which, the last few days, he'd had his fill — And choking when he thought of fame — and gazing Upon his varnish'd boots, (as young men will,) And wond'ring how the shops could pay for glazing — And also, (here his thoughts were getting dim,) Whether a certain smile was meant for him — LXXXVIII. And rnurm'ring over, with a drowsy bow, The speech he made the Countess, when he met her, — And smiling, with closed eyelids, (thinking how He should describe her in the morrow's letter) — And sighing " Good-night !" (he was dreaming now) — Jules dropp'd into a world he liked much better ; But left his earthly mansion unprotected, Well, Sir ! 'twas robb'd — as might have been expected . LXXXIX. The Lady Jane gazed on the fair boy sleeping, And in his lips' rare beauty read his name ; And to his side with breathless wonder creeping, Resistless to her heart the feeling came, That, to her yearning love's devoted keeping, Was giv'n the gem within that fragile frame. And bending with almost a mother's bliss, To his bright lips, she seal'd it with a kiss ! XC. Oh, in that ki.ss how much of Heav'n united ! What haste to pity — eagerness to bless ! What thirsting of a heart, long pent and slighted, For something fair, yet human, to caress ! How fathomless the love so briefly plighted ! What kiss thrill'd ever more — sinn'd ever less 1 So love the angels, sent with holy mercies ! And so love poets — in their early verses ! XCI. If, in well-bred society, ("hear! hear!") If, in this " wrong and pleasant" world of ours There beats a pulse that seraphs may revere — If Eden's birds, when frighted from its flowers, Clung to one deathless seed, still blooming here — If Time cut ever down, 'mid blighted hours, A bliss that will spring up in bliss again — 'Tis woman's love. This I believe. Amen ! XCII. To guard from ill, to help, watch over, warn — To learn, for his sake, sadness, patience, pain- To seek him with most love when most forlorn — Promised the mute kiss of the Lady Jane. And thus, in sinless purity is born, Alway, the love of woman. So, again, I say, that up to kissing — later even — A woman's love may have its feet in Heaven. THE LADY JANE. 855 XCIII. Jules open'd (at the kiss) his large blue eyes, And calmly gazed upon the face above him, But never stirr'd, and utter'd no surprise — Although his situation well might move him. He seem'd so cool, (my lyre shall tell no lies,) That Lady Jane half thought she shouldn't love him ; When suddenly the Countess Pasibleu Enter'd the room with, " Dear me ! how d'ye do !" XCIV. Up sprang the boy — amazement on his brow ! But the next instant, through his lips there crept A just awakening smile, and, with a bow, Calmly he said : " 'Twas only while I slept The angels did not vanish — until now." A speech, I think, quite worthy an adept. The Countess stared, and Lady Jane began To fear that she had kiss'd a nice young man. xcv. Jules had that precious quality call'd tact ; And having made a very warm beginning, He suddenly grew grave, and rather back'd ; As if incapable of further sinning. 'Twas well he did so, for, it is a fact, The ladies like, themselves, to do the winning. In female SKakspearcs, Desdemonas shine ; And the Othellos " seriously incline." XCVI. [ So, with a manner quite reserved and plain, Jules ask'd to be presented, and then made Many apologies to Lady Jane For the eccentric part that he had play'd. Regretted he had slept — confess'd with pain He took her for an angel — was afraid He had been rude — abrupt — did he alarm Her much ?— and might he offer her his arm ? XCVII. And as they ranged that sweet conservatory, He heeded not the flowers he walk'd among ; But such an air of earnest listening wore he, That a dumb statue must have found a tongue ; And like a child that hears a fairy story, His parted lips upon her utterance hung. He seem'd to know by instinct, (else how was it ?) That people love the bank where they deposit. XCVIII. And closer, as the moments faster wore, The slender arm within her own she press'd ; And yielding to the magic spell he bore — The earnest truth upon his lips imprest — She lavishly told out the golden ore Hoarded a life-time in her guarded breast. And Jules, throughout, was beautifully tender — Although he did not always comprehend her. XCIX. And this in him was no deep calculation, But in good truth, as well as graceful seeming, Abandonment complete to admiration — His soul gone from him as it goes in dreaming. I wish'd to make this little explanation, Misgiving that his tact might go for scheming ; I can assure you it was never plann'd ; I have it from his angel, (second hand.) And from the same authentic source I know, That Lady Jane still thought him but a lad ; Tho', why the deuce she didn't treat him so, Is quite enough to drive conjecture mad ! Perhaps she thought that it would make him grow To take more beard for granted that he had. A funny friend to lend a nice young man to ! I'm glad I've got him safely through one Canto. CANTO II. The Countess Pasibleu's gay rooms were full, Not crowded. It was neither rout nor ball — Only " her Friday night." The air was cool ; And there were people in the house of all Varieties, except the pure John Bull. The number of young ladies, too, was small— You seldom find old John, or his young daughters, Swimming in very literary waters. II. Indeed, with rare exceptions, women given To the society of famous men, Are those who will confess to twenty-seven ; But add to this the next reluctant ten, And still they're fit to make a poet's heaven, For sumptuously beautiful is then The woman of proud mien and thoughtful brow ; And one (still bright in her meridian now) III. ' Bent upon Jules, that night, her lustrous eye. A creature of a loftier mould was she Than in liis dreams had ever glided by ; And through his veins the blood flew startingly, And he felt sick at heart — he knew not why — For 'tis the sadness of the lost to see Angels look on us with a cold regard, (Not knowing those who never left their card.) IV. She had a low, sweet brow, with fringed lakes Of an unfathom'd darkness couch'd below ; And parted on that brow in jetty flakes The raven hair swept back with wavy flow, Rounding a head of such a shape as makes The old Greek marble with the goddess glow. Her nostril's breaching arch might threaten storm — But love lay in her lips, all hush'd and warm. V. And small teeth, glittering white, and cheek whose red Seem'd Passion, there asleep, in rosy nest : And neck set on as if to bear a head — May be a lily, may be Juno's crest, — So lightly sprang it from its snow-white bed '. So proudly rode above the swelling breast ! And motion, effortless as stars awaking And melting out, at eve, and morning's breaking ; VI. And voice delicious quite, and smile that came Slow to the lips, as 'twere the heart smiled thro' : — These charms I've been particular to name, For they are, like an inventory, true, And of themselves were stuff enough for fame ; But she, so wondrous fair, has genius too, And brilliantly her thread of life is spun — In verse and beauty both, the " Undying One !" VII. And song — for in those kindling lips there lay Music to wing all utterance outward breaking, As if upon the ivory teeth did play Angels, who caught the words at their awaking, And sped them with sweet melodies away — The hearts of those who listen'd with them taking. Of proof to this last fact there's little lack ; And Jules, poor lad ! ne'er got his truant back ! VIII. That heart stays with her still. 'Tis one of two, (I should premise)— all poets being double, Living in two worlds as of course they do, Fancy and fact, and rarely taking trouble T' explain in which they're living, as to you ! And this it is makes all the hubble-bubble, For who can fairly write a bard's biography, When, of his/nncy-world, there's no geography ! S56 THE LADY JANE. IX. Jules was at perfect liberty in fact To love again, and still be true in fancy; Else were this story at its closing act. Nay, he in fact might wed, and inromance he Might find the qualities his sposa lack'd — (A truth that I could easier make a man see,) And woman's great mistake, if I may tell it, is The calling such stray fancies " infidelities." Byron was man and bard, and Lady B., In wishing to monopolize him wholly, Committed bigamy, you plainly see. She, being very single, Guiccioli Took off the odd one of the wedded three — A change, 'twould seem, quite natural and holy. The after sin, which still his fame environs, Was giving Guiccioli both the Byrons. XI. The stern wife drove him from her. Had she loved With all the woman's tenderness the while, He had not been the wanderer he proved. Like bird to sunshine fled he to a smile ; And, lightly though the changeful fancy roved, The heart speeds home with far more light a wile. The world well tried — the sweetest thing in life Is the unclouded welcome of a wife. XII. To poets more than all — for truthful love Has, to their finer sense, a deeper sweetness ; Yet she who has the venturous wish to prove The poet's love when nearest to completeness, Must wed the man and let the fancy rove — Loose to the air that wing of eager flectness, And sinile it home when wearied out — with air. But if you scold him, Madam ! have a care 1 XIII. All this time the li Undying One" was singing. She ceased, and Jules felt every sound a pain While that sweet cadence in his ear was ringing ; So gliding from the arm of Lady Jane, Which rather scem'd to have the whim of clinging, He made himself a literary lane — Punching and shoving every kind of writer 'Till he got out. (He might have been politer.) XIV. Free of "the press," he wandcr'd thro' the rooms, Longing for solitude, but studying faces ; And, smitten witli the ugliness of Brougham's, He mused upon the cross with monkey races — (Hicroglyphick'd on tli' Egyptian tombs And shown in France with very striking traces.) " Rejected" Smith's he thought a head quite glorious ; And Hook, all button'd up, he took for " Boreas." XV. He noted Lady Stepney's pretty hand, And Barry Cornwall's sweet and serious eye ; And saw Moore get down from his chair to stand, While a most royal Duke went bowing by — Saw Savage Landor, wanting soap and sand — Saw Lady Chatterton take snuff and sigh — Saw graceful Bulwer say " good-night," and vanish — Heard Crofton Croker's brogue, and thought it Spanish. He saw Smith whispering something very queer, And Hayward creep behind to overhear him ; Saw Lockhart whistling in a lady's ear, (Jules thought so, till, on getting very near him, The error — not the mouth — became quite clear ;) He saw " the Duke" and had a mind to cheer him ; And fine Jane Porter with her cross and feather, And clever Babbage, with his face of leather. XVII. And there was plump and saucy Mrs. Gore, And calm, old, lily-white Joanna Baillie, And frisky Bowring, London's wisest bore ; And there was " devilish handsome" D'Israeli ; And not a lion of all these did roar ; But laughing, flirting, gossiping so gaily, — Poor Jules began to think 'twas only mockery To talk of " porcelain" — 'twas a world of crockery. XVIII. ' Tis half a pity authors should be seen ! Jules thought so, and I think so too, with Jules. They'd better do the immortal with a screen, And show but mortal in a world of fools ; Men talk of " taste" for thunder — but they mean Old Vulcan's apron and his dirty tools ; They flock all wonder to the Delphic shade, To know — just how the oracle is made ! XIX. What we should think of Bulwer's works — without him, His wife, his coat, his curls or other handle ; What of our Cooper, knowing naught about him, Save his enchanted quill and pilgrim's sandal ; What of old Lardner, (gracious ! how they flout him !) Without this broad — (and Heavy.) side of scandal ; What of Will Shakspeare had he kept a " Boz" Like Johnson — would be curious questions, coz ! XX. Jove is, no doubt, a gainer by his cloud, (Which ta'cn away, might cause irreverent laughter,) But, out of sight, he thunders ne'er so loud, And no one asks the god to dinner after ; And " Fame's proud temple," build it ne'er so proud, Finds notoriety a useful rafter. And when you've been abused awhile, you learn All blasts blow fair for you — that blow astern .' XXL No " pro" without its " con ;" — The pro is fame, Pure, cold, unslander'd, like a virgin's frill ; The con is beef and mutton, sometimes game, Madeira, Sherry, claret, what you will ; The ladies' (albums) striving for your name ; All, (save the woodcock,) yours without a bill ; And " in the gate," an unbelieving Jew, Your " Mordecai !" — Why, clearly con's your cuel XXII. I've " reason'd" myself neatly " round the ring," While Jules came round to Lady Jane once more, And supper being but a heavy thing, (To lookers-on,) I'll show him to the door, And his first night to a conclusion bring ; Not (with your kind permission, sir) before I tell you what her Ladyship said to him As home to Brook-street her swift horses drew him XXIII. " You're comfortably lodged, I trust," she said : " And Mrs. Mivart — is she like a mother '! " Have you mosquito curtains to your bed ? " Do you sleep well without your little brother ? " What do you eat for breakfast — baker's bread? " I'll send you some home-made, if you would rather " What do you do to-morrow ? — say at five, " Or four — "say four — I call for you to drive ? XXIV. " There's the New Garden, and the Coliseum — " Perhaps you don't care much for Panoramas ? " But there's an armadillo — you must see him 1 " And those big-eyed giraffes and heavenly lamas .' " And — are you fond of music ? — the Te Deum " Is beautifully play'd by Lascaramhas, " At the new Spanish chapel. This damp air ! " And you've no hat on ! — let me feel your hair I THE LADY JANE. 857 XXV. " Poor boy !" — but Jules's head was on her breast, Rock"d like a nautilus in calm mid ocean ; And while its curls within her hands she press'd, The Lady Jane experienced some emotion : For, did he sleep ? or wish to be caress'd ? What meant the child ! — she'd not the slightest notion ! Arrived at home, he rose, without a shake — Trembling and slightly flush'd — but wide awake. XXVI. Loose rein i put spur ! and follow, gentle reader ! For I must take a flying leap in rhyme ; And be to you both Jupiter and leader, Annihilating space, (we all kill time,) And overtaking Jules in Rome, where he'd a Delight or two, besides the pleasant clime. The Lady Jane and he, (I scorn your cavils — The Earl was with them, sir !) were on their travels. XXVII. You know, perhaps, the winds are no narcotic, As swallow'd 'twixt the Thames and Frith of Forth ; And Jules had proved a rather frail exotic — Too delicate to winter so far north ; The Earl was breaking, and half idiotic, And Lady Jane's condition little worth ; So, thro' celestial Paris, (speaking victual-ly,) They sought the sunnier clime of ill-fed Italy. XXVIII. Oh Italy !— but no— I'll tell its faults ! It has them, tho' the blood so " nimbly capers" Beneath those morning heavens and starry vaults, That we forget big rooms and little tapers — Forget how drowsily the Romans waltz — Forget they've neither shops nor morning papers — Forget how dully sits, mid ancient glory, This rich man's heaven — this poor man's purgatory ! XXIX. Fashion the world as one bad man would have it, he Would silence Harry's tongue, and Tom's, and Dick's ; And doubtless it is pleasing to depravity To know a land where people are but sticks — Where you've no need of fair words, flattery, suavity, But spend your money, if you like, with kicks — Where they pass by their own proud, poor nobility, To welcome golden " Snooks" with base servility. XXX. Jules was not in the poor man's category — So Rome's condition never spoilt his supper. The deuce (for him) might take the Curtian glory Of riding with a nation on his crupper. He lived upon a Marquis's first story — The venerable Marquis in the upper — And found it pass'd the time, (and so would you.) To do some things at Rome that Romans do. XXXI. The Marquis upon whom he chanced to quarter, (He took his lodgings separate from the Earl,) The Marquis had a friend, who had a daughter — The friend a noble like himself, the girl A diamond of the very purest water ; (Or purest milk, if you prefer a pearl ;) And these two friends, tho' poor, were hand and glove, \ And of a pride their fortunes much above. XXXII. The Marquis had not much besides his palace, The Count, beyond his daughter, simply naught ; And, one day, died this very Count Pascalis, Leaving his friend his daughter, as he ought ; And, tho' the Fates had done the thing in malice, The old man took her, without second thought, And married her. " She's freer thus," he said, " And will be young to marry when I'm dead." Meantime, she had a title, house, and carriage, And, far from wearing chains, had newly burst 'em — For, as of course you know, before their marriage Girls are sad prisoners by Italian custom — Not meaning their discretion to disparage, But just because they're sure they couldn't trust 'em. When wedded, they are free enough — moreover, The marriage contract specifies one lover. XXXIV. Not that the Marchioness had one — no, no ! — Nor wanted one. It is not my intention To hint it in this tale. Jules lodged below — But his vicinity's not my invention ; And, if it seem to you more apropos Than I have thought it worth my while to mention, Why, you think as the world did — verbum sat — But still it needn't be so — for all that. XXXV. 'Most any female neighbor, up a stair, Occasions thought in him who lodges under ; And Jules, by accident, had walk'd in where (A "flight too high" 's a very common blunder.) He saw a lady whom he thought as fair As "from her shell rose" Mrs Smith of Thunder. Tho' Venus, I would say were Vulcan by, Was no more like the Marchioness than I. XXXVI. For this grave sin there needed much remission ; And t' assure it, oft the offender went. The Marquis had a very famous Titian, And Jules so often came to pay his rent, The old man recommended a physician, Thinking his intellects a little bent. And, pitying, he thought and talk'd about him, Till, finally, he couldn't live without him. XXXVII. And, much to the neglect of Lady Jane, Jules paid him back his love ; and there, all day, The fair young Marchioness, with fickle brain, Tried him with changeful mood, now coy, now gay : And the old man lived o'er his youth again, Seeing those grown-up children at their play — His wife sixteen, Jules looking scarcely more, 'Twas frolic infancy to eighty-four. XXXVIII. There seems less mystery in matrimony, With people living nearer the equator ; And early, like the most familiar crony, Unheralded by butler, groom, or waiter, Jules join'd the Marquis at his macaroni, — The Marchioness at toast and coffee later ; And if his heart throbb'd wild sometimes, he hid it ; And if her dress required " doing" — did it. XXXIX. Now tho' the Marchioness in church did faint once, And, as Jules bore her out, they didn't group ill ; And tho' the spouses (as a pair) were quaint ones — She scarce a woman, and his age octuple — 'Twas odd, extremely odd, of fheir acquaintance, To call Jules lover with so little scruple ! He'd a caressing way — but la ! you know it's A sort of manner natural to poets ! XL. God made them prodigal in their bestowing ; And, if their smiles were riches, few were poor ! They turn to all the sunshine that is going — Swoop merrily at all that shows a lure — Their love at heart and lips is overflowing — Their motto, " Trust the future — now is sure !" Their natural pulse is high intoxication — fSobcr'd by debt and mortal botheration.!* 858 THE LADY JANE. XLI. Of such men's pain and pleasure, hope and passion, The symptoms are not read by " those who run ;" And 'tis a pity it were not the fashion To count them but as children of the sun — Not to be baited like the " bulls of Bashan," Nor liable, like clods, for " one pound one" — But reverenced — as Indians rev'rence fools — Inspired, tho' God knows how. Well — such was Jules. XLII. The Marquis thought him sunshine at the window — The window of his heart — and let him in ! The Marchioness loved sunshine like a Hindoo, And she thought loving him could be no sin ; And as she loved not yet as those who sin do, 'Twas very well — was't not ? Stick there a pin I It strikes me that so far — to this last stanza — The hero seems a well-disposed young man, sir ! XLIII. I have not bored you much with his " abilities," Tho' I set out to treat you to a poet, The first course commonly is " puerilities" — (A soup well pepper'd — all the critics know it !) Brought in quite hot. (The simple way to chill it is, For " spoons" to stir, and puffy lips to blow it.) Then, poet stuff 'd, and by his kidney roasted, And last (with " lagrima,") " the devil" toasted. XLIV. High-scream between the devil and the roast, But no Sham-pain .' Hold there ! the fit is o'er. Obsta principiis — one pun breeds a host— (Alarmingly prolific for a bore !) But he who never sins can little boast Compared to him who goes and sins no more ! The " sinful Mary" walks more white in Heaven Than some who never " sinn'd and were forgiven !" XLV. Jules had objections very strong to playing His character of poet — therefore I Have rather dropp'd that thread, as I was saying. But tho' he'd neither frenzy in his eye, Nor much of outer mark the bard betraying — (A thing he piqued himself on, by the by — ) His conversation frequently arose To what was thought a goodly flight for prose. XLVI. His beau ideal was to sink the attic, (Tho' not by birth, nor taste, " the salt above" — ) To pitilessly cut the air erratic Which ladies, fond of authors, so much love, And be, in style, calm, cold, aristocratic — Serene in faultless boots and primrose glove. But th' exclusive's made of starch, not honey ! And Jules was cordial, joyous, frank, and funny. XLVII. This was one secret of his popularity, Men hate a manner colder than their own, And ladies — bless their hearts ! love chaste hilarity Better than sentiment — if truth were known ! And Jules had one more slight peculiarity — He'd little " approbativeness" — or none — And what the critics said concern'd him little — Provided it touch'd not his drink and victual. XLVIII. Critics, I say — of course he was in prints — " Poems," of course — of course " anonymous" — Of course he found a publisher by dint Of search most diligent, and far more fuss Than chemists make in melting you a flint. Since that experiment he reckons plus Better manure than minus for his bays — In short, seeks immortality — " that pays." XLIX. He writes in prose — the public like it better. Well — let the public ! You may take a poet, And he shall write his grandmother a letter, And, if he's any thing but rhyme — he'll show it Prose may be poetry, without its fetter, And be it pun or pathos, high or low wit, The thread will show its gold, however twisted — (I wish the public fiatter'd me that this did !) No doubt there's pleasant stuff that ill unravels. I fancy most of Moore's would read so-so, Done into prose of pious Mr. Flavel's — (That is my Sunday reading — so I know,) Yet there's Childe Harold — excellent good travels — And what could spoil sweet Robinson Crusoe ! But tho' a clever verse-r makes a prose-r, About the vice-versa, I don't know, sir ! LI. Verser 's a better word than versifier, (Unless 'tis verse on fire, you mean to say,) And I've long thought there's something to desire In poet's nomenclature, by the way. It sounds but queer to laud " the well-known lyre" — Call a dog " poet !" he will run away — And "songster," "rhymester," "bard," and "poetaster," Are customers they're shy of at the Astor. LII. A " scribbler's" is a skittish reputation, And weighs a man down like a hod of mortar. Commend a suitor's wit, imagination — The merchant may think of hiin for his daughter ; But say that " he writes poetry" n ! Her " Pa" would rather throw her in the water ! And yet when poets wed, as facts will prove, Their bills stand all at pa, they much above ! LIII. Jules had a hundred minds to cut the muses ; And sometimes did, " forever !" — (for a week I) He found for time so many other uses. His superfluity was his physique ; And exercise, if violent, induces Blood to the head and flush upon the cheek ; And, (tho' details are neither here nor there,) Makes a man sit uneasy on his chair; LIV. Particularly that of breaking horses. The rate of circulation in the blood, Best suited to the meditative forces, Is quite as far from mercury as mud — That of the starry, not the racing-courses. No man can trim his style mid fire and flood, Nor in a passion, nor just after marriage ; And, as to Caesar's writing in his carriage, LV. Credat Judaeus ! Thought is free and easy ; But language, unless wrought with labor lima, Is not the kind of thing, sir, that would please ye ! The bee makes honey, but his toil is thymy, And nothing is well done until it tease ye ; (Tho' if there's one who would 'twere not so, I'm he !) Now Jules, I say, found out that filly-breaking, Tho' monstrous fun, was not a poet's making. LVI. True — some drink up to composition's glow ; Some talk up to it — vide Neckar's daughter ! But when the temp'rature's a fourth too low, Of course you make up the deficient quarter ! Like Byron's atmosphere, which, chemists know Required hydrogen — (more gin and water.) And Jules's sanguine humor was too high, So, of the bottle he had need be shy ! THE LADY JANE. 859 LVII. And of society, which made him thin With fret and fever, and of sunny sky — Father of idleness, the poet's sin ! (John Bull should be industrious, by the by, If clouds without concentrate thought within,) In short, the lad could fag — (I mean soar high) — Only by habits, which (if Heaven let her choose) His mother would bequeath as Christian virtues ! LVIII. Now men have oft been liken'd unto streams ; (And, truly, both are prone to run down hill, And seldom brawl when dry, or so it seems !) And Jules, when he had brooded, long and still, At the dim fountain of the poet's dreams, Felt suddenly his veins with frenzy fill ; And, urged, as by the torrent's headlong force, Ruthlessly rode — if he could find a horse. LIX. Yes, sir — he had his freshets like a river, And horses were his passion — so he rode, When he his prison'd spirits would deliver, As if he fled from — some man whom he owed — And glorious, to him, the bounding quiver Of the young steed in terror first bestrode ! Thrilling as inspiration the delay — The arrowy spring — the fiery flight away I LX. Such riding galls the Muses, (tho' we know Old Pegasus's build is short and stocky,) But I'd a mind by these details to show What Jules might turn out, were the Muses baulky. This hint to his biographer I throw — In Jules, the bard, was spoil'd a famous jockey ! Tho' not at all to imitate Apollo ! Horse him as well, he'd beat that dabster hollow ! LXI. 'Tis one of the proprieties of story To mark the change in heroes, stage by stage ; And therefore I have tried to lay before ye The qualities of Julcs*s second age. It should wind up witli some memento mori — But we'll defer that till we draw the sage. The moral's the last thing, (I say with pain,) And now let's turn awhile to Lady Jane. LXII. The Earl, I've said, was in his idiocy, And Lady Jane not well. They therefore hired The summer palace of Rospigliosi, To get the sun as well^as be retired. You shouldn't fail, I think, this spot to go see — That's if you care to have your fancy fired — It's out of Rome — it strikes me on a steep hill — A sort of place to go to with nice people. LXIII. ft looks affectionate, with all its splendor — As lovcable as ever look'd a nest ; A palace I protest, that makes you tender, And long for fol de rol, and all the rest. Guido's Aurora's there — you couldn't mend her ; And Samson, by Caracci — not his best ; But pictures, I can talk of to the million — To you, I'll just describe one small pavilion. LXIV. It's in the garden just below the palace ; I think, upon the second terrace — no— The first — yes, 'tis the first — the orange alleys Lead from the first flight down — precisely so ! Well — half-way is a fountain, where, with malice In all his looks, a Cupid — 'hem ! you know You needn't notice that — you hurry by, And lo ! a fairy structure fills your eye LXV. A crescent colonnade folds in the sun, To keep it for the wooing South wind only — A thing 1 wonder is not oftcner done, (The crescent, not the wooing — that's my own lie,) For there are months, and January's one, When winds are chill, and life in-doors gets lonely, And one quite longs, if wind would keep away, To sing i' the sunshine, like old King Rene". LXVI. The columns are of marble, white as light : The structure low, yet airy, and the floor A tesselated pavement, curious quite, — Of the same fashion in and out of door. The Lady Jane, who kept not warm by sight, Had carpeted this pavement snugly o'er, And introduced a stove, (an open Rumford) — So the pavilion had an air of comfort. LXVII. " The frescoes on the ceiling really breathe," The guide-books say. Of course they really see : And, as I tell you what went on beneath, Of course those naked goddesses told me. They saw two rows of dazzling English teeth, Employ'd, each morn, on English " toast and tea ;" And once, when Jules came in, they strain'd their eyes, But didn't see the teeth, to their surprise. LXVIII. The Lady Jane smiled not. Her lashes hung Low to the soft eye, and, so still they lay, Jules knew a tear was hid their threads among, And that she fear'd 'twould gush and steal away. The kindly greeting trembled on her tongue, The hand's faint pressure chill'd his touch like clay, And Jules with wonder felt the world all changing, W T ith but the cloud of one fond heart's estranging. LXIX. Oh it is darkness to lose love ! — howe'er We little prized the fond heart — fond no more ! The bird, dark-wing'd on earth, looks white in air ! Unrecognized are angels, till they soar ! And few so rich they may not well beware Of lightly losing the heart's golden ore ! Yet — hast thou love too poor for thy possessing ? — Loose it, like friends to death, with kiss and blessing LXX. You're naturally surprised, that Lady Jane Loved Mr. Jules. (He's Mr. now — not Master .') The fact's abruptly introduced, it's plain ; And possibly I should have made it last a Whole Canto, more or less — but I'll explain. Lumping the sentiment one gets on faster ! Tho' it's in narrative, an art quite subtle, To work all even, like a weaver's shuttle. LXXI. Good " characters" in tales are " well brought up" — (Tho', by this rule, my Countess Pasibleu Is a bad character — yet, just to sup, I much prefer her house to a church pew — ) But, pouring verse for readers, cup by cup, — So much a week, — what is a man to do ? " 'Tis wish'd that if a story you begin, you'd Make separate scenes of each ' to he continued.' " LXXII. So writes plain " Jonathan," who tills my brains With view to crop— (the seed being ready money—) And if the " small-lot system" bring him gains, He has a right to fence off grave from funny — Working me up, as 'twere, in window-panes, And, 1 must own, where one has room to run, he Is apt, as Cooper does, to spread it thin, So now I'll go to lumping it again ! 860 THE LADY JANE. LXXIII. " Love grows, by what" it gives to feed another, And not by what " it feeds on." 'Tis divine, If any thing's divine besides the mother Whose breast, self-blessing, is its holy sign. Much better than a sister loves a brother The Lady Jane loved Jules, and " line by line, Precept by precept," furnish'd him advice ; Also much other stuff he thought more nice. LXXIV. She got him into sundry pleasant clubs, By pains that women can take, tho' but few will ! She made most of him when he got most rubs ; And once, in an inevitable duel, She follow'd him alone to Wormwood Scrubs — But not to hinder ! Faith ! she was a jewel ! I wish the star all manner of festivity That shone upon her Ladyship's nativity ! LXXV. All sorts of enviable invitations, Tickets, and privileges, got she him ; Gave him much satin waistcoat, work'd with patience, (Becoming to a youth so jimp and slim) — Cut for his sake some prejudiced relations, And found for him in church the psalm and hymn ; Sent to his " den" some things not found in Daniel's, And kept him in kid gloves, cologne, and flannels. LXXVI. To set him down, upon her way chez elle, She stay'd unreasonably late at parties ; To introduce him to a waltzing belle She sometimes made a cessio dignitatis; And one kind office more that I must tell — She sent her maid, (and very stern your heart is If charity like this you find a sin in,) In church-time, privately, to air his linen. LXXVII. Was Jules ungrateful ? No ! Was he obtuse ? Did he believe that women's hearts were flowing With tenderness, like water in a sluice, — Like the sun's shining, — like the breeze's blowing, — And fancy thanking them was not much use ? Had he the luck of intimately knowing Another woman, quite as kind, and nicer ? Had he a " friend" sub rosa ? No, sir ! Fie, sir ? LXXVIII. Then why neglect her ? Having said he did, I will explain, as Brutus did his stab, — (Tho' by my neighbors I'm already chid For getting on so very like a crab) — Jules didn't call, as oft as he was bid, Because in Rome he didn't keep a cab — A fact that quite explains why friendships, marriages, And other ties depend on keeping carriages. LXXIX. Without a carriage men should have no card, Nor " owe a call" at all — except for love. And friends who need that you the " lean earth lard" To give their memories a pasteboard shove, On gentlemen a-foot bear rather hard ! It's paying high for Broadway balls, by Jove ! To walk next day half way to Massachusett And leave your name — on ladies that won't use it. LXXX. It really should be taught in infant schools That the majority means men, not dollars ; And, therefore, that, to let the rich make rules, Is silly in " poor pretty little scholars." And this you see is apropos of Jules, Who call'd as frequently as richer callers While he'd a cab ; — but courtesy's half horse — A secret those who ride keep snug, of course. LXXXI. I say while he was Centaur, (horse and man,) Jules never did neglect the Lady Jane ; And, at the start, it was my settled plan, (Tho' I've lost sight of it, I see with pain,) To show how moderate attentions can, If once she love, a woman's heart retain True love is weak and humble, tho' so brittle ; And asks, 'tis wonderful how very little ! LXXXII. For instance — Jules's every day routine Was, breakfast at his lodgings, rather early ; A short walk in the nearest Park, the Green : (Where, if address'd, he was extremely surly ;) Five minutes at the club, perhaps fifteen ; Then giving his fine silk moustache a curl, he Stepp'd in his cab and drove to Belgrave Square, Where he walk'd in, with quite a household air LXXXIII. And here he pass'd an hour — or two, or three — Just as it served his purpose or his whim ; And sweeter haunt on earth could scarcely be Than that still boudoir, rose-lit, scented, dim — Its mistress, elsewhere all simplicity, Drcss'd ever sumptuously there — for him ! With all that taste could mould, or gold could buy, Pampering fondly his reluctant eye. LXXXIV. And on the silken cushions at her feet He daily dream'd these morning hours away, Troubling himself but little to be sweet. Poets are fond of revery, they say, But not with ladies whom they rarely meet. And, if you love one, madam, (as you may !) And wish his wings to pin as with a skewer, Be careful of all manner of toujours ! LXXXV. " Toujours perdrix," snipe, woodcock, trout, or rabbit Offends the simplest palate, it appears, And, (if a secret, I'm disposed to blab it,) It's much the same with smiles, sighs, quarrels, tears, The fancy mortally abhors a habit .' (Not that which Seraphina's bust inspheres !) E'en one-tuned music-boxes breed satiety, Unless you keep of them a great variety. LXXXVI. Daily to Jules the sun rose in the East, And brought new milk and morning paper daily; The " yield," of both the Editor and beast, Great mysteries, unsolved by Brown or Paley ; But Jules — not plagued about it in the least — Read his gazette, and drank his tea quite gaily: And Lady Jane's fond love and cloudless brow Grew to be like the Editor and cow. LXXXVII. I see you understand it. One may dash on A color here — stroke there — and lo ! the story ! And, speaking morally, this outline fashion Befits a world so cramm'd yet transitory. I've sketch'd for you a deep and tranquil passion Kindled while nursing up a bard for glory ; And, having whisk'd you for that end to London, Let's back to Italy, and see it undone. LXXXVIII. Fair were the frescoes of Rospigliosi — Bright the Italian sunshine on the wall — The day delicious and the room quite cozy — And yet were there two bosoms full of gall ! So lurks the thorn in paths long soft and rosy 1 Jules was not one whom trifles could appal, But few things will make creep the lion's mane Like ladies in a miff who won't explain ! THE LADY JANE. 861 LXXXIX. Now I have seen a hadji and a cadi — Have sojourn'd among strangers, oft and long — Have known most sorts of women, fair and shady, And mingled in most kinds of mortal throng — But, in my life, I never saw a lady Who hud, the least, the air of being wrong ! The fact is, there's a nameless grace in evil We never caught — 'twas she who saw the devil ! XC. In pedigree of sin we're mere beginners — For what was Adam to the " morning star ?" She would take precedence — if sins were dinners, And hence that self-assured " de haut en bas" So unattainable by men, as sinners. Of course, she plays the devil in a fracas — Frowns better, looks more innocent, talks faster, And argues like her grandmother's old master ! XCI. And in proportion as the angel fades — As love departs — the crest of woman rises — Even in passion's softer, lighter shades, With aristocracy's well-bred disguises ; For, with no tragic fury, no tirades, A lady looks a man into a crisis ! And, to 'most any animal carnivorous Before a belle aggrieved, the Lord deliver us ! XCII. Jules had one thing particular to say, The morn I speak of, but, in fact, was there, Vv ith twenty times the mind to be away. Uncomfortable seem'd the stuflfd arm-chair In which the Earl would sometimes pass the day ; And there was something Roman in the air ; For every effort to express his errand Ended in " urn !" — as 'twere a Latin gerund. XCIII. He had received a little billet-doux The night before — as plain as A B C — (I mean, it would appear as plain to you, Tho' very full of meaning you'll agree) — Informing him that by advice quite new The Earl was going now to try the sea ; And begging him to have his passport vised For Venice, by Bologna — if he pleased ! XCIV. Smooth as a melody of Mother Goose's The gentle missive elegantly ran — A sort of note the writer don't care who sees, For you may pick a flaw in't if you can — But yet a stern experimentum crucis, Quite in the style of Metternich, or Van, — And meant—without more flummery or fuss — Stay with your Marchioness — or come with us ! XCV. Here was to be " a parting such as wrings [stay The blood from out young hearts" — for Jules would The bird she took unfledged had got its wings, And, though its cage be gold, it must away ! But this, and similar high-color'd things, Refinement makes it difficult to say ; For, higher " high life" is, (this side an attic,) The more it shrinks from all that looks dramatic. XCVI. Hence, words grow cold as agony grows hot, 'Twixt those who see in ridicule a Hades ; And tho' the truth but coldly end the plot, (There really is no pathos for you, ladies !) Jules cast the die with, simply " I think not !" And her few words were guarded as he made his For rank has one cold law of Moloch's making — Death, before outcry, while the heart is breaking! XCVII. She could not tell that boy how hot the tear That seem'd within her eyeball to have died — She could not tell him her exalted sphere Had not a hope his boyish love beside : The grave of anguish is a human ear — Hers lay unburied in a pall of pride ! And life, for her, thenceforth, was cold and lonely, With her heart lock'd on that dumb sorrow only! XCVIII. Calm, in her " pride of place," moves Lady Jane — Paler, but beautifully pale, and cold — So cold, the gazer believes joy nor pain Has o'er that pulse of marble ever roll'd. She loved too late to dream of love again, And rich, fair, noble, and alone, grows old A star, on which a spirit had alighted Once, in all time, were like a life so blighted ! XCIX. So, from the poet's woof was broke a thread Which we have follow'd in its rosy weaving ; Yet merrily, still on, the shuttle sped. Jules was not made of stuff to die of grieving , But, that an angel from his path had fled, He was not long in mournfully believing. And " angel watch and ward" had fled with her — For, virtuously loved, 'tis hard to err ! C. Poets are moths, (or so some poet sings, Or so some pleasant allegory goes,) And Jules at many a bright light burnt his wings. His first chaste scorching the foregoing shows ; But, while one passion best in metre rings, Another is best told in lucid prose. As to the marchioness, I've half a plan, sir '. To limn her in the quaint Spenserian stanza. END. To the Reader. And now, dear reader ! as a brick may be A sample of a house — a bit of glass Of a broad mirror — it has seem'd to me These fragments for a tale may shift to pass. (I am a poet much cut tip, pardie !) But " shorts" is poor " to running loose to grass." Where there's a meadow to range freely over, You pick to please you — timothy or clover. Without the slightest hint at transmigration, I wish hereafter we may meet in calf! That you may read me with some variation — [laugh This when you're moody — that when you would In that case, I may swell this true narration, And blow off here and there a speech of chaff. I trust you think, that, were there more 'twere better, or If cetera desunt, decent were the cetera ! P. S. I really had forgotten quite To say to you, from Countess Pasibleu— (Dying, 'tis thought, but quite too ill to write) — Her Ladyship's best compliments to you, And she's toujours chez elle on Friday night, (Buckingham Crescent, May Fair, No. 2.) This, (as her written missive would have said,) Always in case her Ladyship's not dead. AN APOLOGY For avoiding, after long separation, a woman once lovtd. See me no more on earth, I pray, Thy picture, in my memory now, Is fair as morn, and fresh as May ! Few were as beautiful as thou ! 862 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. And still I see that willowy form — And still that cheek like roses dyed — And still that dark eye, deep and warm — Thy look of love — thy step of pride ! — Thy memory is a star to me, More bright as day-beams fade and flee. But thou, indeed ! — Ah ! years have fled, And thou, like others, changed the while — For joy upon the lip lies dead If pain but cloud the sunny smile ! And care will make the roses pale, And tears will soil the lily's whiteness, And ere life's lamp begins to fail The eye forgets its trick of brightness ! Look for the rose of dawn at noon, And weep for beauty — lost as soon ! Cold words that hide the envious thought .' I could not bear thy face to see — But oh, 'tis not that time has wrought A change in features dear to me ! No ! had it been my lot to share The fragrance of the flower decay'd — If I had borne but half the care That on thy brow its burden laid — If in my love thou'dst burn'd away, The ashes still had warm'd the heart so cold to-day ! TO HELEN IN A HUFF. Nay, lady, one frown is enough In a life as soon over as this — And though minutes seem long in a huff, They're minutes 'tis pity to miss ! The smiles you imprison so lightly Are reckon'd, like days in eclipse ; And though you may smile again brightly, You've lost so much light from your lips ! Pray, lady, smile ! The cup that is longest untasted May be with our bliss running o'er, And, love when we will, we have wasted An age in not loving before ! Perchance Cupid's forging a fetter To tie us together some day, And, just for the chance, we had better Be laying up love, I should say ! Nay, lady, smile ! CITY LYRICS. Argument.— The poet starts from i> i\ing Green to take his sweet- heart up to Thompson's foran'ice, V(3Tih7V5oelin«J for m ore°) ., CI mse to matters which any everyday man and young Come out, love — the night is enchanting! The moon hangs just over Broadway ; The stars arc all lighted and panting (Hot weather up there, I dare say !) 'Tis seldom that " coolness" entices, And love is no better for chilling — But come up to Thompson's for ices, And cool your warm heart for a shilling ! What perfume comes balmily o'er us ? Mint juleps from City Hotel ! A loafer is smoking before us — (A nasty cigar, by the smell !) Oh Woman ! thou secret past knowing ! Like lilachs that grow by the wall, You breathe every air that is going, Yet gather but sweetness from all ! On, on ! by St. Paul's, and the Astor ! Religion seems very ill-plann'd ! For one day we list to the pastor, For six days wc list to the band ! The sermon may dwell on the future, The organ your pulses may calm — ■ When — pest ! — that remember'd cachucha Upsets both the sermon and psalm ! Oh, pity the love that must utter While goes a swift omnibus by ! (Tho' sweet is / scream* when the flutter Of fans shows thermometers high) — But if what I bawl, or I mutter, Falls into your ear but to die, Oh, the dew that falls into the gutter Is not more unhappy than I ! TO THE LADY IN THE CHEMISETTE WITH BLACK BUTTONS. I know not who thou art, oh, lovely one! Thine eyes were droop'd, thy lips half sorrowful— Yet thou didst eloquently smile on me While handing up thy sixpence through the hole Of that o'er-freighted omnibus ! Ah me ! The world is full of meetings such as this — A thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply — And sudden partings after ! We may pass, And know not of each other's nearness now Thou in the Knickerbocker Line, and I, Lone, in the Waverley ! Oh, life of pain ! And even should I pass where thou dost dwell Nay — see thee in the basement taking tea — So cold is this inexorable world, I must glide on ! I dare not feast mine eye ! I dare not make articulate my love, Nor o'er the iron rails that hem thee in Venture to fling to thee my innocent card — Not knowing thy papa ! Hast thou papa ? Is thy progenitor alive, fair girl ? And what doth he for lucre ? Lo again ! A shadow o'er the face of this fair dream ! For thou mayst be as beautiful as Love Can make thee, and the ministering hands Of milliners, incapable of more, Be lifted at thy shapeliness and air, And still 'twixt me and thee, invisibly, May rise a wall of adamant. My breath Upon my pale lip freezes as I name Manhattan's orient verge, and eke the west In its far down extremity. Thy sire May be the signer of a temperance pledge, And clad all decently may walk the earth — Nay — may be number'd with that blessed few Who never ask for discount — yet, alas ! If, homeward wending from his daily cares, He go by Murphy's Line, thence eastward tending Or westward from the Line of Kipp & Brown, — My vision is departed ! Harshly falls The doom upon the ear, " She's not genteel !" And pitiless is woman who doth keep Of " good society" the golden key ! And gentlemen are bound, as are the stars, To stoop not after rising ! But farewell, And I shall look for thee in streets where dwell The passengers by Broadway Lines alone ! And if my dreams be true, and thou, indeed, Art only not more lovely than genteel — Then, lady of the snow-white chemisette, The heart which vent'rously cross'd o'er to thee Upon that bridge of sixpence, may remain — And, with up-town devotedness and truth, My love shall hover round thee ! Query.— Should this he Ire. cream, or I scream ?— Printer'* Devi/. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 863 THE LADY IN THE WHITE DRESS, Whom I helped into the Omnibus. I know her not ! Her hand has been in mine, And the warm pressure of her taper arm Has thrill'd upon my fingers, and the hem Of her white dress has lain upon my feet, Till my hush'd pulse, by the caressing folds, Was kindled to a fever ! I, to her, Am but the undistinguishable leaf Blown by upon the breeze — yet I have sat, And in the blue depths of her stainless eyes, (Close as a lover in his hour of bliss, And steadfastly as look the twin stars down Into unfathomable wells,) have gazed ! And I have felt from out its gate of pearl Her warm breath on my cheek, and while she sat Dreaming away the moments, I have tried To count the long dark lashes in the fringe Of her bewildering eyes ! The kerchief sweet That enviably visits her red lip Has slumber'd, while she held it, on my knee, — And her small foot has crept between mine own — And yet, she knows me not ! Now, thanks to heaven For blessings chainlcss in the rich man's keeping- Wealth that the miser cannot hide away ! Buy, if they will, the invaluable flower — They cannot store its fragrance from the breeze 1 Wear, if they will, the costliest gem of Ind — It pours its light on every passing eye ! And he who on this beauty sets his name — Who dreams, perhaps, that for his use alone Such loveliness was first of angels born — Tell him, oh whisperer at his dreaming ear, That I too, in her beauty, sun my eye, And, unrebuked, may worship her in song — Tell him that heaven, along our darkling way, Hath set bright lamps with loveliness alight — And all may in their guiding beams rejoice ; But he — as 'twere a watcher by a lamp — Guard^ut this bright one's shining. THE WHITE CHIP HAT. I pass'd her one day in a hurry, When late for the Post with a letter— I think near the corner of Murray — And up rose my heart as I met her ! I ne'er saw a parasol handled So like to a dutchess's doing — I ne'er saw a slighter foot sandall'd, Or so fit to exhale in the shoeing — Lovely thing ! Surprising ! — one woman can dish us So many rare sweets up together 1 Tournure absolutely delicious — Chip hat without flower or feather- Well gloved, and enchantingly boddiced- Her waist like the cup of a lily — And an air, that, while daintily modest, Repell'd both the saucy and silly — Quite the thing ! For such a rare wonder you'll say, sir, There's reason in straining one's tether — And, to see her again in Broadway, sir, Who would not be lavish of leather ! I met her again, and as you .know I'm sage as old Voltaire at Ferney — But I said a bad word — for my Juno Look'd sweet on a sneaking attorney — Horrid thing '. Away flies the dream I had nourish'd — My castles like mockery fall, sir ! And, now, the fine airs that she flourish'd Seem varnish nnd crockery all, sir ! The bright cup which angels might handle Turns earthy when finger'd by asses — And the star that " swaps" light with a candle, Thenceforth for a pennyworth passes ! — Not the thing ! YOU KNOW IF IT WAS YOU. As the chill'd robin, bound to Florida Upon a morn of autumn, crosses flying The air-track of a snipe most passing fair- Yet colder in her blood than she is fair — And as that robin lingers on the wing, And feels the snipe's flight in the eddying air, And loves her for her coldness not the less, — But fain would win her to that warmer sky Where love lies waking with the fragrant stars — So I — a languisher for sunnier climes, Where fruit, leaf, blossom, on the trees forever Image the tropic deathlessness of love — Have met, and long'd to win thee, fairest lady, To a more genial clime than cold Broadway ! Tranquil and effortless thou glidest on, As doth the swan upon the yielding water, And with a cheek like alabaster cold ! But as thou didst divide the amorous air Just opposite the Astor, and didst lift That veil of languid lashes to look in At Leary's tempting window — lady ! then My heart sprang in beneath that fringed veil, Like an adventurous bird that would escape To some warm chamber from the outer cold ! And there would I delightedly remain, And close that fringed window with a kiss, And in the warm sweet chamber of thy breast, Be prisoner forever ! UNSEEN SPIRITS. The shadows lay along Broadway — 'Twas near the twilight-tide — And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride. Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly, Walk'd spirits at her side. Peace charm 'd the street beneath her feet, And Honor charm'd the air ; And all astir look'd kind on her, And call'd her good as fair — For all God ever gave to her She kept with chary care. She kept with care her beauties rare From lovers warm and true — For her heart was cold to all but gold, And the rich came not to woo — But honor'd well arc charms to sell If priests the selling do. Now walking there was one more fair— A slight girl, lily-pale ; And she had unseen company To make the spirit quad— •Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlom, And nothing could avail. No mercy now can clear her brow For this world's peace to pray ; For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, Her woman's heart gave way!— But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven By man is curst alway ! 864 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. LOVE IN A COTTAGE. They may talk of love in a cottage, And bowers of trellised vine — Of nature bewitchingly simple, And milkmaids half divine ; They may talk of the pleasure of sleeping In the shade of a spreading tree, And a walk in the fields at morning, By the side of a footstep free ! But give me a sly flirtation By the light of a chandelier — With music to play in the pauses, And nobody very near ; Or a seat on a silken sofa, With a glass of pure old wine, And mamma too blind to discover The small white hand in mine. Your love in a cottage is hungry, Your vine is a nest for flies — Your milkmaid shocks the Graces, And simplicity talks of pies ! You lie down to your shady slumber And wake with a bug in your ear, And your damsel that walks in the morning Is shod like a mountaineer. True love is at home on a carpet, And mightily likes his ease — And true love has an eye for a dinner, And starves beneath shady trees. His wing is the fan of a lady, His foot's an invisible thing, And his arrow is tipp'd with a jewel, And shot from a silver string. THE DECLARATION. 'Twas late, and the gay company was gone, And light lay soft on the deserted room From alabaster vases, and a scent Of orange leaves, and sweet verbena came Through the unshutter'd window on the air, And the rich pictures with their dark old tints Hung like a twilight landscape, and all things Seem'd hush'd into a slumber. Isabel, The dark-eyed, spiritual Isabel Was leaning on her harp, and I had stay'd To whisper what I could not when the crowd Hung on her look like worshippers. I knelt, And with the fervor of a lip unused To the cool breath of reason, told my love. There was no answer, and I took the hand That rested on the strings, and press'd a kiss Upon it unforbidden — and again Besought her, that this silent evidence That I was not indifferent to her heart, Might have the seal of one sweet syllable. I kiss'd the small white fingers as I spoke, And she withdrew them gently, and upraised Her forehead from its resting-place, and looked Earnestly on me— She had been asleep ! TORTESA, THE USURER, DRAMATIS PERSONS. Duke of Florence. Count Falcone. Tortesa — a usui-er. Anoelo — a young painter. Tomaso — his Servant. *»* * * Isabella de Falcone. Zippa — a Glover's daughter. Other characters— a Counsellor, a page, the Count's Secre- tary, a Tradesman, a Monk, Lords, Ladies, Officer, Soldiers, $c. ACT I. [A drawing-room in Tortesa's house. Servant discovered reading the bill of a tradesman, who is in attendance.] Servant (reading). "Silk hose, doublet of white satin, twelve shirts of lawn." He'll not pay it to-day, good mercer ! Tradesman. How, master Gaspar ? When I was assured of the gold on delivery ? If it be a credit account, look you, there must be a new bill. The charge is for ready money. Servant. Tut — tut — man, you know not whom you serve. My master is as likely to overpay you if you are civil, as to keep you a year out of your money if you push him when he is crossed. Tradesman. Why, this is the humor of a spendthrift, not the careful way of a usurer. Servant. Usurer! humph. Well, it may be he is — to the rich ! But the heart of the Signor Tortesa, let me tell you, is like the bird's wing — the dark side is turned up- ward. To those who look up to him he shows neither spot nor stain! Hark! I hear his wheels in the court. Step to the ante-room — for he has that on his hands to-day which may make him impatient. Quick ! Give way ! I'll bring you to him if I can find a time. Tortesa (speaking without). What ho! Gaspar! Servant. Signor ! Tortesa. My keys ! Bring me my keys ! [Enter Tortesa, followed by Count Falcone.] Come in, count. Falcone. You're well lodged. Tortesa. The duke waits for you To get to horse. So, briefly, there's the deed ! You have your lands back, and your daughter's mine — So ran the bargain! Falcone (coldly). She's betrothed, sir, to you ! Tortesa. Not a half hour since, and you hold the parchment ! A free transaction, see you !— for you're paid, And I'm but promised ! Falcone. (Aside — What a slave is this, To give my daughter to ! My daughter ? Psha ! I'll think but of my lands, my precious lands !) Sir, the duke sets forth — Tortesa. Use no ceremony ! Yet stay ! A word ! Our nuptials follow quick On your return ? Falcone. That hour, if it so please you ! Tortesa. And what's the bargain if her humor change ? Falcone. The lands are yours again — 'tis understood so. 55 Tortesa. Yet, still a word ! You leave her with her maids. I have a right in her by this betrothal. Seal your door up till you come back again ! I'd have no foplings tampering with my wife ! None of your painted jackdaws from the court, Sneering and pitying her ! My lord Falcone ! Shall she be private? Falcone. (Aside— Patience ! for my lands !) You shall control my door, sir, and my daughter ! Farewell now ! [Exit Falcone. Tortesa. Oh, omnipotence of money ! Ha ! ha ! Why, there's the haughtiest nobleman That walks in Florence. He /—whom I have bearded — Checked — made conditions to — shut up his daughter — And all with money ! They should pull down churches And worship it ! Had I been poor, that man Would see me rot ere give his hand to me. I — as I stand here — dressed thus — looking thus — The same in all — save money in my purse — He would have scorned to let me come so near That I could breathe on him ! Yet, that were little — For pride sometimes outdoes humility, And your great man will please to be familiar, To show how he can stoop. But halt you there ! He has a jewel that you may not name*! His wife's above you ! You're no company For his most noble daughter ! You are brave — 'Tis nothing ! comely — nothing ! honorable — You are a phoenix of all human virtues — But, while your blood's mean, there's a frozen bar Betwixt yo^and a lady, that will melt — Not with religion — scarcely with the grave — But like a mist, with money ! [Enter a Servant.] Servant. Please you, sir ! A tradesman waits to see you ! Tortesa. Let him in ! [Exit Servant. What need have I of forty generations To build my name up ? I have bought with money The fairest daughter of their haughtiest line ! Bought her ! Falcone's daughter for so much ! No wooing in't ! Ha ! ha ! I harped on that Till my lord winced ! " My bargain !" still " my bar- gain .'" Naught of my bride ! Ha ! ha ! 'Twas excellent ! [Enter Tradesman.] What's thy demand ? Tradesman. Ten ducats, please your lordship ! Tortesa. Out on "your lordship!" There are twelve for ten ! Does a lord pay like that ? Learn some name sweeter To my ears than " Your lordship !" I'm no lord ! Give me thy quittance ! Now, begone ! Who waits 1 Servant. The glover's daughter, please you, sir I [Enter Zippa.] Tortesa. Come in, My pretty neighbor ! What ! my bridal gloves ! Are they brought home ? Zippa. The signor pays so well, He's well served. Tortesa. Um ! why, pertinently answered ! And yet, my pretty one, the words were sweeter In any mouth than yours ! Zippa. Tkat's easy true ! 866 TORTESA, THE USURER. Tortesa. I would 'twere liking that had spurred your service — Not money, Zippa, sweet ! (She presents her parcel to him, with a meaning air.) Zippa. Your bridal gloves, sir ! Tortesa. (Aside — What a fair shrew it is !) My gloves are paid for ! And will be thrown aside when worn a little. Zippa. What then, sir ! Tortesa. Why, the bride is paid for, too ! And may be thrown aside, when worn a little ! Zippa. You mock me now ! Tortesa. You know Falcone's palace, And lands, here, by Fiesole ? I bought them For so much money of his creditors, And gave them to him, in a plain, round bargain, For his proud daughter ! What think you of that ? Zippa. What else but that you loved her ! Tortesa. As I love The thing I give my money for — no more ! Zippa. You mean to love her ? Tortesa. 'Twas not in the bargain ! Zippa. Why, what a monster do you make yourself! Have you no heart ? Tortesa. A loving one, for you ! Nay, never frown ! I marry this lord's daughter To please a devil that inhabits me ! But there's an angel in me — not so strong — And this last loves you ! Zippa. Thanks for your weak angel ! I'd sooner 'twere the devil ! Tortesa. Both were yours ! But for the burning fever that I have To pluck at their proud blood. Zippa. Why, this poor lady Can not have harmed you ! Tortesa. Forty thousand times ! She's noble-born — there's one wrong in her cradle ! She's proud — why, that makes every pulse an insult — Sixty a minute ! She's profuse in smiles On those who are, to me, as stars to slow-worms — So I'm disparaged ! I have passed her by, Summer and winter, and she ne'er lookedJyi me ! Her youth has been one tissue of contempff Her lovers, and her tutors, and her heart, Taught her to scorn the low-born — that am I ! Would you have more ? Zippa. Why, this is moonstruck madness. Tortesa. I'd have her mine, for all this— jewelled, perfumed — Just as they've worshipped her at court — my slave! They've mewed her breath up in their silken beds Blanched her with baths — fed her on delicate food Guarded the unsunned dew upon her skin — For some lord's pleasure ! If I could not get her, There's a contempt in that, would make my forehead Hot in my grave ! Zippa. (Aside — Now Heaven forbid my fingers Should make your bridal gloves !) Forgive me, signor ! I'll take these back, so please you ! (Takes up the par- cel again.) Tortesa (not listening to her). But for this — This devil at my heart, thou shouldst have wedded The richest commoner in Florence, Zippa ! Tell me thou wouldst ! Zippa. (Aside — Stay ! stay ! A thought ! If I Could feign to love him, and so work on him To put this match off, and at last to break it — 'Tis possible — and so befriend this lady, Whom, from my soul, I pity ! Nay, I will !) Signor Tortesa ! Tortesa. You've been dreaming now, How you would brave it in your lady-gear ; Was't not so ? Zippa. No ! Tortesa. What then ? Zippa. I had a thought, If I dare speak it. Tortesa. Nay, nay, speak it out! Zippa. I had forgot your riches, and I thought How lost you were ! Tortesa. How lost ? Zippa. Your qualities, Which far outweigh your treasure, thrown away On one who does not love you ! Tortesa. Thrown away ? Zippa. Is it not so to have a gallant shape, And no eye to be proud on't — to be full Of all that makes men dangerous to women, And marry where you're scorned ? Tortesa. There's reason there! Zippa. You're wise in meaner riches ! You have gold, 'Tis out at interest ! — lands, palaces, They bring in rent. The gifts of nature only Worth to you, signor, more than all your gold, Lie profitless and idle. Your fine stature — Tortesa. Why — so, so ! Zippa. Speaking eyes — Tortesa. Ay, passable ! Zippa. Your voice, uncommon musical — Tortesa. Nay, there, I think you may be honest ! Zippa. And you look, In all points lofty, like a gentleman ! (Aside — That last must choke him !) Tortesa. You've a judgment, Zippa, That makes me wonder at you ! We are both Above our breeding — I have often thought so — And loved you — but to-day so more than ever, That my revenge must have drunk up my life, To still sweep over it. But when I think Upon that proud lord and his scornful daughter — I say not you're forgot — myself am lost — And love and memory with me ! I must go And visit her ! I'll see you to the door — Come, Zippa, come! Zippa. (Aside — I, too, will visit her ! You're a brave signor, but against two women You'll find your wits all wanted !) Tortesa. Come away ! I must look on my bargain ! my good bargain ! Ha ! ha ! my bargain .' [Exeunt. SCENE II. [The painter's studio. Angelo painting. Tomaso in the foreground, arranging a meager repast.] Tomaso. A thrice-picked bone, a stale crust, and — ex- cellent water ! Will you to breakfast, Master Angelo ? Jlngelo. Look on this touch, good Tomaso, if it be not life itself — (draws him before his easel). Now, what thinkest thou ? Tomaso. Um — fair ! fair enough ! Angelo. No more ? Tomaso. Till it mend my breakfast, I will never praise it! Fill me up that outline, Master Angelo! (Takes up the naked bone.) Color me that water ! To what end dost thou dabble there ? Angelo. I am weary of telling thee to what end. Have patience, Tomaso ! Tomaso (coaxingly). Wouldst thou but paint the gold- smith a sign, now, in good fair letters ! Angelo. Have I no genius for the art, thinkst thou ? Tomaso. Thou ! ha ! ha ! Angelo. By thy laughing, thou wouldst say no ! Tomaso. Thou a genius ! Look ! Master Angelo ! Have I not seen thee every day since thou wert no bigger than thy pencil ? Angelo. And if thou hast ? Tomaso. Do I not know thee from crown to heel ? Dost thou not come in at that door as I do ? sit down in that chair as I do ? eat, drink, and sleep, as I do ? Dost thou not call me Tomaso, and I thee Angelo ? Angelo. Well ! Tomaso. Then how canst thou have genius ? Are there no marks ? Would I clap thee on the back, and say good morrow ? Nay, look thee ! would I stand here telbng thee in my wisdom what thou art, if thou wert a genius ? Go to, Master Angelo ! I love thee well, but thou art compre- hensible ! Angelo. But thinkst thou nev«r of my works. Tomaso ? TORTESA, THE USURER. 867 1'omaso. Thy works ! Do I not grind thy paints ? Do I not see thee take up thy palette, place thy foot thus, and dab here, dab there ? I tell thee thou hast never done stroke yet, 1 could not take the same brush and do after thee. Thy works, truly ! Angelo. How thinkst thou would Donatello paint, if he were here ? Tomaso. Donatello ! I will endeavor to show thee ! (Takes the palette and brush with a mysterious air.) The picture should be there ! His pencil (throws downAngelo's pencil, and seizes a broom), his pencil should be as long as this broom ! He should raise it thus — with his eyes rolling thus — and with his body thrown back thus ! Angelo. What then ? Tomaso. Then he should see something in the air — a sort of a hm — ha — r — r — rrrr — (you understand). And he first strides off here and looks ut it — then he strides off there and looks at it — then he looks at his long brush — then he makes a dab ! dash ! flash ! (Makes three strokes across Angela's picture.) Angelo. Villain, my picture! Tomaso! (Seizes his svmrd.) With thy cursed broom thou hast spoiled a pic- ture Donatello could ne'er have painted ! Say thy prayers, for, by the Virgin ! — Tomaso. Murder! murder! help! Oh, my good mas- ter ! Oh, my kind master ! Angelo. Wilt say thy prayers, or die a sinner? Quick! or thou'rt dead ere 'tis thought on ! Tomaso. Help ! help ! mercy ! oh, mercy ! [Enter the duke hastily, followed by Falcone and attendants.'] Duke. Who calls so loudly ? What ! drawn swords at mid-day ! Disarm him ! Now what mad-cap youth art thou? (To Angelo.) To fright this peaceful artist from his toil ? Rise up, sir ! (To Tomaso.) Angelo. (Aside — Could my luckless star have brought The duke here at no other time !) Duke (looking round on the pictures). Why, here's Matter worth stumblinsj on ! By Jove, a picture Of admirable work ! Look here, Falcone ! Didst think there was a hand unknown in Florence Could lay on color with a skill like this ! Tomaso (aside to Angelo). Didst thou hear that ? (Duke and Falcone admire the pictures in dumb show.) Angelo. (Aside to Tomaso— -The palette's on thy thumb — Swear 'tis thy work !) Tomaso. Mine, master ? Angelo. Seest thou not The shadow of my fault will fall upon it While I stand here a culprit ? The duke loves thee As one whom he has chanced to serve at need, And kindness mends the light upon a picture, I know that well ! Falcone (to Tomaso). The duke would know your name, sir ! Tomaso (as Angelo pulls him by the sleeve). Tom — Angelo, my lord ! Duke (to Falcone). We've fallen here Upon a treasure ! Falcone. Twas a lucky chance That led you in, my lord ! Duke. I blush to think That I might ne'er have found such excellence But for a chance cry thus ! Yet now 'tis found I'll cherish it, believe me. Falcone. 'Tis a duty Your grace is never slow to. Duke. I've a thought — If you'll consent to it ? Falcone. Before 'tis spoken, My gracious liege ! Duke. You know how well my dutchess Loves your fair daughter. Not as maid of honor Lost to our service, but as parting child, We erieve to lose her. Falcone. My good lord ! Duke. Nay, nay — She is betrothed now, and you needs must wed her ! My thought was, to surprise my grieving dutchess With a resemblance of your daughter, done By this rare hand, here. 'Tis a thought well found, You'll say it is ! Falcone (hesitating). Your grace is bound away On a brief journey. Were't not best put off Till our return ? Duke (laughing). I see you fear to let The sun shine on your rosebud till she bloom Fairly in wedlock. But this painter, see you Is an old man, of a poor, timid bearing, And may be trusted to look close upon her. Come, come ! I'll have my way ! Good Angelo, (To Tomaso.) A pen and ink ! And you, my lord Falcone ! Write a brief missive to your gentle daughter T' admit him privately. Falcone. I will, duke. [Writes. Angelo (Aside — Now Shall I go back or forward ? If he writes Admit this Angelo, why I am he, And that rare phoenix, hidden from the world, Sits to my burning pencil. She's a beauty Without a parallel, they say in Florence. Her picture '11 be remembered ! Let the duke Rend me with horses, it shall ne'er be said I dared not pluck at Fortune !) Tomaso (aside to Angelo). Signor ! Angelo. (Hush ! Betray me, and I'll kill thee !) Duke. Angelo ! Angelo (aside to Tomaso). Speak, or thou diest. Tomaso (to the duke). My lord ! Duke. Thou hast grown old In the attainment of an excellence Well worth thy time and study. The clear touch, Won only by the patient toil of years, Is on your fair works yonder. Tomaso (astonished). Those, my lord ! Duke. I shame I never saw them until now, But here's a new beginning. Take this missive From Count Falcone to his peerless daughter. I'd have a picture of her for my palace. Paint me her beauty as I know you can, And as you do it well, my favor to you Shall make up for the past. Tomaso (as Angelo pulls his sleeve). Your grace is kind ! Duke. For this rude youth, name you his punishment! (Turns to Angelo.) His sword was drawn upon an unarmed man. He shall be fined, or, as you please, imprisoned. Speak ! Tomaso. If your grace would bid him pay — Duke. What sum ? Tomaso. Some twenty flasks of wine, my gracious liege, If it so please you. 'Tis a thriftless servant I keep for love I bore to his dead father. But all his faults are nothing to a thirst That sucks my cellar dry ! Duke. He's well let off! Write out a bond to pay of your first gains The twenty flasks ! Angelo. Most willingly, my liege. [Write*. Duke (to Tomaso). Are you content ? Tomaso. Your grace, I am ! Duke. Come then ! Once more to horse ! Nay, nay, man, look not black ! Unless your daughter were a wine flask, trust me There's no fear of the painter ! Falcone. So I think, And you shall rule me. 'Tis the roughest shell Hides the good pearl. Adieu, sir ! (to Tomaso.) [Exeunt duke and Falcone. (Angelo seizes the missive from Tomaso, and strides up and down the stage, reading it exultingly. After looking at hi?n a moment, Tomaso does the same with the bond for the twenty f asks. Angelo. Give me the letter ! Oh, here is golden opportunity— The ladder at my foot, the prize above, And angels beckoning upward. I will paint 868 TORTESA, THE USURER. A picture now, that in the eyes of men Shall live like loving daylight. They shall cease To praise it for the constant glory of it. There's not a stone built in the palace wall But shall let through the light of it, and Florence Shall be a place of pilgrimage for ever To see the work of low-born Angelo. Oh that the world were made without a night, That I could toil while in my fingers play This dexterous lightnins, wasted so in sleep. I'll out, and muse how I shall paint this beauty, So, wile the night away. [Exit. Tomaso {coming forward with his bond). Prejudice aside, that is a pleasant-looking piece of paper ! (Holds it off, and regards it with a pleased air.) Your bond to pay, now is an ill-visaged rascal — you would know him across a church — nay — with the wind fair, smell him a good league ! But this has, in some sort, a smile. It is not like other pa- per. It reads mellifluously. Your name is in the right end of it for music. Let me dwell upon it ! (Unfolds it and reads) " I, Tomaso, promise to pay" — stay! " I,Tomaso — I, Tomaso, promise to pay to Angelo, my master, twenty flasks of wine .'" (Rubs his eyes, and turns the note over and over.) There's a damnable twist in it that spoils all. "/ Tomaso" — why that's 1. And "J promise to pay" — Now, I promise no such thing ! (Turns it upside down, and after trying in vain to alter the reading, tears it in two.) There are some men that can not write ten words in their own language without a blunder. Out, filthy scraps. If the plover's daughter have not compassion upon me, I die of thirst ! I'll seek her out ! A pest on ignorance ! (Pulls his hat sulkily over his eyes, and ivalks off.) SCENE III. [An apartment in the Falcone Palace, Angelo discovered listening.'] Angelo. Did I hear footsteps ? (He listens.) Fancy- plays me tricks In my impatience for this lovely wonder ! That window's to the north ! The light falls cool. I'll set my easel here, and sketch her — Stay ! How shall I do that ? Is she proud or sweet ? Will she sit silent, or converse and smile ? Will she be vexed or pleased to have a stranger Pry through her beauty for the soul that's in it? Nay, then I heard a footstep — she is here ! (Enter Isabella, reading her father's missive.) Isabella. " The duke would have your picture for the dutchess Done by this rude man, Angelo ! Receive him With modest privacy, and let your kindness Be measured by his merit, not his garb." Angelo. Fair lady ! Isabella. Who speaks ? Jlngelo. Angelo ! Isabella. You've come, sir, To paint a dull face, trust me ! -Angelo. (Aside— Beautiful, Beyond all dreaming !) Isabella. I've no smiles to show you, Not ev'n a mock one ! Shall I sit ? Jlngelo. ' No, lady ! I'll steal your beauty while you move, as well ! So you but breathe, the air still brings to me That which outdoes all pencilling. Isabella (walking apart). His voice Is not a rude one. What a fate is mine, When ev'n the chance words on a poor youth's tongue, I Contrasted with the voice which I should love, Seems rich and musical ! Jlngelo (to himself as he draws). How like a swan, Drooping his small head to a lily-cup, She curves that neck of pliant ivory ! I'll paint her thus ! Isabella. (Aside— Forgetful where he is, He thinks aloud. This is, perhaps, the rudeness My father feared might anger me.) Angelo. What color Can match the clear red of those glorious lips ? Say it were possible to trace the arches. Shaped like the drawn bow of the god of love-- How teint them, after ? Isabella. Still, he thinks not of me, But murmurs to his picture. 'Twere sweet praise, Were it a lover Avhispering it. I'll listen, As I walk, still. Jlngelo. They say, a cloudy veil Hangs ever at the crystal-gate of heaven, To bar the issue of its blinding glory. So droop those silken lashes to an eye Mortal could never paint ! Isabella. There's flattery, Would draw down angels ! Jlngelo. Now, what alchymy Can mock the rose and lily of her cheek ! I must look closer on't ! (Advancing.) Fair lady, please you, I'll venture to vour side. Isabella. Sir ! Jlngelo (examining her cheek). There's a mixture Of white and red here, that defeats my skill. If you'll lbrgive me, I'll observe an instant, How the bright blood and the transparent pearl Melt to each other ! Isabella (receding from him). You're too free, sir. Angelo (with surprise). Madam ! Isabella. (Aside — And yet, I think not so. He must look on it, To paint it well.) Angelo. Lady ! the daylight's precious ! Pray you, turn to me ! In my study, here, I've tried to fancy how that ivory shoulder Leads the white light off from your arching neck, But can not, for the envious sleeve that hides it. Please you, displace it ! (Raises his hand to the sleeve.) Isabella. Sir, you are too bold ! Angelo. Pardon me, lady ! Nature's masterpiece Should be beyond your hiding, or my praise! Were you less marvellous, I were too bold j But there's a pure divinity in beauty, Which the true eye of art looks on with reverence, Though, like the angels, it were all unclad ! You have no right to hide it ! Isabella. How ? No right ! Angelo. 'Tis the religion of our art, fair madam ! That, by oft looking on the type divine In which we first were moulded, men remember The heaven they're born to ! You've an errand here, To show how look the angels. But, as Vestals Cherish the sacred fire, yet let the priest Light his lamp at it for a thousand altars, So is your beauty unassoiled, though I Ravish a copy for the shut-out world ! Isabella. (Aside — Here is the wooing that should win a maid ! Bold, yet respectful — free, yet full of honor ! I never saw a youth with gentler eyes ; I never heard a voice that pleased me more ; Let me look on him ?) (Enter Tortesa, unperceived.) Angelo. In a form like yours, All parts are perfect, madam ! yet, unseen, Impossible to fancy. With your leave I'll see your hand ungloved. Isabella (removing her glove). I have no heart To keep it from you, signor ! There it is ! Angelo (taking it in his own). Oh God! how beauti- ful thy works may be ! Inimitably perfect ! Let me look Close on the tracery of these azure veins ! With what a delicate and fragile thread They weave their subtle mesh beneath the skin, And meet, all blushing, in these rosy nails ! How soft the texture of these tapering fingers ! How exquisite the wrist ! How perfect all ! (Tortesa rushes forward.) Tortesa. Now have I heard enough ! Why, what are you, To palm the hand of my betrothed bride With this licentious freedom ? TORTESA, THE USURER. 869 (Angelo turns composedly to his work.) And you, madam ! With a first troth scarce cold upon your lips — Is this your chastity ? Isabella. My father's roof Is over me ! I'm not your wife ! Tortesa. Bought ! paid for ! The wedding toward — have I no right in you ? Your father, at my wish, bade you be private ; Is this obedience ? Isabella. Count Falcone's will Has, to his daughter, ever been a law ; This, in prosperity — and now, when chance Frowns on his broken fortunes, I were dead To love and pity, were not soul and body Spent for his smallest need ! I did consent To wed his ruthless creditor for this ! I would have sprung into the sea, the grave, As questionless and soon ! My troth is yours ! But I'm not wedded yet, and, till I am, The hallowed honor that protects a maid Is round me, like a circle of bright fire ! A savage would not cross it — nor shall you ! I'm mistress of my presence. Leave me, sir ! Tortesa. There's a possession of some lordly acres Sold to Falcone for that lily hand ! The deed's delivered, and the hand's my own ! I'll see that no man looks on't. Isabelta. Shall a lady Bid you begone twice ? Tortesa. Twenty times, if't please you ! {She looks at Angelo, who continues tranquilly painting.) Isabella. Does he not wear a sword ? Is he a coward, That he can hear this man heap insult on me, And ne'er fall on him / Tortesa. Lady ! to your chamber ! I have a touch to give this picture, here, But want no model for't. Come, come. (Offers to take her by the arm.) Isabella. Stand back ! Now, will he see this wretch lay hands on me, And never speak ? He can not be a coward ! No, no ! some other reason — not a coward ! I could not love a coward ! Tortesa. If you will, Stay where you're better missed — 'tis at your pleasure ; I'll hew your kisses from the saucy lips Of this bold painter— look on't, if you will ! And first, to mar his picture ! (He strikes at the canvass, when Angelo suddenly draws, attacks and disarms him.) Angelo. Hold ! What wouldst thou ? Fool ! madman ! dog ! What wouldst thou with my pic- ture ? Speak !— But thy life would not bring back a ray Of precious daylight, and I can not waste it ! Begone ! begone ! (Throws Tortesa's sword from the window, and returns to his picture.) I'll back to paradise ! 'Twas this touch that he marred ! So ! fair again ! Tortesa (going out). I'll find you, sir, when I'm in cooler blood ! And, madam, you ! or Count Falcone for you, Shall rue this scorn ! [Exit. Isabella (looking at Angelo). Lost in his work once more! I shall be jealous of my very picture ! Yet one who can forget his passions so — Peril his life, and, losing scarce a breath, Turn to his high, ambitious toil again — Must have a heart for whose belated waking Queens might keep vigil ! Angelo. Twilight falls, fair lady ! I must give o'er ! Pray Heaven, the downy wing Of its most loving angel guard your beauty ! Good night ! (Goes out with a low reverence.) Isabella. Good night ! (She looks after him a moment, and then walks thoughtfully off the stage.) ACT II. [Tomaso discovered silting at his supper, with a bottle of water before him.] Tomaso. Water ! (Sips a little with a grimace.) I think since the world was drowned in it, it has tasted of sinners. The pious throat refuses it. Other habits grow pleasant with use — but the drinking of water lessens the liking of it. Now, why should not some rivers run wine ? There are varieties in the eatables — will any wise man tell me why there should be but one drinkable in nature — and that water ? My mind's made up — it's the curse of transgression. (A rap at the dooi.) Come in ! [Enter Zippa, with a basket and bottle.] Zippa. Good even, Tomaso ! Tomaso. Zippa ! I had a presentiment — Zippa. What ! of my coming ? Tomaso. . No— of thy bottle ! Look ! I was stinting my- self in water to leave room ! Zippa. The reason is superfluous. There would be room in thee for wine, if thou wert drowned in the sea. Tomaso. God forbid ! Zippa. What— that thou shouldst be drowned ? Tomaso. No — but that being drowned, I should have room for wine. Zippa. Why, now ? — why ? Tomaso. If I had room for wine, I should want it— and to want wine in the bottom of the sea, were a plague of Sodom. Zippa. Where's Angelo ? Tomaso. What's in thy bottle ? Show ! Show ! Zippa. Tell me where he is— what he has done since I yesterday — what thought on— what said— how he has ' iooked, and if he still loves me ; and when thou art thirsty with truth-telling— (dry work for such a liar as thou art), — thou shalt learn what is in my bottle ! Tomaso. Nay — learning be hanged ! Zippa. So says the fool ! Tomaso. Speak advisedly ! Was not Adam blest till lie knew good and evil ? Zippa. Right for once. Tomaso. Then he lost Paradise by too much learning. Zippa. Ha ! ha ! Hadst thou been consulted, we should still be there ! Tomaso. Snug ! I would have had my inheritance in a small vineyard ! Zippa. Tell me what I ask of thee. Tomaso. Thou shalt have a piece of news for a cup of wine — pay and take — till thy bottle be dry ! Zippa. Come on, then ! and if thou must lie, let it be flattery. That's soonest forgiven. Tomaso. And last forgotten ! Pour out ! (She pours a cup full, and gives him.) The duke was here yester- day. — Zippa. Lie the first ! Tomaso. And made much of my master's pictures. Zippa. Nay— that would have made two good lies. Thou'rt prodigal of stuff! Tomaso. Pay two glasses, then, and square the reckon- ing! Zippa. Come ! Lie the third ! Tomaso. What wilt thou wager it's a he, that Angelo is painting a court lady for the dutchess t Zippa. Oh Lord! Take the bottle ! They say there s truth in wine— but as truth is impossible to thee, drink thyself, at least, down to probabilities ! Tomaso. Look vou there ! When was virtue encour- raged ? Here have' I been telling God's truth, and it goes for a lie. Hang virtue ! Produce thy cold chicken, and I'll tell thee a lie for the wings and two for the side-bones and breast. (Offers to take the chicken.) .„ . Zippa. Slav ! stay ! It's for thy master, thou glutton ! Tomaso. Who's ill a-bed, and forbid meat. (Angelo enters.) I would have told thee so before, but feared to grieve thee. (She would have a lie !) Zippa (starting up). Ill ! Angelo ill ! Is he very ill, | good Tomaso ? 870 TORTESA, THE USURER. Tomaso. Very ! (Seizes the chicken, as Angelo claps him on the shoulder.) jlngelo. Will thy tricks never end ? Tomaso. Ehem ! ehem ! (Thrusts the chicken into his pocket.) jlngelo. How art thou, Zippa ? Zippa. Well, dear Angelo ! (Giving him her hand.) And thou wert not ill, indeed ! jlngelo. Never better, by the test of a true hand ! I have done work to-day, I trust will be remembered ? Zippa. Is it true it's a fair lady ? jlngelo. A lady with a face so angelical, Zippa, that — Zippa. That thou didst forget mine ! jlngelo. In truth, I forgot there was such a Ihing as a world, and so forgot all in it. I was in heaven ! Tomaso. (Aside, as he picks the leg of the chicken — Prosperity is excellent whitewash, and her love is an old score !) Zippa (bitterly). I am glad thou wert pleased, Angelo ! — very glad ! Tomaso. (Aside — Glad as an eel to be fried.) Zippa. (Aside — " In heaven," was he ! If I pay him not that, may my brains rot ! By what right, loving me, is he "in heaven" with another ?) Tomaso. (Aside — No more wine and cold chicken from that quarter !) Zippa. (Aside — Tortesa loves me, and my false game may be played true. If he wed not Falcone's daughter, he will wed me, and so I am revenged on this fickle Angelo ! I have the heart to do it !) Angelo. What dost thou muse on, Zippa ? Zippa. On one I love better than thee, signor ! Angelo. What, angry ? (Seizes his pencil.) Hold there till I sketch thee ! By Jove, thou'rt not half so pretty when thou'rt pleased ! Zippa. Adieu, signor ! your mockery will have an end ! (Goes out with an angry air.) Angelo. What! gone? Nay, I'll come with thee, if thou'rt in earnest ! What whim's this ? (Takes up his hat.) Ho, Zippa! (Follows in pursuit.) Tomaso (pulls the chicken from his pocket). Come forth last of the chickens ! She will ne'er forgive him, and so ends the succession of cold fowl! One glass to its memory, and then to bed! (Drinks, and takes up the candle.) A woman is generally unsafe — but a jealous one spoils all confidence in drink. [Exit, muttering. [An Apartment in the Falcone Palace. Enter Servant, showing in Zippa.] Servant. Wait here, here, if 't please you ! Zippa. Thanks ! (Exit Servant.) My heart misgives me! Tis a bold errand I am come upon — And I a stranger to her ! Yet, perchance She needs a friend — the proudest does sometimes — And mean ones may be welcome. Look ! she comes ! Isabella. You wished to speak with me ? Zippa. I did — but now My memory is crept into my eyes; I can not think for gazing on your beauty ! Pardon me, lady ! Isabella. You're too fair yourself To find my face a wonder. Speak ! Who are you? Zippa. Zippa, the glover's daughter, and your friend ! Isabella. My friend ? Zippa. I said so. You're a noble lady And I a lowborn maid — yet I have come To offer you my friendship. Isabella. This seems strange ! Zippa. I'll make it less so, if you'll give me leave. Isabella. You'll please me ! Zippa. Briefly — for the time is precious To me as well as you — I have a lover, A true one, as I think, who yet finds boldness To seek your hand in marriage. Isabella. How ? We're rivals ! Zippa Tortesa loves me, and for that I'd wed him. Yet I'm not sure I love him more than you — And you must hate him. Isabella. So far freely spoken — What was your thought in coming to me now ? Zippa. To mar your match with him, and so make mine! Isabella. Why, free again ! Yes, as you love him not 'Tis strange you seek to wed him ! Zippa. Oh no, madam ! Woman loves once unthinkingly. The heart Is born with her first love, and new to joy, Breathes to the first wind its delicious sweetness, But gets none back ! So comes its bitter wisdom ! When next we think of love, 'tis who loves us I I said Tortesa loved me ! Isabella. You shall have him With all my heart ! See — I'm your friend already ! And friends are equals. So approach, and tell me, What was this first love like, that you discourse So prettily upon ? Zippa. (Aside — Dear Angelo ! 'Twill be a happiness to talk of him !) I loved a youth, kind madam ! far beneath The notice of your eyes, unknown and poor. Isabella. A handsome youth ? Zippa. Indeed, I thought him so ! But you would not. I loved him out of pity ; No one cared for him. Isabella. Was he so forlorn ? Zippa. He was our neighbor, and I knew his toil Was almost profitless ; and 'twas a pleasure To fill my basket from our wasteful table, And steal, at eve, to sup with him. Isabella (smiling). Why, that Was charity, indeed ! He loved you for it — Was't not so ? Zippa. He was like a brother to me — The kindest brother sister ever had. I built my hopes upon his gentleness : He had no other quality to love. Th' ambitious change— so do the fiery-hearted : The lowly are more constant. Isabella. And yet, he Was after all, a false one ? Zippa. Nay, dear lady ! I'll check my story there ! 'T would end in anger, Perhaps in tears. If I am not too bold, Tell me, in turn, of all your worshippers — Was there ne'er one that pleased you ? Isabella. (Aside— Now could I Prate to this humble maid, of Angelo, Till matins rang again !) My gentle Zippa! I have found all men prompt to talk of love, Save only one. I will confess to you, For that one could I die ! Yet, so unlike Your faithless lover must I draw his picture, That you will wonder how such opposites Could both be loved of women. Zippa. Was he fair, Or brown ? Isabella. In truth, I marked not his complexion. Zippa. Tall ? Isabella. That I know not. Zippa. Well — robust, or slight ? Isabella. I can not tell, indeed ! I heard him speak — Looked in his eyes, and saw him calm and angered — And see him now, in fancy, standing there — Yet know not limb or feature ! Zippa. You but saw A shadow, lady ! Isabella. Nay — I saw a soul ! His eyes were light with it. The forehead lay Above their fires in calm tranquillity, As the sky sleeps o'er thunder-clouds. His look Was mixed of these — earnest, and yet subdued — Gentle, yet passionate — sometimes half god-like In its command, then mild and sweet again, Like a stern angel taught humility ! Oh ! when he spoke, my heart stole out to him ! There was a spirit-echo in his voice — A sound of thought — of under-playing music — TORTESA, THE USURER. 871 As if, before it ceased in human ears, The echo was caught up in fairy-land ! Zippa. Was he a courtier, madam ? Isabella. He's as lowly In birth and fortunes, as your false one, Zippa ! Yet rich in genius, and of that ambition, That he'll outlast nobility with fame. Have you seen such a man ? Zippa. Alas ! sweet lady ! My life is humble, and such wondrous men Are far above my knowing. I could wish To see one ere I died ! Isabella. You shall, believe me ! But while we talk of lovers, we forget In how brief time you are to win a husband. Come to my chamber, Zippa, and I'll see How with your little net you'll snare a bird Fierce as this rude Tortesa ! Zippa. We will find A way, dear lady, if we die for it ! Isabella. Shall we ? Come with me, then ! [Exeunt. [An apartment in the Falcone Palace. Tortesa alone await- ; ing the return of the Count.] Tortesa (musing). There are some luxuries too rich i for purchase. Your soul, 'tis said, will buy them, of the devil— Money's too poor ! What would I not give, now, That I could scorn what I can hate and ruin ! Scorn is the priceless luxury ! In heaven, The ansjel's pity. They are blessed to do so ; For, pitying, they look down. We do't by scorn ! There lies the privilege of noble birth ! The jewel of that bloated toad is scorn ! You may take all else from him. You— being mean- May get his palaces — may wed his daughter — Sleep in his bed— have all his peacock menials Watching your least glance, as they did "my lord's;" And, well-possessed thus, you may pass him by On his own horse ; and while the vulgar crowd Gape at your trappings, and scarce look on him — He, in his rass, and starving for a crust — You'll feel his scorn, through twenty coats-of-mail, Hot as a sun-stroke ! Yet there's something for us ! Th' archangel fiend, when driven forth from heaven, Put on the serpent, and found sweet revenge Trailing his slime through Eden ! So will I ! [Enter Falcone booted and spurred.] Falcone. Good morrow, signor, Tortesa. Well-arrived, my lord ! How sped your riding ? Falcone. Fairly ! Has my daughter Left you alone ? Tortesa. She knows that I am here. Nay— she'll come presently ! A word in private, Since we're alone, my lord ! Falcone. I listen, signor ! Tortesa. Your honor, as I think, outweighs a bond ? Falcone. 'Twas never questioned. Tortesa. On y° ur simple word, And such more weight as hangs upon the troth Of a capricious woman, I gave up A deed of lands to you. Falcone. You did. Tortesa. - To be Forfeit, and mine again — the match not made ? Falcone. How if you marred it ? Tortesa. I? I'm not a boy ! What I would yesterday, I will to-day ! I'm not a lover — Falcone. How, so near your bridal, And not a lover ? Shame, sir ! Tortesa. My lord count, You take me for a fool ! Falcone. Is't like a fool To love a high-born lady, and your bride ? Tortesa. Yes ; a thrice-sodden fool— if it were I ! I'm not a mate for her— you know I am not ! You know, that, in her heart, your haughty daughter Scorns me — ineffably ! Falcone. You seek occasion To slight her, signor ! Tortesa. No ! I'll marry her If all the pride that cast down Lucifer Lie in her bridal-ring ! But, mark me still ! I'm not one of your humble citizens, To bring my money-bags and make you rich — That, when we walk together, I may take Your shadow for my own ! These limbs are clay — Poor, common clay, my lord ! And she that weds me, Comes down to my estate. Falcone. By this you mean not To shut her from her friends ? Tortesa. You'll see your daughter By coming to my house — not else ! D'ye think I'll have a carriage to convey my wife Where she will hear me laughed at ?— buy fine horses To prance a measure to the mocking jeers Of fools that ride with her ? Nay— keep a table Where I'm the skeleton that mars the feast ! No, no — no, no ! Falcone. (Aside— With half the provocation, I would, ere now, have struck an emperor ! But baser pangs make this endurable. I'm poor— so patience !) What was it beside You would have said to me ? Torlesa. But this : Your daughter Has, in your absence, covered me with scorn ! We'll not talk of it— if the match goes on, I care not to remember it ! (Aside — She shall — And bitterly !) Falcone. (Aside— My poor, poor Isabella ! The task was too much !) Tortesa. There's a cost of feeling — You may not think it much — I reckon it A thousand pounds per day— in playing thus The suitor to a lady crammed with pride ! I've writ you out a bond to pay me for it ! See here !— to pay me for my shame and pains, If I should lose your daughter for a wife, A thousand pounds per day— dog cheap at that ! Sign it, my lord, or give me back my deeds, And traffic cease between us ! Falcone. Is this earnest, Or are you mad or trifling ? Do I not Give you my daughter with an open hand ? Are you betrothed, or no ? [Enter a Servant.] Who's this ? Servant. A page Sent from the duke. Falcone. Admit him ! [Enter Page, with a letter.] Page. For my lord, The Count Falcone. Tortesa. (Aside — In a moment more I would have had a bond of such assurance Her father on his knees should bid me take her. (Looking at Falcone, who smiles as he reads.) What glads him now ?) Falcone. You shall not have the bond ! Tortesa. No ? (jlside— Here's a change ! What hint from duke or devil Stirs him to this ?) My lord, 'twere best the bridal Took place upon the instant. Is your daughter Ready within ? . ■ . ..__- . Falcone. You'll never wed my daughter ! [Enter Isabella.] Tortesa. My lord ! Falcone. She's fitlier mated ! Here she comes ! My lofty Isabella ! My fair child ! How dost thou, sweet r Isabella (embracing him). Come home, and I not Art well ? I see thou art ! Hast ridden hard ? My dear, dear father ! Falcone. Give me breath to tell thee Some better news, my loved one ! 872 TORTESA, THE USURER. Isabella. Nay, the joy To see you back again 's enough for now. There can be no news better, and for this Let's keep a holyday twixt this and sunset ! Shut up your letter and come see my flowers, And hear my birds sing, will you '/ Falcone. Look, my darling, Upon this first ! {Holds up the letter.) Isabella. No ! you shall tell me all You and the duke did — where you slept, where ate, Whether you dreamed of me — and, now I think on't, Found you no wild-flowers as you crossed the mountain ? Falcone. My own bright child ! {Looks fondly upon her.) Tortesa. (Jlside — 'Twill mar your joy, my lord ! To see the glover's daughter in your palace, And your proud daughter houseless !) Falcone (to Isabella). You'll not hear The news I have for you ! Tortesa (advancing). Before you tell it, I'll take my own again ! Isabella. (Jlside — Tortesa here !) (courtesies.) I crave your pardon, sir ; I saw you not ! (Oh hateful monster ! — Jlside.) Falcone. Listen to my news, Signor Tortesa ! It concerns you, trust me ! Isabella, (jlside — More of this hateful marriage !) Tortesa. Tell it briefly, My time is precious ! Falcone. Sir, I'll sum it up In twenty words. The duke has information, By what means yet I know not, that my need Spurs me to marry an unwilling daughter. He bars the match ! — redeems my lands and palace, And has enriched the young Count Julian, For whom he bids me keep my daughter's hand ! Kind, royal master ! (Reads the note to himself.) Isabella. (Jlside — Never !) Tortesa. (Jlside, with suppressed rage — 'Tis a lie ! He's mad, or plays some trick to gain the time — Or there's a woman hatching deviltry ! We'll see.) (Looks at Isabella.) Isabella. (Jlside — I'll die first ! Sold and taken back, Then thrust upon a husband paid to take me ! To save my father I have weighed myself, Heart, hand, and honor, against so much land ! — I — Isabella ! I'm nor hawk nor hound, And, if I change my master, I will choose him ! Tortesa. (Jlside — She seems not over-pleased !) Page. Your pardon, count ! I wait your answer to the duke ! Falcone. My daughter Shall give it you herself. What sweet phrase have you, Grateful and eloquent, to bear your thanks ? Speak, Isabella ! Isabella. (Jlside — There's but one way left ! Courage, poor heart, and think on Angelo !) (Advances suddenly to Tortesa.) Signor Tortesa ! Tortesa. Madam ! Isabella. There's my hand ! Is't yours, or no ? Tortesa. There was a troth between us ! Isabella. Is't broke ? Tortesa. I have not broke it ! Isabella. Then why stand you Mute as a statue, when 'tis struck asunder Without our wish or knowledge ? Would you be Half so indifferent had you lost a horse ? Am I worth having ? Tortesa. Is my life worth having ? Isabella. Then are you robbed ! Look to it ! Falcone. Is she mad ! Tortesa. You'll marry me ? Isabella. I will ! Falcone. By Heaven, you shall not ! What, shall my daughter wed a leprosy — A bloated money-canker ? Leave her hand ! Stand from him, Isabella ! Isabella. Sir ! you gave me This "leper" for a hnsband, three days gone; I did not ask my heart if I could love him ! I took him with the meekness of a child, Trusting my father ! I was shut up for him — Forced to receive no other company — My wedding-clothes made, and the match proclaimed Through Florence ? Falcone. Do you love him ? — tell me quickly ! Isabella. You never asked me that when I was bid To wed him ! Falcone. I am dumb ! Tortesa. Ha ! ha ! well put ! At him again, 'Bel ! Well ! I've had misgivings That there was food in me for ladies' liking. I've been too modest ! Isabella. (Jlside — Monster of disgust !) Falcone. My daughter ! I would speak with you in private ! Signor ! you'll pardon me. Isabella. Go you, dear father ! I'll follow straight. [Exit Falcone. Tortesa. (Jlside — She loiters for a kiss ! They're all alike ! The same trick woos them all !) Come to me, 'Bel ! Isabella (coldy). To-morrow at this hour You'll find the priest here, and the bridesmaids waiting. Till then, adieu ! [Exit. ' Tortesa. Hola ! what, gone ? Why, 'Bella ! Sweetheart ! I say ! So ! She would coy it with me ! Well, well, to-morrow ! 'Tis not long, and kisses Pay interest by seconds ! There's a leg ! As she stood there, the calf showed handsomely. Faith 'lis a shapely one ! I wonder now, Which of my points she finds most admirable ! Something I never thought on, like as not, We do not see ourselves as others see us. 'Twould not surprise me now, if 'twere my beard — My forehead ! I've a hand indifferent white ! Nay, I've been told my waist was neatly turned. We do not see ourselves as others see us ! How goes the hour? I'll home and fit my hose To tie trim for the morrow. (Going out.) Hem ! the door's Lofty. I like that ! I will have mine raised. Your low door makes one stoop ! [Exit ACT III. [Jlngelo discovered in his studio, painting upon the picture of Isabella.'] Jlngelo. My soul is drunk with gazing on this face, I reel and faint with it. In what sweet world Have I traced all its lineaments before ? I know them. Like a troop of long-lost friends, My pencil wakes them with its eager touch, And they spring up, rejoicing, oh, I'll gem The heaven of Fame with my irradiate pictures, Like kindling planets — but this glorious one Shall be their herald, like the evening star, First-lit, and lending of its fire to all. The day fades — but the lamp burns on within me. My bosom has no dark, no sleep, no change To dream or calm oblivion. I work on When my hand stops. The light teints fade. Good night, Fair image of the fairest thing on earth, Bright Isabella ! (Leans on the rod with which he guides his hand, and remains looking at his picture.) [Enter Tomaso, with two bags of money.] Tomaso. For the most excellent painter, Angelo, two hundred ducats ! The genius of my master flashes upon me. The duke's greeting and two hundred ducats ! If I should not have died in my blindness but for this eye-water, may I be hanged. (Looks at Jlngelo.) He is studying his picture. What an air there is about him — lofty, unlike the vulgar ! Two hundred ducats ! (Observes Jlngelo' s hat on the table.) It strikes me now that I can see genius in that hat. It is not like a common hat. Not like a bought TORTESA, THE USURER. 873 hat. The rim turns to the crown with an intelligence. (Weighs the ducats in his haul.) Good heavy ducats. What it is to refresh the vision ! I have looked round, ere now, in this very chamber, and fancied that the furniture expressed a melancholy dulness. When he hath talked to me of his pictures, I have seen the chairs smile. Nay, as if ashamed to listen, the very table has looked foolish. Now, all about me expresseth a choice peculiarity — as you would say, how like a genius to have such chairs ! What a puinter-like table ! Two hundred ducats ! Angelo. What hast thou for supper ? Tomaso. Two hundred ducats, my great master ! Angelo (absently). A cup of wine ! Wine, Tomaso ! [Sits doicn. Tomaso. (So would the great Donatello have sat upon his chair! His less thus ! His hand falling thus !) (Aloud.) There is naught in the cellar but stale beer, my illustrious master! (Now, it strikes me that his shadow is unlike another man's — of a pink tinge, somehow — yet that may be fancy.) Angelo. Hast thou no money ? Get wine, I say ! Tomaso. I saw the duke in the market place, who called me Angelo (we shall rue that trick yet), and with a gracious smile asked me if thou hadst paid the twenty flasks. Angelo (not listening). Is there no wine ? Tomaso. I said to his grace, no ! Pray mark the sequel ; In pity of my thirst, the duke sends me two — ahem ! — one hundred ducats. Here they are ! Angelo. Didst thou say the wine was on the lees ? Tomaso. With these fifty ducats we shall buy nothing but wine. (He will be rich with fifty.) Angelo. What saidst thou ? Tomiso. I spoke of twenty ducats sent thee by the duke. Wilt thou finger them ere one is spent ? Angelo. I asked thee for wine — I am parched. Tomaso. Of these ten ducats, thinkst thou we might ipend one for a flask of better quality ? Angelo. Lend me a ducat, if thou hast one, and buy vine presently. Go ! Tomaso. I'll lend it thee, willingly, my illustrious master. .t is my last, but as much mine as thine. Angelo. Go! Go! Tomaso. Yet wait ! There's a scrap of news. Fal- tone's daughter marries Tortesa, the usurer ? To-morrow is the bridal. Angelo. How ? Tomaso. I learned it in the market-place ! There will be rare doings ! Angelo. Dog ! Villain ! Thou hast lied ! Thou dar'st not say it ! Tomaso. Hey ! Art thou mad ? Nay — borrow thy ducat where thou canst ! I'll spend that's my own. Adieu, master ! (Exit Tomaso, and enter Tortesa with a complacent smile.) Angelo. Ha ! — well arrived ! [Draws his sword. Tortesa. Good eve, good Signor Painter. Angelo. You struck me yesterday. Tortesa. I harmed your picture — For which I'm truly sorry — but not you ! Angelo. Myself! myself! My picture is myself ! What are my bones that rot ? Is this my hand ? — Is this my eye ? Tortesa. I think so. Angelo. No, I say ! The hand and eye of Angelo are there ! There — there — (Points to his pictures) — immortal ! Wound me in the flesh, I will forgive you upon fair excuse. 'Tis the earth round me — 'tis my shell — my house ; But in my picture lie my brain and heart — My soul — my fancy. For a blow at these There's no cold reparation. Draw, and quickly ! I'm in the mood to fight it to the death. Stand on your guard ! Tortesa. I will not fight with you. Angelo. Coward ! Tortesa. I'm deaf. Angelo. Feel then ! ^Tortesa catches the blow as he strikes him, and coldly flings back hit han-l.\ Tortesa. Nay, strike me not ! I'll call the guard, and cry out like a woman. Angelo (turning from him contemptuously). What scent of dog's meat brought me such a cur ! It is a whip I want, and not a sword. Tortesa (folding his arms). I have a use for life so far above The stake you quarrel for, that you may choose Your words to please yourself. They'll please me, too. Yet you're in luck. I killed a man on Monday For spitting on my shadow. Thursday's sun Will dry the insult, though it light on me ! Angelo. Oh, subtle coward ! Tortesa. I am what you will, So I'm alive to marry on the morrow ! 'Tis well, by Jupiter ! Shall you have power With half a breath to pluck from me a wife ! Shall I, against a life as poor as yours — Mine being precious as the keys of heaven — Set all upon a throw, and no odds neither? I know what honor is as well as you ! I know the weight and measure of an insult — What it is worth to take or fling it back. I have the hand to fight if I've a mind; And I've a*heart to shut my sunshine in, And lock it from the scowling of the world, Though all mankind cry " Coward !" Angelo. Mouthing braggart ! Tortesa. I came to see my bride, my Isabella ! Show me her picture ! (Advances to look for it.) Angelo. Do but look upon't, By heaven's fair light, I'll kill you ! [Draws. Tortesa. Soft, she's mine ! She loves me ! and with that to make life precious, I have the nerve to beat back Hercules, If you were he ! Angelo (attacking him). Out ! Out ! thou shameless liar ! Tortesa (retreating on the defence). Thy blows and words fall pointless ! Nay thou'rt mad ! But I'll not harm thee for her picture's sake ! Angelo. Liar ! she hates thee ! (Beats him off the stage and returns, closing the door violently.) So ! once more alone ! (Takes Isabella's picture from the easel, and replaces it with Zippa's.) Back to the wall, deceitful loveliness ! And come forth, Zippa, fair in honest truth ! I'll make thee beautiful ! (Takes his pencil and palette to paint.) [A knock is heard.] Who knocks ! come in! [Enter Isabella, disguised as a monk.] Isabella. Good morrow, signor ! Angelo (turning sharply to the monk). There's a face, old monk, Might stir your blood— ha ? You shall tell me, now, Which of these heavenly features hides the soul ! There is one ! I have worked upon the picture Till my brain's thick — I can not see like you. Where is't ? Isabella. (Aside — A picture of the glover's daughter ! What does he, painting her .') Is't for its beauty You paint that face, sir ? Angelo. Yes — the immortal beauty ! Look here ! What see you in that face ? The skin — Isabella. Brown as a vintage-girl's ! Angelo. The mouth — Isabella. A good one To eat and drink withal ! Angelo. The eye is— Isabella. Grey ! You'll buy a hundred like it for a penny ! Angelo. A hundred eyes ? Isabella. No. Hazel-nuts ! Angelo. The forehead — How find you that ? Isabella. Why, made to match the rest ! I'll cut as good a face out of an apple — For all that's fair in it ! 874 TORTESA, THE USURER. Angela. Oh, Heaven, how dim Were God's most blessed image did all eyes Look on't like thine ! Is't by the red and white — Is't by the grain and tincture of the skin — Is't by the hair's gloss, or the forehead's arching, You know the bright inhabitant ? I tell thee The spark of their divinity in some Lights up an inward face — so radiant, The outward lineaments are like a veil Floating before the sanctuary — forgot In glimpses of the glory streaming through ! Isabella {mournfully). Is Zippa's face so radiant ? Angelo. Look upon it! You see thro' all the countenance she's true ! Isabella. True to you, signor ! Jlngelo. To herself, old man ! Yet once, to tne too ! (Dejectedly.) Isabella. (Aside — Once to him ! Can Zippa Have dared to love a man like Angelo ! I think she dare not. Yet if he, indeed, Were the inconstant lover that she told of — The youth who was " her neighbor !") Please you, sig- nor! Was that fair maid your neighbor ? Angelo. Ay — the best ! A loving sister were not half so kind ! I never supped without her company. Yet she was modest as an unsunned lily, And bounteous as the constant perfume of it. Isabella. (Aside — 'Twas he, indeed ! Oh ! what a fair outside Has falsehood there ! Yet stay ! If it were I Who made him false to her ? Alas, for honor, I must forgive him — tho' my lips are weary With telling Zippa how I thought him perjured ! I can not trust her more — I'll plot alone !) (Turns, and takes her own picture from the wall.) Isabella. What picture's this, turned to the wall, good signor ? Angelo. A painted lie ! Isabella. A lie ! — nay — pardon me ! I spoke in haste. Methought 'twas like a lady I'd somewhere seen ! — a lady — Isabella ! But she was true ! Angelo. Then 'tis not she I've drawn. For that's a likeness of as false a face As ever devil did his mischief under. Isabella. And yet methinks 'tis done most lovingly ! ^ou musl have thought it fair to dwell so on it. Angelo. Your convent has the picture of a saint Tempted, while praying, by the shape of woman. The painter knew that woman was the devil, Yet drew her like an angel ! Isabella. (Aside — It is true He praised my beauty as a painter may — No more — in words. He praised me as he drew Feature by feature. But who calls the lip To answer for a perjured oath in love ? How should love breathe — how not die, choked for ut- terance, If words were all. He loved me with his eyes. He breathed it. Upon every word he spoke Hung an unuttered worship that his tongue Would spend a life to make articulate. Did he not. take my hand into his own ? And, as his heart sprang o'er that bridge of veins, Did he not call to mine to pass him on it — Each to the other's bosom ! I have sworn To love him — wed him — die with him — and yet He never heard me — but he knows it well, And, in his heart holds me to answer for it. I'll try once more to find this anger out. If it be jealousy — why — then, indeed, He'll call me black, and I'll forgive it him ! For then my errand's done, and I'll away To play the cheat out that shall make him mine.) (Turns to Angelo.) Fair signor, by your leave, I've heard it said That in the beauty of a human face The God of Nature never writ a lie. Angelo. 'Tis likely true ! Isabella. That howsoe'er the features Seem fair at first, a blemish on the soul Has its betraying speck that warns you of it. Angelo. It should be so, indeed ! Isabella. Nay — here's a face Will show at once if it be true or no. At the first glance 'tis fair! Angelo. Most heavenly fair ! Isabella. Yet, in the lip, methinks, there lurks a shadow — Something — I know not what — but in it lies The devil you spoke of ! Angelo. Ay — but 'tis not there ! Not in her lip ! Oh, no ! Look elsewhere for it, 'Tis passionately bright — but lip more pure Ne'er passed unchallenged through the gate of heaven. Believe me, 'tis not there '• Isabella. How falls the light ? I see a gleam not quite angelical About the eye. Maybe the light falls wrong — Angelo (drawing her to another position). Stand here ! Dy'e see it now ? Isabella. 'Tis just so here ! Angelo (sweeps the air with his brush). There's some curst cobweb hanging from the wall That blurs your sight. Now, look again ! Isabella. I see it Just as before. Angelo. What ! still ! You've turned an eyelash Under the lid. Try how it feels with winking. Is't clear ? Isabella. 'Twas never clearer ! Angelo. Then, old man ! You'd best betake you to your prayers apace ! For you've a failing sight, death's sure forerunner — And can not pray long. Why, that eye's a star, Sky-lit as Hesperus, and burns as clear. If you e'er marked the zenith at high noon, Or midnight, when the blue lifts up to God — Her eye's of that far darkness ! Isabella (smiling aside). Stay — 'tis gone ! A blur was on my sight, which passing from it, I see as you do. Yes — the eye is clear. The forehead only, now I see so well, Has in its arch a mark infallible Of a false heart beneath it. Angelo. Show it to me ! Isabella. Between the eyebrows there ! Angelo. I see a tablet Whereon the Savior's finger might have writ The new commandment. When I painted it I plucked a just-blown lotus from the shade, And shamed the white leaf till it seemed a spot — The brow was so much fairer ! Go ! old man, Thy sight fails fast. Go ! go ! Isabella. The nostril's small — Is't not ? Angelo. No ! Isabella. Then the cheek's awry so near it, It makes it seem so ! Angelo. Out ! thou cavilling fool ! Thou'rt one of those whose own deformity Makes all thou seest look monstrous. Go and pray For a clear sight, and read thy missal with it. Thou art a priest, and livest by the altar, Yet dost thou recognise God's imprest seal, Set on that glorious beauty ! Isabella. (Aside — Oh, he loves me ! Loves me as genius loves — ransacking earth And ruffling the forbidden flowers of Heaven To make celestial incense of his praise. High-thoughted Angelo ! He loves we well ! With what a gush of all my soul I thank him — But he's to win yet, and the time is precious.) (To Angelo.) Signor, I take my leave. Angelo. Good day, old man ! And, if thou com'st again, bring new eyes with thee, Or thou wilt find scant welcome. Isabella. You shall like These same eyes well enough when next I come ! [Exit. TORTESA, THE USURER. 875 Angelo. A crabbed monk ! (Turns the picture to the wall again.) I'll hide this fatal picture From sight once more, for till he made me look on't I did not know my weakness. Once more, Zippa, I'll dwell on thy dear face, and with my pencil Make thee more fair than life, and try to love thee ! (A knock.) Come in ! [Enter Zippa.] Zippa. Good day, Signor Angelo ! Angelo. "Why, Zippa ! is't thou ? is't thou, indeed ! Zippa. Myself, dear Angelo ! Angelo. Art well ? Zippa. Ay ! Angelo. Hast been well ! Zippa. Ay ! Angelo. Then why, for three long days, hast thou not been near me ? Zippa. Ask thyself, Signor Angelo ! I have — a hundred times since I saw thee. And there was no answer ? None! Then shouldst thou have asked the picture on Nay — I understand thee not. Did I not find thee feasting thy eyes upon it ? True — thou didst ? And art thou not enamored of it — wilt tell n Angelo. Zippa. Angelo. Zippa. thy easel ! Angelo. Zippa. Angelo. Zippa. truly ? Angelo (smiling). 'Tis a fair face! Zippa. Oh, unkind Angelo ! Angelo. Look on't ! and, seeing its beauty, if thou dost not forgive me, I will never touch pencil to it more. Zippa. I'll neither look on't, nor forgive thee. But if thou wilt love the picture of another better than mine, thou shalt paint a new one ! (As she rushes up to dash it from the easel, Angelo catches her arm, and points to the picture. She looks at it, and, seeing her own portrait, turns and falls on his bosom.) My picture ! and I thought thee so false ! Dear, dear Angelo ! I could be grieved to have wronged thee, if joy would give me time. But thou'lt forgive me ? Angelo. Willingly ! Willingly ! Zippa. And thou lovest me indeed, indeed ! Nay, answer not ! I will never doubt thee more ! Dear Angelo ! Yet — (Suddenly turns from Angelo wilh a troubled air.) Angelo. What ails thee now ? (Zippa takes a rich veil from under her cloak, throws it over her head, and looks on the ground in embarrassed silence.) Dost thou stand there for a picture of Silence ? Zippa. Alas ! dear Angelo ! When I said I forgave and loved thee, I forgot that I was to be married to-mor- row ! Angelo. Married ! to whom ? Zippa. Tortesa, the usurer ! Angelo. Tortesa, saidst thou ? Zippa. Think not ill of me, dear Angelo, till I have told thee all ! This rich usurer, as thou knowest, would for ambition marry Isabella de Falcone. Angelo. He would, I know. Zippa. But for love, he would marry your poor Zippa. Angelo. Know you that ? Zippa. He told me so the day you angered me with the praises of the court lady you were painting. What was her name, Angelo? Angelo (composedly). I — I'll tell thee presently ! Go on ! Zippa. Well— jealous of this unknown lady, I vowed, if it broke my heart, to wed Tortesa. He had told me Isabella scorned him. I flew to her palace. She heard me, pitied me, agreed to plot with me that I might wed the usurer, and then told me in confidence that there was a poor youth whom she loved and would fain marry. Angelo (in breathless anxiety). Heard you his name ? Zippa. No ! But as I was to wed the richer and she the poorer, she took my poor veil, and gave me her rich one. Now canst thou read the riddle ? Angelo. (Aside — A " poor youth !" What if it is I ? he " loves and will wed him !" Oh ! if it were I !) Zippa. Nay, dear Angelo! b» not so angry ! I do not love him ! Wny — thou know**! I do noi ' Angelo. (Aside— It may be— nay— it must ! But I will know ! If not, I may as well die of that as of this jealous madness.) (Prepares to go out.) Zippa. Angelo ! where go you ? Forgive me, dear Angelo ! I swear to thee I love him not ! Angelo. I'll know who that poor youth is, or suspense will kill me ! (Goes out hastily, without a look at Zippa. She stands silent and amazed for a moment.) Zippa. Why cares he to know who that poor youth is ! "Suspense will kill him ?" Stay ! a light breaks on me ! If Isabella were the court lady whom he painted ! If it were Angelo whom she loved ! He is a poor youth !— The picture ! The picture will tell all ! (Hurriedly turns round several pictures turned to the wall, and- lust of all, Isabella's. Looks at it an instant, and exclaims) — Isabella ! (She drops on her knees, overcome with grief, and the scene closes.) [A Lady's dressing-room in the Falcone Palace. Isabella discovered wilh two vials.] Isabella. Here is a draught will still the breath so nearly, The keenest-eyed will think the sleeper dead, — And this kills quite. Lie ready, trusty friends, Close by my bridal veil ! I thought to baffle My ruffian bridegroom by an easier cheat; But Zippa's dangerous, and if I fail In mocking death, why death indeed be welcome ! (Enter Zippa angrily.) Zippa. Madam ! Isabella. You come rudely ! Zippa. If I offend you more, I still have cause — Yet as the "friend" to whom you gave a husband, (So kind you were !) I might come unannounced ! Isabella. What is this anger ? Zippa. I'm not angry, madam ! Oh no ! I'm patient ! Isabella. What's your errand, then ? Zippa. To give you back your costly bridal veil, And take my mean one. Isabella. 'Twas your wish to change. 'Twas you that plotted we should wed together — You in my place, and I in yours — was't not ? Zippa. Oh, Heaven ! you're calm ! Had you no plotting, too ? You're noble born, and so your face is marble — I'm poor, and if my heart aches, 'twill show through. You've robbed me, madam ! Isabella. 1 1 Z ippa . Of gold — of j e wels ! — Gold that would stretch the fancy but to dream of, And gems like stars ! Isabella. You're mad ! Zippa. His love was worth them ! Oh, what had you to do with Angelo ? Isabella. Nay — came you not to wed Tortesa freely ? What should you do with Angelo ? Zippa. You mock me ! You are a woman though your brow's a rock, And know what love is. In a ring of fire The tortured scorpion stings himself, to die — But love will turn upon itself, and grow Of its own fang immortal ! IsabeUa. Still, you left him To wed another ? Zippa. 'Tis for that he's mine ! What makes a right in anything, but pain ? The diver's a?ony beneath the sea Makes the peril his— pain gets the miser's gold— The noble's coronet won first in battle, Is his by bleeding for't— and Angelo Is ten times mine because I gave him up— Crushing pit heart to do so! 876 TORTESA, THE USURER. Isabella. Now you plead Against yourself. Say it would kill me quite, If you should wed him? Mine's the greater pain, And so the fairer title ! Zippa {falling on her knees). I implore you Love him no more ! Upon my knees I do ! He's not like you ! Look on your snow-white arms ! They're formed to press a noble to your breast — Not Angelo ! He's poor — and fit for mine ! You would not lift a beggar to your lips ! — You would not lean from your proud palace-stairs To pluck away a heart from a poor girl Who has no more on earth ! Isabella. I will not answer ! Zippa. Think what it is ! Love is to you like music — Pastime ! You think on't when the dance is o'er — When there's no revel — when your hair's unbound, And its bright jewels with the daylight pale — You want a lover to press on the hours That lag till night again ! But I — Isabella. Stop there ! I love him better than you've soul to dream of! Zippa (rising). Tia false ! How can you ? He's to you a lamp That shines amid a thousand just as bright ! What's one amid your crowd of worshippers ? The glow-worm's bright — but oh ! 'tis wanton murder To raise him to the giddy air you breathe, And leave his mate in darkness ! Isabella. Say the worm Soar from the earth on his own wing — what then ? Zippa. Fair reasons can not stay the heart from breaking. You've stolen my life, and you can give it back ! Will you — for Heaven's sweet pity ? Isabella. Leave my presence ! (Jlside — I pity her — but on this fatal love Hangs my life, too.) What right have such as you To look with eyes of love on Angelo ? Zippa. What right ? Isabella. I say so. Where's the miracle Has made you fit to climb into the sky — A moth — and look with love upon a star ! Zippa (mournfully). I'm lowly born, alas ! Isabella. Your souPs low born ! Forget your anger and come near me, Zippa, For e'er I'm done you'll wonder ! Have you ever, When Angelo was silent, marked his eye — How, of a sudden, as 'twere touched with fire, There glows unnatural light beneath the lid ? Zippa. I have — I've thought it strange ! Isabella. Have you walked with him When he has turned his head, as if to list To music in the air — but you heard none — And presently a smile stole through his lips, And some low words, inaudible to you, Fell from him brokenly. Zippa. Ay — many times ! Isabella. Tell me once more ! Hast never heard him speak With voice unlike his own — so melancholy, And yet so sweet a voice, that, were it only The inarticulate moaning of a bird, The very tone of it had made you weep ? Zippa. 'Tis strangely true, indeed ! Isabella. Oh, Heaven ! You say so — Yet never dreamt it was a spirit of light Familiar with you ! Zippa. How ? Isabella. Why, there are seraphs Who walk this common world, and want, as we do — Here, in our streets — all seraph, save in wings — The look, the speech, the forehead like a god — And he the brightest ! Zippa (incredulously). Nay — I've known him long ! Isabella. Why, listen ! There are worlds, thou doubting fool ! Farther to flee to than the stars in heaven, Which Angelo can walk as we do this — And does — while you look on him ! Zippa. Angelo ! Isabella. He's never at your side one constant minute Without a thousand messengers from thence ! (0 block ! to live with him, and never dream on't !) He plucks the sun's rays open like a thread, And knows what stains the rose and not the lily — He never sees a flower but he can tell Its errand on the earth — (they all have errands — You know not that, oh dulness !) He sees shapes Flushed with immortal beauty in the clouds — (You've seen him mock a thousand on his canvass, And never wondered !) Yet you talk of love ! What love you ? Zippa. Angelo — and not a dream ! Take you the dream and give me Angelo ! You may talk of him till my brain is giddy — But oh, you can not praise him out of reach Of my true heart. — He's here, as low as I ! — Shall he not wed a woman, flesh and blood ? Isabella. See here ! There was a small, earth-creep- ing mole, Born by the low nest of an unfledged lark. They lived an April youth amid the grass — The soft mole happy, and the lark no less, And thought the bent sky leaned upon the flowers. By early May the fledgling got his wings ; And, eager for the light, one breezy dawn, Sprang from his nest, and buoyantly away, Fled forth to meet the morning. Newly born Seemed the young lark, as in another world Of light, and song, and creatures like himself, He soared and dropped, and sang unto the sun, And pitied everything that had not wings — But most the mole, that wanted even eyes To see the light he floated in ! Zippa. Yet still She watched his nest, and fed him when he came — Would it were Angelo and I indeed ! Isabella. Nay, mark ! The bird grew lonely in the sky. There was no echo at the height he flew ! And when the mist lay heavy on his wings His song broke, and his flights were brief and low — And the dull mole, that should have sorrowed with him, Joyed that he sang at last where she could hear ! Zippa. Why, happy mole again ! Isabella. Not long ! — for soon He found a mate that loved him for his icings ! One who with feebler flight, but eyes still on him, Caught up his dropped song in the middle air, And, with the echo, cheered him to the sun ! Zippa. (Jside — I see ! I see ! His soul was never mine ! I was the blind mole of her hateful story ! No, no ! he never loved me ! True, we ate, And laughed, and danced together — but no love — He never told his thought when he was sad ! His folly and his idleness were mine — No more ! The rest was locked up in his soul ! I feel my heart grow black !) Fair madam, thank you ! You've told me news ! (She shall not have him neither, If there's a plot in hate to keep him from her ! I must have room to think, and air to breathe — I choke here !) Madam, the blind mole takes leave ! Isabella. Farewell ! [Exit Zippa. (Takes the vial from the table.) And now, come forth, sweet comforter ! I'll to my chamber with this drowsy poison, And from my sleep I wake up Angelo's, Or wake no more ! [Exit. ACT IV. [Ji sumptuous Drawing-room in the Falcone Palace. Guests assembled for the bridal. Lords and ladies promenading, and a band of musicians in a gallery ai the side of the stage.] 1st Lord. Are we before the hour ? or does the bride- groom Affect this tardiness? TORTESA, THE USURER. 877 2d Lord. We're bid at twelve. 1*/ Lord. 'Tis now past one. At least we should have music To wile the time. (To the musicians.) Strike up, good fellows ! 2d Lord. Why, A man who's only drest on holydays Makes a long toilet. Now, I'll warrant he Has vexed his tailor since the break of day Hoping to look a gentleman. D'ye know him? 1st Lord. I've never had occasion ! 2d Lord. Poor Falcone ! He'd give the best blood in his veins, I think, To say as much ! 1st Lord. How's this ! I see no stir Amons; the instruments. Will they not play ? 2d Lord. Not they! I asked before you, and they're bid To strike up when they hear Tortesa's horses Prance thro' the gateway — not a note till then ! (Music plays.) 1st Lord. He comes ! (Enter Tortesa, dressed over-richly.) Tortesa. Good day, my lords ! 15/ Lord. Good day ! 2d Lord. The sky Smiles on you, signor ! 'Tis a happy omen They say, to wed in sunshine. Tortesa. Why, I think The sun is not displeased that I should wed. 1st Lord. We're happy, sir, to have you one of us. Tortesa. What have I been till now ! I was a man Before I saw your faces ! Where's the change ? Have I a tail since ? Am I grown a monkey ? (Lords whisper together, and walk from him.) Oh for a mint to coin the world again And melt the mark of gentleman from clowns ! It puts me out of patience ! Here's a fellow That by much rubbing against better men, Has, like a penny in a Jew's close pocket, Stolen the color of a worthier coin, And thinks he rings like sterling courtesy! Yet look ! he can not phrase you a good morrow, Or say he's sad, or glad, at anything, But close beneath it, rank as verdigris, Lies an insulting rudeness ! He was "happy" That I should now be one of them. Now! Now ! As if, till now, I'd been a dunghill grab, And was but just turned butterfly ! (A Lady advances.) Lady. Fair sir, I must take leave to say, were you my brother, You've made the choice that would have pleased me best ! Your bride's as good as fair. Tortesa. I thank you, madam ! To be your friend, she should be — good and fair ! (The Lady turns, and walks up the stage.) How like a drop of oil upon the sea Falls the apt word of woman ! So ! her " brother !" Why, there could be no contumely there ! I misrht, for all I look, have been her brother, Else her first thought had never coupled us. I'll pluck some self-contentment out of that! (Enter suddenly the count's secretary.) How now ! Secretary. I'm sent, sir, with unwelcome tidings. Tortesa. Deliver them the quicker ! Secretary. I shall be Too sudden at the slowest. Tortesa. Pshaw ! what is't ? I'm not a girl ! Out with your news at once ! Are my ships lost ? Secretary (hesitatingly). The lady Isabella — Tortesa. What ? run away ! Secretary. Alas, irood sir ! she's dead ! Tortesa. Bah ! just as dead as I ! Why, thou dull blockhead ! Can not a lady faint, but there must be A trumpeter like thee to make a tale on't ? Secretary. Pardon me, signor, but — Tortesa. Who sent you hither 1 Secretary. My lord the count. Tortesa (turning quickly aside). He put it in the bond, That if by any humor of my own, Or accident that sprang not from himself, Or from his daughter's will, the match were marred, His tenure stood intact. If she were dead — I don't believe she is — but if she were, By one of those strange chances that do happen If she were dead, I say, the silly fish That swims with safety among hungry sharks To run upon the pin-hook of a boy, Might teach me wisdom ! (The secretary comes forward, narrating eagerly to the company.) Now, what says this jackdaw ? Secretary. She had refused to let her bridesmaids in— Lady. And died alone ? Secretary. A trusty serving maid Was with her, and none else. She dropped away, The girl said, in a kind of weary sleep. 1st Lord. Was no one told of it? Secretary. The girl watched by her, And thought she slept still ; till, the music sounding, She shook her by the sleeve, but got no answer; And so the truth broke on her! Tortesa. (Aside— Oh indeed ! The plot is something shallow !) 2d Lord. Might we go And see her as she lies ! Secretary. The holy father Who should have married her, has checked all comers, And staying for no shroud but bridal dress, He bears her presently to lie in state In the Falcone chapel. Tortesa. (Aside — Worse and worse — They take me for a fool !) 1st Lord. But why such haste ? Secretary. I know not. JU. Let us to the chapel ! Tortesa. (Drawing his sword, and stepping beliveen them and the door.) Hold! Let no one try to pass ! 1*/ Lord. What mean you, sir ! Tortesa. To keep you here till you have got your story Pat to the tongue — the truth on't and no more ! Lady. Have you a doubt the bride is dead, good signor ? Tortesa. A palace, see you, has a tricky air! When I am told a tradesman's daughter's dead, I know the coffin holds an honest corse, Sped in sad earnest, to eternity. But were I stranger in the streets to-day, And heard that an ambitious usurer, With lands and money having bought a lady High-born and fair, she died before the bridal, I would lay odds with him that told me of it She'd rise again— before the resurrection. So stand back all ! If I'm to fill to-day The pricking ears of Florence with a lie, The bridal guests shall tell the tale so truly, And mournfully, from eyesight of the corse, That even the shrewdest listener shall believe, And I myself have no misgiving of it. Look ! where they come ! (Door opens to funereal music, and the body of Isabella is borne in, preceded by a monk, and followed by Falcone and mourners. Tortesa confronts the Monk.) What's this you bear away ? Monk. Follow the funeral, but stay it not. Tortesa. If thereon lie the lady Isabella, I ask to see her face before she pass ! Monk. Stand from the way, my son, it can not be ! Tortesa. What right have you to take me for a stone ? See what you do ! I stand a bridegroom here. A moment since the joyous music playing Which promised me a fair and blushing bride. 878 TORTESA, THE USURER. The flowers are fragrant, and the guests made welcome; And while my heart beats at the opening door, And eagerly I look to see her come, — There enters in her stead a covered corse ! And when I ask to look upon her face — One look before my bride is gone for ever, — You find it in your hearts to say me nay ! — Shame ! Shame ! Falcone (fiercely). Lead on ! Tortesa. My lord, by covenant — By contract writ and sealed — by value rendered — By her own promise — nay, by all, save taking, This body's mine ! I'll have it set down here And wait my pleasure ! See it done, my lord, Or I will, for you ! Monk (to the bearers). Set the body down ! Tortesa (takes the veil from the face). Come hither all ! Nay, father, look not black ! If o'er the azure temper of this blade There come no mist, when laid upon her lips, I'll do a penance for irreverence, And fill your sack with penitential gold ! Look well ! (Puts his sword blade to Isabella's lips, and after watching it with intense interest a moment, drops on his knees beside the bier.) She's dead indeed ! Lead on ! [The procession starts again to funereal music, and Tortesa follows last.) {A Street in Florence. The funereal music dxjing away in the distance. Enter Zippa, straining her eyes to look after it.] Zippa. 'Tis Angelo that follows close behind, Laying his forehead almost on her bier! His heart goes with her to the grave ! Oh Heaven! Will not Tortesa pluck out of his hand The tassel of that pall ? (She hears a footstep.) Stay, stay, he's here ! (Enter Tortesa, musing. Zippa stands aside.) Tortesa. I've learned to-day a lord may be a Jew, I've learned to-day that grief may kill a lady; Which touches me the most I can not say, For I could fight Falcone for my loss, Or weep, with all my soul, for Isabella. (Zippa touches him on the shoulder.) Zippa. How is't the signor follows not his bride ? Tortesa. I did — but with their melancholy step I fell to musing, and so dropped behind — But here's a sight I have not seen to-day ! (Takes her hand smilingly.) Zippa. What's that ? Tortesa. A friendly face, my honest Zippa ! Art well ? What errand brings thee forth ? Zippa. None, signor ! But passing by the funeral, I stopped, Wondering to see the bridegroom lag behind, And give his sacred station next the corse To an obtrusive stranger. Tortesa. Which is he ? Zippa (points after Angelo). Look there ! Tortesa. His face is buried in his cloak. Who is't ? Zippa. Not know him ? Had I half the cause That you have, to see through that mumming cloak The shadow of it would speak out his name ! Tortesa. What mean you ? Zippa. Angelo ! What right has he To weep in public at her funeral ? Tortesa. The painter ? Zippa. Ay — the peasant Angelo ! Was't not enough to dare to love her living, But he must fling the insult of his tears Betwixt her corse and you ? Are you not moved ? Will you not go and pluck him from your place ? Tortesa. No, Zippa ! for my spirits are more apt To grief than anger. I've in this half hour Remembered much I should have thought on sooner, — For, had I known her heart was capable Of breaking for the love of one so low, I would have done as much to make her his As I have done, in hate, to make her mine. She loved him, Zippa ! (Walks back in thought.) Zippa, (Aside — Oh to find a way To pluck that fatal beauty from his eyes ! 'Tis twilight, and the lamp is lit above her, And Angelo will watch the night out there, Gazing with passionate worship on her face. But no ! he shall not !) T'ortesa (advancing). Come ! what busy thought Vexes your brain now ? Zippa. Were your pride as quick As other men's to see an insult, signor ! I had been spared the telling of my thought. Tortesa. You put it sharply ! Zippa. Listen ! you are willing That there should follow, in your place of mourner, A youth, who, by the passion of his grief, Shows to the world he's more bereaved than you ! Tortesa. Humph ! well ! Zippa. Still follows he without rebuke; And in the chapel where she lies to-night, Her features bared to the funereal lamp, He'll, like a mourning bridegroom, keep his vigil, As if all Florence knew she was his own. Tortesa. Nay, nay ! he may keep vigil if he will ! The door is never locked upon the dead Till bell and mass consign them to the tomb ; And custom gives the privilege to all To enter in and pray — and so may he. Zippa. Then learn a secret which I fain had spared My lips the telling. Question me not how, But I have chanced to learn, that Angelo, To-night, will steal the body from its bier ! Tortesa. To-night ! What ! Angelo ! Nay, nay, good Zippa ! If he's enamored of the corse, 'tis there — And he may watch it till its shape decay, And holy church will call it piety. But he who steals from consecrated ground, Dies, by the law of Florence. There's no end To answer in't. Zippa. You know not, Angelo ! You think not with what wild, delirious passion A painter thirsts to tear the veil from beauty. He painted Isabella as a maid, Coy as a lily turning from the sun. Now she is dead, and, like a star that flew Flashing and hiding thro' some fleecy rack, But suddenly sits still in cloudless heavens, She slumbers fearless in his steadfast gaze, Peerless and unforbidding. O, to him She is no more your bride ! A statue fairer Than ever rose enchanted from the stone, Lies in that dim-lit chapel, clad like life. Are you too slow to take my meaning yet ? He can not loose the silken boddice there! He can not, there, upon the marble breast Shower the dark locks from the golden comb ! Tortesa. Hold ! Zippa. Are you moved ? Has he no end to compasj In stealing her away from holy ground ? Will you not lock your bride up from his touch ? Tortesa. No more ! no more ! I thought not of all this ! Perchance it is not true. But twilight falls, And I will home to doff this bridal gear, And, after, set a guard upon the corse. We'll walk together. Come ! Zippa. (Aside — He shall not see her !) {Exeunt [A Street in front of the Falcone Palace. Night. Enter Isabella in her white bridal dress. She falters to her father's door, and drops exhausted.'] TORTESA, THE USURER. »79 Isabella. My brain swims round! I'll rest a little here ! The night's cold, chilly cold. Would I could reach The house of Angelo! Alas! I thought He would have kept one night of vigil near me, Thinking me dead. Bear up, good heart ! Alas ! I faint ! Where am I / (Looks around.) 'Tis my father's door. My undirected feet have brought me home — And I must in, or die ! (foiocks with a painful effort.) So ends my dream ! Falcone (from above). Who's that would enter to a mourning house ? Isabella. Your daughter ! Falcone. Ha ! what voice is that I hear ? Isabella. Poor Isabella's. Falcone. Art thou come to tell me, That with unnatural heart I killed my daughter? Just Heaven ! thy retribution follows fast ! But oh, if holy and unnumbered masses Can give thee rest, perturbed and restless spirit ! Haunt thou a weeping penitent no more ! Depart ! I'll in, and pass the night in prayer ! So shalt thou rest ! Depart ! (He closes the window, and Isabella drops with her forehead to the marble stair.) (Enter Tomaso, with a bottle in his hand.) Tomaso. It's like the day after the deluge. Few stirring and nobody dry. I've been since twilight looking for somebody that would drink. Not a beggar athirst in all Florence ! I thought that, with a bottle' in my hand, I should be scented like a wild hoar. I expected drunkards would have come up out of the ground— like worms in a shower. When was I ever so difficult to find by a moist friend ? Two hundred ducats in good wine and no com- panion ! I'll look me up a dry dog. I'll teach him to tip- ple, and give up the fellowship of mankind. Isabella (faintly). Signor ! Toiwiso. Hey! What! Isabella. Help, signor ! Tomaso. A woman! Ehem ! (Approaching her.) Would you take somethine to drink by any chance I (Offers her the bottle.) No ? Perhaps you don't like to drink out of the bottle. Isabella. I perish of cold ! Tomaso. Stay ! Here's a cloak ! My master's out for the night, and you shall home with me. Come ! Perhaps when you get warmer, you'd like to drink a little. The wine's good ! (Assists her in rising.) By St. Genevieve, a soft hand ! Come ! I'll bring you where there's fire and a clean flagon. Isibella. To any shelter, sisrnor ! Tomaso. Shelter ! nay, a good house, and two hundred ducats in ripe wine. Steady now ! (This shall pass lor a good action ! If my master smell a rat, I'll face him out the woman's honest !) This way, now! Softly ! That's well stepped ! Come ! (Goes out, assisting her to walk.) ACT V. lAngelo's Studio. A full-length picture, in a large frame, stands on the floor against an easel, placed nearly in the centre of the room. Two curtains, so arranged as to cover the picture u-hen dravm together. Angelo stands in an imploring attitude near the picture, his pencil and palette in his hands, appealing to Isabella, who is partly turned from him in an attitude of refusal. The back wall of the room such as to form a natural ground for a picture.] Angelo. Hear me, sweet ! Isabella. No, we'll keep a holydav, And waste the hours in love and idleness. You shall not paint to-day, dear Angelo ! Anzelo. But listen ! Isabella. Nay, I'm jealous of my picture ; For all you give to that is stolen from me. I like not half a look that turns away Without an answer from the eves it met ! I care not you should see my lips' bright color Yet wait not for the breath that floats between ! Angelo. Wilt listen ? Isabella. Listen ? Yes ! a thousand years! But there's a pencil in those restless fingers, Which you've a trick of touching to your lips— And while you talk, my hand would do as well ! And if it's the same tale you told before Of certain vigils you forgot to keep, Look deep into my eyes^till it is done — For, like the children's Lady-in-the-well, I only hark because you're looking in ! Will you talk thus to me ? Angelo. Come night I will ! But close upon thy voice, sweet Isabella ! A boding whisper sinks into mine ear Which tells of sudden parting ! If 'tis false, — We shall have still a lifetime for our love, But if 'tis true, oh think that, in my picture, Will lie the footprint of an angel gone! Let me but make it clearer ! Isabella. Now. by Heaven ! I think thou lov'st the picture, and not me ! So different am I, that, did I think To lose thee presently, by death or parting, For thy least word, or look, or slightest motion — Nay, for so little breath as makes a sigh I would not take, to have it pass untreasured. The empire of a star ! (While she was uttering this reproach. Angelo has lookeu at her with delight, and touched his portrait with a few rapid strokes.) Angelo. My picture's done ! (Throws his pencil to the ground.) Break, oh enchanted pencil ! thou wilt never On earth, again, do miracle so fair! Oh Isabella ! as the dusky ore Waits for the lightning's flash to turn to gold — As the dull vapor waits for Hesperus, Then falls in dew-drops, and reflects a star — So waited I that fire upon thy lips, To make my masterpiece complete in beauty ! Isabella. This is ambition when I looked for love, The fancy flattering where the heart should murmur. I think you have no heart ! Angelo. Your feet are on it ! The heart is ever lowly with the famines, Tho' the proud mind sits level with a king ! I gave you long ago both heart and soul, But only one has dared to speak to you ! Yet, if astonishment will cure the dumb, Give it a kiss — Isabella (smiling). Lo ! Where it speaks at last ! (A loud knock is heard.) Hark, Angelo ! (He flies to the window, and looks out.) Angelo. Tortesa with a guard ! Alas ! that warning voice ! They've traced thee hither ! Lost ! Lost ! Isabella. (Hastily drawing the curtain, and disappearing behind it.) No ! no ! defend thy picture only, And all is well yet ! Angelo. Thee and it with life ! (Draws his sword, and stands before the curtain in an atti- tude of defiance. Enter Tortesa with officers and guard.) Whal is your errand ? Tortesa. I'm afraid, a sad one ! For, by your drawn sword and defying air, Your conscious thought foretells it. Angelo. Why, — a blow — (You took one, si?nor, when you last were here — If you've forgot it, well!) — but, commonly, The giver of a blow needs have his sword Promptly in hand. You'll pardon me ! Tortesa. I do ! For, if my fears are just, good signor painter ! You've not a life to spare upon a quarrel ! In brief, the corse of a most noble lady Was stolen last night from holy sanctuary. 880 TORTESA, THE USURER. I have a warrant here to search your house ; And, should the body not be found therein, I'm bid to see the picture of the lady — Whereon (pray, mark me !) if I find a trace Of charms fresh copied, more than may beseem The modest beauty of a living maid, I may arrest you on such evidence For instant trial ! Angelo. Search my house and welcome ! But, for my picture, though a moment's glance Upon its pure and hallowed loveliness Would give the lie to your foul thought of me, It is the unseen virgin of my brain ! And as th' inviolate person of a maid Is sacred ev'n in presence of the law, My picture is my own — to bare or cover ! Look on it at your peril ! Tortesa (to the guard). Take his sword. (The guards attack and disarm him.) Angelo. Coward and villain ! (Tortesa parts the curtains with his sword, and Angelo starts amazed to see Isabella, with her hands crossed on her breast, and her eyes fixed on the ground, standing motionless in the frame which had contained his picture. The tableau deceives Tortesa, who steps back to contem- plate what he supposes to be the portrait of his bride.) Tortesa. Admirable work ! 'Tis Isabella's self! Why, this is wondrous ! The brow, the lip, the countenance — how true ! I would have sworn that gloss upon the hair, That shadow from the lash, were nature's own — Impossible to copy ! (Looks at it a moment in silence.) Yet methinks The color on the cheek is something faint! Angelo (hurriedly). Step this way farther ! Tortesa (changing his position). Ay — 'tis better here ! The hand is not as white as Isabella's — But painted to the life ! If there's a feature That I would touch again, the lip, to me, Seems wanting in a certain scornfulness Native to her ! It scarcely marred her beauty. Perhaps 'tis well slurred over in a picture ! Yet stay ! I see it, now I look again ! How excellently well ! (Guards return from searching the house.) • What ! found you nothing ? Soldier (holding up Isabella's veil). This bridal veil — no more. Angelo (despairingly). Oh ! luckless star! Tortesa. Signor ! you'll trust me when I say I'm sorry With all my soul ! This veil, I know it well — Was o'er the face of that unhappy lady When laid in sanctuary. You are silent ! Perhaps you scorn to satisfy me here ! I trust you can — in your extremity ! But I must bring you to the duke ! Lead on ! Angelo. An instant ! Tortesa (courteously). At your pleasure ! Angelo (to Isabella, as he passes close to her). I conjure you By all our love, stir not ! Isabella (still motionless) . Farewell ! (Tortesa motions for Angelo to precede him with the guard, looks once more at the picture, and with a gesture expres- sive of admiration, follows. As the door closes, Isabella steps from the frame.) Isabella. I'll follow Close on thy steps, beloved Angelo ! And find a way to bring thee home again ! My heart is light, and hope speaks cheerily ! And lo ! bright augury ! — a friar's hood For my disguise ! Was ever omen fairer ! Thanks ! my propitious star ! (Envelops herself in the hood, and goes out hastily.) [A Street. Enter Tomaso, with his hat crushed and pulled sulkily over his eyes, his clothes dirty on one side, and other marks of having slept in the street. Enter Zippa from the other side, meeting him.~\ Zippa. Tomaso ! Is't thou ? Where's Angelo ? Tomaso. It is I, and I don't know ! Zippa. Did he come home last night ? Tomaso. " Did he come home !" Look there ! (Pulls off his hat and shows his dirty side.) Zippa. Then thou hast slept in the street ! Tomaso. Ay ! Zippa. And what has that to do with the coming home of Angelo ? Tomaso. What had thy father to do with thy having such a nose as his ! (Zippa holds up a ducat to him.) What ! gave thy mother a ducat ? — cheap as dirt ! Zippa. Blockhead, no ! I'll give thee the ducat if thou wilt tell me, straight on, what thou know'st of Angelo ! Tomaso. I will — and thou shalt see how charity is rewarded. Zippa. Begin ! — begin ! Tomaso. Last night, having prayed later than usual at vespers Zippa. Ehem ! Tomaso. I was coming home in a pious frame of mind — Zippa. And a bottle in thy pocket. Tomaso. No ! — in my hand. What should I stumble over Zippa. But a stone. Tomaso. A woman ! Zippa. Fie! what's this you're going to tell me? Tomaso. She was dying with cold. Full of Christian charity — Zippa. And new wine. Tomaso. Old wine, Zippa ! The wine was old ! Zippa. Well ! Tomaso. I took her home. Zippa. Shame ! — at thy years ? Tomaso. And Angelo being out for the night Zippa. There ! there ! you may skip the particulars. Tomaso. I say my own bed being in the garret Zippa. Well, well ! Tomaso. I put her into Angelo's. Zippa. Oh, unspeakable impudence! Didst thou do that? Tomaso. I had just left her to make a wine posset (for she was well nigh dead), when in popped my master, — finds her there — asks no questions, — kicks me into the street, and locks the door ! There's the reward of virtue ! Zippa. Did he not turn out the woman, too ? Tomaso. Not as I remember. Zippa. Oh worse and worse ! And thou hast not seen him since ? Tomaso. I found me a soft stone, said my prayers, and went to sleep. Zippa. And hast thou not seen him to-day? Tomaso. Partly, I have ! Zippa. Where ? Tell me quickly ! Tomaso. Give me the ducat. Zippa (gives it to him). Quick ! say on ! Tomaso. I have a loose recollection, that, lying on that stone Angelo called me by name. Looking up, I saw two Angelos, and two Tortesas, and soldiers with two spears each. (He figures in the air with his finger as if trying to remember.) Zippa. (Aside— Ha ! he is apprehended for the murder of Isabella! Say that my evidence might save his life! Not unless he love me !) What way went he, Tomaso ? (Tomaso points.) This way ? (Then has he gone to be tried before the duke.) Come with me, Tomaso ! Come. Tomaso. Where ? Zippa. To the duke's palace ! Come ! (Takes his arm.) Tomaso. To the duke's palace ? There'll be kicking of heels in the anti-chamber !— Dry work ! I'll spend thy ducat as we go along. Shall it be old wine, or new ? [Exeunt. {Hall of judgment in the ducal palace. The duke upon a raised throne on the left. Falcone near his chair, and Angelo on the opposite side of the stage with a guard. Isabella behind the guard, disguised as a monk. Tortesa stands near the centre of the stage, and Zippa and Tomaso in the left comer, listening eagerly. Counsellors at a table, and crowd of spectators at the sides and rear.] TORTESA, THE USURER. Duke. Are there more witnesses ? Counsellor. No more, my liege ! Duke. None for the prisoner ? Counsellor. He makes no defence Beyond a firm denial. Falcone. Is there wanting Another proof, my liege, that he is guilty? Duke. I fear he stands in deadly peril, count. (To the counsellor.) Sum up the evidence. (He reads.) Counsellor. 'Tis proved, my liege, That for no honest or sufficient end, The pris'ner practised on your noble grace And Count Falcone a contrived deceit, Whereby he gained admittance to the lady. (Tomaso exhibits signs of alarm.) Duke. Most true ! Counsellor. That, till the eve before her death, He had continual access to the palace ; And, having grown enamored of the bride, Essayed by plots that never were matured, And quarrels often forced on her betrothed, To stay the bridal. That, against the will Of her most noble father and the duke, The bride was resolute to keep her troth ; And so, preparing for the ceremony, Upon her bridal morning was found dead. 'Tis proved again — that, while she lay in state, The guard, at several periods of the night, Did force the pris'ner from the chapel door ; And when the corse was stolen from sanctuary All search was vain, till, in the pris'ner's hands Was found the veil that shrouded her. To these And lighter proofs of sacrilege and murder The prisoner has opposed his firm denial No more ! Duke. Does no one speak in his behalf? Tortesa. My liege ! so far as turns the evidence Upon the prisoner's quarrels with myself, I'm free to say that they had such occasion As any day may rise 'twixt men of honor. As one of those aggrieved by his offences, You'll wonder I'm a suiter for his pardon — But so I am ! Besides that there is room To hope him innocent, your grace's realm Holds not so wondrous and so rare a painter ! If he has killed the lady Isabella, 'Tis some amends that in his glorious picture She's made immortal ! If he stole her corse, He can return, for that disfigured dust, An Isabella fresh in changeless beauty ! Were it not well to pardon him, my lord ? Isabella. (Aside.— Oh, brave Tortesa !) Duke. You have pleaded kindly And eloquently, signor ! but the law Can recognise no gift as plea for pardon. For his rare picture he will have his fame ; But if the Isabella he has painted Find not a voice to tell his innocence, He dies at sunset ! Isabella (despairingly). He is dead to me ! Yet he shall live ! [She drops the cowl from her shoulders, and with her arms folded, walks slovrty to the feet of the duke.) Falcone (rushing forward). My daughter! Angelo (with a gesture of agony). Lost ! Tortesa. Mive ! Zippa (energetically). Tortesa '11 have her ! (Isabella retires to the back of the stage with her father, and kneels to him, imploring in dumb show ; the duke and others watching.) . Tortesa. (Aside— So ! all's right again ? Now for my lands, or Isabella ? Stay ! 'Tis a brave girl, by Heaven ! (Reflects a moment.) A sleeping draught, And so to Angelo ! Her love for me A counterfeit to take suspicion off! It was well done ! I feel my heart warm to her ! (Reflects again.) Where could he hide her from our search to-day? 56 (Looks round at Isabella.) No ? Yet the dress is like ! It was the picture ! Herself — and not a picture ! Now, by Heaven, A girl like that should be the wife of Caesar ! (Presses his hand upon his heart.) I've a new feeling here ! (Falcone comes forward, followed by Isabella with gestures of supplication.) Falcone. I will not hear you ! My liege, I pray you keep the prisoner In durance till my daughters fairly wed. He has contrived against our peace and honor, And howsoe'er this marvel be made clear, She stands betrothed, if he is in the mind, To the brave signor, yonder ! Duke. This were well — What says Tortesa ? Tortesa. If my liege permit, I will address my answer to this lady. (Turns to Isabella.) For reasons which I need not give you now, Fair Isabella ! I became your suiter. My motives were unworthy you and me — Yet I was true — I never said I loved you ! Your father sold you me for lands and money — (Pardon me, duke ! And you, fair Isabella ! You will — ere I am done !) I pushed my suit ! The bridal day came on, and closed in mourning; For the fair bride it dawned upon was dead. I had my shame and losses to remember — But in my heart sat sorrow uppermost, And pity — for I thought your heart was broken. (Isabella begins to discover interest in his story, and Angelo watches her with jealous eagerness.) I see you here again ! You are my bride ! Your father holds me to my bargain for you ! The lights are burning on the nuptial altar — The bridal chamber and the feast, all ready ! What stays the marriage now ? — my new-born love ! That nuptial feast were fruit from Paradise — I can not touch it till you bid me welcome ! That nuptial chamber were the lap of Heaven I can not enter till you call me in ! (Takes a ring from his bosom.) Here is the golden ring you should have worn. Tell me to give it to my rival there — I'll break my heart to do so ! (Holds it toward Angelo.) Isabella (looking at her father). Would I might ! Tortesa. You shall, if 't please you ! Falcone. I command thee, never ! My liege, permit me to take home my daughter ! And, signor, you — if you would keep your troth — To-morrow come, and end this halting bridal ! Home ! Isabella ! (Takes his daughter's hand.) Tortesa (taking it from him). Stay ! she is not yours ! My gracious liege, there is a law in Florence, That if a father^ for no guilt or shame, Disown, and shut his door upon his daughter, She is the child of him who succors her ; Who, by the shelter of a single night, Becomes endowed with the authority Lost by the other. Is't not so ? Duke. So runs The law of Florence, and I see your drift — For, look, my lord (to Falcone), if that dread apparition You saw last night, was this your living daughter, You stand within the peril of that law. Falcone. My liege ! Isabella (looking admiringly at Tortesa). Oh noble signor ! Tortesa (to Isabella). Was't well done ? Shall I give Angelo the ring ? (As she is about to take it from him. Tomaso steps in behind, and pulls Isabella by the sleeve.) Tomaso. f^'^Tl ■> What wilt thou do for dowry ? I'm thy father ? But — save some flasks of wine- Isabella (sorrowfully). For thy sake, Angelo ! Would I were richer 882 TORTESA, THE USURER. (Tortesa looks at her an instant, and then steps to the table and writes.) Jlngelo (coming forward with an effort). Look, Isabella ! I stand between thee and a life of sunshine. Thou wert both rich and honored, but for me ! That thou couldst wed me, beggar as I am, Is bliss to think on — but see how I rob thee ! I have a loving heart — but am a beggar ! There is a loving heart — (Points to Tortesa.) With wealth and honor ! (Tortesa steps between them, and hands a paper to Jlngelo.) Tortesa (to Isabella). Say thou wilt wed the poorer ? Isabella (offers her hand to Jlngelo). So I will ! Tortesa. Then am I blest, for he's as rich as I — Yet, in his genius, has one jewel more ! Isabella. What say'st thou ? (Jlngelo reads earnestly.) Tortesa. In a mortal quarrel, lady ! 'Tis thought ill-luck to have the better sword ; For the good angels, who look sorrowing on, In heavenly pity take the weaker side! Isabella. What is it, Angelo ? Jlngelo. A deed to me Of the Falcone palaces and lands, And all the moneys forfeit by your father ! — By Heaven, I'll not be mocked ! Tortesa. The deed is yours — What mockery in that ? Isabella (tenderly to Tortesa). It is not kind To make refusal of your love a pain ! Tortesa. I would 'twould kill you to refuse me, lady ! So should the blood plead for me at your heart ! Shall I give up the ring ? (offers it.) Isabella (hesitatingly). Let me look on it ! Tortesa (withdrawing it). A moment yet ! You'll give it ere you think ! Oh is it fair that Angelo had days, To tell his love, and I have not one hour ? How know you that I can not love as well ? Isabella. 'Tis possible ! Tortesa. Ah! thanks! Isabella. But I have given My heart to him ! Tortesa. You gave your troth to me ! If, of these two gifts you must take back one, Rob not the poorer ! Shall I keep the ring ? (Isabella looks down.) Jlngelo. She hesitates ! I've waited here too long ! (Tears the deed in two.) Perish your gift, and farewell Isabella ! Isabella (advancing a step with clasped hands). You'll kill me, Angelo ! Come back ! Tortesa (seizing him by the hand as he hesitates, and fling- ing him back with a strong effort). He shall ! Jlngelo. Stand from my path I Or, if you care to try Some other weapon than a glozing tongue, Follow me forth where we may find the room ! Tortesa. You shall not go. Jlngelo (draws). Have at thee then ! (Attacks Tortesa, who disarms him, and holds his sword- point to his breast. Duke and others come forward.) Tortesa. The bar 'Twixt me and heaven, boy ! is the life I hold Now at my mercy ! Take it, Isabella ! And with it the poor gift he threw away ! I'll write a new deed ere you've time to marry, So take your troth back with your bridal ring, And thus I join you ! (Takes Isabella's hand, but Jlngelo refuses his.) Jlngelo (proudly). Never ! But for me, The hand you hold were joyfully your own ! Shall I receive a life and fortune from you, Yet stand 'twixt you and that i Isabella (turning from Jlngelo). Thou dost not love me ! Tortesa. Believe it not ! He does ! An instant more I'll brush this new-spun cobweb from his eyes. (Crosses to Zippa.) Fair Zippa ! in this crossed and tangled world Few wed the one they could have loved the best, And fewer still wed well for happiness ! We each have lost to-day what best we love. But as the drops that mingled in the sky, Are torn apart in the tempestuous sea, Yet with a new drop tremble into one, We two, if you're content, may swim together! What say you ? Zippa (giving her hand). I have thought on it before, When I believed you cold and treacherous, Tis easy when I know you kind and noble. Tortesa. To-morrow then we'll wed ; and now, fair signor, (To Jlngelo.) Take you her hand, nor fear to rob Tortesa ! (Turns to the duke.) Shall it be so, my liege ? Duke. You please me well. And if you'll join your marriage feast together I'll play my part, and give the brides away ! Tortesa. Not so, my liege ! I could not see her wed him. To give her to him has been all I could ; For I have sought her with the dearest pulses That quicken in my heart, my love and scorn. She's taught me that the high-born may be true. I thank her for it — but, too close on that Followed the love, whose lightning flash of honor Brightens, but straight is dark again ! My liege, The poor who leap up to the stars for duty Must drop to earth again ! and here, if 't please you, I take my feet for ever from your palace, And, matched as best beseems me, say farewell. (Takes Zippa's hand, and the curtain drops.) END OF TORTESA. BIANCA VISCONTI; THE HEART OVERTASKED DRAMATIS PERSONS. Francesco Sforza— A Condottiero of the Wh century, after- ward Duke of Milan. Brunorio — His Lieutenant. Sarpellione — Ambassador at Milan from Alfonso, king of Naples. Rossano— A Milanese Captain, formerly companion in arms to \ Sforza. Pas<iuau. — A whimsical Poet. • » 4 * Bianca Visconti — Daughter of Philip Visconti* the bed-ridden Duke of Milan, and heiress-apparent to the crown. Giulio — Her Page, afterward discovered to be her brother and heir to the crown. Fiametta — Waiting Women to Bianca, and partial to Pasquali. Lords of Council, Priest, Messengers, Sentinels, $c. ACT [Pasquali the poet's chamber. Fiametta mending his hose while he writes.] Fiametta. Why dost thou never write verses upon me ? Pasquali. Didst thou ever hear of a cauliflower struck by lightning ? Fiametta. If there were honesty in verses, thou wouldst sooner write of me than of Minerva thou talkst of. Did she ever mend thy hose for thee ? Pasquali, There is good reason to doubt if Minerva ever had hose on her leg. Fiametta. There now ! She can be no honest woman ! I thought so when thou saidst she was most willing at night. Pasquali. If thy ignorance were not endless, I would instruct thee in the meanings of poetry. But thou'lt call Jupiter a cow driver, till the thunderbolt thou takest for a bunch of twigs, strike thee dead for profanity. This once understand : Minerva is no woman, but wit ; and when the poet speaks of unwilling Minerva, he talks of sluggish wit — that hath nothing to do with chastity. Fiametta. Are there two names for all things then, Master Pasquali ? Pasquali. Ay — nearly. Fiametta. What is the learned name for honest wife ? Pasquali. Spouse. Fiametta. When shall I be thy spouse then ? Pasquali. When thou canst make up thy mind to forego all hope of living in poetry. Fiametta. Nay, if I am not to be put in verse, I may as well have a plain man for a husband. Pasquali. If thou wouldst be put in verse, thou shalt I have no husband at all. Fiametta. Now, wilt thou tell me why — in good com- j mon words, Master Pasquali. Pasquali. Thus :— dost thou think Petrarch had e'er made Laura so famous if she had been honestly his wife ? Fiametta. An' she were thrifty, I think he might. Pasquali. I tell thee no ! His sonnets had then been as dull as the praises of the just. No man would remem- ber them. * This eccentric duke, the iast of the Viscontis, passed the latter part of his life in utter seclusion, seen bv no one but his physician. His habits were loathsome, and his character harsh and unnatural. Fiametta. Can no honest women be famous then ? Pasquali. Virtue disqualifies. There is no hope for her in poetry if she be not a sinner. Mention me the most famous woman in history. Fiametta. Helen of Troy, in the ballad, I think. Pasquali. Wouldst thou be more virtuous than she ? Fiametta. Nay, that were presumption. Pasquali. Knowest thou why she is sung in an Iliad ? I will tell thee : being the wife to Menelaus, she ran away with the prince of Troy. Fiametta. Then is it a shame to remember her. Pasquali. So thou sayest in thy ignorance. Yet for that sin she hath been remembered near three thousand years. Look through all poetry, and thou'lt find it thrives upon making sinners memorable. To be famous, thou must sin. Wilt thou qualify ? [Jl rap at the door.'] Page. Master Pasquali ! Master Pasquali ! Fiametta. Holy Virgin ! it is my mistress's page. An' I be found here now, I were as qualified as Helen of Troy. [She conceals herself. Enter the page.] Pasquali. How now, Master Giulio ! Thou'rt impatient. Page. Zounds, Pasquali ! If thou hadst been a prince, I had not been kept longer at the door. Pasquali. If thou wert of age to relish true philosophy, I could prove to thee that the poet were the better waited for of the two. But what is thy errand ? Page. A song — I want a new song! Pasquali. To what tune ? Page. To a new tune on the old theme. Could I tell thee a secret without danger now ! Hast thou ne'er a cat that will mew it out? Pasquali. No ! not even a wall that has ears. What is thy news ? Page. My mistress Bianca hath lost all taste for my sin^im; ! Pasquali. A pin's head might pay for that news. Page. But, good Pasquali, wilt thou not write me a new song ? Pasquali. Upon what theme ? Page. Sforza — still Sforza ! But it must be melan- choly. Pasquali. Why melancholy ? Page. Did I not tell thee once in confidence that she loved him ? Pasquali. Ay — and I writ a song in his praise. Page. I now tell thee in confidence that she hath lost him ; for she is to marry Lionel of Ferrara ! Pasquali. Here's news, indeed. Page. It's the duke's will, and my lady is grieved to the degree I tell thee. She'll have none of my music. Wilt thou write me the song? Pasquali. Must it be mournful, say you ? Page. Ay — as the jug-jug of her nightingale. She's full of tears. Wilt thou write it now? Shall I hold the ink while thou writest it ? Pasquali. Bless the boy's wits ! Dost thou think songs are made like pancakes, by turning the hand over ? Page. Why, is't not in thy head ? Pasquali. Ay— it is. Page. And how long will it take thee to write eight lines upon parchment ? Pasquali. Not long — if Minerva were willing. 884 BIANCA VISCONTI. Page. Shall I have it by vespers then ? Pasquali. Ay — if thou wilt leave me presently. Page. Farewell then ! Let it be melancholy, good Pasquali. [Exit. [Fiametta comes out.] Fiamelta. Now must I hurry to my mistress, ere that monkey-page gets to the palace. Pasquali. Stands he well with her ! Fiametta. If he were her born child, she could not love him more. She fancies the puppy-dog has an eye of her color. Good day, Master Pasquali. Pasquali. Stay ! will she marry this Lionel, think you ? Fiametta. Can you know anything by tears ? Pasquali. Not so much by a woman's — but doth your lady weep 1 Fiametta. Ay — like an aqueduct ! Pasquali. Then it's more like she loves than hates him I Fiametta. Now, enlighten me that ! Pasquali. Thus : — a woman, if she be a lady (for clowns like thee, are of a constitution more dull and reasonable) ;— a lady, I say, hath usually in her composition, two spirits— one angelical, the other diabolical. Now, if you stir me up the devil, he will frown— but if you touch me the angel, he will weep ! If your lady weep, therefore, it is more like this match hath waked the angel than stirred the devil— for I never saw woman yet, who, if her heart were crossed, would not play the devil ere she knocked under ! Fiametta. How canst thou think such brave thoughts on what does not concern thee ! Pasquali. Does it concern me if I shall live for ever ? Fiametta. Surely it doth ! Pasquali. By what shall I live then ? Fiamelta. By faith in the catechism, I think ! Pasquali. By poetry, I tell thee ! And now digest this paradox ! Though poetry be full of lies, it is unworthy to be called poetry if it be not true as prophecy. Fiametta. But how can that be true which is false ? Pasquali. I will show thee ! Thy lady's page would have a song, now, full of lamentation for Sforza. In it, I should say, the heavens wept— (which would be a lie) — that the winds whispered mournfully his name (which would be a lie), and that life without him were but music out of tune (which would be a consumed lie) ! Yet if she loved Sforza, see you not that my verses, which are nothing but lies, have a poetic truth. When if she love him not— they are poetically false ! Fiametta. 'Tis like thy flatteries then ! When thou sayest my cheek is like a peach, it is true, because it hath down upon it, and so hath a peach— yet it is false— because my cheek hath no stone in it ! Pasquali. Let me taste the savor of that peach. Thou art wiser than I thought thee. Fiametta. I must go now. Pasquali. Find me out if she love him ! I would fain write no more verses on Sforza— whom I hate that he hath only a brute courage, and no taste for poesy. Now, Lionel's father was Petrarch's friend, and thy lady loving my verses, it were more convenient if she loved Lionel, who would love them too. Go thy ways now. Fiametta. Farewell, Master Pasquali ! Pasquali. Stay— there be rude men in this poor quar- ill come with thee to the piazza. Come along, [The Camp before Milan. The tent of Sforza at the side and watchfires in the distance. Enter Sforza and Brunorio.] Sforza. Is the guard set ? Brunorio. All set, my lord ! Sforza And blaze 1 he watch-fires where I ordered ? Brunorio. Every one. Hold you your purpose, sir ? Sforza. To-nisht, at twelve, I will set on ! This fickle Duke of Milan Has changed for the last time. Brunorio ! Brunorio. You seem disturbed, sir. Sforza. I would have to-night The best blood up that ever rose for Sforza. Are your spears resolute ? Brunorio. As yourself, my lord ! Sforza. We'll sleep in Milan then. By Heaven ! I know not Why I have waited on the changing pleasure Of this old duke so long. Brunorio. Twelve years ago He promised you his daughter. Sforza. Did he not 1 And every year he has renewed and broken This promise of alliance. Brunorio. Can you hold Milan against the Florentine, my lord ? 'Tis said the fair Bianca is betrothed To their ally Ferrara ! They will join Naples against you, and cry out " usurper !" Sforza. Ay— I have thought on't. I'm the second Sibrza ! The first hewed wood ! There lies enough to bar me, Were I another Csesar, from authority ! 'Tis by this whip I have been driven so long — 'Tis by the bait of this old man's alliance I have for ten years fought the wars of Milan. They've fooled me year by year, and still found meana With their cursed policy, to put me off— And, by the saints, they've reason. Could I point The world to such a thread twixt me and Milan As weaves a spider through the summer air, I'd hang a crown upon it. Once possessed Of a fair seat in Lombardy, my spears Would glisten in St. Mark's ! Brunorio. And thence to Naples ! Sforza. Ay — with what speed we might ! My brave lieutenant, You echo my own thought ! [Enter a sentinel.'] Sentinel. A flag of truce By torch-light comes from Milan. [Enter Sarpellione, in haste.] Sarpellione. Noble Sforza ! I've rudely used my privilege to seek you ! Sforza. By right of office you are ever welcome. Sarpellione. If I might speak to you a timely word In haste and privacy ? Sforza. Brunorio, leave us ! Sarpellione. A flag of truce comes presently from Milan With terms of peace. The duke would give his daughter To save his capital. Sforza. The duke does well ! Sarpellione. You'll wed her then ! Sforza. If fairly offered me, Free of all other terms save peace between us, I'll wed her freely. Sarpellione. Then I pray you pardon ! You're not the Sforza that should be the son Of him who made the name ! Sforza. Bold words, ambassador ! But you are politic, and speak advisedly. What bars my marriage with Duke Philip's daughter ? Sarpellione. Brief— for this herald treads upon my heels — Bianca was not born in wedlock ! Sforza. Well ! Sarpellione. She's been betrothed to other suitors — Sforza. Well! Sarpellione. Is't well that you can ne'er through her inherit The ducal crown ? Is't well to have a wife Who has made up her mind to other husbands — Who has been sold to every paltry prince Twixt Sicily and Venice ? Sforza. Is that all ? Sarpellione. No — nor the best of it. There lives a son, By the same mother to the Duke of Milan. Sforza (seizing him by the arm). Said you a son ? Sarpellione. A son !— and— had I time— Sforza. Without there ! Pray the embassy from Milan To grant me but a moment. BIANCA VISCONTI. [Turning to Sarpellione.] Is it sure ? Sarpellione. Upon the honor of my royal master Who'll make it good. Sforza. Have you authority For what you say ? Sarpellione. In court or camp, Alfonso Will prove this story true. His mother fled, As the world knows— in peril of her life To Naples. Sforza. From the jealousy of the duke— I well remember. Sarpellione. Ere he could demand her From young Alfonso, newly king, she died; But in her throes brought prematurely forth A son ; whom, fearing for his life, she hid, And reared him, ever like a prince, till now, Sforza. Some fourteen years. Sarpellione. Scarce that— but he is forward, And feels his blood already. Sforza. Say he does— What make you out of it to change my purpose ? Sarpellione. Seeing you can not thrive by conquering Milan, ° Which Milan's allies will pluck back from you To put the prince upon his futher's seat My royal master wishes you forewarned. Sforza. He's kind— if that is all ! Sarpellione. He'd make a friend Ul the best sword in Italv. Sforza. ' What scheme Lies under this ? Sarpellione. No scheme— but your own glory' Your star stoops to the south. Alfonso's army Gathers at Capua to war on Florence ! (Afore earnestly.) He'll add Ravenna to your marquisate For but a thousand spears ! Sforza. I'll take Ravenna W ithout his leave ! Admit the herald there ! No, count ! your policy has overshot ! The King Alfonso needs no spears of mine — But he would have them farther off from Milan A blind mole would see that ! Sarpellione. My lord ! My lord ! Sforza. Hear me, Sarpellione ! I have been Too long the sport of your fine policy ! With promises of power and fair alliance I've fought for every prince in Italy — And against all, in turn ; now leagued with Venice To beat back Florence from the Brenta ; now With Florence against Milan ; then with Milan To drive the Tuscan home again, and all For my own glory, by some politic reason. I'll have a place, or I'll be in the track on't— Where the poor honor that my hand may pluck Shall be well garnered. By Visconti's daughter I set my foot in Milan. My poor laurels, Such as they are, shall root there ! — and, by Heaven, I'll find a way to make their branches flourish! Call in the herald, there ! Sarpellione. But Lionel, Prince of Ferrara, whom Bianca loves — Sforza. Glory has been my mistress many years And will suffice me still. If it should chance Bianca loves another, 'tis an evil To wed with me, which I will recompense With chainless freedom after. In my glory She'll find a bright veil that will hide all errors, Save from the heart that pardons her. Sarpellione. Farewell! You'll hear o' the young prince soon ! Sforza. I'll never wrong him If there be one !— Our stars will rise together ! There's room enough ! [Exit Sarpellione and enter Rossano.] Fair welcome, brave Rossano ! i know your news. Rossano. The duke sends greeting to you — Sforza, And offers me his daughter — is't not so ? Rossano. Seeing your preparations as I came I marvel you anticipate so well ! Sforza. A bird i' the air brings news, they say— but this Came by a serpent. How's the spear-wound now, You took for me at Pisa ? Brave Rossano ! We'll break a lance once more in company. It warms my blood to find myself again O' the same side. Come out in the open air ! We'll talk more freely, as we used to do, Over a watch-fire. Come out, old comrade ! [Exeunt Sforza and Rossano. [The apartment of Bianca. Fiametta embroidering, and the page thrumming his guitar.] Pa S e - I'd give my greyhound now— gold collar and silken leash — to know why the duke sent for my lady Fiametta. Would you, Master Curiosity ? Page Mistress Pert, I would— and thy acquaintance into the bargain. Fiametta. Better keep the goods you come honestly by. I would you knew as well how your mistress came by you. Page. I came to her from heaven— like her taste for my music. (Hums a tune.) Fiametta. Did you ! do they make sacks in heaven ? Page. There's a waiting woman's question for you • Why sacks ? Fiametta. Because I think you came in one, like a present of a puppy-dog. Page. Silence, dull pin-woman ! here comes my mis- tress ! ' [Takes off his cap as Bianca enters. She walks across the stage without heeding her attendants.'] Bianca. To marry Sforza ! My dream come true ! my long, long cherished dream ! The star come out of heaven that Lhad worshipped! The paradise I built with soaring fancy And filled with rapture like a honey-bee Dropped from the clouds at last ! Am I awake ?— Am I awake, dear Giulio ? Page (half advancing to her). Noble mistress ! Bianca. Thank God, they speak to me ! It is no dream ? It was this hand my father took to tell me — It was with these lips that I tried to speak It was this heart that beat its giddy prison As if the exulting joy new-sprung within it Would out and fill the world ! Wed him to-morrow! So suddenly a wife ! Will it seem modest, With but twelve hours of giddy preparation To come a bride to church ! Will he remember I was ten years ago affianced to him ? I have had time to think on't ! Oh, I'll tell him— When I dare speak, I'll tell him— how I've loved him ! And day and night dreamed of him, and through all The changing wars treasured the solemn troth Broke by my father ! If he listens kindly, I'll tell him how I fed my eyes upon him In Venice at his triumph — when he walked Like a descended god beside the doge, Who thanked him for his victories, and the people, From every roof and balcony, by thousands Shouted out " Sforza ! Live the gallant Sforza !" I was a child then— but I felt my heart Grow, in one hour, to woman ! Page. Would it please you To hear my new song, lady ? Bianca. No, good Giulio ! My spirits are too troubled now for music. Get thee to bed ! Yet stay ! hast heard the news ? Page. Is't from the camp ? Bianca. Ay — Sforza's taken prisoner ! Page. I'm vexed for that. Bianca. Why vexed ? Page. In four years more I shall bear sword and lance. There'll be no Sforza To kill when I'm a man ! Who took him, lady ? Bianca. A blind boy, scarcely bigger than vourself ; And gave him, bound, to me ! In brief, dear Giulio ! 886 BIANCA VISCONTI. Not to perplex those winking eyelids more, The wars are done, and Sforza weds to-morrow Your happy mistress ! Page. Sforza ! We shall have A bonefire then ! Bianca. Ay — twenty ! Page. And you'll live Here in the palace, and have masks and gambols The year round, will you not ? Bianca. My pretty minion, You know not yet what love is ! Love's a miser, That plucks his treasure from the prying world And grudges e'en the eye of daylight on it ! Another's look is theft — another's touch Robs it of all its value. Love conceives No paradise but such as Eden was With two hearts beating in it. [Leaves the Page and walks thoughtfully away.] Oh, I'll build A home upon some green and flowery isle In the lone lakes, where we will use our empire Only to keep away the gazing world. The purple mountains and the glassy waters Shall make a hushed pavilion with the sky, And we two in the midst will live alone, Counting the hours by stars and waking birds, And jealous but of sleep ! To bed, dear Giulio ! And wake betimes. Page. Good night, my dearest lady ! Bianca. To bed, Fiametta ! I have busy thoughts, That needs will keep me waking. Fiametta. Good night, lady. Bianca. Good night, good night! The moon has fellowship For moods like mine. I'll forth upon the terrace, And watch her While my heart beats warm and fast. ACT II. [The square of Milan. The front of the cathedral on the right. People kneeling round the steps, and the organ heard within. Enter Pasquali and Fiametta in haste.] Fiametta. Now, Master Pasquali ! said I not we should be too late ? Pasquali. Truly, there seems no room ! Fiametta. And I her first serving-woman ! If it were my own wedding I should not grieve more to have missed it. You would keep scribbling, scribbling, and I knew it was past twelve. Pasquali. Consider, Mistress Fiametta ! I had no news of this marriage till the chimes began ; and the epithala- mium must be writ ! I were shamed else, being the bard of Milan. Fiametta. The what, of Milan ? Pasquali. The bard, I say ! Come aside, and thou shalt be consoled. I'll read thee my epithalamium. Fiametta. Is it something to ask money of the bride- groom ? Pasquali. Dost thou think I would beg ? Fiametta. Nay, thou'rt very poor ! Pasquali. Look thee, Mistress Fiametta ! that's a vulgar error, thou hadst best be rid of. I, whom thou callest poor, am richer than the duke. Fiametta. Now if thou'rt not out of thy ten senses, the Virgin bless us. Pasquali. I'll prove it even to thy dull apprehension. Answer me truly. How many meals eats the duke in a day? Three, I think, if he be well. So does Pasquali ! How much covering has Fiametta. Pasquali. he? Fiametta. isquali. Nay — what keeps him warm. So has Pasquali ! How much money carries he on his person. Fiametta. None, I think none. Pasquali. Even so Pasquali ! He is a poet, and needs none. What good does him the gold in his treasury ? He is a.tiuke, and needs Fiametta. Pasquali. He thinks of it. So can Pasquali ! What pleasure hath he in his soldiers ? Fiametta. They keep him safe in his palace. Pasquali. So they do Pasquali in his chamber. Thus far, thou'lt allow, my state is as good as his — and better — for I can think of his gold, and sleep safe by his soldiers, yet have no care of them. Fiametta. I warrant he has troubled thoughts. Pasquali. Thou sayst well. Answer me once more, and I'll prove to thee in what I am richer. Thou'st ne'er heard, I dare swear, of imagination. Fiametta. Is't a pagan nation or a Christian ? Pasquali. Stay — I'll convey it to thee by a figure. What were the value of thy red stockings over black; if it were always night ? Fiametta. None. Pasquali. What were beauty if it were always dark ? Fiametta. The same as none. Pasquali. What were green leaves better than brown — diamonds better than pebbles — gold better than brass — if it were always dark ? Fiametta. No better, truly. Pasquali. Then the shining of the sun, in a manner, dies your stockings, creates beauty, makes gold and diamonds, and paints the leaves green ? Fiametta. I think it doth. Pasquali. Now mark ! There be gems in the earth, qualities in the flowers, creatures in the air, the duke ne'er dreams of. There be treasuries of gold and silver, temples and palaces of glorious work, rapturous music, and feasts the gods sit at — and all seen only by a sun, which, to the duke, is black as Erebus. Fiametta. Lord ! Lord ! Where is it, Master Pasquali ! Pasquali. In my head. (Fiametta discovers signs of fear.) All these gems, treasuries, palaces, and fairy har- monies I see by the imagination I spoke of. Am I not richer now ? Fiametta (retreating from him). The Virgin help us ! He thinks there's a sun in his head! I thought to have married him, but he's mad. [She falls to weeping. [The cathedral is flung open, and the organ plays louder. The bridal procession comes out of church and passes across the stage. As they pass Pasquali, he offers his epithalamium to Sforza.] Sforza. What have we here — petitions ? Bianca. Nay, my lord ! Pasquali's not a beggar. You shall read Something inventive here ! He's a clear fancy, And sings your praises well. Good chamberlain ! Bring him with honor to the palace ! Please you, My lord, wilt on ! Page (to Pasquali). You'll come to the feast now, wont you ? We'll sit together, and have songs and stories, And keep the merriest end on't! [Js the procession passes off, Sarpellione plucks Pasquali by by the sleeve, and retains him.] Sarpellione. A fair bride, sir ! Pasquali. What would you, noble count ? Sarpellione. The bridegroom, now, Should be a poet, like yourself, to know The worth of such a jewel ! Pasquali. Haply so — But we are staying from the marriage feast — Sarpellione. One word ! (Pulls him aside.) Have you ambition ? Pasquali. Like the wings Upon a marble cherub — always spread, But fastened to a body of such weight 'Twill never rise till doomsday. I would drink Sooner than talk of it ! — Come on ! my lord ! Sarpellione. Signor Pasquali — I have marked you oil For a shrewd, rapid wit. As one who looks Oft on the sun, there needs no tedious care Lest the light break too suddenly upon you. Is it not so ? Pasquali. Say on ! Sarpellione. You know how Naples Has over it a sky all poetry. BIANCA VISCONTI. 887 Pasquali. I know it well. Sarj>ellione. The radiant Giovanna Cherished Bocaccio and Petrarch there, And 'tis the quality of the air they breathed — Alphonso feels it ! Brief and to the point ! My royal master sends for you. He'd have A galaxy around him ! Pasquali. Noble count ! [Enter Page.'] Page. I'm sent to bid you to the feast, sirs ! Sarpellione. Qq j We'll follow straight. [Exit Page. This leaden-headed soldier Slights you, I see— He took you for a beggar ! Pasquali. Humph! 'tis his wedding day, and I for- give him ! Sarpellione. You're used to wrong, I knew. Pasquali. To-day, my lord. I'm bent upon a feast— wake not a devil To mar my appettie ! Sarpellione. One single word ! This brainless spear-head would be duke of Milan. Pasquali. What ! while the duke lives ! Sarpellione. While the duke's son lives, For there is one— I'll prove it when you will — And he will murder him to take his crown. Pasquali. How know you that ? Sarpellione. Alfonso, king of Naples, Would have this usurpation and this murder In time prevented. Pasquali. How ! Sarpellione. By Sforza's death. There's no way else— but 'tis a dangerous theme To talk on here — come out o' the way a little, Ind you shall have such reasons for the deed — Pasquali (flings him from him with contempt). \\ hat " deed !" Dost take me for a murderer ? My lord ! I'm poor. I have a thirst for honors Such as you offered me but now, that burns Like fire upon my lips— I could be tortured Through twenty deaths to leave a name behind me. But nay, I prate— I'll turn not out to thee The golden inside of a soul of honor — (Leaving him.) When next you want a hand for a bad deed, Look to your equals— there are those beneath you Who, from their darkling wells, see guiding-stars Far o'er your head, my lord ! [Exit. Sarpellione. Such men as this Do not betray e'en villains ! I shall find Another and a fitter. To the feast now ! And watch my time and means. [Exit. Rossano. I've, in my tent, the sword Your father plucked from a retreating soldier To head the fight at Pisa. 'Tis well hacked ! Sforza, I'll come, Rossano ! (To Bianca.) Nay, sweet ! by your leave (Takes his helmet.) We'll go abroad a little ! You shall see us Betimes at supper. Keep the revels toward ! We'll taste your wine anon. Come, brave Rossano ! [They go out. Bianca looks after them thoughtfully a few moments, and then walks back slowly to the banquetting room.] * ° [Jin ante-room, with a feast seen beyond. Enter Sforza and Rossano.] Rossano. I've a new culverin Invented here by the duke's armorer; Will you walk forth ? Sforza. Most willingly. Within there ! My helmet ! [Enter Bianca.] Bianca. Is there fresh alarm, my lord ? You would not go abroad ? f She takes the helmet from the page as he brings it in.] Sforza. A little way, sweet, To look at some new arms. Bianca. To morrow, surely, Will do as well. Here are some loving verses Writ on your marriage ! Rossano. p ve the gonfalon Your father gave me at the siege of Parma. The rags wave yet ! Sforza. I'd rather see a thread on't Than feast a hundred years ! Bianca. My lord, wil't please you Come in, and hear the verses ? There's a wine You did not taste, grown on Vesuvius ; Pray you come in ! [The ramparts at night. Enter Sforza and Rossano.] Rossano. She's loving in her nature, and methought Seemed grieved when you came forth ! Sforza. I should have thought so, But that I had some private information She loved another ! Rossano. You're perhaps abused ! Sforza. Nay— nay— how should she love me ? I'm well on To my meridian, see you ! — a rough soldier — Who never learned the courtly phrase of love. And she— the simplest maiden in a cot, Is not more tender-eyed, nor has a heart Apter to know love's lesson ere 'tis time. She's loved ere now, Rossano ! Rossano. Happy so— Yet be not rude too rashly. Sforza. Rude ! I'll make This forced link that policy puts on her Loose as a smoke-curl ! She shall know no master, And be no slave for me ! Rossano. You'll not neglect her ! Sforza. The sun of woman's world is love, Rossano ! When that sun sets, if no unpitying cloud Trouble her sky, there rises oftentimes A crescent moon of memory, whose light Makes the dark pathway clear again. Bianca's May have gone down for me ! I'll be no cloud To mar the moon as well. Rossano. Stand by— there comes A footfall this way. (They stand aside.) [Enter Pasquali hiccupping, and talking to himselj.] Pasquali. That wine was grown on Vesuvius. That's the reason it makes such an eruption. If it breaks out o' the top o' my head how— as I think it will— for it gets hot- ter and hotter— I shall know if wit be in the brains or the belly. Rossano. (Jlside — Stay— my lord ! This is Pasquali, whose verses Bianca sometimes sings to her lute. Ten to one now but you may gather from his drunkenness if Bianca loves another.) (Rossano comes forward.) Good even, Master Pasquali. Pasquali. That's an everyday phrase — this is holyday ! Rossano. A merry good even then ! Pasquali. Ay, that's belter! For we're all merry— except the bride. And that's the way of it. Rossano. What's the way of it ? Pasquali. See here ! Who is it that never weeps at a funeral ? Rossano. You shall tell me. Pasquali. The dead man, that hath most cause. Rossano. And what hath that to do with a bridal J Pasquali. A great deal. Of all people at a bridal, who should be most merry ? Why, the bride ! now I have just left a bride that is sad enough for a funeral. Rossano. For what cause, think you ? Pasquali. There are some things which can have but one cause. There's but one cause for drunkenness, and there's but one grief on a wedding-day. Rossano. And what's that ? Pasquali. Wine — causes drunkenness ! Rossano. And what causes grief in a bride 1 Pasquali. Want of love for the bridegroom. Rossano. How know you that, sir t BIANCA VISCONTI. Pasquali. Listen to in-spi-ra-tion ! "When first young Lionel did catch mine eye, "Sforza, the valiant, passed unheeded by!" Rossano. Villain ! these are thine own lying verses ! Pasquali (pulling out his sword). The figures of speech are lies of verse. But if thou sayest that it is a lie that Bianca loves Lionel best, thou liest in prose, and so, come on ! (Attacks Rossano, and Sforza comes foward, and strikes up their swords.) Sforza. Get home, thou drunkard ! Come, away, Rossano. He writes what's palatable, and but echoes That which is rung at court. She loved this prince — Sarpellione told me so before. We'll to the field and our old mistress, glory. Come on— we'll talk of battles and forget her. [Exeunt. Pasquali. Fighting's not my vocation ; but I have an itching that way, and I'll after him. Halloo ! Were there two men ? I think there were two. The last man called me a drunkard ! That's no offence I a poet may be a drunkard! But "villain!" that's incompatible, and must be pricked back. Halloo ! [Exit. SCENE IV. [Bianca's chamber at midnight. She sits on a couch in \ white undress, and Sforza beside her in his armor.'] Bianca. Dost think this ring a pretty one, my lord ? Sforza. Ay, 'tis a pretty ring ! I have one here Marancio gave me — Giacomo Marancio. The ring his wife sent — but you've heard the story ? Bianca. I think I never heard it. Sforza. She's a woman The heart grows but to speak of. She was held A hostage by the Milanese (I pray you Pardon the mention), when, twixt them and me Marancio held a pass. Her life was threatened If by his means I crossed the Adige. She — (Brave heart ! I warm to speak of her !) found means To send to him this ring ; wherein is writ " He who loves most, loves honor best." You'll see it Here o' the inside. Bianca. Did you see this lady ? Sforza. I hazarded a battle three days after With perilous odds, only to bring her off— And would have sold my life for't. Bianca. Did you see her ? Sforza. I gave her to Marancio when I took The ring of him. Bianca. My lord ! speak you so warmly Of any other woman ? Sforza (rising and taking his helmet). Nay, I know not. There are some qualities that women have Which are less worthy, but which warm us more Than speaking of their virtues. I remember The fair Giovanna in her pride at Naples. Gods ! what a light enveloped her ! She left Little to shine in history — but her beauty Was of that order that the universe Seemed governed by her motion. Men looked on her As if her next step would arrest the world; And as the sea-bird seems to rule the wave He rides so buoyantly, all things around her The glittering army, the spred gonfalon The pomp, the music, the bright sun in heaven — Seemed glorious by her leave. Bianca (rising and going to the window). There's emulation Of such sweet praise, my lord ! Did you not hear The faint note of a nightingale ? Sforza. More like A far-heard clarion, methousrht ! They change The sentinels perchance. 'Tis time Rossano Awaits me on the ramparts. Bianca. Not to-night ! Go not abroad again to-night, my lord ! Sforza. For a brief hour, sweet ! The old soldier loves To gossip of the fields he's los> and "Won, And I, no less, to listen. Get to bed ! I'll follow you anon. [Exit Sforza. Bianca. He does not love me ! I never dreamed of this ! To be his bride Was all the heaven I looked for ! Not to love me When I have been ten years affianced to him ! — When I have lived for him — shut up my heart, With every pulse and hope, for his use only — Worshipped— oh God ! idolatrously loved him ! Why has he sought to marry me ? Why still Renew the broken pledge my father made him ? Why, for ten years, with war and policy, Strive for my poor alliance ? He must love me, Or I shall break my heart ! I never had One other hope in life ! I never linked One thought, but to this chain ! I have no blood — No breath — no being — separate from Sforza ! Nothing has any other name ! The sun Shined like his smile — the lightning was his glory— The night his sleep, and the hushed moon watched o'er him ; — Stars writ his name — his breath hung on the flowers — Music had no voice but to say J love him, And life no future, but his love for me ! Whom does he love ? Marancio's wife ? He praised Only her courage ! Queen Giovanna's beauty ? 'Tis dust these many years ! There is no sign He loves another ; and report said ever His glory was his mistress. Can he love ? Shame on the doubt ! 'Twas written in the ring " He who loves most, loves honor best" — and Sforza Is made too like a god to lack a heart. And so, I breathe again ! To make him love me Is all my life now ! to pry through his nature, And find his heart out. That's wrapt in his glory ! I'll feed his glory then ! He praised Giovanna That she was royal and magnificent — Ay — that's well thought on, too ! How should an eye, Dazzled with war and warlike pomp, like Sforza's, Find pleasure in simplicity like mine ! (Looks at her dress.) I'm a duke's daughter, and I'll wear the look on't ! Unlock my jewels and my costly robes, And while I keep his show-struck eye upon me, Watch for a golden opportunity To build up his renown ! • And so farewell The gentle world I've lived in ! Farewell all My visions of a world for two hearts only — Sforza's and mine ! If I outlive this change, So brief and yet so violent within me, I'll come back in my dreams, oh, childish world ! If not — a broken heart blots out remembrance. [Exit into her bridal chamber, which is seen beyond on opening the door.'] ACT III. [An ante-chamber of the palace. Brunorio leaning sullenly on his sword by the door. Enter Sarpellione.] Sarpellione. What's this ?— the brave Brun orio turned lackey ? Brunorio. Nay, count ! I wait my turn. Sarpellione. If a civilian May have a judgment of a soldier's duty, You're out of place, sir ! This is not the camp ! You're not on guard here ! There's a difference Twixt patience at your post, and kicking heels In my lord's antechamber ! Brunorio. By the saints My own thought, noble count ! As you came in I brooded on't. Sarpellione. (Aside — This blockhead may be turned To a shrewd use now ! I have marked his brows BIANCA VISCONTI. 889 Blackening upon Rossano, who usurps His confidence with Sforza. Could I seize The lightning in this jealous thunder-cloud — I'll see the depth on't.) Sforza knows you're here ? Brunorio. I had a message by a varlet page, Who bid me wait here. Sarpellione. By a page ? Sacristie ! Fair treatment for a soldier ! Say, Brunorio ! What was't I heard of the Pope's standard-bearer Clove to the wrist ? Brunorio. Heard you of that, my lord ? You see the weapon, here ! Sarpellione. Was't thine, i' faith ? I thought promotion had been won with service ! Was't thou, indeed ? I heard the King Alfonso Say 'twas the best blow and the bravest followed He'd know in his time. How it came to his ears I know not but he made the court ring with it ! Brunorio. The king ? Sarpellione. How long since thou wast made lieu- tenant ? Brunorio. Five years come March ! Sarpellione. Zounds ! how this peasant's son Treads merit in the dust ! Sforza keeps back His betters, brave Brunorio ! (Rossano passes out.) Ay — there ! That man cuts off your sunshine, or I know Nothing of courts ! I, that have no part in it, Have marked how you are slighted for Rossano ! Forgive my touching on't ! 'Tis my respect For a brave soldier makes me speak so freely. But were I of your counsel — Brunorio. Noble count, My heart speaks through your lips. Since this Rossano Has had my lord's ear, I've been thrust aside Like a disgraced hound. Sarpellione. Frankly, brave Brunorio ! And between us,— I've heard you lightly mentioned By this ungrateful Sforza ! Brunorio. How, my lord ? Sarpellione. I would not tell you but to serve you in it — He told Rossano, there, that you had strength, And struck a sharp blow — and so did an axe ! But for your brains — and then he tossed his head — You've seen the scorn upon his lip ? Brunorio. Curse on him ! I've a sharp blow left yet — and brains enough To find a time to strike it ! Did you say Alfonso had spoke well of me, my lord ? Sarpellione. So well, that, on my own authority If you'd take service with a better master — You're captain from this hour. Brunorio. My lord ! So promptly I take your offer, that your commendations Will find no swifter bearer than myself To King Alfonso. Sarpellione. Stay — I'm not just now On the best terms with Sforza, and you'll see With half a glance, that while he's here in Milan His best sword could not leave him for Alfonso, But it would throw suspicion upon me, And touch my credit here. I'll write your warrant, Which you shall keep, and use it when you please. But for the present shut your bosom up, And bear your wrongs. Sforza awaits you now — Go in. I'll see you as you pass again ! , [Exit Brunorio. He's a fit tool ! This o'er-ambitious Sforza Must not be duke— and if I fret this cur Till he will tear his master, why, 'twill save A worthier hand the trouble on't. [Exit Sarpellione. [Sforza discovered sitting thoughtfully in his apartment. The page curiously examining his sword.] Sforza (yauming). This is dull work ! Page- My lord, will't please you, teach me A trick of fence ? Sforza. Ay— willingly ! Hast thou A weapon in that needle-case of thine ? Page (drawing). A weapon ! If I had your legs to stand on I'd give you all the odds twixt it and yours ! Look at that blade ! (Bends it.) Damascus ! [Sforza smiles, and unbuckles his scabbard.] By the gods You shall not laugh at me ! I'll give you odds, With anything to stand on ! Sforza. Nay— I'll sit— And you shall touch me if you can ! Come on ! And see I do not rap you o'er the cockscomb ! Page. Have at you fairly ! Mind ! for I'm in earnest ! (They fence.) Sforza. One — two — well thrust, by Jupiter ! Again ! One — two ! Page (makes a lunge). Three ! there you have it ! Sforza (starting up). Zounds ! This is no play. Page. What ! does the needle prick ? (Wipes it with his handkerchief.) Sforza. 'Tis a Damascus if thou wilt ! I'll laugh No more at it or thee. Come here, thou varlet ! Where got thy mistress such a ready hand As thou art ? Page (fencing with the chair). From an eagle's nest, my lord ! Sforza. I'll swear to it ! Thou hast the eagle's eye ! But tell me — what brave gentleman of Milan Has thy blood in his veins ? Page. I'm not of Milan. Sarpellione brought me here from Naples. Sforza. Thou'rt not his child. I'll answer for't. Page. Not I ! I hate him ! Come ! Wilt try another pass ? Sforza. Stay ! is the count thy master then ? Page. My ma3ter ? He's an old snake ! But I'll say this for him, Were I a royal prince — (as I may be — Who knows !) — Sarpellione could not treat me With more becoming honor. Sforza (starting up suddenly). What if this Should be the duke's son that he told me of? Come hither, sir ! What know you of your father ? (Aside. — 'Tis the Visconti's lip !) Page. . I'll tell you all I know, my lord. Alfonso sent me here, Five years ago, in quality of page. I was to serve my lady and no other, And to be gently nurtured. The king gave me A smart new feather — bade me bear myself Like a young prince at Milan — Sforza (starting away from him). It is he ! — Princely in spirit, and Visconti's impress On every feature ! He'll be duke of Milan ! Page. Heard you the duke was worse to-day, my lord? Sforza. What duke ? Page. Nay, sir ! you ought to know what duke ! I heard the doctor say you'd wear his crown In three days. Never say I told you of it ! He whispered it to old Sarpellione, Who— Sforza. What ? Page. Looked daggers at him ! Sforza. (Aside — Now the devil Plucks at my soul indeed ! If the duke die, The crown lies in the gift of my new wife, And I were duke as sure as he were dead — But for this boy ! (Walks rapidly up and down.) I'd set my foot in Venice In half a year ! — Ferrara — then Bologna — Florence — and thence to Naples ! I'd be king Of Italy before their mourning's threadbare — But for this boy ! (The page still fences with the chair.} I'd found a dynasty ! — BIANCA VISCONTI. Be second of the name — but the first king — And there should go, e'en with the news, to France, A bold ambassador from one Francesco, — Sforza by birth and king of Italy — But for this boy! I would he were a man ! I would an army barred me from the crown, Sooner than this boy's right ! But he might die ! He might have run upon my sword just now ! 'Twere natural, — and so it were to fall In playing with't, and bleed to death unheard, From a ripped vein. That would be natural ! He might have died in many ways and I Have had no part in't. Page. Will you fence, my lord ? Sforza (clutches his sword, and suddenly sheaths it, and walks from him. Aside). (Get thee gone, devil ! After all his glory Shall Sforza be the murderer of a child !) No — No ! I'll not fence with thee ! Go and play! I — I — I — (turns from him) . Stay ! shall such a grain of sand As a boy's life, check Sforza's bold ambition ! I, who have hewn down thousands in a day For but the play on't — I, upon whose hand Sat slaughter, like a falcon, to let loose At all that flew above me ! I — whose conscience Carries the reckoning of unnumbered souls Sped unto hell or heaven, for this ambition ! — Shall I mar all now with a woman's pity For a fair stripling ! (Draws his sword, and the page, who has been regarding him attentively, comes up and pulls him by his sleeve.) Page. Look you here, my lord ! If I have harmed you — for you seem so angry I think I have — more than I meant to do — Take my own sword, and wound me back again ! I'll not cry out — and when you see me bleed, You'll pardon me that I was so unhappy As to have chanced to wound you ! (Kneels, opens his bosom, and offers his sword-hilt to Sforza.) Sforza. Angels keep me ! Give me thy hand, boy ! (Looks at him a moment, and passes his hand across his eyes.) Page. You'll forgive me, sir ? Letting of blood — when done in fair play, mind you ! Has no offence in't. Sforza. Leave me now, sweet boy ! I'll see thee at the feast to-night ! Farewell ! (Page kisses his hand, and exit.) Shade of my father ! If from heaven thou lookest Upon the bright inheritance of glory I took from thee — pluck from my tortured soul These thoughts of hell — and keep me worthy of thee ! (Walks up and down thoughtfully, and then presses the cru- cifix to his lips.) As I am true to honor and that child, Help me, just Heaven ! [Exit. [A bridal feast seen through a glass door in the rear of the stage. Enter from the banqueting room, Bianca, dressed with great magnificence, followed by Sforza, Bossano, Brunorio, and Sarpellione. A raised throne, at the side. Music heard till the door is closed.] Bianca. They who love stillness follow us! The brain Grows giddy with the never-wearying dance, And music's pause is sweet as its beginning. Shut the doors, Giulio ! Sarpellione ! enter ! You're welcome to Trophonius' cave ! We'll hold The Court of Silence, unci I'll play the Queen. My brave lord, you shall doff that serious air, And be court favorite — sit you at our feet ! Sforza. Too envious a place and office both ! I'll sit here with Rossano. Honor's flower — That lifts a bold head in the world — at court, Looks for the lily's hiding-place. Sarpellione. (Aside — What trick Lies in this new humility.) The lily Is lowly born, and knows its place, my lord ! Bianca. Yet is it sought with pains while the rose withers ! Sarpellione. The rose lifts to the sun its flowering tree, And all its parts are honored — while the lily Upon one fragile stem rears all its beauty — And its coarse family of leaves are left To lie on the earth they cling to. Sforza (to Rossano, with whom he has been conversing apart). (I've sure news He was worse yesterday !) (Bianca rising with dignity, and descending from the ducal chair.) Bianca. Now, since the serpent Misled our mother, never was fair truth So subtly turned to error. If the rose Were born a lily, and, by force of heart And eagerness for light, grew tall and fair, 'Twere a true type of the first fiery soul That makes a low name honorable. They Who take it by inheritance alone — Adding no brightness to it — are like stars Seen in the ocean, that were never there But for the bright originals in heaven ! Sarpellione (sneeringly) . Rest to the gallant soul of the first Sforza ! Bianca. Amen ! but triple glory to the second ! I have a brief tale for thine ear, ambassador ! Sarpellione. I listen, lady ! Bianca. Mark the moral, sir ! An eagle once from the Euganean hills Soared bravely to the sky. (To Sf.) (Wilt please my lord List to my story ?) In his giddy track Scarce marked by them who gazed upon the first, Followed a new-fledged eaglet, fast and well. Upward they sped, and all eyes on their flight Gazed with admiring awe, when suddenly, The parent bird, struck by a thunderbolt, Dropped lifeless through the air. The eaglet paused, And hung upon his wings; and as his sire Plashed in the far-down wave, men looked to see him Flee to his nest affrighted ! Sforza (with great interest). Did he so? Bianca. My noble lord — he had a monarch's heart ! He wheeled a moment in mid air, and shook Proudly his royal wings, and then right on, With crest uplifted and unwavering flight, Sped to the sun's eye, straight and gloriously. Page. Lady — is that true ? Bianca. Ay — men call those eagles Sforza the First and Second ! (The bell tolls, and enter a messenger.) Messenger. Pardon, madam ! For my sad news ! your royal father's dead ! Bianca (aside, with great energy). (Sforza'll be duke !) (Turning to the messenger.) Died he in much pain, know you ? Messenger. Madam — Bianca. (Aside — The crown is mine ! He will re- member The crown was mine.) (Turns to the messenger.) Sent he for any one In his extremity ? Messenger. Most honored madam — Bianca. (Aside — Ingratitude is not the lion's fault — He can not hate me when I make him royal ! It would be monstrous if he did not love me !) (To the messenger.) Said you my father sent for me ? Messenger. No ! Madam, He died as he had lived, unseen of any Save his physician ! Bianca. (Aside — Sforza must be crowned And then our mourning will shut out the world ; BIANCA VISCONTI. 891 He'll be alone with me and his new glory — All royal, and all mine .') (To Sf.) Please you, my lord, Dismiss the revellers ! My father's dead ! (jlside. — There are no more Viscontis — Sforza's children Shall now be dukes of Milan ! Think on that ! He'll think on't, and his heart will come down to me, Or there's no truth in nature !) (To Sf.) My brave lord! Shall we go in ? Sforza. Go you in first ! (hands her in) Rossano Will forth with me, to see the funeral Fitly arranged. Binnca. You'll come back soon, my lord ! Sforza. Ay — presently ! [Exit Bianca. Rossano. With what a majesty She walks ! Sforza. She knows not that she has a brother, And in her port already mocks the dutchess. Rossano. She would have made a glorious queen, my lord ! Sforza. She should have made one — but I can not talk on't ! Let's forth upon our errand, and forget There was a crown in Milan. [Exeunt. ACT IV. [Pasquali's chamber. Fiametta sitting with his cap in her hand.] Fiametta. What wilt thou do for a black feather, Pasquali ? Pasquali. Hast thou no money ? Fiametta. No — save my dowry of six pieces. Pasquali. Give the pieces to me, and thy dowry will be ten times greater. Fiametta. An it be not six times less, I will never trust counting upon fingers. Pasquali. Hast thou no dread of dying uncelebrated ? Fiametta. If it be sin, I have a dread of it by baptism. Pasquali. Is it a sin to neglect thy immortality ? Fiametta. Ay — it is. Pasquali. Then take heed how thou fallest into sin — for to be the friend of a poet is to be immortal, and thou art no friend of mine if I have not thy six pieces. Fiametta. But how shall I have six times more, Master Pasquali ? Pasquali. In reputation ! Wouldst thou marry a fool ? Fiametta. No, truly. Pasquali. Then if thy husband be wise, he will be more proud that thou art famous, than covetous of thy six pieces. Fiametta. And shall I be famous? (Gives him the money.) Pasquali. Thou wilt live when Sforza is dead ! Fiametta. Is not Sforza famous, then ? Pasquali. He hath fame while he lives, and so had King Priam of Troy. But if Homer had not written, Priam would have been forgot and Troy too ; and if Sforza live not in poetry, he is as dead in a century — as thou and Laura were, but for thy favors to Petrarch and Pasquali. Fiametta. Why does not Sforza give thee six pieces and be immortal ? Pasquali. Truly — he pays more for a less matter ! It is the blindness of great men that they slight the poets. Look here now — hath not Sfcrza shed blood, and wasted treasure, and taken a thousand murders on his soul, to leave a name after him ? Fiametta. I misdoubt he hath. Pasquali. Now will I whom he thinks less worthy than a trumpeter, sit down, and with a scrape of my pen, make a dog's name more known to posterity. Fiametta. When thou speakest of a dog, I think of my lady's page. Canst thou tell me why she should love him so out of reason ? Pasquali. Canst thou tell me why the moon riseth not every night, as the sun every day ? Fiametta. No — truly. Pasquali. Neither can I give thee reason for a woman's fancy — which is as unaccountable in its caprice as the moon in its changes. Hence the sun is called "he," the moon "she." Fiametta. Holy Virgin — what it is to be learned ! Pasquali. Come, Fiametta ! spend thy dowry while thy mind is enlightened ! Fiametta. If I should repent now ! Pasquali. Think not of it. If thou shouldst repent to- morrow, I shall still go beseemingly to the funeral, and thou wilt be famous past praying for. Come away ! [The garden of the palace of Milan. Enter Bianca m mourning, followed by Sarpellione.] Bianca. Liar — 'tis not true ! Sarpellione. Wil't please you read this letter from the king, Writ when he sent him to you — Bianca (plucks it from him, and tears it to pieces). 'Tis a lie Writ by thyself— Sarpellione (taking up the pieces). The king has written here The story of his birth, and that he is Your brother, pledges his most royal honor — Bianca. Lie upon lie — Sarpellione. And will maintain the same With sword and battle ! Bianca. Let him ! There's a Sforza Will whip him back to Naples ! Tell him so ! There'll be a duke upon the throne of Milan In three days more, whose children will be kings ! Sarpellione. Your brother, madam ! Bianca. Liar, no ! my husband ! The crown is mine, and I will give it him ! Sarpellione. Pardon me, lady, 'tis not yours to give ! While a Visconti lives — and one does live — Princely and like his father — 'tis not yours — And Sforza dare not take it. Bianca. He has taken it, In taking me. Sforza is duke, I say ! Sarpellione. Am I dismissed to Naples with this news ? Bianca. Ay — on the instant ! Sarpellione. Will you give me leave To bid the prince make ready for his journey ? Bianca. What prince ? Sarpellione. Your brother, madam, who'll come back With the whole league of armed Italy To take the crown he's born to. Bianca. I've a page I love, called Giulio ! If you mean to ask me If he goes with you — lying traitor ! no ! I love him, and will keep him ! Sarpellione. Ay — till Milan Knows him for prince, and then farewell to Sforza! He's flown too near the sun ! Bianca. Foul raven, silence ! What dost thou know of eagles who wert born To mumble over carrion ! Hast thou looked On the high front of Sforza ! Hast thou heard The thunder of his voice ? Hast met his eye ? Tis writ ui>on his forehead : " born a king !" Read it, blind liar! Sarpellione. Upon your brother's, lady, The world shall read it. Bianca. Wilt thou drive me mad ? They say all breathing nature has an instinct Of that which would destroy it. I of thee Fee] that abhorrence ! If a glistering serpent Hissed in my path, I could not shudder more, Nor would I kill it sooner — so begone ! I'll strike thee dead else ! Sarpellione. Madam ! (Exit Sarpellione.) Bianca. Tis my brother ! At the first word with which he broke it to me My heart gave nature's echo ! Tis my brother ! I would that he were dead — and yet I love him — Love him so well, that I could die for him — Yet hate him that he bars the crown from Sforza. He's betwixt me and heaven ! were he but dead ! Sforza and I would, like the sun and moon, Have all the light the world has ! He must die ! 892 BIANCA VISCONTI. Milan will rise for him — his boyish spirit Is known and loved in every quarter of it. Naples is powerful, and Venice holds Direct succession holy, and the lords Of all the Marches will cry " down usurper !" For Sforza's glory has o'ershadowed theirs. Both can not live, or I must live unloved — And that were hell — or die, and heaven without him Were but a hell — for I've no soul to go there ! Nothing but love ! no memory but that ! No hope ! no sense ! — Heaven were a madhouse to me ! Hark ! who comes here ? {Enter Sarpellione and Brunorio. Bianca conceals herself.) Sarpellione. Strike but this blow, Brunorio — And thou'rt a made man ! Brunorio. Sforza sleeps not well. Sarpellione. Art thou less strong of arm than he who called thee A brainless ass ! Brunorio. 'Sdeath, he did call me so ! Sarpellione. And more I never told thee. Pay him for it — And thou wilt save a prince who'll cherish thee, And Sforza's soul a murder — for he'll kill him Ere one might ride to Naples. Brunorio. Think'st thou so ? Sarpellione. Is it not certain ? If this boy were dead Sforza were duke. With Milan at his back He were the devil. Rather than see this, Alfonso would share half his kingdom with thee. Brunorio. I'll do it ! Sarpellione. Thou wilt save a prince's life Whom he would murder. Now collect thy senses. And look around thee ! On that rustic bank, Close by the fountain, with his armor off, He sleeps away the noon. Brunorio. With face uncovered ? Sarpellione. Sometimes — but oftener with his mantle drawn Quite over him ! But thou must strike so well, That, should he see thee, he will never tell on't. Brunorio. I'd rather he were covered. Sarpellione. 'Tis most likely — But mark the ground well. By this alley here, You'll creep on unperceived. If he's awake — You're his lieutenant, and may have good reason To seek him any hour ? Are you resolved ? Brunorio. I am ! Sarpellione. Once more look round you ! Brunorio. If he sleep To-morrow, he'll ne'er wake ! Sarpellione. Why, that's well said — Come now and try the horse I've chosen for you. We'll fly like birds with welcome news to Naples ! (Exeunt Sarpellione and Brunorio.) Bianca. Thank God that I was here ! Can there be souls So black as these — to plot so foul a murder ! Oh unretributive and silent Heavens ! Heard you these men ? Thank God that I can save him ! The sun shone on them — on these murderers — As it shines now on me ! — Would it were Giulio They thought to murder ! — Ha ! what ready fiend Whispered me that ? Giulio instead of Sforza ! Why that were murder — too! — Brunorio's murder ! — Not mine ! — my hands would show no blood for it ! If Giulio were asleep beneath the mantle To-morrow noon, and Sforza in his chamber — What murder lies upon my soul for that ? I'll come again to-night, and see the place, And think on't in the dark ! [Exit Bianca. ACT V. [Same scene in the garden. Enter Bianca.] Bianca. No ! no ! come hate — come worse indiffer- ence ! Come anything — I will not ! He is gone To bring me flowers now, for he sees I'm sad ; Yet, with his delicate thought, asks not the reason, But tries to steal it from me ! — could I kill him 1 His eyes grew moist this morn, for I was pale — With thinking of his murder ! could I kill him ! Oh Sforza ! I could walk on burning ploughshares. But not kill pitying Giulio ! I could starve — Or freeze with wintry cold — or swallow fire — Or die a death for every drop of blood Kneeling at my sad heart, but not kill Giulio ! No — no — no ! no ! (Sforza comes in dejectedly.) My lord ! My noble lord ! Sforza. Give you good day, Bianca ! Bianca. Are you ill, That you should drop your words so sorrowfully ? Sforza. I am not ill, nor well ! Bianca. Not well ? Sforza. The pulse Beats on sometimes, when the heart quite runs down. I'm very well ! Bianca. My lord, you married rne — The priest said so — to share both joy and sorrow. For the last privilege I've shed sweet tears ! — If I'm not worthy — Sforza. Nay — you are ! — I thank you For many proofs of gentle disposition, Which, to say truth, I scarcely looked for in you — Knowing that policy, and not your choice, United us ! Bianca. My lord ! Sforza. I say you're worthy, For this, to see my heart — if you could do so, But there's a grief in't now which brings you joy, And so you'll pardon me ! (Giulio comes in with aheap of flowers, which he throws down and listens.) Bianca. That can not be ! Sforza. Listen to this. I had a falcon lately, That I had trained, till, in the sky above him, He was the monarch of all birds that flew. I loved him next my heart, and had no joy, But to unloose his feet, and see the eagle Quail at his fiery swoop ! I brought him here ! Sitting one day upon my wrist, he heard The nightingale you love, sing in the tree, While I applauded him. With jealous heart My falcon sprang to kill him ; and with fear For your sweet bird, I struck him to my feet ; And since that hour, he droops. His heart is broke, And he'll ne'er soar again ! Page. Why, one such bird Were worth a thousand nightingales. Bianca. (Aside — Poor boy ! He utters his own doom !) (To Sf.) My lord, I have A slight request, which you will not refuse me. Please you, to-day sleep in your chamber. I Will give you reason for't. Sforza. Be't as you will ! The noon creeps on apace, and in my dreams I may forget this heaviness. (Goes in.) Bianca. Be stern, Strong heart ! and think on Sforza ! Giulio ! Page. Madam ! Bianca. (Aside. — He's hot and weary now, and will drink freely This opiate in his cup, and from his sound And sudden sleep he'll wake in Paradise.) Giulio, I say ! (She mixes an opiate.) Page. Sweet lady, pardon me ! I dreamed I was in heaven, and feared to stir Lest I should jar some music. Was't your voice I heard sing, 'Giulio?' Bianca. (Aside — Oh, ye pitying angels, Let him not love me most, when I would kill him.) Drink ! Giulio ! Page. Is it sweet ? Bianca. The sweetest cup You'll drink in this world ! Page. I can make it sweeter — BIANCA VISCONTI. 893 Bianca. And how ? Page. With your health in it ! Bianca. Drink it not ! Not my health ! Drink what other health thou wilt ! Not mine — not mine ! Page. Then here's the noble falcon That Sforza told us of ! Would you not kill The nightingale that broke his spirit, madam? Bianca. Oh Giulio ! Giulio ! ( Weeps.) Page. Nay — I did not think You loved your singing bird so well, dear lady ! Bianca. (He'll break my heart !) Page. Say truly ! if the falcon Must pine unless the nightingale were dead, Would you not kill it ? Bianca. Though my life went with it — I must do so ! Page. Why— so I think ! And yet If I had fed the nightingale, and loved him ; And he were innocent, as, after all He is, you know — I should not like to kill him — Not with my own hands ! Bianca. Now, relentless heavens, Must I be struck with daggers through and through ! Speaks not a mocking demon with his lips ? I will not kill him ! Page. Sforza has gone in — May I sleep there, sweet lady, in his place ? Bianca. No, boy ! thou shalt not ! Page. Then will you ? Bianca. Oh God ! I would I could ! and have no waking after ! Come hither, Giulio ! nay — nay — stop not there ! Come on a little, and I'll make thy pillow Softer than ever mine will be again ! Tell me you love me ere you go to sleep ! Page. With all my soul, dear mistress ! (Drops asleep.) Bianca. Now he This mantle for his pall — but stay — his shape Looks not like Sforza under it. Fair flowers, (Heaps them at his feet, and spreads the mantle over all.) Your innocence to his ! Exhale together, Pure spirit and sweet fragrance ! So — one kiss ! Giulio ! my brother ! Who comes there ? Wake, Giulio ! Or thou'lt be murdered ! Nay — 'twas but the wind ! (Withdraws on tiptoe, and crouches behind a tree.) I will kneel here and pray ! (Brunorio creeps in, followed by Sarpellione at a distance.) Hark! Sarpellione. See — he sleeps. Strike well, and fear not ! Bianca (springing forward as he strikes). Giulio ! Giulio ! wake ! Ah God! (She drops on the body, the murderer escapes and Sforza rushes in. As he bends over her the scene closes.) [A road outside the walls of Milan. Enter Sarpellione and Biunorio, flying from the city, and met by Pasquali.] Pasqjiali. What news, sirs ? (As they attempt to pass him without answer, he steps before Sarpellione.) Stay, count, I've a word with you ! Sarpellione. Stand off, and let me pass ! Pasquali. Nay, with your leave One single word ! Sarpellione. Brunorio ! hasten forward, And loose my bridle ! I'll be there o' the instant ! (Brunorio hastens on.) What would you say ? Pasquali. My lord ! I hear the bell Tolling in Milan, that is never heard But at some dread alarm. Sarpellione (pressing to go on). Is that all? Pasquali. Stay ! I met a flying peasant here just now, Who muttered of some murder, and flew on ! Sarpellione. Slave ! let me pass ! (Draws, and Pasquali confronts him with his sword.) Pasquali. My lord ! you once essayed To tempt me to a murder. Something tells me That this hot haste has guilt upon its heels, And you shall stay till I know more of it. Down with your point ! Sarpellione. Villain ! respect my office ! Pasquali. No " villain," and no murderer ! In Milan They've soldiers' law, and if your skirts are bloody, You'll get small honor for your coat, ambassador ! Bear back, I say ! (They fight, and Sarpellione falls, disarmed on his knee.) Sarpellione. In mercy, spare my life ! Pasquali. Up, coward! You shall go before to Milan, And meet the news ! If you are innocent, I'll ne'er believe a secret prompting more. If not, I've done the state a worthy service. On, on, I say ! (Drives Sarpellione out before him at the point of his sword.) [A room of state in the palace. Enter Rossano ana a Priest.] Rossano. Will she not eat ? Priest. She hath not taken food Since the boy died ! Rossano. Nor slept ? Priest. Nor closed an eyelid ! Rossano. What does she ? Priest. Still, with breathless repetition, Goes through the page's murder — makes his couch As he lay down i' the garden — heaps again The flowers upon him to eke out his length ; Then kisses him, and hides to see him killed ! 'Twould break your heart to look on't. Rossano. Is't the law That she must crown him ? Priest. If, upon the death Of any duke of Milan, the succession Fall to a daughter, she may rule alone, Giving her husband neither voice nor power If she so please. But if she delegate The crown to him, or in extremity Impose it, it is not legitimate, Save he is crowned by her own living hands In presence of the council. (Enter Sforza, hastily, in full armor, except the helmet.) Sforza. Ho ! Rossano ! Rossano. My lord ! Sforza. Send quick, and summon in the council To see the crown imposed ! Bianca dies ! My throne hangs on your speed ! Fly ! (Exit Rossano.) Sentry, ho ! Despatch a hundred of my swiftest horse Toward Naples ! Bring me back Sarpellione ! Alive or dead, a thousand ducats for him ! Quick ! (Exit sentinel, re-enter Rossano.) Rossano. I have sped your orders ! (Enter a messenger.) 4 Please, my lord, Lady Bianca prays your presence with her ! Sforza. Away ! I'll come ! (To Rossano.) Go, man the citadel With my choice troops ! Post them at every gate ! Send for the Milanese to scout or forage, I care not what, so they're without the wall ! And hark, Rossano ! if you hear a knell Wail out before the coronation peal, — Telling to Milan that Bianca's dead, And there's no duke — down with the ducal banner, And, like an eagle, to the topmost tower Up with my gonfalon ! Away ! 894 BIANCA VISCONTi. {Re-enter the messenger from Bianca.) My lord — Sforza. I come ! I come ! Pasquali (without). In, in ! (Enter Sarpellione, followed by Pasquali.) Sarpellione (aghast at the sight of Sforza). Alive ! Sforza. Ha, devil ! Have you come back to get some fresher news ? Alfonso'd know who's duke ! While you are hanging, I'll ride to Naples with the news myself! Ha ! ha ! my star smiles on me ! (Bianca rushes in and crouches at the side of Sforza, as if hiding from something beyond him.) Bianca. Hark ! I hear them ! Come ! come ! Brunorio ! — If you come not quick, My heart will break and wake him ! (Presses her hand painfully to her side.) Crack not yet ! Nay, think on Sforza ! Think 'tis for his love ! Giulio will be an angel up in heaven, And Sforza will drink glory from my hand ! Come! come! Brunorio! (Screams piercingly.) Ah, who murdered Giulio ! Not I !— not I ! not I ! Sforza (watching her with emotion). Oh God ! how dearly Are bought the proudest triumphs of this world ! Bianca. Will the bell never peal ! Priest (to an attendant). On that string only Her mind plays truly now. Her life hangs on it ! The waiting for the bell of coronation Is the last link that holds ! Sforza (raising her). My much-loved wife ! Bianca. Is it thee, Sforza ? Has the bell pealed yet ? Sforza. Think not of that, but take some drink, Bianca ! You'll kill me this way ! Bianca (dashing down the cup). Think you I'll drink fire ! Sforza. Then taste of this ! (Offers her a pomegran- ate.) Bianca (laughing bitterly). I'm not a fool ! I know The fruit of hell has ashes at the core ! Mock me some other way ! Sforza. My poor Bianca ! Bianca. Ha ! ha ! that's well done ! You've the shape of Sforza, And you're a devil, and can mock his voice, But Sforza never spoke so tenderly ! You overdo it ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Sforza. God help me, I would her brother had been duke in Milan And I his slave— so she had lived and loved me ! Bianca. Can you see heaven from hence ! I thought 'twas part Of a soul's agony in hell to see The blest afar off ? Can I not see Giulio ? (Struggles, as if to escape something before her eyes.) Sforza's between ! Sforza. Bianca ! sayst thou that ? (Struggles with himself a moment.) Nay, then, 'tis time to say farewell Ambition ! (Turns to the Priest.) Look, father ! I'm unskilled in holy things, But I have heard, the sacrifice of that Which the repenting soul loved more than heaven, Will work a miracle ! (Takes his sword from his scabbard, and proceeds in a deeper voice.) I love my sword As never mother loved her rosy child ! My heart is in its hilt— my life, my soul, Follow it like the light ! Say thou dost think If I give that up for a life of peace, Heaven will give back her reason — Priest (eagerly). Doubt it not ! Sforza. Then— take it ! (Drops the hilt into his hand, and holds it a moment.) Sarpellione (in a hoarse whisper). Welcome news for King Alfonso ! Sforza (starting). Fiend! sayest thou so! Nay, then come back my sword. I'll follow in its gleaming track to Naples If the world perish ! (Enter Rossano.) Now, what news, Rossano ? Rossano. In answer to your wish, the noble council Consent to see the crown imposed in private, Three delegated lords will presently Attend you here ! Sforza (energetically). Tell him who strikes the bell, To look forth from his tower and watch this window ! When he shall see a handkerchief wave hence Let him peal out. (Attendant goes out.) My gonfalon shall float Over St. Mark's before Foscari dreams There's a new duke in Milan ! Let Alfonso Look to the north ! (Enter attendant.) attendant. My lord ! the noble council Wait to come in ! (Sforza waves his hand, and they enter.) 1st Lord. Health to the noble Sforza ! Sforza. My lords, the deep calamity we suffer Must cut off ceremony. Milan's heiress Lies there before you failing momently, But holds in life to give away the crown. If you're content to see her put it on me Let it be so as quickly as it may ! Give signal for the bell ! (The handkerchief is waved and the bell peals. Bianca rises to her feet.) Bianca. It peals at last ! Where am I ? Bring some wine, dear Giulio ! (Looks round fearfully.) Am I awake now ! I've been dreaming here That he was dead ! Oh God ! a horrid dream ! Come hither, Sforza ! I have dreamt a dream, If I can tell it you — will make your hair Stand up with horror ! Sforza. Tell it not ! Bianca. This Giulio Was, in my dream, my brother ! how I knew it I do not now remember — but I did ! And loved him — (that you know must be a dream) Better than you ! Sforza. What — better ? Bianca. Was't not strange ? Being my brother, he must have the crown ! Stay ! — is my father dead — or was't i' the dream too ? Sforza. He's dead, Bianca ! Bianca. Well ! you loved me not, And Giulio did — and somehow you should hate me If he were duke ; and so I killed him, loving me, For you that loved me not ! Is it not strange That we can dream such things ? The manner of it — To see it in a play would break your heart — It was so pitiless ! Look here ! this boy Brings me a heap of flowers ! — I'll show it you As it was done before me in the dream ! Don't weep ! 'twas but a dream — but I'll not sleep Again till I've seen Giulio — the blood seemed , So ghastly natural ! I shall see it, Sforza, Till I have passed my hand across his side ! (Turning to the attendants.) Will some one call my page ? Sforza. My own Bianca, Will you not drink ? (She drops the cup in horror.) Bianca. Just such a cup as that Had liquid fire in't when the deed was done — A devil mocked me with it ! (Another cup is brought, and she drinks.) This is wine ! Thank God, I wake now ! (She turns to an attendant.) Will you see if Giulio Is in the garden ? BIANCA VISCONTI. 895 Sforza. Strike the bell once more ? Bianca. He kissed me ere he slept — wilt listen, Sforza ? Sforza. Tell me no more, sweet one ! Bianca. And then I heaped The very flowers he brought me, at his feet, To eke his body out as long as yours — Was't not a hellish dream ? (The bell strikes again, and she covers her ears in horror.) That bell! Oh God, 'Tis no dream — now I know — yes — yes — I know These be the councillors — and you are Sforza, And that's Rossano — and I killed my brother To make you duke ! Yes, yes ! I see it all ! Oh God ! Oh God ! (She covers her face, and weeps.) Sforza. My lords ! her reason rallies Little by little. With this flood of tears, Her brain's relieved, and she'll give over raving. My wife ! Bianca ! If thou ever lovedst me, Look on my face ! Bianca. Oh, Sforza, I have given For thy dear love, the eyes I had to see it, The ears to hear it. I have broke my heart In reaching fort. Sforza. Ay — but 'tis thine now, sweet one ! The life-drops in my heart are less dear to me ! Bianca. Too late ! you've crushed the light out of a gem You did not know the price of! Had you spoken But one kind word upon my bridal night ! Sforza. Forgive me, my Bianca ! Bianca. I am parched With thirst now, and my eyes grow faint and dim. Are you here, Sforza ! mourn not for me long ! But bury me with Giulio ! (Starts from him.) Hark ! I hear His voice now ! Do the walls of Paradise Jut over hell ? I heard his voice, I say ! (Strikes off Sforza, who approaches her.) Unhand me, devil ! You've the shape of one Who upon earth had no heart ! Can you take No shape but that ? Can you not look like Giulio ? (Sforza falls back, struck with remorse.) Hark ! 'tis his low, imploring voice again — He prays for poor Bianca ! And look, see you ! The portals stir ! Slow, slow — and difficult — (Creeps forward with her eyes upward.) Pray on, my brother ! Pray on, Giulio ! I come! (Falls on her face.) (Sforza drops on his knee, pale and trembling.) Sforza. My soul shrinks with unnatural fear ! What heard I then ? " Sforza, give up thy sword !" Was it from heaven or hell ! (Shrinks as if from some spectre in the air.) I will ! I will ! (Holds out his sword as if to the monk, and Sarpellione, who has been straining forward to watch Bianca, springs suddenly to her side.) Sarpellione. She's dead ! Ha ! ha ! who's duke in Milan now ? (Sforza rises with a bound.) Sforza. Sforza ! * (He flies to the vnndow, and waves the handkerchief. The bell peals out, and as he rushes to Bianca, she moves, lifts her head, looks wildly around, and struggles to her feet. Rossano gives her the crown — she looks an instant smi- lingly on Sforza, and with a difficult but calm effort pla- ces it on his head. All drop on one knee to do allegiance, and as Sforza lifts himself to his loftiest height, with a look of triumph at Sarpellione, Bianca sinks dead at his feet.) [Curtain falls. THE END OP BIANCA VISCONTI. RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW >M JA N 1 7 1998 AUG 11 1998 AUG»»«» r,| •70 E)4| LEY 12.0X (11/95) GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY BD0DS722ia '63854 W7 3JT- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY